After roaming the stores and the malls on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day after Thanksgiving, shoppers go back to work on Monday, also known as Black Monday or Cyber Monday, and shop on line. During Thanksgiving get-togethers, people find out what their families and friends need and want for Christmas. They search the web for good deals and deep discounts. When the actual sales start on Monday, these people are at work so they go on line and shop using their company high speed internet connection.

The holidays are fast approaching and along come deadlines, exams and finals. This is a time of increased stress, fatigue, and frustration for a lot of people. Stress could be affecting our body without us knowing about it. We become irritable, anxious, nervous, and depressed. We become forgetful, loose concentration and make bad judgment. We tend to think of symptoms of stress such as headaches, body aches or stomach aches as illnesses. Stress is normal and can keep us on track with school assignments, but if stress is preventing us from focusing or maintaining a healthy lifestyle it can be a problem. Studies now show that increased stress can cause high blood pressure, memory deficiency or even a weakened immune system.

First there were junk mails then spam emails, now there are spam blogs or splogs. A lot of people might have already encountered this phenomenon. You look for a certain blog, for example, tobacco hazards, and you end up on a web site that has a few words about hazards. They try to get you to click on a different web site full of advertisements about something else like insurance pitch or exotic dancers.

There was a big article titled “Sick of Their Husbands in Graying Japan” on the front page of the Washington Post on October, 18th, 2005. It was about the alarming rate of Japanese women suffering from retired husband syndrome (RHS). After decades of dedicating their lives to their husbands’ and children’s well-being, these women now face a gloomy future with their retired husbands constantly around to bark orders and to criticize them.

It started in the Philippines a few months ago when the activists created a ring tone to condemned their president. A clandestine conversation of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo regarding the tampering of the 2004 election were illigally taped and secretly distributed. The government forbade the media to broadcast the recording, therefore, the activists sent it out as a ring tone on cell phones. People downloaded it like crazy and it exploded overnight. This has spurred a new form of political protest.

I just read an article, “The Next Killer Flu,” in the October 2005 issue of National Geographic. This disease called avian flu is no ordinary flu. The virus is frighteningly deadly to chickens, which can die swollen and hemorrhaging, within hours of exposure.

Worst of all, it can jump from birds to humans and spread quickly to the populations. This H5N1 virus can mutate rapidly and exchange genes with other viruses.

It's about 3:30 AM right now, and we have 1751 guests online! 1751!!! Where are these people coming from? And why does the number increase so dramatically in the middle of the night? I'm just curious.

Is the “Freshman 15” a myth or is it true that first year college students pack on 15 pounds during their first year at school?

Indeed, recent studies from researchers at Cornell University found that students gained an average 4 pounds in their first 12 weeks of college.

Over the break, I weighed myself at home and I freaked out. I did notice that my clothes felt tight and I had difficulty zipping up my jeans, but 2 pounds in 2 months? How did it happen?

In an unprecedented ruling that could help set national legal standards for free speech on the Internet, the Delaware Supreme Court rejected a Smyrna Town councilman’s attempt to unmask an anonymous Internet blogger.

In 2004, councilman Patrick J. Cahill and his wife Julia filed a lawsuit against “John Doe No 1” and three other individuals, who posted anonymous comments on the weblog operated by Independent Newspaper Inc. of Dover, for defaming him by claiming he had an "obvious mental deterioration" and implying that he was homosexual. Cahill wanted Internet service provider Comcast Cable Communications to release the identity of “John Doe No. 1” so he could sue for defamatory comments.

When I tell people that I might want to become a plastic surgeon in the future, they usually give me a "Really? Plastic surgery?" kind of face. They tend to get the wrong idea about it. When people think of plastic surgery, they think breast implants, nose jobs, and tummy tucks. But that’s not what it is at all. Plastic surgery is necessary and therefore reconstructive in nature. Cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, is elective and used to enhance people's features.

We have heard a lot about outsourcing: American corporations outsourcing thousands of Information Technologies, computer programming, software design, and advanced engineering to offshore companies in India and Southeast Asia. But the latest in outsourcing is healthcare services. A rising number of American patients are heading to India, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam for medical procedures such as orthopedic surgery, cardiology, infertility or even plastic surgery.

The silvery full moon shone brightly in the sky. The young children, with colorful lanterns in their hand and accompanied by their parents, walked around in circle to the rhythmic beat of traditional music…

Stop gas price inflation!

Remember the “Don’t buy gas on a certain day” campaign that has been going around for the last few months? This didn’t have an impact on gas prices since we rely on our cars and can’t just stop purchasing gas. It was more of an inconvenience for the consumers than a problem for the oil companies.

Gas prices have soared uncontrollably since hurricane Katrina. We need to take more aggressive action to control the market place. We can act together to force a price war. A friend of mine just told me of another strategy that she heard from somebody else. And I have to admit that it seems to make sense and might work. And we can accomplish that without hurting ourselves.

Ok, so here's something a little less serious, but essential to know nonetheless. The whole world's been waiting for the arrival of Britney Spears' baby. Even though I'm not a fan, I must say that I was curious as well.

Here's the URL for the site just in case the link doesn't work:
http://www.comcast.net/entertainment

I'm starting to get really sick of all these people complaining. It amazes me that this person who stood next to me at the gas station filling up his huge 8-cylinder truck while cursing and fussing about the rising price of gasoline and how much it is costing him each week and that pretty soon he will no longer afford to drive. Then this obviously upset man drove over to a Starbuck's coffee shop next door and ordered a grande double chocolate chip frappucinno.

I contributed two links to the aggregator. The first is an article about headaches. For the longest time I've been getting these chronic headaches that I don't know the cause of. I even went to get an MRI of my head, but they couldn't give me an answer to my problems. I was searching through technorati.com and I stumbled upon this site. I wasn't even searching for anything medical related. Actually I think that my search topic was tennis ... Anyways, the man in the article turned out to a leak in his meningeal sac. I'm pretty sure that my headaches aren't that serious (at least I hope they're not). It's an interesting article, so if you have time, you can read it.

The two chapters which I picked were interesting when read together. The first, chapter 20: The Blogger Code by Ron Yeany, was like reading symbols. I am not much of a computer genius, and I have never had any prior experience blogging before, so most of the vocabulary in this chapter was very cryptic. It was very much like its title – a code. Like what the heck does “[quotient/]” mean? Did anybody else actually answer the questions and get a letter/character combination? This is what I got: B1d- -t-k-s-u- -f-i-ox- -e+l-c+. Does that mean anything to any of you? I was feeling a little overwhelmed after reading this chapter, because it was the first thing that I read from the book. But after reading chapter 27: Ten Tips for Building a Bionic Weblog by Metascene, I was starting to feel a bit more relaxed.

Alright, so I'm gonna change it up a bit and NOT write about my family! haha. I thought that it might be appropriate now that we're in college, to write about, well, ... the college community! I came from a small private school with only 700-some students from pre-k to 12th grade. My graduating class had 58 people. It was such a small community, that everybody knew everybody else. It was impossible to keep a secret. A rumor would spread like wildfire, and by the end of the day, every single person knew about it. I had been attending that school since 4th grade, and about a quarter of my class had been going there since pre-kindergarten.