When Apple released Safari, the elegant interface and quick rendering speed quickly promoted it to my default web browser. And now that they've added tabbed browsing, I don't find myself missing Camino (the Netscape Navigator spin-off) so much, and internet Explorer is just a bad memory. Unfortunately, some sites have compatibility issues with non-Explorer browsers, which I find contrary to the entire concept of the World Wide Web (not to mention really, really stupid). One such site is Pyra's Blogger, which has been the technology powering my Hard Rock blog for the past two years. And so I've patiently waited for Pyra (now owned by Google) to get off their asses and allow Safari to use their service. Well, my patience has finally worn thin, and I've decided to scrap my Blogger site and start over with the highly recommended Moveable Type. Not only was it shockingly easy to set up, the wealth of features and cool options have me wondering why in the heck I was messing around with Blogger for so long! We'll see how it goes.
Since my blog is starting over, I thought I'd check into the latest blogging technology available for MacOS X. Much to my surprise, there's actually quite a lot to choose from at VersionTracker. But the app that really stood out was 5-star Kung-Log, which had a feature list that seemed too good to be true, and testimonials to match (apparently, people are switching to Moveable Type just to be using this app!). After playing around with it for a bit, I've discovered that, amazingly enough, it lives up to the hype. As a side-bonus, author Adriaan Tijsseling has a nifty blog at that's an interesting mix of life in Japan, MacOS X coding, and Cognitive Neural Science! In any event, Kung-Log makes blogging a breeze, so thanks Adriaan (and since this is "donationware" I'll definitely be making a contribution!).
Okay, now that I've had a chance to mess around with the Kung-Log blogging client a bit more, I'm kind of freaking out over the nifty stuff that's built into it. One of the more intriguing features is the ability to look at what's playing on iTunes and insert it into your post with one click, just like this: To Let You Win from the album "Minor Earth Major Sky" by a-ha. And, yes, the Google search link for the artist is created automatically as well. Frighteningly good stuff! If only you could add your own HTML tags... oh crap... wait a second... yes, you can do that too (and create shortcut keys for them as well!). Sigh. I just set up hot keys for all of Meagan's little photo booth images that preceed my posts, and it took about 2 minutes. Heaven only knows what other features are hiding in here... I suppose I should read the documentation!
There's quite a lot of peer pressure to have your site be "W3C Validated." While cruising blogspace, I see the little W3C badges displayed everywhere, and the fact that my blog wasn't validated made me feel like a second-class internet citizen. I guess it's time I care. So, off I go to the W3C Validator to see how things look, and the result isn't pretty. Apparently, tags that have no closing tags have to be closed anyway (by slapping a forward slash at the end). Whatever. A few minutes later and BBEdit (my text editor of choice) has switched all of my line-breaks and image tags to the "new and improved" (and apparently "valid") versions. The next step takes a little longer... adding "ALT" statements to all of my images. The last step, however, is puzzling... I get a cool dozen errors on the same line because the W3C doesn't like the way an URL pointing to a search at VersionTracker is phrased. Sure, the W3C claims this is a limitation of the validating app, but the last thing I want is somebody to check my site and see a bunch of errors, so I delete the link. Oh well, at least people can click on my newly installed "W3C Validated" badges and see that I am a good little web conformist.
Just found out from a Windows user that my style sheets "break" under Microsoft internet Explorer on Windows XP (and probably all the other MSWin flavors as well). Oddly enough, things work just fine when I use the Mac browsers: Opera, Safari, Chimera/Camino, Mozilla, and even MS internet Explorer Mac... so apparently this must be a Windows thing (though I haven't heard from any Linux/Unix users yet). What to do? Well, the only thing I can think of right now is to spoil my beloved table-free layout with a table across the top to hold the header graphics and have them flush out to the left and right margins. Crap. Yet another example of Microsoft making my life "better."
Well, Adriaan Tijsseling has done it again... His amazing Kung-Log blog posting app is now at version 1.5 and is ever so dreamy! We now get to preview entries using Apple's WebKit, which makes all the difference for me (as previews have never worked before for some reason). I can honestly say that this blog would not be possible if it weren't for this excellent app. Any MacOS X user who is even thinking about keeping a blog owes it to themself to take a look (and, for you poor Windows-using bastards, this is yet another good reason to make the switch to a Mac!). My donation is on the way... thanks Adriaan!
There are so many things that piss me off, but I work real hard to maintain a sense of calm through it all. Then along comes that one little straw that breaks the camel's back and pushes me into thermonuclear meltdown. Today it happens to be people stealing images from my web site. Actually, if they were to just steal the images, I probably wouldn't be that upset... but they don't. Instead, they just link to the graphic on my site so it displays on their site, but I'm still paying to host it! I tell you, it takes a real ass-wipe to not only steal from you, but then continue to charge you for the theft! No permission, no credit given, just idiots who are working overtime to make the internet suck for the rest of us.
Case in point is a site called "Bluemira" that appears to be from some 10 year-old girl in Germany or something. Somebody who slaps together a lame-ass web site, and then steals all the content, including numerous images from my Hard Rock Cafe pages. What a piece of shit! And, after checking my web logs, I see that this is fairly common... I have HUNDREDS of illegal requests for the various images I've got on my site, some of them really unlikely (stealing from my MIA/POW pages... what the heck?).
If you're going to take an image without permission, well fine. That's kinda the internet for you. But at least attribute it to where it came from... AND HOST IT ON YOUR OWN SITE SO I DON'T HAVE TO PAY FOR YOUR TRAFFIC!
I wrote a while back about a very disturbing trend that's eating up quite a lot of bandwidth for my Hard Rock Cafe web site at DaveCafe.com. As more and more people become aware of it, more and more people are deciding to steal my photographs for their web pages. If that were the only problem, I would probably just ignore it. But rather than copy the image to their site, they link to the image instead, which means they aren't just stealing the photos but my bandwidth as well!
But not anymore! Thanks to a helpful hint from Jurgen, I've now enable "hotlink protection" in my site's "htaccess" file which makes it impossible for people to make me host the images they've been taking. I tested it out by looking at one of the 32 sites I've tracked down that have been stealing from me, and it works! I guess I can start adding back all the cafe, pin, and T-shirt photos I had to take down last month.
So, if you host images on your site that are at potential risk for this type of thing, you might want to investigate whether your web host offers "hotlink protection" as an option. That way you won't be surprised with a $120 bill for excessive bandwidth usage because somebody linked to a photo on your site in a popular public forum.
Lately I have been reading a number of blogs by Iraqi natives that provide a fascinating insight into what life has been like "after the liberation." I am not one who feels that war is the ultimate solution to all the world's problems, but I cannot help but be touched at how the lives of the Iraqi people have been changed.
One of my favorite Iraqi blogs is Iraq at a Glance by a dentist in Baghdad named A.Y.S., which has just become even more fascinating now that his mother (an English teacher of 20 years) has started posting as well. For anybody even a little curious about what it's like to be a citizen of Iraq with a blog right now, this is a great starting point.
But the blog that encouraged me to write this post today is Iraq the Model. Yesterday Ali posted a response to a comment made by Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean about Iraq being worse off now than when Saddam was running the country. It is a powerful and eye-opening read, and defends American troops in a way that every American should be doing whether they agree with the war in Iraq or not. Here's an excerpt...
"By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morality of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don't support them and that they're abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield."
"And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it? And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it's for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What's it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn't see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they're doing."
Ali sums it all up by saying: "My heart goes with those brave people and the widows, orphans and mothers of the American soldiers who died while doing this great service for their country, ours and humanity. I can't imagine what their response would be to such thoughtless words motivated with nothing more than selfish ambitions."Politicians here are famous for spouting off crap that they think will get them votes or raise their popularity, despite the ramification of what their words might incite. Dean wanted to appeal himself to anti-war voters (like myself, I guess), and didn't seem to stop and think of what it might mean to our troops who are fighting and dying over in Iraq, nor the Iraqi people trying to rebuild their country. I can only hope that politicians will one day come to learn that being a leader is about more than just saying whatever it takes to be popular... and isn't it ironic that it takes somebody from Iraq, so new to freedom, to point this out?
The successor to the blogging software I use, Kung-Log, has finally been release from beta and is now called ecto. This is essential software for anybody running a Mac with OS X and keeping a blog. Thanks Adriaan!
When you publish your thoughts on a blog that's open for the entire world to see, you are bound to have people reading it that are not going to agree with you. That's fine with me because everybody is entitled to their own opinion. Some of these people feel the need to send an e-mail telling me that they disagree, which is also fine. If the e-mail is intelligent and thoughtful, I may even bother to read it. If it's particularly compelling, I may even reply.
But then there are the morons who do not send thoughtful and intelligent e-mail... they send moronic hate mail that is just a waste of time because I don't even bother to read it past the first line before hitting the "delete" button. Hey, life is too short, and if you want to behave like that please feel free to start your own blog and stop reading mine.
And then I really did it... I made a joke about hating clowns so much that I wish I could set a clown's ass on fire. Apparently, when you slander a clown like this, there is a coalition of clown-loving morons that feel the need to inundate the offender (me) with charming e-mails calling you "sick" and "stupid." Some of the e-mails were so over-the-top that you'd think I had actually set a clown on fire rather than having just joked about it in a cartoon. And there's my real problem with these idiots... IT WAS A FRICKIN' CARTOON FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Pull that stick out of your ass and loosen up!
But anyway, in the interest of being diplomatic to any clown lovers that might be reading this blog, I will issue an apology. Yes, I still hate clowns. I don't find them at all funny... I find them scary and stupid. But that's no reason to joke about wanting to set a clown on fire, and it was never my intention to promote violence against any living thing. That was wrong.
In the future, I won't make any more jokes about clowns on fire. Instead, I'll joke about hitting them with baseball bats...
Now that's funny!
Okay, this whole clown thing is getting out of control. I'm sorry that the thought of setting a clown's ass on fire is funny to me... really I do. And apparently my attempt to fix the situation in my last post only made things worse. Don't you clown people find anything funny? If you don't, then why read this blog? My smart-assed comments are just bound to upset you, so do us both a favor and stop reading!
It has been suggested that I might not get attacked by the Clown Coalition so much if I would turn comments on. Well, because of stupid comment-spam attacks I suffered through last time (as mentioned in my BlogFAQ), and the fact that nobody ever really left comments to begin with, I just though it better to leave them off. Well, enough people have asked that I've decided to turn them on for a while and see what happens (commenting has been activated starting from January 1 entries).
Everybody be nice.
UPDATE: Well that was fast... I've had comments on for 5 whole minutes and have already received comment-spam for an online casino and some pill that's supposed to be even better than Viagra!
The weather is suh-weet today, so it looks like a ride on my motorcycle is definitely in order (after I spend an hour or two cleaning it up). In the meanwhile, a friend had asked why I haven't blogged my "Visited States and Countries" like everybody else in blog-space. The reason is pretty simple... I didn't think the map was a good color for my site. Seriously. But, in the interest of conformity, I decided to make my own map just in case there are people who can't sleep at night because they are wondering what States I've been to. Well here you go...
I absolutely plan on visiting Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont one day... no question about it. Ditto for Alaska and New Mexico (Taos!). But that run of states down the middle? I just don't know. Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument are in South Dakota, but everything else? Who knows, maybe one day I'll get really bored and just drive through all of them in a single run just to say I've been there (heck, MapQuest shows that if I fly into Bismarck, then rent a car and drive through all the central Sates I'm missing to Oklahoma City, it takes a mere 16 hours and 34 minutes (anybody want to share that drive with me?).
The world map for visited countries is pretty anemic, which is scary considering I've seen more of it than most people. Let's just make a list, shall we? USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong (China?), Indonesia, Malaysia, United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland), Ireland, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Italy, Vatican City, France, Belgium, Sweden, and Iceland.
When it comes down to it, there's really no place in the world I don't want to see... I want it all (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, and Mainland China are first in line). I can only hope that I'll have the opportunity to experience a lot more of it before I go.
UPDATE: I now maintain a dedicated page to all the places I've visited. You can get to it by clicking here.
You may have noticed that I don't post any of those dippy quiz results that seem to be all the rage in other blogs. No offense to those of you who love nothing better than hanging out at Quizilla all day answering questions, but I don't find those things to be even remotely entertaining. Who gives a crap "what kind of flower," or "how caring," or "which Star Wars character" you are? How boring. If you can't think of anything interesting to say, filling up space in your blog with lame quiz results is not going to make it any more entertaining to read.
Maybe I would feel differently about quizzes if they were something cool that I could relate to. Perhaps something like these...
The problem is that even cool quizzes become lame when they are plastered on half the blogs on the internet. Keeping that in mind, I prefer the solution that Jeff came up with over at Geekable...
Yep, that pretty much sums it up.
UPDATE: Two-and-a-half months of people begging for this to be a real quiz later, and I relented. you can read about the "real" Fart Quiz here.
I never managed to fall asleep last night... my mind just kept racing, making it impossible to nod off. Instead I must have read a hundred different blogs and then irritated my friends in other time zones with e-mails and iChats. After I had read everything of interest on the internet and run out of people to annoy, I started looking at the stats for my web site. This was a real eye-opener because, as of January, I found out that my blog (yeah, this one) is now more popular than my DaveCafe site (devoted to my Hard Rock Cafe travels). That was completely unexpected.
Here are some of the keyword searches (averaged from their variations) people have used in search engines to find me this past week:
And here are some direct links to specific blog entries that people are passing around the internet this week:
Odd what people look for when they stumble across this blog.
I was checking the logs for my blog and ran across a bunch of odd link referrals I've been getting... and an ad for the Paris Hilton sex video at FamousAss, for example (and there are others along the same lines). I'm not complaining that somebody is linking to my site mind you, but what could porn sites possibly want with my blog?
First of all, anybody coming to my blog from sites like that are bound to be really disappointed. Second of all, when I visit those pages and search through the source code I can't find the link that comes to me. Going back through my older log files, I see that this has been happening for quite a while now and I have no idea why. I'm hoping that somebody hasn't hacked my site and secretly has it hosting porn... if that's the case, I should be able to look at it for free!
Work kind of got away from me this week, meaning that my entire weekend was spent trying to get caught up again. Because of that, I didn't even attempt checking my e-mail until very late Sunday and into Monday morning... eventually finding a total 62 non-spam e-mails in my "In-Box." Half of these were belated birthday greetings, and a significant number of those were from people I don't even know. That's kind of nice isn't it?
One of the e-mails that caught my attention was from "a long-time reader, first-time writer" who had more than the usual number of questions regarding previous blog entries. Most of the time when I get questions from people I don't know, I am happy to reply so long as the answers are not overly-personal or involving my friends, family, and other people in my life who have a right to their privacy. But this e-mail was a bit different. This e-mail was not asking questions just to be snooping into my life or looking for entertainment... this was a plea for help.
For people who know me only from my writings here at Blogography, my life might appear to be a series of funny anecdotes, odd incidents, curious travels, and care-free fun involving a motorcycle. A passage from my BlogFAQ is in order...
"Probably the most important thing I should tell you... really the only thing you need to know... is that this blog is not my life. It is just a reflection of a very small part of it. My real life is what is happening in-between the entries you'll find here. So, while you might come to know an aspect of me, this blog cannot really give you the whole picture of who I am. Let's face it, I am just not that talented of a writer."
So if you ever think that my life is devoid of sadness, insecurity, desperation, loneliness, depression, or any of the other horrors associated with life in general, I urge you to read the above paragraph again. Nothing could be further from the truth, I just choose not to write about my personal problems here for the entire world to ponder over.
That's why, when I get an e-mail from somebody who is hurting and confused, writing to me because they think my life seems so much better than theirs, and I might be able to help them because I seem to have all the answers to life when I write in this blog... well, it makes me feel like a complete fraud. My life is just as messed up as everybody else's (if not more so). What makes it bearable is that I spend a lot of time trying to see the beauty and wonder that is so often hidden in this world. To be more specific, what makes it all worthwhile is the "Bears of Berlin."
Perhaps I should explain...
The year 2001 was a very difficult one. My best friend had died early in the year, and another friend had committed suicide just two months later. A relationship with a girl I really liked fell apart. A project I was passionate about never got off the ground. I was burned out from endless hours of work. Nothing in my life was coming together and everything was out of focus... then the terrorist attacks of 9/11 happened, and even the future seemed dark and uncertain. It wasn't the worst time in my life, but it was darn close. By the end of the year, I just didn't feel anything... it was as if my body and soul had given up. That's why, when December rolled around, I decided to take a run through Europe to visit some Hard Rock Cafes I hadn't seen before, and just get away from my horrible life for a while.
Within minutes of landing in Amsterdam, I thought for certain I had made a terrible mistake. When I boarded the train to Germany, I was certain of it. Wandering Europe alone was not going to make me feel better, it was only going to make things worse. I arrived in Berlin more depressed than ever. But as I was walking from the train station to my hotel, I saw this...
A pink bear wearing lipstick?! Just a small part of a public arts project, and one of several decorated bear statues scattered throughout the city. But it ended up being more than just a statue to me. It was a reminder. It was a reminder that no matter how bad things are... no matter how much crap has been tossed your way and no matter how terrible you feel... there are always going to be crazy, beautiful moments in your life if you care to discover them. And that's all it took. For some reason a statue of a bear in the middle of Berlin was enough to snap me out of a year of depression, loss, angst, doubt and fear. Life, as they say, does go on.
Which leads me to the only piece of advice I have for when life is less than perfect: take a moment to stop and look around. That one thing that can give you a foothold to climb out of the hole you're in is within your grasp (though it probably won't be a pink bear wearing lipstick). Sometimes you have to look hard for it. Sometimes you have to fight for it. Sometimes you will forget about it. And sometimes you will doubt it even exists... but rest assured that your "Bears of Berlin" are out there just waiting for you to find them.
Take care, and never stop looking.
I ran through a few tests on fuali.com and found out some things about myself (well, not really... these things are ridiculous). Regardless, it was an amusing way to kill 10 minutes (especially since the odds of getting a new Friday Five topic are diminishing with each passing week).
I am 65% Evil Genius: This is very disappointing figure, because I pride myself on being at least 85%-90% Evil Genius. I need to really work on this figure... but, sadly, I just can't bring myself to kick a wounded animal! Maybe there are pills to fix this kind of thing?
I am 48% Geek: Well, it's less than half... but not by much. I am guessing that I was a bit higher, maybe in the 60%-70% range, in high school. Now if only I could figure out if dropping a bit in my geek ranking is a good thing or a bad thing?
I am 42% internet Addict: This is probably about right. I am online either working, learning, or playing most of my waking hours (and have a Macintosh PowerBook with wireless connectivity so I can be online in every room of my apartment and while I travel)... but... I have no problem at all leaving it behind. If I go away for a weekend of unacceptable behavior, I don't miss the internet or even think about it.
I am 35% Metrosexual: This is probably not accurate, as I don't really care about a majority of the things that define a Metrosexual. I think the reason I rank so high is because I am forced into a bit of maintenance as a side-effect of Accutane treatments I took years ago (though, to be fair, I do NOT harbor bad feelings toward Accutane...I'll gladly live with the annoying permanent side-effects instead of the horrors of advanced clinical acne I suffered through. I do realize that there are plenty of people who have very critcal feelings toward the drug, but to me it was a life-saver).
Kind of a bummer that I'm not a 100% anything. Does that mean I'm wishy-washy, or just eclectic?
As usual I cannot sleep tonight but, this time around, it's actually explainable... I was really sick all day, and spent most of it in bed being miserable. I'm pretty sure it was food poisoning of some kind, but I cannot imagine what I ate to cause it. This is rotten luck because I was counting on finishing up some things at work so that my weekend would be free. Now I don't know what's going to happen, as I still have to get that work completed before Monday.
What it probably means is that I won't get to work on my Hard Rock site or go for a motorcycle ride like I had planned. That sucks!
To cut down on the tedium, I found a list of 23 questions to answer from Neil's blog...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Annoyance #1: Mobile phones are quickly becoming more of an annoyance than television commercials. Today when I went to the post office, there was a woman in the lobby talking on her mobile phone at FULL VOLUME... YELLING OUT PERSONAL DETAILS FOR ANYBODY TO HEAR!! While I was waiting to pick up a parcel at the counter, I couldn't help but listen to her rambling on and on about her daughter's marital problems (we're talking all the juicy details, fit for a television movie). Is she too stupid to realize that everybody in this very public place can hear her? I'm sure her daughter would be mortified (and, since this is such a small town, I'm sure that several people at the post office knew her and who her daughter was). Have people no shame?
Annoyance #2: Comment spam on this blog is escalating at a frightful rate. I'd hoped that banning the IP addresses from commenting again would solve things, but it doesn't. Even worse, some legitimate comments are blocked in the process. I wonder if there is a legal recourse for comment spam? All I know is that I am getting really tired of manually deleting it every day. The folks at Movable Type are starting up a commenting registration system... I hope that works out.
Annoyance #3: Is it my imagination, or are automated phone answering systems getting more complicated? It used to be you had only one or two levels of "press 1 for this, press 2 for that, press 3 for the other." But now, I find myself easily going 6 or 7 levels deep in these systems... sometimes unable to get out. Do companies honestly think this is how their customers want to spend their time?
In honor of the one-year blogiversary of Blogography (just five days away!), I've decided to add a gallery to the site. I've received more than a couple requests to do this, but always resisted because most of my photos are filled with friends and family that may not want to have their picture posted on the internet.
I know, it's kind of a lame excuse... I was just too lazy to look for photos.
Anyway, a gal e-mailed me to point out that there are already hundreds of photos scattered in my blog, so I had plenty of "acceptable" pictures readily available if I would just get off my ass and make pages for them. She was right of course, so I guess I'm out of excuses. It will take a while to get everything set up, but I'll try to add a couple of new galleries each day... so, if you're interested, check back from time to time to see what's new.
UPDATE: Obviously in the day-and-age of Google Image Search, having a local gallery page is a bit silly, so my old gallery pages have been removed. Ah the price of progress!
This morning I awoke to an in-box filled with rejected messages I never sent. Apparently, some dumbass spammer is using my daveweb.com domain in the return address of the crap they are sending. Anybody looking at the actual e-mail headers can see that the spam did not originate at DaveWeb, but I guess some spam and virus detection programs don't bother to dig that far. Even so, the fact that some bastard is pretending to be me to send spam (which I loathe) really pisses me off.
Isn't something like this illegal? This being the USA and all, am I within my legal right to hunt down this piece of shit and shoot him with a really big gun? Or do I at least get to sue the ass-clown for TEN MILLION DOLLARS over this?
When is something actually going to be done about spam? I get (on average) around 300 spams each day... there are currently 332 trapped in my SpamCop holding bin since yesterday morning. Did anybody actually think the spam law that went into effect would do anything? We don't need fines... we need public executions!! = Sigh = Since I started writing this, another three spam rejects have come in. I hope this means I don't have to deactivate the domain until this all blows over.
UPDATE: After taking a look at the e-mail addresses that spam is being sent to, I see that most of them are just random names sent to my domains (dozens of them are to "webmaster" as well). The simple solution seems to be rejecting any e-mail not sent to a valid address. So, now that I have only one e-mail address for each domain, I wonder how that will affect my spam counts?
Here is another set of questions that's popped up on Neil's blog (the previous set was under my entry "Twenty-Three"). Since there was no Friday Five meme this week, here we go...
1. Who do you admire the most and why? I admire two traits above the others... hard work and kindness. Given that, I'm compelled to say "Mother Theresa." I know that answer sounds trite, but it's true. As I've said before, I also admire anybody who is part of "Doctors Without Borders.
2. What would you have as your last meal if you were on death row? A Johnny Rockets Streamliner vegetarian burger without grilled onions and add extra mayo, an entire Da Vinci pizza from David's Pizza, a large order of fries with plenty of ketchup, a chocolate shake, and a glass of water.
3. What is your earliest memory? Playing with neighborhood kids when I was living in San Diego. I have no idea how old I was, but it was very young... 4 maybe?
4. If you had 3 wishes, what would your 3rd wish be? An end to all violence in the world.
5. If you had to be blind or deaf, which would you choose? Probably deaf... that way I could still do my job and travel the world unaided.
6. Have you ever been dared to do something where the risk exceeded the reward (ie. jump off a building for a penny)? I'm sure I've done that many times. The one that comes to mind ended up with me getting my ass kicked and losing the reward (which wasn't really worth it in the first place). You would think that I learned my lesson but, alas, I did not.
7. If you were forced to live the rest of your existence in a fictional world from a movie, book and TV show which ones would you select? The movie Total Recall had an interesting take on the near-future that has never left me since I first watched it. Maybe it's the girl-on-girl fight action (with Sharon Stone no less!) that made such an impression, but they sure made the future seem a nifty place to live (as answered from the Friday Five on June 13). But I also really like Neil's answer of Back to the Future II (riding a hover board would indeed be sweet!).
8. If you had a superpower, which superpower would it be and why? It would be pretty cool to be able to fly... but I'd probably rather be invulnerable to harm so I could do any crazy thing I wanted to without getting hurt... wouldn't it be nifty to jump out of an airplane without a parachute? (as answered from the Vrijdag Vijf on April 2).
9. What is your favourite vegetable? Qunicy Sweet Corn. The best in the world and, since Qunicy is less than an hour away, you can find it everywhere here.
10. In how many different languages do you know the meaning of at least one word? Well, I think that "taxi" is one of those words that's the same in 99% of all languages but, just like Neil, I would have to answer "thanks." Before I travel to any country with a foreign language, I strive to learn at least a minimal vocabulary so I can speak basic courtesies... "thanks" would be the top of the list. Hmmm, looking at a map of the world... let's see, I know how to say it in Cantonese (doh jeh), Japanese (arigatou), Alaskan (taku), Thai (khrap), Danish (tack), Icelandic (tack), Portuguese (obrigado), Balinese (mata suksama), Norwegian (tack), Swedish, Dutch (dank), French (merci), Hawaiian (mahalo), German (dank), Spanish (gracias), Italian (grazie), Korean (komapsumida), Russian (spacibo), Hindi (dahnyavahd), Cherokee (wa doh), Arabic (shookran), and English. There are a few I am not positive of... like Gaelic (rab math agat?), Cambodian (ah kun?), and Latin (gratis?). And there are a few I knew at one time, but have forgotten... Malay, Polish, and Tagalog. (NOTE: I have not travelled to all of these places... some of the words I learned from books or movies).
11. What did you want to be when you were a child? A fireman (didn't everybody?).
12. What one event (if any) would you change in your personal past if you had the power to do it once? I find myself wondering what my life would be like now if I hadn't entered into a certain disastrous relationship from my past... but I suppose living through that horror made me who I am today, so I guess I'd have to say I wouldn't change anything. Of course there are always little things you wish you could take back, but that's part of life and I try not to dwell on them.
13. What’s the one question you want to be asked of you in an interview? Job interview: "Do you mind of we force you to take all of the vacation time you earn?" (since I haven't been able to take all my earned vacation hours in over a decade). Newspaper Interview: "How do you plan on spending the 25 million dollars you just won in the lottery?"
14. Have you ever cheated death? Heavens yes... many times... but that was back when I was young and stupid. I'm a little more careful now.
15. What was the most important decision you’ve ever had to make? Whether to take a job I was offered at Microsoft. I passed, but sometimes wonder if I'd be a millionaire today if I had!
16. Which sports team do you support the most, and why? BOSTON RED SOX FOREVERRRRR!!!
17. Mobile phones (cellphones) - evil or good? They are neither, it's how people use them that's evil or good. I've twice had to use mine in emergency situations (not for myself), so I guess I'd have to say "good" despite how annoying some people are with them.
18. What is your favourite song at the moment? Only One by The Pet Shop Boys from their album Nightlife.
It's been one year since I started Blogography, which makes today my first blogiversary. It seems kind of strange that I've continued with it as long as I have (my two previous attempts never lasted over 3 months). Most of the credit for this blog's longevity can be attributed to Adriaan Tijsseling and his amazing blogging tool "ecto for MacOS X" (formerly known as "Kung-Log"). Keeping a blog current can be quite a chore, but ecto makes it nearly effortless. Microsoft sufferers will be happy to know that ecto for Windows was just released last week... if it's only half as good as the Mac version, it'll still be amazing.
Another round of thanks should go out to Ben and Mena Trott, creator of the sweet Movable Type software that powers this blog. I can't wait to see what they've got planned for version 3.0!
Blogography was started so that I could keep friends up-to-date with what I was up to, and had an initial audience of 8 people. A bit more people are reading it now, and I've met some terrific new friends because of it. Here are some stats I've put together...
So there you have it. Even I am interested to know if I'll make it another year.
Well darn. I started the day today attempting to install the latest "developer release" of Movable Type 3.0... the software package that powers this blog... and ran into all kinds of trouble. I can no longer post new entries, nor can I add comments to existing entries. I'll wait until I get to work (where I have a backup) and see if I can at least get back to where I was.
UPDATE: Well, things are back to normal. I'll try another install later tonight.
UPDATE: No joy. another attempt to upgrade has met with failure. Even worse, my web host (Lunar Pages) now forbids new installations of Movable Type!! They won't kick off anybody already using MT, but they won't assist you either. Lovely.
UPDATE: Bah, I'll give it one more try tomorrow. If it doesn't work then, I guess I find a new blogging package. This blows.
Well, I tried again last night to install the Movable Type 3.0 blogging software and was again foiled... but this time with database errors instead of the usual path errors. I asked around to see if any other MT3 early adopters had run into similar problems, but nobody had. It would seem that it's only me. I decided to got back to MT 2.6, but ran into problem there as well. Eventually I came to the conclusion that I may never blog again!
Today I took a fresh look at it and decided that perhaps the database was at fault. I deleted the old users, created a new user, re-entered the information into Movable Type 3.0, and all of a sudden I am running again. I still have no idea what happened.
The disturbing part is that I don't really notice any difference for my trouble. MT3 looks a little different and has some interesting comment management tools (which, unfortunately break the excellent MT-blacklist plug-in), but everything else is the same. That kind of sucks. I was at least expecting some kind of photo gallery management like they put in TypePad!
Oh well. I got a pretty generous discount on the upgrade since I had already donated before, so I guess it's no big deal. I'm just grateful that I'm not still running the DaveWeb blog, because having 7 authors would require an upgrade price of $190!?! That's a ridiculous amount for a non-commercial site that makes no money! You would think that they would have an "unlimited" personal version for non-commercial use.
Now that the Friday Five is dead, I occasionally get e-mails from fellow bloggers with ideas or new questions to answer. This morning a friend e-mailed me with a list that's up over at Neil's World. With nothing to do until the washing machine quits, I've answered it in an extended entry...
Oooh... Tony Pierce asks "do you have the guts to take the honest bloggers-only quiz?" I really try to keep my political leanings private, but how can you refuse a challenge like that? Interesting how international issues are neatly skirted in this questionnaire... I think the answers in that area would prove much more revealing.
Neil has posted a "twenty-seven questions" meme on his blog that's seems to be working it's way through the internet. In order to make it easy for those of you who are bored by these things to skip it, I've posted it as an extended entry.
My blog is so compelling that now I have people flying in from Australia to meet me in person! Well, not really, but Karen (from her Kazza blog) who is Australian and was in the neighborhood did give me a call so we could meet for dinner in nearby Wenatchee. This is not the first time I've met up with a fellow blogger, but I do think she's from the furthest away I am likely to see (unless somebody drops by from Antarctica tomorrow morning for breakfast).
The good news is that she didn't feel compelled to stab me with a fork and run screaming from the restaurant after being forced to listen to me talk for hours on end. If it were me having to listen to me, I don't know that I would have been as forgiving.
Nope... it was a perfectly lovely dinner, and three hours passed in no time at all. Blogs can be pretty swell for things that like.
Today was not much better than yesterday. I hope this string of sucky days ends soon. Needless to say, this means I am not in much of a mood to write anything chipper. Perhaps a questionaire? Neil is always finding new and interesting memes for his blog. He should have listed this uncanny talent under question #20. So here goes "Another Day, Another Meme."
Tomorrow is Wednesday already? Bleh. I don't hold out much hope for it not sucking...
My Saturday-morning ritual of taking a complete run through my blogroll turned up a meme that's just too good to pass up! Over at Kazza's blog, she's discovered The Glovebox Project (from Mushroom & Rooster's pen) whereas you list a complete inventory of what's contained therein. I have no idea what could be lurking in there, as it is a black hole storage space where I place things I never expect to see again. Let's go have a look shall we?
It's worse than I thought.
Wow. That's a lot of crap, yet not a pair of gloves to be found! Oh well, this was just the excuse I needed to finally clean out my glovebox. Would somebody please start a "What's in Your Trunk" project? I can't imagine what's been stuffed in the boot of my car over the years.
I had a bit of a long post I was constructing for today, but never felt like wrapping it up, so I decided to just grab the first Tuesday meme I could find to get an entry up today. Oddly enough, the meme that came my way is from "Chick Chat" and this week's questionnaire is entitled "Bad Girls!!!" How in the heck do I get myself into these things?
Have You Ever Been Arrested? Personally arrested? No. Part of a group that was not so much "arrested" but "detained," yes. (that probably sounds more interesting than it actually was).
How many Tattoo's do You Have? None. But I have wanted one for a very long time. One day.
What's the Most Bad-Ass thing You've Ever Done? I am probably the least "bad-ass" person you will ever meet, but there have been moments. Kicking a guy in his kneecap when he pulled a knife on me is pretty bad-ass isn't it? (let's not mention that he was drunk and not much of a threat at the time okay?).
How Many Times Have You Been Pulled Over? Six that I can think of. Only two of those resulted in a ticket, but that was many, many years ago.
Have You Ever Lied To Get Your Way? Any guy who has ever been in a relationship with a woman would be lying if he didn't answer "yes." Because if it weren't for an occasional lie, we would never get our way on anything ("no honey, those jeans do not make you look fat, want to make out?"). Of course, women in a relationship lie for no particular reason, not just to get their way, so it's hard for me to feel too bad about it. It's just such a shame that women are so much better at it than we are.
Damn, I'd make a good chick!
Crack Potatoes: Why in the hell is it impossible for me to pass by Taco Bell without driving through and ordering up a bowl of Cheesy Fiesta Potatoes? I think I'm addicted or something. What do they put in them, crack? I know I've blogged about this before, but damn.
Emmy Fraud: Sitting here watching the Scrubs Marathon on television, I am convinced that the Emmy Awards are a complete and total fraud. The episode "My Screw-Up" should have been nominated for both Best Drama and Best Comedy... not to mention Brendan Fraser's stunning performance being Emmy-worthy for both Best Guest Star in a Drama and Comedy. It's inconceivable that the crapfest known asWill & Grace (where every episode is exactly the same) gets nominated over the brilliance that is Scrubs.
Go-Go Know: How in the heck is it that when the song Head Over Heels by The Go-Go's comes on a television commercial, I know all the words? Even more puzzling, I've started buying more and more rap and hip-hop off of the iTunes Music Store... I'm a 38 year-old middle-class white guy, and yet DMX, Dr. Dre, and Nate Dogg are suddenly something that I enjoy listening to? I blame my nephew.
Moab Soundtrack: The entire time I was in Moab, I was thinking of the movie Thelma & Louise, because the film was shot there and Ridley Scott knows how to make an impression with scenery. When I got back I ordered the soundtrack, and it arrived today. Though I loathe country music, I love this CD because it makes me relive scenic memories like this:
Wireless Nirvana: Apple's "Airport Express" is absolutely everything I had hoped it would be. God save the Mac!
Book Smarts: This last trip I started reading The Vanished Man (by Jeffery Deaver) because everybody tells me how great the Lincoln Rhyme novels are (the most famous being The Bone Collector). Sorry, but I just don't get it. While I think the idea of a quadriplegic criminal investigator is interesting, I find Deaver's dialogue to be horrible. Every word feels contrived and forced, which makes conversations between characters just awful. I don't think I'll be reading another any time soon.
Film Threat: And from the good character dialogue department: Please somebody tell me that Quentin Tarantino is working on a new movie really soon now. I think my DVD player is starting to burn a hole through Pulp Fiction, Resevoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, and of course Kill Bill.
Designer Challenge: I'm getting tired of the same old art posters decorating my apartment. Since the "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy" team aren't available for design tips, I think I'll turn to the FridayQ to get some ideas. Shameless, I know!
I have had this "One Hundred Things About Me" entry stored on my computer for ages now, but never posted it because I wasn't entirely convinced I was interesting enough for the hundred things to be worth publishing. This morning I got an e-mail asking me why I hadn't done it yet, and decided to go ahead and put it up in an extended entry. You have been warned...
I woke up today in the mood to do absolutely nothing. If it weren't for the fact that I had to get up and take my laundry down to the concierge, I probably would have stayed in bed all day. I suppose that I could have just come right back up to my room and watched television, but then guilt started to settle in. Here I am in Dublin, where I'm sure many people would love to visit, and I would just be wasting the opportunity.
My morning started with the best shower I've ever had. Seriously. Apparently Dublin has no water shortage problems, nor do they have a concept of what a "water flow restriction device" is. The water pressure was so great that I nearly buckled under it. They should post a sign warning that small children and pregnant women should not use the shower. I think my skull has been dented, that's how fabulous it was...
Then I had to work for three hours. Working while on vacation sucks ass.
After lunch, I decided to wander up O'Connell Street, which I never bothered to do on my previous visit. It was then that I saw the Dublin Spire. Other than being really tall, I just don't get it. I mean, come on... "Look! It's a great big pole!" is about the limits as to what can be said about it. Apparently, it was the winning entry in an architectural contest. If this was the winner, I am very curious as to what the losers must have been like...
On my way back to Grafton Street for some non-shopping, I passed by Trinity College, home to the "Book of Kells." All I knew about it was that it was a very old book that monks had drawn on dead cow hides a long time ago. Out of curiosity and boredom, I decided to stop in and take a look. I nearly took a pass when I saw that it was 7.50 Euros ($9) to get in, but oh well.
Wow...
Absolutely stunning. 61.20 Euros ($77) later, I had purchased a book, lots of postcards, and a CD-Rom about the Book of Kells because it was so amazing. The CD-Rom is particularly good, and packed with loads of cool material (including the entire contents of the manuscript). You should go order a copy right now and, if you're ever in Dublin, seeing it in person is a must.
Every once in a while (usually when I am put on hold while talking on the phone) I take a glance at my web site stats just to see what people are interested in and where they are going. Several months back, I shared some of the most popular keywords and links, and thought I would do that again just to see what has changed. Boy what a difference five months make!
Here are the top ten keyword searches people use to find me in August so far (anybody see a pattern here?)...
Going back a month, so I can get the big picture, I notice that most everything changes in the top five...
My most popular direct-linked entries for the past three months...
In other news: August appears to be yet another record-breaking month for unique visitor counts. In June it was averaging 307 per day, July 428 per day, and August so far is 446 per day. The vast majority of those counts are visitors to the Blogography entry page, so I am guessing most visitors are regular readers?
The FridayQ is a distant second entry point, but still receives a respectable number of visitors. Oddly enough, when I actually follow-up on people who are doing the FridayQ, it's shocking just how many people participate only to bitch about how they don't like the questions! Jeez, if you don't like FridayQ, DON'T DO IT!! Some of the comments are so nasty that I finally understand why other memes are dying off... I mean, why put any work into something that people are going to crap all over? It's not like I'm asking for money or anything, and anybody who thinks it's easy to dream up something unique every week should try their own meme for a few months before passing judgment. I've even had some people tell me that they refuse to participate in FridayQ because they don't get to leave comments and links to boost their web ranking! Well, I'm putting FridayQ out there NOT to make money or increase your ranking... I'm doing it just to help out because I know that coming up with an idea on Friday can be tough! If that's not enough for you, I'm sorry, but that's all I have to offer just now. That being said, it's pretty nice to get that occasional e-mail from people who like FridayQ, so maybe I'll hang in there a bit longer?
Lastly, I continue to find it amazing that nearly 450 people each day find this blog (and my life!) interesting enough that they feel like stopping by and checking in. Who knew that my love of motorcycles, Elizabeth Hurley, and travel (along with my all-too-frequent rants) would be something people want to read?
Tell me Clarice... have the spams stopped screaming?
In addition to the blogging wonder than is ecto (not to mention Movable Type itself), there is one other piece of essential software that any blogger using MT simply must have... the sublime sweetness known as MT-Blacklist, created by minor deity Jay Allen to stop spammers from assaulting your blog comments and trackbacks.
In changing to the latest Movable Type installation 3.0, then going back to 2.6, then upgrading and going back yet again before finally installing 3.0 once and for all, one thing has not changed. Comment Spammers are relentless bastards. Waiting for the release of a version of MT-B that works with 3.0 has been excruciating because I receive up to 30 spam comments every day, and each one has to be dealt with individually and immediately so visitors aren't subjected to ads for headache relief, debt consolidation, penis enlargement, and other stupid crap that nobody wants to look at in the first place.
Enter MT-Blacklist, which stops most of the spam from ever reaching you, and also gives you an easy way to manage those that do. As I first learned from Neil, and then later had confirmed from Jay himself, an emergency release that works with MT3 is now available. Since this is a "pre-release" of sorts, there are still a few bugs and no tech support is available, but I've had zero problems so far and not a single spam comment has arrived since I installed it.
Now, at long last, blog nirvana has returned. The spams have stopped screaming.
Thanks Jay! My donation is on the way.
When I decided to go ahead and try Yet Another Blog after having had two failures, I decided to trash all my previous layouts in favor of something simple. This time around I was planning on using photos, cartoons and other distractions in my entries, so I wanted everything in the layout to be uncluttered. Initially this meant Blogography had a white background with gray text menus and not much else. But eventually common sense set in and I ended up with the design you're looking at today (which is based entirely on the default Movable Type template that comes with the installation).
Overall, I like the layout of my blog and have no plans to change it anytime soon (indeed, I'm guessing the day I change it is the day I'll delete it and start all over again... or not). That being said, there are still a number of little details that I'm unhappy with and would like to change. Tonight I thought it would be fun to make some of those changes.
I was wrong.
Apparently, I am more inept at handling Movable Type's templates than I thought. In fact, I am a complete moron on the subject. It's now nearly 1am and I've been working on it for the past six hours and am failing miserably. Fortunately, I backed up all my templates, so now I'm going to revert to the originals and go to bed a defeated, wreck of a man.
I need that book Neil is working on! But since it isn't scheduled to be released until January 10th of next year, I guess I'll wait a while before trying my hand at customizing MT again.
My life is pretty boring right now (work... ride motorcycle... repeat) so there's just not very many interesting things for me to blog about ("interesting" being a relative term, of course). This morning while in the shower I started thinking about things I could blog about. I could write about the brand of shampoo I use, obviously, or perhaps even how I get rid of soap scum in the tub. But surely there's something more... something captivating and exciting. Something that's actually worth people's valuable time to read.
And then it occurred to me: I would have tons of cool crap to blog about if I had a million dollars!
Somebody could give me a million dollars (PayPal accepted) and I could blog about how I spend it!!
I know, I know... before you go sending me a million dollars, there are few questions you have. Well never fear, that's what I am here for...
If I give you a million dollars, how do I know that you will really blog about it?
I blog about brushing my teeth for crying out loud, do you actually think I wouldn't blog about spending a million dollars?
Yeah, but how do I know you won't blow it all on something crazy and I'll only get one blog entry out of the deal?
Because I'm just not that stupid. It's not like I'd give it all to a foundation for bat guano research or pay Elizabeth Hurley a million dollars to sleep with me or something. Oh no, your million dollars guarantees you years of fabulous blog entries!
Just how long will it take you to spend it then?
Say... do you really think Elizabeth Hurley would sleep with me for a million dollars? Nah, you're right, she'll love me because I'm such a wonderful person, not because of how much money I have.
What exactly will you do with the million once I give it to you?
I don't know, and that's what's so cool about it: we'll find out together! Some of it will be going to charity (that's just how it works when you get a lot of money) but the rest will probably be spent doing interesting things, meeting interesting people, and buying cool crap. Whatever happens, you'll read about it right here!
I don't trust PayPal with my money, can I send you a certified check?
But of course! Wire transfers, bearer bonds, and gold bouillon are also perfectly acceptable.
Great! I am a Nigerian businessman with ten million dollars in oil prospecting revenue stuck in a bank. If you pay the $100,000 release fee, I'll give you a million of it!
Didn't I already mention that I'm not stupid? If I'm going to toss away massive amounts of money, I'd rather send it to Ze Frank.
But I love your blog just how it is! If I give you a million dollars, won't you change and not be the same person anymore?
Nah, that would never happen. I'll be the same guy I've always been, just with a lot more money. No sir, a million dollars won't change me one bit!
This is just a scam to get me to pay you a million dollars isn't it?!? Uhhh... you obviously haven't read much of my blog. This is just a joke*.
*not that I'm saying I would refuse it if somebody offered me a million dollars, mind you.
There are a number of difficulties in trying to maintain a meme like FridayQ each week. The hardest part is always trying to come up with the questions. You want to be a little unique, but not too personal or offensive. You want to be interesting, but not too obtuse or strange. Finding the right balance is a definite challenge, and it's a small victory when you finally think of something (no matter how lame). Last week I had come up with the topic of "romantic," and basked in the relief that another week was done.
Until I found out that Cheddar X had come up with the same thing for their meme today.
Now, normally I don't pay attention to other memes because I don't want to be influenced by what others are doing. After Theme Thursday died, that was it for me. But some of the blogs I read participate in memes, and I end up taking a look. Tonight I was horrified to find out that my topic for the week was taken and I'll have to think of something else. I'm sure this happens all the time, but I'd rather it not happen in the same week if I can help it.
Oh well. Just to prove I'm a good sport, I'll go ahead and answer the Cheddar X questions:
1. What's the sexiest name you've ever heard? That would be "Elizabeth" because it's attached to the sexiest woman on earth, Elizabeth Hurley...
2. What's your idea of a romantic evening? I could say something like "flying to Rome for a romantic Italian dinner followed by a walk through the city holding hands and eating a gelato," but that would be a lie. Truthfully, a romantic evening to me would be making dinner together then watching DVDs until we fall asleep on the couch. Just being with somebody special is romantic enough for me, I don't need any distractions or window dressing.
3. Where's the most romantic place you know? Maui has beaches with romantic sunsets that can't be beat. It's gotten a bit crowded over the years, but it's still pretty amazing. Actually, anyplace can be romantic if you're with somebody you care about.
4. What's the most romantic gesture someone's made to you? A girl I was dating completely disarmed me once when she gave me new shoelaces. Yes, shoelaces. I was flying out on a trip, and she stopped to see me off on her way to work. After giving me a goodbye kiss, she handed me a package of shoelaces with a bow on top. She had noticed that my laces were a little "mangy," and thought I should have a new pair for my trip. The fact that she paid attention to such a tiny detail in my life really meant a lot to me. No other romantic gesture has ever come close.
5. What was your most romantic gesture? A girl I was really smitten with was devastated when a friend of hers died so I bought an airline ticket for her sister to come take care of her. We had only been out on a few dates, so I didn't know her well enough to make things better myself, so I did the only thing I could think of to help her out. In retrospect, I think that was pretty darn romantic.
Many, many people are blissfully unaware of the name Dave Winer and I envy you. It's enough to know that if there is a conflict in the blogging community, Winer is probably in the middle of it. This is not without cause, as the guy is a fairly important figure in the formation of weblogs and adoption RSS feeds... but he's been beating us over the head with his "credentials" ever since, which upsets a lot of newcomers who want to contribute to how we blog.
Winer first came to my attention when he claimed authorship of the RSS spec during the early days of the RSS/Atom syndication wars. This came as a big surprise to me, because I was fairly certain that a group of people at Netscape had something to do with it. Maybe Winer was involved, I don't really know, but claiming sole authorship seemed bizarre to me at the time. I decided to label him as an egotistical crackpot (much like Al Gore "creating the Internet" before him) and move on.
The problem is that you can't safely ignore Winer if you have any interest in the technicalities of blogging. He is simply too important to the formation of weblogs to put aside, and will never ever let you forget it. When Winer speaks, people listen.
Which is why I cringe now that Dave Winer has decided to define "moblogging" for us. And it's not because he decided to write the definition (hey, if "mobile blogging" isn't enough, then somebody should)... it's because he got it totally wrong, and now we may be stuck with it:
"So Scoble and I sat down for coffee with this mission in mind. To figure it out. To figure out what Moblogging is. And we did. We nailed it. We know. And now I'm going to tell you. Moblogging is any activity that occurs away from your normal blog-writing place whose purpose is to create content for your blog."
Sorry Dave, but you didn't "nail it" at all.
In order for that definition to work, I'd have to know what my "normal blog-writing place" is. The simple fact is, I don't. Sometimes I blog at work. Sometimes I blog at home. Sometimes I blog in hotel rooms half-way around the world. Sometimes I blog on my desktop computer. Sometimes I blog on my laptop. Sometimes I blog on a public Internet terminal. Once I even blogged from a PDA I borrowed from some guy at the airport. So, according to your definition, I am either never moblogging because I have no "normal blog-writing place" or I am always moblogging because I have no "normal blog-writing place." The definition just doesn't work.
I'm not even going to pretend I would know how to define the term "mobloging" (getting attacked by Dave Winer is just not something I want to experience). I had always thought that "mobile blogging" was "mobile phone blogging" with either text messages or camera phone uploads. But now that PDAs (and, eventually, actual PCs) are converging with mobile phones, that seems like it's a definition doomed to be antiquated any day now.
Then again, perhaps the same could be said of the term "moblogging" in the first place, and we should just let nature take its course?
Somebody found my blog after reading another blog called "Lifeless Matter," and suggested that I should do the BBC's Fifty Things to do Before You Die checklist they saw there (guessing I might be a good candidate considering all my traveling and stuff). I have to admit that it is an interesting list (though it has a bizarre fixation on wild animals and mountain expeditions), so I thought "why not" and gave it a try. From the looks of things, I am 2/5 ready to die already.
Personally, I have my own list of "Things I Want to Do Before I Die," but I only add something to it after I've actually done it. That way, I don't die unfulfilled!
Anyway, not exactly the list I would have chosen, but you can read my comments in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Surprise: It would seem that the initial delay I had getting into LAX for my recent trip to Korea was not because of a power outage... turns out somebody didn't perform a monthly reboot of their Windows 2000 Server, causing it to crash over some kind of data overflow. Why am I not surprised?
Lost: I finally got around to watching Alias creator J.J. Abrahms new show: Lost. I was not surprised that I ended up liking it, but was surprised that Matthew Fox turned in a decent performance. Who knew?
Flickr: While I would prefer to make my own gallery to put my photos on the web, server space is starting to become an issue. There are a lot of free photo sharing services out there, but the first one I've ended up liking has been Flickr (see my test gallery). Free accounts only get three albums (with only the most current 100 photos displayed), but you can cram in as many photos as you like because there's no storage limit, just a bandwidth limit of 10 megs a month. Manipulating and organizing your photos is pretty easy, but the nicest thing about the service is the ability to keep track of your friend's photos and see what they've been up to (if you invite a friend to join, their albums will automatically be added to your list!). Once Flickr is out of beta, they will offer paid upgrades to Pro accounts so you can have more than three albums and view more than the last 100 photos... if it's reasonably priced, I'll absolutely be signing up.
Photographic: Speaking of Flickr, be sure to check out the Flickr Blog. Here they highlight some of the more interesting photo albums from their users, some of which are amazing. One of the best is Guys on Bikes, which is a photo journal of a trek four guys made across the USA on bicycles.
Fable: The new Xbox release, Fable, was developed by Peter Molyneux who created one of my favorite games of all time: Populous. I've been too busy to look at it much, but the hour I did manage to spend playing (while backing up my laptop) was pretty cool. It's nifty how the game kind of changes depending on the choices you make. I just wish it weren't so complicated... navigating through a half-dozen menus to eat an apple from your inventory is ridiculous. This is only the 3rd time I've had a free moment to turn on my Xbox since I bought it months ago. Why did I even bother to spend $50 for a game that I know I'll never have time to play?
Hah!: I'm not even here today! My entries for yesterday and today were posted automatically by a new feature in Movable Type that allows you to pre-date your posts. That's kind of a nifty way to keep your blog fresh when you know you won't be able to post in person! But it's also kind of spooky. I mean, what if I am was in a car wreck and died tomorrow yesterday morning? That would make this a post-mortem post! If that's the case, I think I would like my last words here to be "funky taco."
