Bookmarks

You can tell a lot about a person by what sites they've bookmarked on their browser. People who don't search a lot don't have a lot of bookmarks. Jimbo goes to a few sites--our history group, a few gaming sites, Lucasforums, some work-related places, and a couple other places that interest him. He doesn't do a lot of browsing at home.

My bookmark list is a little different. I search the web a lot, so I have, oh, about a zillion bookmarks. This, however, became a problem when I had to scroll through two pages of bookmarks just to find a D&D site I wanted. So, I decided to organize the bookmarks into folders. While I was doing that, I thought about which ones needed to go into a folder, and hence out of direct sight, and which needed to stay in the main list.

Weather, Lucasforums, Blogger.com, some webmail sites, a couple medical sites, Dictionary.com, kotorfanmedia, Wizards of the Coast, a couple computer places, a church site, and some other Star Wars related sites made the main list. Now that's a geeky list. I mean, the Storm Prediction Center gets top billing, for heaven's sake, followed by the National Weather Service sites for my region and city. You don't get much more geeky than that. There are no women's sites, no soap opera bookmarks, and no beauty blogs. If I want to use something once or twice, I just google it. Amazon.com would make it to the list, or at least the bookmarks in folders, except that it's faster to type the site than to click through some folder lists, so I don't bookmark that one. I'd also bookmark Barnes and Noble bookstore, except that would mean I'd have no excuse to drive there and get books, so I've intentionally left that one off. Well, left it off the main bookmark list, anyway. It has some cool forums on writing so it stays in my folders.

My grandmother, on the other hand, has about eight soap operas bookmarked, even though she watches them every day, some dog sites since she has a few poodles, and about three different greeting card sites. I'd probably bookmark The Young and the Restless, which is the one soap opera I actually like. The rest make me want to pull out my hair, because so many of the characters' problems would be solved if they actually talked to each other instead of talking to everyone else but the person causing the problem. Of course, then they wouldn't have years of stories to tell. She's happy having all those bookmarks on soap operas, though, and that's what's important.

Anyway, I have so many bookmarks that my folders have folders. I have folders on blogging, Star Wars, Lucasforums, Kotor and gaming, and by far the most populated folder, humor. The humor folder has everything from cartoons that people send me to Dave Barry to Onion article links. If it makes me laugh, it gets bookmarked and transferred to the humor folder. You never know when you might need to send someone a good laugh and I like to have a wide selection of subjects from the wacky to the most sublime wit. The 'my bookmarks' folder has subfolders with music, videos, computer, D&D, religion, and 'miscellaneous'.

The miscellaneous folder is my way of storing all those interesting sites on my list that I'm too lazy to make another folder for. It's kind of like the junk drawer of my bookmark list--it has a little bit of everything that you find useful about once every seven weeks to seven years. It's also that folder that you know you should clean out about once a year, but never get around to doing because you might end up needing something down the road. I should go clean it now, but I have to go check out the weather first, and then Lucasforums, and then my email....