Tom's picks

Random, I know. Just wanted to share with you a few websites I get a lot of use out of these days. Maybe one or two will be helpful/enjoyable to you too.

Catholic

Catholic Answers. Perhaps the single greatest Catholic resource on the web. Click on the Radio link at the top and browse 10-years' worth of shows on just about every topic you can think of. Or read past issues of This Rock magazine. The Faith Tracks list under the Library tab is another excellent one-stop-shop for solid answers (and dozens of Early Church Fathers' quotes) to offer skeptics and critics of Catholicism. The Catholic Answers Forums is yet another excellent source of information, especially when it comes to more day-to-day, practical questions.

Scripture Catholic. If you need a good Bible verse (or 30) in support of a Church teaching, this is the place to go.

Dave Armstrong. An impressive one man show, Dave has an incredible amount of apologetics articles and debates uploaded to his site.

Off the Record. As I understand it, Diogenes is a pen-name for multiple contributors. The commentary on current Church affairs, however, is unparalleled. (The Catholic news section of the website is not too bad either.)

WDTPRS. Fr. Z will keep you abreast of Church matters, especially liturgical.

Whispers in the Loggia. For those of us dying to know replacements for phony-Mahony and +Brunett.

Our Lady Star of the Sea. Hey, it looks a lot better with the new facelift than before. And I've even spent some time contributing to it. The Life Teachings and Common Questions pages under the Catholic Resources tab at the top were compiled by yours truly. ;)

News/Politics

Drudge Report. Sure beats the alphabet channels.

Ann Coulter. Hilarious. (Her books are even better; just be sure to order them through Amazon so you can save a few bucks and, even better, don't have to put up with the dirty looks at Barnes & Noble.)

Pat Buchanan. When you want to know how bad things really are. Just make sure you have your Prozac handy.

Finance

Dave Ramsey. Real debt help.

My Money Blog. Good tid-bits, and Jonathan keeps you in-the-know about a lot of financial questions.

Mint.com. Almost forgot this one, even though I check it at least weekly. If you have multiple accounts (checking/savings, money market, 401k, home loan, school loan, credit cards, etc.), this is a wonderful, free way to keep track of them all in one place, with one password. All of your accounts update automatically when you log in to mint. It has other nice sorting and tracking features so you can see where every dollar is going. If you're already using Quicken or something similar, it probably is not worth switching. But if you find yourself having to dig up paper-statements, or memorize 12 different passwords to check on balances, you might want to set up an account with Mint.

Google Finance. I've tried a few different stock market trackers, and Google just seems simplest to me.

The IRS. Just kidding!

Handy

Google Docs. Kind of like my cell phone; not sure how I got by without it. If you've never used it, get a google account and try it out. It's quite handy to have Excel spreadsheets and Word documents stored online, share-able with others, and accessible where ever there is an internet connection.

Google Calendar. Handy for the same reasons as Google Docs. Carrie can add stuff to the calendar from home and I can check it at work. Or vice-versa. You can also have it send you text message reminders, if that's your thing. (I tried it, but eventually turned that feature off.)

Anyway. Just thought I'd share.

-Tom