Neil is always coming up with interesting memes and other tidbits for his blog, and now I know why: he reads nearly 100 feeds! And here I thought I was crazy for the 38 I read regularly. Anyway, the latest meme he's manage to dig up is called 200 Questions. This completely trumps my previous entries of 50 Things to Do Before You Die and Dave's List of Things to Do Before He Dies That Are Already Done (well, at least until somebody comes up with the inevitable "500 Questions" in a few weeks).
Usually I would take a pass on an entry like this, but I'm spending the next couple of hours on the phone and welcome a physical distraction that doesn't require a lot of thought (I loathe talking on the phone). Interestingly enough, it probably took me longer to reformat the questions than it's going to take to answer them. I wish people coming up with things like this would post the list already in HTML-list format! My answers are in an extended entry (how many people are actually going to read through all 200?!?)...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Is blogging becoming passe? In order to have something to look at while on the phone this morning, I started cruising my "second tier" blog links... the blogs I don't read daily, but check in on every couple of months or so. I was a bit surprised to learn that a big chunk of them are gone and a majority of those remaining hadn't been updated in quite some time. This has me wondering if the blogging bubble has burst and weblogs are on the way "out." Since even some of my "first tier" blogs are being updated with decreasing frequency, it just might be time.
The number one excuse for stopping a blog (of those who bothered to post a final entry) is "this blog is occupying too much of my time, and I've got a life to live" - or something to that effect. I suppose this implies that those of use who blog regularly don't have a life? This is bizarre, because the 10 minutes a day I spend writing for Blogography hardly seems like a dent in my life (of course, if there are photos to crop or cartoons to draw, it takes a bit longer... but still).
Anyway, while people's willingness to write in a blog appear to be diminishing, their appetite for reading them seems to have no signs of letting up...
A year ago my Hard Rock Cafe site DaveCafe.com, occupied just over 80% of my traffic. Today, it's hovering at 10% and falling. The only other domain I track, DaveSpot.com, used to get 6% and is now under 2%. But the interesting thing to see here is that the traffic for both of these domains hasn't much changed. They just look like they are doing worse because the page hits for Blogography keep growing (obviously, DaveSpot is redundant now that I have a blog, so I've just now redirected all links to here).
Naturally, all of this has me thinking: "I wonder how much longer it will be before I decide to hang it up and shut down my blog?"
Blogography: I awoke this morning to find a baker's dozen of emails from kind people asking me not to shut down my blog (apparently in reaction to my entry yesterday). Sorry to mislead you, but I'm not planning on it anytime soon. I was just wondering how much longer I would continue given that quite a few bloggers seem to be giving it up. Besides, when I started this blog (after two previous failures) I made a commitment to myself that I would stick around for 1000 entries, and this is only #605.
Commentary: It's a mystery to me that I receive far more emails than visitor comments for my blog. From yesterday I got 2 comments but 13 emails? Thinking that perhaps people are afraid to leave comments because an email address is required, I've made some changes... 1) No personal information is required to comment anymore, and 2) If you do leave an email address for personal correspondence, it will never be displayed. I have no idea if it will make any difference, but you can now leave completely anonymous comments if you like (by leaving the name, email, and link fields blank).
Listen: Since I had to rebuild all 604 pages to remove the commenting requirements, I made a few other changes as well. First of all, I've added a link to my FAQ and other info about me to the menu there on the left. Second, the "Dave Gallery" now links to my Flickr album. Third, I've added a "Listening" item to the menu which shows what embarrassing 80's pop music I'm listening to at the moment (currently, that would be Until She Comes, a beautiful song by the Psychedelic Furs).
Angelina: I just saw a trailer for the new Angelina Jolie movie coming out called Mr. & Mrs. Smith (which also stars Brad Pitt, if you care). Sweet! They play a typical suburban married couple, but are unaware of each other's true professions... they are actually highly-paid assassins working for competing organizations. When the secret is revealed, they end up trying to assassinate each other! Looks wicked-funny and action-packed but, sadly, doesn't come out until June 10, 2005 Something about Angelina Jolie as an assassin appeals to me. Maybe it's the outfits?
Jessica: I also see that a trailer for Blade: Trinity is out, which I am looking forward to. In addition to more Wesley Snipes ass-kicking action, we also get Jessica Biel for eye candy and Ryan Renolds for comdey relief (cool, it's Berg!). They got Goyer to write again, but this time he is also directing, which worries me a bit because he's a rookie and Guillermo del Toro did such a brilliant job last time.
Season: I have a feeling that my motorcycle is going to be put into storage for the winter very soon now. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to ride it much for the past month, so I'm kind of sad about that. Oh well, just another reason to look forward to Spring, I guess.
I've been playing around with Google's Gmail and have to say that it's pretty good for a web-based email service. And now that I've got an account, I've protected myself in anticipation of Google's bid for global domination. If anybody out there doesn't yet have an account and wants one, I've got a half-dozen invitations... just leave a comment and be sure to fill in an email address where I can send it (the address will not be publicly visible).
Every night this week, I've taken a look at my web site error logs and fixed a problem that was causing trouble for my visitors. I've added error pages, fixed references and redirects, changed URLs to be more compatible with Google Image Search, and cleaned up a bunch of dead links. My thinking was that if I solved a new problem every night, eventually all the various errors would be eliminated.
This was, of course, delusional... because the problems never end.
For every issue I fix, another is happy to come along and take its place (sometimes what I fix is the cause of the new problem!). Anyway, I've finally reached a place where the most heinous errors affecting the most people have been eliminated. So now I am switching from technical problems to design problems.
Since the very beginning I've wanted my menu bar to be on the right instead of the left. This would give the bulk of the text a nice clean left-edge to read against. Problem is, I could never get the menu bar to work properly on the right-hand side. Then this evening, after nearly two hours of trial and error, I finally got the menu bar on the right where it was meant to be! This was cause for a small celebration on my part...
... after which I promptly moved it back to the left side. Things have been the "wrong" way for so long that it looks strange to make such a radical change. Instead, I went for a more subtle approach and added a light purple background to the menu sections so they separate more from the body text. I'm not sure if it's better or worse, so I guess I'll wait a month or two and see if it grows on me.
I'm fickle that way.
For a long time now I've wanted to convert my Hard Rock site, DaveCafe, over to a database so that it would be easier to maintain and update. I had played around with using PHP and MySQL to do this, but I'm just not talented enough to figure it out. Then it occurred to me that I might be able to use my blogging system, Movable Type, to run the site. It ended up working out amazingly well. The development curve went something like this:
10 MINUTES: Approximate time it took to figure out how to store variables in my blog by using a terrific Movable Type plugin called KeywordVariable.
20 MINUTES: Approximate time it took to convert the seven templates required for the site over to Movable Type and test all of them.
30 MINUTES: Approximate time it took to automate and convert the 100 Hard Rock Cafe reviews from an Excel spreadsheet to MT blog entries, thanks to the delicious scriptability of ecto (the blogging software I use). That's astoundingly fast... AppleScript rules!
And that was it! Thanks to Movable Type, ecto, AppleScript, and my Mac, I was able to completely create a database-driven web site in one hour with no database ability! Amazing. Simply amazing. At least it was, until the final step...
THREE HOURS AND COUNTING: Amount of time it's taking me to figure out why the pages will display perfectly in every browser I can find EXCEPT Internet Explorer in Microsoft Windows.
WHAT THE f#@%?!?Seriously. This is stupid, STUPID, STUPID!!! I just don't get it. Why doesn't Microsoft feel any obligation whatsoever to fix rendering bugs that ONLY appear in their browser? I'll tell you why... they don't give a shit. And why should they? 90% of the people on earth are using their shitty software, so web designers have no choice but to grab their ankles and waste hours and hours of time trying to make sites compatible with a bug-ridden pile of crap browser. Microsoft is law unto itself and is apparently not accountable to their customers, web standards, the US government, or anybody else.
What this boils down to is that if you are using Internet Explorer, odds are that many of the web sites you visit are not looking as they were intended to be displayed. That defeats the entire purpose of the web, and is just wrong. Not only that, but the security holes in Explorer are opening your computer up to all kinds of spyware, nasty viruses and other problems. Microsoft sucks total ass, and I can only hope that one day in the near-future people will wake up and start refusing to put up with their crap.
So do yourself (and the entire web-using universe) a favor... dump Internet Explorer if you are still using it and get a real browser. Go grab yourself a copy of Firefox right now and be amazed at how a browser is supposed to work. You might just be surprised, and web designers will thank you.
So here we are back in Ft. Lauderdale! Getting off the ship was a bit problematic because the idiots at immigration/security/customs held us on the ship for TWO-AND-ONE-HALF FREAKIN' HOURS this morning with absolutely no explanation. That's amazingly stupid considering that most of us have planes to catch (thankfully I was smart enough to book my flight with plenty of time in the event of just such a screw-up). Who I really felt sorry for was the crew of the Dawn Princess who had to deal with an increasingly hostile crowd of passengers wanting to disembark. There was nothing they could do about it, of course, but that didn't stop a lot of crotchety old farts from trying to make their lives miserable.
Surprisingly, here at Ft. Lauderdale International Airport, there is a free guest account for wireless internet access! I have no idea if that is intentional or accidental, but it sure is nice of them. All airports should have free internet considering the crap you have to go through when traveling now-a-days.
Anyway, first thing I do is check my email and find out that my web host has suspended the script that allows Blogography visitors to leave comments. Apparently, I received thousands of spam comment hits to my blog, which pegged CPU usage and forced them to put a stop to it.
I don't get it. I really don't.
I use a spam blocking plugin called "MT-Blacklist" that prevents any spam comments from ever appearing. Why hit me with thousands of spam comments when they will never show up in the first place? I knew that comment spammers were lowlife bug-f#@%ers... but who could guess that they are so astoundingly stupid as well?
Until we're allowed to shoot spammers DEAD, this is never going to stop... you realize this don't you?
Anyway, I guess when I get home tomorrow I'll have to see if there is something I can figure out so that I can turn comments back on. If anybody has any suggestions, let me know.
UPDATE: Well, comments are back on... at least for the time being. Sadly, entries that are older than 14 days will automatically have their comments closed. Furthermore, ALL comments will be moderated from now on, meaning that any comment you care to leave will not appear until I have manually approved it. One thing that hasn't changed is that your email address will NOT be shown if you should choose to leave it (so I can contact you privately). Anonymous comments are still welcome as well (assuming you aren't leaving spam or being nasty).
Yargh. The mess in dealing with comment spammers is worse than I could have imagined. Apparently they are accessing the "mt-comments.cgi" script directly, which means simply turning on comment moderation is not going to cut it. I've posted a plea on the MT forums in hopes that somebody can tell me how to make it so the script rejects all attempts to comment when the request doesn't come from my "official" comments form... but I don't even know if that's possible. If there's no way of rejecting outside direct-access to the script, then I guess comments will have to be turned off permanently.
That's kind of sad. I like getting the occasional comment from time to time.
Even worse, now that I'm had to turn off comments on all entries more than 14 days old, there's no way to tell people that comments have been closed which is very confusing. I thought a little MT template wizardry would fix this but, alas, my attempt has failed...
UPDATE: Many thanks to Neil and James who have pointed out that the "MTElse" tag needs to be within the conditional tag in order to function properly. Once I moved the block to sit within the "MTEntryIfCommentsOpen" set, everything works perfectly!
Comment spammers suck ass. The internet used to be fun before evil people had to go and ruin it for everybody.
After seeing the "Which Family Guy Character Are You?" quiz on both Neil and Ryan's blogs, I decided to give it a try. No surprise here...
Which Family Guy character are you?
Stewie is my idol (as I mentioned a while back).
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! I have ranted numerous times about the horror that is Microsoft Internet Explorer (the most recent is here). Simply put, if you are using IE, then you are probably not viewing huge chunks of the internet as it was intended. You are certainly not seeing this blog the way it was intended. For reasons that remain a complete mystery to me, Microsoft simply does not care that their browser renders pages incorrectly. For the longest time, I thought it was my fault... something in my CSS or HTML is bad. But every browser I check... EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM... renders the pages exactly right. They may look a little different, but they are at least laid out correctly. If this is my fault, then why does it work properly on all these other browsers, including Internet Explorer for the Macintosh?!?
So, when I receive a comment at BlogExplosion like this:
"I like the site and words but the format needs work too much scrolling to the left and right to read."
I go absolutely insane...
If people don't like my blog and leave a low rating or a comment about hating it BECAUSE OF THE CONTENT, that's fine and I have no problem with it. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. But to have people's experience be tainted with Microsoft's sloppy-ass browser that causes horizontal scrolling WHERE THERE SHOULDN'T BE ANY... well, I go nuts. It's not fair to me. It's not fair to my visitors. It's just not fair. But, since Microsoft has a monopoly on the way the internet is displayed because of their huge dominance with Internet Explorer, it doesn't matter. I'm going to have to be the one to try and figure out what's going wrong. Fair or not, it's my problem.
At least I know what I'll be doing this weekend. If you are using Internet Explorer on a Windows machine and want to see what the site looks like when rendered correctly on the top-five Mac browsers (no horizontal scrolling!), then follow the link below where I've put up thumbnails (or you could always go get a better browser, and see for yourself):
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Hooray! The Mozilla Firefox browser has finally reached 1.0 release! If you're a MacOS X user like me, you're probably perfectly happy using Safari to browse the web... but there's always that occasional site that doesn't seem to work properly, which is why it's good to have Firefox sitting in your Applications folder. It's fast, friendly, does a great job, and may just become your browser of choice.
Of course, if you're a Microsoft Windows victim that's been suffering with Internet Explorer, then Firefox is a dream come true... it's a superior product in every way that will finally display the web the way designers meant for it to be seen, and protect you from spyware and other nastiness the IE invites. Go download it right away.
Happy as I am, I have to admit that every time I read some blog saying "FIREFOX IS OUT," something entirely different comes to mind...
Or maybe this...
Or perhaps this...
Congratulations to the entire Mozilla team for a job well done!
Honestly, I don't copy absolutely everything Neil does in his blog... it's just that he's constantly finding really cool things to blog about. And now he's run across a truly inspired meme: what's in your gadget bag? (which reminds me of the what's in your glovebox meme). I'm not saying that my particular bag is something special, but I do haul a lot of crap around with me, so this might be interesting to some...
An inventory of what is accommodating me on a typical trip...
Yargh. No wonder my pack is so heavy. And now I'm off to Seattle, continuing onward to Salt Lake City for a few days.
Apple! I wish I were in London right now. Not just because I love the city and have a number of friends living "over the pond," but because Europe's first Apple Store is opening up there this weekend on Regent Street (in a pretty cool location just off Oxford Circus). Sure it looks to be much like the stores in Chicago, New York, L.A., and Tokyo that I've already been to, but these "flagship" Apple Stores are all so cool that I'd like to keep up with them as they open up if I can.
Ze! It's always cool when one of my favorite sites gets a little notice, and this time it's a really good one. Ze Frank's latest triumph: "Punctuation Substitution for Passive Aggressive Communication Solutions" is making its way around the blogosphere, and is too funny. If you like it, be sure to check out all of the other crazy and cool things he's made for ZeFrank.com ("How to Dance Properly" is what he's most known for, and is still one of his best).
Berg! The site for Blade: Trinity seems to have been updated with more images and information. While I enjoyed the previous Blade films, this one has me really anxious because it has one of the funniest guys on the planet in it... RYAN RENOLDS!! First coming to prominence as "Berg" in Two Guys, A Girl, and A Pizza Place Renolds then drifted through a number of guest appearances in films (like Dick) and TV shows (like Scrubs) before hitting the big time in Van Wilder. Now he's got a primo part in the latest Blade film, and seems to have really buffed up in a bid to become an action hero...
Of course, it doesn't hurt that hottie Jessica Biel is along for the ride playing Whistler's daughter...
Porn! My workload is so overwhelming just now that I can't really take on anything more, but every once in a while an offer of work comes my way that I'm sorely tempted to take anyway. This morning I got a rather serious email wanting me to develop an e-commerce site for porn! I've accumulated a pretty diverse body of work over the years, but haven't done any work involving pornography before. Sadly, I don't have any time available before Spring of next year, so I had to decline. Such a shame, because having porn in my portfolio would certainly spice things up a bit!
Rated! Also in my email box was a request from a "concerned parent" to add ratings to my blog so that it can be properly identified as "adult content." Apparently, her 14-year-old son was searching for cartoons on the internet, stumbled across the "DaveToons" here on Blogography, saw a cartoon image of me being Janet Jackson at the SuperBowl, then became "traumatized." To this I can only reply: what the f#@%?!? I assume this is the image in question:
Well, whatever. I certainly don't want to be in the business of "traumatizing" any kids. But then I took a look at the RSACi web site to figure out exactly how I am supposed to rate my site, and am even more dumbfounded. I mean, take a look at what your options are! How am I supposed to choose?
In all honesty, I think this is pretty ridiculous, and have to wonder what the ramifications of adding a rating to your site might be. I mean, if I rate my site as "Mild expletives" and somebody comes along and decides that "crap" isn't "mild" can I be sued? Will Google refuse to index my site if I have ratings in place? Does it really matter anyway? Geez. Maybe I'll just forget about it and instead request that parents monitor their kid's activities on the internet rather than asking me to babysit for them.
Thanks to some help from James, I've gone ahead and rated this site so that unsuspecting (and unsupervised, I'd imagine) kids won't have to be traumatized by something they might read or look at here (or so the ICRA claims).
I have mixed feelings about ratings. Personally, I don't think that they work, and are no substitute for supervising your children. Furthermore, I think that increasingly easy access to the internet makes it all too easy for kids to find unrestricted access. But, for parents that are trying to do the right thing and living in a constant battle with television, music, and the internet to raise their kids... well, if rating my site for content in any way helps, then I have no problem giving it a try.
Here is how I've chosen to rate my blog (with samples of material):
I decided not to label the above as being in an "artistic context," even though I personally believe that to be the case here. Given what I know from having a 13-year-old nephew, this site is positively tame compared to what kids are exposed to at school every day... but whatever. Just doing my part to preserve public decency!
(Trying to type that last sentence with a straight face was near impossible!)
Seriously... how do we go about repealing the antiquated and horrendously stupid electoral voting system here? I don't care which side of the political spectrum you might lay, how can anybody not support the idea of every vote counting? Does anyone (except those comprising the Electoral College) seriously want it this way? Why hasn't a repeal of the 12th Amendment ever been offered to the people? How do we get it put to a vote? Anybody?
Seriously... can't Dave Winer just leave us alone? First he decides to define moblogging for us... badly, and now he's decided to tell us that unless we're reading syndication feeds his way, then we're doing it all wrong. I have no problem with Winer publishing his opinion, but he never seems content to do just that. Instead it's always "Winer's right, everybody else is wrong." End of story. Why can't he just be happy that people are using syndication and suggest a way that works best for him, rather than attacking people who have found a different way of doing things? Shades of gray Dave... shades of gray.
Seriously... why is it that movie comedies can't be complex and intelligent anymore? Have people's attention spans truly diminished to such a low that dumb-ass burp and fart jokes are all we're going to get now? It certainly seems that way. I just purchased the long-awaited DVD release of Foul Play and am amazed that a film starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase could be so brilliant while also being so funny at the same time. What's truly amazing is that there are no wasted moments in this film. Even seemingly meaningless scenes are subtext that builds the story. Things going on in the background are essential to solving the mystery they've got going. Unlike the typical Adam Sandler crapfest, you actually have to pay attention... but it's so well-written that you don't care, you want to pay attention (which is cruel, because there are some seat-jumping moments you never see coming). And it was made in 1978. We've certainly dumbed down in the past 26 years. A "comedy" as smart as Foul Play would never be green-lighted today.
Seriously... who is the moron that put David Caruso at the head of C.S.I. Miami? I love the original C.S.I. and am won over by the grittier take on the concept with C.S.I. New York. But I cannot bring myself to get through a single episode of Miami because Caruso is so laughably bad doing his overly-dramatic, arrogant, Gil Grissom impersonation. If Caruso can't be bothered to actually act out something original, can we put Emily Procter's character in charge?
Seriously... why do I feel compelled to participate in really time-consuming and difficult memes? This time I have Dennis to blame. To read through my "Nine Layers," just click the link below...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
I've been seeing increasing usage of GRAvatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) in blogs lately, but have shied away from incorporating it into Blogography because most implementations I've seen have totally destroyed the page layout. But now Neil's gone and done it, and his layout was preserved just fine, so I thought I'd go ahead and try it.
Gravatar (not to be confused with the Atari video game Gravitar) is a global repository for "avatars" (little pictures that identify you to others online) which can be used in all kinds of web environments, including blog comments. Since Blogography is now Gravatar enabled, any comments you leave will display your avatar, assuming you have signed up for a free Gravatar account and use the same email address you signed up with (but don't worry, your email address is private and will never be displayed here).
Each avatar you upload to your account is individually reviewed by the Gravatar staff, and given a rating of G, PG, R, or X. This allows implementations to be safely restricted for the intended audience (I've set the rating here to be "PG" or lower). The avatar I uploaded was reviewed and rated "G" (hah!) within 20 minutes. You can see how Gravatar works by following the "comments" link on this entry.
Which entry in your blog is your favorite so far and why is that? It's strange, but I don't really like any of my entries overly-much. I compare them to the genius displayed on other blogs and just kringe, because mine all seem so senseless, useless, and plain silly (why in the heck do people read this stuff?). With that in mind, I guess the ones I don't mind so much are those that use these traits as an advantage. I like Toothpaste a bit, because it was fun to draw. The same goes for Leather Jackets, which I find funny every time I look at it (mainly because it does seem funny as a cartoon, but would be horrifying in real-life!).
Which entry in your blog has gotten you the most attention and why do you think that is? That would be STILL Stop Calling Me. My saga with the ass-hats at Stonebridge Life Insurance and their harassing telemarketing policy has become a kind of repository for Google searchers who have suffered as well. I receive emails and comments on this entry even today. A close second would have to be Credit, where I made a joke about setting a clown's ass on fire. I received over 100 emails from some kind of "Clown Coalition" that was enraged by it (which is odd, because you'd think clowns would have a sense of humor).
Which entry in your blog do you feel was overlooked and why should people have read it? Probably Theme Thursday: Wings. This is the hardest blog entry I've ever done, because it took a lot of luck, planning, begging, and scheming to pull off. But now that the Theme Thursday meme is dead, nobody really sees it anymore to appreciate what I had to go through to make it work (my blog didn't have nearly as many people reading it back then either). I still think it's a cool entry, so go look at it right now!
FQ REVEAL: Which entry in your blog do you think is most indicative of who you are and what makes it so? That's kind of difficult to answer, because none of the most personal details of my life are really shared here. Every once in a while, a little more "me" than usual ends up in an entry when I feel strongly about something... like when I am saddened (The Sad State of Modern Times), bitter (Heart), grateful (Strut the Rooster), etc. If forced to pick just one, I'd have to say The Bears of Berlin shows a side of me that doesn't make it to Blogography very often.
Get blogged at the FridayQ.
Unable to sleep even a little bit, I decided to take a quick look through my email inbox and have a rather odd one awaiting me. The writer said that he had heard about a "fart quiz" and was wondering where he could take it. I then had to explain that there was no "fart quiz" and I had just made up some fake results because I think all those blog quizzes are kind of lame. Then, just 15 minutes later, I get another email wanting to know where to find the nonexistent "fart quiz."
A quick look at my blog stats and I notice that "fart" has overtaken "boobie" on my list of referral search terms! The source seems to be some kind of post forum, but since it is "members only," I can't confirm anything. Digging a little further, I see that Google's Image Search has been hitting with "fart quiz" quite a bit. In fact, it's currently the #1 hit for the term (we'll save how freaked I am that there are 72 results for "fart quiz" another time)...
So, for anybody coming here wanting to take the "fart quiz," here's the deal... there is no quiz. You can read about it on my "lame quizzes" entry (and also see nonexistent quizzes for "Which Deadly Strain of Virus Are You?" and "Which of the Bodily Fluids Are You?").
Hmmm... maybe there really should be a "What Type of Fart Are You" quiz?
Alright. ALRIGHT. ALRIGHT!! I give up... you can stop emailing me, because I've now taken my fake "What Kind of Fart Are You?" quiz and made it into a real, actual quiz. So now everybody who is just dying to know which fart best fits their personality can finally sleep at night. I've never created a quiz before, and find it only marginally more painful than taking a quiz. But I digress... click here to take the Fart Quiz.
Just as an F.Y.I., there are a total of five results the quiz can return. The first is below, the remaining four are in an extended entry...
I had started this meme back when I saw it at Lost Pilgrim (which I read religiously, especially on Friday, so I can see how Richard has brilliantly perverted the FridayQ that week). But something happened for one reason or another and I forgot about it.
Until Kazza did it, and now I feel I feel compelled to finish it (so you have her to blame!).
Basically, the idea is to open up your web browser of choice, then type in each of the letters of the alphabet to see what is "autocompleted" in the URL field. Kind of a nifty idea for a meme, I must say! To spare those of you who don't want to view 26 of my bookmarks, the list is in an extended entry. Though, I must say, a few of the links are worth a look if you don't already know about them...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
As anybody who attempts to link to an image on Blogography has found out, I have enabled hotlink protection for my site. I pretty much had to after some dumbass linked to a photo here (without asking) on a SlashDotted entry and ran my bandwidth allotment into the ground. I figure that if somebody is going to be using my images without permission, they might as well copy it to their own server instead of forcing me to host my content for them. It's not that I really care that people are taking my stuff (though giving credit to me when they do is always nice), it just seems lame for me to be expected to pay for it as well.
Since I was in an ass-drawing mood after creating my "fart quiz" yesterday, I went ahead and re-designed the image people see if they link to anything without asking first...
So yes, in effect, I am telling people who try and steal my bandwidth that they can kiss my ass. Still, it's pretty tame when you think about it. I could have used a photo of an actual ass (or something far, far worse). There are exceptions... a girl was making a site for a school project and wrote me a polite email asking if she could use the photo of a teddy bear I had posted... so natually I said "yes" and added her site to my list of allowed links. It's not a big deal really, I would probably be glad to do this for most anybody if they had a good enough reason for wanting me to do so.
And then I received an email from some ass-clown this morning ripping me to pieces because they were humiliated when they linked to one of my images in a Christian fellowship forum (a photo of a cool cherub statue at the Vatican). "You've destroyed my reputation and I should sue!"
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny too, so I replied:
"Let me get this straight. You steal an image from me without asking permission, fail to give me credit for said image, and then threaten to sue me because you're not a very clever thief? Just exactly how big of a dumbass are you?"
To say that this did not go over very well is an understatement, because they wrote back and apparently I am now going to hell.
Whatever. I must have read the Christian Bible wrong, because I'm pretty sure there's something in there along the lines of "thou shalt not steal thy neighbor's bandwidth" (I could be wrong though, I'm a Buddhist after all).
I had the afternoon off so I decided to catch up with my sleep, catch up with my laundry, and catch up with dozens of little things I've been putting off... like updating the layout for my blog. Nothing drastic, mind you, just a few changes to separate the content a little better. It's always bugged me that everything here isn't really contained, but floating all over the place. I also wanted a new header that could have swappable graphics (this time with cartoons!).
And then, fifteen minutes later, I've got it roughed out (thanks to the glory of CSS). Naturally, it looks fine in Safari and Firefox on my Mac (it usually does) but, the problem is always, always getting it to render properly in that bug-ridden pile of crap known as "Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer." It never fails... it takes just fifteen minutes to get what I want, and then I'll end up spending hours trying to make it work in Windows. Well, it's late, and I just don't have the heart to see how bad it looks in IE, so I guess that will have to wait until the weekend.
And, speaking of catching up, I also managed to watch yet another amazing episode of Veronica Mars from last night ("Annoy tiny blonde one! Annoy like the wind!!"). This show is simply too good for television. Seriously, broadcast television doesn't deserve a show this perfect. Veronica Mars is deliciously complex, cleverly written, brilliantly acted, and shockingly addictive. I think it just might be my favorite show currently on television...
I can't imagine how they are going to manage to keep the intricate web of character relationships going for the entire season but, since Rob Thomas (of "Cupid" fame) is involved, I suppose I needn't worry about it. All I can do now is curse myself for not having saved every episode on my TiVo, and then wait patiently for new episodes to air next year.
Thanks to miraculous technology advancements in blog syndication (and my inability to sleep more than 4-5 hours each night), I read an awful lot of blogs... 112 at current count. Fortunately, many of my favorites don't post every day, so I can actually have a life outside of reading them. If you have a good feed reader, you can easily organize people into groups, which makes me happy because I just love to categorize people. For instance, here is my group of "Blogs Written by People So Insane That Their Psychological Impediments Make for High Entertainment Value..."
If your in that list, I'm just kidding... this is actually my list of "Coolest People on Earth" (and if you're not on the list, then rest assured, it really is "Blogs Written by People So Insane That Their Psychological Impediments Make for High Entertainment Value").
Anway, since I don't have to be to work for an hour, let's take a look at a slice of my own personal Blogosphere shall we?
And with that, I now have 10 minutes to get to work!
Whenever I am at a loss as to what to blog about, Neil always seems to have another meme handy. This time, it's the "End of Year Quiz"... much like a "year in review" in forty questions I'd imagine. Anyway, I've put my answers in an extended entry so those completely uninterested in my accomplishments (or lack thereof) this year can easily skip it. Now that I think about it, how much cooler would it have been to have regular readers of my blog fill this out for me! I wonder if the answers would be very different? Probably.
As an "end-of-year" wrap up, I thought I'd expand upon the "End of Year Quiz" I took just a few days ago...
Biggest annoyance. Other than crappy lip-syncing music acts topping the charts and an over-abundance of stupid reality shows on television, I'd have to say my deaf neighbors. The apartment complex I live in is rented almost entirely to elderly people, most of which have horrible hearing problems. Rather than getting hearing aids, they would instead prefer to scream at each other at all hours, slam every door every time, play their televisions at full-volume, and say "WHAT WAS THAT?" over and over and over again. I moved here because I wanted peace and quite, but it ends up that these people are noisier than a 24-7 party at a frat house. Annoying doesn't even begin to cover it.
Biggest disappointment. Too many things stayed the same or got worse in 2004.
Biggest encouragement. In the past year, traffic to my blog has steadily increased. This has encouraged me to keep blogging, even when I've considered dropping it. I thought that my visitor counts were amazing at the beginning of the year, but it was nothing compared to how the year would end (in fact, it even graphs as nothing!)...
Biggest shock. That would be a tie between President Bush actually winning re-election and the current crisis in Asia.
Biggest jerk. Whoever is responsible for canceling Wonderfalls at Fox Television.
Biggest bitch. With Martha in prison and Dr. Laura shoved to insignificance, I'm left choosing between f#@%ing freak Judge Judy, f#@%ing insane Anne Coulter, and - oh - wait a second... no need to go further, It's Ann Coulter alright. Somebody needs to slap that stupid bitch. Hard.
Biggest bastard. There's a number of jerks, idiots, and asshats that are in contention for this spot, and - oh - wait a second... I'm pretty sure it's got to be Ann Coulter. Somebody needs to slap that stupid bastard. Hard.
Biggest idiot. I tried to ma-- oh, who am I kidding... it's Ann Coulter again. Somebody needs to slap that stupid idiot. Hard.
Biggest fun. Finally hitting my 100th Hard Rock!
Biggest discovery. I picked up the DVD set for the first season of Roswell (which aired on WB and UPN before I had WB and UPN) simply because it was cheap. $14 for 22 hours of television? Sign me up! I had heard good buzz about it, but thought it was some kind of stupid teen angst show with lame sci-fi elements tossed in. Imagine my surprise to find that it's actually a really good series.
Biggest surprise. I managed to keep this blog going for the entire year! We'll see what 2005 will bring.
Sienna: The Sun is reporting that Jude Law has proposed to the blisteringly hot Sienna Miller. I've been in love with Sienna since her days on the funky Keen Eddie television show, and am a little crushed here.
Death: Is it wrong to wish Jared dead every time one of his stupid-ass Subway commercials shows up on television? I feel badly about even thinking it, but I just can't help myself. And it's not just that I want him dead, I want him really dead... like chopped up in little pieces and then lit on fire. Or run over with a steamroller and then disintegrated in a vat of acid. Or maybe even blown up with... uhhh... must... stop... thoughts... of... Jared... death... by... Wyle E. Coyote...
Quiz: And speaking of sub sandwiches, why does Quiznos bother to post a menu showing the sandwich contents if they are just going to ignore it? A Quizno's Veggie consists of the following: guacamole, black olives, lettuce, tomato, red onion, mushrooms, mozzarella, cheddar, and Red Wine Vinaigrette Dressing. So, you would think that if I ordered a "Veggie with everything that comes on it except the mushrooms," it wouldn't be rocket science to figure that out. But they manage to screw it up every time. Usually they're denying me my guacamole, but last night they tried to add green peppers to it. Maybe I am going to have to start drawing diagrams? Oh well, I'll still take a delicious Quiznos sub over a boring Jared Subway sub any day.
Guano: How fabulous! Blogography has won the most prestigious of all blog awards: The Golden Guano! What makes this recognition particularly special is that it's awarded by somebody I truly admire and respect: me! I have decided that my Guano will have been won for "Blog Most Likely to Touch You In An Inappropriate Place." Feel free to go grab one for yourself at My So-Called Strife (available in black, white, and lovely hot pink) and come up with your own blog category...
Lou: I usually delete comments which are just thinly veiled attempts at advertising other people's blogs (i.e., "I agree totally with what you said. Come visit my blog at www.lame.com!"). The reason I do this is because A) the person obviously didn't bother to read my blog, why should I bother to read theirs, or ask somebody else to do so? And B) it's kind of senseless... how many people are actually going to click on such a link? That being said, "A-Lou's Diary" ended up being an interesting use of a blog as I've seen. It's "written" by a 5-year old Belgian(?) boy who has been blind since birth and is facing complex mental challenges. Apparently it's a big hit in the French-speaking world, and is being translated into English now. I just wish "Lou's Daddy" would find some other way of advertising it.
Goodness: Alias is on tonight! The sweet hotness of Jennifer Gardner has returned to set us free and bring peace to all the world. Oh joyous day!
In updating my RSS template (thank you Neil!), I noticed that the name of the template is "INDEX.XML" and then it suddenly occurred to me why I occasionally get emails asking me "do you have an RSS feed?" Well, it's probably because nothing here actually says "RSS," including the syndication badge I've got in my sidebar. It's the classic case of calling something by one name, then referring to it by a completely different name, but I was just following what everybody else had done.
And that begs the question... why do all of the RSS logos and badges say XML when everybody calls it RSS? Shouldn't the logo say "RSS" if you're going to call it RSS?
And yes, I realize that RSS is an XML-based format, but nobody ever calls it "XML" so it's just confusing. The problem is, if I switch it, then it will be different from all the others, and those who know to look for XML won't find it. I suppose I could put two badges up but that would probably confuse things even worse. Who thinks up this stuff?
Blogging is a contact sport, because anything you write is in full contact with the entire world. Sometimes this is a good thing, but other times it just opens you up for inexplicable hostile behavior. Sure I realize that not everybody is going to agree with what I say and some people are going to become angry because of it... that's human nature, and I accept it.
This morning I woke up to a really nasty email sitting in my in-box. It's happened before, doesn't really bother me, and is easily solved by pressing the "delete" key. Except this one was different. As I was about to obliterate it from my sight and mind, I noticed that it was attacking me not because of what I said, but because of how it was formatted.
The really foul language and poor spelling forbid me from reproducing the email here, but the gist of it was "you suck ass because you claim your blog validates but it doesn't."
To which I can only say "WTF?" I rant often about adhering to web standards and Internet Explorer's complete disregard for such things so, if this were true, I would be a big fat hypocrite. But it's not true. I have a badge that proudly links to the W3C validator and, when you click on it, this is what you'll see:
So now I am really puzzled. I start frantically validating all the pages I can find... my FAQ... my "Best of"... my Master Archive... and everything comes through with no problems. Then I start validating individual entry archive pages with no problems... until I reach a page with comments. And then tragedy strikes. The Gravatar plug-in I use to display little pictures next to commentors is putting unencoded ampersands in its URL, which is invalid. No big deal, I just edit the plug-in source, rebuild my pages, and everything is okay again (well, kind of okay, because if somebody leaves a comment with invalid HTML embedded in it then the page won't validate, but it does when I first put it up so I guess I can live with that).
Anyway, I was actually going to write back to the foul-mouthed ass-clown that emailed me with the problem, but the return address was forged. So, if you're reading this guy, thanks for bringing it to my attention and I appreciate it. But was it really necessary to call me a "!#@&!%@ $*@@%#" ?
Perhaps it's the splitting migraines that have been plaguing me all week, but I am in a terrible mood. Nothing seems to be making me happy. In the hopes that I can alleviate my frustrations, I'm venting things that suck today. Lucky you.
Alias: What in the heck was last night's Alias supposed to be? I don't know. But I will tell you what it actually was: STUPID! I was so happy that the show seemed to be back on track, but now we've got hallucinations, vampires, and rampant idiocy going on at mind-numbing levels. If this is what we have to look forward to for the rest of the season, I wish somebody would let me know so that I can stop watching right now. This has got to be the worst episode of Alias yet, scraping the bottom of the barrel with the rest of the crap that's on television.
Podcasting: Whatever. I suppose when something comes out in a podcast that I actually want to listen to... then I'll start getting excited about it. But, after trying dozens of different "shows," I am less than impressed. When Stern starts a podcast, somebody let me know. I wish Robin Williams would do a weekly podcast, that would rule: comedy podcasts for when you need a dose of funny.
American Dad: We waited all this time so that Seth MacFarlane could create American Dad, a grossly inferior copy of his brilliant Family Guy show? What a complete and total waste of time. Stewie has been replaced by a fish and Brian has been replaced by an alien, but it's basically the same show... only not funny. Thank heavens that the original Family Guy is coming back in May.
Service Pack: I don't use my Windows PC unless forced, which means that it's never much kept up to date with the latest round of bug patches and useless security fixes. This morning I fired it up to find out I had Windows XP Service Pack 2 awaiting (and probably many others, but it's hard to tell). I noticed that Internet Explorer is finally getting a pop-up blocker, so I figure that alone is worth the hassle of downloading SP2. Anyway, my Windows PC is now officially dead. Since I'd rather shoot myself in the head than go through another WinXP install, I've decided to just leave it that way. Microsoft bastards. And here I was actually considering the purchase of a Tablet PC... what was I thinking? Look, it's a version of Windows that sucks just as bad as regular Windows, but you can use a pen instead of a mouse!
iPhoto: And to show I'm not 100% biased here, I offer the following: Given that I am a certified Apple whore, do you know how hard it is for me to find something to criticize about Apple software? Well iPhoto 5 makes it easy, because it's a steaming pile of crap. It's worse than crap. In fact, you usually have to search through Windows 98 shareware collections to find something with this magnitude of suckage. Slow to the point of being absolutely unusable, I have to wonder if anybody at Apple even bothered to test this ass-sucking turd of a program on anything other than a Dual-G5 machine. Apparently they didn't bother to test it at all, considering that many people lost their photos in the upgrade from version 4. Did Apple get bought out by Microsoft while I wasn't looking?
Wonderfalls: I finally finished watching all thirteen glorious episodes of Wonderfalls on DVD and have to wonder... how could this remarkable show be canceled so FOX could have room for shit like Trading Spouses in their schedule? As if that wasn't enough, the inferior "girl talks to God" show Joan of Arcadia is still running. While I used to actually like Joan, she has turned into a whiny bitch that's so boring in the latest round of shows that I've stopped watching it entirely.
Boca Burger: When I became a vegetarian, I was ever-so-grateful when "Boca Burgers" came along, because I could then enjoy the most deliciously fantastic hamburgers... all mad-cow free! But in the past year, they've re-formulated the recipe, and now they taste like ass. Wet ass. I don't know what in the heck they are thinking, but now their burger patties are slimy, soggy, and horrible in every way. Where I once was eating them by the box-fulls, now I can't even stand to look at them. I guess when the company was bought out by the cancer cartel of Philip Morris tobacco (under their "Kraft Foods" umbrella) they decided they didn't want people to actually buy the product anymore, and made it taste and "feel" like shit to get these results. Well congratulations, as if supporting big tobacco wasn't enough of a reason to stop buying them, now you've given me a reason I can't ignore.
Seattle: WHY DOESN'T SEATTLE HAVE A HARD ROCK CAFE YET?!? I mean, come on... Latvia is getting a cafe for heaven's sake! LATVIA! And, while we're at it, whatever happened to the cafes that were supposed to open up in Oslo and Frankfurt? Lastly, it also sucks that the "Hard Rock Beach Club" experiment has closed in Choctaw. UPDATE: It has just been brought to my attention that the cafe in Queenstown, New Zealand has also closed... which is horrible, because I hadn't made it to that one yet!
Station: It seems as though you can't just sit down and watch television anymore. Oh no, first there was station identification "badges" in the corner, now we've got pop-up ads, news tickers, and loads of other obnoxious crap to distract you while trying to watch your favorite show. I weep for the future. How much longer until our television screens are cluttered with so much shit that you can't even watch the actual show?
Trackback: If things keep going as badly as they are now, I will soon be joining the multitudes that are disabling trackbacks on their blogs (like Antipixel and Wirefarm). I loathe waking up in the morning to find 70 emails notifying my of trackback spams... all of which must be deleted and blacklisted. When is it going to be legal to hunt down and slaughter these low-life, bottom-feeding, bug-f#@%ers like the ass-biting dicks they are? They've taken a wonderful feature of the blogosphere and destroyed it utterly.
Lahti: I finally gave in to peer pressure and started having TiVo record Jack & Bobby, which is the story of a young boy "Bobby" who is destined to one day be president, and his growing up with brother "Jack" under the femi-nazi domination of their bitch-from-hell mother "Grace." It's a fascinating concept with good writing and interesting twists... all destroyed by Christina Lahti's completely unlikable portrayal of "Grace." She has -zero- redeeming qualities, and I find it mind-boggling that such a heinous character was ever green-lighted for television. Just like CSI: Miami which I cannot force myself to watch because of David Caruso's arrogantly laughable William Peterson impersination, I'm afraid that Jack & Bobby ain't making my list of must-see shows so long as Lahti is so horribly featured on it.
Hate: I can't help but wonder if these so-called devout Christians who email me the most hateful emails I've ever received understand what the word "hypocrisy" means. I must be on some kind of watch-list since the clown thing, because every single time I speak my mind on such things as gay marriage and other "controversial" topics, I am bound to get at least one raving email (can't you people leave comments?). In my previous post where I recommend a book by Bill Bryson where he discusses the "science of everything" (including evolution) I received an email telling me I was a "shill for Godlessness" and then was consigned to hell... again! I usually don't dignify such things with a response, but I am feeling especially frisky today, so here it is: f#@% you. And I'll also offer a helpful hint: if reading my blog makes you so upset, STOP READING IT YOU DUMBASS! I have never, ever, been anything but supportive and accepting to people's belief structure, and don't think it's out of line to ask the same courtesy from others. Go read somebody else's blog that won't bring about such hatred because, let's face it, there's enough of that in the world just now and I don't want to hear it.
When it comes to Blogography (which is this blog, in case you hadn't noticed), I am only peripherally aware that quite a lot of people read it. Granted "quite a lot" is all relative because, compared to the number of hits Google gets, I might as well not even exist. But considering I initially started this up for an audience of 4 people, it's nothing less than amazing that thousands - tens of thousands - people drop by every week.
Of course, not all of these "unique visitor counts" can truly be counted as "readers," but the end result is still scary. Once I strip out all the robots, spammers, search hits, and people looking for nude photos of Jennifer Garner, a mind-boggling 1600 people a day visit Blogography's entry page. It may be more than that because I don't know how to count RSS readers, blog aggregators, and direct links, but that's still a lot of people. And y'all keep coming...
I've long ago given up trying to figure out why my life is interesting enough to merit such attention. Other than an occasional trip to interesting (and not-so interesting) locations, I lead an exceedingly boring life that consists of work, watching television, riding my motorcycle, surfing the web, and complaining a lot. But what do I know, I am addicted to blogs for far less reasons than that.
Anyway, this morning I received an odd email congratulating me for having a high Google Rank, and then went on to tell me of an "opportunity too good to pass up" (but aren't they all?). This came as quite a surprise to me because last time I checked I was at Google Rank 4, which I didn't think was anything special. Since the Google Toolbar isn't available for Macintosh, Rank is something I don't know how to monitor.
Apparently, this spammer gentleman wanted to sell me an "insider's guide" to making money with blogs, and provided a sneak peek at some of the "profit driven tips" that would make me a gazillionaire. Most of them were exceedingly stupid, but one of these money-making essentials caught my eye... the one which advised me to eliminate my RSS feed, or release only my entry headers to an RSS feed. The idea being that people would then be forced to visit the site (thus the advertising I'm supposed to put there) if they wanted to read my blog. I found this amusing because, without RSS, I would probably read only a third of the blogs I do now.
And there's the whole enchilada... I provide full content of my posts to my RSS feed so that people using Bloglines or some kind of RSS reading app have an easy way to keep reading Blogography (only rarely do I make an extended entry, and even then it has to be a topic that I feel most people won't be interested in). Sure it's not as pretty as my site, but the importance should be the content over the design anyway, shouldn't it? I dunno. It's not that I am opposed to making money, but that's not why I blog. Besides, is anybody out there making big money with Google AdSense anyway? Maybe it's something I should look into, because a lot of people do it and I can only assume they wouldn't bother unless they got paid.
Back to Google Rank: through some cursory research I've found a little bit more about it. First of all, I only have a Rank of 5 which, while respectable (bloggers like James, Tonya, and Richard are at 5 also), is not considered to be a high Rank. Second of all, Rank is exponential... meaning that it's always more and more difficult to reach that next highest level. Going from 4 to 5 is much easier than going from 5 to 6 for example. So to reach a Rank of 6 (like more relevant bloggers than I, such as Neil and Mark) would require drastically more links pointing to me by some sites with heavy Rank themselves and, let's face it, Blogography is just not that kind of blog.
Besides, my findings show me that Google Rank is in no way indicative of how good a blog actually is. Such finds as Down With Pants and My So-Called Strife have a Rank of 3 (criminal!), but easily hold their own with blogs that are at 7 (sorry but I just don't "get" blogs like Scobleizer and Pirillo, but an awfully lot of people must with a Google Rank of 7!).
Everything else aside, this is entry #771, meaning I've got 229 to go before I've fulfilled the promise I made to myself when I started this, my 3rd blog. If I keep at my average of 1.2 entries per day, that means #1000 will happen sometime in August. I always thought that I would give it up at that point and move on to something different, but blogging sure has been good to me over the years, and I don't know that I can let it go so easily. I guess I'll know in 6 short months.
And, if I haven't said it lately, thanks for stopping by.
For the first time in a week, my migraines seem to be subsiding. I was going to go get a shot Friday after work so that I could have the weekend to recover from the nausea... but ultimately ended up deciding to spend the weekend in bed to see if I can get my head to stop exploding. Now it's just a kind of dull ache behind my eyeballs, and will hopefully have dissipated by tomorrow morning.
Assuming the geese don't attack.
This morning I was awoken by some geese honking all over the place. I thought it was an excellent opportunity to take out the garbage so I could see what a flock of geese looks like all up-close and personal-like. That was a mistake. These were some angry geese, and decided to attack me. Well, not really attack, but they did come honking my way... as if possessed by a rage from some long-forgotten evil. I am proud to say that I did not drop the trash and run screaming like a little girl. Instead I stood frozen and screamed like a big girl ("AAAAAAAAHHHHH!") which is my own personal brand of evil-repellent. After that, they honked off not to return. Yet. The horror. I live in constant fear of them coming back for me.
My migraine forgotten for the moment, I decided to catch up on the blogosphere and find some nice things to say here for a change...
Jerz: My first stop at Mr. Jerz was instantly rewarded by giving me all kinds of new profanity for my blogging rants and, if that were not enough, also provides a way of creating new ones of my own! Somebody needs to turn this brilliance into a Flash-based profanity-maker...
Hmmm... let's try this out, shall we?
Napshitter: Scott Andrew (whose music you really should take a listen to) has noticed that Napster has a lame full page dedicated to taking pot-shots at Apple's iPod and iTunes. And now they're putting them on television as well. To which I can only say to Napster: bitch, please. The iPod is the overwhelming choice for the discerning digital music listener, and your shit isn't even compatible with it. Furthermore, your taint-spank (thank you Mr. Jerz!) claim of being able to fill up some sack-smoking (thanks again!) Windows MP3 player that isn't anything close to being as nifty as my iPod for just $15 is grossly misleading. Sure you can do it... but after 30 days, you're boned, because all that music disappears unless you pay another bitch-licking (Jerz!) $15 for another 30 days. Just close up you testicle-slapping (whoo!) excuse for a music service and stop wasting our time.
Oh my. And here I was going to say nice things for a change. I blame Mr. Jerz.
Hurley: There was good news to be found when I drop by e-Dennis and see there's a rumor running around which has Elizabeth Hurley being attached to the next Harry Potter movie. If anything can save that franchise for me, this would be it. You can read a few of the many unabashed Hurley-lust entries I've made over the hottest woman in the known universe here and here and here.
Still: Neil has crafted a nice message for the MPAA after they closed down LokiTorrent (a BitTorrent hub). Even better, Boing Boing has picked it up! Sweet. I am a big fan of BitTorrent because it allows me to download television to take on the road with me, and easily archive shows that I can't be sure will ever be released on DVD (I'd do all this on my TiVo, but we all know how that's turning out). I find absolutely nothing wrong with my doing this. I pay DirecTV obscene amounts of money every month to watch those shows, and always buy the DVDs for shows I want to keep. If television networks had half-a-brain, they'd allow you to buy the shows over the internet in the first place.
Final: James has noted that Star Trek: Enterprise has entered the final frontier and been cancelled after this season. How can anybody be surprised. NOTHING EVER HAPPENS ON THAT SHOW! It's just one boring episode after another. When is a kick-ass Star Trek show going to come along? Somebody should hire Ron Moore and the Battlestar Galactica team to take care of it.
Toby: And why couldn't I think of this? Of course, being a vegetarian, my credibility in such a threat would be quite low.
Pee: Just a few days ago I was thinking I might be able to drive up my blog traffic by getting some kind of high-profile endorsement. And now fate steps in. Heaven only knows nothing would make me happier than "spreading love all over the blogosphere," but some endorsements are just inviting trouble. I get enough wacky hate mail as it is, so perhaps being mired in obscurity it not such a bad thing.
Summer: The quirks of seasonal inversion between the north and south hemispheres of our planet is a nice side-effect of an international blogosphere. CoffeeWaffle is eating summer berries off the vine in New Zealand, and Kazza is spending time in the swimming pool in Australia. Naturally, I'm jealous. Summer means being able to ride my motorcycle. Of course, given the weak winter we've been having here, they should be cleaning the streets of loose gravel any day now. THERE... now that makes me happy.
WTF? Do TrackBack spammers actually read my blog before spamming me? Just yesterday I was musing as to how TrackBack spammers always seem to slam me when there is nothing I can do about it... I'm on a plane... without internet... whatever. It's as if they wait for the most opportune moment and then strike. At first I thought it was a coincidence, but after what happened last night, now I'm not so sure. Within two hours of my last entry, I started getting TrackBack spams on a regular schedule. By the time I got to work early this morning so I could check my email, there were around 120 waiting for me to delete and blacklist...
The most disturbing thing about this is that all of these disgusting TrackBacks were actually listed on my blog for a period of time. The "no-follow" link tag is obviously NOT WORKING, because spammers are more determined than ever. Movable Type needs to add forced-moderation of all TrackBacks IMMEDIATELY. It won't stop spammers from attacking me, but at least I have the piece of mind of knowing that they won't show up on my blog. There is a plug-in available that's supposed to do this, but I couldn't get it to work properly... the solution needs to be integrated into the system, and Movable Type is who should be doing it. So what are they waiting for?!?
In a wonderful stroke of luck, I managed to catch an earlier flight and arrive home a full three hours ahead of schedule. A pity that there's no new episode of Veronica Mars running tonight (Save Veronica!), but at least we have a return appearance of Heather Graham on Scrubs.
In more disturbing news, along with the twenty new pornographic TrackBacks I had to de-spam, I also got a scary piece of email which accused me of "stealing" the idea for a graphic which I drew up for my "review" of the movie Sideways. Since the return address was bogus, I'll go ahead and make my reply public here:
I hate to tell you this dumbass, but the only thing I did was parody the official movie poster...
