Links

Links: these are some places on the Web I visit regularly:

Games

	Sudoku Slam Fast, idiot proof Sudoku. It stops you making an illegal move; if there's only one possible number in a square, it will fill it in for you; you can ask for hints; it times the games and gives a running average of solution time if you want. I'm at around 2:40 for the easy puzzles, for what it's worth.
	Mini-Putt Miniature golf. 18 holes; some easy, some not so easy. My personal best score is 24 strokes so far; I've seen several perfect 18s on the web - google it for examples.
	Chain Reaction Kind of hard to describe - try it out and see what you think. There is a grid of circles, each one has a part of a circle painted on it. You hit one with the mouse and it turns - if an open part of turning partial circle connects with an open part of a neighbor that one turns too. And then the ones that one connects with turn and ... when you get a good chain reaction going the effect is fairly hypnotic. At the end, it tells you how many circles have been turned. I figure 1,500 is okay, 2,000 is good and 3,000 is fantastic. I haven't (quite) gotten to 4,000 - once I do, I'll quit. Really. I will. Having read all of the above several times, I'm ready to admit that I can't describe it - try it out and see for yourself.

Daily

	Not Always Right Allegedly true stories about retail/fast food/service encounters with customers who ... are not quite right. If true (and most of them sound good to me) there are some truely horrible customers in the world.
	The Straight Dope Cecil Adams of the Chicago Reader newspaper has answered a write-in question once a week since 1973. This week's question and answer is posted on Fridays; there are reruns on the other weekdays. Usually sarcastic; always informative; always a good read.
	Daily WTF True stories for the geeks that work in Information Technology submitted by fans of the site. "WTF" in this case (so he says) means "Worse Than Failure" - situations that would be so much better if they failed and never saw the light of day. I have not submitted anything yet so don't search. Please?
	ars technica Note the lower case: they're a little picky about that. Anyway, news about technology; games; gadgets; Intellectual Propery. It used to much more focused on what goes on inside your computer; now it's a sister site to Wired.com and there's a lot more about the social aspects of computing. Five to ten new articles a day; pretty much all of it worth reading.
	ZDNet More news about technology; games; gadgets; Intellectual Propery. Quite a bit 'fluffier' than Ars but much of it worth reading. Drill down to blogs and then all blogs; read a bit and you'll discover who's worth reading and who isn't. There's a discussion below each article that usually goes off track and degenerates quickly. The disussions are worth reading for the laughs, if nothing else.
	Oh Gizmo New shiny! All kinds of odd stuff that people are selling, designing or manufacturing. The update rate is tolerable (as opposed to, say Gizmodo - you get a new gadget there around every 8 minutes) - maybe five, ten updates per day. They're usually all in the class of "Holy crap - where can I buy that? Today, please?", though.

Comics

Non Sequiter	Non Sequiter Hmm. What I said on the last 'links' page: Remarkably intellignet daily comic. I'll add - it's biased toward US political commentary but it still has a ton of odd observations on day-to-day life
	XKCD All geeks know this one. Science, math and technology humour. If you like any of those it's worth it. If not, maybe not so much. New comic every Mondy, Wednesday and Friday.
Abstruse Goose	Abstruse Goose A few geeks know this one. Science, math and technology humour. If you like any of those it's worth it. If not, maybe not so much. New comic on some kind of a cosmic random schedule. I check it daily to see if it's been updated.

Message Boards

	Straight Dope Message Boards Worth visiting often. The topic categories are well described and the site moderators keep everyone on topic.
	ars technica open forum Intelligent discussion about a lot of deep, complicated technical subjects plus a a bit of fluff to keep you entertained. See the Open Forum discussion for most of the fluff but it could show up anywhere.
	The Daily WTF Message Board A small warning might be in order here: once any given topic gets to around ten replies, it (very) quickly degenerates into abuse and random references to other poster's sexual orientation. Funny, but juvenile. But, at the same time, funny and intelligent. The only really active part is the "Side Bar" WTF section - that's where the meat (sorry) of the message board is. A lot of nasty. And a lot of funny. And they even make fun of people posting on 4Chan; how can this not be right?
	Customers Suck Tales from the front line people who make our world work. Stories from retail; fast food and other service workers about the customers that they have to deal with. Many, many appalling stories and more coming in by the moment.