Typing on a borrowed computer, no spellcheck or word count, no thesaurus and no saved files for updating the newsletter. Worst of all, the space bar is temperamental. I miss my computer but I will have it back soon. Just trying to sort out the car and job stuff.

How addicted are you to your computer and the information you have stored in it? Could you go without for a day, two days, a week? What would you miss most? Which are the really important files that you can't do without? What about other things like that desktop wallpaper you saved from that really neat website?

All kind of things you rely on your computer for. So, wouldn't this be a good time to back it up. At least make copies of information you don't have a back up for. What are you doing tonight that you couldn't put off to take the time to back up your files? Won't you wish you had when it's too late?

This message brought to you by the Society for Missing All Data, SMAD for short.

This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it? It looks so plain you would think nothing was wrong with it! In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is unusual though. Study it, and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out! Try to do so without any coaching!

The letter "e", which is the most common letter in the English language, does not appear once in the long paragraph.

Check out the On Writer's, Writing and Books Community for more information about the ScribbleFest starting on February 3rd.

http://www.backwash.com/community_content.php?id=9

There's a new columnist at BackWash that I'm looking forward to reading. She's from Australia and is a "Writer, Blogger, Artist, Online Junkie". Her login is Webblogrrl and the column is called Creative WeBloGrrl in Motion. Here's a link to her.

http://www.backwash.com/content.php?id=366

Kareem wrote a column about words and word usage. http://www.backwash.com/content.php?jouid=7944