I don't even know who you are or what picture you are talking about. Sooo... perhaps instead of threatening to "expose" me, you should attack Fox/Searchlight Pictures for coming up with the idea in the first place.
Stupid people suck ass.
Ever run across something you'd just love to blog about, but ultimately decided against it once you had a minute to think about it? That seems to be happening to me a lot lately. I just spent twenty minutes writing up and entry, drawing a cartoon, and then... while proof-reading it... decided to delete it instead of posting it.
I don't think that it was too personal or anything like that, it just "felt" wrong.
With that in mind, I can't help but wonder how often something like this happens with other bloggers. Maybe it's just timing? If I were to go back through every blog entry I've ever made, how many of them would I be compelled to delete? Heh... probably ALL of them.
Well, it would appear that I am going to have to turn comment moderation ON again, despite the fact that the new "MTKeystrokes" plugin is doing an amazing job of discarding comment spam from spam-bots. Last night I received a comment that was obviously trying to sell something. Sure it was hand-typed, and sure it related to my entry, but I have never allowed people to whore their wares here and I don't intend to start now. The only person allowed to be a whore here is me, and I don't like the competition. Get your own blog if you want to sell something.
It kind of makes me wish that I was able to clone my brain and hook it up to my blog so that it could approve and reject comments without me having to bother...
Of course, I think the massive genius of my clone brain would tire of such a mundane chore 24-7, and would probably go mad and become an evil brain monster. An evil brain monster to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!! MOOWAAAHHH HA HA HAAAA!
For a Friday, I must say it's been a pretty good day for me...
Sixteen. Verizon finally came through with my DSL order today after sixteen days of orders, cancelled orders, re-orders, and a myriad of other problems that wasted hours of my valuable time to get sorted out. Much to my surprise, the new router/modem they sent me had wireless built-in! That's a pretty cool bonus, and shows that (if nothing else) Verizon is at least paying attention to how the customers are accessing the internet. Even better, it seems as though my connection is slightly faster to boot, and the Verizon wireless has more range than my old Apple Airport Base Station. The best part? All of that is at a $20 savings per month over my previous EarthLink DSL line. This couldn't come at a better time, because just this morning I was thinking I'd rather give up the internet than spend another week with dial-up.
Three. Last night while watching the latest episode of The O.C., they ran the new Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith trailer. Just for fun, they had "Seth Cohen" from the show (the ultimate sci-fi/comic book nerd) introduce the thing with his Star Wars action figures. The trailer itself is pretty kick-ass cool and features mind-blowing special effects, Samuel L. Jackson with his purple lightsaber I covet so much, Wookies(!) and, best of all... GREEN BOOBIES! Of course, I remember getting all excited about Episodes I and II after watching the trailer, and they both sucked so much ass that I nearly shat myself in the theater. Do I dare muster any hope that the final Star Wars installment will be worth a crap? History tells me no... BUT WOOKIES AND GREEN BOOBIES! How can I not be excited?
Of course, the bigger Star Wars news is the increasing rumors that Kevin Smith will be in charge of some kind of Star Wars television show after Episode III wraps production. Since Kevin Smith on his worst day can fart better dialogue out of his ass than Lucas can write on his best day, this is really enticing gossip. It also seems really plausible given that the show could be done fairly cheap given today's digital special effects... I mean, all the computer models and scenes and such are already there, they just need to be reused in new and interesting ways.
Six. TrackBack spammers are pummeling me today. In the past six hours I've received dozens of email notifications for horrendously disgusting TrackBack pings that I am trying to Blacklist as quickly as they arrive so that any further attempts will be rejected. The problem is, they are using a new domain every time, so Blacklist is only killing a portion of what I'm being hit with. Six Apart has STILL failed to patch MT so that I can force moderation of TrackBack pings for manual approval, which is mind-boggling. I'm left with no choice but to turn of TrackBack for my blog, because I refuse to allow "hot doggy sex bestiality pics" to be promoted here. What in the heck is Six Apart waiting for? It's not like I am asking them to take care of my spam... just give me the ability to do it myself through moderation like I already can with comments. Seesh!
Four. Since putting Scott Plank on my "List of Three Guys I'd Go Gay For", I've received four emails wanting to know more about him. One email was from a woman who "became obsessed with him after seeing that sexy photo on your blog." Unfortunately, as I had mentioned, I don't know much about him at all. I met Scott briefly a few times because he was a potential actor for a role in a movie project I was involved in. Unlike most everybody else I met in Hollywood, Scott was a genuinely nice guy who was kind, funny, and humble. I was sent tape of his appearances in Air America and Melrose Place, but anything else I learned about him was from his entry on IMDB. I am told that he once had a web site at ScottPlank.com, but it isn't there anymore, which is kind of a shame. I have no details about Scott's death, only rumors I don't care to elaborate on. If anybody out there runs across this and knows of a place that has any information about Scott, please pass it along, and I'll be happy to share it.
Eight. And speaking of computer animation, I switched to LightWave[8] today after having used Electric Image Animation System for nearly a decade. I originally started with EIAS because that's what the people at Industrial Light and Magic used in Star Wars: Special Edition. It cost thousands of dollars, didn't come with a modeler, and was a bitch to use... but it produced pretty images very quickly. The problem is that EIAS sucked more and more with each new update. Version 5 has a modeler that crashes constantly doing the simplest of things (like beveling the corner of a cube!), and an animator that is so buggy I keep looking for roaches under my keyboard. The final straw came when I got a notice that I can upgrade to EIAS 5.5 for $300 the same day I got a notice that I could purchase a "sidegrade" to LightWave[8] for $500. Despite my having to re-learn a brand new package from scratch, I decided I was not going to pay $300 for another pile of shit from Electric Image just to get bug fixes to problems they never patched (and a load of potential new problems to worry about). As a perk of switching to LightWave, there's about a hundred books and dozens of training videos available... I think EIAS has at most three books (all out of date) and not much else. So any penalty from switching should be fairly short with such a wealth of material to learn from. Here's hoping.
UPDATE: Interestingly enough, NewTek just hired Jay Roth and Mark Granger... two long-time Electric Image employees. I am hopeful that this is a good thing, but my past problems with EIAS do have me slightly worried.
Seventy-Two. It's a lovely 72 degrees outside this afternoon. I am so taking off work early to go for a nice long ride on my motorcycle.
A month and a day away! April 18th is my two-year "blogiversary" and I'm in a mood to celebrate. I'm telling you now because it's going to be something you don't want to miss. Seriously. It's a "mark your calendars now" type of thing.
I wanted to have a big celebration last year, but waited until it was too late and didn't have time to pull everything together. And every day since then I've been thinking about what I was going to do the next time. Planning. Scheming. Begging. Extorting. Pleading. Stealing (well, not really, but doesn't it make you feel special that I was willing to steal for you?). An event one year in the making...
Will there be big fun? Absolutely!
Will there be prizes? You bet!
Will there be free stuff? Count on it!
Will Dave get naked and dance LIVE on a web-cam? You had better hope not.
Intrigued? Well you should be. I'm CRAZY-INSANE and there's just no telling what is going to happen!
Holy crap! Can I just say that last night was one of the best nights of television in recent memory? First we get a great episode of Lost followed by a fantastic episode of Alias (it's about time, because that show has been sucking major chunks of ass recently). But the real kicker of the evening was the final show of the night, a new program called Eyes. I tuned in expecting a boring private-eye drama... and was stunned when it turned out to be an hour packed with humor, mystery, romance, back-stabbing, betrayal, and snappy dialogue, all wrapped around a pretty entertaining story. I was riveted right up until the final minute, when they kicked my ass with an ending so surprising that I ended up rewinding the TiVo to make sure I had seen what I thought I had. If this is the kind of show that Eyes will be dishing out each week, I will absolutely be tuning in for another helping.
Okay, with that out of the way, we continue on to today's episode of Blogography...
...but before we start I feel it is essential that I remind you, dear reader, that I am a genius. Not a self-proclaimed genius, but an actual genius with a Mensa-level IQ of 142. As I've mentioned before, this gives me the grim satisfaction of knowing that when people call me a "smart ass," that it really is true. At least it seems as though my ass is smarter than most people I meet...
Because of being so insanely brilliant, it's always a real eye-opener when I run across something I didn't know. In fact, any time you hear me saying something like "wow, I didn't know that," you can be assured that inside my head a nuclear explosion is going off, shaking me to the very core of my being.
So when I tell you that I was completely unaware that "if you play video games, you get sent to hell," you can imagine how I felt when this bombshell was dropped on me. It was such a shock that I found myself having to stop right there in the middle of K-Mart and reevaluate the universe and my place in it.
Allow me to explain...
Today is the day that "Lego Star Wars: The Video Game" is being released. I want this game bad. Really bad. Since the moment I found out about it, I've been counting the days until it can finally be mine. I mean, it's LEGO FRICKIN' STAR WARS... IN A VIDEO GAME!! How could anybody possibly not want it? Everything is there... the characters, the ships, the locations... but they're all made from Lego...
Anyway, I ditch work a little early and head to Wenatchee so I can get a copy. But everywhere I look they've either never heard of it, or don't have it yet, or only have the PlayStation version. Suck ass! On my way out of town I decide to make one last stop at K-Mart to see if they might have it. I park the car, dash on back to the electronics department, and start to look. All the while, a young boy is standing there looking in wide-eyed wonder at all the cool games available. Eventually he works up the courage to speak to me:
Kid: Do you have a video game?
Me: Yep, I've got an Xbox.
Kid: And you can play games on it?
Me: Uhhh... yes. After I finish my work, I sometimes get to play games on it.
Kid: I want to play the --
At that moment a scorching bitch comes tearing around the corner breathing fire and screaming her head off... "JASON!! THERE YOU ARE!! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!? GET AWAY FROM THERE!!! YOU KNOW WE DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES!!! VIDEO GAMES ARE FROM THE DEVIL!!!! IF YOU PLAY VIDEO GAMES, YOU'RE GOING TO HELL!! DO YOU WANT TO GO TO HELL?!? YOU COME HERE RIGHT NOW!!!
I just stare at this horrible woman in utter disbelief when she decides to go after me! "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SPEAK TO MY CHILD WITH YOUR VIDEO GAMES! NO RIGHT!!!" I do a kind of "who me?" look, and say "uhhh... hey, I was just standing here looking for a game... I didn't..." -- "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT AT ALL!!
Okay. Here's where the dilemma sets in. I'm already pissed because I just wasted the last hour looking for a video game that nobody has. I am in no mood at all to put up with this crap. But if I unload on her, I just know that it won't be me she takes her frustrations out on... it will be this poor kid. As much as I want to tear into this bitch, I just can't bring myself to do it for the kid's sake.
So please bear with me as I unload. Please indulge me while I say what I would have liked to have said, but couldn't...
"Listen bitch, you can just stop your screaming at me right now or I will come over there and kick the living shit out of you. While I am not a Christian, I've undoubtedly spent more time studying The Bible than your ignorant ass will ever know, so don't you dare presume to preach at me. I don't know what misguided, f#@%ed up interpretation of The Bible you are getting this crap from, but I can say without a doubt that God just loves a good game of Donkey Kong, so you can take you entire "video games are from the devil" bullshit and shove it right up your fat ass."
Thanks, that's much better. Oh how I loathe living in this redneck purgatory.
NEW AND IMPROVED! One last thing. In response to Kazza's lament that she misses out on comments now that she's switched to an RSS reader... I've modified Neil's excellent RSS-2 template to include comments with the entries. It works beautifully for me, but I'm not sure if it's formatted properly (and I don't want to bother Neil for help while he's on vacation). So, if you want to try it out in your RSS reader and let me know how it works for you, here's the URL you should use: https://www.blogography.com/comments.xml. The really cool part is that every time a new comment is left (and approved), the feed is automatically updated. So if your RSS reader can flag changed entries as "unread," you won't miss any new comments! So thank you Kazza for giving me this wonderful idea. Now that I've grown accustomed to it on my blog, I sure wish other blogs would do the same because it sure is convenient! Once Neil's had a look, I'll post the template here if he doesn't want to host it.
This morning I awoke to find a hefty stack of comment confirmation emails in my "in-box." Apparently the scumbags over at Stonebridge Life Insurance are once again up to their dirty telemarketing tricks, and my blog is getting Googled by angry people looking for answers. I don't have answers, but it's nice to know that people can come here and vent their frustrations over an activity that should most certainly be illegal and punishable by death.
Along with people who were violated by the Stonebridge asshats, there were other great comments on various entries (seriously, I often think that the comments on this blog are far more entertaining than the blog itself!), and a very nice email from somebody in Germany who wrote to tell me that he had stumbled across my blog and spent the past week reading it from start to finish (even I am not that brave!). So thanks everybody!
Of course it wasn't all sunshine and roses, there was a hate-mail buried in there as well. It wouldn't be a week at Blogography if I didn't receive at least one nasty comment. This time it was in response to my previous entry lamenting the ever-dwindling value of the once mighty US Dollar. It started out with "You liberals..." and then went on to say "blah blah blah. blah blah. BLAH! BUSH! BLAAAAHHH! BLAAHH!!!" Well, not really. But I never did get over the shock of being labeled a "liberal" in the first two words, and pretty much ignored everything after that.
It would seem that ever since I started this blog, everybody is just dying to label me...
And while it is (on some really low level) flattering that people take the time to label me based on things they have read here, there is really only one label I will ever ascribe to...
And why is that? Because I don't need some group, organization, or other person doing my thinking for me, and certainly do NOT want to be tossed in with a group of people who do. That's fine for some, but absolutely not me. I make up my own mind, and speak my own mind. Some of my thoughts could be said to embrace popular liberal leanings, but others are very much in line with what is generally considered to be traditional conservative thinking.
It all comes down to the fact that my opinion is my opinion, and I don't really care on what side of the political fence it lands. I refuse to blindly subscribe to any political party, and choose to vote for the person I consider to be best for the job instead of randomly checking off the labels presented me. It is not the most popular way to handle your politics, but it's the only way for me. Ironically, such thinking has me regularly labeled as both "liberal" and "conservative" ... "Democrat" and "Republican" when, in fact, I am none of them.
And that brings me to the crux of this entry. Somebody assumes I was Bush-bashing, labeled me a liberal, and then decided to lay me to whale shit for being something I am not. This is so ridiculous as to be laughable. All I did was present the facts for my argument: since Bush has been in office, the value of the US Dollar has been in free-fall, and that is making it difficult for me to make vacation plans. That's it! If you are going to attack me for Bush-bashing, then at least wait until I am actually bashing the idiot our President before slapping yet another label on me. And if you can't do that much, then that's your problem, and attacking me via email is a big waste of time because I won't bother to read it. So blah blah blah BLAH!
Personal blogging is an activity that defies logic. In an age where people are losing more and more of their privacy (and fighting to regain what little privacy they have left), putting your personal life out on the internet makes no sense at all. Most of the time I try not to think about it, but there are moments when it hits me like a ton of bricks and I get one of those "what in the heck am I doing moments?" Today is one of those days, probably brought on by tomorrow's "Two-Year Blogiversary" celebration...
In an attempt to answer my own question, I've decided to write out the long and boring history of my adventures in blogging. That way, whenever I have doubts, I can just read this entry and everything will go back to quasi-normal. The rest of you can feel free to read today's movie quote and move on.
Or you can click the link below to read along with me...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
TODAY'S PRIZE: One of Twenty-Five Blogography T-Shirts!
SORRY...CLOSED FOR ENTRIES!
You may notice a new tab has just been added for the "Artificial Duck Store" at the top of this page. That's because I've had some cool new Blogography silk-screened T-Shirts made, and you can win one for FREE (in your choice of two designs)! There will be 25 winners, but everybody who enters will get a 50% off coupon good for any shirt (so even if you don't win, you win!). To get a look at the goods, just click here to visit the Artificial Duck Store. Each shirt is a $14.95 value.
THE CATCH: I may be crazy, but I'm not wealthy! So shipping charges are not included with the prize ($3.95 Priority Mail inside the USA, and $13.95 Air Mail everywhere else... an explanation is in the comments section).
THE RULES: One entry per person please! Entries must be received before midnight on Saturday, April 23rd (Pacific Time USA, here in Cashmere, WA). Winners will be notified on Sunday, April 24th. Email addresses will never be released, and will be deleted once winners have been notified and e-coupons have been sent. Winners are responsible for any customs duties or import taxes (if applicable). Shipping charges can be paid via PayPal or money order in US funds.
TO ENTER: Just send an email to shirts@blogography.com and be sure to include your name and a valid email address so I can send you a coupon and contact you if you win.
THE STORY: One of my earliest jobs was designing T-Shirts for screen printing. Sadly, it's getting to be a lost art, because of all the internet "iron-on transfer" sites popping up. Who wants to pay a graphic designer to create a classy T-Shirt, when you can make your own design with clip art and Zazzle? It's a bit of a bummer, because an iron-on will never be as good as a real silk-screened shirt. To read about my humble design beginnings and the origin of Artificial Duck T-Shirts, I've written an entry about it here.
TODAY'S PRIZE: Dave's "Read & Watch" $250 Big Box of Fun!
SORRY...CLOSED FOR ENTRIES!
Sure I could have dug through my closet and found a bunch of crap I didn't want anymore, then tied a bow around it and called it good... but that's not much of a prize, is it? No sir, I say it is NOT! So, instead, I went out and bought stuff that I would actually want to win... all brand new and factory-sealed! Yep, here's a box filled with some of my favorite books and movies you might have overlooked. Each is a hidden gem that's actually worth your valuable time, and adds up to nearly $250 in value!!
THE CATCH: Ground shipping is included to any address in the Continental US. If you live outside these 48 States, you can still enter, but you will be responsible for exact shipping charges (sample costs are given in the comments section for the 12-lb. box). ALSO... I've bought both VHS tapes (in NSTC format) and DVDs (with Region 1 encoding) so hopefully whoever wins can watch the videos. But if you live outside the USA, PLEASE make sure you have a "region-free" DVD player or a VCR/TV that can play VHS NTSC tapes before you enter! I really would like it if whoever wins actually uses the prizes before they sell them on eBay or whatever!
THE RULES: One entry per person please! Entries must be received before midnight on Thursday, April 21st (Pacific Time USA, here in Cashmere, WA). Winners will be notified on Sunday, April 24th. Email addresses will never be released, and will be deleted once winners have been notified. Winners are responsible for any customs duties or import taxes (if applicable). If you aren't in the Continental USA, shipping charges can be paid via PayPal or money order in US funds.
TO ENTER: Just send an email to bigbox@blogography.com and be sure to include your name and a valid email address so I can contact you if you win.
A complete list of the goodies in the box can be found in an extended entry.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
TODAY'S PRIZE: Dave's "Taste of Home" $100 Big Box of Gourmet Foods!
SORRY...CLOSED FOR ENTRIES!
From my home to yours... a taste of the Pacific Northwest. It's an assortment of various treats from Washington, Oregon, and Montana that I've come to enjoy over the years (and hopefully you will too). We've got jams and jellies. We've got vinegars and glazes. We've got candies and pancakes. We've got bread and fish. WE'VE GOT MUSTARD FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE! MUSTARD I SAY!!! In any event, this prize is sure to add a bit of exotic flavor to your boring culinary routine (you pizza-eating slacker you).
THE CATCH: Ground shipping is included to any address in the Continental US. If you live outside these 48 States, you can still enter, but you will be responsible for exact shipping charges (and this one ain't cheap... the sucker weighs TWENTY POUNDS!!). ALSO... Some countries have severe restrictions as to food imports. If you live outside the USA, please make sure that none of these items are forbidden to receive in the mail (call your local post office and see).
THE RULES: One entry per person please! Entries must be received before midnight on Friday, April 22nd (Pacific Time USA, here in Cashmere, WA). Winners will be notified on Sunday, April 24th. Email addresses will never be released, and will be deleted once winners have been notified. Winners are responsible for any customs duties or import taxes (if applicable). If you aren't in the Continental USA, shipping charges can be paid via PayPal or money order in US funds.
TO ENTER: Just send an email to tasty@blogography.com and be sure to include your name and a valid email address so I can contact you if you win.
A complete list of the goodies in the box can be found in an extended entry.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
TODAY'S PRIZE: Dave's "Other Man's Treasure" $400 Big Bag of Geeky Stuff!
SORRY...CLOSED FOR ENTRIES!
When I was planning my Two-Year Blogiversary, I made a promise to myself that I was not going to just dig through old crap I had laying around for prizes, but instead buy all-new, all-terrific stuff. But the original (really cool) prize I had lined up for today fell through last week, and I was left with a gaping hole in the prize-schedule. Since it was too late to figure out something new, I had no choice but to see what I might have laying about. As it turns out, there are items that I paid a total of $1050 for just sitting around unused (or barely used). Stuff that I don't want, but may be of use to somebody out there since it's practically new merchandise. As they say, "one man's junk is another man's treasure." Except this stuff isn't really junk at all.
THE CATCH: Ground shipping is included to any address in the Continental US. If you live outside these 48 States, you can still enter, but you will be responsible for exact shipping charges (weight is about 15 pounds). ALSO... Some countries have severe restrictions as to what can be imported. If you live outside the USA, please make sure that none of these items are forbidden to receive in the mail (call your local post office and see).
THE RULES: One entry per person please! Entries must be received before midnight on Saturday, April 23nd (Pacific Time USA, here in Cashmere, WA). Winners will be notified on Sunday, April 24th. Email addresses will never be released, and will be deleted once winners have been notified. Winners are responsible for any customs duties or import taxes (if applicable). If you aren't in the Continental USA, shipping charges can be paid via PayPal or money order in US funds.
TO ENTER: Just send an email to geek@blogography.com and be sure to include your name and a valid email address so I can contact you if you win.
A complete list of the goodies in the bag can be found in an extended entry.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Bandwidth. Just exceeded my bandwidth limit (again). All my attempts in finding a reasonable solution to this problem with my hosting company (LunarPages.com) have failed. My regular account costs $7.95 a month and I get 40 gigs of bandwidth. To buy another 40 gigs of bandwidth costs an additional $158 a month ($3.95 per gig). Yes, you read that right: $165.95 EACH MONTH to host a blog (and no, you can't buy two and combine them). My other option is to switch from a $7.95 plan to a $22.95 plan to get the additional bandwidth I need. Double the bandwidth should be double the cost, not triple, but it's not like they're giving me much choice (at least I get a couple of additional SQL databases out of the deal). I haven't felt this screwed since I signed my mobile phone contract. The monkey spankers. Anybody know of a support group for people who have been violated by their web hosting company?
Domestic. As I was driving home this evening, a lawn chair suddenly appeared in the middle of the road. I slammed on the brakes to avoid it, then attempted to come to my senses as the adrenaline rush died down. Trying to figure out what just happened, I look over to see a man and a woman screaming and fighting and throwing things at each other. That was amusing, but not the reason I am writing this. That would be because their two horrified young kids were across the yard watching the entire ordeal. Somebody please tell me what I am supposed to make of this, because I am completely lost on this one.
Eyes. Watched yet another amazing episode of Eyes last night. The show is flawless.
Tool. Ya know, usually nobody is a bigger asshole than me. I'll readily admit to that. But every once in a while you run across somebody who is such a complete and total tool that you have to step back and realize that you are not #1 anymore. Yesterday a "business journalist" named Dana Blankenhorn wrote a stunningly bitchy article slamming Google for not better implementing RSS throughout its services. Even better, he lays the blame 100% on Evan Williams, saying that Ev needs to "move on, and Google needs to bring in someone with a Clue." Talk about "needing a Clue" - Evan Williams already left Google last October (as anybody who reads his blog already knows). Blankenhorn has been a "journalist" for 25 years... yet he can't seem to do even the most basic research before tearing into somebody? Perhaps it's time for HIM to "move on."
Toast. Right now I could go for a nice piece of toast with butter and jam. And also a fifth of Jack Daniels to help me forget the ravaging I just took in excess bandwidth charges.
TODAY'S PRIZE: Dave's "Hard Rocker" $225 Rock Box OR "Hard Lurker" $50 Bag!
SORRY...CLOSED FOR ENTRIES!
When mapping out Blogiversary 2, I really struggled with just how I was going to give away all this stuff. At first, only people who had left five or more comments were going to be allowed to enter. Just my way of saying "thank you" to the many people who make this blog as fun as it is for me. But then I thought this would be really unfair to somebody who only just discovered my blog yesterday and might go on to leave thousands of comments. So the initial four days were open to everybody. This time is a little different, because I still want to have a day just for my "commentin' posse"... my favorite things for my favorite people!
There are two prizes today. EVERYBODY is welcome to enter, but ONLY those who have left five or more comments between April 18 2004 and April 18 2005 are eligible to win the "Rock Box" prize! After the Rock Box winner is drawn from qualified entries, all remaining names will be put in a drawing for the "Hard Lurker" prize (whether you are a lurker or not!).
Sorry about that, but hopefully it will encourage people to have fun and participate with their comments for Blogiversary 3 next year... because look at what you could have won this year:
THE CATCH: Ground shipping is included to any address in the Continental US. If you live outside these 48 States, you can still enter, but you will be responsible for exact shipping charges (weight is about 6 pounds). ALSO... Some countries have severe restrictions as to what can be imported. If you live outside the USA, please make sure that none of these items are forbidden to receive in the mail (call your local post office and see).
THE RULES: One entry per person please! Entries must be received before midnight on Saturday, April 23nd (Pacific Time USA, here in Cashmere, WA). Winners will be notified on Sunday, April 24th. Email addresses will never be released, and will be deleted once winners have been notified. Winners are responsible for any customs duties or import taxes (if applicable). If you aren't in the Continental USA, shipping charges can be paid via PayPal or money order in US funds.
TO ENTER: Just send an email to rocker@blogography.com and be sure to include your name and a valid email address so I can contact you if you win.
A complete list of the goodies in the box and bag can be found in an extended entry.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Alrighty then... the week-long Blogiversary 2 Kick-Ass Online Celebration has nearly come to a close. All that's left this week is wait for a few entry deadlines to expire at midnight tonight, then arrange to have all the winners selected tomorrow by a impartial 3rd party.
Of course, then the REAL work begins. Notify the winners, collect T-Shirt sizes and shipping charges (where required), place a final T-Shirt order, assemble the prizes, take a drive to Seattle to pick up shirts, then box and mail over 30 packages...
Oh crap! What have I got myself into?!!??
It's a good thing that my Blogiversary only comes along once a year! And since I didn't celebrate last year, I wanted to be sure this time was something special. I guess another week of work for my adoring readers won't be so bad. And speaking of my adoring readers... I'd like to take a minute to thank everybody for tuning in to help me celebrate. Entries for the Blogiversary prizes exceeded my expectations, and that's very cool indeed. All the nice comments and emails were also much appreciated.
With that being said, there are a handful of readers who I would like to single out for a bit of extra thanks... Jeff, Karen, Kazza, Kimono, and Perry. These guys (and gals) made the extra effort to actually meet up with me in person, and I'd like to send a T-shirt and a little something extra their way to let them know how much I appreciated that. I'll email you for your shipping information when the prizewinner notifications go out tomorrow.
Anyway, thanks again for tuning in, and I'll start making plans for next year...
Well, it's been a great week... but all good things must come to an end, and it's time to announce the winners!
And figuring out exactly how these winners would be selected was a new challenge entirely. I was going to figure out some kind of spiffy electronic randomizing raffle picker thing (or see if I could find one to download)... but that just didn't seem right. Once the computer takes over, how do I know that it's a fair drawing? I don't. So I decided to print out everybody on perfed folder tabs, and have the names drawn out of a hat (or, more accurately, a CD spindle cover). Since my email program was set to color-code the incoming emails, I decided to color-code the names to draw...
After printing out all the names on tabs, I double-checked to be sure everybody was there, then headed out to a girl I work with so that she could draw the names. It was at this time I began to panic with thoughts like... "oh crap! what if the same person wins all the prizes!" and "I forgot to ask people where they live so I can know whether or not to ask for shipping charges!" and a dozen other things that put me on the verge of a meltdown.
But it was all worry for nothing. Within three minutes, I had the winning names and nothing scary happened. Well, ALMOST all the winning names... I forgot to draw a second name for the "Lurker" prize, and then realized that I forgot to be sure that the "Rock Box" winner had 5 comments (which, thankfully, he did). So I drew the last name myself when I got back to the office, then set about matching the color-coded names to the prizes they had just won.
If you don't want to know (or would rather be surprised when I send out notifications later this afternoon) then stop reading right now...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
If I weren't so totally evil, I might cry.
I cannot help but be touched at everybody's kind emails and comments over the past week. But since I am saving all my tears for the inevitable marriage of Logan to Veronica Mars, I've come up with another way to show my gratitude. Instead of sending "half-off" coupons to only those who didn't win a shirt, I've just marked everything half-off in the Artificial Duck Store so everybody can get an cheap inexpensive shirt if they want.
This means that currently the "Blogography Logo" shirt is a ridiculous $5.50 (+shipping) which is below my cost, and the "Bad Monkey" shirt is a mere $7.50 (+shipping) to balance things out. I will probably just leave it that way for a month or two until I decide to put a few new designs up... just try to find a high-quality shirt with 4-color silk screened art at these prices anywhere else!
If you live outside the USA you have to add an additional $10 to your order for every 5 shirts to cover shipping costs but, given the weak-ass value of the US Dollar, I think this still works out to almost-free. So go ahead and buy dozens of them to be used as dust rags, shoe polishing cloths, or even really comfortable toilet paper... I'm just doing my part to repair international US relations!
Two last things... PayPal is a free and safe way to pay for things over the internet (they guarantee it), but if you would rather not use PayPal, that's perfectly okay... just write to me, and I'll send you an address where you can send a money order (in US funds). And lastly, for everybody who has already ordered a shirt and paid full-price, have no fear. I'll double your order. I've already sent out emails asking which design you want for your freebie.
See? It's never been easier to protect yourself and your loved ones from my evil plans for world domination! Because, naturally, I won't be exploding the heads of anybody wearing a Blogography T-shirt. In fact, I'll probably promote you to a Five-Star General in the Dave World Liberation Army, based solely on your keen fashion sense!
Somehow it became May and I didn't notice. Probably because I am too busy fighting with vending machines and watching television.
Of the two activities, watching television seems to be what I am more successful at. I say this because I am typing this entry one-handed after having damaged my other hand beating up a vending machine that stole my money. Fortunately, I did manage to shake two candy bars and a bag of chips out of the deal (even if none of them were what I was trying to purchase).
Tiger Heat. Ever since upgrading my PowerBook to MacOS X Tiger, it runs much hotter. I have no idea what is going on, but both fans are running constantly and my fingertips are burning up from typing on it. Perhaps it's the processor working harder or something? I've tried setting my "Processor Performance" to "reduced" but I'm not sure it's having any effect. This is a bit troubling, and I hope somebody at Apple is looking into it... assuming it's not just my imagination. I guess if she bursts into flames we'll know for sure.
JAG. One of my favorite TV shows, JAG ended its 10-year run last week. I just don't know what I am going to do with myself not being able to look at the sweet hotness of Catherine Bell each week. Oh well. At least they wrapped up the show nicely nicely. Here's hoping that some brilliant television exec finds her a new television show right away.
Mars DVD. According to the genius behind Veronica Mars, the first season is being rushed to DVD with a September street-date so that people who missed it can get caught up before the second season starts up again. The bad news is that there won't be time for any "extras" like commentaries and production featurettes to be included. As much as I would like to have these things, I'm just happy to be getting a release. The only thing that could possibly be better news would be if Rob Thomas's other excellent show (Jeremy Piven's Cupid, the best television series ever) was also being released.
Surgery TV. Is anybody watching Grey's Anatomy on Sunday nights? The show is excellent. The fact that Sandra Oh is in it is just icing on the cake.
Bandwidth Bust. My bandwidth usage continues to climb. I have no choice but to make a few alterations in how Blogography is arranged, or else I will top my new 80gig limit in 18 days (at the current rate). From now on only 7 days will be displayed on the front page (down from 10, which was my weekly average)... and all feeds will also display 7 days (down from 15). I apologize to those readers who only stop by once a week (since you'll end up having to go through the archives now), but there's just nothing I can do about it. This weekend I plan on chopping up the category pages into years so that the pages will serve up dozens of entries instead of hundreds. I'll also be killing trackback. Hopefully all these changes will keep me under the 80gig limit until next January when I can look for a web host with a bigger allowance (it's either that, or stop posting photos, like the one above, which I really don't want to do).
Today I was supposed to drive to Seattle and pick up the Blogography T-shirts. Unfortunately, because I insisted on only the highest quality Haynes Beefy-T shirts, they had to be ordered from Colorado. Shipping is taking slightly longer than anticipated, but they will be here before the end of the week so I can send out everybody's prizes. Secretly, I'm relieved, because the battle injury I received from the piece-of-shit vending machine that took my money yesterday is killing me. It feels as though my entire arm is in a vice yet, oddly enough, there's no bruise.
Oh well, it's not like I'm not going to apologize for wanting quality. I can't stand it when I order a cool-looking T-shirt only to have it arrive with a cheap fabric so rough that it feels like sandpaper to wear it. I want people to actually want to wear my shirts because they are super-comfy and they enjoy wearing them (as opposed to using them as a dust rag, which is what seems to happen to a lot of the ones I've bought over the years). Haynes Beefy-T's are the nicest, softest, most well-made shirt you can buy and that's what I want. They also have the benefit of "fluffing up" after you wash them, so a nice "fuzz" forms across the design... this way, they have that "classic vintage look" instead of the "tacky plastic inks look" (another thing I loathe about cheap T's).
Hopefully everybody won't mind a couple of days delay when they realize how much effort I am putting into making sure that the shirts are the absolute best they can be.
Over at Michael Sean Blogs, he's starting up a "Blog Survivor Challenge," which is based on an "Ultimate Blogger" contest he found. I had never heard of it before, but it looks like a lot of fun. Though I must say it's a bit humbling to read through some of the blogs that are battling it out in the current Ultimate Blogger competition, because they are amazing. The good news is that now I've found seven new blogs I will be reading regularly. The bad news is that I realize just how crappy my blog is in comparison.
Take for instance "Twenty Something" written by "Crash" (a self-professed "24-year-old gay guy living in Vermont"). He is absolutely fearless, and a terrific writer. The subject matter is sometimes X-rated explicit and kind of daunting to somebody raised in small-town America (that would be me), but some of his entries are such a compelling and beautiful read, that I just don't care. His "90's-Something Chronicles" are kind of a gay version of "The Wonder Years" in quality, and about as real as it gets. I want to expose myself to as many different cultures, ideas, and beliefs as I possibly can in my lifetime... even if they conflict with my own (heck, especially if they conflict with my own)... and blogs like this are a treasure.
And then there's Mimi in NY, which is so flawless in execution, that it makes Blogography look like something I crap out of my ass each day (which is probably not far from the truth). I would give just about anything to write even half as well as she does (the only thing that keeps me from shutting down my blog right this minute is that she's a professional writer, so I suppose she has to be good). Again, the subject matter can take very strange turns into the explicit, but I just can't help myself. Fortunately, she's only been blogging since March, so it won't be too much of an effort to catch up with everything.
I could go on for pages, but it would be easier if you just go check them out (warning... many are sexually explicit in nature).
Finally ran into something I loathe about MacOS X Tiger: the printing panel. Apple has decided to check your printer for "supply levels" every time you go to print so they can sell you toners, ink jet cartridges, and paper at the Apple Store (how very Microsoft of you Mr. Jobs!). The problem is that it can't "read" my printer, so there is a noticeable (and very, very annoying) delay every time I need to print. This is going to add up to hours of wasted minutes every year. I am really pissed off at this bullshit, and am furious at Apple that they would intentionally disrupt your work-flow because of a marketing opportunity. Every time I print I get so mad that I want to beat the crap out of somebody.
But not a vending machine, because they seem fully capable of kicking my ass.
Just to prove my love for you, dear reader, I woke up early so I could drag my sorry ass over the dreary mountain passes to the Microsoft-owned city of Redmond, Washington. And why is that? Why would I drive 2-1/2 hours on a Thursday morning? Because it's T-shirt day! Yes, today is the day that all those Blogography T's are being printed.
And they turned out friggin' sweet...
And now that the shirts are out of the way, I realize that it's Cinco de Mayo, so I'm off to drink Margaritas with my friends until I pass out. Tequila es mi amigo!
Okay then... will everybody who won a prize or ordered a T-shirt please just drop by my apartment and pick up your order? Yeah, that would be great, thanks.
No, seriously, anytime from 4:30 to 9:30, Monday-Friday (weekends by appointment only).
Packaging all these T-shirts is a massive chore. You have no idea. At first I was just digging through the boxes to find the size I needed for each order, but then I decided it would be faster to spread them all over the dining room so I could find them easier. Of course, that meant I had to scrub the tables and chairs to be sure everything stays clean. Then I had to sort through the shirts, but didn't have room for them all, and ended up stacking them up in the living room as well. So now shirts have taken over my apartment.
And then there's the matter of having to fold all the booklets.
And of course each shirt has to be wrapped in plastic to protect it during shipment.
And I haven't even gotten to the labeling and postage yet! Next year it's going to be sticks of gum or something that can fit in an envelope.
Chicks dig my monkey.
And before you get the idea that I am speaking metaphorically here, and think that I'm attaching bizarre "pet names" to various parts of my anatomy, I am speaking of my "Bad Monkey" T-shirt. Today I decided to "test drive" a shirt to see how I like wearing it, only to find that it gets big attention from just about everybody. The chicks really dig it. "Cool shirt!" they say. "Where did you get that?" they ask. "Please make mad, passionate monkey-love to me right now!" they beg (or so I wish... particularly to the hot, hot, brutally hot babe filling up her car at the mini-mart, who I very nearly gave the shirt off my back).
For the past couple of days I've been washing and re-washing a few of my shirts to see how they hold up (answer: very well) and how long it takes before they start getting that "oh so soft" lived-in feel (answer: four washings). But today was the first time I actually wore one in public, and the response is pretty sweet. To everybody who ordered a shirt... your photos and testimonials are welcome! I need to work up a gallery or something.
Now the bad news. I am losing major bank on these things, because the costs just keep piling up (even once the shirt has been paid for). I had expected to lose a little bit for each logo shirt, thinking it would be a small price to pay for cheap advertising. Problem is, I figure that I am now losing $1.60 per shirt. When you multiply that by 100 shirts... well, it's no longer a small price is it? So, starting today, the "sale price" has been bumped up to $8.95 (still saving you $6) which will remain until the next round of designs are added. Sorry about that.
The next step is to come up with individual foreign order pages so that I can guarantee that anybody outside the USA won't have to over-pay for shipping charges. Hopefully I'll get that finished up in the next day or two.
For everybody who has won or ordered a shirt, you have the rain to thank for me finishing packaging everything up today. All current orders will ship Monday morning (whoooooo!).
And here you thought I was kidding.
Read this unsolicited testimonial from yet another satisfied Artificial Duck T-Shirt customer...
"I'm so grateful that I picked the regular "Dave Blog Logo" T-Shirt over the "Bad Monkey" version because my 64 yr. old heart couldn't have taken anymore excitment during the Apple Blossom Festival weekend being held in Wenatchee, Washington."
"I wore the "Blog" T-Shirt Saturday nite while cruising the Ave. in my hot 2003 (Silver Bullet) Honda Civic and the action was unreal!"
"I'm not sure if the fact that I left my wife at home this year, or that the new T-Shirt was a total chick-magnet, but I'll have a lot of stories to tell my buddies at the Nursing Home in a few years. Hope alzheimer's doesn't erase the fond memories of my best weekend ever. Thanks! --Harold"
And you are welcome!
I really do need to do some research here. I think that there is scientific evidence to support my claim that Blogography T-shirts make life better. Keep sending in those photos and testimonials... I'll be working up a page for them this weekend.
I am not a huge fan of Arianna Huffington, but must admit to being intrigued with her star-filled blog creation: The Huffington Post. I was going to drop it, but now she's got Ze Frank writing for her so I guess I'll be sticking around. How can you say "no" to a guy with one of the funniest sites on the internet?
Now back to my favorite subject... me.
I get a lot of email every day. It doesn't really bother me, because it's so much more convenient than the phone, and I am a really fast typist. But as the visitor counts for Blogography continue to blow through the roof, I've been getting slammed with an alarming number of utterly bizarre emails that I'm not quite sure what to do with. Everything from marriage proposals and inquiries into my personal life... to nasty, hateful letters and emails condemning me to an eternity burning in hell.
"Normal" emails are great (comments are even better!), and I love hearing from my readers, even if I can't always respond right away. But how does one deal with something like this:
All I could do was write back and say: "I don't make any money from my blog. In fact, I just had to pay out another $200 for more bandwidth. If you want to make money off a blog, you'd have to do a far better job of it than I have." Naturally, I start to wonder how anybody jumps to the conclusion that I'm raking in the big bucks on a blog that doesn't have advertising nor solicits for tips. Maybe I just look expensive.
But that was a relatively minor issue compared to this (paraphrased) email I got this morning:
Which is along the same lines as this one I got last week:
And this:
And this:
On average, I get two or three emails like this every week. Telling me what to write about or what I'm doing wrong, or slapping me on the wrist for something I've done or said. Usually, these are immediately deleted without a second thought, because my only response would be this:
"Blow me."
I mean, give me a break, if you don't like what I write, DON'T READ IT. No hard feelings... just go. It's my blog and I'm not soliciting opinions over what I should and should not be doing here. Sorry, but that's the way it is. So when that entry comes along where I talk about my wild weekend of having drunken sex with coked-up hookers as a pizza delivery boy spreads peanut butter on my ass while I shoot people in the head and watch porn... well, accept that it's not your day and come back tomorrow to see if I've rescued a kitten and drawn a rainbow or something. Better yet, don't risk that something even more bizarre is going to happen, and just don't come back. Delete that bookmark. Unsubscribe from that RSS feed. Really, I don't want to upset people... so do us both a favor, forget about me, and go be happy.
And, for those of you sticking around, it's probably best to understand that I will never be so lucky as to actually have a weekend like that. Mainly because the small city I live in doesn't have pizza delivery.
Funny... I'm on the "grid" now.
One of my regular reads, Gawker Media's excellent Gridskipper.com, has taken one of the little collages I made for my entry praising Shynola's work on the Junior Senior video for Move Your Feet. I guess I shouldn't be surprised... all of my images are thoroughly indexed by Google, after all. It's just strange to run across stuff like this. Oh well, it's not like it's my work... all the credit goes to the demi-gods at Shynola (who are also responsible for The Guide graphics from the current movie Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).
At least Gridskipper was nice enough to copy the image to their server rather than steal my bandwidth (good thing too, because I will probably run out AGAIN before the end of the month).
Writer, student (and self-proclaimed Lord of The Dance) Cavan Terrill has come up with an interesting meme over at his "The Blurred Line Blog." He is basically asking how important the personality of the blogger is to your reading, and which of the bloggers you read would you like to hang out with.
The short answer is that I would like to hang with everybody listed in my blogroll (along with a dozen other bloggers I've forgotten to list, or those bloggers who write so infrequently that I've dropped them). Since I find each person listed there interesting enough that I keep going back for more, I can only guess that they would be interesting enough that I would like to hang with them in person. Nobody on that blogroll is there just because they link to me, or write nice comments... they've earned a spot on the list (I really do need to update it though).
The long answer is a bit more complex because of another question Cavan raises: How well do you actually get to know the bloggers you read every day? And that's the trick, isn't it? Because you can only interpret who a person really is based on what they write. But even the best writers aren't going to give you all the details of their life. When you read a blog, you don't get the whole story... only what the writer wishes you to know.
In the case of my blog, this is actually more true than in others, because I leave quite a lot out. I do not write about my friends and family. I do not write about my work. I (usually) do not write about my more personal problems. There's a lot of things happening with me that will never show up in Blogography. Cavan calls this "quasi-personal" which is exactly right... there's just enough of "me" here that you can probably figure out what type of person I am, but not enough for you to truly know me.
Unfortunately, there is a danger in this... some people don't realize that this blog is "quasi-personal" and think they know all about me just because of what they see here. I'm guessing this would make Blogography "pseudo-personal." I give the impression that this blog is an open book unto my life when, in reality, it isn't (I wrote about this in more depth here).
I will tell you that people who know me in "real life" who also read Blogography often tell me that I seem much angrier in my blog than I am in person. This is true, for obvious reasons. Here I can vent my frustrations knowing that if people don't want to hear it, they just won't read it. If I was bitching like this all the time to my friends, I probably wouldn't have many friends for very long. I am a fairly easy-going guy, and I know that this doesn't always come across here. This will be a relief to some of you (and grave disappointment to others).
Knowing that about myself, I have to wonder why I would want to hang with anybody whose blog I read... because there's always the chance that the person I like so much from their writings will turn out to be entirely different in real life (well, except for Girl on a Glide... she rides a motorcycle, and what else do you really need to know about a person?).
I don't know... would it be worth the risk?
Of course it would. Let's all meet next Thursday and hang out. Mr. Jerz is bringing the beer (happy birthday by the way!).
And, speaking of "happy birthday," best wishes to the love of my life, Elizabeth Hurley, who turns 40 today!
It's always an interesting battle to try and keep under my bandwidth allotment each month. Every couple of days I take a look at my stats and try to estimate whether I'm going to make it or not. Most times, it's obvious I'm going to run over, so I have to make little adjustments... chopping up large categories... removing redundant archive pages... that kind of thing. From previous history, I know that 42% of my bandwidth is used in the first-half of the month. Right now I'm at 51%, so I'm already in trouble. After tweaking a few things to limit the data be transmitted, I was bored and decided to look at all the other stats my hosting company offers.
There's a lot of cool stuff there, but the most surprising was the "Top Countries by Access" list. After eliminating "unknowns" and the USA, here's a list of the top-twenty countries of international visitors to Blogography (in order of volume, and I've bolded the countries I've been to)...
I'm trying to make sense of this list. Naturally, I expected predominantly native English-speaking countries to come out on top, but that's not the case. I have never blogged about Portugal. I have never been to Portugal (yet very much wish to visit one day... there is a Hard Rock Cafe in Lisbon, after all). But people in Portugal lead the pack by a comfortable margin (boa vinda!). Maybe my blog is more entertaining when translated into Portuguese?
Saudi Arabia at #4 is a bit puzzling, though I suppose the US military build-up there might explain it.
Another surprise... I (incorrectly) assumed that places I've been to and blogged about would rank higher on the list. With this in mind, I'd have thought that Japan and Germany would rate much higher. Sweden was actually under 1%, despite the fact that I blogged from there every day for four days (omöjlig! where for art thine countrymen Patrick?!?). Italy barely made a half-percent (nessun amore per Dave?).
The biggest shocker of all? I thought for certain that the USA would account for 80-90% of my traffic. It probably doesn't. Once "unknowns" are eliminated, it accounts for just 62%. That's kind of remarkable when you think about it. I wonder if blogs outside the USA have such large foreign readership? I'm guessing that English-language blogs have a considerable edge in attracting a "world view," but can't be sure now.
I hope I manage to get more sleep tonight than the three hours I got last night. Dwight Yoakam is whining his way through an incredibly bad country song (that has stolen riffs from Chuck Berry's Johnny B Good!) on Leno. I can't take it anymore, so I'm going to bed whether I can sleep or not. People actually pay money to buy this guy's "music?" Yeeargh.
My internet is down. I wonder why you don't get to deduct outages from your DSL bill? Seems like you should be able to.
So in lieu of spending a few hours surfing blogs and the latest entertainment news, I decided to take a break from work and play around with making widgets for MacOS X's Dashboard. For those of you not OS X savvy, Dashboard is a tool that holds useful little "widgets" that can be summoned instantly to your desktop. There are widgets for everything, and new ones are being released all the time. I've got widgets for converting measurement and currencies, viewing my Netflix queue, weather forecasts, Wikipedia lookups... even one to show the lyrics for the song I've got playing in iTunes. It's pretty slick.
Making your own widgets is not too difficult, because they're just mini web apps written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The tricky bit is getting it all to look cool and function as intended. I've got two widgets I am currently working on:
Ask Dave. The "Ask Dave" widget is like a Magic 8-Ball. You ask a question, then click on the Dave Widget and he'll give you an answer. Sage advice at your fingertips! I'll probably release it over the weekend...
BloggerPeeps. The next project is quite a bit more complicated, because it's not just a Widget, it's an entire web site project that I've been working on called "BloggerPeeps" which is a visual blog directory based solely on photographs. When you visit the site, there will be a set of photo tiles with pictures of bloggers in them. When you click on a face, you are taken to their blog... it's as simple as that. New photos will be rotated in the set, and there will be a second set of "peeps" that will randomly pull from previous tiles. The widget for BloggerPeeps will show the current blogger, the previous blogger, plus a random "blogger of the day" - and will be updated Monday through Friday. The web site and the widget should both be going live by the end of the month...
The intent is to create a place where my favorite blogger peeps (people) are displayed in a way that's more interesting than a blogroll or links list. I've managed to dig up 100 photos, so I've got at least that many peeps to play around with. I'm sure others will pop up as I work on the site. I have no idea whether it will be of interest to anybody, but it will be a fun experiment.
Last night I stayed up way too late working on my "Ask Dave" widget, and I think it's finally done. One thing I wanted very much to do was add some kind of animation to give the "Toon Dave" a bit of life. Eventually I thought of using one of those Etch-A-Sketch type toys so he could shake it up and down to erase the old message, then a new message would appear. But I had no idea how to simulate motion using only JavaScript, so I went widget hunting to see if somebody else had managed it. That's when I found Alwin Troost's Magic 8-Ball widget, and used his image array technique to build the shake animation. Every time you click on Toon Dave, he shakes the "dave-a-sketch" and the answer to all of life's questions magically appear!
And, just like Apple's widgets, you can flip him over to get a quick link to everybody's favorite blog...
Overall I'm quite pleased with my first widget. If you own a Mac running OS X 10.4 Tiger, and want to try it, CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD. If you don't own a Mac, then you need to run right out and buy one so you can have Dave's wisdom readily available to you. Or I suppose you could just become an Apple developer so you can get your hands on OS X for Intel, then install it over your Windows or Linux OS (and no, I don't know where to download it). Hmmm... probably easier to buy that Mac (you'll be glad you did!).
In any event, here is the discaimer I include with the ReadMe file:
DISCLAIMER: The Ask Dave widget is just for fun. Any resemblance to actual advice is purely coincidental, and should not be taken seriously (much like Dave himself).
Have fun with your own personal Dave. Try not to abuse him too badly.
Apple has picked up my Ask Dave widget for their Dashboard widget repository:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/justforfun/askdave.html
I just now realized that anybody downloading the widget who then clicks on the Blogography link is going to come here and read how I want to become Pope, explode people's heads, shoot frivolous lawsuit lawyers, and all the other crazy things that I write here in my blog fantasy life.
Uh oh.
I already receive enough hate mail as it is... something tells me this does not end well. I really, really should think these things through before I do them.
Here come the labels.
What a freaky day.
This morning I got an email from some random guy who was starting a new blog and came up with this fantastic idea to call it "Blogography", but the domain "blogography.com" was taken which made him mad. And then he found out ".net" and ".org" were also taken, and he got even madder.
He checked the URLs and discovered something astounding: the same jerk bought all three domains!
Oh wait... that's me!
After writing back to say "so?" I received another email accusing me of everything from domain squatting to destroying the internet. He went on to pretty much demand that I release one of the domains so he could have it (apparently, he didn't want ".info" or ".tv" or any of a hundred other top-level domains available). This made me laugh, but not as much as when he tried to comment-spam me (he left six before realizing I manually approve all comments).
Back when I thought of the name (April 2003), I Googled "blogography" to make sure nobody else was using it and came up blank. Since that time, dozens of other "blogography" sites have sprung up on the internet... but I was first, and I wanted all three domains to make sure some ".net" or ".org" didn't cause confusion. This is not an unusual thing to do, and having somebody equating it to domain squatting is just bizarre.
Almost as bizarre as trying to figure out how to animate something. Since TV is in reruns, I decided to goof around with making my DaveToons move. At first I was going to do it like South Park, and have the characters bounce along without actually walking... but it didn't work for me. I needed a simple "walk cycle" to give the illusion that I was at least trying to make an effort. How hard could it be?
