I’ve had @dturnbull’s 30 Ways to Build a Carefree Life on my desktop for a few weeks, and I get something different out of it each time I read it. #13: “Always be working on something that is greater than yourself and will still be around beyond your years. Idleness kills. ‘Find a happy person, and you will find a project.’ – Sonja Lyubomirsky” This is certainly a grand challenge for me as a web designer; the things I create are rarely around beyond next year, let alone beyond one’s lifetime.

@ecorrigan’s blog post from March just made my day brighter. “This is not a place you can go charging into, armed with to-do lists and rational argument and plans. You can’t take inventory and tidy up in there. It makes pieces of itself visible only when it’s ready. If you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse in your peripheral vision every now and then. This is kind of a scary idea. That something so deep and so big and so in control is so elusive. …But the thing is, this is the essence of being human. It’s what we all have in common.”

Finally had a chance to try Jeremy Smith’s how-to for running Internet Explorer 8, 7, and 6 concurrently, and it works flawlessly. I didn’t even receive any of the DLL errors that he cites in his post.

In case Awkward Family Photos isn’t enough to get you through Friday and into the weekend, try Cake Wrecks.

One of the most clever blog titles I’ve seen in awhile: Girl’s Gone Child.

If God had a Facebook… “God is just sittin’ around bein’ omnipotent… Hit me up on AIM.”

Bethany posted my unnecessary quotation marks find yesterday. Those demanding stairs.

“Recognize that college is more about developing personal responsibility and improving your analytical and creative thinking skills. Going to school is not about resume building. College is about learning theory (how to go beyond this place in time) and history (how we got to this place in time) in a well-balanced array of subjects. This knowledge gives you depth and helps develop character. Learn how to transpose solutions from one discipline or event to another in order to solve a problem or create an opportunity.”

Kudos to Kent for beating some sense into the masses. Nearly every time I have to use “his or her,” I wince at the cumbersomeness.

Andy Rutledge on project pricing: “When doing identical projects for Client A and Client B, you may find it appropriate to charge anywhere from an additional 20% to double (or more) for Client B, based on certain important criteria.”

Some have described Jeff Deck and his team as “the Zorro of grammar,” but I prefer “crusaders of orthography.”

Ever wondered why Easter falls anywhere from mid-March to late April? Jot down this formula for future reference. Or accept that you’ll never remember what all of those variables mean and a) get a 10-year calendar and/or b) attempt to remember the simplified mantra involving the full moon.

How did I think that my life was complete without my two new favorite websites? Passive-Aggressive Notes (which I actually found a few weeks ago and was remiss to post… oops) and the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

“In situations where you need to improve your connection with a white person, just mention how you hope to be successful enough to one day afford an original piece of furniture by <insert obscurely named architect>. If they have heard of the designer they will nod in agreement, if they have not, they will also nod in agreement and make a note to look it up later. In either case, your status will rise.”

“I don’t know where exactly, but somewhere in between Saul Bass and Joshua Davis, a new breed of designers was born. A breed with tremendous talent (most of them anyway) but with one big flaw: they developed an arrogant attitude and started acting like Divas instead of acting like the professionals they were supposed to be.”