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Photo Credit: scraz

I wonder why putting things in a “Top [insert number here] ” list suddenly makes them more important. Don’t you think the Top 5 Marking Tips sounds much more important than Marking Tips from John? There is a whole site dedicated to Top 5 lists. The idea of doing a Top 5 list was inspired by this Group Writing Project. Hey, the chance to win money just for doing what I already do it pretty fun.

So far most of my posts are my favorite sites about this or that. When I was trying to think of what topic I would write on today I thought ‘what do I do on a typical day’, and it came to me … I am the expert of entertaining myself when there is no work to do. In my industry there is either way too much work or not enough so I tend to have a lot of down time at work.

My Top 5 favorite time waster sites are:

1. Craigslist – You can find anything and everything on craigslist. I like to browse for random stuff for sale or The Best of Craigslist can keep you busy for hours (seriously). *sidenote: if you have lots of random junk laying around your house this is the perfect way to get rid of it.
2. Cuteoverload – if you haven’t seen this site, you should at least take a look. The name is pretty explanatory, but the pictures over there really are just too cute.
3. Stumbleupon – this site is cool, it learns what you like and makes better recommendations. If you type in scrapbooking to the search on there it will say hey if you like scrapbooking you should like these sites. In case you hadn’t gathered already I am all about discovery of new and fun things.
4. Reuters: Oddly Enough – odd and weird news, sometimes I wonder what is going on with people.
5. Digg – when all else fails find out what everyone else is doing and follow the crowd. You can find out what the most popular sites are based on user input. Would you be surprised to know that Apple announcing the iPhone is big news, I know I would not. Technorati and del.icio.us can serve this same purpose.

Honorable mentions:

• Youtube: the only reason this is not on top 5 for me is that I have to share an office with people, so it is a little more difficult to hide a video than it is to hide an open website. Plus laughing and falling out of your chair is slightly hard to explain.
• MySpace: stalking browsing people’s profiles can take up some serious time, but many companies have blocked myspace because they know how myspace interferes with getting your work done. When I am bored I like to find random bands on myspace. I love to find new music.
• The Cool Hunter – there are some serious cool strange things out there.
• Official Bored Sites – you can always resort to the official bored websites. Sometimes there are some funny things very-bored.com and bored.com