A lot harder than you'd think. It took me nearly two hours to get something I considered to be acceptable, and I'm still not really happy with it...
He needs to bobble a little bit when he walks, but my attempts to do this make him look like a complete spaz. He also needs a shadow, but when I attempted to add one, it looked like he was walking with a pet blob. At some point I need to just accept the fact that I am not Walt Disney, and be happy that I can manage this much.
I've been falling behind in my email, but received a very interesting note from a Blogography reader "Jim" who ran across some of my entries that had been reproduced on another blog. My words had been changed around and the images cropped and scaled, but there was no doubt that I had been plagiarized. At first Jim thought that perhaps I had a second blog, and was re-posting content there. He did a search to see if I claimed this other blog, but instead found out something even more puzzling...
Some OTHER guy has decided to "claim" the word "blogography" and use it as some kind of bizarre definition for blogs he thinks are "anti-Christian" or something...
I mean, wow. Where do I start?
First of all, I don't even understand what in the heck this nut-job is trying to say. His flowery text is a valiant attempt to sound literate, but is ultimately incomprehensible. All this talk about "base desires for man praise and tickling" sounds like gay-fetish porn or something.
But wait! It gets even better! The above "claim" to the word "blogography was written in an entry dated July 12th, 2005. But, in order to make it look like he thought it up last year, he decided to retroactively "define" the word 8 months earlier on November 12, 2004... even though he just started his "Anti Blog" blog on July 9th!
And it just gets more bizarre and freaky the more you read. Apparently, he really hates blogs... he finds them a "sinful desire to make a name for ourselves" and that they are "mediocrity clothed as creativity" and "sacrificing more important reading for the hot topic of the moment."
And how does he decide to address these horrific blasphemies? He starts a blog!!
Conclusion: What a tool.
When days start out this weird, things are bound to only get worse.
UPDATE: Oooh. He responds. And then goes on to read the sarcastic description of my blog to prove his point. Apparently I'm not as tongue-in-cheek funny as I think I am, because he thinks I am being serious. Oh the humility.
Well, not really. The relevant portion of my response:
I am Buddhist, so your condemnation of me as a blogger is inoffensive, but I have studied The Bible more than most Christians, and must ask you if you have read Luke 6: 27-38? It amazes me how Christians are always so happy to overlook this passage when judging others.
Okay then. This is Blogography entry #1000.
And I don't know what to make of that.
When I began this blog (after two previous failures) I made a commitment to myself that I wouldn't start again unless I could commit to 1000 entries. At that point I figured I'd either quit blogging or move on to something different. Now that the promise to myself has been fulfilled, what does it really mean?
When I look around at other personal blogs, I notice a trend to post less and less (with some people quitting altogether). I don't think that this means blogging is in a downward spiral, I just think it means that people are getting burned out writing in them. But I'm not burnt out at all. Writing an entry every day is a habit that I'm not sure I want to break. Most entries only take a few minutes of my time (though if I draw a cartoon or have a rant going, it can take a lot longer) so it's not like maintaining Blogography is an overwhelming burden or anything.
And it's not like people have stopped reading it either...
At first I thought it was just Google search results that was driving up my counts, but a closer look at my stats show this is not the case. The hits on my "home page" and RSS feed increase every week, so people are actually coming here intentionally (as opposed to looking for porn or something). I don't think I will ever know what makes Blogography worthy of this kind of attention (especially since only the tiniest fraction of my visitors leave comments), but I am certainly touched that so many people enjoy reading what I have to say here.
In the end, "1000" is just a number, and I don't anticipate anything changing in the immediate future. But now that the milestone has passed, there are a few things I am CONTEMPLATING...
And here's a few things I will actually be DOING...
Anyway, to all of you who visit this happy place... thanks! As always, your comments are welcome and, who knows, there may just be another 1000 entries to come.
Many thanks to everybody who left comments or sent emails on the occasion of my 1000th entry at Blogography. You are all too kind, and I love hearing from you. Especially to those who took the time to complain over the years. I mean, you know I'm just going to ignore you, yet you take the time to write anyway. Sweet!
Anyway, in honor of those valiant few who hate my blog, complain about my blog, yet still feel compelled to read it... this entry is for you. Here I respond to my five favorite quotes (paraphrased) from the peanut gallery, their voices no longer ignored:
"You are a sadistic, violent, sexist pervert.
This came from a woman(?) who found one of my DaveToons in a Google search, and liked it enough to visit Blogography. Sadly, she had the grave misfortune to arrive on "penis salad day" and was mortified. She then had to go through the archives only to find further evidence of my depravity, and simply had to let me know about it. Yeah, like that's never happened before. Look, I'm sorry something I did upset you, because that's not my goal. But let me be very clear... I really, really don't care. In real life, I don't go around shooting people and am about as non-violent a person as you are likely to find. But here on my blog I can be whatever I want to be and, unfortunately for you, that sometimes includes being a sadistic, violent, sexist pervert. For that I won't apologize.
"Your blog is just a desperate cry for attention at the expense of others."
This one just arrived yesterday. From what I can understand from her rather flowery email, she used to read my blog, stopped reading for a while, then started again. But now that she's back, she finds me "mean" and "offensive" and won't be reading ever again. Awwww... darn it anyway! There goes more advertising revenue. Oh... wait a second... I don't get ad revenue from my blog! Seriously, if you decide to stop reading, there's no reason to tell me about it because I... just... don't... care. I don't know if these people think I am going to all of a sudden change the things I write to make them happy, or what, but it doesn't work that way. I don't write here to make money. I don't write here as a popularity contest. I don't write here to make people happy. So read or don't read... it doesn't matter. Because my blog, like my life, is always changing.
"You are as two dimensional as the crappy cartoons you draw."
Oh, now that hurts. Well, not really... but only because my blog is that way by design. This guy started some kind of business and wanted to buy one of my domains from me. When I politely refused, he decided to write back and criticize my blog. First in a racist and thoroughly offending comment (which I deleted) and later in a racist and thoroughly offending email. A pity he never took the time to read my FAQ, or else he would realize that I fully acknowledge the two-dimensional nature of Blogography. I do not write about my work. Ever. I do not write about my friends and family. Ever. I do not write about my more serious personal problems. Ever. This is simply because my co-workers, clients, friends, and family deserve their privacy. I don't want people I know to have to worry about what I might say about them, so I don't say anything at all. Aside from all that, I deserve my privacy as well. Seriously, I love my readers and am just flat-out honored that anybody should choose to spend their valuable time reading my blog... but there are parts of my life that I keep just for myself, and that's not going to change. While there are some exceptions, I don't think I am unique in this.
"Microsoft won. Get over it already."
This came from somebody who wrote me a long, drawn-out email as to the superiority of Windows, and how the Mac will never prevail over it. Well, if they've won, then why am I still using a Mac? If they've won, then why does the iPod own the mobile music market? If they've won, how come MSN search hasn't surpassed Google? If they've won, how do you explain the escalating popularity of Firefox? If they've won, then why is all their revenue dependent on upgrades to Windows and Office? I think it's time to wake up and realize that Microsoft not only hasn't won... they are losing ground every day. People don't love using Windows the way people love their Macs... they tolerate Windows because they don't understand that there is something better out there. Well, guess what? There is something better, and I'm going to write about it when I feel like it. Microsoft sucks ass... YOU get over it already.
"What a hypocrite! If you don't care what people think, why do you have comments turned on?"
This is one from a while back, but it still brings tears to my eyes... tears of laughter. This guy wrote several abusive emails complaining about stuff I had written. At first I just ignored him. But he kept writing. So then I wrote back and told him to please leave a comment instead of sending email, because I wasn't going to get trapped into a "battle of emails" over my opinion. But he kept writing. I finally wrote back and told him to just stop reading my blog since he was so unhappy with it, and please stop emailing me because I "just don't care." That's when he unloaded about my being a hypocrite, which is ironic considering I encouraged him to leave comments in the first place. The simple truth is that I love comments. Sometimes, the comments people leave send the conversation in an entirely different direction... many times more entertaining than the entry itself. So if readers want to put in their two cents, or expand the discussion, or even tell me I'm full of crap... I love reading it. But, if you're just being a dumbass or want to criticize everything I do, then screw-off, because I really don't care. Go start your own blog and see how perfect people think YOU are.
Alrighty then... to all the other ass-biters who didn't make the top five, I can only encourage you to try again. But this time, instead of just throwing out profanity when you write me hate mail, try to be creative in your efforts. Make me feel it. Curse words are a dime a dozen and, frankly, don't really have an effect on me... but telling me I'm "as two-dimensional as the crappy cartoons I draw" is darn clever. So, unless you can write something of that caliber, then don't bother. I'll be deleting your email so fast that physicists will be debating as to whether it ever existed at all.
I am in the process of working on three different web sites just now, and have spent most of the day combing the internet (in general) and A List Apart (specifically) in order to make sure that I'm not overlooking any nifty bit of HTML or CSS that will help me in the browser/platform compatibility battle. Surprisingly, I'm more on top of things than I thought (at least until Microsoft decides to once again trash the internet when they release their next version of Internet Explorer).
As usual, parts of Blogography will serve as testing ground for some of the new things I'll be trying out (like this idea, which is just too cool), so forgive the mess that might occur over the next week or so.
Though my entire weekend has been consumed with solving other people's web site problems, I did have time to prep Blogography for the big switch to Movable Type 3.2 once it is out of beta.
The "Sliding Doors" method of creating menu tabs works flawlessly and looks beautiful. I guess I should have expected as much from the brilliant mind behind Stopdesign. I also made a few other cosmetic changes, including finally giving an explanation to anybody trying to leave profanity in a comment. Now I need to figure out how to write XML Syndication templates in Atom 1.0 format (or wait for somebody else to work on it) so I can trash my RSS feeds (at last).
The good news is that everything seems to work properly in Firefox Windows and Internet Explorer (version 5.5 and up... though it mostly works with 5.0 as well). Of course, it looks fabulous on Mac Safari because the typefaces are rendered properly. Why in the heck doesn't Windows know how to display type so it looks decent? Oh well, there's always hope that "Vista" will be an improvement. I'll be right over here holding my breath.
Now it's time to read the new MT template documentation. Bleh.
Since I totally think pirates are the coolest thing ever... right up there with ninjas... I have been anxiously awaiting the amazing game Sid Meier's Pirates to be released for the Macintosh. Unfortunately, I am still waiting. The good news is that it was released for Xbox on the 12th. The bad news is that a half-month has passed and the cheapest price is still forty bucks! I'd go ahead and buy it, but I don't have much time for video games and don't want to waste the money (heck, I still haven't finished Xbox Lego Star Wars). Maybe in a few weeks I can pick it up for thirty and be okay with that...
Bah! I am so weak. I just know I am going to cave and end up ordering it. I MEAN, COME ON!! LOOK AT IT!! IT'S PIRATES!!! Arrrrgh!
In television news, I am quite pleased that Six Feet Under didn't wimp out. I had bet myself big money as to how the episode would end, and now I owe myself $100 because I won. Errr... and lost. How does that work? Entourage was brilliant as always, and I am very curious to see where they go with the whole "Aquaman" thing. Leave it to HBO to save Sunday night television.
It's probably because I'm a bit dense when trying to create documents that are "standards compliant" that I've been struggling somewhat with converting my syndication feed over to the new Atom 1.0 format. I read where other people managed it in 5 minutes, and feel like a total failure for having spent over an hour on it.
While I am not quite certain if my feed is optimal (e.g., I am confused as to the "id" tag, as different people interpret its use in different ways), it does verify as Atom 1.0 compliant. Perhaps tweaks will come later once I've seen the "official" template when Movable Type 3.2 is released. In the meanwhile, I've killed off all of my RSS variants, and have routed their URLs to the Atom feed instead. Hopefully this won't cause problems for anybody.
The next step is trying to figure out how to craft a "comments only" feed in Atom format. That will replace the "combined entries/comments" feed, since that one seems to confuse many newsreaders out there.
I remain optimistic that Atom catches on in a big way so that the "syndication wars" will finally end.
NOTE TO MAC USERS: If you are using NetNewsWire to read your syndication feeds, you'll need to upgrade to version 2.0.1 in order to view Atom 1.0 feeds. It's free to registered users. I believe that other readers (like Shrook) are also being updated.
Well then... I finally had a spare moment while watching the latest episodes of Six Feet Under and Entourage to create an Atom 1.0 syndication feed for comments here. And (woohoo!) it validates. This means that the last vestiges of skanky old RSS code have been purged from Blogography. Time to HARNESS THE POWER OF THE ATOM! For those of you who don't have an Atom 1.0 compliant feed reader, I apologize, but updates are coming fast and furious so your reader of choice should be upgraded soon.
So, for anybody who prefers to get their daily dose of "me" via syndication, there's only two XML feeds now:
That way, you can keep current without ever having to visit the beautiful web site that I worked so hard to make for you... slaving over code and graphics day and night. But don't feel bad for me. Whatever makes you happy is just great. Don't feel you have to come visit the site because I might feel bad... oh no, I'll be just fine. Here all alone. With nobody coming to visit...
= ahem =
For anybody who doesn't know what "syndication feeds" are, here's the scoop. For those of you who have no desire to use a syndication feed, forget I mentioned it.
Now, before I go, is it just me or is hot in here? If I wanted to fill the bathtub with a few inches of cool water and sleep in it... would there be any health risk? Can one die from wrinkly fingers? Perhaps I should ask the government for a few million dollars in research grants to get this all sorted out. They've certainly funded stupider ideas than this.
Ever since I put the Artificial Duck Store "advertisement" on my blog sidebar, my T-shirt sales have asploded. I credit this to the fact that Elizabeth Hurley is in the photo. Can you imagine what would happen if I actually had photos of her WEARING one of my shirts for advertising? I wonder how I go about getting Liz to model a Bad Monkey T-Shirt on the cover of Cosmo? Then everybody would want one!
Anyway, this is both good news and bad news.
It's GOOD news because I might eventually be able to break even from all the shirts I've given away for free. It started with the 32 I passed out for my Blogiversary2 celebration... and I still like to send them out as gifts for people who do me favors and such. You can call me weak, but when a firefighter writes to order another shirt because his got "damaged at work" well, I can't really charge for that can I? (I gave him two more and asked that he be careful out there, as Washington State is once again besieged with wildfires). It's not like I am wanting to make money here (otherwise I'd charge more), but it would be nice to have a balance so I am not losing money. Maybe when I release a few more designs (planned for mid-October now), I'll have it all figured out.
The BAD news is that fulfilling all these new orders is difficult...
But there IS good news from the post office today. My new stamps have arrived from "stamps.com", and they're sweet!! Well worth the pricey cost of admission...
I don't use stamps very often, except to send postcards, so I was happy to know that I could get postcard stamps customized. I am most pleased.
The stamps arriving was a nice thing to have happen on a day when I received a hate-mail so vile, so utterly horrible and racist, that I very nearly broke down. Not because I got yet another hate-mail (like I care), but because people like this actually exist in this world. I outright pity those whose entire existence is so superficial that how a person looks is grounds for such blind hatred. I just don't understand it. Furthermore, I am thankful I don't understand it... I don't want to.
Here's another boring entry on web site syndication. Forgive me. I actually wrote this earlier today and decided not to post it (choosing to show pictures of my new postage stamps instead). But then other people started jumping in, so I thought I might as well too. I've put it in an extended entry so that those of you who don't care about "RSS" and "Atom" and "XML" and "Web Site Syndication" can skip it.
Well that was a big bucket of non-stop fun.
I just upgraded Movable Type to version 3.2, which is the blogging software that runs this site. To put it bluntly, the upgrade process sucks ass. After spending hours on two crash-and-burn installs (thank the maker for backups!), I was about to give up. But then I read some forum commentary about NOT upgrading the installation, but instead creating a NEW installation in a NEW folder.
Piece of cake.
How incredibly stupid that SixApart doesn't have this bit of wisdom in their docs, because it would have saved me a lot of wasted time. For anybody wanting to "upgrade" to MT 3.2, here's what worked for me...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
When it comes to what people like to read here, I don't really care to analyze it. I write what I write and people can choose to read it or not. So when it comes to visitor counts and popularity indexes, and all that kind of stuff... I'm just not that interested. Mostly because stats packages are just too darn complicated to be bothered with.
There are two things I do need to know, however...
The bandwidth is easy enough to monitor, because it's right on the front page of my site control panel. The broken links, on the other hand, are a mess to ferret out of the error log and link referral listings. You can never seem to get broken links without wading through a bunch of crap, and often times I just don't bother.
Enter Mint.
This really nifty app gives you a smart and streamlined view of statistics for your site at a glance. I've been running it for only a few hours, but already find it indispensable. It's all the things you want to know, without all the junk that gets in the way. As if that weren't enough, it's beautiful to look at too, with a web interface that features dynamic resizing and customization to die for.
Want to know what pages are popular? It's right there, sorted however you want it...
And note the error page. Now that I know about it, it was a simple fix. Bingo. Exactly what I wanted to know. But there's tons of other stuff too... referrers, visitor count break-downs, even the searches people are using to find you, all arranged how you want to look at it...
Pretty sweet. But Mint is also extensible by using easy-to-install modules called "Peppers" (for Pepper-Mint... peppermint... get it?!?). They currently have a Pepper that monitors internal searches, and another that displays browser stats...
Well that's depressing.
Again, I realize that all this information is available in the dozens of stats packages out there, but it's never been this easy to visualize and understand. All you have to do is drop a line of JavaScript into the pages you want to monitor, and Mint does the rest... all with the cleanest, most elegant interface you could possibly hope for. And did I mention that there's a Dashboard widget for MacOS X as well?
The truly shocking bit is that all this only costs $30. A bargain at twice the price. Especially when you factor in that author Shaun Inman provides world-class support for his product. I was having some troubles using Mint with my virtual domain, and he reset the license so I could install it just minutes after I emailed him the problem... and it was approaching midnight at the time! Try getting that kind of help from Adobe or Microsoft.
Anyway, if you are looking for a way of monitoring your web stats that's quick and painless, Mint is worth a look. Just be sure you can meet the requirements and run the compatibility test before shelling out your $30.
Everything sucks today! E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G-!!
I woke up this morning sick to my stomach and wanting to puke my guts out. It only went downhill from there.
I got to work and had to use Microsoft PowerPoint most of the day. MICROSOFT POWERPOINT SUCKS ASS! After using the sublime elegance of Apple Keynote for Macintosh, being forced to use PowerPoint is the equivalent of getting kicked in the balls by a lumberjack in steel-toed boots. All the little niceties that Keynote provides to make work so easy are gone. And, adding insult to injury, PowerPoint creates the ugliest, most horrifying, most boring slideshows imaginable. Hard to work with. Nasty results. Somebody remind me once again why people use Microsoft shit when something so much better is available? Insanity.
During my overindulgent 15-minute lunch hour, I got to fill out forms for an immigration visa application. PAPERWORK SUCKS ASS! Ultimately, I had a hard time figuring out which blows more... the inconvenience of filling out the forms, or the abhorrent photo of myself I had to attach to the application. I don't envy the person at the embassy who has to open the envelope. I envision them pulling out the papers, seeing the photo, and then running screaming from the room. After a Xanax and a bottle of Abolut Vodka, they return to their desk and deny me a visa based of the fact that I am just too heinous to enter the country. Does ANYBODY take good passport photos?
Once I finished up my PowerPoint ordeal, I then spent the next half-hour digging through loads of spam and other crap that had piled up in my email "In Box" during the day. Then I noticed an email from a friend telling me that Depeche Mode American tour dates had been released. This doesn't suck. This is the best news I've had all day. Until I look at the actual dates... only to learn that Depeche Mode lands in Seattle on November 16th. Of course, I'm not here on the 16th. I'm a couple of thousand miles away that day. NOVEMBER 16th SUCKS ASS! WTF? Am I not entitled to ANYTHING going right today? The best band in the universe, who I've been waiting to see on tour for a decade, finally comes to town and I won't be able to go. WAAAAAAAAAHHH!
Once I get home. I check on my blog only to find I have a shit-load of spam comments waiting for me. Turns out that SixApart's much-vaunted "SpamLookup" feature in the new version 3.2 of Movable Type doesn't work very well. In fact, it doesn't work at all, and makes things much more difficult than using good old MT-Blacklist (there's no one-click "mark as junk" anymore... oh no, now you have to navigate a drop-down menu and then click "Save Changes", which is lame). Banning commenters doesn't seem to work (no big surprise, I can't seem to get "trust commenters" to work either). It could be that I'm doing something wrong, but when I click on the "documentation" link to find out, there is no documentation. MOVABLE TYPE SUCKS ASS! Who the f#@% ships a product with essential... nay, F#@&%ING CRITICAL... documentation not available? It's like "here's your blog, good luck with that spam shit, because we've got better things to do than tell you how to deal with it... like adding features to non-paying LiveJournal users or something." This is lame. Manually marking up spam is not fun. Especially when it is so obviously spam in the first place.
You'd think after a day like this, I'd get to go home and relax for a bit. You'd be wrong. By the time I'm done, I'll have spent 6 hours trying to get my scheule for the next two months figured out. MAKING TRAVEL PLANS SUCKS ASS! Trying to coordinate flights from one side of the planet to the other, along with hotels, trains, tickets, and all the other crap that goes along with it is exhausting work. Right now, I have hotels without flights, flights without hotels, and a few days where I don't even know where I'll be, or how I'm getting to where I need to be going. I decided to take a break from the chaos to blog my day, but talking about it is only making me feel worse. If I make it to bed by midnight tonight, I'll consider myself very, very lucky.
Things had better be better tomorrow, or else I cannot be held responsible for my actions.
I have never, ever, in my 26 years of computer use regretted upgrading software more than when I installed Movable Type 3.2. Ever since installing it, I have been regularly receiving HUNDREDS of spam comments each day that are somehow not junked. The new "SpamLookup" filter is total shit. It doesn't learn ANYTHING. You would think that once you mark a spam as "junk" the filter would learn to mark all future occurrences as junk. You would be wrong. On top of that, marking commenters as "trusted" or "banned" doesn't work... they are never registered. Even worse, my feeble attempt to add keywords and keyphrases to the SpamLookup preferences have all met with failure. I don't know if it is because the entire plug-in is not working, or whether I am doing something wrong. Since there is ABSOLUTELY NO F#@%ING DOCUMENTATION, how can I know? I am familiar with perl expressions, and have tried dozens of different variations... but nothing works. I go to the SixApart forums for help, but nobody there is getting their questions answered.
I would switch to WordPress or another solution, but I just don't have time to create all new templates, import 1100+ entries, and figure out how to keep from breaking old links. So now my options are to either keep manually junking shit-loads of spam, or turn off comments entirely. I don't know who I am more pissed-off at... spammers, or SixApart for letting them get to me.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I just received another three email notifications for spam while I've been typing this. Oh wait... one of them is from Karla... make that two.
I just spent the past five hours hacking my own blog. I've made several changes, added plug-ins, modified plug-ins, and changed templates. I've done extensive testing after every step, so hopefully everything works okay... but if you run into any problems viewing entries or making comments, please let me know. My email address is on the sidebar of every page.
And coming this evening... an entry one week in the making! An entry so all-consuming that it very nearly destroyed my life! An entry that will astound you with the fact that I could waste so much time over something so geeky and lame! An entry that could be THE LAST BLOGOGRAPHY ENTRY EVER!!... and it's all James Bow's fault!
P.S. Bad Monkey is on the loose. I'd apologize in advance if he bites your ass, but you probably had it coming.
Today I received a sweet fan-mail that had so many nice things to say that I got a little bit choked up reading it. They started off by telling me how much they like my writings and my cartoons... then they went on to say how much they love that they can count on something new at Blogography every day... then they had to tell me that this is their favorite blog and that they often go back and re-read old entries because they find them so entertaining.
At this point I was feeling pretty special. I mean, you like me! You really like me!
But then I got to the end of the e-mail where it said this: "Too bad you rarely comment on the more serious things going on in the world today. I'm sure your readers would like for you to tackle something important from time to time."
Uh... what?
I never rehearse or plan ahead what I'm going to write here. I just open up my PowerBook when it's time to write, and whatever happens, happens. But, in the interest of pleasing a fan, I thought I'd try commenting on the serious issues other bloggers are talking about. And since I don't know what they might be, I'll just visit one of the many blog aggregators out there and take a look at the top ten things that people are searching for...
Funny, that didn't seem so different from other entries. Maybe I did it all wrong.
WARNING! BORING TECHNICAL ENTRY AHEAD!!
Thanks to a comment from Patrick I've implemented gzip compression on all the pages served up here at Blogography. I pretty much had no choice, because my bandwidth is rapidly approaching quota for the month (again), and I'm running out of tricks. I've tested random pages on various browsers and everything seems to work okay. Though I suppose if it isn't working for you, I'll never know, because you won't be able to read this to know what's happening.
Remarkably, this actually seems to be having an effect. In just 14 hours, my bandwidth usage has dropped by about 16%, and pages are served slightly faster. Sweet! I had no idea that HTML contributed so much to the problem, and was always blaming everything on the abundance of images I use. If you are curious to know if your pages are compressed, or how much bandwidth you could save if they are not, there's a nifty online tool to check your domain.
Another change, thanks to monitoring my logs with the ridiculously clever Mint, is that I've repaired hundreds of broken links I didn't even know I had! When I changed the way my entry archives are named about 7 months ago, I thought that search engines would eventually figure out they shouldn't be linking to the old ones. I was wrong. Google has regularly been sending people here using busted links from over a half-year ago. Isn't Google supposed to be smarter than this?
Anyway, I created a very simple template in Movable Type to generate a list that maps old busted links to new fresh links, and then just copied all 1000 lines of permanent redirects to my "htaccess" file. Simple. Problem solved.
This weeks list of interesting search engine referrals...
Looking over that list, I think that it makes this blog sound a heck of a lot more exciting than it actually is.
UPDATE: Spent the past hour adjusting more little things that were bothering me... all by manually modifying the SQL database. If you know how SQL works, it's a very powerful way to make bulk changes in minutes that would have taken hours by hand, but is scary, scary stuff if you make a mistake. At a couple of points I thought for sure I would have to restore from backup, but always managed to dig myself out again.
I like getting thoughtful (or even not-so-thoughtful) comments on entries I post. And because I realize that sometimes people wish to comment anonymously for one reason or another, you don't ever have to leave your name or email address to speak your mind. So long as you have something to contribute (even if it's in disagreement with something I've said), I don't care if I know who you are or not. Sometimes this backfires, because people will just call you a name or leave a string of profanity or wish you dead but, for the most part, it's worth the effort.
But, in the end, Blogography is like a magazine with myself as sole editor-in-chief, and I occasionally choose to delete comments as I see fit. It's rare, but it does happen if I feel the comment does nothing to contribute to the conversation (negative or positive) and is just trolling for attention or shock value.
Comments are easy to monitor, because Movable Type has an approval system which allows me to review each and every one.
It's the anonymous emails that drive me insane.
Since my email address appears on every single page of this site, many people choose to write to me. Most of the time I'm happy to receive mail, because it gives me the opportunity to get to know my readers a bit better. Odds are, even if you are vehemently opposed to something I've said, I will gladly reply as a courtesy for having spent your valuable time writing to me. That's why I put my email address out there in the first place.
But now, as people are discovering anonymous re-mailers, I am getting a considerable amount of anonymous emails with the sole purpose of attacking me for one reason or another. Sometimes it's just bizarre comments fueled by ignorance. Other times, they are the most hateful, horrible things you can imagine. Other times they are just plain stupid. Like this one for instance...
"I searched Google to find a recipe and your site came up. I clicked on the link, but the recipe was not there. Why do you advertise recipes on Google if you are not going to provide them? This is very unfair and misleading and wastes my time. You need to post the recipe you promised!!!"
Of course, they sent the email through an anonymous re-mailer, so I don't even know who it is or why they are so stupid. Furthermore, my incentive to reply is nil. If I had replied, here is what I would say...
Dear Ignorant Bitch,
Since you didn't tell me your name, is "Ignorant Bitch" okay? Great, thanks! Google is a search engine that indexes all pages of a web site, and I have no control over the results they provide you. I certainly do not advertise anything on Google as you imply, and don't promise shit. Odds are, you don't know how to perform a proper search anyway, and ended up with a monthly archive page with thousands of words that somehow contained the random words you were searching for. Perhaps if you bothered to send me your actual name and a valid email address, I would give you some tips on using quotes and wildcard characters to find what you are looking for but, since my mother told me not to talk to strangers, I guess you're on your own. Thanks for visiting Blogography!
But emails like that are just harmless entertainment. It's the deranged psychos that baffle me...
"I have written to you five times for help with my MT templates and you have not responded!! I was trying to be nice! Would you be happier if I hunt you down and beat the answers out of you? Hahaha!"
Here's the interesting bit... not only were the five emails sent anonymously, but they were sent over the course of two days! My reply, had I felt like responding to an anonymous re-mailer, would go something like this...
Dear Psycho Hand-jobber,
Beating the answer out of me is probably the best approach, assuming that you are well-manicured and have experience in porn films or prostitution (and are not easily frightened by large objects). As for your enthusiastic need for assistance, please realize that I travel... a lot... and do not always have access to my email. Furthermore, while I am happy to help when I am able, demanding an immediate response is rather rude if the person in question is not being paid to assist you. I suggest that you either: A) get some manners, patience, and common sense; B) pay me my hourly rate; or C) be really good at that hand-job you're promising. Thanks so much for taking time to write with the promise sexual favors! That doesn't happen nearly enough around here!
And then there's the scary ones (heavily edited for profanity and massively corrected for spelling)...
"LIKE _______ SO MUCH?? THEN ____ ___ YOU ___________ ______!!! ITS ____ _____ LIKE YOU WHO _______ HATE AMERICA THAT NEED TO BE _______ SHOT!!!!! ______ _______ ______ LOVING ______!!!! ____ ___ AND DIE ______!! OR MOVE TO CANADA WITH THE REST OF YOU ______ LOVING ____!
Charming. And completely anonymous from a bogus Yahoo! address. I suppose I'm taking my life into my own hands here...
Dear Anonymous Pussy,
Whenever I put my opinion out there, I sign my name to it. By using a fake address and not signing your name, do you really expect I give a crap over anything you have to say? Perhaps your ignorant, racist remarks are so embarrassing to you that you just can't bring yourself to sign your name... I have no idea. But, for future reference, if you wish to be taken seriously regarding your thoroughly offensive comments, I'd suggest the following: A) spell check; B) tact; C) a thesaurus; and D) some balls. Thanks for reading. I hope I can anger you even further in the future!
Anyway, if you want to send me an anonymous email or comment, that's fine if you have something to say. But if you are doing it just to be a sack-licking, monkey-spanking, dumbass... don't bother. I don't care. And if you don't have to balls to sign your name when you flame me, then you probably don't care either.
When I got back from Hong Kong in early September, I was dumbfounded to have received an interview request from a Japanese reader. It was her ambition to interview bloggers from all over the world for a web project of some kind. I thought it was crazy that she would want to interview me (there are far more interesting choices out there, I'm sure!), but I went ahead and did it anyway. This evening I was sent a transcript of the Instant Message interview so that I could edit my comments before it was translated. Since I am a rambling moron during an IM session, this was really nice of her. It would be cruel to have me coming off looking a bigger moron than I normally do.
Anyway, I'm going to publish the interview here, in case anybody is interested. As a side-note, I made a few minor edits on the questions so they would make more sense to the English reader...
Blogography from David Simmer II (2005年9月18日)
Your blog is cute with cartoons and things! How do you make it?
Thanks! My blog is just a Movable Type install with a few plugins added. The cartoons are drawn in Adobe Illustrator then exported as GIFs. The CSS layouts are hand-coded in either BBEdit or TextMate. All my entries are created with a program called "ecto" on a Macintosh.
You are famous for blogging. Is it fun to be a famous blogger?
Oh I'm not famous at all! On very rare occasions I will be recognized at the airport or something because I am wearing a Blogography T-Shirt, but that's it. I'm grateful for the regular readers I have, but most people don't even know I exist. I don't think about it very much because I find it shocking that anybody would care to read what I have to say in the first place.
How did you think of Blogography for your name?
This is my third blog. My previous two were complete failures, and were called "Dave's World" and "DaveBlog." When I decided to try again, I wanted to pick something unusual and not put my name in the title. As I was working on the layout, I had the television on and changed the channel until an A&E television show called "Biography" showed up. Half-way through the program, it suddenly occurred to me that "Autobiography" (a book about one's self) could become "Autoblogography" (a BLOG about one's self). I Googled "Blogography" and nothing turned up, so I check to see if the domain was available. It was, and so "Blogography" became the name of my new blog.
Are you mad because there are other Blogography on the web now?
No. Not even a little bit. The more people use the term, the more my domain has relevance and value on the internet. If somebody chooses to name their site "blogography," it's like free advertising for me because people will be typing "blogography.com" to find it, and end up getting my blog instead... who could be mad about that?
I like your blog because it is new every day. Is it difficult to think of postings to write?
Not really. I don't plan anything to write, I just sit down when I have a free moment and something always seems to pop into my head. Sometimes, when something cool or amazing happens, it's easier than on boring days... but I don't put a lot of effort into my writing (and it probably shows!). I force myself to write every day because once you skip a day, it's easy to skip another... then another... then another... and pretty soon you're posting just once a month or something, then it's like "why bother?" The down-side of writing every day is that you end up with some pretty poor entries every once in a while. I definitely have my share.
Are there things you like to write best of all?
Any day that provides an easy topic is a favorite. I especially love writing on days where I am traveling and get to see something amazing. Next week I'll be visiting China, which is someplace I've always wanted to go. Those entries will undoubtedly write themselves. I'll be saying things like... "I walked on the Great Wall of China this morning..." and be guaranteed of something cool to say about it. I also like to write rants, because being able to vent your frustrations to the entire world is liberating (I always feel bad about it the next day through).
Which things do you not like best?
Nothing. If I don't feel like writing about something, I just won't write about it. This includes my friends, family and work... because it's not fair that they should have to worry about what I might say about them. I also don't write about my more personal feelings or problems or anything like that. Some things you have to keep for yourself.
Is blogging fun or work (for you)?
Definitely fun. If it was work, I wouldn't be doing it (well, unless somebody was paying me to!). What's most fun about having a blog is the people you meet, and that's all I need to keep myself motivated to continue... making new friends, hearing new ideas, and meeting new people.
What other blogs do you admire?
I admire any blogger that puts in the effort to stick with it, and it doesn't matter what kind of blog it is. Every time I visit a site where they have posted a new entry, I admire that because I know what it takes to keep a blog going. The mortality rate for new blogs is staggering. Somebody starts one because it's trendy... then realizes it's not as easy as it looks and abandons it. So now the internet is littered with dead blogs and broken links which kind of messes it up for the rest of us.
Do you think blogging will keep (being) popular?
Sure... but probably not as we know it now. As technologies improve and bandwidth increases, we'll probably transition to video blogs or something like that. It's a natural evolution, just like the popularity of "podcasting" is now. In the meanwhile, I don't think that written blogs are going to disappear anytime soon, even though the focus may change from time to time.
Do you have a plan for the Blogography future?
Not right now. There are some rendering bugs in Internet Explorer that drive me nuts, so fixing Blogography to display properly in IE is about the only immediate thing I have in mind. Other than that, I plan to just keep doing what I am doing so long as people are still interested in reading it.
Thank you for your time.
ありがとございます！
I had written up a long rant about Microsoft's proposal to brand webfeeds with a new icon, and Dave Winer's asinine response to it. This is one case where Microsoft is actually Doing The Right Thing and asking for people's opinions. But Winer and his massive ego doesn't want anybody but him to make decisions.
Eventually I decided not to post it, because responding to Winer's never-ending obsessions is bordering on an obsession all its own.
But then Patrick stepped up and voiced some very good points, so I thought I would post my comments as well. Winer is Winer and won't change, but he has significant voice in the grand scheme of things, and that means he should not go unchallenged when he is wrong. What I love best about him is when he calls those who dare to disagree with his opinion "arrogant," which is the very definition of hypocrisy.
It also makes me laugh.
But he just picked up a couple million from the sale of "weblogs.com" so maybe he's entitled to be an ass?
Anyway, in case anybody cares, I object strongly to the use of "XML" as the "official badge" for webfeeds. XML is ambiguous as a label, even if it is technically correct. eXtensible Markup Language can be used for many, many things... not just webfeeds, and using it to title something so specific is pretty stupid. Not to mention the fact that it is consumer-hostile and is just going to confuse matters as more data enters XML-space. It would be like saying all varieties of fruit should be named "fruit" instead of specializing for distinction... apples, oranges, bananas, and the rest. It's just wrong.
I disagree with Microsoft on many things, but coming up with an icon to better identify webfeeds (and jettisoning the ambiguous "XML" badge once and for all) is okay by me. If they listen to the community of webfeed users and factor their input into their decision... I, for one, will be jumping on board. And since Microsoft actually has the muscle to get it adopted, I guess their monopoly is good for something.
I don't hate Dave Winer. I actually respect the work he has done to help people more easily assimilate data into their lives. He is now (and continues to be) an important force in the world of blogging and webfeeds. But I am sick of his god complex. I am tired of his constantly accusing people of attacking him simply because they disagree with his opinions. There are smart people out there who deserve to have a voice in the Way Things Work. Sometimes I wish Winer would just shut the f#@% up and let them speak. His opinion isn't the only one that matters, and nobody should have to be on the receiving end of a Winer bitch-slap for giving theirs.
UPDATE: I received a rather rude email telling me that there is nothing wrong with calling XML by the name "XML" and I am the one that should shut up.
Okay, I will shut up... if anybody can adequately explain how people are going to distinguish XML schemas when you aren't specific about their application. Here's an example... MS Word has it's own XML file format with a schema called "WordML". Saving in that format will give you a valid XML document. But you can't open such a document in a feed reader like FeedDemon or NetNewswire, nor can you parse it with an online feed service like NewsGator, Feedster or whatever. XML schemas are specific and, to end confusion, naming and branding conventions need to be specific as well.
Webfeeds are a genre of XML schema. There's RSS, RSS 2.0, Atom, and the rest. Since any webfeed reader worth its salt should be able to parse them all, they should be grouped under a single umbrella with an icon/branding that distinguishes them from other XML schemas. It shouldn't matter to the end-user whether a feed is RSS or Atom... people shouldn't have to care. We need something to end the confusion.
Dave Winer is pretty much demanding that everything be called one thing (RSS) and branded another (XML) which is crazy confusing. Atom is not RSS, and it is not going away. I personally believe Atom is the superior schema for webfeeds and don't want it to go away. But there is room for both, and I see nothing wrong with people having a choice of which schema to distribute... so long as the end-user doesn't have to be confused by it. Let's group the specifics (RSS, Atom), eliminate the obtuse (XML), and simplify the reference (webfeeds) with a new icon so we can continue moving forward. There are other worlds to explore.
Neither my hotel in Florence or my hotel in Venice has internet access. On top of that, there isn't a place I can use my computer for internet (only public terminals), so I guess I'll just have to store all my entries up and post them when I get back to Rome. It's quite strange how some places seem quite content to pretty much ignore the internet entirely.
I've been watching the Frappr (Friend Mapper) project with interest. It's a little raw around the edges, but there are some bloggers having a lot of fun with it (like Belinda over at Ninja Poodles), so I decided to start one so I can see where everybody comes from.
Just click here to visit the Blogography Map and add yourself! Feel free to list your blog or web site URL in your comments so that people can come visit you.
After that, you can browse the map (zooming in and out as needed) to see everybody's pins and then click on them to get details. Or you can click on a person's name in the list and be taking instantly to their pin and see where they are at in the world. Pretty nifty...
I was hoping to create Frappr maps to mark my travels, but there doesn't seem to be a way to create a "closed" map which allows only the administrator to add pins. I'll have to study the specs for Google Maps API so I can see what's involved with making one on my own.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I really must be getting back to catching up on my TiVo watching. A moment I have been dreaming of since the very first episode of The West Wing has finally come to pass: Toby's stupid, arrogant ass just got fired... I can't wait to see what else happened in the world of television while I was away.
Blogography, for lack of a better word, is a diversion. I spend about ten minutes each day writing an entry (a bit more if there's a cartoon), another ten approving comments, and another 10 to 20 answering emails. It's not a very big part of my day, but it is a part that I'm rather attached to. My online life means a lot to me, and the people I've met because of it mean even more.
Which is why I am starting to get fanatically pissed that people are stealing my blog. And I'm not talking about the hundreds of MySpace bloggers who try to hotlink to my photos... I am talking actual theft here.
Back in February, I got an email from my friend Dave++ telling me how somebody had taken photos and content from his web site and created a new fictional person based on his life (you can read the fascinating story here). Something similar had happened to me the previous summer, so I could relate... a reader had sent me an email telling me that somebody had stolen most of my travel photos (like these) and then blogged about the trips as if they were the one who had taken them. I was curious more than upset, and fired off an email telling them that they should either give me credit for my photos or remove them. Instead, they removed the entire blog, which was okay too.
But that was not the end of it. I still get emails from Blogography readers pointing me to other sites that have stolen my stuff. Sometimes it's just a photo or two, which is no big deal (though I do wish they would give me credit, as specified by my Creative Commons license)... but other times it's much worse. They steal entire entries. They steal cartoons and erase the copyright. The steal photos and claim to have taken them. They steal my site layout. They steal my web feed. They steal EVERYTHING.
What really burns my ass is that many times these thieves have money-generating ads on their blogs, meaning that they are PROFITING off of my work. Do you see any ads on MY site? No? That's because THERE AREN'T ANY! If I am not making any money off of Blogography, why should anybody else get to??
A few weeks ago I was pointed to some kind of television critics site where some ass-clown had stolen my entry about why Lost sucks... in its entirety... and posted it with their name as the author. When I wrote in about it, I was told that there must be some kind of "misunderstanding" and that they would look into it. Since the site had paid advertising, I wrote back and said that this was completely unacceptable... either they remove my content IMMEDIATELY, or I would start contacting their advertisers. Their solution? Rewrite the piece with different words to say the exact same thing. Whatever. It's not like I have the money to have a lawyer sue their thieving asses.
And a few weeks before that I was battling with somebody whose entire site was nothing more than my web feed displayed in their layout... with paid ads! WTF?!? How can ANYBODY think that it's okay to republish somebody else's free material and get money for it? But people do... because I've had my entire "television" and "Hard Rock Cafe" categories stolen as well.
Is it just me, or does this suck ass? For the web feed thief, I actually had to get the idiot's web host involved because he refused to remove my work. His attitude was that "anything put on the internet is fair game," and he "had every right to use it however he wanted to." He honestly thought that there was nothing wrong with stealing my content and making money from it. It's this kind of bizarre behavior that has me completely baffled. If you didn't write it and don't credit the original source, you're just a stealing liar. How could it possibly be interpreted any other way?
This would all be so much easier if I could hire mercenaries to track down the people who steal from me and have their stupid asses killed.
This morning I woke up to a lovely email from somebody who apparently had too much time on their hands. If I were to have printed it, I'm fairly certain it would have amounted to at least four pages.
FRONT AND BACK!
It started out friendly enough... but quickly escalated into a diatribe of how everything I write here is wrong, and proceeded to explain in excruciating detail how people like myself are a blight on all of humanity for producing morally bankrupt content on the internet.
At first I thought it might be a form letter that is randomly emailed to unsuspecting bloggers, but as I continued to read I realized that this was not a form letter, but instead a well-thought-out opinion piece on my blog that was addressing specific excerpts from my entries.
Naturally, I was touched.
This person spent some serious time working on this email, so how could I not be?
Usually I don't bother replying to stuff like this (unless I think of something snarky, sarcastic, and laced with profanity to reply with), but couldn't help myself. This was the nicest thing I could come up with to say (in its entirety):
"Thanks for reading Blogography!"
Sure it's no four pages or anything, but you've got to give me credit for trying.
BLOGOGRAPHY FLASHBACK ENTRY: Email
BLOGDATE: May 12, 2005
In which Dave finds himself responding to wacky emails from his faithful readers and inadvertently creates a Google search result for people wanting to know more about having sex with coked-up hookers while having your ass covered with peanut butter by a pizza delivery boy.
Click here to go back in time...
And so Cavan writes to me and says "Dude, I am totally going to start interviewing popular bloggers!" And I am like "Dude, that is so cool!" And Cavan is all "I know! And I totally want you to be my first interview!" And I am like "Dude, I am so totally NOT a popular blogger!" And Cavan says "Dude, you so totally are! You've got over 100 links on Technorati!" And I am all "No way!" And Cavan is "Way!" And then I go "Dude, I so totally AM a popular blogger!" And then Cavan goes "For reals!" And then I am all "OMG! Dude, you so totally have to interview me now!" And he is all "I know!"
Well, maybe it didn't go exactly like that. I have a bad memory and have been reading way too many MSN Spaces blogs. But he did interview me, and you can read it over at Cavan's The Blurred Line Blog.
Would it surprise you to learn that I have been hiding secret information in my blog entries since the very first one? Do you find this shocking? Disturbing even?
My very own Da Vinci Code... a DAVEinci Code, if you will.
That's right. Just when you think you have experienced everything that Blogography has to offer, you find out there is a whole new level to my genius. Like an onion, this blog has many layers.
And it occasionally it smells so bad that it makes you cry...
But anyway, like I said, each of the 1156 entries here has hidden information imbedded in them... and each bit of information combines with other bits to create a grand tapestry of forbidden knowledge, ancient secrets, profound revelations, and shocking prophecies. It's a remarkable achievement, I know!
So feel free to spend your life trying to decode the fabulous mysteries contained within my blog. I just can't imagine a more noble devotion of one's time. And in order to inspire you, I've included some sample scenarios to get you started...
DAVEinci Code Sample #1: Have you ever wondered what happens if you take the fourth word of every fourth Blogography entry, convert the letters into hexadecimal, then multiply the result by four and feed the end product into Photoshop as a raw file? Well wonder no more! Here is the fabulous result...
Okay, the incredibly sexy Elizabeth Hurley doesn't actually have a mustache... I think I must have miscounted some words along the way... but that's pretty amazing isn't it?
DAVEinci Code Sample #2: Can you guess what happens when you take all the entries from my trip to China, strip out all of the vowels, convert the remaining letters into their base vector equivalents, feed the result into a cartography plotter as GPS coordinates, then overlay the resulting image over a map of the United States? Why it's a treasure map! And what happens when you link up the cities? I'll show you what...
That's right! Anybody living in Seattle, Spokane, Boise, Elko, Redding, Salem, Salt Lake City, Great Falls, Wiliston, Cheyenne, Idaho Falls, Buffalo, Minot, Omaha, Duluth, Marinette, St. Louis, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Roanoke, Chicago, San Diego, Ely, Grand Junction, Gallup, Las Vegas, Bisbee, Durango, Las Cruces, Amarillo, Cheyenne, Salina, San Antonio, Beaumont, Poplar Bluff, Baton Rouge, Pensacola, Greenville, Birmingham, Knoxville, Norfolk, Asheville, Augusta, Charleston, Orlando, and Montgomery... well, you might want to grab a shovel and start digging for buried treasure! And, if you find it, just send it to me and I'll cut you in for half of the value as a finder's fee! How cool is that?
Yes, yes... I know... it's totally incredible isn't it? And there's so much more! Want to know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried? It's in there! Want to know next week's winning lottery numbers? That's in there too! Dying to know the name of the guy who will be chosen as ball-boy at the final tennis match at next year's US Open Tournament? Yep, that's in there too!
Knock yourself out, and don't forget to forward my half of your lottery winnings.
BLOGOGRAPHY FLASHBACK ENTRY: Dave Approved: Crest
BLOGDATE: August 28, 2004
In which Dave stumbles upon the miracle of cinnamon-flavored toothpaste, and discovers a tasty new breakfast cereal topping that can kill you.
Click here to go back in time...
Turns out my "Chicago Adventure" was NOT over last night... I had a Depeche Mode concert to go to with fellow-blogger Kevin Apgar and his charming wife Katie!
As expected, it so totally kicked ass. Depeche Mode is easily the best live band I've ever seen, and one of the very few who sound better live than in a studio. Their latest album, Playing the Angel, is not their best work... but every song was -stunning- when performed live (oh how I want a DVD release of the concert). Dave Gahan is an amazing singer who puts everything he has into a performance yet STILL manages to deliver crisp vocals that strike you at your very soul. Personally, I don't understand where he gets the energy... I think he must be 45 years old now, but is kicking more ass on stage than guys half his age.
And what a funky cool stage it was...
The artistic genius behind the band, Martin Gore, was in fine form... delivering emotionally wrenching lead vocals for a few songs, including Home which is a favorite of mine. But I think people will most remember him for running around the stage in a little black chicken suit. Needless to say, I simply must get one of my own, because I think I would look fabulous in feathers...
As I mentioned, the set list was a pleasing blend of new and old that ensured there was something for everyone. All songs were well-received, but I dare say that the older material had a bigger impact on the crowd than the new stuff. When songs like Enjoy the Silence and Just Can't Get Enough started blasting through the arena, the crowd just went nuts. This in turn energized the band, so it looked like they were having more fun with the old stuff as well. And as if that weren't enough, they've managed to update the classics yet again to make them sound all shiny and new (one of my favorite DM songs, Everything Counts was given a blistering rock beat that totally killed).
My only complaint was the band's selection for the final song of the evening... Goodnight Lovers from their somewhat boring Exciter album. After all the high-energy drive they put into the rest of the concert, it seemed like a week weak ending. Had they went out with a pumping crowd-pleaser like People Are People or something... they would have totally freaked out the entire arena and allowed them to sign-off on a high note. And isn't that how you WANT to leave a room when you're a rock band?
Anyway, even though I had to catch a plane to L.A. just five hours after the concert, and only managed to get 3 hours of sleep... it was all so totally worth it. My only regret was not getting to spend more time with Kevin and Katie, because they are alarmingly nice people. Not only that, but Kevin thinks I'm cool. You can read about just how totally cool I am in his entry over at Kapgar.com (oh... and I think that he wrote something about the concert as well).
Seriously though, meeting your readers and fellow-bloggers is really the best part of having a blog.
Well, except the guy who keeps emailing me to tell me that I am going to hell.
That's just mean.
Turns out some crap-weasle is using my name to endorse products for advertising dollars. And now I have to ask any lawyers out there... can I sue this douche-bag for impersonating me and using Blogography to advertise a mattress that I've NEVER OWNED in an ENTRY I NEVER WROTE?!? Isn't this identity theft? I DON'T ACCEPT ADS OR ENDORSEMENT FEES AT BLOGOGRAPHY! This is a personal choice that may change in the future, but it should at least be MY CHOICE!
Just look at this crap...
Sorry, but my price for selling out my blog is $25,000. And now I WANT MY FREAKIN' MONEY! I also want to sue for damage to my reputation, identity theft, and the fabulous catch-all: "pain and suffering." You owe me ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS you f#@%tard!!
WTF? I mean seriously... WHAT THE F#@%?!?
Who in the hell thinks it is perfectly acceptable to fabricate a blog entry using somebody else's identity? Shouldn't there be ramifications for this shit? This is MY blog and I F#@%ING CHOOSE WHAT TO WRITE HERE. On April 14th, 2004, I was (ironically) blogging about somebody stealing my identity for spam and Lomo effects on photographs.
But a A MATTRESS?!?
Seriously... do a search for "mattress" on Blogography and see what comes up (other than this entry). I HAVE NEVER EVEN MENTIONED THAT WORD!!
And, while I'm at it... will somebody tell that ass-clown over at "memes.org" to STOP USING MY NAME AND MY CONTENT FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF ADVERTISING STUPID SHIT?? The terms of my Creative Commons license CLEARLY STATE that my stuff can only be taken for NONCOMMERCIAL USE, but all his sites are obviously just frames to support advertising, WHICH IS A COMMERCIAL ENDEAVOR YOU IDIOT! Yet here's an excerpt from one of my entries as picked up on web search...
According to his profile, he's a self-proclaimed "expert on corporate blogging, the blogosphere, online social networks, virtual communities, online brand promotion, online brand protection, online brand intelligence, online buzz marketing, and online viral marketing."
I guess all that corporate hype bullshit is supposed to imply that he's some kind of internet marketing genius for hire... which is funny, because he's obviously trying to flood blog trackbacks to get himself links and drive up his Page Rank so he can sell more... except I DON'T HAVE TRACKBACKS ENABLED YOU MORON!
