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	<title>Two Cents and a Thousand Words</title>
	<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog</link>
	<description>Pseudo-random observations and views</description>
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		<title>Donate your rewards points to charity</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last year I spent a couple of nights in a Comfort Suites hotel and earned a handful of points in their loyalty program for my stay. I don&#8217;t stay in hotels often enough to redeem any rewards, but I don&#8217;t want the points to go to waste. Many loyalty programs have expiration dates for points [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/12/27/donate-points-to-charity/</link>
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		<title>The Luxo Jr. shift</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just over a decade ago I started my college&#8217;s computer science program. I&#8217;d always loved computers; I remember the days playing games on the computer of my best friend who lived down the street, before my family bought one of our own. Once we did, I remember writing stories on some old DOS software and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/10/10/the-luxo-jr-shift/</link>
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		<title>The dancers down the hall</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m at the University of Maine right now, looking down the hall at a bunch of barefooted undergrads walking around outside Hauck Auditorium. It&#8217;s second nature for them; they&#8217;re dancers taking a break while practicing for the dance showcase later this week. They&#8217;re not even dancing, but I&#8217;m smiling here in the Union&#8217;s Lookout area. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/04/26/the-dancers-down-the-hall/</link>
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		<title>If you give a kid an iPad</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last night the Auburn School Committee decided to take a big leap in educational technology: every kindergartener in the city will receive an iPad this fall. Critics of the plan didn&#8217;t waste any time finding the comment sections of daily newspapers across the state. Can you blame them? Why would you want to give a $500 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/04/07/if-you-give-a-kid-an-ipad/</link>
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		<title>All the news from Maine</title>
		<description><![CDATA[With all the hard-hitting news coming out of Maine lately, it seemed like a great time for a new source. I bet people would buy it. Yummy whoopie pie photo by Joy.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/04/01/all-the-news-from-maine/</link>
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		<title>Moving Maine forward</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m happy to announce that I&#8217;m launching the first of my Track projects today. It&#8217;s called next:maine, and it&#8217;s up and running at nextmaine.com. next:maine is a new place to collect stories about how people are moving Maine forward. Sometimes it seems pretty tough to spot the new and exciting things that people are doing [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/02/01/moving-maine-forward/</link>
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		<title>The future of Maine</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When I was looking at the candidates for governor last year, the question on the ballot to me really wasn&#8217;t a question of party; it was a question of a vision for Maine. I&#8217;ve come to love Maine as a place of progress, of beauty, and of opportunity, and though we may be going through [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/02/01/the-future-of-maine/</link>
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		<title>The track</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The biggest challenge I&#8217;ve faced during my recent refocusing is trying to decide where I should concentrate my effort and time. As I said earlier, I have nine projects I really want to complete – but I can&#8217;t do them all at once. I&#8217;ve never had a good way to visualize where I should focus [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/01/26/the-track/</link>
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		<title>From the clouds to the track</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve struggled with the notion of a dream job my whole life (I&#8217;ve covered this before – a few times, actually). I&#8217;m getting closer to an idea of what that might be for me, but at this point I still don&#8217;t think I have a solid idea. As a result I&#8217;ve never been able to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/01/15/from-the-clouds-to-the-track/</link>
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		<title>Political extremism and mental instability</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s sad when a tragedy divides more than it unites. Let&#8217;s look at the aftermath of the assassination attempt yesterday in Arizona. Much of the controversy that erupted after the shooting stemmed from a post by Sarah Palin last March in which Giffords was one of twenty senators quite literally put in the crosshairs of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/01/09/political-extremism-and-mental-instability/</link>
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		<title>My favorite music of 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Amazon.com Widgets Music is a huge part of my life. I carry my iPod with me everywhere I go, and it seems as though I always have some kind of track playing in the background when I work. My taste is a bit eclectic, but I thought it&#8217;d be interesting to go through my top [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2011/01/06/my-favorite-music-of-2010/</link>
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		<title>Justin and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad JCPenney order</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I normally don&#8217;t like to rant about merchants. I know first-hand that dealing with buyers can be tough, and sometimes things won&#8217;t go as smoothly as they should. My last order from JCPenney, though, convinced me that I will never shop with them again. Here&#8217;s a chronology of what has happened since I placed my [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/12/18/justin-and-the-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-jcpenney-order/</link>
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		<title>Apple announcement brainstorming</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A mysterious teaser appeared on apple.com today to announce an announcement happening tomorrow. Most people have landed in one of four prediction camps: the launch of cloud- or subscription-based iTunes, Beatles availability on iTunes, the release of iOS 4.2, or a small, insanely hyperbolized announcement to grab the attention of the media. And yes, it&#8217;ll [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/11/15/apple-announcement-brainstorming/</link>
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		<title>Final thoughts on the Maine gubernatorial race</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you want to see what&#8217;s wrong with Maine, look no further than the gubernatorial race this year. Maine&#8217;s a state that doesn&#8217;t know what it wants. We know we&#8217;re not in a good place right now, but we don&#8217;t know how to move forward. Many of our key industries (forest products, shoes, and more) [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/11/03/megov-final-thoughts/</link>
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		<title>The order in which I would have voted for gubernatorial candidates had they appeared on the ballot</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Peter Mills Steve Abbott Rosa Scarcelli Steve Rowe Matt Jacobson Eliot Cutler Pat McGowan Libby Mitchell Shawn Moody Kevin Scott Paul LePage Bill Beardsley Bruce Poliquin Les Otten I voted for Cutler. What&#8217;s your list look like?]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/11/02/gubernatorial-candidate-order/</link>
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		<title>EvDaWriMo</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For a number of years I&#8217;ve had three main pillars that I enjoy: web development, photography, and writing. Between my full-time job and a few projects I do on the side, I definitely keep my development interest going. I cover photography by going on day trips on the weekends; even though I don&#8217;t take as [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/11/01/evdawrimo/</link>
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		<title>My new netbook (wait, what?)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As those of you who have seen me rave about announcements from Steve Jobs know, I&#8217;m a bit of an Apple fan. My primary computer&#8217;s an iMac, I use a Mac mini for work, and I carry around an iPad and an iPod touch almost everywhere I go. That&#8217;s why my purchase of a Asus [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/10/21/my-new-netbook/</link>
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		<title>In addition</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I wrote my first blog entry on July 7, 2001. (I didn&#8217;t call it a blog back then; I actually went so far as to say &#8220;This is not a blog. I&#8217;m not that dedicated.&#8221; at the top of the page.) I&#8217;ve always had one guiding principle when I blog: write what I want to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/10/12/in-addition/</link>
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		<title>Questions for a governor</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The latest story in the Maine gubernatorial race involves a prompt ending to a press conference by Paul LePage, the Republican candidate for the office, after a question about his property tax history in Maine. I&#8217;ll let you decide whether he ran away or just stormed off in an unprofessional fit, but the fact remains [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/09/13/lepage-questions/</link>
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		<title>You gotta want it</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Seems to me like we always focus on the minutiae of political races. Who&#8217;s taken money from whom? What associations might we not see with the candidates? In reality a big part of winning a political contest is the drive of a candidate and his or her followers. To win a race, either you or [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.justinrussell.com/blog/2010/09/07/you-gotta-want-it/</link>
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