The following is a list of places I've traveled to and the date of my first visit.  A visit counts as driving through and/or stopping off, not just getting a connecting flight through an airport. 

US States:
Alabama - 2001
Alaska
Arizona - 2007
Arkansas
California - 2002
Colorado
Connecticut - 1982
Delaware - 1988
Florida - 1988
Georgia - 1988
Hawaii - 2007
Idaho - 2007
Illinois - 2005
Indiana - 2003
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky - 2005
Louisiana
Maine - 1993
Maryland - 1988
Massachusetts - 1993
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana - 2007
Nebraska
Nevada - 2005
New Hampshire - 1993
New Jersey - 1983
New Mexico - 2010
New York - 1990
North Carolina - 1988
North Dakota
Ohio - 2002
Oklahoma - 2012
Oregon
Pennsylvania - 1992
Rhode Island - 2007
South Carolina - 1988
South Dakota
Tennessee - 2003
Texas - 2004
Utah - 2008
Vermont - 2000
Virginia - 1988
Washington - 2006
West Virginia - 2003
Wisconsin
Wyoming - 2007

---

Total: 

International:
Antigua - 2009
Aruba - 2009
Bahamas - 2005
Barbados - 2009
Bermuda - 2008
Canada - 2000
Cayman Islands - 2011
Curacao - 2009
Dominica - 2009
Dominican Republic - 2009
Germany - 2008
Italy - 2011
Jamaica - 2004
St. John - 2009
St. Lucia - 2009
St. Thomas - 2009

A parasite is defined as "An organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host."  Most definitions also mention that the parasite, usually the smaller of the two, often benefits while the host is harmed. 

Human beings are, quite literally, a parasite to planet earth.  They use it, burn it, dig it, crush it, and destroy it.  Then they scatter all their waste products (created and bodily) on the ground and in the ocean, further harming themselves and other creatures attempting to live symbiotically on the planet.  Every part of the planet is made worse by human interaction.  Humans make use of the earth for their own well-being at the expense of the earth's well-being, thus perfectly fitting the definition of a parasite. #psychology

Public bathrooms that don't have paper towels invariably have electronic hand-dryers that blow hot air.  It's a painfully inefficient process, but hey, anything to save the environment.  Despite their fool-proof design and operation, instructions are necessarily, and they usually go something like this: 

1. Push button.
2. Rub hands under warm air.

I've been in public bathrooms all around the country and in all kinds of venues.  I don't think I've ever seen hand-dryer instructions that didn't have some variation of the following graffito (singular of graffiti ... c'mon, keep up): 

1. Push button.
2. Rub hands under warm hair.

I've seen this in schools, workplaces, public attractions, everywhere.  Either this specific graffito is so obvious that it practically writes itself, or there's a nationwide band of hoodlums systematically vandalizing public bathroom hand-dryers.  You decide. #entertainment

Having a website/blog means there will be spam comments, just like having an email address means getting spam email.  I could very easily disable the ability to leave comments, but I sometimes like to hear what people have to say.  Currently, I have a very simple yet effective method of preventing spam involving basic arithmetic.  It works great at filtering out (a) people with math disabilities and (b) robots who leave spam comments.  Every once in a while, a spam comment gets through, either because it was left by a real human (which I find surprising, seeing that most spam is done by automated means) or because the robot happened to guess the correct number to type into the box. 

But what I find most surprising is how much spam I get while I'm away from my computer.  I spend a good 9 hours per day at a computer, so I can quickly delete spam comments that get through.  I might get one or two spam comments per week normally, if any at all.  But as soon as the weekend rolls around, I suddenly get three or four.  And if I'm on vacation like I was last week, I suddenly get all kinds of comment spam.  It's like the robots know when I'm not around, so they all gang up and abuse my website.  Be careful robots, I might disable commenting altogether.  Don't ruin it for everyone. #technology

Faceball is an "office sport" played by throwing beach balls at fellow employees' faces.  Opponents sit 10 feet apart and try to hit each other directly in the face.  Glancing blows don't count, and ducking is not allowed.  The one with the most points after 5 rounds wins.  (via Neatorama) #sports

I just spent a week on vacation in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, stopping off in Missoula to visit a friend from college, the National Bison Range to check out some roaming buffalo, Glacier National Park to see some snow-covered mountains, and Yellowstone National Park to visit the nation's first national park.  Here's a list of interesting things I learned: 