I wouldn't hire the dopey bastard to clean my toilet. "Online Brand Protection?" And how do you accomplish that... by stealing content from others, thus ruining THEIR brands? Just another douche-bag thief who makes money off of other people's hard work without their permission and in violation of copyright laws. Want to advertise crap? Write your own blog you donkey-ball-licking dumbass.
Now get me a lawyer so I can start suing some asses! I am looking for somebody thoroughly unprincipled, unethical, immoral, shameless, corrupt, dishonest, devious, evil, and unscrupulous who will stop at nothing (including death) TO GET ME MY MONEY!! Oh wait... that's pretty much all lawyers isn't it? I never thought that I would be happy about that.
CHAPTER 3: We Wish You a Merry Arson
LEGO ADVENT CALENDAR TOY OF THE DAY: Cherry Picker Ladder
Oh noes! The fire that Lego Dave started in a meth lab to prove his fire fighting skills has inadvertently trapped a crack whore inside...
The flames grew higher and higher, quickly turning the meth lab into a flaming deathtrap! From the second story window, the crack whore is screaming for help from out of the inferno... "Help! Help" she cries.
Lego Dave starts frantically looking around for something that might help him to rescue the drug-addicted prostitute. Luckily, a crew working on the power lines have left their electronic "cherry picker" ladder nearby. Without hesitation, Lego Dave climbs into the bucket and rises into the flames...
But will the ladder be tall enough?
FIND OUT TOMORROW WHEN DAVE'S "A VERY LEGO HOLIDAY TALE" CONTINUES!
I don't feel like getting out of bed today.
Fortunately, with a PowerBook and a wireless network, there's no need to get out of bed! I can just lay here and the entire world can come to me. Not only that, but my Lego Advent Calendar is just within reach on my desk... and I can almost... argh... just about... get my fingers on it... and there we go. Wow. It's a little Lego police officer. That's going to make for an interesting turn in the story.
And speaking of interesting turns... my rant yesterday about my name and blog content being commandeered to advertise mattresses has only served to get me put on two more mattress sites. Apparently, the same scumbags are running all three, and all I did by complaining about it was provide more material for their Google-aggregating asses to steal. It's like a virus that spreads... all in the interest of getting people to click on their Google mattress ads. I find it fascinating that so many people are using theft as a business model now-a-days. Even worse... they're probably making money at it.
They all must die, of course. Once I've achieved world domination, I'll get right on that.
And speaking of Google searches... I continue to be amused at what searches people are using to find Blogography. I realize that most of the time I'm listed because random words in one of my archives somehow manage to fit the search criteria, but it's still bizarre. Here's some of the "cleaner" results I've seen this morning:
Sigh. I suppose now I HAVE to get up so I can go to the bathroom. I also need to grab my camera.
Not that I am going to take pictures of myself in the bathroom or anything... I just need to take a photo of the Lego toys for today's chapter.
Seriously... you really need to get your mind out of the gutter!
I need to get my mind out of the gutter as well, but the words "elizabeth hurley naked" are stuck in my head.
CHAPTER 4: Jingle Bell Cop Rock
LEGO ADVENT CALENDAR TOY OF THE DAY: Disgruntled Policeman with Walkie-Talkie
Scaling the burning meth lab, fake fire fighter Lego Dave sets out to rescue a crack whore from the inferno...
"I'm coming to save you Miss Crack Whore!" Lego Dave cried above the roar of the flames. As the cherry-picker ladder rose higher and higher, he could barely make out a figure standing in the smoke-filled window above.
After agonizing minutes, the bucket finally reached the second floor.
"Here I am to sa-- hey! You're not a crack whore!" Lego Dave exclaims.
"No you idiot, I'm a police officer!" replied the disgruntled figure, his face twisted into a perpetual smirk.
"That's okay Mr. Policeman, I'll save you!" Lego Dave replied. "Hop in!"
"Thanks guy" said the police officer, as he climbed into the bucket.
"I am so totally brave!" Lego Dave said proudly. "They're sure to make me a fireman now!"
"What?" said the policeman. "Hey! You're not a real fire fighter! What's going on here?"
"Don't say that. DON'T SAY THAT! I AM A REAL FIRE FIGHTER" Lego Dave replied frantically. "I've proven it by rescuing you!"
As the bucket reached the ground, sirens could be heard in the distance. The police officer had called the fire department on his walkie-talkie when the fire had broken out.
"You stay right there fella!" the police officer demanded. "I'm calling for back-up, and we're going to have to take you down to the station for questioning..."
Has Lego Dave's fire fighting adventure come to an end?
FIND OUT TOMORROW WHEN DAVE'S "A VERY LEGO HOLIDAY TALE" CONTINUES!
I'm swimming in a plethora of hate mail, and haven't been this entertained in months! Where do you guys come up with this stuff?!
By far, my most favorite email of the week (perhaps the entire year), was from somebody who wrote me an impassioned letter over my making fun of "Intelligent Design". They started out preaching fire and brimstone, then settled into a series of scripture quotes, then said they love me, then say they will pray for me, then threatened me with eternal damnation in hell if I don't stop mocking The Almighty. This was not the first time, but I never get tired of hearing it.
You'd think that the fact I'm rendered as a cartoon and have a screaming monkey with me would be a big clue that I'm not actually serious about being God, but apparently there is room for confusion here...
But the big finale of the email was regarding THIS image...
However, it's not the actual picture that got the guy all riled up... it's the fact that I titled it "Dave Lord". This was apparently enough to send my new best friend over the edge, because he started typing in ALL-CAPS!!
"THERE IS ONLY ONE LORD! JESUS IS LORD OVER ALL!!!! THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO THE ONE TRUE GOD AND HIS HEAVENLY KINGDOM AND THAT IS OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST!!! YOU PROCLAIM YOURSELF AS A FALSE GOD AND DENY JESUS WHO IS OUR TRUE GOD!!!!!!"
I wonder if Lord Vader has to put up with this?
But mostly I wonder how somebody could actually take anything they read here this seriously.
Well, that and I wonder when my worshipers will finally come through with the bank to build DaveLand.
But mostly that "taking this serious" thing.
CHAPTER 15: Hark the Harold Mechanics Sing.
LEGO ADVENT CALENDAR TOY OF THE DAY: Mechanic with Wrench.
There's been an accident on the way to the hospital, and now Team Lego Dave struggles to get Mr. Construction Worker to a doctor in time to save his severed hand....
"Hey Barky... help me carry Mr. Construction Worker to the emergency room!" says Lego Dave. "We're running out of time."
"Bark! Bark!" says Barky the Dog hopefully as he grabs the severed hand from the ground.
But just as everybody starts limping towards the hospital, they hear a voice...
"Hey guys, hold up a second" a man says. "I'm a mechanic and I can fix that wheelbarrow for you in just a few seconds!"
"That's really cool of you!" exclaims Lego Dave as he turns back towards the street lamp. "Thanks for your help Mr. Mechanic, now we can get to the hospital twice as fast!"
"Anytime, fella!" replies the man with the wrench as he gets to work.
But just as the construction worker limps back to the repaired wheelbarrow, the mechanic starts screaming in pain! "AAAAAARGH!!" he says!
"What the-" Lego Dave stutters. "Holy crap! It's Lego Buzz! He's sawing Mr. Mechanic in half!"
"Dude" screams the construction worker!
"Shouldn't you be dead?" Lego Dave inquires. "That crossing arm that fell should have crushed you!"
"No way, buddy!" Lego Buzz laughs. "I sawed through that like butter, and now I'm going to saw through YOU!"
Lego Buzz is ALIVE? How can Lego Dave get away this time?
FIND OUT TOMORROW WHEN DAVE'S "A VERY LEGO HOLIDAY TALE" CONTINUES!
After spending most of my evening trying to find out why I couldn't post my entry yesterday, I finally figured out that something had broken with my blogging app. Once I trashed everything and started over, my blog was suddenly working again.
I then had the sad duty of posting the most tragic chapter of "A Very Lego Holiday Tale" yet... if you haven't read it, you may want to skip this entry and go there first. Take a box of tissues with you.
Since I already wasted away a couple hours fixing my blog today, I don't much feel like writing anything tonight. I thought that I had a solution when I dropped by Kazza's blog because she had a "Fifty Questions" meme, but then I realized I had already done it.
Oh well. Let's see what comes out of the Lego Advent Calendar today. I'm almost afraid to look...
CHAPTER 17: I'll Be Drunk for Christmas.
LEGO ADVENT CALENDAR TOY OF THE DAY: Keg of Italian Beer with Tap.
In a horrible turn of events, the evil Lego Buzz has killed Barky the Dog, faithful companion to our hero, Lego Dave...
"Barky! Barky, no!" wails Lego Dave, his heart breaking. "You can't die!"
"Dude, I'm sorry about your dog" says the construction worker sympathetically. "But that saw-weilding maniac is still in here somewhere... we've got to go."
"I don't care!" says Lego Dave, sobbing uncontrollably now. "Just leave me here."
"Can't do it buddy." Mr. Construction Worker replies solemnly. "You saved my life, now it's my turn to save yours."
Sticking his severed hand in his back pocket, the construction worker starts dragging Lego Dave towards the rear exit of the garage. Several nervous minutes later, they finally find their way to the back door. Leaning on each other for support, they continue onward to the hospital.
"This is my stop" says Mr. Construction Worker. "Will you be okay?"
"Not without Barky" replies Lego Dave, his voice laced with despair. "You take care."
Without another word, Lego Dave turns to leave, his head hanging in sadness. Lego Buzz is out there somewhere, but he doesn't care. Nothing matters anymore.
Stumbling along in a daze, Lego Dave finds his way to a seedy bar in a bad neighborhood at the edge of town. Wanting nothing more than to dull the pain of his loss, he orders a drink. Then another. Then another. But drinking one glass at a time just isn't enough. He makes his way to the storage room and finds a keg of fine Italian beer to drown his sorrows with...
The next morning, Lego Dave awakes a broken man. His mind fuzzy, his life in ruins, he drags himself up from the floor and wanders the streets aimlessly. As his head starts to clear, a single thought starts forming in his brain. One all-consuming thought that burns like a wildfire. One thought...
"Revenge" Lego Dave mutters, almost a whisper. "I will avenge you Barky. I WILL AVENGE YOOOOOOUUU!!"
Will Lego Dave avenge his canine companion? Will he have his revenge?
FIND OUT TOMORROW WHEN DAVE'S "A VERY LEGO HOLIDAY TALE" CONTINUES!
One of the things that I find so fascinating about the internet is the way it breaks down barriers. No longer is the world out of reach... now you can visit far away places and make friends in foreign lands from the comfort of your own home. Lines on a map and political barriers disappear. And, as if that weren't enough, online language tools can even eliminate language barriers.
Well, kind of.
Every once in a while, I check my error logs to see if there are any bad links I need to fix, pages missing, or anything else that makes Blogography a poor experience for my visitors. While I'm there, I also like to take a look at popular links to see where people are going. And every time I look, I see more and more translation links showing up. Visitors are regularly translating my pages into foreign languages, and I find that very cool.
But today I actually took the time to see what they were translating.
And now I'm freaking out just a little bit.
The most translated entries all seem to be the most bizarre.
Take for instance my entry from June 28th, which has been translated numerous times in various languages. I'm guessing it's a popular search result with foreigners because I am bitching about the Bush administration not addressing the "Downing Street Memo" or doing anything to explain the "apparently false" pretenses that sent us to war. No big deal. BUT later in the same entry, I have this freaky rant against all the news coverage of people finding body parts in their fast food. And, to make my point, I decide to invent my OWN "body part in food scenario" -- the Penis Salad.
In my native English, it's a little disturbing. And the fact I felt the need to draw a cartoon to illustrate matters doesn't help much...
Original English
"Uhhh... excuse me, but the menu said nothing about chopped penis in my garden salad, and I'm a vegetarian."
I was immediately curious to know how this translated into other tongues. So I used online translators (like Google's) to see what happens. I then take the result and translate it back into English...
Some of the translations are not so bad (though "penis" has become a proper noun for some reason?)...
German
Uhhh... entschuldigen mich, aber das Menü sagte nichts über gehackten Penis in meinem Gartensalat und mich sind ein Vegetarier.
"Uhhh... excuse me, but the menu did not say anything about chopped Penis in my garden salad and in me is a vegetarian."
But other translations are downright frightening...
Korean
Uhhh... 나에게를 용서 한다, 그러나 메뉴 말하지않았다 나의 정원 샐러드안에 잘게 자 른 남근에 관한 아무것을,및 나는 이다 채식주의자.
"Uhhh... In me it forgives, the vegetarianism which is anything the penis which but the menu my regular staff salad which it does not talk and or cuts small inside regarding it sleeps."
Still other translations vary in quality... from strange to incomprehensible...
French
Uhhh... m'excusent, mais le menu n'a indiqué rien sur le pénis coupé dans ma salade de jardin, et moi suis un végétarien.
"Uhhh... excuse me, but the menu did not indicate anything on the penis cut in my salad garden, and me am a vegetarian."
Spanish
Uhhh... me excusa, pero el menú no dijo nada sobre el pene tajado en mi ensalada del jardín, y mí es un vegetariano.
"Uhhh... excuses to me, but the menu did not say anything on the penis sheer in my salad of the garden, and me he is a vegetarian."
Italian
Uhhh... lo scusa, ma il menu non ha detto niente circa il penis tagliato nella mia insalata del giardino ed in io sono un vegetariano.
"Uhhh... the excuse, but the menu he has not said nothing approximately the penis cut in my insalata one of the garden and in I am a vegetarian."
Portuguese
Uhhh... desculpa-me, mas o menu não disse nada sobre o penis chopped em meu salad do jardim, e no mim é um vegetariano.
"Uhhh... forgives me, but the menu did not say nothing on the penis chopped in mine salad of the garden, and in me it is a vegetarian."
Japanese
Uhhh... 私を許すが, メニューは 言わなかった私の庭サラダ及び私の切り刻まれた陰茎についての 何もである菜食主義者。
"Uhhh... I am permitted, but, the menu word trap concerning the penis where my garden salad which is applied is chopped up what, and the vegetarian where am I."
Chinese
Uhhh... 劳驾, 但这份菜单认为无事关于被砍的阴茎在 我的庭院沙拉, 和我是素食主义者。
"Uhhh... excuse me, but this menu thought the safe about the penis which chops in mine garden salad, with me is the vegetarianism."
Swedish
Uhhh. förlåta mig, utom menyn sa ingenting omkring hacket penis i min trädgård sallad, och Jag er en vegetarian.
"Uhhh. excuse me, except menu said nothing about chip penis in my time garden salad, and I'm a vegetarian."
Icelandic
Uhhh. afsakið, en the matseðill ómerkingur óður í kjötöxi getnaðarlimur í minn garður salat, og Myndað af I am a grænmetisæta.
"Uhhh. excuse me, while the menu nobody crazy about cleaver phallus into my park tossed salad, and Alluvial with I am a vegetarian."
Welsh
Uhhh. ddiheura 'm, namyn 'r ddewislen eb ddim am faledig penis i mewn 'm ardda salad, a fi m a vegetarian.
"Uhhh. I excuse' ores, except' group menu said anything about ground was miscarrying in' ores I plow worst, I go I ores I go vegetarian."
So much for knocking down barriers. I'm fairly certain that I'm setting back foreign relations a hundred years all by myself.
Oops.
I guess when the Welsh declare war on the United States, I have nobody to blame but myself.
CHAPTER 23: It's Beginning to Burn a Lot Like Christmas.
LEGO ADVENT CALENDAR TOY OF THE DAY: Pizza Oven and Cook's Paddle.
Lego Dave has finally caught up to the evil Lego Buzz, but things are looking grim for our hero as he is about to be beaten to death with a frying pan...
"Time to die!" shouts Lego Buzz as he moves in for the kill with his cookware.
"Barky, I've failed you!" Lego Dave says despondently. "Forgive me!"
As he backs away from Lego Buzz and the cast-iron skillet of death, Lego Dave suddenly finds himself backed against the pizza oven. Out of desperation, he starts flailing wildly... searching for anything to defend himself with.
Miraculously, his hand soon finds itself grasping the pizza oven cooking paddle. With all his strength, he whirls the paddle in the air and catches Lego Buzz's chin in a vicious uppercut, knocking him to the floor!
"ARRRGH!" screeches Lego Buzz. "You'll pay for that!"
But Lego Dave is undeterred. Gathering all his strength, he circles around the evil Lego Buzz and strikes him with all his might. The force is enough to send Lego Buzz flying forward... right into the mouth of the oven! With a roar, the oven erupts with a violent burst of fire, consuming Lego Buzz in an a flaming inferno!
Within moments, the screaming subsides, and Lego Buzz's body goes limp...
"At last... he's gone." says Lego Dave with a sigh. "Rest in peace Barky, my best friend."
And then, just as Lego Dave is catching his breath, a dark, menacing voice resonates through the air...
"I'd like my hand back, if you don't mind."
Holy crap! It's Lego Buzz Junior... FLYING IN THE AIR! What could this possibly mean?
FIND OUT TOMORROW WHEN DAVE'S "A VERY LEGO HOLIDAY TALE" FINALLY CONCLUDES!
All morning I've been glued to the WE Channel, which is the Women's Entertainment Channel. Most of the time, I avoid WE like the plague because, well, it's crap isn't it?
But today is different, because it's an English Royalty Marathon!
In an effort to make Americans feel better about the heinous state of our leadership, WE Channel has decided to drag out the glamorous scandals of Great Britain, with a stellar line-up of badly-produced, faux "documentaries" on the Royals. Every hour, there is another tantalizing glimpse into the life and times of The House of Windsor, each more delicious than the last! The titles alone are exciting enough to keep you watching...
It's all very fascinating, and I've learned so much (Her Majesty The Queen prefers to take her breakfast served from Tupperware containers!). Ultimately, after my hours of research, I've come to the conclusion that I should be King...
BOW BEFORE MY MAJESTY!
And my first act as King would be to behead blog plagiarists!
I've already said my peace on the subject... and am starting to see other bloggers venting their frustrations as well (including blogging giant Om Malik). But it's reaching ridiculous heights now, because people think that there is money to be made from blogging, and are desperate to swipe content so they can start raking in the big bucks (ha ha ha). Over Thanksgiving, I was made aware of somebody who decided to rape some of the cartoons I created here... even going so far as to remove copyrights and "improve" the coloring!
I guess on some level you could claim that these alterations of my stuff are "derivative works" which are allowed by my Creative Commons license... but only if you credit the original source (which he didn't) and do not use them for commercial purposes (which he did, as he was clearly using his blog to sell crap). Adding insult to injury, that second "thanks!" cartoon is only displayed here if you leave a comment... which means that the guy actually left me a comment before swiping my stuff! Hey, he may be a thief but, on the other hand, he's got enormous balls!
I've always wanted to end an entry by saying "enormous balls".
I love getting mail.
Which is one of those paradoxical things in life for me, because I loathe going to the post office to actually pick it up.
Fortunately, I have a billing service that collects my monthly bills and allows me to pay them online, or else I'd be in never-ending peril from bill collectors wanting to break my legs. But everything else... magazines, exciting offers from select retailers, free samples, cards, letters, and all the rest... it just collects in a bin until I get off my lazy ass and do something with it.
Faced with a huge pile of mail, I finally decided to go through everything on Sunday.
Turns out I got a lot of nice cards from Blogography readers for the holidays, so I first want to thank everybody for that. And, while I'm at it, thanks for the well-wishing emails, e-cards and stuff everybody sent as well. I appreciate it all, and cannot help but be touched that so many people spent their valuable time thinking of me.
Which, of course, makes me feel like a total bastard for not reciprocating... but that's my problem, not yours.
But hey, I make a special Blogography delivery every day just for YOU (yes, you!) so it's not like I don't care or anything...
Speaking of mail... let's catch up with a few emails I've gotten lately, shall we?
Council: Probably my favorite email in the past several weeks was from a woman who was absolutely outraged after having read my entry on Seattle's new insanely stupid strip club laws. She found it reprehensible that I could possibly be so crass as to tell elected public officials to kiss my ass... IN A PUBLIC BLOG THAT ANYBODY... INCLUDING (gasp) CHILDREN... CAN READ! The word "disrespectful" kept popping up again and again, and she wondered how I felt about inflicting such horrible, uncivil values on my readers. My response, of course, was that she could kiss my ass too.
Pivot: Speaking of ass-kissing... another email came from somebody wanting to collect "Pivot Questionnaires" published on the web. After Googling, they found mine, and wanted to know if they could add it. For anybody not familiar with The Bernard Pivot Questionnaire, it's the final questions that James Lipton asks when he interviews guests on his show Inside the Actors Studio. The show is fantastic (if you can get over what a total kiss-ass Lipton is... he just doesn't kiss ass... he FRENCH kisses ass!), and so I was happy to contribute. The Bravo website has a cool "Personality Profile Game" where you can see which actor you most closely relate to personality-wise (for me, it's Benicio Del Toro).
Suggested: One email was a bit surprising in that it was just a big list of suggestions of things that the guy wanted me to write about here. Oddly enough, I had already written about most of them, which now has me worried that there's nothing left to talk about, and I should just close down my blog.
Prayer: After telling Pat Roberston to "shut up and die" I got a rather nice email from somebody telling me that this wasn't a very "Christian" thing to say, even if I disagree with the guy. My reply didn't bother telling him that I'm not a Christian in the first place... but I did write back and ask if he had written to Pat and told HIM that it wasn't a very "Christian" thing to ask God to make people dead (which Robertson has done on more than one occasion). This, apparently, was not the response the guy was looking for, and I got a nice long lecture on everything from school prayer to internet porn (sadly, no links were provided).
Privacy: Last, but certainly not least, was an email I received last month which asked a series of highly-personal questions which I would be hard-pressed to talk about to even close friends... let alone a complete stranger. The sad thing was that this person had put a lot of thought into what they were asking, and I felt bad having to tell them that I wasn't comfortable discussing those areas of my life. Over the past couple of weeks, the whole situation has been really bothering me, and I cannot figure out why. Surely it's not wrong to want to keep some areas of my life private... is it? Why would anybody want to know such things in the first place? Does EVERYBODY wonder about this stuff? Hmmm... every once in a while I get the sense of just how weird it is to have a blog.
BLOGOGRAPHY FLASHBACK ENTRY: Kiwi
BLOGDATE: October 20, 2004
In which Dave ponders the eternal mystery of Kiwi (and Photoshops a cool picture of it).
Click here to go back in time...
The coolest thing about having a blog is the lovely death threats you get just for stating your opinion.
Well, in this case, it's not actually a "threat" per se... it's more like harsh tongue lashing without the benefits such an activity might normally involve.
And I owe it all to Tony Danza.
Not Tony Danza personally, but a Tony Danza fanatic who decided to write to me after reading my comments on his talk show. I would never have guessed that Tony was capable of having such a rabid fan base, so naturally I have come to the conclusion that Tony Danza has some kind of demonic mind-control powers. And now his evil minions are hunting down anybody who would dare speak out against their diabolical overlord.
So now I wonder... mild-mannered talk show host, or hellspawn sent to destroy us all?
Apparently the wrath I've incurred is due to The Tony Danza Show being pulled from some key markets like New York and Philadelphia. According to the email I got, horrible people like me "have poisoned people against Tony and created a negative energy to destroy a wonderful show that brings happiness to millions of people". She drives her point home by closing her email with "God bless Tony Danza and I hope you die!".
= Sob! =
Did you see that? She wants me dead! Between this wack-job and Pat Robertson, I don't think any of us are safe. If no new Blogography entries are forthcoming and I should mysteriously disappear... now you'll know why. Tony Danza finally got me.
What a way to go.
BLOGOGRAPHY FLASHBACK ENTRY: Dave Approved: Crest
BLOGDATE: August 28, 2004
In which Dave discovers the toothpasty goodness of Crest Whitening Expressions and comes up with a great idea for breakfast.
Click here to go back in time...
I've officially become the worst possible kind of blogger.
I'm now one of "those guys" whose blog has started to intrude into Real Life.
This morning a guy I work with emailed me about what a pain in the ass it was to get his father signed up for the new Medicare Drug insurance plan. Without even thinking, I replied back and said "yeah, I had a tough time helping my grandmother get that figured out" and then pasted a link to a Blogography entry where I had written about it.
Five minutes later I'm sucked into an Instant Message chat...
Chet: You have a blog? That is so gay!!
Dave: Yes. You are right. Blogs are totally gay.
Dave: Which makes it easier for me to tell you something...
Chet: NO SHIT?!?
Dave: Yeah. I've been living with this secret for a while now...
Chet: YOU'RE GAY?!?
Dave: Yes, well, no... uhhh... kinda. According to this online quiz I took, I'm 20% gay, which I guess means that I'm only 80% not-gay.
Chet: What test? Where?
Dave: Here: http://www.channel4.com/life/microsites/G/gayometer/gayometer.html
15 minutes later...
Chet: Shit! I'm gayer than you!!!!!
Dave: So when can I expect to see YOUR blog online?
All of this is kind of strange to me, because I work so hard to keep my Real Life separate from my blog. I mean, sure... a lot of real-life people I know read it... but there's no overlap. I don't initiate a conversation around something I've written, and I absolutely don't point people to my blog as an alternative to talking with them about something.
At least I didn't until now.
I suppose my next step is to hang a flat-screen monitor around my neck, put a wireless antennae on my head, and just point people to Blogography entries instead of actually having to talk to them. Then I could wander around with a look of total disinterest all day, ignoring anybody I should run into...
I mean, hey, I'm coming up on my three-year blogiversary in a few months... I've pretty much said it all, haven't I? What else is left to say?
And speaking of blogging milestones - it would appear that I'm rapidly approaching my 5000th comment! I wonder if I should have a prize for whoever leaves comment #5000? Just my luck it would be some lame comment like "YOU SUCK, ASSHOLE!" and I'd have to reward that kind of troll behavior with a prize.
Or do I?
I mean, in the past, I've approved ANY comment, no matter how lame. So unless somebody was selling something or shilling for their site, I've just let it go through. But why should I? I mean, I don't care if somebody wants to call me an asshole (I'm getting used to it), but I think they should at least have to tell me WHY they think that before I publish their crap.
I dunno. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think this is unreasonable. I wonder what other bloggers do about abusive comments by random 10-year-olds and comment trolls?
Sweet! I've just put a disclaimer on my comments form telling them not to bother.
Hmmm... I guess I really AM an asshole.
Why am I not surprised.
The lovely and talented Liz over at Everyday Goddess has brought to my attention that today is "Blog for Choice Day". At first I had no intention of airing my thoughts on the subject, as I consider it a private matter, but eventually changed my mind. I'm not quite sure why. No matter which side you take in the abortion debate, you are bound to make enemies... and, believe it or not, I don't blog to make enemies.
But before I get into it, there is one thing I need to make clear:
Personally, I do not believe in abortion. I try to live my life according to Buddhist teachings, and my interpretation of Buddhist precepts is such that abortion is wrong. All arguments as to whether or not life begins at conception are totally irrelevant to me, because conception creates a life. So, unless the pregnancy will endanger the life of the mother, thus putting two lives at risk... there is no gray area for me. I do not condone abortion, and don't feel it should be used as a method of birth control, which our society seems far too comfortable with.
However...
I am a guy and will never have to be faced with whether or not I should get an abortion, so I am pro-choice.
I don't have to worry about becoming pregnant because somebody raped me, so I am pro-choice.
I realize that this is America, where everybody is free to believe as they wish, and my moral and ethical beliefs are not the moral and ethical beliefs of everybody else, so I am pro-choice.
I am not so arrogant as to force my interpretation of life on other free-willed individuals, so I am pro-choice.
I do not subscribe to the legal definition of murder as applying to abortion, so I am pro-choice.
I believe that once you start regulating any one choice, that it will only lead to other choices being regulated, so I am pro-choice.
I feel that anything so highly personal as an abortion has no business being decided by government, so I am pro-choice.
Shit happens, so I am pro-choice.
So there. I said it. I am pro-choice.
Not because I think abortion is a good thing... but because it's not my place to force others to believe as I do in a country where people are supposed to be able to decide for themselves what to believe in.
And that is why you won't find me telling a woman who is on her sixth abortion to "find a better method of birth control you ignorant slut"... because it's just not my place to judge.
In the end, it's not always easy to set aside one's personal beliefs when it comes to something like abortion. But if you are making decisions as to what other people are allowed to believe for themselves, you kind of have to. Lawmakers would do well to remember that.
I don't often look at my web stats because I just don't care how many people are reading my blog. But not so long ago I got an invitation to set up an account with "Google Analytics" for free, so I thought that I would give it a try. The preview showed that you get all kinds of pretty graphs and interesting numbers to look at, so why not?
Well, this morning I finally remembered to go take a look. Unfortunately, the charts and numbers don't mean a heck of a lot to me. I suppose if I gave a crap about this stuff, it would be totally awesome but, since I don't, it's boring. I'm just not seeing any data I'm actually interested in. For example, I still don't know why the hate-mails I get usually arrive on the weekend. Nope, instead all I get to see are things like where my visitors come from on a big map...
Blogography: Big in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland
So I decided to write my own analytics software. I call it "Blogography Anal". It's a funky piece of engineering that gives you information you can actually use.* Just export your Google Analytics stats, then drop them into the program and press start.
In trying to get to the root of my hate-mail question, I first ran the data through Blogography Anal's "Visitification Index" to see how many people are visiting and whether or not I should be happy about it. The results look like this...
I find it interesting how traffic remains fairly steady throughout the week, but always plummets on the weekends. I guess people have better things to do than surf this sorry-ass blog on their day off? Can't say I blame them. Though I do shudder to think of the number of lost job-hours I am personally responsible for because billions of people are reading Blogography instead of working.
But if visitor counts drop so substantially on weekends, why is this when I get the most nasty emails and rude comments? I decided to rerun the stats, but this time use Blogography Anal's "Assholification Index" to see what happens...
Ah ha! Even though my visitor counts drop significantly on the weekends, it turns out that the number of assholes stopping by shoots to over eleven billion! Last Sunday there were 13.4 billion assholes alone.
And this is a problem. My "happy zone" for asshole visitors is between one and three billion a day. Any less than a billion, and you just aren't trying hard enough. Any more than three billion, and the odds are you'll start getting emails bitching about something you've said that week.
Since this is Sunday, I guess it means there is a 96.4% chance that the person reading this right now is an asshole.
Well, not YOU... I would never think of YOU as an asshole. I just love YOU.
So it begs the question: why in the heck do I bother to write in my blog on the weekends?
If visitor counts drop, and all I am going to get for my trouble is a bunch of assholes hanging around... why do it? I just don't know. Perhaps if I stopped writing on the weekend, I wouldn't feel like starting up again on Monday? Or maybe the people who count on Blogography to brighten up their Monday work-day would be pissed if they didn't have a couple of fresh entries to read before their boss arrives?
I guess there are questions that even Google Analytics and Blogography Anal can't answer.
* Please note that the accuracy of my calculations is plus-or-minus twenty-six billion.**
** Hey, I'm an artist, not a mathematician.***
*** Oh don't give me that look! Writing software is hard... let's see YOUR stats package.
A couple of days ago I wrote about the government requesting that Google release their search records. Ever since then, I've been addicted to the stats page which shows the keyword searches people are using to find Blogography. Sure I've looked before, but now I'm seeing them in an entirely different light. What if the people requesting some of these wacky searches were tracked by the government? Scary.
And if these freaky-ass searches are finding my blog, what in the heck does that say about me?
As it turns out, it's not always my fault. When you combine a bunch of unrelated entries into monthly archives, suddenly a word from June 7th combines with a word from June 13th and a word from June 20th to create something truly disturbing. What was once an innocent separation of words on different days has suddenly been Googlized into something naughty.
And while that's true most of the time, it's not true all of the time.
Searches for things like "penis salad" I have no excuse for.
But hey, here's a question... WHO IN THE HECK DOES A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR "PENIS SALAD"?? What could they possibly be hoping to find? I made it up as a joke... are these people serious?!? And it's not like it was only a one time thing... I've been hit by that search 11 times this month. ELEVEN PEOPLE WERE LOOKING FOR "PENIS SALAD"! WTF? Over half of them are from the U.K., so perhaps it's a British slang term that I am unfamiliar with?
Anyway, for the moment at least, Blogography is the #1 hit in both text and images. I did a screen capture to preserve this moment forever...
And there it is. My proudest moment as a blogger. Out of 701,000 results for "penis salad", I'm #1 on Google. How cool is that? I might as well close up shop and move on to other challenges. I've climbed my Everest. There's nowhere else for me to go with Blogography now. It's all downhill from here.
And, on that note, I should mention that I've passed 5000 comments from brilliant readers such as yourself!
On January 23rd at 6:28pm, "Used Hack" hit the magic number, and has won a pair of quality T-shirts of his choice from the Artificial Duck Store PLUS a gift certificate for $20 from either the iTunes Music Store or Amazon.com, whichever he likes best! It's a prize valued at $43.85, so congratulations Hack!
Comments are cool, and this blog wouldn't be half as much fun without them. I should have comment prizes more often.
And lastly, did anybody see Betty White's masterful performance last night on Boston Legal? Betty with a gun kicks ass!
BLOGOGRAPHY FLASHBACK ENTRY: Bleh
BLOGDATE: February 7, 2004
In which Dave finds Betty White in his mailbox and contemplates life without clean underwear.
Click here to go back in time...
You know the satisfaction that comes from a job well done? The sweet victory of completing a project you can be proud of? Knowing that you took the time to do something right, and it shows?
Yeah, me to. It's a great feeling isn't it?
Unless you are building a web site.
Because no matter how much time you spend making sure everything is compliant with web standards... no matter how long you take to validate every line of hand-coded HTML... no matter what you do to ensure that everything will appear exactly as you intended it to look...
It all falls apart when you look at the site in Internet Explorer...
Suddenly, all the hard work... all the hours... all the painstaking attention to detail... it's all turned to shit because Microsoft's browser sucks ass. Sometimes the Internet Explorer Effect™ is so heinous that sites which render perfectly in every other browser on earth become unusable. I could go into details (the box model is f#@%ed up, floats aren't handled properly, no support for max-width, etc. etc. etc. etc.) but none of it really matters. The simple fact is that Internet Explorer is garbage. Unfortunately, people don't seem to realize it...
HALF the world is using Internet Explorer, so it doesn't matter that the browser sucks donkey balls. You pretty much have to hack your site to work around all the bugs, omissions, inaccuracies, and f#@%-ups in IE, or else all these people will think it's your fault things look like crap.
There's always the hope that the next version of IE will fix all the problems, but it doesn't really matter because so few people will bother to upgrade. This makes Internet Explorer the equivalent of a case of herpes that will never go away completely. All you can do is put a condom on your site and hope that it doesn't mess things up for the browsers that don't have an STD.
I dunno. Maybe if enough IE victims are convinced to make a better choice, the percentage of users will drop so low that designers won't have to worry about the Internet Explorer Effect™ anymore. Finally, the internet will be beautiful once again (and mostly disease-free).
Oh well. Since I've spent most of my day being beaten into submission by a crappy web browser, I might as well get that "FOUR THINGS" meme out of the way. I've been tagged a couple of times before, but now Gerry and Karla have nabbed me in a weakened state, so here we go:
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
I have so much dirty laundry piled up that I am certain one day I won't be able to make it out of my bedroom alive. I'll awake in the middle of the night having to go to the bathroom, trip over a heap of dirty underwear, hit my head on the closet door, and lay there bleeding to death in a pile of smelly socks. I can't imagine how they would make that sound good for my obituary, so I figure it's best to just spend my day-off washing.
But as fun as doing laundry is, there's quite a bit of down-time while waiting for that rinse-cycle to finish.
At first I was going to watch the complete first season of the excellent Grounded for Life DVD set I just got, but that only occupies half my brain. The other half gets bored and needs something to do.
Enter Google Maps.
The really nifty thing about this service from Google is that anybody can create their own maps using the freely provided (yet poorly documented) Google Maps API. You can even draw your own little icons and stuff. This appeals to me, because I think it would be very cool to include interactive maps of my travels when I am blogging on the go. For example... if I were in Chicago at the Apple Store, and Bad Monkey was waiting for me at Giordanos Pizza, I could easily create a little map to show where everything is. You would be able to move around, zoom in and out, and it would look something like this...
Actually, it would look exactly like that, because this is a screen capture of a real Google Map I made.
The only drawback is that the JavaScript to create the map takes forever to load... even if you don't actually display anything that uses it. This caused major problems, because all my blog pages were taking four-times longer to load whether there is a map there or not.
Obviously, that's not going to work out for me.
I guess what I am going to have to do is create a separate "Blogography Maps" blog and then provide a link in my entries there. That way, only pages that are actually going to be drawing maps will load slowly. It's not an ideal solution, but it's the only thing I can think of. A pity that individual entry archives in Movable Type can't be flagged to use different templates. Then I could just dump my maps into the extended portion of an entry and be good to go. Oh well.
And there goes the buzzer on my clothes dryer...
UPDATE: Thanks to reader assistance, I did figure out how to embed a Google Map without penalizing other pages.
This morning I awoke to two emails regarding yesterday's experimentation with Google Maps...
The first was from somebody who felt compelled to write and say "nice Photoshop hack" in regards to the Google Map screen capture that I had included (apparently he felt it "looks fake").
The second was from somebody showing me how I can put the slow Google code only on the pages that have maps. The only restriction is that I can't put the map in the main body of an entry, because then web feed readers will choke and die (they'll have to go in extended entries).
UPDATE: This is so cool. After goofing around for a while, I was inspired to redo my travel map with the Google Maps API. It's pretty sweet. I've got custom icons to separate my Hard Rock visits from other visits, and all the data is read from an XML file so I can update easily. I'm pretty happy with it, so I've added my map to the tab bar on every page.
The original map test is still in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Quite a while ago, I had the idea of creating a blog directory site that was entirely visual in nature. There would be no text at all... just pictures of bloggers that you could click on when the mood struck you. I thought it an interesting way to discover new blogs, and also put faces to the blogs you already know about.
Unfortunately, life got in the way, and I never quite got it going.
Until Tuesday.
On Tuesday I got another nice invitation to join one of the many "Blogger Networks" that keep popping up. They liked my blog and thought it would be a fabulous addition to their group. And just like the last time, it was a network I had never even heard of, so I wrote back and politely declined. I explained that this wasn't something I was interested in just now, but best of luck and I hope your endeavor is a successful one. UNLIKE last time, I received a reply:
"Are you stupid?? We're building a powerful network that could explode your traffic and give you exposure you could never get on your own!!! Blah blah blah blah blah."
And that's when I got to thinking... what do I care? I don't have ads or anything. It's not like I get a prize for having more readers. And the more I thought about it, the more offended I became. Some of these networks actually look worthwhile for finding great reads (9rules must be good, because both Pauly and Firda are members)... but most of the others I've found are nothing more than elitist wank-fests. My joining would just provide links for their crappy blogs, and I don't even care about my own traffic. So I wrote back another email and told them "sorry I am too stupid to join... f#@% you, and have a nice day."
And then yesterday I woke up and decided to create my own elitist blogging network...
Well, actually, BloggerPeeps is not so much a network as it is a list of blogs that I like. Every couple of days I'll send out a batch of email invitations to people in my web feed reader and, if people want to become a member, I'll add them to the site and they officially become a VIB... Very Important Blogger.
Then, if you should wish to show off your new status amongst the blogging elite... I'm making little BloggerPeeps member badges, and am working on these little sidebar widgets that will fit nicely under a Flickr Zeitgeist. Right now they just randomly grab members and rotate through them, but I am working on a way to make it so that when you click on a face, you'll go to their blog...
I'm also going to finish making the MacOS X Dashboard Widget, so Mac users can access the BloggerPeeps Web Feed right from their desktop...
Sweet! Now I have a project for the weekend.
One of the most beautiful objects ever created by man is Michelangelo's statue masterpiece, David.
As an art-lover, my life-long ambition has been to visit L'Academia Gallery in Florence so I could personally bear witness to this stunning tribute to the beauty of the human form. On October 16th of last year, I was lucky enough to do just that. I was not at all disappointed. I could write pages on just how amazing an experience it was, but it basically comes down to the fact that David looks as though he is made of flesh and blood instead of stone. All the muscles, the veins, every fold of skin... it's all been so meticulously crafted, that the experience of standing before it can literally take your breath away.
It's that good...
There are other statues of course... the exquisite Venus de Milo and the heart-wrenching La Pieta come instantly to mind. But David stands above them all as to what a true artist can accomplish given nothing but a block of stone.
Which brings me to the point of all this.
Boing Boing, one of my favorite sites on the internet, is doing a good thing very wrong.
It would seem that Boing Boing is being blocked by some filtering software due to their displaying "nudity" which is kind of stupid. Any nudity I can remember seeing has either been artistic or informative in nature, and in no way gratuitous or exploitive. I support Boing Boing 100% in their efforts to protest this ridiculous practice, mainly because I've posted content to Blogography (such as the above photo) which would get me censored as well.
What I do not support is the way they are going about it. They have decided to protest the butchering of artistic expression by butchering David to create web badges...
I mean, come on... now you've taken a work of sublime artistic beauty and reduced it down to a picture of a penis. I'd pretty much sum that up as the very definition of poor taste. It's no longer an artistic statement, but exploitation for the sake of shock value. I doubt most people seeing such a web badge would even understand that it's a crop of David. All they see is a penis (giggle, snort) which kind of defeats the entire purpose. If you are going to use David as a symbol, "be respectful to the source material"...
Otherwise I'd argue that you're no better than the people you're fighting.
(They wouldn't let me take photos at L'Academia, so the above photo is by Rico Heil and governed by the GNU Free Documentation License).
The sweat pours down my forehead as I crouch behind the battered automobile. My ears are ringing because the sound is deafening as they unload in my direction. The car shudders amidst flashes of light, and pieces of metal rain down upon me. These guys really, really hate me. But that's okay. Thanks to some inventive internet research, I've got the Big F#@%ing Gun with me and am ready to unleash. I wait for them to reload, and then it's my turn. I blow away everything in sight, my MSAW ripping through wood, glass, metal, and flesh. I know this is so wrong, but I just can't wipe the smile from my face. The Microsoft Internet Explorer developer group deserved to die. All of them. Rest in pieces you bastards.
And this is why I think playing violent video games is actually a good thing. If I couldn't fire up my Xbox and pretend to blow away the idiots who made Internet Explorer the shitty-ass browser that it is... I would probably be tempted to do it in real-life. But instead, I just sit down with the video game Black and blow shit up for an hour, then the urge to kill is manageable again.
And it's all because of this...
BloggerPeeps beta, which is starting to look fabulous in every browser I throw at it (including Safari, FireFox, Opera)... is, of course, looking like crap in Internet Explorer. AS USUAL!! So then I've got to sit down and try to figure out which magical combination of "display:block" and "display:inline" statements will bypass all of the IE bugs and display the page as it's meant to be seen. I must be getting used to it, because it only took about an hour this time.
Anyway, everything is coming together for my very own elite blogging "anti-network". Tonight I'll swap out the temporary graphics with the real thing, then get the database hooked up. After that, I'll be good to go, and start adding sites later this week. Woot!
Now I need to go buy groceries. It's 10:00am, and all I had to eat for breakfast is a can of Mountain Dew.
I feel funny.
Today I got an email telling me that my ICRA labeling is out of date. Truthfully, I don't think that labeling site content matters one bit, but if it will keep people from sending me an email because their kid stumbled across Blogography and ended up traumatized, then I have no problem doing it.
Just like last time, I am being very conservative, and applying labels that I don't necessarily agree with (better safe than sorry). The one thing I have changed is that I've blanketed all of this crap as "appearing in an artistic content" because I am of the opinion that my cartoons and writing do have some artistic merit (no matter how small). If you were to read down the list and NOT see it as appearing in an artistic context, Blogography looks incredibly pornographic, violent, and balls-nasty, which I don't feel is a very fair assessment.
The simple truth is that I don't consider my blog to be in any way obscene. It's more like a PG-13 rated movie where young children reading it may be exposed to things that they don't understand, or sarcastic material that they can't yet view in the proper context without help from an adult. Sadly, I don't think this comes across in my ICRA rating because of the very narrow choices you are given, but it is what it is and so that's what i got.
Below is the current rating structure which I have labeled on every page in my blog. A sample link is given to show how I am interpreting the label for actual content...
Oooh, I feel so perverted and dirty now.
Blogging is an effortless endeavor for me. I've read about bloggers who struggle with every new entry, bloggers who get burned out, bloggers who can't think of things to write, bloggers who ramble on because they don't have anything to say... but it's never that way for me. I just sit down to write and, 10-20 minutes later, it's over. Results may vary, but that's all there ever is to it.
But not today.
I woke up, had a few minutes to write... but didn't feel like it.
The twenty minutes I take for lunch... didn't feel like it.
Home from work and done with dinner... didn't feel like it.
Now I've watched a couple hours of TiVo-recorded television... and still don't feel like it.
Maybe if I make a toy boat from a photo I took in St. Thomas...
Awww, cute. But I still don't feel like it. Maybe a dippy internet qiz will help... like "Which of the Seven Deadly Sins Are You?"
Uhhh, no. Stupid quizzes are still stupid. How about a meme I found at Blue Goo Ate My Mom?
Eh. I give up. :-(
WARNING: This is a bullet-point entry!
I am driving home from Seattle this afternoon, then will immediately start boxing up 38 T-shirt back-orders so they can ship out first thing Monday morning. That's pretty much my entire day, so I figure bullet-points are better than nothing.
Here we go...
And I'm off. So long, Seattle...
I am going to start carrying around one of those little "clicker counters" so I can keep track of the number of people I want to bitch-slap in a given day. I'm thinking that the number has got to be rather large... perhaps in the high thirties or low forties. It's possible that I'm just irritable, but I honestly think it's because there are a lot of people out there in need of a good bitch-slapping.
Case in point... I stopped at a shop whilst in Wenatchee yesterday. I wasn't there two minutes before some idiot came in with his demon-spawn child. His boy then proceeded to continuously blow a coaches whistle LOUDLY while the father did... nothing. The sales clerk and three other customers just stood there staring in shock. Me being, well... me, walked up and said something...
Dave: Hey... does he have to do that in here?
Idiot: It's either that or listen to him scream his head off.
Dave: You sir, are a model parent.
Idiot: Uhhhh... what?
Dave: Yeah, that's what I thought.
See? There's two slaps right there... one for the dumbass father and another for his whistle-blowing dumbass kid.
It's times like this that make me want to abandon saying "bitch-slap" and go back to saying "a punch in the face". I can see now that my attempt to come up with a less-violent way of enunciating my disproval in people is not nearly as effective, because I seriously wanted to hurt these idiots.
Most people would say "don't blame the child, he wasn't brought up right and doesn't know any better." But since he's the one with the whistle in his mouth, I don't really care. Obviously he isn't being taught proper manners at home, so it becomes the duty of society to educate the little hellion. The ideal solution is probably too harsh...
... so I guess a bitch-slap it's going to have to be.
And in other, non-slapping-related news, I see over at TV Shows on DVD that the Air America television show spin-off is being released on June 6th. Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention something like this (it was an okay show, but nothing fantastic), except Scott Plank co-starred in it with Lorenzo Lamas...
Now that Scott's tribute site seems to have disappeared, I get a lot of Google traffic from people trying to find out stuff about him (probably because I chose Scott as one of the three "Guys I Might Go Gay For" in a previous entry). Since he was one of the few decent people I met while I was involved in my "Hollywood project", I figure the least I can do is help keep his memory alive here when something like this comes up.
Oh, and before I forget... Kachina has posted a totally awesome entry on how great I am over at A Whiter Shade of Pale. As I said in the comments...
"I wished I possessed even a tiny amount of humility so that I could at least pretend to be humbled by such kind praise... but my ego simply doesn't allow for it.
As it turns out, I AM totally great.
If I weren't me, I'd be wishing I was me. But since I am me, I just have to be satisfied with wishing I was more me than I am right now. If I were three times more me than I am, I think I'd be pretty much perfect."
Now feel free to go write about how great I am in your own blogs.
Not that I need the validation or anything... I'm just suggesting a topic in case you can't think of anything better to write about today.
Though I can't imagine that there is anything better to write about than me.
So even if you THINK you have something better to write about than me, I'm here to tell you that it probably isn't, and you should just go ahead and blog about my greatness instead.
Not that I don't value your opinion, it's just that most people don't understand how truly magnificent I am, so I'm trying to point you in the right direction.
Because, admit it, you are feeling a little lost right now and could use some direction in your life, couldn't you?
Yeah, that's what I thought. Off you go then... remember to double-check the spelling of "Blogography" when you link back to here.
Not that I am accusing you of being a bad speller, I'm just saying...
I'm getting some nice emails from people who are finally getting their shirts this week, many of whom have been waiting quite a while. I feel bad about all the delays, and can only hope it was worth the wait. What I am wanting to do is fix the store so that it shows inventory quantities. That way, people can see if they'll be getting a shirt right away or have to wait a bit. It would also be nice to come up with a solution that calculates exact shipping charges, so nobody pays too much (this is a BIG problem for international shipments, which can be billed too much or too little by $5 or more). If wishes were fishes.
Anyway, I don't know if it is apparent from the $8.95 price tag, but I don't make much money on these things... once everything is factored in, I get about 50¢ to $1 per shirt. Considering how much time it takes to package and process the shipments, I am actually operating at quite a loss. But I don't mind one bit. I never got into this with the intent of making money, it was always just for the fun of it. And when I see pictures of people having a good time while wearing their shirts, it's all worthwhile...
There will, of course, be a new design for my Blogiversary III Celebration come mid-April. And once again I'll be giving away a bunch of free shirts (among other things) to people who enter the contests (just to warn you... this time you may have to work for it, so put on your thinking caps!).
And, while we're talking about shirts, time for some Q&A...
Where can I get your "Healthy Boobies" Breast Cancer Awareness Shirt? This was a limited-edition shirt that I designed, but had no part in manufacturing (I don't even own one!). The shirt was a success, however, and helped raise nearly $1000 during Breast Cancer Awareness Month... quite an achievement considering only 50 were ever made! If there is enough interest, I may make a limited edition shirt this October and donate all the money to The Susan G. Komen Foundation. I'll keep you posted.
Why can't I buy a "Dave Cafe" shirt like in all your DaveToons? Because the Hard Rock Cafe would probably sue my ass! I love the Hard Rock, and would rather that people head to their local cafe and get a "real" shirt than anything I would come up with.
How do I get an "Artificial Duck" shirt? They are currently not for sale, but may be resurrected one day. The logo is really too good to not be on a shirt, so I definitely want to print them again. I'll take a look at it after Blogiversary III is over.
Why are your shirts in black and white? I want color! For the current designs, I just thought that they looked better that way. I did experiment with color, but kept coming back to the B&W. The good news is that there may be some color options coming up...
I'm a GIRL and want a GIRL'S SHIRT! How can I order a baby doll T or fitted women's shirt? Well, right now you can't. The simple truth is that having to keep an inventory of many shirt styles in various sizes would bankrupt me. HOWEVER, I have talked to my printer about custom ordering them along with my "regular" orders and it doesn't seem to be a problem. So I am thinking of having a "pre-order store" next time, and letting people order sweatshirts, baby dolls, fitted shirts, long sleeves, or whatever. When it comes time to order the Blogiversary III stuff, I'll let everybody know.
What does "Bad Monkey" mean... who is this "Bad Monkey"?? There is no secret meaning to Bad Monkey. The very first DaveToon I drew was in reference to that evil little monkey in the movie Outbreak who infected everybody with the ebola virus. Not only that, but monkeys have been known to spit and throw their poo at people, which makes them bad indeed!
Who prints your shirts? That would be Ad-Fab Ink... the best screen printers I have ever had the pleasure of working with (and there have been quite a few over the years!).
I was told by (insert name here) that they got a shirt for free. I want a free shirt! There are five ways to get a free shirt... ONE: Get lucky from leaving a comment here on Blogography (every 1000th commenter gets a free shirt, assuming you leave a valid email address so I can contact you, and aren't a comment troll who got deleted). TWO: Win a contest during one of my Blogiversary celebrations each April. THREE: Be one of the first twenty people to make a tax-free donation of $100 or more to Doctors Without Borders during a disaster relief drive (contact me if you're interested). FOUR: Order a shirt that's out-of-stock for 4 weeks or longer. FIVE: You are Elizabeth Hurley, Kristen Bell, or Betty White and ask for one.
