Yay, I'm secure enough in my adulthood to tell this little gem.  Maybe a testament to my social awkwards, maybe a propellant of my social awkwardness...who's to say, either way, what a childhood.  So I was in scouts as a kid, and really had a great time all along.  If I remember correctly, I skipped the smallest ranking of cub, but had 2 years of wolf, 2 years of bear, and I think there is a 3rd rank in there before webelo scout...had to google it, bobcat.  Webelo is where all the cool stuff happens, in my opinion, but as you can see, i was pretty well invested in the program with around 7 or 8 years involved.  Towards the end, I started getting less and less involved, perhaps a little disinterest on my part, perhaps some parental differences, perhaps going to a private school instead of the public school that all the other kids went to, but probably a mix of all of the above.  I think there was a time where I had missed like 3 months of activity and one day my dad just said, "You're going." when I wanted out because I didn't know anyone anymore.  Anyway, it was a night where there was some structured lecture thing going on, maybe about 50 kids in the room sitting in a grid of fold out wooden chairs.  I don't remember how old I am, I think 5th grade, but certainly old enough to know when I need to go to the bathroom, and I did know I had to...just not sure of what protocol was necessary to go.  Welcome to my oppressed childhood.  The scout master is up there rambling on and on, and I'm stuck worried about getting in trouble for interrupting if I just got up and went to the bathroom without someone's permission.  I tried my hardest to wait.  I knew it couldn't be long until the end of the meeting.  I don't know anyone here anymore.  I really don't want to be here.  Then I just let it flow.

  I remember now that I was wearing brand new white sneakers too.  I just sat there waiting for the meeting to end...not that I new what to do once it ended...but yeah...I was deer in the headlights mentally.  Then the others caught on.  "Dude, you're leaking" someone said.  I played confused and tried to blame it on a leak in the ceiling...haha, wow.  "I know, this crazy leak in the ceiling is falling right onto my crotch and I just don't know what to do about it since I am chained to this chair and the chair is nailed to the floor" seemed like a good explanation at the time at least.  The scout master said the final words, something that would start everyone to get up and do some kind of pledging, and I bolted in the crowd of movement.  I ran outside, with no destination in mind, I was thinking about hiding in a bush until I saw my mom, but thank God she had already parked the van in the parking lot and was cleaning it out.  Mom to the rescue...again.  I remember balling my eyes out trying to explain what the crap I just did.  I can't even imagine what was going through her head.  She helped me come up with a plan to sneak into the house so that Serah and J'aime wouldn't see.  I think they did though.  That, or my mom told them later.  I know my dad told them later.

You'd think that'd be it though, right?  Nah, dad says I'm not allowed to quit.  Time to go to a weekend camping trip with the troop.  I was not friends with the kids before because I just didn't know them, but now they're not friends with me because I'm the kid who peed his pants.  They stuck me in a tent with one of the older kids, probably so I didn't get beat up.  I don't remember much of that weekend, really it seemed like it went pretty well in retrospect.  We camped at a small airport and I got to fly in a plane for the first time.  There was a helicopter there too, and I really liked helicopters.  The worst part about it though was spaghetti was on the menu for the whole weekend...and I didn't eat spaghetti.  It was ham barbecue for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Since that weekend, I've never been able to eat a ham barbecue sandwich without emotionally cringing.  It has become the embodiment of one of the worst childhood experiences I can remember.

Soon, you'll be able to register any top level domain (TLD) you like.  A TLD is like the .net, .com., .org, .gov, etc of websites.  This will be chaos on a stick.  So many peope are going to be "cybersquatting" which means I would go and register .pepsi before Pepsi would, and if they wanted it, they could buy it from me, if I was willing and liked their offer.

This might at first be a new and inovative thing, but this is not an expansion of our current system if this turns out how I think it will.  No one will be registering .com sites anymore.  So what we'll really see is a change of our existing orderly and common knowledge system.  The ctrl+enter keyboard shortcut will be used less and less when going to websites.  Everyone is just going to be cutting off the .net and .com and all that, so we're basically eliminating the TLD system and it will be a free-for-all.

granted, I'm already thinking about registering .joshhall, because I think i could get ahead of the others out there...i dunno.  it's approved.  It's happening.  We'll see if it'll will be the epic fail i'm expecting it to be.

class dreamgirl
{
  var $family;
  var $body;
  var $faith;
  var $humor;
  var $intelligence;
  var $sanity;
  var $ambition;
  var $interest; 
  function PhysicalAttraction()
  {
    foreach($attributes as $key => $value){
    return $value;}
  }

  function PersonalityCompatibility()
  {
    while($personality>0 && $interest!=NULL){
 	GetToKnow($personality);
	$personality--;
	NextStep($thisgirl);
	}else EXIT;
  }

$thisgirl = new dreamgirl();

>Error on line 21, function "NextStep" not defined.

With video cameras getting smaller and smaller, I'd like to see a headband with cameras sewn into it on the front, back, and both sides.  This headband would be worn by athletes like in the NBA.  It'd be great to get that first person point of view on things like fast breaks or dunks, or even as reviews on close calls to see what the player saw.  We pay major athletes and idolize enough already, why not throw a camera on them to get the fans even closer? 

...which would be the next step...once you have 360 camera on a player, you can design a helmet or special screen for people to watch through and feel like they ARE the player.  If enough cameras are on and you can map their locations to a relation field, you'll even be able to do free roam viewing, so that you can be watching the game as if you're standing on the court, you'd just be jumping to the camera that has your current view in it.

Next time you're with a friend on top of Mount Washington looking down at the fountain at point state park, ask them how many rivers there are.  If they're completely clueless of pittsburgh's history, I could see someone saying just 2, assuming that either the mon or the allegheny river just flow into the other.  If they said 3, they're still wrong.  It's straight out of a DaVinci code or Nationaly Treasure plotline, but the fountain is actually supplied by an underground water souce.  I've always known this, but a recent article in the paper reminded me of that fact.  So the real answer would be 4 rivers would be in plain sight.

for more on the under ground "river" - http://www.clpgh.org/exhibit/neighborhoods/point/point_n77.html