1. Glacier National Park doesn't have many snow-covered mountains during the summer.
2. Montana stays light until around 9 or 10pm during the summer.
3. Most, if not all, Montana towns have a large white letter painted or somehow otherwise emblazoned on a nearby hillside, representing the first letter of the name of the town.
4. Most, if not all, Montana farms and towns have irrigation ditches (essentially a small stream of fresh water), which carry water to plants and lawns.  You can use water from the irrigation ditch, but only if you have rights to it.
5. In the mid- to late-90s, Montana's speed limit was "Reasonable and Prudent", which essentially meant "whatever you want".  This was changed in 1999 to be slightly more reasonable:  75 on interstates and 70 on most other roads.  Montana is the first place I've ever felt unsafe while going under the speed limit.
6. Meth is a big problem in Montana, or at least it was assumed to be big enough to attract the attention and advertising dollars of billionaire Thomas Siebel for something called the Montana Meth Project.  The weirdest example of this was driving hundreds of miles on a state highway and seeing nothing, until suddenly coming to a barn whose roof had a large painted message reading, "Meth ... Not Even Once".
7. Wildfires are essentially good, unless they get too close to houses and cities.  Many plants and trees actually depend on fires to survive, so most fires are allowed to burn.
8. Yellowstone National Park is essentially a national park located inside the crater of a volcano, complete with hot water springs, geysers, bubbling sulfur, and boiling mud.  All these phenomena are caused by underground magma, which, like all those Discovery Channel disaster shows talk about, will eventually erupt and cause the biggest natural disaster in the history of the universe, likely ending all life on earth.  In the meantime, it's a pretty cool place to walk around.
9. Moose (plural) sometimes eat by standing fully submerged in a lake and nibbling plants off the bottom.
10. Bison (plural) stick their tongues out when they roar/moo.

Here's a list of interesting things I experienced:

1. I ate an almost completely organic, all-natural, and, more importantly, sustainable meal with my friend's family, complete with garden-grown vegetables, lake-caught fish, and gun-killed deer and antelope.
2. I ate fresh kohlrabi, a garden-grown vegetable that looks like a head of cabbage and tastes like a radish.
3. I/we drove 1700 miles in 8 days.
4. I ate a buffalo burger right outside the National Bison Range.  This was later proven to be morally acceptable because many of the bison from the range are sold to local breeders and herders in order to further purify the bison currently living on the protected range.  The breeders and herders can do with these animals as they wish, which most likely means killing and eating them.  Bison meat is relatively low in saturated fat and cholesterol, but tastes surprising similar to beef.
5. On the flight home, I had to fly from Spokane to Seattle to Newark.  My flight out of Spokane was a little delayed, but I had no problem making my connecting flight out of Seattle.  My bag (which was checked in Spokane), however, was unable to make the connecting flight.  But don't worry, it caught the next flight, which was 4 hours later.  I was unaware this was possible, and I was surprised no one in any of the three airports told me about it.  Airports are weird.

Pictures: more »

A home-schooled 16-year-old from Illinois was denied the option of playing high school football for the reason that "participation in extracurricular activities is a 'privilege' and not a 'right'".  While I dislike that argument, it's totally true.  There are a lot of things that we as humans (or probably more accurately, we as Americans) think are our God-given rights.  We have the right to vote.  We have the right to bear arms.  We have the right to play high school football.  We have the right to drive.  But actually, those last two aren't rights at all.  They're privileges.  Privileges can be taken away because of bad behavior or not granted in the first place. 

I think this has a little to do with this article about how Mr. Rogers ruined the world by telling everyone they're special.  A San Diego State University psychologist noticed that many Asian-born students accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their superiors assessed them accurately.  American students, on the other hand, often view lower grades as a reason to "hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard".  I can identify with this idea because I've done it many times.  I think it shows that I (and we) feel like I'm owed something.  We have the right to go to college, and we have the right to get good grades for doing our work.  The SDSU professor said he wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective:  "The world owes you nothing.  You have to work and compete.  If you want to be special, you'll have to prove it." #psychology

I referred to this earlier, but I think I'm ready to spill my guts and tell all.  Apparently it helped solve this guy's problems.  This is the story of my ongoing fiasco with Sprint. 

I used to have a contract with Cingular, but right as it was about to end, I decided to switch to Sprint because of their faster data network and their lower prices.  I ordered a phone from Wirefly and filled out a form to port my number.  A few days later I got my phone and called to have it activated.  They gave me a temporary number at first because the porting takes a few days, and that was no problem.  However, after a day or two, I was told my number couldn't be ported to Sprint's network.  Since I've had the same number for the past 4 years, I didn't feel like going through the process of telling everyone I know I have a new number, mainly because I can't remember who has my old number (and I'm extremely important; I get multitudes of phone calls per day; yes, multitudes).  Plus, the problem sounded like a technical glitch, not an actual legitimate problem.  ("Our system says your number won't port."  Well, fix your stupid system.)  After talking to several different customer service people, I was told there was nothing they could do, so I was all set to give up and hold a lifelong grudge.  As a last ditch effort, I went to a local Sprint store to see if they could help, and the guy at the store said he had the same exact problem with his personal number, and he would just need to send an email to a person he knew.  Several days later he changed his story and said he didn't know what the problem was, but he escalated my case to a group in Sprint called "Employees Helping Customers" (Who exactly was I dealing with before this?  Employees not helping customers?).  After several weeks, my case was put into the hands of the local Sprint store's manager, who was still "waiting to hear back from EHC".  It has been exactly 6 weeks and 3 days since this Sprint fiasco started, and I still have no solution as to where exactly my old number is and why I'm not able to use it. 