Alrighty then. I am off to wash a giant pile of dirty clothes that has accumulated over the past week of craziness. Something is starting to smell funny, and I want to take care of things before it comes alive and strangles me in my sleep. Just my luck it would be a Bad Monkey T-shirt... oh the irony...
Sometimes having a blog sucks ass.
Sunday morning I received an email from my hosting company telling me that my site was "in quarantine" because it was using an excessive amount of CPU resources. This strikes me as funny, because I've done a lot of work to optimize everything, and am not dynamically generating any pages, but whatever.
Of course, there's no way for me to verify this myself... I just have to take their word for it.
Anyway, the quarantine site kept losing data, so I eventually decided it was safest to just find a new hosting company. Movable Type (my blog software) recommends Yahoo!, so here I am.
So, for the next day or so...
And to find out why I am pisssed off at just about everybody involved, you can read the whole story in an extended entry. Otherwise, just ignore me for a day or two, and everything should be back to normal by then.
UPDATE: Thanks to Göran over at 6ft5, I found out that MacZot is releasing a new version of "AppZapper" (a drag-and-drop uninstaller for Macs that track down pesky related files you might miss). The cool part is that the price drops 5¢ for every site that links to their page. If 259 people link by midnight (when the offer expires) you can get a copy for free! I don't even care about the program... I just want that cool ray-gun icon in my applications folder! This is a brilliant marketing idea, and the price has already dropped to $7.15 as of this writing.
UPDATE: More good news... an exclusive internet trailer for Clerks2 is up! Sweet!
Last night as I was driving home, two girls ran across the street in front of me on a rural road. Not knowing what was going on, I stopped the car. Then I noticed that a small boy was also wanting to cross, so I waved him onward so he could catch up to the two girls (who really should have been watching him closer). Good thing he was smart enough to stop and look both ways, or else I very well might have ran him over.
So there I am sitting in my car as the boy waves and starts to run across. All of a sudden, his shoe comes off. Does he grab the shoe and continue across the street?
No.
He sits down right in front of my car and proceeds to put his shoe back on.
Ordinarily, this would have annoyed me greatly, but I was fascinated. It was like a sudden moment of clarity when I realized that this kid had it all figured out. Rather than panic and try to solve two problems at once, he stopped and worked on the problem at hand before moving on.
A minute later, he pops up, waves at me again, then runs across the street to the two girls who seem very upset with the poor tyke.
It's amazing how little moments like this can have such an effect on me.
Yesterday I made the decision to shut down my blog.
No joke, it was really going to happen. The entire hosting fiasco had just gotten to be too much, and I honestly didn't know where to go with it. Yahoo! is not working out. I got a lot of recommendations from people as to other hosting services but, every time I checked into them, I found out that Movable Type users had been banned there for excessive CPU usage (this includes Dreamhost, and everybody else I tried).
No thanks. Once was enough. This "blogging thing" which was supposed to be a hobby had suddenly become a liability that I don't need. I simply don't have the time or energy to try and maintain three blogs during a second move. Everything is a mess, and I just don't need it. Enough is enough, and it was time to move on.
But then a little boy stopped to put on his shoe in front of my car.
And suddenly I realized that I don't have to stress about it. All I have to do is stop, solve the problem at hand, and move on. Who cares if my email is down for a while. Who cares if my blog is inaccessible for a bit. Who cares if everything is a mess. Just solve the problem at hand and THEN finish crossing the street.
So... I've done that. I think.
In the meanwhile, I'm sorry if I don't get your emails. I'm sorry if some comments get lost during the move. I'm sorry if things don't work right for a while. But I'm not going to worry about it. Eventually everything will work out. Eventually everything will be okay. I'm not stressing over a silly blog that shouldn't mean as much as it does.
One thing at a time. And it's time to move. Again.
So, if you like reading Blogography, and are happy that I've found a way to keep on going... you can thank a little boy who stopped to tie his shoe in front of my car yesterday.
It's amazing what you can learn if you just stop the car.
And so I'm moving.
Again.
Changing hosting companies is a huge mess that I never really wanted to experience. But, lucky me, this is the third time I've had to do it in three days. I am documenting my pain in an extended entry, so feel free to read it if you are interested (or ignore it if you aren't).
With luck, everything will be sorted out in a day or two. Until then, I am screaming a lot.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
You know... just when you think things can't get any shittier, that's usually when they do.
Thanks to a lot of hard work and the kindness of one incredibly generous person, I am very close to climbing out of the nightmare of getting my blog re-hosted. It has been a totally crappy four days, but it's almost over. Then BLAM! I get f#@%ed by PayPal!
This lovely piece of email lands in my inbox...
PayPal is committed to maintaining a safe environment for its community of buyers and sellers. Our team employs the most advanced systems in the world to protect the security of your account.
During a recent review of our system, we determined that you received funds from an account that reportedly has been associated with possible unauthorized use. In accordance with PayPal's Seller Protection Policy, the following transaction has been reversed...
WTF?!?
THEY accepted the charge, and yet it's MY problem?
And what kind of bullshit is "POSSIBLE unauthorized use"??
It's POSSIBLE that aliens have replaced world leaders with pod people. It's POSSIBLE that Elvis is still alive. It's POSSIBLE that PayPal is a giant scam. It's POSSIBLE that diamonds might shoot out of my ass...
So PayPal steals MY F#@&ING MONEY because of a "possible" problem. No proof is offered. I'm just supposed to take their word for it. No mention on whether they will reinstate my money if the charge is proved to be valid. No mention on me getting any evidence whatsoever as to this ALLEGED claim of "unauthorized use".
This is bullshit.
I wrote and asked for the evidence that this is, IN FACT, an unauthorized charge. Who knows if I will ever see it. I'm probably just f#@%ed, which is fantastic. Not only am I going to be out $12.90... I'm also out $4.05 in shipping... and $7.95 in shirt and materials.
I just had to pay hundreds of dollars to host my blog, and now T-shirts that I sell at near-cost out of the goodness of my heart, have just screwed me out of $25.
What's coming next?
UPDATE: I got an email from somebody saying: "If somebody stole YOUR credit card and bought a shirt don't you think that you should get your money back? Being ripped off by credit card thieves is part of owning a business and you need to grow up". First of all... the person who bought the shirt has no idea why the transaction was flagged as "possible unauthorized use" - NEITHER OF US DO! Even better, the buyer didn't even know that there was a problem until I wrote and told them! PayPal never bothered to contact them! So basically, PayPal says there is a "possible problem" but there is NO evidence provided to either buyer OR seller, and THAT is what I am upset about. And this is not an email scam, because the reversal of the money credit is showing up in my PayPal account. Second of all... Even if there IS fraud, "my business" WAS NOT THE ONE WHO TOOK THE CREDIT CARD! PayPal accepted the credit card! And they aren't doing it for FREE, I get billed fees every time. I mean, seriously... if I was the one who took the card and the charge was bogus... is it fair that I turn around and bill the company who printed the shirts for my loss?? No. In any event PayPal needs to provide evidence that there is wrong-doing OR GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK!!
Yesterday was one of the greatest days ever because my Batman Legos arrived. But do I have time to put together my Bat-mobile, Bat-plane, Bat-boat, and Bat-dragster?? No. No I do not. And why haven't I had time to play with my new toys? Because my blog is still completely messed up. I got an email last night telling me that most of the links on my Best Of page are broken. A quick check of my server logs shows hundreds upon hundreds of "Page Not Found" errors... broken links everywhere.
It turns out that there is a major, major problem with Movable Type. I'm not going to go into it just yet but, suffice to say, if you are an MT user I've put the whole story in an extended entry and you should read it. For everybody else, it's time for BULLET POINTS!!
• Campaign. All next week I will be participating in Kevin's "grassroots campaign" to promote Paul Davidson's new book The Lost Blogs. This is a great opportunity to blog as somebody else for a while, so I'm looking forward to it.
• Celebrate. The week after that is Blogography's Kick-Ass Blogiversary III Celebration, which means it's going to be a busy few weeks. I don't want to give anything away... but prizes will be involved.
• Vegas. The show Las Vegas gave a nice shout-out to my favorite charitable organization, Doctors Without Borders, in last night's episode. This is one of those shows that surprises me with its consistency... you can always count on being entertained when you tune in (though part of that might be due to my infatuation with Mary, Sam, and Delinda on the show).
• Loopy. On the other end of the television spectrum, FOX has unleashed a new show called The Loop upon an unsuspecting nation. I tuned in because it stars that kid who was the next-door neighbor in Grounded for Life, only to be subjected to the stupidest half-hour of television I've seen in a long, long time. How in the heck did this show get greenlit?
• Cheese. Holy crap! I just went to make myself a sandwich and found out that I'm out of Tillamook Medium Cheddar Cheese! WHY?!? OH LORD, WHY ME??? IS THERE NOTHING SACRED? WAAAHHHHH!
Today, I am a man without cheese. =sob!=
I guess I have to run to the store before I can play with my Batman Legos.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Tomorrow begins five days of "lost-blogging" for Kevin's "grassroots campaign" to promote Pauly's new The Lost Blogs book. Even though I've known about it for around two-and-a-half months now, I just haven't decided on which historical figure I was going to blog as. No matter who I thought might make a good choice for a "mystery game", I had no idea how to make it go on for five days. There's just too much to figure out and, if somebody guesses your pick on the first day, you're screwed. I had toyed with the idea of picking a new person for each day, but I don't think that's allowed by the rules.
I finally just wrote all nine of my candidates on slips of paper, put them in a cup, then picked one.
Who I ended up with doesn't surprise me as much as how I've decided to write for them.
This is either going to end up being a lot of fun (in which case I'll give myself a pat on the back for my ingenuity), or it's going to be a disaster of biblical proportions (in which case I'll blame Kevin). In any event, I'm very interested in seeing how everybody else is going to handle this challenge. Knowing how hard it is, I don't know that I can bring myself to post guesses on other "lost-blogger" sites in case I'm right.
Back to the blogging front...
After almost two full days of trying to fix links that Movable Type has broken, I'm giving up. The problem is just too extensive to be repaired. Any entry that had its name changed, or whose name was duplicated... even YEARS APART... is now named something entirely different. This is really devastating to me, because I pride myself on not breaking links. I would go on another rant about how stupid it is that Movable Type makes no effort to warn you about such a serious KNOWN bug, but I'm too tired. So let me once again thank Six Apart for taking three years of hard work maintaining my links and flushing it down the toilet... I appreciate that.
The up-side is that I am in good company.
I was utterly shocked at how many outgoing links I have that are broken. Not only to other blogs, but to major companies like Sony, BMW, OreIda, and many others. At first I thought that these companies were stupid for not comprehending the importance of maintaining link history, but then I thought perhaps they run their sites on Movable Type and it's not their fault.
Links are what MAKE the internet. Doesn't anybody understand that?
I am almost to the point where I don't want to create another outbound link ever again. But what fun is that?
Blogs are so cool.
Originally, I liked having a blog because it was a way to let my friends know where I was at and what I was doing. Then I liked having a blog because it let me bitch about stuff that was bothering me. Then I liked having a blog because the comments allowed me to interact with readers and find other blogs to read. Then I liked having a blog because of all the nifty people I was meeting.
And now?
Now I like having a blog because of free socks.
Yes! Free socks! A couple days ago I got a comment on my entry "I Want a Gun" from Jon, who runs a most excellent site called "Drive Right, Pass Left" (which is all about those dumbasses who drive in the left-side passing lane WITHOUT PASSING ANYBODY, which drives me insane). He was nice enough to send me a few stickers (one of which is now on my backpack), a license plate frame (which is going on my car ASAP), and a pair of socks with his site's logo embroidered on them...
At first I thought that the socks were just a fun novelty, but I tossed them in the wash and decided to try them on today. HANDS-DOWN THE MOST COMFORTABLE SOCKS I HAVE EVER WORN! Seriously, they stretch-fit so there's no bunching in your shoe. The seams are imperceptible, so they don't rub against your toes. They have some kind of miracle fabric that keeps your feet cool. These are NOT some crappy novelty... they are truly awesome socks. Jon didn't cheap-out here, he went for "Sock Guy" socks, which I had never heard of, but am now in love with.
Naturally, I am so jealous of Jon and his personalized socks that I can barely stand it. I want custom socks of my own!
Unfortunately, I don't have $650 burning a hole in my pocket to place a minimum order. Oh well. I'll just have to be happy dreaming of socks. Thanks Jon!
And in non-sock-related news...
It looks as though another "Lost Blogs" entry has appeared over at DaveSpace!
I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that out of all the participating bloggers, I've guessed just ONE "lost blogger", and even that one I'm not 100% sure about.
Those of you wanting to make guesses as to my "lost blogger's" identity should send me an email at the address in my sidebar. Comments with guesses will not be approved! Who knows, there might be a prize for the first person to guess correctly! But remember the rules... you only get ONE GUESS... so make sure you're sure about who it is before contacting me, because any subsequent guesses by the same person will be tossed out. Good luck!
If you want to learn more about Pauly's book (or pre-order a copy), visit The Lost Blogs site!
Cheaters! I have cheaters reading my blog!
Ever since moving to a new hosting company, I've been closely monitoring my error stats to see if there's anything that needs to be fixed. Today when I checked, I noticed a bunch of people typing in "lostblogs/daythree.html" and "lostblogs/daythr.html" and "lostblogs/day3.html" - apparently looking for the next "lost blogger" entry a day early (even though it didn't exist yet). Cheaters!
Ha! I can only DREAM about being organized enough to write something a day in advance.
Sorry, but everything at Blogography is baked fresh daily, baby!
Most of my entries are written first thing in the morning (like today!). I wake up, grab my trusty PowerBook to check my email, and something pops into my head to write or draw. If it turns out okay, I post it. But most of the time I let it sit until my lunch break so I can read it over and make sure I didn't say anything stupid. But since I always say something stupid, I usually try to make it less stupid and then post it. On rare occasions I can't think of anything to write about, and it's not until dinnertime that I get around to writing. In any event, I don't write ahead. Even while lost-blogging, which I'll be cooking up after this.
Oh, and before I forget... I have the bestest blog posse ever (yes, this means you!). Two days ago I was lamenting over my broken links and got a suggestion from Blogography reader Wejn on how to fix it. When I didn't understand what to do... he wrote the fix for me. I've installed it, and now my problems are solved. How cool is that? Thanks Wejn! An extra Blogography cookie for you today, fresh from the oven!
And while I am passing out cookies, I cannot forget about Bre, who left the 7000th comment here yesterday. Congratulations Bre, You just won a Blogography T-Shirt! Email me your address and the size you want to claim your prize.
And in non-baking-related news...
There's another "Lost Blogs" entry over at DaveSpace! Click here to read it!
I am hopelessly addicted to reading all 40 participants now, and many of them are getting really interesting!
Those of you wanting to make guesses as to my "lost blogger's" identity should send me an email at the address in my sidebar. Comments with guesses will not be approved! Who knows, there might be a prize for the first person to guess correctly! But remember the rules... you only get ONE GUESS... so make sure you're sure about who it is before contacting me, because any subsequent guesses by the same person will be tossed out. Good luck!
If you want to learn more about Pauly's book (or pre-order a copy), visit The Lost Blogs site!
Before I jump into it, I am happy to announce that I found somebody to help me draw a winner in the runner-up T-shirt drawing from the 41 correct guesses I received. Congratulations to Gary, who joins Firda and Alexis as the lost blogger winners! And thanks again to everybody who took a guess. If you didn't win, don't be too sad, because there will be plenty of new opportunities to win something this week. And on that note...
w00t! My blogiversary is here! Back when I started three years ago, I never thought things would come this far. Blogography began as a way to stay in touch with a half-dozen friends while I travel, but has turned into something much more (for anybody who is interested, I wrote all about my humble beginnings last blogiversary). Even more amazing to me than having lasted this long, is that so many have come along for the ride. Thanks to all of you who have made the past three years such a great experience!
And to mark this momentous occasion, it's time for the Blogiversary III Kick-Ass Celebration...
Over the next four days, I'll be giving away fabulous prizes valued at over ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS...
Yes, you read that correctly. Once again I'll be passing out loads of stuff that I think makes life worth living. I am giving back to you, dear reader, for all that you've given to me. So write yourself a note and don't forget to drop by every day for the next four days to check out all the cool crap you can win... and be sure to check back Sunday to see if you've won it!
Good luck everybody!
And now it's time for the rules. You might want to take a minute to read them, because I'll be referring to this stuff each day...
Dave Approved!
All of the merchandise being given away is new and factory-sealed. This is not a bunch of crap that I don't want, but fresh copies of merchandise I already love and own. All prizes are offered "as-is" and I make no warranty or promise as to their contents or condition of arrival. Any problem you experience with the merchandise will need to be handled directly with the manufacturer. If necessary, you can request to have individual prizes removed from prize packages if you do not wish the item(s), or are living somewhere which prohibits the item(s).
Blogiversary Contest!
Last year, all you had to do was send an email in order to be entered into the drawings. This year, you're going to have to work for it! The final three day's prizes will be accompanied by a contest. In order to be entered in the drawing, you'll have to pass a little test first! HOWEVER... if you have left ten or more comments here between April 25th, 2005 and April 16th, 2006... you are automatically eligible to enter, and don't have to take a quiz at all. This is just my way of rewarding those of you who make my blog so much better by leaving comments (if you are unsure about how many comments you've left, just go to the search page, enter your commenter name in the search box, then select "search comments only" and count the results that fall within the dates given). Frequent commenters get other benefits as well, so stay tuned!
Prize Availability!
Some of the merchandise being offered as prizes is made-to-order, and will not be available until mid-May. NO PRIZES WILL BE SENT BEFORE THIS TIME! If you are expecting immediate shipment of your winnings after Blogiversary III Week, don't bother entering, because it ain't gonna happen. I will make every effort to send the prizes exactly as described or shown. However, if due to unforeseen circumstances I am forced to make a substitution, I reserve the right to do so. Sorry, but winners are not allowed to request a cash prize or make substitutions.
Winner Notification!
Winners will be announced here on Sunday, April 23rd using their first name and last initial. If you would prefer to be identified by a nick-name, it's not a problem... just let me know when you send in your entry. Winners will be notified via the return email address in their entry (please make sure your address is valid!).
Shipped to Order!
All of the larger prize packages (i.e., those valued at $50-$250 or more) include domestic shipping to the 48 States of the Continental USA via surface courier. If you live outside of the Continental USA, you can still enter the contests and drawings, but you will have to share in the shipping charges. Any amount above the cost of domestic shipment will be your responsibility. I will post estimated costs to different locations to try to help you decide whether it's worth it for you to enter. PLEASE DO NOT ENTER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO PAY YOUR SHARE OF THE SHIPPING COSTS! You are also responsible for any customs duties or taxes (if applicable). Insurance is not included in ANY shipment, so if you wish to insure your winnings, you have to pay for it yourself.
All rules are subject to change without notice
Sure I am wishing good luck to everybody, but I especially want you to win! Yes, you! Have fun.
SORRY! VOTING IS NOW CLOSED! No new entries are being accepted.
Every year I release a new T-shirt to celebrate my blogiversary. First there was the classic Blogography Logo T. This sublimely elegant piece of apparel is appropriate for even the most important occasions... from your wedding day to an audience with the Queen. Then came the Bad Monkey T. This cheeky statement of artistic vision is perfect for everything from dining with foreign dignitaries to making out with Paris Hilton. But one thing is for certain... no matter which shirt you choose, you're assured of being the best-dressed person in the room.
And now here we are a year later. So what's next?
I dunno. Why don't YOU tell ME?
This year I've got FOUR new Blogography designs, and it's up to YOU to vote for which one gets printed (close-ups of all four designs are in an extended entry)...
And since you are the one making the hard decisions, you're probably asking yourself "what's in it for me?"
Good question! How about this...
Everybody who sends in a vote will receive a valuable $10 OFF coupon to purchase any reguarly-priced shirt from the Artificial Duck store. That means you can pick up a classic white shirt for just $4.95* (+ shipping)... or the new color shirt for just $6.95* (+shipping). And these ain't no crappy iron-on designs... no way! Each shirt is custom silk-screened on premium quality Hanes Beefy-T's for the ultimate in comfort and durability!
BUT THAT'S NOT ALL! Every voter will ALSO be entered in a drawing with TEN chances to win a FREE* T-shirt of your choice... all you pay is the shipping charges!
SORRY! VOTING IS NOW CLOSED! No new entries are being accepted.
It's almost too good to be true! So how do you vote? It's easy!
* Please note that this prize is for sizes S-XL. Larger sizes are available for an extra charge: 2XL is $1.00 extra, 3XL is $2.00 extra. Sizes bigger than 2X are not available in colors, but I'll be happy to print any design on a white shirt: 4XL is $3.00 extra, 5XL is $4.00 extra, 6XL is $5.00 extra.
Alrighty then! Take a look at the choices and get voting (one vote per person please!)...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
TODAYS'S PRIZES: Books valued at over $200!
SORRY! THIS DRAWING IS NOW CLOSED! No new entries are being accepted.
No matter how far technology advances, there is nothing that can quite compare to the old-fashioned experience of sitting down with a good book... you know, those things that have paper pages and require you to turn them to navigate the story?
When I first sat down to create a list of books that I love enough to include in this year's prizes, I quickly had 100 titles without even breaking a sweat. The first thing I did was remove the more obvious ones that people had probably either already read, or had heard of and decided not to read. I then went about choosing more eclectic books that would ensure a varied mix. Lastly, I thought that I would arrange a few surprises to make things interesting. What I ended up with was a pretty gosh-darn good list that I'm really happy with. Hopefully, you'll find something that piques your interest, because they're all worth reading...
Ooooh... and this year there's something REALLY special happening...
Instructions for how to enter this drawing are given in an extended entry, and you had better hurry! In order to enter you MUST enter before 9:00pm PST (Seattle time) TOMORROW (April 20th). Take a look at what you could win:
TODAY'S $150 "READ WITH DAVE" GRAND PRIZE INCLUDES...
AUTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR!!
The Unwritten Girl by James Bow.
An imaginative tale of fantasy for "young adults" that is a great read for "older adults" too. Rosemary must enter the Land of Fiction to save her brother who has, quite literally, become lost in a book! Visit the book's website here, and check out James' blog here. I have written more about The Unwritten Girl here. (Value: $12.99)
AUTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR!!
The Lost Blogs by Paul Davidson.
Long before I had ever heard of Pauly or his highly entertaining blog, I was a big fan of his first book. Now he has a brand new book where he has tirelessly compiled scores of unearthed "lost blogs" of famous historical figures from Jesus to Jim Morrison! Learn more at The Lost Blogs website. (Value: $13.95)
AUTOGRAPHED BY THE AUTHOR!!
Blurred Line by Cavan Terrill.
Cavan's cyberpunk novel Blurred Line, takes place in a 22nd century future where corporations have become governments, the net has become sentient, and androids are carving out their own future... free from the confines of their programming. Visit the Blurred Line website and Cavan's blog. (Value: $9.95)
Blogography T-Shirt.
How could this prize possibly be complete without your choice of one shirt from the Artificial Duck store? Silk-screened by hand on high-quality Hanes Beefy-T shirts, these Blogography-inspired masterpieces are comfortable, durable, and are guaranteed to make you the best-dressed person in the room... Dave not included! (Value: $14.95 to $16.95)
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams.
This bittersweet novel documents celebrated author Douglas Adams as he sets out to see some of the world's most endangered species before they disappear. Sometimes sad, but always amusing, this is an incredibly important book that everybody should read. Includes terrific photos by zooligist Mark Carwardine. Wikipedia has a good article on Last Chance to See here. (Value: $14.95)
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
You'd hardly expect that a story about the end of the world could be funny, but here's proof that any subject can make you laugh in the hands of comedy writer Douglas Adams! I included this book, because I worry most people just watched the movie and are blissfully unaware at how much better the original is. Sometimes books are much better in your head than on the screen. (Value: $7.99)
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson.
I discovered Bill Bryson's work while stuck at an airport. After devouring his A Short History of Nearly Everything, I methodically tracked down and read every one of his books. He's probably the best travel writer I've ever read, and A Walk in the Woods is one of my favorites. Join Bryson as he hikes the length of the Appalachian Trail and laugh your ass off at the hilarity that ensues. (Value: $14.95)
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Thanks to a series of crappy movies and crappier TV shows, most people have no idea how brilliant Tarzan is. All they remember is inane crap like "ME TARZAN, YOU JANE" and think he is some kind of grunting idiot that hangs out in the jungle with a monkey. The truth is shockingly different, and Tarzan of the Apes is a classic that everybody should read to know the true story. (Value: $4.95)
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Edgar Rice Burroughs first story is a stunningly imaginative work that deftly combines elements of sci-fi, adventure, romance, and even a little mystery. Considering it was written in 1912, it was far ahead of its time too. Join Confederate soldier John Carter as he is transported to the planet Mars for the adventure of a lifetime. (Value: $6.50)
Noble House by James Clavell.
My favorite fiction novel ever, I have read Noble House at least a dozen times. Most famous for his book Shogun, Clavell crafts a huge story of contemporary Hong Kong that has a dizzying number of subplots to keep you occupied for hours. Exceedingly deep and complex, this novel has suspense, intrigue, espionage, romance, action and mystery so fascinating that you can't read it just once! (Value: $7.99)
Lightning by Dean Koontz.
Dean Koontz is best-known for his horror novels, which is a real shame... because Lightning gets ignored as "just another horror story" when it is anything but. It is actually a sci-fi time-travel novel with a nifty twist, and one of my favorite Koontz books. Every time I re-read it, I wonder why he doesn't write more sci-fi because he's really good at it! (Value: $7.99)
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
I loathe to have the label "comic book" applied to Watchmen, but that's pretty much what we're stuck with. This definitive graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons imagines what might happen if super-heroes existed in the real world rather than some goofy fictionalized version of it. The result is a breathtaking exploration of what comics could be, but rarely are. (Value: $19.99)
The Mighty Thor: Volume 2 by Walter Simonson.
I don't read comic books much anymore, but still like to pick up a graphic novel from time to time. Most recently, I've been re-reading all those great Thor stories by Walt Simonson, and thought that I would toss one into the mix. Volume 1 is sold out (and I ain't parting with mine!), so I've included a copy of Volume 2, jam-packed with Thunder-God action. (Value: $24.99)
And that's not all! This year you get two other chances to win...
TWO $25 "READ WITH DAVE" RUNNER-UP PRIZES INCLUDE...
Blogography T-Shirt.
How could this prize possibly be complete without your choice of one shirt from the Artificial Duck store? Silk-screened by hand on high-quality Hanes Beefy-T shirts, these Blogography-inspired masterpieces are comfortable, durable, and are guaranteed to make you the best-dressed person in the room. (Value: $14.95 to $16.95).
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Thanks to a series of crappy movies and crappier TV shows, most people have no idea how brilliant Tarzan is. All they remember is inane crap like "ME TARZAN, YOU JANE" and think he is some kind of grunting idiot that hangs out in the jungle with a monkey. The truth is shockingly different, and Tarzan of the Apes is a classic that everybody should read to know the true story. (Value: $4.95)
A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Edgar Rice Burroughs first story is a stunningly imaginative work that deftly combines elements of sci-fi, adventure, romance, and even a little mystery. Considering it was written in 1912, it was far ahead of its time too. Join Confederate soldier John Carter as he is transported to the planet Mars for the adventure of a lifetime. (Value: $6.50)
Now how cool is all that? Brilliant reads enough to keep you busy for months! Better enter now before time runs out...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Response to Blogiversary III has, so far, been very different than I expected. But in a good way. I couldn't be happier, so thanks everybody!
IMPORTANT!: Leaving a comment does NOT enter you in any of the contests! You MUST send an email as mentioned in the entry instructions!
Anyway, I thought maybe a hundred people would vote for T-shirts... on the outside. I get large numbers of "unique visitors" to my home page on a daily basis, but only a small fraction of them leave comments or participate in Blogography stuff in any way. Well, this morning I awoke to a total which is rapidly approaching 300. If everybody who voted turns in their $10 coupon for a shirt, that's $3000 I've given away right there! Well, not really... I'd crap myself if I had to pay out $3000 in cash... it's far less than that, but still a very surprising response. I am most pleased!
And yes, the "Zombies Ate My Brain" shirt is ahead in the voting by a fairly large margin. But, given the unexpected response, I might not wait a full year before offering another design. I guess I'll wait and see how many people actually end up turning in their coupon and getting a shirt.
The "READ with DAVE" giveaway reaction has been strange indeed. I created a quiz for everybody who hasn't left 10 comments and made it a requirement to enter the drawing. This was meant to reward those who contribute to my blog by allowing them to enter without the hassle. But here's the thing... most everyone (and I'm talking 80% or better) who isn't required to take the quiz is doing it anyway! Apparently, searching through my blog for answers to simple questions is big fun, and I wasn't expecting that. Yet only 72 people have entered. Part of the reason is because international readers don't want to pay shipping charges on a heavy box of books, but I think there is a fair amount of people who aren't entering simply because they don't want to take five minutes and search for quiz answers. Yet those who don't have to do it are doing it anyway? Interesting.
I get a lot of people who are writing notes to me in their email entries, and questioning whether or not I read them. The answer is yes... I read every single email entry I get! But with 350+ to sort through, I'm a bit behind just now. :-)
See you in an hour with today's new prize giveaway!
TODAYS'S PRIZES: $200 worth of music (and stuff)!
SORRY! THIS DRAWING IS NOW CLOSED! No new entries are being accepted.
Coming up with a music prize is a very difficult thing to do. First of all, everybody has wildly different tastes. It's impossible to come up with a single solution that's going to make everybody happy. Second of all, if somebody likes a band, they're bound to have all their stuff already. So the challenge is to come up with something that isn't going to be too out of the mainstream, yet unique enough that people don't already own it. In the end, I simply selected stuff I like that I think can appeal to the widest audience without being too generic. Instructions for entering are in an extended entry.
And just in case the dumbasses at the RIAA are listening, these are all brand new CDs... I don't steal music...
Blogography T-Shirt.
How could I possibly create any prize without including a rockin' Blogography T-shirt from the Artificial Duck Store? Lovingly silk-screened by hand on high-quality Hanes Beefy-T shirts, these Blogography-inspired masterpieces are comfortable, durable, and are guaranteed to make you the coolest cat in even the hottest clubs... Liz & Dave not included! (Value: $14.95 to $16.95)
Minor Earth, Major Sky, by a-ha
Anybody who thinks that 80's pop band "a-ha" peaked with their hit Take on Me has absolutely no idea how wrong they are. The band went on to create some stunning albums that were never released in the USA because executives at record labels are dumbasses. Minor Earth, Major Sky is a mature, mellow work tempered with pop sensibility that results in some truly great songs. I get chills whenever such beautiful works as To Let You Win and I Wish I Cared get rotated into my shuffle play. But, to be completely honest, there's not a bad song in the bunch, and I never tire of listening to ANY of it. Who cares if it's a $25 import? Worth every penny! Since I can't give you a link to something THAT DOESN'T EXIST (at least for the American iTunes Music Store), I've put up a small MP3 snippet to whet your appetite: LetYouWin.mp3. (Value $25.49)
Lifelines, by a-ha
This follow-up to Minor Earth, Major Sky would be perfect if not for one of the stupidest songs ever: Oranges on Apple Trees. If you can ignore this one blight on an otherwise superb CD, you're in for a treat. Time & Again is probably one of the most amazing songs I've ever heard, and Turn Down The Lights features a duet with Anneli Drekker that is so achingly beautiful that it sends a chill though me just thinking about it. Again, I would love to point USA readers to a link so you could buy it from the iTMS, but it's not there. Instead, I'm posting small snippets so you can hear a bit of what you're missing: TimeAndAgain.mp3 and TurnDownLights.mp3. (Value $15.49)
The Shore, by The Shore
When I decided to do a "music day" for Blogiversary III, my first idea was to contact the management for The Shore and see if I could get a deal on 50 copies of their debut CD for prizes. But I didn't have enough time, and so I had to be content with including a copy of this brilliant work in the "LISTEN with DAVE" Grand Prize. Seriously though, I have no idea why this band isn't a mega-huge, chart-topping smash. They have a "classic rock" vibe to their music, and seem to be very much influenced by more modern bands like Coldplay and Oasis. I'd try to pick a favorite track but, with the exception of "Firefly" which is kind of a mess, I love them all equally. Even if you don't win this prize package, you should do yourself a favor and check out The Shore. If you are an iTunes user, here's a link for The Shote on the iTMS. (Value $11.99)
Title of Record, by Filter
As any fan of Nine Inch Nails can tell you, there ain't no substitute for the real thing. Unfortunately, this leaves us high and dry while waiting for "major" new releases (it took SIX YEARS between The Fragile and With Teeth!). The auxiliary releases around each new album help, but it's the cohesive albums I like best. In some respects, this doesn't bother me, because I'd rather have a few awesome albums and a single here and there instead of frequent releases of crap. But it is a bit frustrating, and I'm always looking for something to fill the void. Of all the wannabes, Filter is my favorite (possibly because member Richard Patrick is a former member of the touring band). This second album is more of a departure from the Nine Inch Nails sound than the first, but the remaining influences are great. For those looking for lighter fare, Title of Record has a couple of mellow tracks (including the haunting Take a Picture). If you have iTunes, have a listen at the iTMS. (Value $11.99)
Ultra, by Depeche Mode
Depeche Mode is one of those bands that I love so deeply that I fully admit to being biased toward liking most anything they do. But when it comes to Ultra, I don't have to put blinders on to appreciate it. This is, simply put, one of the best albums ever made, yet is somehow completely overlooked (even by Depeche Mode fans). Surprisingly, all this magic happened without musical genius Alan Wilder, who left DM after their mega-smash Violator album. Ultra is a very deep experience that is much darker and intense than previous efforts. My favorite song is probably Insight, but I loathe to choose just one. If you are an iTunes user, here's a link to this album on the iTMS. (Value $11.99)
Dive, by Sarah Brightman
Whenever Celine Dion is praised for her vocal stylings, I laugh my ass off thinking of how she positively pales in comparison to Sara Brightman. Sure Celine was pretty good back before she started whoring herself out in Vegas, but she hasn't really broken any new ground in over a decade. Sarah Brightman, on the other hand, is a stage performer who is legendary for belting out sensual vocals in such plays as "The Phantom of the Opera", yet has an eerie ability to subdue herself to an almost ethereal presence when required. It doesn't hurt that she's scorching hot on top of it all. Dive (released in 1993) is a successful attempt to cross over into more pop-oriented themes, and remains a favorite of mine when I want to mellow out. If you've got iTunes, here's a link to the album on the iTMS (if you go, be sure to check out her cover of Queen's Who Wants to Live Forever and, for a really good laugh, take a listen to her version of Don't Cry Argentina and marvel how Madonna ever had the balls to even attempt it). (Value $11.99)
Greatest Hits, by the Psychedelic Furs
This is one of those "one hit wonders" who never achieved wide-spread success outside of one major hit (Pretty in Pink). This is quite a shame, because there was some great stuff in their back-catalog, and they then went on to do some even more brilliant music. My iPod has such minor hits as Love My Way, Heaven, The Ghost In You, Heartbreak Beat, and Until She Comes in heavy rotation, and dearly wish that The Furs would come out with a new album. (Value $11.99)
And, just in case you aren't lucky enough to nab the "big prize", there's two other chances to win...
TWO $40 "LISTEN WITH DAVE" RUNNER-UP PRIZES INCLUDE...
Blogography T-Shirt.
How could I possibly create any prize without including a rockin' Blogography T-shirt from the Artificial Duck Store? Lovingly silk-screened by hand on high-quality Hanes Beefy-T shirts, these Blogography-inspired masterpieces are comfortable, durable, and are guaranteed to make you the coolest cat in even the hottest clubs... Dave not included! (Value: $14.95 to $16.95)
Minor Earth, Major Sky, by a-ha
Anybody who thinks that 80's pop band "a-ha" peaked with their hit Take on Me has absolutely no idea how wrong they are. The band went on to create some stunning albums that were never released in the USA because executives at record labels are dumbasses. Minor Earth, Major Sky is a mature work tempered with pop sensibility that results in some truly great songs. I get chills whenever such beautiful works as To Let You Win and I Wish I Cared get rotated into my shuffle play. But, to be completely honest, there's not a bad song in the bunch, and I never tire of listening to ANY of it. Who cares if it's a $25 import? Worth every penny! Since I can't give you a link to something THAT DOESN'T EXIST (at least for the American iTunes Music Store), I've put up a few MP3 snippets to whet your appetite: ToLetYouWin.mp3 and IWishICared.mp3. (Value $25.49)
And there you have it, enough music to put a dent in your iPod! Better get that entry in quickly...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
TODAYS'S PRIZES: $290 worth of DVDs (and stuff)!
SORRY! THIS DRAWING IS NOW CLOSED! No new entries are being accepted.
Coming up with prizes for a blogiversary celebration is a difficult task. Not only do you run the risk of picking out stuff that people don't want, but you have to make your prize world-friendly. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. Last year I did a food entry, and found out export of food items is prohibited to many countries. Books are heavy, so shipping is expensive. And when it comes to videos... well, that's the toughest of all. DVDs are "region encoded", which mean that they don't play outside of the area you bought them. Last year, I thought I would fix this by including both a DVD and a VHS videotape for each movie. Little did I know, this was even more stupid, because video formats are different around the world too. Apparently there's no real solution.So unfortunately, if you live outside of "Region 1" (the USA and Canada), you won't be able to watch any of today's prize-winning DVDs unless you have a "region-free" DVD player. Sorry, but there doesn't seem to be anything I can do about it. Please keep all this in mind if you live outside the USA and Canada and decide to enter. Though, I must say, this collection of brilliant video may well be worth tracking down a region-free player to watch...
Sweet! And away we go...
TODAY'S $200 "WATCH WITH DAVE" GRAND PRIZE INCLUDES...
Blogography T-Shirt
Even the best movie or television show pales in comparison to how cool you are when wearing a sweet Blogography T-shirt! Artfully silk-screened by hand on high-quality Hanes Beefy-T shirts, these Blogography-inspired masterpieces are comfortable, durable, and are guaranteed to make you the best-dressed person in the room... Dave not included! (Value: $14.95 to $16.95)
Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season
Yeah, big surprise considering I feel Veronica Mars is the best show on television. Period. The only show I've ever enjoyed more was another Rob Thomas creation, Jeremy Piven's Cupid. And to think I almost passed it up because I had thought it was going to be yet another high school drama crapfest. But NOOOOoooo! Veronica Mars is smart, funny, brilliant television with the best mysteries of any show yet seen. Veronica is a typical student at uber-posh Neptune High, until the murder of her best friend turns her world upside down. Now she helps her father run a private investigation office, all while helping her friends at school, and always trying to solve the biggest mystery of all: who killed Lilly Kane? Every episode is a piece of a bigger puzzle, with the ultimate solution so good that you'll be compelled to watch every episode all over again top spot the clues you missed. Highest possible recommendation. (Value: $49.95)
Wonderfalls: The Complete Series
As if to prove that ABC isn't the only television network that can destroy a brilliant television show with incompetent scheduling and marketing... FOX decided to screw one of the freshest, most interesting show they've ever had: Wonderfalls. Jaye Tyler is uninspired and going nowhere in life. She passes her time by working in a gift shop at Niagara Falls and avoiding meaningful interaction with people at all costs. But when inanimate objects start speaking to her, she's forced to get involved with not only her family, but complete strangers as well. Featuring funny, biting humor that's anchored by an amazing cast, Wonderfalls is must-see television that very few people got to see. (Value $39.95)
South Park: The Complete Second Season
South Park is one of those shows you either love or hate. You either appreciate it as some of the smartest, guttiest, satire of pop culture ever created... or condemn it as a crappily-animated cartoon with four foul-mouthed kids that should be banned from the air. Me? I love it for both reasons! The second season of South Park is probably one of my most favorite, mostly because it contains an episode devoted entirely to Terrance & Philip, who are probably my favorite animated characters ever. Sure this isn't a show for everybody, but if you can get past the potty humor, foul language, and sometimes disgusting antics... it remains brilliant commentary on just about everything going on in the world today. (Value: $49.95)
Cinema Paradiso: The Director's Expanded Edition
I can't stand romance movies. They're all so lame and cliched... with sappy dialogue and often totally unrealistic premises. Only rarely do I ever see a romance film that's worth a crap, and most of the time it's because they have something else to offer. And most of those films are foreign (Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon being excellent examples). And so we come to Cinema Paradiso. This film tells the story of Toto, a young boy growing up in a small village in war-torn Italy. With his father gone, Toto turns to the projectionist at the local theater for guidance. He quickly develops a love for movies, which become the driving passion in his life. But as Toto grows up, he finds that movies don't have all the answers when it comes to love and life. Easily one of my favorite films of all time, Cimena Paradiso is a rare movie romance that works on every possible level. The DVD contains TWO versions of the film... the original, and an extended version that has a revelation so shocking that it completely changes the meaning of the movie. I recommend watching the original (shorter) edit first, because it would be difficult to feel the same about some of the characters if you watched the extended cut first. (Value: $14.95)
Clerks, The Complete Animated Series: Uncensored
In counting the ways that ABC television has screwed brilliant television shows because of rampant stupidity, the animated Clerks series would occupy at least five spots... probably more. It is well-made, highly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny (basically, everything you want in a cartoon). I had my doubts that a fairly vulgar movie like Clerks could ever be adequately adapted for network television, but Kevin Smith somehow managed to do it, and do it well. At the core of Clerks is two guys stuck in a dead-end job who stopped caring about it long ago... now they're just trying to make it through another day. Hilarity ensues. Watch it now as preparation for Clerks II, coming this summer! (Value: $14.95)
Bedazzled
This movie stars the incomparable Elizabeth Hurley as the Devil. What more do you really need to know? As an added bonus, this is actually a really good film... filled with all the things that make life worth living: Liz being funny, Liz being sexy, Liz being cute, Liz being naughty, and Liz in a bikini. If that weren't enough, there's also a positive life message to wrap it all up. If you haven't seen this movie yet, then I fear for your immortal soul. (Declared Value: $9.95. Actual Value: Priceless)
And, as if that weren't enough, you've got two other chances to win if the Grand Prize eludes you...
TWO $45 "WATCH WITH DAVE" RUNNER-UP PRIZES INCLUDE...
Blogography T-Shirt
Even the best movie or television show pales in comparison to how cool you are when wearing a sweet Blogography T-shirt! Artfully silk-screened by hand on high-quality Hanes Beefy-T shirts, these Blogography-inspired masterpieces are comfortable, durable, and are guaranteed to make you the best-dressed person in the room... Dave not included! (Value: $14.95 to $16.95)
Cinema Paradiso: The Director's Expanded Edition
I can't stand romance movies. They're all so lame and cliched... with sappy dialogue and often totally unrealistic premises. Only rarely do I ever see a romance film that's worth a crap, and most of the time it's because they have something else to offer. And most of those films are foreign (Amelie, A Very Long Engagement, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon being excellent examples). And so we come to Cinema Paradiso. This film tells the story of Toto, a young boy growing up in a small village in war-torn Italy. With his father gone, Toto turns to the projectionist at the local theater for guidance. He quickly develops a love for movies, which become the driving passion in his life. But as Toto grows up, he finds that movies don't have all the answers when it comes to love and life. Easily one of my favorite films of all time, Cimena Paradiso is a rare movie romance that works on every possible level. The DVD contains TWO versions of the film... the original, and an extended version that has a revelation so shocking that it completely changes the meaning of the movie. I recommend watching the original (shorter) edit first, because it would be difficult to feel the same about some of the characters if you watched the extended cut first. (Value: $14.95)
Clerks, The Complete Animated Series: Uncensored
In counting the ways that ABC television has screwed brilliant television shows because of rampant stupidity, the animated Clerks series would occupy at least five spots... probably more. It is well-made, highly entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny (basically, everything you want in a cartoon). I had my doubts that a fairly vulgar movie like Clerks could ever be adequately adapted for network television, but Kevin Smith somehow managed to do it, and do it well. At the core of Clerks is two guys stuck in a dead-end job who stopped caring about it long ago... now their just trying to make it through another day. Hilarity ensues. Watch it now as preparation for Clerks II, coming this summer! (Value: $14.95)
Prizes so good, I almost wish that I could enter this one myself! To see how YOU can enter, read onward...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Want to know the best thing about my Kick-Ass Blogiversary III Celebration? Not the fact that I get to have some fun promoting my favorite books, music, and movies. Not the fact that I get to share cool new T-shirts with Blogography readers (at below-cost, I might add). And certainly not the fact that it's just a way to say "thanks" to everybody who has kept me blogging in the first place. Oh no! The REAL reason that I love it is because of all the wonderful people who have sent me such kind, encouraging emails!
My favorite was from the laughably misnamed chuckle-head "The Real Dave" who wrote to congratulate me on the clever scam I am running to steal email addresses so I can sell them to spammers! Here is my reply...
Dude! you SO got me all figured out! I mean, never mind the THREE YEARS I spent building up a reputation with Blogography... I am all about the scam now! Seriously, do you KNOW how much money that spammers will pay for a fresh email address? Well neither do I, but a quick Google search shows that I can buy 100,000 names for just $20, so I am guessing that I can get TWO WHOLE PENNIES for the hundreds of names I scammed! Wow... and here I thought all those people claiming to make money on the internet were full of shit! Yet here I am making 2¢ in just a week! And just think... another one-thousand-two-hundred-and-sixty-eight years of this, and I can retire! Woohoo!
Since you were the only one brilliant enough to uncover my secret plan, THREE YEARS IN THE MAKING, I feel it's only fair that I share my profits with you. Please forward you address in all haste, and I'll get that penny right out to you!! You sir, are a frickin' GENIUS!!
But that wasn't enough. He wrote back again to tell me "nice try" and that anybody can take pictures of crap from Amazon and claim to have prizes... I'm not showing any REAL merchandise and so this is just a scam. Here is my reply...
OMFG, DUDE! You have just so totally blown the lid off of my Master Plan! Congratulations, because you are the Austin Powers to my Dr. Evil... THERE REALLY IS NO MERCHANDISE! Ha ha ha ha haaaaa! SUCKERS!! Please let me know when you run for president, because you totally have my vote for reals!
So, to everybody who entered, I thought I would just let you know that this was all an elaborate scam before you have to hear it on FOX News or something. I threw away THREE YEARS and sold you all out for 2¢, and it was totally worth it! And, to all of you who haven't entered yet, please continue to send in those emails! Who knows, if enough of you fall for this, I may get a whole 3¢ when this all ends on Saturday!
Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to go listen to my three new a-ha import CDs of Major Earth, Minor Sky... ALL AT THE SAME TIME!! BWAAH HA HA HAAAAH!
This is almost as good as the gal who wrote to tell me she hated my blog and its "nihilistic world view", but then proceeded to enter all the drawings! You rock girl! I so hope that you win!
Sometimes being an evil scamming genius is SO rewarding!
UPDATE: This just in from the peanut gallery: "I'm famous! In the interest of fairness you should tell your readers that I asked if you were selling email addresses to spammers. Asking is different than accusing. - The Real Dave". Touche my suspicious new best friend. Touche. And the answer is "yes!" Yes I AM selling email addresses to spammers... starting with yours. Those penis enlargement emails should start arriving any day now...
Today is the penultimate day of Blogiversary III Celebration week! And while I wait for 9:00pm to arrive, I am taking my life in my own hands by defying a goddess.
This is not an easy thing to do, especially considering that the goddess in this instance is the charming, talented, and scorching hot Liz, who I love more than Coke with Lime (and if you've been reading Blogography for any length of time, you know that's quite a lot). Today on Everyday Goddess, Liz takes issue with people who do not properly enclose punctuation within quote marks:
Witness The Horror:
He likes to call it "the muff".
Now what, WHAT, is going on with that period? See how sad and lonely? See how ridiculous and downright FLOATING-OUT-IN-THE-MIDDLE-OF-NOWHERE it looks?
You can read the whole story here, and I agree that she is 100% correct. Every rule book tells you that periods and commas should be enclosed within the quotes just as she says. It drives me crazy too.
But, alas, I refuse.
At least I do when I am writing for the web.
When I am writing for PRINT, where letter forms are spaced properly, and I am in control of kerning, tracking, and leading, then I do indeed follow the proper grammatical rules. Because in print, I know that it will turn out looking as it should...
See that? See the beautiful way that the the end-quote floats ABOVE the period in that sentence? She how wonderful it is that you can understand perfectly that the quote is a part of the text? But look at what we get when we try the same thing on the web...
AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! That end-quote might as well be in another Zip code! By the time I finally get to it FLOATING WAY OVER THERE, I've forgotten that it even went with the sentence that preceded it! In fact, it is SO removed from things that, to me at least, it looks as though you are starting a NEW quote!!
That drives me even MORE insane than doing it the wrong way...
Ah! There we go! The quote is actually next to the text as it should be, and all is right with the world!
So, until typography on the web moves out of the stone age, I will continue to violate the rules because it looks better to me. And also because a very wise person told me THERE ARE NO RULES IN BLOGGING.
And, with this in mind, I do a lot of things I shouldn't. Like using boatloads of unnecessary ellipses everywhere (those are the "..." dots you see way too much here). And not omitting the final comma in a list. And starting sentences with prepositions. And using run-on sentences for dramatic effect. And dozens of other things I do wrong so as to express myself as I want.
So my sincerest apologies to Liz, because I love her more than buttered toast (and if you've been reading Blogography for any length of time, you know that's quite a lot) but I remain in defiance of a rule that makes my blog look yucky.
(But I do work hard to not confuse "their" with "they're" and "your" with "you're" because that crap drives me nuts!)
Woo hoo! Alrighty then. It is now 9:00pm PST, which means all Blogiversary III contests are now closed for entries. Many thanks to everybody who entered this week, and thanks again for helping to make this blogiversary celebration the best yet!
So what happens now?
Well, since I strive for fairness in the drawings, I won't be doing anything except printing out a complete list of everybody who entered each contest and handing it over to an impartial third party to pick the names out of a hat. I'll then record each name and work up a winner's list that will be posted tomorrow afternoon.
Best of luck everybody!
Oh, and for those of you who are curious to know the answers to all of the quizzes, I've put them into an extended entry (along with where to find them)... → Click here to continue reading this entry...
TIME TO CELEBRATE! Okay then, all the contests for the Blogiversary III Kick-Ass Online Celebration have been closed. Thanks again to everybody who participated!
YOU ARE A WINNER! Anybody who voted or entered in a competition will get $10 off any regularly-priced T-shirts from the Artificial Duck Store (shipping not included) so, when you look at it that way, everybody wins!
Okay... here I go... when I return, I'll have a list of the winners!
And I'm back! Congratulations to everybody who nabbed a prize! I tried to use commenter names, where they exist (and if I could find them), but all winners will be receiving an email confirmation later today in case there is any confusion.
READ with DAVE!
LISTEN with DAVE!
WATCH with DAVE!
STYLIN' with DAVE
The following ten winners get a FREE T-shirt (not including shipping charges) from the Artificial Duck Store...
And the T-shirt which got the most votes? Yeah, it ended up being "Zombies Ate My Brain" by quite a margin...
From the surprising number of voters who turned out, every design actually got enough votes to be printed... even for just a limited edition run (which I could offer at discount). Depending on how many people respond to the $10 OFF deal, I may end up having other designs printed too.
HOW WINNERS WERE SELECTED: A list of everybody who entered each contest was printed out on little cards. These cards were cut apart, dropped into a plastic bucket, and shaken thoroughly. I then had somebody who has absolutely no association with Blogography draw names. This was repeated for each contest. After the READ, LISTEN, and WATCH prize winners had been drawn, their names were removed from the T-shirt drawing to maximize the number of winners we get (no need to be greedy, since they've already won a T-shirt anyway!).
I'M A WINNER! NOW WHAT? Your winning entry will be confirmed via email with instructions on how to claim your prize. The new shirts will not be printed until mid-May, so prizes will be shipped after that time. Those receiving a $10 OFF coupon will be receiving a confirming email when the Artificial Duck Store re-opens on Wednesday so they can pre-order their shirt choice.
THAT'S A WRAP! Though the original idea was to come up with $1000 in prizes to give away, response to the T-shirt vote exceeded my wildest dreams. If everybody who voted claims their $10 OFF Coupon, the prizes given away this year end up totaling just over $4000. I cannot imagine what will happen for Blogiversary IV. One thing I am considering for next year is having more smaller prizes instead of putting so much money into the Grand Prizes. This way, more people would win... but the down-side is that my shipping costs would increase by quite a lot. Hmmm... something to think about over the next year!
