Not a blogger is stirring, not even us.
But we have been busy typing away the last week preparing the 12 HackCollege Days of Christmas feature. We’ll be bringing you 12 posts of free program-goodness. One for each day of Christmas.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Hey everybody. We hope the holidays are as well as can be. We’ve got a few podcast updates:
Much to our unwillingness to help such an intellectual brain dead site with some extra publicity, we completely neglected the JuicyCampus blog. For those who missed it, a student posting on JuicyCampus caused some problems three weeks ago at LMU when a student. HackCollege broke the news to the world about the incident (not really). But we did get quite a bit of press and are currently the #2 hit when you search “JuicyCampus” in Google. I just found their blog today while posting more nonsense garbage on their site (explanation in episode 12 of the podcast), our website for all to see. Whoops! There goes my anonymity!
The Dealio
On December 9, the JuicyCampus Blog responded to the shooting threat debacle in the most professional and mature way possible–by vicariously blaming someone else. Cool.
By using another user’s post as a seemingly official response to an overblown yet serious matter, JuicyCampus belittles their users:
Read on to your heart’s content »

Episode 12: Cross-country, USA:
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Episode 12: Cross-country, USA:
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Chris and Kelly are back in the States and podcasting from different parts of the country.
Topics this episode include:
This episode’s music:
As the Facebook Blog reports today, our favorite social website has added another feature. It is exactly what it sounds like: a user can now group their friends into “lists.” As promised by Facebook, these new friend lists will have a more important role early next year. For now it remains one more way of categorizing and messaging groups of people. Who will make my “Real Friends” list?
It’s a week away, but if I hear one more Christmas song on the radio, I think I just might explode. If you’re like me (or even if you aren’t), check out the newest game from SuperDeluxe: Violent Night: Win the War on Christmas.

Armed with a cannon, you have one mission: Destroy all the holiday cheer. And enjoy the heavy metal background music. 
So today while I was driving my car through the blizzard, I was desperately trying to keep myself warm by screaming to the radio. (Note: My car is currently without a front passenger window. See my last post.) Now, this might sound lame, but I really like Linkin Park’s new “Shadow of the Day”.
But before I go out and buy the cd, I might want to hear the song a few more times. Instead of firing up Limewire, let’s try Google. A quick search for:
"shadow of the day" intitle:"index.of" "parent directory" "size" "last modified" "description" [snd] (mp4|mp3|avi|flac|aac|ape|ogg) -inurl:(jsp|php|html|aspx|htm|cf|shtml|lyrics-realm|mp3-collection) -site:.info -site:franceradio.net
gave me two results. Clicking the first one led me to an actual .mp3 file. Nice.
So here’s the trick. Highlight and Copy what I searched for, but put your own song title or artist or composer name inside the quotation marks at the beginning. Yes, the quotation marks are important.
And enjoy.
Still looking around online for what to get your geeky friends or family? First, be sure to have the following Firefox addons:
Second, check out the following Gift Guides:
Third, don’t shop online instead of studying for your finals. Seriously. But good luck with those. 
So a few nights ago, here in New Haven, CT, my car was broken into. My front passenger window was smashed, my door dented, and (among other things) my new Garmin GPS was stolen. How mean.
I drive an old Jaguar XJ6, and my GPS was actually in the passenger-side glove box. My new Adidas Superstars were sitting on the back seat, so I’m assuming they were worth breaking my window. And once inside my car, why not look around. And then why not leave my door slightly open, so that once I get back to my car, my battery is dead. Geez, guys.
Anyway, I will get my window replaced this Saturday, and eventually I’ll be able to buy back everything that was stolen from me.
For now, I’ve taken the time to research a little bit. What could I have done differently? One thing I’ve found online is called GadgetTrak.
GadgetTrak provides proven theft recovery solutions for a wide range of portable devices including cell phones, PDAs, removable media devices (iPodsĀ®, Sony PSPsĀ® digital cameras, flash drives, GPS devices) and Apple computers. GadgetTrak can tell where your stolen gadget is, who stole it and even what they’re wearing.
If you can connect your device via USB to a computer, you can use GadgetTrak. It’s a piece of software that, once your device is connected to a computer, will be triggered to send its whereabouts to your GadgetTrak account. You can then print out this information and present it to your local law enforcement. Then, if they care, you’ll be one step closer to getting your stuff back.
When I first noticed my car was broken into, I tried waving down three cop cars. All looked at me, but none stopped. So while those of us in New Haven are probably out of luck in this sort of predicament, it’s worth a try for others of you.
Any other tips or ideas? Let me and your fellow HackCollege readers know in the comments.