So Sprint CEO Gary Forsee, fix my &*$%ing problem.  As of this point in my sure-to-be-wonderful 2-year contract with your company, I've had nothing but problems.  Your customer service is pitiful.  Your technical support is a joke.  Your whole company seems to be a winding maze of "let me transfer you to that department" and "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do about that".  I would've been better off sticking with Cingular or switching to Verizon. 

Now for an extremely detailed chronological breakdown of events: 
June 12:  Received my phone in the mail.  Called and had it activated with a temporary number. 
June 13:  Called customer service several times to start using my old number instead of the temporary number. 
June 14:  Called customer service several times to start using my old number instead of the temporary number. 
June 15:  Called customer service several times to start using my old number instead of the temporary number.  Went to the Sprint store and was told my problem would be solved. 
...
June 22:  Emailed Sprint store guy who said he'd get back to me by 4pm.  At 7:38pm, he said a network ticket had been logged and that he should hear a final answer by June 26 at 5pm. 
...
June 27:  Emailed Sprint store guy.  No answer. 
...
June 28:  Sprint store guy handed me over to Employees Helping Customers and told me I'd hear from them by June 29 or July 2 at the latest. 
...
July 5:  No word from anyone.  I emailed the Sprint store guy to see what the problem was.  No answer. 
...
July 10:  I'd had enough, so I was willing to just sign up for a new number.  Emailed the Sprint store guy and said I was coming in.  He said calls to my old number would be magically forwarded to my new number for the time being.  That never happened.  The Sprint store guy said I'd be dealing with the Sprint store manager from now on.  Progress was made by giving me a new number. 
...
July 12:  New number stopped working.  Went to the Sprint store, and progress was made by fixing it.  I was told I'd be contacted by EHC to get my issues sorted out.  I never heard from them. 
...
July 24:  Emailed Sprint store manager asking about any updates to my 6-week long saga.  No response. 
July 25:  Emailed Sprint store manager asking about any updates to my 6-week long saga.  Response:  "Still waiting to hear."
...
August 7:  Emailed Sprint store manager asking about any updates to my 8-week long saga.  Response:  "There's nothing we can do."  I emailed again later asking for a refund for the early termination fee for my old number.  Progress was made by refunding the money I didn't owe in the first place. 

I'll continue to update this with "waiting to hear", "sorry we can't do anything", and "we're the worst company ever in the history of the universe; here's all your money back; oh and here's the past 6 weeks of your life back" and things of that nature. 

Final update:  By mid-August, the results were in.  I lost my old number for unexplainable reasons.  I got a new number.  I got a refund for all the money I didn't owe (such as double billing and incorrect early termination charges).  My old number is now in the hands of a teenager with Verizon service.  Not sure how that happened.  All in all, my switch from Cingular to Sprint was as painful and inconvenient as it possibly could've been, correctly representing Sprint's deplorable reputation and abysmal customer service. #technology

Transformers is an awesome movie, partly because of the prolific robot violence, but also because of the cool sound effects.  Hearing that wahnt-wahnt-wahnt-wahnt-wahnt takes me right back to 1989, sitting on my neighbor's couch on weekday afternoons, preceded by G.I. Joe and other amazing cartoons.  I just learned that the voice of Optimus Prime is actually the voice of a human named Peter Cullen.  I always thought it was some sort of electronic effect.  But like Hal Douglas and Don LaFontaine, he's just a guy with a cool recognizable voice. 

On a related note, there's an adult-sized Transformers helmet that electronically alters your voice when you speak through the microphone.  It doesn't sound much like Optimus Prime, but it's mildly close. #entertainment

I'm a geek.  I buy gadgets.  Before any major gadget purchase, I look for product reviews.  Most times, Google doesn't do a very good job of finding product reviews.  It usually finds a few comparison shopping websites where Average Joe writes about his terrible experience buying it online and the subsequent time it took to collect the number of pieces formed when the product was dropped off a tall building onto a rock.  Average Joe is an idiot.  I don't drop my gadgets off tall buildings onto rocks.  I'm good with my gadgets, so I usually want a product review with a little more intelligence.  A great place for good online product reviews is CNET.  They usually have a pretty thorough writeup done by someone with more than half a brain.  The best part about it is that they'll say if a product sucks.  They're not the kind of company that's just happy to get free products from manufacturers so they'll give a good review no matter what.  CNET is big enough to not care about giving a product a bad review, and I've often found that I'd rather know why a product sucks than why it's great. #products