Thanks again everybody!
As great as Blogiversary III has been, I am secretly relieved that it is all over. Usually a blog entry only takes about 10 minutes for me to write up (20-25 at the most if I decided to draw a cartoon), but the past two weeks of "Lost Bloging" and "Blogiversary" antics have taken HOURS out of every day that I am very glad to have back. After all, I've got a box full of Batman Lego that's not going to put itself together.
Drawing this year's prize winners was more painful than last time. I consider many of those who entered to be my friends, and it kills me that everybody can't win something fantastic. I guess that's why I don't have the guts to draw the names myself, and have to get somebody else to do it. I am such a weenie. I need to either stop caring, or become a billionaire. Anyway, thanks to everybody for their kind words... win or lose.
And now for the thing you've all been waiting for since seeing the title of this entry. It's time for porn!
Well, kind of...
Every once in a while I get some kind of porn catalog in my mailbox. I think I owe this to Bad Robert, who signed me up for something a year ago as a joke. Its an automatic habit to toss this stuff in the garbage, because once you've seen one porn catalog you've pretty much seen them all. So this weekend while I was sorting through my mail, I ran across a Priority Mail envelope with porn stuff inside and tossed it. But after I had thrown it away, I noticed that something was different. A second look showed me that it was NOT a porn catalog.
It was a job offer.
And, before you let your mind wander off in a totally wrong direction, let me clarify that.
It was NOT an offer for me to appear in porn. Sure I have a great ass, but I don't think anybody would want to see me in anything porn-related. No, it was a job offer to do some graphic design work for a porn company. A guy I used to work with had forwarded it to me to see if I was interested.
And if I wasn't so totally backlogged, I would seriously consider it.
But even though I decided I couldn't take the job, I did decide to take a look through the promotion kit. And it was then that I noticed something entirely shocking... women are not the only ones who are practicing "nether-region landscaping". Apparently male porn stars are now enamored with the idea of shaving everything down to a 1-inch square. Like a penis soul-patch or something.
That's some bizarre shit right there.
Yet another compelling reason to stick to more "porn-efficient" all-lesbian action, I suppose.
And, in a segue I never thought I'd be making... we go from porn to Betty White erotica.
Well, kind of...
Family Guy had a brilliant appearance by Betty last night. Once again, she totally kicked ass and stole the show. Whoever thought to cast her as the "books on tape" reader for Peter's erotic novel is a genius. I maintain that Betty White should make guest appearances on ALL television shows. And can somebody tell me why Disney/Pixar hasn't cast her as the voice of a cartoon character yet? Betty rules...
Welcome to Peterotica on tape! I'm Betty White reading The Hot Chick Who Was Italian, or maybe Some Kind of Spanish by Peter Griffin. Chapter One: "Oh God you should have seen this one hot chick. She was totally Italian. Or maybe some kind of Spanish...."
Along the way, we also find out that Stewie is a Mac user, and are treated to an appearance by the pre-penis-weilding Kool-Aid man. I love that show.
This morning I got a phone call from a fellow designer who wanted advice on how to best run a straight pattern around the edge of a circle. There are many ways to approach this challenge, but I told her my favorite way is to dice the design into pieces and turn the pieces into a font. Then you simply type the pieces around a circle. It's a lot of work, but it gives you the most flexibility.
After thanking me for the help, the conversation took a curious turn...
Samantha: So what are you going to do for CSS Reboot this year?
Dave: Uhhh... what's that?
Sam: It's a redesign for you web site using web standards.
Dave: Ah, well my blog is already standards-based.
Sammy: Yeah, but you've had the same design forever. Don't you want to try something new?
Dave: Not really.
Sam-O: Well that's disappointing.
And I suppose that deep down it's disappointing to me too. With the exception of adding rotating cartoon headers, changing the background to black, and adding tabs... the design for Blogography is pretty much the same as it's always been...
But here's the problem... I like it exactly how it is now. It's clean, simple, and allows the content to have prominence. About the only thing I would change would be to add "MaxWidth" to prevent everything from getting too spread out on really wide displays. But Internet Explorer doesn't handle it properly, so I guess there's nothing to be done.
So, to everybody who is bored with my design, I'm sorry to report that I won't be changing it any time soon.
Doesn't everybody read their blogs via web feed anyway?
Whenever I write about some of the freakier Blogography emails I get here, I'm assured of some blogger leaving a comment that says something like this: "at least people pay attention to what you say... I'd kill to get hate mail or ANY mail out of my blog". I then chuckle softly to myself knowing that they would feel quite differently if they actually had to put up with some of the crap I get.
As an example...
In an entry for last year, I had mentioned a "sex switch" (as in GENDER, you perv!) Halloween party from years ago where I dressed up as Wonder Woman. It was big fun and I put a lot of work into getting the costume right. In the comments I had mentioned that I didn't have any pictures of it, but feared that a friend might have taken photos and would post them on the internet some day. Shortly after that, a friend who reads my blog DID manage to track down a drunken pic of Wonder-Dave and emailed it to me. I got a laugh out of it, then filed it away so there will be something interesting to show at my funeral.
But then I get an email from some guy on Friday who said he was trying to build a Wonder Woman costume and wanted to know if I ever found pictures, because he'd like to see how I managed it. I wrote back and said that while I did have a photo, I'm afraid I won't be sending it, because it's personal and I don't want it posted to a pervy website or anything.
The next day I get a reply where he assures me that he won't share the pic, and he really would appreciate it if I could send it to him. I wrote back and politely declined, saying that I wouldn't give it to some of my closest friends, let alone somebody I've never met.
Saturday night I get yet another email. This time the tone is much different. He's hostile now, and wants to know why I won't trust him. Then, as if to encourage me, he attaches some pictures of himself in various costumes... some of which I cannot even begin to describe without inviting search engine hits I really don't want. Suffice to say that this guy likes to dress up as famous women, and looks really good as Cher.
I'm kind of scared now. There is no way I am sending the photo, and yet I really would like to diffuse the situation, so I draw up a cartoon for him and say "sorry, but this is the only photo I'll be sending"...
I didn't hear anything on Sunday, and thought that it was over.
I was wrong.
This morning I get this ranting email about how I am a judgmental prick. How I am a close-minded idiot who can't accept other people. Yadda yadda yadda. After reading it, I came to the conclusion that it takes a pretty big dumbass to think this of me just because I won't share a personal photo, and deleted it. I won't even bother to open anything else that arrives from him.
So yeah, I like getting comments and emails from my readers. Always have. But when things like this happen, I have to question my sanity in having a blog at all. The more things I write about and the larger my archives grow, the more search engines are going to set me up for freaky-ass search results. Then even more crap like this is going to happen.
I guess what I'm trying to say is be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.
On the up-side... doesn't cartoon Dave look FABULOUS dressed up as Wonder Woman?
Oh look! It's a trio of things that bug the crap out of me!
Captcha!
I love getting comments on my blog. I can only assume that other bloggers like getting comments too, so I try to leave them when I can. Unfortunately, given my time constraints, it isn't as often as I'd like. For every comment I leave, that's time I could have spent reading other blogs. On top of that, it seems that comments are getting more and more time consuming to write thanks to "captchas"...
Captchas are those goofy little code blocks you have to decipher in order to leave comments on so many blogs now-a-days. They are supposed to foil spammers, but they keep getting longer and more complicated, so they are foiling me too. It sucks, but whatcha gonna do? I'm thinking of initiating my own captcha system for Blogography comments. But I'm not settling for today's technology. I've developed my own Super-Captcha of The Future...
Oh yeah! Suck on that spammer bitches!
A pity captchas bug this crap out of me, because mine is sweet.
Hillary!
I don't really care for Hillary Clinton. Never have. Her politics and position on issues never seems to quite mesh with mine. I'm particularly against her censorship-driven stance against all forms of violence in media... from video games to television. It's not the job of society to babysit other people's kids. If I want to run around shooting fake people in my Xbox to keep me from going out and shooting real people with a gun, it's none of your f#@%ing business.
But then she goes and drafts a brilliant bit of legislation which binds Congressional pay rates to the National minimum wage index. This means that dip-shit politicians can't keep voting themselves pay raises again and again and again, while people trying to survive on minimum wage get shafted. Any raise in Congressional pay has to be matched with an equal percentage raise in minimum wage! Sweet. I'm for anything that limits Congressional idiots from rewarding themselves with pay raises they DON'T deserve.
It bugs the crap out of me that I am actually admiring Hillary Clinton for something, but this would be it.
Repetition!
If there's one thing I absolutely loathe about television shows, it's repetition. Characters who do not develop or grow in-between episodes. Situations that never change. Plots that are recycled over and over and over again. Why should I bother to tune in if it's just going to be the same shit I've already seen?
The show Medium is a classic example. EVERY EPISODE Allison has a psychic vision about something in her sleep. She then tells her husband who gets cranky and tries to blow it off as "just a dream". She then tells her boss who dismisses it outright. And then she gets dismissed by the detective guy too. Never mind that her dreams are right on the money EVERY F#@%ING TIME!! Seriously, WTF?!? You've seen first-hand that the bitch is a serious psychic... like what... A HUNDRED TIMES NOW?? At what point are you going to stop dismissing her or questioning her and just ACCEPT THAT THE STUFF SHE SAYS IS FOR REAL?!? How stupid are you morons?
STUPID. STUPID. STUPID!! If it weren't for the constant disbelief by people WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER, the series would be great. Great characters, terrific stories, decent acting... get rid of the blatant stupidity, and it's actually worth watching.
The fact that I continue to watch this junk is seriously bugging the crap out of me.
Argh. I guarantee you that I'll have at least another twenty things I can add to the list by lunchtime.
She turned to the man standing just there and opened her mouth as if to speak. Somehow sensing that words would never adequately express the love in her heart, she gently laid her head upon his shoulder and began to weep. Holding the woman tightly as night descended upon them, the man comforted her as best he could. They were alone now. The tourist crowds had long since departed into the sunset, ill-prepared for the chill that spread through the air like a ghost. Though the woman's legs were weakened by her desire, his arms held her strong. Savoring this perfect moment, she knew then that she would never fall. Never ever ever fall again. And just as she was beginning to hope that the moment would never end, the man let loose with a mighty fart, the reverberations echoing cleanly in the crisp night. He instinctively looked around for a dog to blame but, alas, there was none to be found. The spell broken, they drift apart now, only their fingertips touching as they walk away into darkness.
Ahem.
Yeah, sometimes I have no idea either.
The entirety of my Sunday evening was spent trying to assemble a T-shirt order for everybody who won or purchased them. After six hours getting everything straightened out, it somehow all came together in a massive pile of PayPal receipts and emails...
My task was made considerably more difficult in that nearly one-third of the orders never resulted in a PayPal email notification, so I had to go back through all the orders again to make sure my count was correct.
The GOOD news is that I am finally finished now, and my shirt order has been sent in. I am hopeful that the distributor has everything in stock so I can ship everything out by the end of the month (I am getting tired of all those CDs, books, and DVDs cluttering up my dinner table). I promise to send out an email once I have a date to share.
There has got to be a better way to do this next time. Order counts were quadrupled from last year, and I was taken completely by surprise at the amount of work it was going to be. Heaven only knows how many trips to the post office I'm going to have to make once the shirts arrive.
And I do it all for you, dear reader. All for you.
All the web is abuzz with the news that O'Reilly has decided to trademark "Web 2.0" for their exclusive use for conferences and such. This has pissed off some people. Well, actually it's pissed off just about everybody. To be honest, I can't really blame them. This is a generic term that has no business what-so-ever being trademarked and, if it is approved, just goes to show how terribly f#@%ed up our trademark system is.
Don't tell anybody, but I am secretly hoping that O'Reilly gets the registration.
And why is that?
Let me tell you why...
I f#@%ing hate the asinine term "Web 2.0"... HATE IT!! I refuse to use it. And the quickest way to kill off this stupid shit is to piss everybody off so badly that they won't want to use it either. Having the trademark approved is the best thing that could possibly happen.
Every time I hear somebody mention "Web 2.0" I want to punch them in the face. It's one of those things that only has meaning if somebody is trying to sell you something... in reality, it has zero relevance to the ever-evolving web. It's like trying to draw a line in the sand to mark the tide. It doesn't work. The waves come in. The waves go out. Your line is slowly eaten away as the tide does whatever it's going to do.
Much like the internet.
When I started with the World Wide Web it was text only. About as extravagant as you could get to dress up your website was to add the "blink" tag. THAT was "Web 1.0". So you could say that "Web 2.0" was adding TABLES to the web. Or was Web 2.0 adding IMAGES to the web? Flash? Javascript? CSS? By my count, we're up to like "Web 27.2" now. Applying numbers is just plain stupid.
So let O'Reilly have it to sell their books and conferences. That's about all it's good for anyway.
How is it that you can spend an entire evening with complete strangers, yet be chatting away as if you were old friends immediately after sitting to the table? A meet-up with your fellow bloggers, that's how!
Truth to tell, there's really no way of knowing how something like this is going to go down. Blogs can only tell you so much about a person, and there's no way of knowing what they are like in "real-life" until you meet face-to-face. And then you run the risk that the bloggers you meet will be totally psychotic, and everybody will end up fighting and screaming. Fortunately, I was the only psychotic person there, and nobody seemed to notice.
As it ends up, everybody had a really good time. At least I know I did. A nicer bunch of people you'll never meet, and now I have some new blogging friends to read (not to mention an awesome new pizza to look for: MASHED POTATO PIZZA!). All in all, it was a great night, and has me wishing I could meet up with my readers and fellow-bloggers more often.
Super-Best-Friend Bloggers Roll Call...
The evening started out with really good pizza at Piece...
And ended with mango mojitos at a tequila bar called Salud...
Though I think Bob is contemplating the "world's worst wine" there, and I have no idea what lethal red concoction Jen is drinking. Out of all of us, Gary is the only one who actually had one of Salud's famous margaritas. Probably because "Mango Mojito" just sounds too tempting (and is fun to say).
Thanks to everybody who attended for a terrific night out!
Because I've been busy with work and processing T-shirt orders, I'm running behind in my email replies and haven't had much time to respond to my comments (though, rest assured, I treasure each and every one I get, and DO read all of them when I approve them). But the other day I got an email which kind of bothered me, and I thought I'd put it out there before I lose any sleep over it.
Basically, this guy told me that my blog isn't very funny, and if I want to write a humor blog that I should try writing more amusing entries.
This really puzzled me because at no point have I ever claimed that Blogography is a "humor blog". I write what I write. Sometimes funny things happen to me, so people might think of this site as being humorous from time to time... but I don't sit down and think "I'm going to be funny" when I write.
So I wrote back to the guy and asked him what the deal was. Turns out I am up for some kind of "humorous blog" award, and so he showed up here on a day when I was ranting about Windows Vista and couldn't find the funny he was looking for.
I've been up for awards before (and have even won some) I just never talk about it here, because I don't blog to enter contests or win awards. This doesn't make me ungrateful... I am really honored that anybody finds Blogography entertaining enough for something like that... it's just not something I want to spend my time thinking about.
But, since people are going to come here expecting something funny now, I thought I had better not disappoint them. Unfortunately, nothing humorous has happened to me lately.
Except this dream I keep having which is kind of funny...
You know that dream when you are walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City eating a banana and suddenly you realize that you're totally naked and you've grown to giant size? And then you notice that the entire city is populated by monkeys who are all screaming and running away from you? And for some reason the sky has turned all green with pink clouds and you are walking on water, but it's not really water because it's solid? Yeah, that's the one...
Anyway, when I have that dream, it doesn't end the normal way where the monkeys start dancing around singing Madonna's "Holiday"... oh no... for me it's totally different.
For me, the monkeys all of a sudden decide to attack with purple lightsabers like the one Samuel L. Jackson uses in those awful Star Wars prequel movies. But just as they are about to slice you up and steal your banana, A giant Elizabeth Hurley head appears in a beautiful white light! And then little sparkles shoot out from her glorious aura and magically give you laser vision (which is kind of like Superman's heat vision). So now you can zap the filthy little monkeys before they eat your banana...
Then, just as the last monkey disappears, you suddenly find yourself floating up into outer-space! But then the planets and stars turn into giant gum-balls that bounce around you. And since you really like gum, you try to reach out and take a bite, but you can never seem to touch them... they're always just out of reach....
And just as you become frustrated at your lack of gum-based chewing satisfaction, you wake up still holding the banana from your dream. But instead of being alone there is a crack-whore laying next to you that looks suspiciously like Ann Coulter. And then, just before you can start screaming because Ann Coulter is in your bed, you look again and it's not Ann Coulter after all... but a horse's head! Just like in The Godfather! But it isn't a severed head from a dead racehorse, it's a LIVE horse...
And wait for it... HERE'S THE FUNNY BIT... the horse turns to you and says "can I have a bite of your banana?"
And then you realize that you DIDN'T wake up, but you were STILL DREAMING!!
HA HA HA HAAAAAA! THE HORSE WANTS A BITE OF YOUR BANANA!! Isn't that totally the funniest thing you've ever heard?!? I slay me!!
Whoa! I should try to be funny in my blog more often!
I was going to wait until everything was ready before I said anything... but once I put a picture of my little buttons up on Friday, I've been getting emails and comments from people wanting them.
Well, soon enough you will be able to get them.
The idea for buttons came up months ago during the T-shirt voting for Blogiversary III. There were people who were passionate about one design or another, and I felt bad that not everybody was going to get their first choice. I then had an idea that no matter which design won, I'd make little pin-back buttons of ALL the designs and include them with the winning shirt design (which ended up being "Zombies Ate My Brain").
Simple, right?
Not so much. I thought the stupid little things would cost me a nickel or something (since I would be ordering hundreds of them in bulk)... turns out they would cost anywhere from fifty cents to a dollar each! And since I certainly couldn't afford that kind of money, I abandoned the idea. But then my friend Meagan came to the rescue. After explaining my problem, she devised a way to make the buttons for about 25 cents each... far closer to my budget.
So I designed the T-shirt buttons.
But then I found I couldn't stop drawing buttons.
After a week of goofing off, I had over 200 designs, and I wanted to make ALL of them into buttons...
So then I came up with the idea to sell little 1-inch buttons on my website.
But, just like the T-shirts, I wanted them to be cheap so people could afford them. This ruled out CafePress and many of the online shops I looked at, because they would end up selling for $1.25... EACH!! (which meant that even with my profit set to zero, they would end up at almost $2.00 once shipping was added!). This may be fine when you get to design your own... but for a pre-made button?!? Rip-off. There was no way I would pay that, and I didn't expect anybody else to have to do it either.
And then there was the problem of filling the orders. The T-shirt fiasco where people had to wait TWO MONTHS for their order is just not acceptable. My busy life can't get in the way of people getting their buttons in a timely manner. So this meant I not only had to find a way of having cheap buttons made... but I also had to find somebody who would ship them as well.
And then I became worried that my designs wouldn't look good when reduced to 1-inch.
So, after a long brainstorming session with Meagan, we came up with a plan. First I sent in a handful of designs to CafePress to see what the buttons would look like. If they looked good, then everything else was in place... We had a place to manufacture them. We had a place to handle the orders. We had a pricing structure that was fair. We even had a cool little button-card worked up to protect the buttons in the mail! Everything was ready to go... IF the print test turned out okay.
Well it did, so now we are getting things ready to go. I am guessing that the store will be online in early July (its hard to tell, because I've got work piled so high it's going to take me a few weeks to get through it).
Once we added up the cost of the buttons, the button card, the fulfillment labor, and all the other expenses, we were pleased to discover that we could price a card of seven buttons for $5.00 (plus whatever the exact shipping charges are) and still make a profit of twenty-two cents per card! Woohoo! So that means even with shipping you should be able to get the buttons for less than a buck each domestically, and only a little over that internationally. Sweet!
Even better, I'm trying to come up with a way to sell bulk-buttons to my fellow bloggers for as cheap as possible. It's a lot of fun having blog-related things to sell or give away, and I think it would be great if everybody had a way to promote their site that isn't super-expensive. Wouldn't it be cool to go to a blogger gathering where everybody could trade buttons? It would be a great way to keep track of the people you've met.
Anyway, to everybody who ordered T-shirts from the Blogiversary III Celebration, you'll be getting a set of all four T-shirt buttons for free (just as I wanted to do in the first place) along with a half-off coupon for your first button-set purchase. Hopefully it will at least partially make up for the long wait you had to endure while the shirts were printed and shipped. Since I am running out of ways to say "sorry" I figure a little gift can't hurt.
So watch this space for further developments, and let me know if you might be interested in getting buttons for promoting your blog (if enough people are interested, we're hoping to get even better pricing).
Alrighty then... back to work.
When asked to describe Blogography, the words most people tend to use are "strange" or "weird". A typical quote I run across is much like this one from Nikki: "kind of odd, but very entertaining". Basically, people find Blogography to be crazy-insane, and often-times don't know what to make of it (even though they may visit regularly). So, despite the fact that I said I would never change my blog to make others happy, it seems kind of rude considering how many people leave nice comments and write me nifty emails.
With that in mind, I've decided to make my blog more like other blogs. That way, maybe visitors will be more comfortable when they visit and won't be all weirded out. But where to start? Perhaps I should cruise random blogs and pick five areas of improvement I can work on? Let's give that a try.
PART ONE: RENTERS!
It seems like most blogs I visit now-a-days have something called "renters". And it doesn't end there... blogs that have renters are forever begging people to click on them.... "Please click on my renter" they say. "Go visit my renter" they plead. "You should click on my renter" they demand. Alrighty then, I'll get me a renter:
My renter is DOOCE because heaven only knows she needs some of my sweet traffic numbers. And she's probably one of the few bloggers that could afford my outrageous rental fees. So please click on my renter. Click it now. Go ahead, just click that little picture. Why are you still reading this when you should be visiting my renter? Hey! Seriously, CLICK MY RENTER! DO IT! DO IT! CLICK IT NOW, BITCH!! CLIIIIIICK MYYYYYYY RENTERRRR!
In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that Dooce isn't really renting anything here. But I like to think that she is. And here's how I fantasize the conversation would go...
DOOCE: (picking up phone) Hello?
DAVE: Hello Heather, this is Dave...
DOOCE: Wait a second... THE Dave? BLOGOGRAPHY DAVE?!?
DAVE: Yep, that's me. I'm going to start renting space on my blog and...
DOOCE: (squeels) OMG! You mean I won't have to entice my child into doing crazy shit so I can attract new readers? I can just pay money to get traffic from Blogography?
DAVE: Sure! And it's bargain-priced at only $10,000 a month!
DOOCE: Sign me up! (covering phone mouthpiece with her hand) JON! JON!! PUT THE BABY DOWN, JON! YOU DON'T NEED TO TELL LETA HOW MUCH FUN IT IS TO STICK PAPERCLIPS IN ELECTRICAL OUTLETS NOW! WE'RE JUST GOING TO RENT SPACE AT BLOGOGRAPHY TO GET MORE TRAFFIC!!
PART TWO: ADS!
I must be one of the last people in the entire blogiverse who has yet to put Google Ads on their site. Much to my surprise, whoring yourself out for Google payola is a quick and painless process which took me all of twenty minutes to apply and be approved for...
Now I can beg for readers to click my renters AND my ads! This is actually good news, because if my bandwidth bills keep going through the roof, I may just have to start putting ads on my blog. It's something I've never wanted, but the monthly shuffle between four different hosting servers to ensure the site keeps running is getting a little old.
PART THREE: TIP JAR!
Speaking of begging, it seems quite a few blogs have tip jars. Though why anybody would want to pay for the crap I write here is completely beyond my ability to comprehend...
What I really love are those sites who beg for cash when they are lucky to write once a week. Or how about people who ask for cash and totally suck? I am a bit surprised at why some sites have tip jars at all, and have to wonder if they honestly think that people will want to give them money for posting pictures of their hamster and writing about some boring conversation they had with their tax attorney. I dunno... maybe people do pay money for that. All I know is that unless it's a blog that's better than other paid entertainment (or contains gratuitous breast nudity), I can't imagine tip jars being worth the effort.
PART FOUR: QUIT!
I haven't threatened to quit blogging in quite a while now. I've seriously considered it a few times, yet there was only once that I was confident it was going to happen. But a random run through the blogosphere shows a shocking number of blogs that haven't been updated in months... some haven't been updated in years. So it would seem one of the most popular ways to make my blog more like other blogs is to quit writing in it. And then, after a long hiatus, bloggers always start out their next entry with "I haven't written here in a while——" which I find hysterical, because it sounds as if they think their visitors are incapable of reading the date. Oh well. In many ways I actually envy people who quit blogging... they obviously have much cooler stuff going on in their life than I do, and much better things to occupy their time.
PART FIVE: SONG LYRICS!
It seems that I am never lacking for some crazy crap to write here and, for better or worse, I try my best not to copy content from other blogs, the news, or whatever. The furthest I've gone has been movie quotes and memes. But if a bunch of song lyrics is what it takes to be more like other blogs, then I'll go ahead and put some in an extended entry.
I was sent an interesting "Thierry Ardisson Interview" meme to think about. Since it's in French, it's taking a while to decipher because my French language skills are quite poor (and long-forgotten). But one thing is immediately apparent... most all of the questions are introspective. They force you to take a real look at yourself as opposed to asking how others look at you (or asking how you look at something else). The second question is this: "Quand vous vous regardez dans la glace le matin, vous vous dites quoi?" - which translates into "When you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning, what do you say to yourself?"
My answer would have to be "I don't say anything," because I never really look at myself in the mirror. I put my contact lenses in by feel, and brush my teeth while doing other things. I never care how my hair looks, and so it never occurs to me to look. So this morning I decided to give it a try...
And all I could think to say to myself is "you look like shit, buddy!"
Having not slept in a month has really taken its toll. I have bags under the bags under my eyes. I am also in bad need of a haircut. I should cancel my upcoming travel plans and check myself into a spa or something. Or perhaps start shooting heroin, so at least then there would be an excuse for looking like a heroin addict.
And speaking of questions... my best friend Karl has answered my five "Barbara Walters interview questions" over at Secondhand Tryptophan. I must say, asking for questions to fill up blog entries is a pretty sweet idea. I would steal it and have people ask me five questions... but, considering some of the emails and comments I get, that is a very scary prospect. Perhaps it would be better to ask "If you were to GET to ask me five, questions, what five questions WOULD you ask?" That way when somebody asks me something particularly frightening, I can just laugh and say "wow, that WOULD be a good question!"
I am such a weenie.
But since I won't talk about my friends, family, or work... I'm guessing those are the questions most people would ask, and so I really can't go there. I did get a question in my email yesterday that I WILL answer, however...
"Hey did you make any money from that Google ad you put in your RENT entry?"
Wow, that's a good question! I never bothered to look! Let's see shall we? ... ... ... HOLY CRAP! I made $9.54!! That's pretty good isn't it? This is 1/10 the current cost of keeping Blogography running each month on 1/30 the entries I write in a month, so it looks like the site could support itself if it had to. Kind of nice to know that I have options if I should need to use them. Still, I would much rather remain ad-free for as long as possible. Media Temple has mentioned that they will be increasing their bandwidth allowance, so maybe that will take care of my current troubles?
Ooooh, look...
Costco is selling Crunch Master 6-Packs! That's enough to last me almost an entire week! Now all I need is Coke with Lime in 60-Packs, and I'm good to go!
There wasn't much I had planned today. A few museums. Eating REAL bagels from H&H on the Upper West Side. That kind of thing.
Oh yeah... and visit the new 5th Street Apple Store.
This amazing new structure is about the coolest Apple Store yet (though I still loves me Tokyo, Chicago and L.A.) and is really beautiful with the light shining through it. The store itself is actually underground, but the big cube marks the entrance to the glass staircase and houses the elevator tube...
Once I was finished snapping photos and ready to descend into the packed store below, a guy walked up to me... turns out it was Timothy from Araalinas (and now at Araalinusa)!! He has one more day in the city before heading to Uganda to teach, and apparently wanted to see the Apple Store before leaving the country.
It's strange, because when I first saw him, something familiar flashed in my head but I dismissed it. But when he walked up to me, I recognized him immediately from his blog (it's a small blogosphere after all!).
After we said our goodbyes, I wandered down to the Apple Store and suddenly realized that I should have gotten a photo, because nobody is going to believe this. After getting back to the hotel, I immediately unloaded my camera to see if he was in any of the shots I took. Sure enough...
Now, seriously. What are the odds here?
I mean, I run into people every once in a while who recognize me (or, to be more accurate, my shirt), but a fellow blogger I read who is from American Samoa via Florida on a stopover in New York City before he's on his way to Africa? This is some crazy stuff right here.
And there I was with no Hello Kitty Pop-Tarts to offer him.
Blogging is SO worth it.
Well that was frustrating.
Movable Type's blogging software just gets more inexplicable with every new release. Their latest, version 3.3, is no different. I specifically waited until it was out of beta before installing it, because I wanted to be sure that they had time to work the bugs out and finish up the documentation. Well, as it turns out, I shouldn't have bothered.
If you are a Movable Type user, or are interested in the software which runs this blog, then I've detailed my upgrade "experience" in an extended entry. Everybody else may want to come back later when I'll be bitching about something else...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
This is part one of a two-part entry.
Please tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion!
Given my increasing frustration with the Movable Type blogging software, I took a few hours to play around with WordPress this afternoon.
Holy crap. I give up.
Sure WordPress has fabulous documentation (my biggest complaint about Movable Type)... BUT IT'S ALL OUTDATED!! Need information on replacements for depreciated tags, TOUGH SHIT... the docs don't have it. Want to know how to import entries? TOO F#@%ING BAD... the documentation is ANCIENT, and bears absolutely NO relationship to the actual process! This is supposed to be better than Movable Type's docs HOW?!?
I had heard that WordPress was more difficult to make templates for, but that's a flaming understatement. It's not that I mind hard work or a steep learning curve, but I'd like the structure to at least make some sense. WordPress had me completely baffled at almost every turn. Want to use images for navigating between pages? Okay! Want to use images for navigating between entries? You can't! Want to customize a drop-down menu for date-based archives? No problem! Want to customize a drop-down menu for category-based archives? Sorry!
There is -zero- consistency in how you use the Word Press faux-tags (which are not really tags at all, but PHP code snippets). Even worse, you have to use endless streams of variables to configure even the simplest of tasks. I mean, just look at this crazy shit...
get_links('-1', ' ', ' ', ' ', FALSE, 'name', FALSE, FALSE, '-1', FALSE, TRUE);
I went absolutely insane trying to remember what the parameters are and in what order they go. And by the time I had to add my fourth "hack" to the "my-hacks.php" file just to get basic functionality, I was certifiable.
After a while, I was beginning to feel that WordPress had a lot of power behind it (and some cool features to die for), but I just don't have time to try and work my way through all the idiosyncrasies just now. If you want to see how things were looking when I gave up, I had my test site at a temporary domain here. It looks pretty much like my existing blog (which is what I wanted) but the underlying code is quite different.
So, for the time being at least, I'm sticking with the devil I know (that would be Movable Type). Sure it has some major problems, but at least the work is already done. Maybe if I get some free time and have some ambition left I'll take a look at "B2Evolution" or "Expression Engine" or one of those other blogging packages.
Surely they can't all suck ass... can they?
Having a blog can sometimes be insanely strange in ways you would never suspect. Well, I never suspect it because I can't believe that people bother to read Blogography in the first place, but mostly because of the reactions I get from some of the people who do read it. I get the most bizarre, odd, scary, freaky, and otherwise disturbing emails and comments that you could possibly imagine. For the most part, I just don't care, because the nice comments and emails more than make up for the few nut-jobs who try their best to spoil things. But every once in a while something comes along that baffles me completely.
Take last week, for instance.
As I mentioned before, this past March one of my totally sweet blogger-friends, Kachina, wrote a very nice entry singing my praises and talking about how much she enjoys Blogography. It was titled "Things I Think Are Great: Number One" and, apparently, is part one in a one-part series. It's understandable that she never wrote a "Number Two" because she started with ME... arguably one of the greatest things ever... and had nowhere to go but downhill.
Anyway, after reading such wonderful things about myself, I was compelled to leave a comment...
I wish I possessed even a tiny amount of humility so that I could at least pretend to be humbled by such kind praise, but my ego simply doesn't allow for it.
As it turns out, I AM totally great.
If I weren't me, I'd be wishing I was me. But since I am me, I just have to be satisfied with wishing I was more me than I am right now. If I were three times more me than I am, I think I'd be pretty much perfect.
Now, when I write smart-assed crap like that, I assume that people understand I am being sarcastic.
Apparently, this is not the case.
Because while I was goofing off working in Seattle last week, I received an email telling me that they had been referred to my blog by Kachina's entry and felt they had to set the record straight. Among the highlights were...
Uh huh.
It's almost as good as the time I wrote about constructing a 50-story tall monument to myself made out of Italian marble with a roller coaster, movie theater, revolving restaurant, and sacrificial altar inside. I immediately received a comment telling me that my recent travel problems were a direct result of my wanting people to idolize me, and that I was "stealing glory from God" and incurring His divine wrath.
Yeah, I deleted that one.
So now I am trying to come up with a way to let people know that I am being a sarcastic ass when they are just too dense to realize it. Because when there is somebody out there who thinks I am actually planning on demolishing Mt. Rainier National Park so I can build a 50-story tall monument to myself, well, obviously something needs to be done.
Because hunting them down and giving them a nice bitch-slapping is way too much work.
After yet another three hours driving, I'm back home. For a day.
And since I have limited time to get my act together, I am trying very hard to get caught up with work, re-pack my suitcase, read blogs, and sort through the 137 emails jamming my in-box. One of these emails was from somebody saying "mind your own business," which I thought was odd. I mean, usually when I get emails like this, people will cram in all kinds of profanity and at least tell me what it is I said that they didn't like. This one left me clueless.
So I did a little digging, matched the IP address to my server logs, then tracked the referring link.
It seems some journalist guy linked to Blogography in an article he wrote about the awesome new logo for the Milwaukee Admirals hockey team. For reasons unknown, he thinks my name is "Jersey" even though my name and photo are at the top of my sidebar on every page. Turns out both myself and Brandon (from Sports Logo Pundit) are being linked so he can show how there are some people who like the logo despite a vocal group of Milwaukeans who hate it...
Oddly enough, the journalist guy DIDN'T link to the entry I wrote about how much I love the logo... which means many people who come here from his article just turn around and leave because they aren't finding anything about the Admirals' new look. The internets are confusing that way.
But this one guy managed to track down the entry, decide that I'm full of crap, then goes to the trouble of telling me to "mind my own business" but doesn't tell me why.
And now I have no idea why I just wasted my valuable time to figure that out.
But I was happy to learn that Milwaukee Admirals merchandise sales have increased 600% (and the season doesn't even start until October). Sweet! I can't wait for my jersey to get here, and will probably buy even more logo crap when I'm back in Milwaukee later this year.
In television news... BETTY F#@%ING WHITE WILL BE ROASTING WILLIAM SHATNER ON THE NEW FRIAR'S CLUB ROAST ON COMEDY CENTRAL ON AUGUST 20th!! Holy crap! BETTY KICKS ASS!
Looks like The Shat truly will be hitting the fan on Sunday. Hopefully I'll be home again by then.
I be internet-free! Blogging from a mobile phone is harder than I thought. 2 bad I suk at txt msg cuz therz no way Im bloggng lik ths!
UPDATE: Had I been able to post my progress map, I would have shown me making it to Bothell...
Heh heh heh... Bothell is just an "R" away from being "Brothell"...
Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Jenny just released the dates for TequilaCon 2007... looks like we'll be meeting in lovely Portland, Oregon the weekend of March 10th! I'd say that I'm so happy I could crap my pants, but I have no desire to go through all that again.
TequilaCon promises to be one of the most memorable events of next year, and the reason I know this is because I will be there (probably wearing a Zombies T and my special edition Batman Chucks). So, if you are in the area (or even if you aren't) mark your calendar, then head on over to Jenny's blog for the details...
I can only hope that I escape from the event with my underpants this time.
Today is Blog Appreciation Day and, trust me, if I had the time to load up the hundreds of blogs I read so I could take their photo, I would absolutely do that. But, on top of all the crazy stuff that happened today, my new Mac Pro showed up, and so a huge chunk of my day was spent setting it up, transferring files, and screaming (if you're really interested, I've put the whole ordeal in an extended entry).
But, despite the fact that I couldn't participate, Kevin and Karl were nice enough to photograph my blog anyway...
Unfortunately, it's also "Planet Depreciation Day," and some dumbass astronomy guys decided that Pluto was no longer a planet. This is totally lame, and I have news for you... I don't really give a crap what they say, to ME Pluto is STILL A MUTHERF#@%ING PLANET!! Hey, it sure looks like a planet, and even has a freakin' moon...
Okay then. If the joys and frustration of Macintosh computer ownership fascinate you, then feel free to continue reading about my day in an extended entry, filled with bitching and geeky goodness...
I've done something I've never done before... I've joined a Fantasy Football League.
I'm not into pro sports at all, so this has high disaster potential written all over it. But the league was started by Brandon over at Down With Pants, so it promises to be a good time even if I end up getting my ass kicked.
If nothing else, I have a cool team name...
So now I'm suited-up and ready to play. Well, I would be if I could get my pre-draft order set. Apparently Yahoo! Sports has a problem with Apple's Safari web browser. I can't scroll in the pick lists. Hopefully FireFox will work out, because I'd rather take leftovers than have to suffer through using Windows Internet Explorer.
So wish me luck. I'd be very happy to win the $10,000 Grand Prize that Brandon is offering up!
Okay, yeah, I just made that up. But if by some miracle I manage to win this, I would totally deserve $10,000.
P.S. Can somebody tell me who Vincent is blowing on Project Runway that he hasn't been eliminated yet? Two weeks ago his laughably bad craft project somehow knocked the hottest girl off the show. Then last week he actually managed to WIN with that piece-of-crap disco-collar disaster. Now this week he stays in the game with a boring pantsuit? Angela's crap may look stupid, but at least she actually puts some effort into being unique. Something tells me it's going to be Laura, Uli, and Michael to the Final Three.
Lately it seems that I am entirely out of the loop on just about everything. I don't know if it's because I'm just so incredibly busy, or I've just become indifferent to the world around me. Probably a little of both.
Never was this more vividly clear than when I got an email telling me that the fourth season of Scrubs is due to be released on October 10th... and I didn't even know that season three had been released. This may seem like a petty thing to be upset about, except I have been waiting for the third season to drop for YEARS now. All because it has one of the best episodes of comedy/drama ever seen on television. The episode is called "My Screw-Up" and features a return of guest-star Brendan Fraser as Dr. Cox's best friend and ex-brother-in-law...
Don't let the fact that Tara Reid also guest stars, fool you. That this show did not win an Emmy for best writing is what finally confirmed that the Emmy Awards are a complete sham, and I've never trusted them since. Soooooo... I know this is late, but if you have not seen My Screw-Up, you owe it to yourself to hunt it down and do so. Buy Scrubs the Complete Third Season set (it's all good), or rent Disc 2 from Netflix or Blockbuster or whatever... just see it.
In other news... let this serve as fair warning that I will be guest-posting over at Hilly's blog this weekend. Do I know what I am going to write about yet? No. I don't write my entries ahead of time, so what happens is your guess as well as mine. All I do know is that the thought of Lil' Dave meeting up with Lil' Snackie is a very, very dangerous idea that is begging to be explored...
Heaven help us. Heaven help us all.
This entry was originally posted when I was guest-blogging over at Hilly's blog.
Hello Hilly fans! My name is Dave and I'll be guest-posting today while Hilly is tearing Vegas a new one. You may know me from such videos as "Beaver Hunt 2: Stud Factor" and "Power Tool Loving Sluts" or such blogs as "Everybody Loves Dave" and "Blogography".
When Hilly gave me her password last week, I safely tucked it away until Sunday when I promised to post an entry. But today after work I logged-in only to find out that my blog mascot had already been here goofing around with Hilly's blog mascot over the weekend. There was a stack of Polaroids of Lil' Dave and Lil' Snackiepoo waiting... only a few of which I am able to post without TypePad suspending this blog...
If this is the type of behavior that Hilly's mascot is into... what in the hell must she be up to in Vegas?
I, for one, am relieved that she is not posting from Sin City. There are some things we are better off not knowing.
Five months ago I was going to quit blogging. Between the horrors of finding a hosting company that wouldn't screw me and the never-ending onslaught of hate mail and spam I was receiving each day... I had just had enough. Blogging wasn't fun anymore and I wanted out.
But then a little boy stopped to tie his show in front of my car one day and everything changed.
This morning I was driving on that exact same road and came upon a cat that was laying in the middle of my lane. A black cat. I slowed down thinking he would move out of the way as I approached, but he didn't. He looked up at me until I came to a stop, then started licking himself. He wasn't going anywhere.
"Huh." I thought. "Perhaps this is a sign to have a break from blogging. Maybe I should be taking the time to stop and lick myself?" (errr... metaphorically speaking). So I swerved around the cat and continued onward, all the while thinking that maybe a nice vacation from Blogography was a good idea. I'd take the rest of the year off and return to my daily writing on January 1st.
But then I read on Karl's blog that he has declared a "Quitting Moratorium" and my blogging vacation was ruined.
Thanks a lot Karl.
Later in the day I had work in Spokane. But when I got there, things weren't working out as planned, so I had to turn around and come back home. This basically meant that I just drove a 6-hour roundtrip for a slice of pizza.
Most people would be upset by this. But it was a slice of the Best Pizza In The Known Universe, so I wasn't upset at all. I once drove an eleven-hour roundtrip to visit a Hard Rock Cafe, so crazy stuff like this is nothing new to me.
Except now I'm tired and need to go to bed.
No DaveToon for you.
Yes, my header graphics have been redesigned. I was quite happy with the old "look" but, for reasons I am not going to elaborate on just yet, it was time for a change. The random DaveToon in the corner is meant to give visitors something different to look at on each visit. But now I'm finding that there a lot of people who just continuously refresh the page until they see them all, so I figured I might as well save them the trouble and post all twenty of them here. Spoilsport.
Speaking of DaveToons, I got a terrific email from a guy who got in trouble at school for printing out the one where Bad Monkey is smoking cigarettes and pasting it on his notebook...
How cool is that? I'm corrupting American's youth!
Well, if it's any consolation, Bad Monkey is chewing ten sticks of Nicorette gum and burning through a dozen nicotine patches every day in an effort to quit...
See kids, it's best to just not start in the first place.
AAAAARRRRR!
Avast ye mateys... 'tis "Talk Like a Pirate Day" today! It be a proud day indeed for we pirate-lubber folk. Me an me monkey be drinkin' grog and pillaging the worthless bilge rats of this shanty town. 'Tis only a wee matter of time afore we be claiming our treasure and sailing the high seas...
Whilst we be out seeking me fortunes, I be givin' ya a new port of call. One of me favorite bloggers, Peggy Archer be havin' a beauty of a new site for ye all to plunder! It be called "Abandoned Couches" and she be usin' a fine treasure of a couch from Blogography's home port here! So shiver ye timbers and be payin' a visit smartly to this fine pearl of a site before me be dropin' anchor in yer scurvy lagoon, ye sea dogs! AAAAARRRRR!
Aye! Me barnacles need a scrapin' so I be off!
In what can only be described as "a blissful turn of events," the amount of hate-mail I've been receiving from this blog has dropped to near-zero. With the exception of the occasional nut-bag who leaves a nasty comment, I haven't seen a good piece of deranged email in months!
Until this morning, that is.
It all seems to begin with the new Aaron Sorkin television show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. In the premiere episode, Matthew Perry's character rants about Pat Robertson being a bigot and goes on to compare his "700 Club" show to a Klan rally. This, needless to say, upset a lot of people. And one of these "people" decided to go on a Google crusade, and consequently stumbled across Blogography because of a freaky combination of words found in my archives.
Now, as anybody who has read this blog for a while knows, I despise Pat Robertson. I loathe how he spreads hatred, mis-information, and violence across the globe all in the name of his freaky interpretation of Biblical verse and his personal brand of Christianity. In fact, I think that if Pat Robertson were to be judged by his actions, he is one of the least "Christian" people I have ever seen. He's not a religious leader at all... he's a douchebag with an audience that has no problem calling for the assassination of foreign leaders, condemning victims of natural disasters, and persecuting anybody who thinks differently than he does. But this is all okay, because God tells him he's right...
Apparently people like me who disagree with this dumbass are (naturally) going to hell, and this guy had a burning desire to write and tell me that. It was a fascinating discourse which says I could be forgiven for THIS... but not THIS or THIS. The good news, however, is that there's still hope for me if I can turn to The Bible and find my way to Pat Robertson's particular flavor of crazy.
Which is kind of funny, because I've read through The Bible a number of times and distinctly remember it saying how you should run away from hateful idiots like Pat Robertson.
But whatever. I actually appreciate people who send email like this because it almost makes me look sane by comparison.
Anyway... I took the trouble to draw a DaveToon for yesterday's entry, but forgot to post it...
I don't think that the "Material Boy" look is very flattering for Lil' Dave. Maybe because he hasn't got the breasts to fill out that bra?
I probably should have bypassed Madonna's "Lucky Star / Like a Virgin" eras and went for the "Erotica / Vogue" years.
Blogography is proud to participate in Pink for October all next month.
Now you know the reason for the header change I made a while back. The old headers weren't able to be "pinkified" enough to show much support, so it was time for a change. Breast cancer has touched some very special people in my life, and helping to raise awareness is important to me. But going pink is just the beginning. There's more to come in Breast Cancer Awareness Month from Blogography, so watch this space to see how you can help out (and possibly get some cool stuff to boot!)...
Dave & Bad Monkey love healthy boobies! Schedule your mammogram today!
For more information on National Breast Cancer Month, visit the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
Ooh look! I'm all better now. Well, mostly. I still have vision troubles, but at least the headaches and cold/flu symptoms have faded.
Until I open my email and find a lovely note from somebody with "I'M GOING TO SUE YOUR ASS" as the subject line. This is absolutely my favorite way to start the day, because being threatened with legal action is always such a great motivator first thing in the morning. "Hmmm..." I think to myself, "I wonder what I did this time?" Since I don't recognize the name, I'm guessing something in my blog has upset somebody. Having a blog is such a great way to meet new and interesting people!
HOW NOT TO START A LAWSUIT...
1) Have somebody who doesn't like you sneak a photo of you wearing a Bluetooth mobile phone headset.
2) Have this blood-enemy search the internet for a cartoon which makes fun of people who wear Bluetooth mobile phone headsets in public.
3) Have this same person cut out part of the cartoon so they can insert a picture of YOU...
4) Then have this person email everybody in the office with a cartoon which likens you to a large penis.
5) Find out about the cartoon, see that it was copyrighted by blogography.com, then decide to fire off a nasty email threatening a lawsuit because this person you've never even met decided to humiliate you.
6) Get an email back from blogography.com telling you that they have no idea what you are talking about, have no idea who you are, and have never even been to your city to take your picture.
7) After another furious exchange of emails, discover that people who post cartoons on the internet have no control over what other people do with them, then realize you'll have to find somebody else to sue.
8) Cry silently to yourself because you have nothing better to do than threaten complete strangers with baseless lawsuits.
Somebody remind me why I have a blog again?
Oh yeah! It's so I have a place to bitch about things that bother me!
Now that I'm feeling better, I finally managed to watch the second episode of Heroes, and boy does that show suck ass. It puzzles me greatly how so many critics are going ape-shit in love over this show when it pretty much blows. Just like "Odo," the shape-changing alien on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine that rarely changed shape... here we have super-powered people who rarely use their super powers. I guess special effects are still not cheap enough to do shows like this properly. I can only hope that they eventually get a budget and can have people with flying powers ACTUALLY BE FLYING AROUND AND SHIT. So far we've gotten one lame, SUPER-LAME "flying" shot in the first episode which looked so bad I could have filmed it in my back yard... then a "flying" shot in the second episode which wasn't even flying... it was more like floating. LOOK DUDE, I CAN FLOAT!! Bitch, please. Until you are willing to put the money into decent special effects to do the super-hero show right, don't waste my frickin' time...
I also love how everybody else in the show conveniently has "powers" which don't require special effects. Notice that there isn't a "hero" who can shoot lightning bolts out of their ass... or a "hero" who can walk through walls... or a "hero" who can do ANYTHING even remotely interesting, because that would require actual visual effects, and we can't have that!
What I want to know is how come an episode of Bewitched which was made FORTY F#@%ING YEARS AGO... BEFORE THEY EVEN HAD COMPUTERS has more special effects shots than an episode of this lame-ass show. Screw this stupid crap. I'm done with "Heroes"... so somebody please let me know if they ever get the balls to actually SHOW super-powers instead of just talk about them for an hour.
Thank heavens for Veronica Mars, a detective who ACTUALLY DOES DETECTIVE STUFF in every episode!! Imagine that!
I received an email this morning criticizing both me and my blog and so I did what I usually do when this happens... lock myself in my bathroom and cry for five hours.
Well, not really, because when you put yourself out on the internet like this, you learn very quickly to ignore the dumbasses and morons that feel the need rain shit on your day. I gave up caring what people think about me decades ago, so criticism from faceless idiots on the internet mean about as much to me as navel lint.
But now I've found an even better way of dealing with such nonsense than simply ignoring it:
TIME-SENSITIVE CONTEXT!
Oddly enough, it was watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie that brought about this revelation*.
When I heard Pa Ingalls say something like "that's a fine-looking boy you've got there," I assumed it to be an innocent compliment because of time-sensitive context. Back in pioneer days you could say stuff like this and not be pegged as a freaky child molester. Today if a guy were to say this about a little boy, people would call for the police.
And it works the other way too. A long time ago you could see a painting, say it was "awful," and the artist would thank you for the compliment since the time-sensitive context of "awful" meant "full of awe" back then. Today if you say a painting is "awful" the artist will lock himself in the bathroom and cry for five hours because it meant you didn't like it.
Just five years ago if somebody wrote to me and said "DUDE, YOU ARE TOTALLY SICK!! YOUR BLOG IS WICKED SICK TOO!" it would mean that they thought both me and my blog were perverted and grotesque. But if somebody wrote that to me NOW, the time-sensitive context has shifted and it means that they think both me and my blog are insanely cool.
And since this trend shows no sign of stopping, I figure why wait? I am going to start applying FUTURE-SENSITIVE CONTEXT to any criticism or negativity that comes my way from now on.
Somebody calls me an "asshole"? I choose to believe that in the future "asshole" will come to mean "kind and generous."
Somebody says my blog is "f#@%ing stupid"? I choose to believe that in the future "f#@%ing stupid" will come to mean "amazing and brilliant."
With this in mind, here is the email I received with future-sensitive context applied...
Hey you kind and generous person!
I just ran across your amazing and brilliant blog and think you are a down-to-earth and observant individual who should be showered with praise and worship! If you think you are so humble and respectful then why don't you go buy a treat for yourself! You deserve what you get!!!!
People like you are creating a better world for all of us and make me feel insanely cool!!
I hope you have a long and happy life!!
See?? By using the magic of future-sensitive context, even horrible hate-mail can be made into a wonderful and life-afirming statement of love and support! Sometimes it's not how the world looks at you, but how you look at the world.
* Don't ask me why I was watching Little House on the Prairie. In my defense, I was waiting for my clothes to get out of the dryer and it happened to be on the television when I turned it on.
Halfway through each month, I have an alarm set so I will remember to check my server stats and see if I need to be offloading some bandwidth. This ensures that I won't overrun my limit and have to pay pay pay. Fortunately, there are some very kind and generous people out there who donate bandwidth when I need it... if I remember to use it.
Anyway, for the first time in years, unique visitor counts for Blogography went down. It was bound to happen eventually... I was expecting it to happen... but I still admit to being surprised. Apparently nobody loves me any more.
Well, 1.2% of the people who used to love me don't love me any more.
I should have never put up those pictures of Lindsay Lohan.
It's a good thing I am not a stats whore or I might have to do something drastic, like post those amateur porn videos I made when I was young and needed the money. Nothing makes visitor counts skyrocket like amateur porn! Well, except professional porn. I suppose if I drop another 5% I'll have to look into turning pro. Nothing quite like whoring myself out to keep my -ahem- stats up.
Speaking of surprises... I rented a Samuel L. Jackson film I somehow overlooked called The 51st State which had the amazing Emily Mortimer as a bitchin' lady-assassin who likes to drive motorcycles and kill people. In other words, she's the perfect woman...
The movie was okay, but not nearly as good as the other Emily Mortimer film I recently saw... a sappy drama called Dear Frankie. This flick also stars Gerard Butler who, in turn, is starring in the most eagerly anticipated film of next year... 300, which is based on Frank Miller's awesome graphic novel of the same name. It looks amazing. An even better adaptation than Sin City, if you can believe it...
The totally bitchin' sneak preview trailer (along with a nifty making-of featurette) is available at Apple in delicious hi-def QuickTime. For those of you who (like me) fell totally in love with Miller's graphic novel, there's a very cool comparison between the film and book here. Even if you aren't interested in 300, it's still worth checking out.
And now I'm off to "research" my pending porn star career...
It's 10:00pm now. I've been working since I got up at 4:30am. What is that... like 17 hours? 18 hours? Too many hours, that's for sure. I should be in bed, but the idea of missing my first blog entry in over two years compels me to forge onward. There's something kind of twisted about that, but I'm too tired to figure out what that might be.
The drive over to Seattle was entertaining because the road had a nice frost on it. Cars were sliding wide around corners, swiping guard-rails, and generally being stupid. Driving in these conditions is not rocket science, but you'd be surprised just how long it takes for people to catch on that you can't drive like a maniac and not pay the price.
Yet the highlight of my drive happened just three minutes after I pulled out of my driveway. Some moron ran the red light leading to the highway... right in front of a police officer. That alone was pretty ballsy.
But not enough for this guy.
He had a momentary delusional state where he thought outrunning a cop on an open highway was a good idea. He punched the gas for a few seconds then must have realized "uhhhhh... I'm in a beat-up old van so he can probably catch me in his shiny new police car" and pulled over.
Which is kind of a pity, because I would have loved to see that one play out. I'm not sure if that makes me a bad person, but a high-speed chase on frosty roads sounds like entertainment to me!
And, speaking of entertainment, how totally sweet was Veronica Mars last night? Her determination to get back Lilly's necklace resulted in an ending that summarized everything I love about that show. The completely detached way that Veronica drove off after everything went down just proves that Kristen Bell kicks ass in a way most actors can only dream of. You felt that one.
Now I think I'll let VH-1's "Hundred Greatest Songs of the 80's" play me to sleep...
We interrupt the regularly scheduled programing here on Blogography to bring you an important message: You get no points for trying.
You either do something to meet the exacting expectations and desires of every single person on earth, or you get sued. Apparently, it's the American Way, because we're an all-or-nothing kind of country.
Today Boing Boing has regurgitated a story that involves a lawsuit filed against my local library here in Washington State. For those who don't read it, Boing Boing is one of the most popular websites in existence. It's a site I read regularly, and enjoy quite a lot. But this "story" simply goes to show that any purported "news site"... no matter how popular... doesn't always know what the fuck they are talking about.
The deal is basically this...
All 28 branches of public libraries in the North Central Regional Library System provide public internet access so that those who can't afford a computer or don't have access to the internet have the same opportunities as those who do. But things are never as easy as just trying to do something helpful, there are always people who are intent on spoiling things for everybody. In this case, that means people accessing porn and other material in full-view of anybody (including children) walking by. Even worse, kids being the crafty buggers they are, will gladly surf for porn on their own without having to look over anybody's shoulder.
Of course, exposing minors to porn is illegal.
By trying to do something good, the library gets in trouble. And you get no points for trying.
So the library attempts to address the problem by contracting with a "filtering service" which attempts to block porn and other age-inapropriate sites so that the library can still provide free internet, but not get sued for doing so. The filtering service is not perfect... some sites that probably shouldn't be blocked end up getting blocked... but the library is trying their best to service as many of their patrons as they can with what they have, and you simply cannot make 100% of the people happy 100% of the time.
And have I mentioned that you get no points for trying?
No. Instead you get sued by the ACLU and bashed with snippy inane comments by internet legend Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing.
There's so much wrong with all this... namely that nobody has their facts straight... but I think I will start out with explaining something to both Boing Boing and the ACLU that they are apparently unaware of: THIS IS NOT OUR LIBRARY...
That stunning, multi-story, high-tec structure with space-age capabilities and an entire team of librarians and technical staff belongs to Seattle. No no... the libraries in rural Eastern Washington look like this...
These tiny libraries sometimes have no more than a single room and are staffed by one or two librarians who may have been working there for decades.
Now imagine this... you are a small-town librarian who has given years of faithful service to your community. Your daily tasks involve arranging books, checking out materials, and helping people the best you can to find information they are looking for. It doesn't pay a lot, but it's a job you love and trying to help people is something you feel good about.
Then one day you find out that you have to clear out a corner of your small building so that you can make room for a public internet computer. This allows you to even better serve the community you love, so you do your best to accommodate the new technology and offer internet access to people who may not otherwise have the opportunity to use it. You may not have ever even turned on a computer before, but you try your best to learn how things work so you can do your job.
But you don't get any fucking points for trying... haven't you been paying attention?
Instead you get sued for "refusing to honor requests by adult patrons to temporarily disable the filter for sessions of uncensored reading and research" (among other things).
It's all a crock of shit of course... you didn't "refuse" anything... you just weren't able to comply with a request. But fuck you... the fact that your filtering service keeps me from looking at monster trucks with naked chicks painted on the hood means I'm going to SUE! SUE THE LIBRARY FOR TROUNCING ON MY RIGHTS, DAMMIT!!
Give me a fucking break.
The simple fact is that providing 100% unfiltered browsing in a library so small that you're unable to keep people from observing said browsing is impossible. It just can't happen. Otherwise some kid is eventually going to see something fucked up and some parent is going to sue for a million dollars on the grounds of child endangerment or something like that. So while the library may like to give you unfiltered access, they just can't. It's as simple as that.
The best the library can do is try to come up with a solution that helps as many people as possible without getting sued... either for providing too much access... or not enough.
And, dammit, they DO try.
The North Central Regional Library System knows there is a problem with the filtering service and has spent a year researching alternative while waiting for their filtering contract to run out. And now that the contract IS running out, they have been spending the past two months switching over all 28 branches to a new solution... it's a centrally managed system that will more easily allow a librarian to have a site unlocked for viewing. It's not 100% unfiltered because, I say again, that's simply not an option here, but it's an honest attempt to better address an unsolvable problem.
But did the ACLU bother to call the library and learn this before they filed their lawsuit and wasted tax dollars on total bullshit? No. Did Cory Doctorow bother to call the library for a response? No. Heck, even if Cory Doctorow didn't know that the filtering software was being phased out in favor of trying a different approach... did he at least call the library to see if he might help-out or suggest an alternative to filtering before bashing them with his article? Of course not! That doesn't attract readers and increase ad revenue! Far more fun (and profitable) to attack a small-town library that is just trying to service their patrons the best they can... because THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY IS!! Well, if Doctorow feels like using some of that Boing Boing cash to build us bigger libraries with secluded "adults only" rooms so they can provide unfiltered access, more power to him. But who is going to be responsible for cleaning up that room knowing what crazy shit is bound to go on in there?
How did America get this way? Nobody wants to try lending a hand or helping people to help others... they just want to sue and attack them every chance they get. BECAUSE YOU GET NO POINTS FOR TRYING!
How sad.
The insane thing here is that the libraries are being portrayed as these evil entities that want nothing more than to violate taxpayers by limiting their access to freely available information. It's categorically absurd, of course... especially considering that the mission statement of the NCRL is as follows: "The Mission of the North Central Regional Library is to promote reading and lifelong learning."
You will note that nowhere... nowhere... in that statement does it say that the mission of the library is to keep adults from performing research... or reading Boing Boing... or looking at works of art that contain nudity. Seriously, why would they give a shit? But it makes for a flashy lawsuit and good drama to say otherwise, so that's what we get.
I wonder if the ACLU and Boing Boing would be happier if libraries were to rip out internet access entirely rather than to try and come up with a solution that addresses both the threats of being sued for too much access and being sued for not having enough access? What other option are these libraries going to have? It's a no-win scenario because they're going to get sued no matter what they try and do.
And you get no points for... well, you get the picture...
We're rapidly becoming a country that's going to be afraid to TRY anything... who do I sue for that?
Strange. I got all ready for a bullet-point entry because I thought it was Sunday for some reason. I wonder what that's all about? Oh well, it's not like I haven't got a million other things to blog about. In fact, I never understand how bloggers get writer's block because surely everybody has a more exciting life than mine? Today I sat in an office almost all day, and yet I am still having to decide which thing I should write about... The bitch who flipped me off on the way to work? Nearly breaking my arm trying to get Chili Cheese Fritos out of the vending machine? Having Robert iChat me from his toilet to tell me he got a new MacBook with iSight camera? The inexplicable hate mail I got this morning? My new — hey, wait a second, yes... let's go with the hate mail...
I usually don't share viewer hate-mail because, well, it's not like I want to encourage these people... but today's rant was so utterly bizarre that I feel compelled to share. And the reason I say it's bizarre is because it wasn't complaining about the usual stuff like my imaginary abuse of clowns, my support of gay marriage, my assertion that Pat Robertson is insane, or my thinking that I'm God. Oh no. This time it's about chest shaving.
Yes. You read that right. Chest shaving!
While reading the email I was all WTF? Because I didn't remember ever having taken a stand either for or against shaving chest hair. Why in the hell would I care what a guy wants to do with his chest? I don't even care what I do with my own. So there I am ready to delete the email as a total nut-job when I decide to Google myself and find out if I had inadvertently insulted chest-shavers along the way.
It turns out that I kind of did.
But not really.
Last year I wrote about walking into an airport bathroom only to see a dude shaving his chest with an electric razor. Needless to say, I was freaked out about it, and decided to write about the horror of it all in my blog.
How could I have forgotten something like that?
I must have been blocking it from my mind.
Anyway, the email rambled on a while, but could ultimately be summarized in that I'm an asshole for calling the chest-shaver guy a "prissy bitch" and I shouldn't be critical of somebody else's grooming choices. Or something like that. But that's where the email hater was wrong. You see, the prissy bitch option was Option B. As I explained in the entry, I did not choose Option B... I selected Option F. I did not call the guy in an airport a prissy bitch at all. So this time the hate mail wasn't even justified, because the writer jumped to a conclusion before reading to the end of my entry.
Who's the asshole now? Huh? Huh? Huh?
Hmmm... maybe I should have written about the Chili Cheese Fritos incident after all...
Gee... I could write just about anything today and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. Everybody is eating turkey instead of surfing the internet and reading blogs. I, being a vegetarian, don't eat turkey and so I've got nothing better to do.
Neil has declared today as "Thank Your First Commenter Day" which is kind of nifty. Truth to tell though, I had no idea who my first commenter might be. Turns out that once you get rid of the back-and-forth testing between Bad Robert and myself, my first "real" commenter is Kazza. That's cool because, while commenters come and go, Kazza is still around. The fact that she's still blogging is kind of a bonus...
Awwwww... it's Lego Lil' Dave!
Well, one good Legofication deserves another...
And now I'm off to finish some work so I can watch tonight's special edition of Grey's Anatomy. I'm hoping somebody dies...
The scream (which sounded something like "WAAAAAAAAGGH!") was yelled at nobody in particular and did nothing to alleviate the burning pain. Then, once I realized I was scrubbing Apricot Facial Cleanser into the open wounds on my face, it sounded something like "OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!" Then I have the task of trying to flush out the tiny particles of walnut shell, which usually do such a great job of scraping off dead skin cells, but are now causing me to cry "LIFE IS SO UNFAIR!!" as I splash water on my face at a frantic pace.
It would seem this is not going to be such a good day to be Dave.
This was later confirmed when I found out that my internet router is dead.
I can't stand how much my life revolves around having internet access, and how huge a problem it is when I am disconnected from it. It's like I NEED internet to survive or something. Overcoming drug addiction must be a walk in the park by comparison.
Which is why I am checking email and writing in my blog over a dial-up connection tonight.
It's far, far slower than I ever remember it being...
I seem to have survived my bout with food poisoning (or whatever).
Which is probably a good thing, because my most excellent web hosting company Media Temple, is moving Blogography to a new "grid server" here in a few hours. I don't understand much of what's happening, but it all sounds very cool and interesting. In any event, I totally trust Media Temple with my life. Out of the dozens of hosting companies I've dealt with over the years, they are the very best... by far.
I am told that there will be some down-time for a bit while the move occurs. So, if you try to visit Blogography and can't, that's why. And if you are coming here after not being able to access the site, that's why.
Many thanks to Bad Robert for the use his pick-up truck "The Blue Bitch." we couldn't have gotten everything moved without her...
Please forgive the urine stains in the passenger seat. Bad Monkey had a fifth of vodka with a two-liter bottle of 7-Up for dinner and forgot to go to the bathroom before we left. I made sure there was plenty of toilet paper in case we had to stop along the way, but he didn't tell me until after the deed was done. You know monkeys...
UPDATE: Well that was amazing. The move went flawlessly with no data loss and everything ending up in its proper place. I then set about changing all my blog settings and scripts to point to their new address... only to find that Media Temple had already done it. And not just in the obvious places, like my Movable Type blog software, but also in not so obvious places like my Mint stats package. I simply cannot say enough good things about Media Temple for web hosting. Brilliant company. Terrific service.
How can I be so exhausted yet not be able to sleep?
I went to bed at 9:30 and was relieved that I might actually catch up on some much-needed shuteye. But then I woke up at midnight, and haven't been able to get back to sleep all night. Insomnia sucks ass, but it did give me time to write the final Bullet Sunday of 2006... BLOGOGRAPHY'S BEST OF THE YEAR LIST!
• Best New Television Show... For nine glorious weeks, Project Catwalk featured Elizabeth Hurley being Elizabeth Hurley which makes it one of the greatest shows ever. At least it was, until this tragic event occurred.
• Best Returning Television Show... How does one choose between Veronica Mars and Battlestar Galactica? (if you are a guy, trust me... you want to follow those links!).
• Best Guest Appearance on a Television Show...
Betty White in "Peterotica" from The Family Guy.
• Best Movie... This is a tough call, but I was taken completely by surprise at how much I loved Little Miss Sunshine. A close second is The Prestige, which haunted me for weeks.
• Best Bad Movie Hype... I went to Brokeback Mountain because of all the hype and was so bored that I consider this to be one of the worst films ever. I prefer my remake, Bareback Monkey. "I wish I could quit you, Captain Crunch!"
• Best Video Game... Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy. I only wish I had time to play it.
• Best Funny... I never claimed that Blogography was a humor blog but, when I set my mind to it, this can be the funniest blog ever.
• Best Poetry... I hate to be tooting my own horn here, but my Seven Odes From My Day-Trip To Chicago kick ass! I should totally write a book of poetry!
• Best Charitable Cause... There is nothing more important right now than immortalizing my greatness. Give generously to the Dave Monument Fund.
• Best Explanation of Why I Am The Way I Am...
Yes, the world really does revolve around me.
• Best Reason to Have a Blog... Davecago was one of the year's biggest highlights for me.
• Best Shock... Randomly running into fellow blogger Timothy while in New York City just before he's off to Uganda. What are the odds? Considering he previously lived in American Samoa before moving to Africa, he would be voted the Blogger I'm Least Likely To Ever Meet, yet there he was in the middle of one of the biggest cities on earth.
• Best Non-Government Holiday... Yeah, it would be pretty hard to top Day of Slayer! (and getting to meet Mistress Eve and Dave3 a month later was icing on the cake).
• Best Garfield Strip in 25 Years... Well, it's not like Jim Davis was ever going to get around to doing it. You may think I'm joking here, but I'm totally not.
• Best Bad Influence... Bad Monkey really is bad... he's teaching kids to smoke cigarettes and then getting them into trouble at school.
• Best Blog Fan... Turns out that I'm not good-looking, not funny, and not nice, and somebody was kind enough to point it out to me.
• Best Identity Theft... And here I only thought I was joking about people wanting to be me...
Who could possibly want to be me with hair like this?
• Best Bad Robert Story... Well, of those stories I was actually able to share without getting sued, I guess it would have to be Bad Robert's Blue Balls.
• Best Advice... How to make your blog be like every other blog (though some people hated me for this one).
• Best Way To Hide a Fart... Who knew a pack of gum would make the best odor eliminator ever?
• Best Lie... Bob is a psychopath.
• Best Lesson Learned... One thing at a time.
• Best Blogography Entry... How can I choose when they're all so good? I've narrowed it down to these ten...
• Best Reader... It's totally you! How could it be anybody but you? Thanks for stopping by, and we'll see you next year.
I had a long hard day at work and didn't get home until 10:30. This is not the best way to spend a Sunday holiday. Some would argue that it's not the best way to spend any day but, sadly, I'm used to it. So when I finally drag my sorry ass to the couch for some quality TiVo time, I realize that I haven't written in my blog today. That sucks, because I don't really feel like it now. For the first time in years, I actually consider skipping a day.
Until I turn on the television and see Dr. Daniel Stein M.D. telling me how he has devoted his professional life to improving the sexual health of others. "Holy crap!" I say to myself as images of this creepy doctor instructing people how to have sex fill my head. But it turns out he's selling penis enlargement pills called (hah!) ExtenZe. Actually, they're MAXIUM STRENGTH Extenze (I guess when it comes to giving yourself a bigger penis, there's no half-way, so "regular strength" ExtenZe is not an option).
But penis enlargement pills are not the reason I decided to blog, however.
It's what Dr. Daniel Stein M.D. said next...
"I have personally researched the formula in ExtenZe, and found it to be truly effective."
Which is another way of saying "I've tried the stuff, and now I have a massive, massive penis."
"Well that explains why they only show him from the waist up" I say to nobody in particular. Suddenly I wonder if this is the secret to Lil' Dave's own massive endowment, and consider offering him to the Stein Medical Institute as a spokesperson (spokestoon?)...
There's a part of me that actually wants to call for the free sample to see if it actually works... and then blog about it. I can picture it now...
"DAY 10: My penis is now so big that I had to buy a larger pair of pants today..."
In other news, I got an email from somebody a few weeks ago which I thought was spam offering to "increase your search engine position" and was about to trash it when I realized it wasn't an offer, it was a question. A guy was asking if I was preventing Google from indexing my site, because he was having problems Googling my blog. I go check it out and, sure enough, Googling "blogography" shows no results for my "Blogography" (yet at Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN and other search engines I show up fine). I have no idea why. Signing up for Google's "Webmaster Tools" reveals nothing and provides no way of finding out. I guess it doesn't matter, because it's not like I'm getting money for visitors or anything... but it is strange how dozens of sites that link here show up while the actual "blogography.com" does not. Oh well. It's not like anybody at Google is going to care about a blog like mine.
And then today I read where Boing Boing, one of the biggest web sites in existence, is having the same problem.
Now that I know a site like Boing Boing has also gone missing, I have to wonder if Google's search results are worth a crap anymore. Perhaps it's time to go back to Yahoo? If I were running a business, I would be totally screwed, because Google IS search, and there's doesn't seem to be anything you can do if you disappear.
On the bright side, I should be grateful because I don't really want my site popping up when people Google "massive penis."
The first email I opened this morning was somebody saying "You are a f#@%ing asshole and your blog sucks!" Ordinarily, I'd be thrilled to receive such well-written and thoughtful feedback, but this morning I wasn't in the mood. So instead of sending my usual automated reply ("Thank you so much for your lovely letter regarding Blogography, and I look forward to making you even more angry in the future!") I instead wrote back with this...
"Wow! You've figured it all out! I make my blog suck ON PURPOSE because, as you have so astutely surmised, I AM an asshole! Congratulations on your brilliance, and I hope you die real soon now so my secret will be safe!"
Then I got worried that by hoping somebody else is going to die, I might be wishing death upon myself, and suddenly became concerned about my health and well-being. Perhaps a diet of candy, chips, and Coke with Lime is just the excuse that irony is looking for to kill me off? Well screw that. I'm going to start eating healthier snacks!
So there I am at the health-bar aisle of the grocery store looking at the hundreds of healthy alternatives to candy. I am amazed at how expensive it all is. But what's money compared to my health? Nothing! So I scoop up an assortment of yummy-sounding bars, pay my $25 (holy crap!) and am on my way.
Once I get to work I decide to have a health bar for breakfast. GAH! IT'S HORRIBLE! HORRIBLE!! Dumbstruck at the foul taste in my mouth, I spit it into a garbage can while making a mental note to never buy that brand again. Then I try another one, AND IT'S EVEN WORSE! ACK!!! I PAID $2.99 for THIS?!? After spitting my fifth health bar in the trash, I'm screaming "OH LORD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME??" as I open up number six, which is called a "Bumble Bar."
Bumble Bar Almond still tastes outrageously bad but, compared to the first five I tried, it's at least edible. So there I am chomping away on gobs of seeds and sticks, trying my best to be happy at how healthy I'm going to be from all this suffering. At least I was, until I looked at the Nutrition Facts...
WTF?!?
Seriously, WTF?!? It's the same calories and fat content as a tasty Hershey Bar with Almonds! About the only difference is 2 grams more fiber, 4 grams less saturated fat, and an additional 18% iron!
Holy shit. Give me back my frackin' candy! I'll just eat a handful of Shredded Wheat for breakfast to make up the difference in fiber, and suck on a nail to get that extra 18% iron.
What really frosts my cake is that I could have bought FORTY candy bars for the money I paid for these ten "health" bars. This blows. The ones I threw out are probably healthier because they tasted worse, but I'd rather die than have to eat that crap for the rest of my life. Better to die young and happy from snacking on junk than old and miserable from eating disgusting health bars.
Maybe I'll just starting taking a vitamin with my first can of Coke with Lime of the day? That's probably the same thing anyway. Yes, thanks to vitamins, I can be healthy and still eat delicious crap! Modern science is great.
Yargh. Karma dictates I find something good to blog about now. Fortunately, I have a book that's totally sweet to talk about in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
"Well aren't you a whiny little bitch in your blog lately" she says in a tone of distaste.
Nothing like having a friend ring you up first thing in the morning so she can call you names... "Ooh look! Mayonnaise! You are whining about m-a-y-o-n-n-a-i-s-e now!" she cries, drawing out the word "mayonnaise" to an impressive 30 seconds. I act quickly to defend myself, but to dubious effect: "Uhhh... actually, I'm whining about Miracle Whip... see, they changed the recipe and it's melting into my toast..." I hear a huff of disgust followed by "Oh? Miracle Whip? Well that makes a BIG difference!" I then envision her eyes rolling so far back into her head that they get stuck there. "Maybe you shouldn't read my blog anymore, because whining is what I DO there," I offer helpfully. But she doesn't hear me... "HA! HA! The monkey is smuggling heroin up his ass?! HA! HAAAAAAA! Where do you come up with this stuff?"
Having friends and family reading your blog is a mixed bag.
On one hand, when I'm traveling or doing something interesting, everybody can see what's going on in my life without having to ask. In many ways, this is why I started blogging in the first place... it's easier than having to send a bunch of emails that all say the same thing, or having the same telephone conversation over and over. It also has the benefit of giving me a record of what I was doing two years ago (driving from Birmingham to Nashville with stops at the Hard Rock Cafes in Nashville and Gatlinburg) or even just two months ago (puking my guts out), which is kind of nifty.On the other hand, much of what I write in my blog is stuff that I would never bore somebody with in "real life," so it can be confusing to people who know me (and even more perplexing to those who don't, I'm sure).
Such is the hazard of blogging from a small town where nothing very exciting ever happens, and all you do each day is work. You end up whining about a lot of little things (like Miracle Whip) because there's nothing else going on. I've toyed with the idea of only writing when I have something interesting to say, but what's the point of having a blog with only ten entries per year?
It makes me jealous of bloggers who live fabulous lives in the big city, because they almost never post an entry featuring a cartoon monkey smuggling heroin up his ass (and, when they do, it's bound to be much more entertaining and better-drawn than what you'll find here).
Which puts me in kind of a dilemma...
Since today was yet another boring day, should I talk about Britney Spears' continuing melt-down? Or how awesome and surprising Veronica Mars was last night? Or about that scary video of Anna Nicole Smith in clown makeup talking to a doll? Or maybe I should blog about the world's tiniest prematurely-born baby getting to go home?
I'm sure any of those topics would make for a most excellent blog entry.
But I'd much rather whine about people who over-fill their gas tanks and spill petrol all over the place. Don't you just want to roll them around in the spill until they've mopped it all up and then set them on fire? Because I am getting really sick and tired of getting out of my car to fill up, stepping in a puddle of gasoline, then having to smell it all day long. I've spent the latter half of my afternoon debating as to whether the fumes I've been inhaling are better or worse than the smell of the men's public toilet at an outdoor concert during the middle of 110-degree summer heat after two hundred drunken guys urinate on every available surface. Since I loathe both smells equally, you can see what a challenge this is for me.
Except now that I've gotten that off my chest, I feel a little better.
Isn't whining about your life what blogs are for?
I must be doing something right, because the volume of hate-mail I've been getting lately is five times what it was a year ago (I started keeping count after the Scary Clown Incident of 2004). February isn't even over yet, and I'm at a record-breaking 14 hateful emails/comments for the month! I always try to respond to people who have the balls to sign their name and give a valid email address... but all the anonymous crap is deleted with such speed that one could say it never existed at all (except as a tally-mark on my hate-mail count sheet). And since 90% of the stuff is from anonymous pussies who actually think I give a crap, hate-mail and hate-comments are never much trouble.
I suppose I should be crying on the inside, but my inner-child seems to be sleeping at the moment.
I wonder how much trouble I can get into today?
I am blessed with teeth that are naturally white. Since I don't drink coffee, don't smoke, and brush them three times daily, they tend to stay that way. And when I say "white" I don't mean "literally white" because they are actually teeth-colored which, in fact, is kind of an off-white color. But ever since I switched to the delicious Crest Whitening Expressions Cinnamon toothpaste, I've noticed that my teeth have been getting even whiter (whoa... the shit actually works!). They're now more white than off-white, and I am quite pleased about that.
Unfortunately, I have an addictive personality and never seem to be content when something better is on the horizon.
Having mostly-white teeth simply isn't good enough anymore. I find myself secretly wanting brilliant-white teeth...
When I smile, I want anybody not wearing sunglasses to be temporarily blinded.
So when Crest sends me a $7.00 coupon offer that can be applied to a box of Crest White Strips, it's like offering a crack-addict a vial of cocaine. I clicked that link faster than Britney checks out of rehab, and have my credit card ready.
At least until I find out that the retail cost of a box of White Strips is $39.99, which means my desire for brilliant-white teeth requires an investment of $32.99... PLUS TAX!
Holy crap! For that kind of money I can buy the biggest Maglite flashlight they make (for temporarily blinding people), and still have money left over for a couple bags of Golden Oreos! I don't mean to sound cheap or anything, but $35 for whiter teeth? Maybe if my teeth were brown this would seem like a bargain, but I can't fathom paying $35 when my teeth are already mostly-white. I guess that I'll keep brushing with my whitening toothpaste and hope for the best.
And now, because I am a total meme whore, I've put that "book meme" that's been working its way around the blogosphere in an extended entry (I can't remember if I saw it first from Frances or SJ)...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
After two weeks of relatively sane weather, I had packed away my gloves and coat in anticipation of Spring's imminent arrival.
Given that five inches of snow decided to drop this morning, I can see that this was a stupid move. And, as if that weren't scary enough, the killer geese decided to pay a visit as well. I think the snow only made them more angry than usual, because around twenty of them were honking around the building for an hour or so... presumably out for blood. Fortunately, they left before I had to go to the movie theater (Kapgar was totally right, Breach was a pretty good flick... AND it had Jaye in it!).
In other news, here is me sitting on a pile of money...
Apparently, this is what some people think my life is like after I started blogging. I received another email today asking me about all the money I'm making off of Blogography, and what my secret is to being a successful blogger. Like last time, I remain dumbfounded as to how people could think that I get any money from doing this when I don't have advertisers or membership fees. I guess the money is just supposed to fall from the sky or something.
So as not to disappoint those people who think of me as some kind of millionaire blogger, would y'all mind sending me a couple thousand dollars? I think if everybody pitches in, I can start living the fabulous and excessive lifestyle that is expected of me. That would be great, thanks.
And now, just for Hilly, I am answering her feed reader/blogroll questionnaire in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Last night I was flipping though channels and landed on the CW Network which was airing a "Pussycat Dolls: The Search for a New Pussy" reality show. I kept watching expecting to see hottie potential Pussies shaking their asses in some kind of competition... but instead was treated to a girl blowing chunks in the toilet. WTF? If I wanted this kind of action, I'd go buy a Girls Gone Wild video where I could see me some nudity with my puking!
Blargh. I miss Veronica Mars already (which is on hiatus until sometime in April).
Back on Sunday when I was in Chicago all bored and alone in my hotel room, Hilly (whom I love more than chocolate pudding) was kind enough to "keep me company" via email as I hammered away on my blog entry for the day. Eventually our conversation turned to the upcoming TequilaCon this weekend, and how much we were looking forward to the event. Though my trip is not coming together exactly as I had planned, I am still excited that I can go...
This got me to thinking about all the bloggers I've met in person, and how lucky I am to have had the opportunity to do so. While meeting bloggers in real-life has never been a disappointment, it has always been different. That's what makes everything so much fun...
That's The Kennedy School Bar and Hotel in northern Portland. If I sense your essence, I'll be sure to give you a astral high-five and buy you an out-of-body drink. But please don't drink and astrally-project home! You're more than welcome to crash your higher being in my room so long as you behave yourself (no spirit-fingering my ass in the middle of the night).
Hmmm... I should probably get some more sleep this morning so I'll have the energy to pack a suitcase after work tonight. I wonder how many pair of underwear I'll be needing for the weekend? I think I'll pack a dozen just to be safe.
Today is the day!
TeuilaCon 2007 started off early yesterday when I met Karl and Hilly at the airport for the 10-minute drive to The Kennedy School for check-in. There were tentative plans to have a pre-con meet up, so we had dinner and drinks at the restaurant while we waited. It was nice to catch up on old times, but a bit odd when you consider that I had never met either one of them before today... blogger meet-ups are like that.
Once Adena and Stacey arrived, we couldn't find a table anywhere at The Kennedy School (it's a popular place!) so we took a run to the Alameda Brew House not too far away. Then Neil and Sophia showed up for beer and big fun...
Hilly, Sophia, Neil, Karl, Stacey, and Adena at the Alameda Brew House
Then it was time to head back to The Kennedy School where we ran into Dustin (my new roommate) and went hunting for bloggers. After a while of wandering, we found Jenny, Brandon, Jill, Kimberly, Sibyl, and Vahid.
Jenny rocking the official TequilaCon 2007 poster.
This morning we're meeting up for super-fantastic French Toast at The Cadillac Cafe and then heading downtown to Powell City of Books. I'm sure there will be blogging updates as time allows.
Wow.
TequilaCon 2007 has just ended, and it couldn't have been more amazing. A great bunch of people having fun (sometimes too much fun) and getting to meet the faces behind the blogs. I just knew it was going to be good, but nothing could prepare me for how much fun was to be had. Kudos to the TequilaCon Advisory Committee for their brilliant work this time around, and I can't wait to attend next year's event.
Among the billions of photos taken, here are a few random shots from my camera tonight...
Jenny's annual tattoo parlor was open for business. Mine was pretty bad-ass. "Bad to the Bone - FOREVER" with a skull and cross-bones... it doesn't get much better than that...
The incomparable Hilly and Stunning Ms. Sizzle glamming it up for their adoring fans and paparazzi...
We took a run with Portland's favorite taxi driver to the famous VooDoo Donuts. The trip was made all the more exciting when we found out that COCK-FEST was coming to town...
Our voodoo donut sacrifice to the tequila gods was delicious...
But one of the most interesting attendees for TequilaCon 2007 was the venue itself. The Kennedy School is incredibly cool, despite a number of disturbing images hanging in the hallways...
To everybody who attended, thanks for such a great time. To everybody who could not attend, I hope to see you next time!
Continuing on with TequilaCon Week here at Blogography...
As Jenny was organizing the massive blowout that was TequilaCon 2007 PACNW, there was one concern that kept popping up in my head. What can you do you to make sure that people don't spend all their time hanging with bloggers they already know, but instead branch out and want to meet everybody? How do you make sure that those people who might be shy around groups or are new to blogging feel welcome, comfortable, and involved? The name badge lanyards were a start, but was there something else I could do to help out?
Having been to a number of Hard Rock Cafe pin collector events, I knew that most of the fun was wandering around trading pins with all the attendees. With this in mind, I decided to put my button machine to good use and make blog buttons. I didn't know everybody showing up... or even if everybody who said they were going to show up would actually be there... but I figured if I picked a dozen bloggers, gave them custom blog pins, and then brought a big bag of eclectic pins for everybody else, maybe it would encourage people to wander around so they could trade. Just maybe attendees would end up talking to more people than they usually would if they were trying to find pins they didn't have. It was worth a shot...
It seemed to work out okay, because everywhere you went TequilaConners were wearing pins on their shirts and had pins stacked on their lanyards...
The problem was that not everybody had custom pins to trade. I feel kind of bad about that, so once Jenny compiles a final list of attendees I'll fix those blog pins I got wrong, add the blog pins I missed, then build a complete set I can send out to those who would like to have them. If Jenny and Brandon end up wanting to do this again next year, hopefully I'll be better organized.
And now for a few of those TequilaCon Moments I never get tired of re-living...
Knowing my love of all things Batman, Karl surprised me with an early birthday present... A BATMAN ALARM CLOCK! It's retro cool and will look superb sitting on my Batman Lego shelf. And, as if the clock weren't enough, Karl also included a battery. The man has class, I'll give him that much (though I will always remain jealous that the bastard looks better rocking Hilly's tiara than I do).
Then, just as I was beginning to think that this was the best TequilaCon ever, Michelle shows up with another present... THE NINJA-POPE LIL' DAVE ACTION FIGURE! This means not only is she Portland's favorite taxi driver, president of the TequilaCon Doughnut Procurement Office, and somebody I love more than my Cinnamon Crest toothpaste, she's also got talent. No photo could ever do justice to the detail that's sculpted into the piece (he's even sporting his Ninja Papal Power Staff!), but he's been added to my toy shelf, right between the starship Enterprise and my Plastic Brain, as you can see here...
Pretty sweet! And if you are not reading This Fare City, you should be. In all seriousness, many of Michelle's stories are better than the rest of our blogs put together.
Alrighty then. Will tomorrow finally see an end to all these TequilaCon entries? Probably not. I've barely touched upon all the goings on from the weekend. TequilaCon was much bigger than anybody could have anticipated, and the aftershocks will be felt for days (if not months) to come!
This is the conclusion of TequilaCon Week here at Blogography...
Gee, can it really have been a week since I flew off to Portland and the wonders of TequilaCon? Apparently so.
One of the hazards of attending a blogging event packed with talented, clever, interesting people is that you leave with a big pile of new links for your blogroll. This is a happy event if your blog is new and your blogroll is empty. But if you've been blogging four years like I have, odds are your blogroll is already stuffed to overflowing.
Time to move my blogroll to a separate page.
Now I've got room to keep a running tally of all the bloggers I've met, but it seems a shame that I can't promote those many bloggers I enjoy but haven't met on the front page. Looks like it's time to look at finishing up my BloggerPeeps project.
The original idea of BloggerPeeps was to create an "blogger anti-network" and offer a visual directory of bloggers I read. One of my favorite parts of the project was the idea of creating a little "Peep Popper" widget which would randomly cycle through all of the BloggerPeeps members... kind of a compact blogroll with little Peep-Heads that shift in and out...
I built the Peep Popper in Flash so it could do all the nifty things it needed to do, but could never get it to work right. I've made a temporary non-working widget, but still want to find somebody who knows how to program Flash ActionScript so I can have a real one.
In the meanwhile, the BloggerPeeps site is here, and there are already two amazing bloggers listed there from last year (which was when I started this project). To keep things interesting, I'll be adding a new Peep-Head every week.
Okay then... until TequilaCon 2008, I guess that's all she wrote.
This morning I woke up woefully behind in my email. As I'm pouring through it all, I quickly notice a bunch of comment notifications on several different entries left by the same guy. This isn't terribly unusual, because every once in a while somebody discovers Blogography for the first time and gets a little excited about leaving feedback. It's actually kind of nice when it happens.
Except this time. The first comment was about how this guy had a blog for a year, but finally gave up on it because nobody was reading. "If I had known I needed to draw cartoons and write nonsense to build an audience, I would have never started in the first place" he said. Things just got stranger from there. Comment #4 was a rant about how "nobody is elevating blogs to their potential for serious discourse" and then "crap like this (i.e. Blogography) should be deleted for clogging up the internet with stupidity." Comment #5 was priceless, because he stopped slamming me and my blog, and decided to turn on my readers (this means you). "Why in the hell are you people wasting your time with this crap?" he ponders. "42 comments about Vanna White on a mattress? Are you all insane or mentally deficient? How many comments would you leave if somebody wrote about cleaning the grout in their bathtub or wiping their ass?"
An aside here... If he had dug a little deeper in the archives, he would have found out that an entry about wiping my ass resulted in 27 comments. I'm still working on that bathtub grout entry.
But it was comment #7 which stole my heart. After blasting away at me, my blog, my readers, my genealogy, Google, The New York Times, a few A-list bloggers (like Dooce, Robert Scoble, & Perez Hilton), and the entire blogosphere in general, he decided to unleash his wrath on... wait for it... Farrah Fawcett??
Yes. You read that right. Farrah...
And no spanking my monkey in front of the Farrah poster!
Don't ask me why. I'm assuming Farrah doesn't have a blog, so maybe she set his computer on fire or something. Let your imagination run wild. All I do know is that Farrah is somehow partially responsible for people not reading the guy's stuff, and he is kind of upset about that.
Usually I delete comments like this and don't mention it, because the last thing I want to do is encourage this kind of behavior. Nasty comments which do nothing to contribute to the conversation simply aren't worth the trouble. If you want to disagree with me (or give me a verbal spanking) for something I've written, then more power to you. I have no problem approving comments like that. But I refuse to waste my time and energy on comment trolls who want a soap box for their wacky crap. They can start their own blog (or, in this case, un-delete their old blog) and leave me out of it.
But the idea of having Farrah Fawcett in one of my blog entries proved too compelling, so here we are. I understand she did very well with her recent medical treatment and is now cancer-free, so way to go Farrah. Maybe now we'll get that original Charlie's Angels reunion people keep talking about.
Anyway, there was no email address or link left with any of the comments, so I guess this is the end of it.
Ironically, if the guy's comments are any indication of what his blog was like, I would so totally have read it.
The ripples from the sensory utopia that was TequilaCon3 PACNW 2007 continue.
First there was TQ3.1 Seattle, whereas Dustin, Karl, and Ms. Sizzle kept the magic going. And last night was TQ3.2 Wenatchee, where Brandon, Shari, and I met up for dinner in the one-time Apple Capital of the World.
I brought a box of Aplets & Cotlets for Brandon (read this to find out why), Brandon brought a bottle of laundry detergent for me (read this to find out why), and Shari brought her entire family (for protection, obviously, which is self-explanatory considering she was meeting up with crazy bastards like Brandon and I).
The bad news is that everything went great, and I have no exciting "Brandon took out a gun and shot up the place" stories to tell. The good news is that we came up with a terrific list of possible locations for TequilaCon4 2008 that we'll be suggesting to Jenny...
Okay, I made up that last one because I've always wanted to visit there, but the remaining four locations actually came up in conversation. There were a number of other cities tossed around, but I forget what they were (Las Vegas maybe?). Naturally I'm pulling for Kansas because I've never been there before.
Hmmm... I'm taking the day off today. I wonder what kind of trouble I can get into?
Well, shit! My Verizon DSL is down at home. AGAIN.
I don't know what pisses me off more... having to waste an hour with technical support when I already know what the issue is... or eventually being told that somebody will look at it when they damn well feel like it (i.e. 24 to 48 hours). What's even worse is that my Verizon DSL account doesn't come with a backup dial-up connection, despite the fact that my local phone service, long-distance phone service, wireless, and DirecTV service are ALL handled by Verizon. That's pretty f#@%ed up.
So now I have to drive into work anytime I want to use the internet, which sucks ass.
What worries me is how I start to go insane if I am disconnected from the internet for more than 30 minutes. And it's not as if I don't have anything better to do than sitting around reading blogs and stuff, it's just that my life seems so abnormal when I'm not able to go online any time I want.
Which, of course, is all the time
Crap! Now I have to drive back to work so I can post this. Having an internet addiction blows.
Today the blogosphere is abuzz over Tim O' Reilly's well-meaning but entirely insane proposal for bloggers to adopt a "Code of Conduct." The New York Times was all too happy to jump on the bandwagon by running a page-one story entitled "A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs." This could have been an interesting piece, but once I read the opening line ("Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?") I was laughing too hard to pay much attention.
Now, before I dig in, let me state that I am giving the benefit of doubt that Tim O' Reilly's heart is in the right place here. I understand he is trying to do a good thing. Who wouldn't want to make the blogosphere a better, safer place after the disturbing events surrounding the Kathy Sierra incident? Some of the stuff that goes on in our "world" is hurtful, hateful, and just plain sick. Wanting to address these horrors is only human.
But no thank you.
I'm not signing up for anything that tells me what I can say, how I should run my blog, and how I should react to other people's blogs. If anybody cares why I feel this way, I've address Mr. O'Reilly's six bullet-points in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Oooh. Hate-comment of the day... "You are just another turd in the blog toilet clogging up Google with shit!" At first I thought that my Farrah-hating comment stalker was back, but a quick check of my stats shows a different IP address. So then I took a look through my search referral log and see that this person found me from a Google search for "ann coulter shaved porn." Such is the peril of having your blog archives indexed by Google, I guess.
I'd be upset, but I'm too freaked out at the idea that anybody would want to see Ann Coulter doing porn... shaved or otherwise. Just typing the phrase "ann coulter shaved porn" is enough to make me vomit in my mouth a little bit.
Even though this particular comment can't be taken seriously, I do get criticism from time to time over my apparent refusal to say anything of substance here, and for clogging up the blogosphere with my senseless crap. I draw funny cartoons and talk about wacky stuff, but any serious discussion is notably absent (except on rare occasions). My response has always been that I deal with enough serious crap all day long that I don't feel like dealing with it all over again in my blog. And that's pretty much the truth. Naturally I have my opinions on subjects like Don Imus, President Bush, Global Warming, Stem Cell Research, Knut the Bear, and all the rest... but blogging specifically about that stuff is simply not something I'm interested in. There are many, many other blogs out there who are happy to mix it up, I just don't happen to be one of them.
But to say that I don't put my 2¢ in on current events is not quite true, because many times I actually do so... just indirectly.
For example, my entry yesterday about the spider in my suitcase was written around 1:00am. I couldn't sleep, and decided to write out a blog entry in the hopes that my mind would relax and I could go back to bed. Even though it had just become Monday, I decided not to post it right away, and tried to get more sleep. Fast forward to my lunch hour where I am checking the news, and the Virginia Tech Massacre story is all over the place. Deeply saddened by yet another case of senseless violence in an increasingly senseless world, I added the following paragraph to the entry I had written earlier that morning...
"In a world where it is increasingly more common to kill a life than save it... where it's far easier to destroy something than to create it... it's the little things like this that help me feel better about my place in the grand scheme of things."
This was an indirect response to the news coming out of Virginia, even though most people probably didn't realize it as such.
And, to quote Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that."
Of course, now my blog is going to rocket to the top of the Google charts for people who can't get enough Ann Coulter shaved porn. I'd address that indirectly by talking about a television program I once saw about pubic lice, but something tells me this would just confuse the issue further.
Well take a look at what we have here... it's my four-year blogiversary!
And if you had told me back at the beginning that I'd still be writing in Blogography... daily, no less... four years hence, I'd have thought you were insane (and then probably killed you because that kind of crazy just shouldn't be wandering the streets). After all, I had two failed blogs under my belt from the previous three years, and there was no indication that Blogography was going to be any different. The only change was that if Blogography didn't work out, it was going to be three strikes and I was done.
But here I am, still writing my daily dose of incomprehensible crap.
Year One was a mess, filled mostly with memes and boring stuff that I should have deleted long ago. Year Two was when I finally got my shit together and my blog was everything I wanted it to be... "the golden years," if you will. Year Three was the hardest, with too many bumps in the road and crazy crap that had me contemplating shutting Blogography down. And here we are at Year Four, and the blogging habit is such a big part of my life that I can't see an end to it. So it must be time to celebrate...
Yes indeed, this time the shit is very personal, as you will find out during this week-long party that has been five months in the making. Just like previous years, there will be hundreds of dollars worth of prizes to win and good times along the way, but there are going to be some changes as well...
The schedule of events looks something like this...
Oh yeah. You might want to tune in every day, because it will undoubtedly be worth your while. :-)
UPDATE: THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED! NO ADDITIONAL ENTRIES ARE BEING ACCEPTED!
Every year I release a new T-shirt to celebrate my blogiversary. First there was the classic Blogography Logo T, then came the Bad Monkey T, and lastly was the infamous Zombies Ate My Brain T (chosen by YOU, my loyal Blogography readers in last year's contest). Well, this year I came up with 32 different design ideas, and couldn't make up my mind which one to print. So I went to dinner with a group of friends, and we managed to narrow it down to a mere 7.
Since everybody did such a great job of picking a design last year, I'm going to put it up for a vote again this year.
And, to make it worth your while, everybody who votes will be getting a coupon for $10 OFF any Artificial Duck Co. Store T-Shirt purchase!
That means you can pick up a classic white shirt for just $5 (+ shipping)... or one of the new color shirts for just $7 (+shipping)*. And these ain't no crappy iron-on designs... no way! Each shirt is custom silk-screened on premium quality 100% cotton shirts for the ultimate in comfort and durability!
And, just because I love you, FIVE VOTERS will be put in a drawing to get a shirt ABSOLUTELY FREE... all you pay is the shipping charges!
It's almost too good to be true! So how do you vote? It's easy!
And here's this year's choices... you're voting for the TWO designs you like best...
VOTE: Bad Monkey (on yellow)
VOTE: Dave Pope (on teal)
VOTE: Toxic Yawn (on green)
VOTE: Smoking Monkeys (on blue)
VOTE: Try Evil (on black)
VOTE: Little Geeky (on olive)
VOTE: Blogography (on slate)
Please be sure to follow the rules listed above to vote, and may the best design win!
10 BLOGOGRAPHY MOMENTS IN HISTORY, YEAR ONE: 04/03-03/04
Dave writes his very first snarky rant about 6 extra grams of fat on some daft bitch's lazy ass.
Dave first declares his love for Elizabeth Hurley.
Dave writes his first travel-blog on a trip to Iceland and Stockholm.
Dave rips apart a totally incompetent review of Kill Bill by James Berardinelli at "ReelViews."
Dave writes about a trip to New Orleans, pre-Katrina... one of his favorite cities.
Dave draws his very first DaveToon, featuring the first appearance of Bad Monkey on Blogography.
Dave writes that infamous entry about hating clowns which spawns his first hate-mail avalanche.
Dave writes about lame internet quizzes, and then makes up his own lame internet quiz ideas.
Dave finally writes about something personal, which turns out to be a fairly rare event.
Dave draws a DaveToon about brushing his teeth, which is still one of Blogography most popular links.
*PLEASE NOTE: Shirts will be printed in early June once all the pre-orders have been taken through the month of May. The prices listed above are for sizes S-XL. Larger sizes are available for an extra charge: 2XL is $1.00 extra, 3XL is $2.00 extra. Sizes bigger than 2X are not available in colors, but I'll be happy to print any design on a white shirt: 4XL is $3.00 extra, 5XL is $4.00 extra, 6XL is $5.00 extra.
UPDATE: THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED! NO ADDITIONAL ENTRIES ARE BEING ACCEPTED!
Everybody loves little 1-inch button pins! Especially when they have really cool stuff on them. I originally invested in pricey professional button-making equipment for a charity fundraising event. Eventually it occurred to me that it might be cool to make buttons for my blog and pass them out at blogger meet-ups and stuff. When TequilaCon came around, I took some Blogography pins, some custom pins for bloggers I knew, and a big bag of 60 "generic" designs so everybody else could have pins to trade. By the end of the night all my pins were gone, and everybody seemed to have fun with them.
So I decided to add pins to the Artificial Duck Store for sale in ready-to-buy sets or pick-and-choose sets that customers can assemble themselves. There will also be the option for bloggers to send in their own artwork and have custom pins made. It's button fun for everyone, and I call them DuckyButtons...
In celebration of this new addition to the store, today's contest will feature button prizes...
TODAY'S $150+ GRAND PRIZE DRAWING...
$50 Amazon Gift Certificate ($50 value). Rather than shipping heavy books, region-specific DVDs, or CDs that get ripped and tossed in a landfill, I've decided to pass out Amazon Gift Certificates. This means prize-winners can get whatever they like and, since Amazon is available in several countries around the globe, it's a prize most everybody can enjoy (even if the US dollar doesn't buy as much as it used to).
Six Sets of DuckyButtons ($24 value). Pick any six sets you like, or create your own 5-button sets. DuckyButtons are sure to bring a smile to your face... or to anybody else's you meet when you wear them. And since you're getting 30 buttons, that's a month's worth of sweet wearable art to wear and share!
Twenty-Five Custom-Made DuckyButtons with Your Design ($25 value). Email us any one design or photo you like, and we'll turn it into 25 beautiful custom buttons of your very own! Use them to promote your blog, impress your friends, or distribute wearable pictures of your cat... so long as it isn't copyrighted, we'll make buttons from whatever you want!
Three Artificial Duck T-Shirts ($51 value). Yep, that's right, get any three shirts you like from the Artificial Duck Store... keep them for yourself, or give them out as gifts that will impress those lucky people you deem worthy of wearing them!
World-Wide Shipping (up to $35 value). No matter where you live on planet earth, rest assured you won't have to pay a dime to claim your prize because shipping is included.
And that's not all, today you also have two other chances to win...
TODAY'S $40+ RUNNER-UP PRIZE DRAWING (TWO WINNERS!)...
Two Sets of DuckyButtons ($8 value). Your choice of two sets of super-sweet DuckyButtons in whatever designs you like... that's ten buttons to wear and share!
Fifteen Custom-Made DuckyButtons with Your Design ($15 value). Email us any one design or photo you like, and we'll turn it into 15 beautiful custom buttons of your very own!
One Artificial Duck T-Shirts ($17 value). Pick any shirt you like from the Artificial Duck Store, and be happy knowing that you'll be wearing a T-shirt that makes you at least 10% hotter the minute you put it on!
World-Wide Shipping (up to $12 value). Of course shipping is included, because that's the way I roll here.
AND NOW FOR THE RULES...
Okay then, if you didn't leave 10 comments in the past year, PICK FOUR of the five questions below, and be sure to include the answers in your email entry to CONTEST EXPIRED! All the answers can be found in the Blogography History links listed below or by using the "Search Box" in my sidebar...
Remember, the entry deadline is TOMORROW at 9:00pm P.S.T. (Seattle time)! Good luck!
10 BLOGOGRAPHY MOMENTS IN HISTORY, YEAR TWO: 04/04-03/05
Dave writes his most Googled blog entry ever.
Dave lives here.
Dave takes really cool photos from the air.
Dave takes even cooler photos right here on earth.
Dave flies to Dublin, Ireland so he can look at a book that's being made into a killer animated feature.
Dave talks about his childhood, and shares a photo that Google-searching pedophiles will probably enjoy.
Dave goes looking for Robin Hood, but gets cake instead.
Dave live-blogs for the first time under less than ideal circumstances.
Dave blogs a "Day in the Life" entry, and swears never to do it again because it's just too much work.
Dave picks three guys he might go totally gay for.
UPDATE: THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED! NO ADDITIONAL ENTRIES ARE BEING ACCEPTED!
Looks like there is going to be a slight change of plans for Blogiversary IV Week.
Turns out that the T-shirt voting from the first contest has taken an interesting turn. One design has pulled way, way, way out ahead of the pack (for those of you who were wanting the "A Little Geeky" shirt printed, it looks like you're going to get your wish). The problem is picking a shirt for the #2 spot, because there are three shirts all within 5 votes of each other. This leaves me with a dilemma because with no clear runner-up winner, it's difficult to know which one should be printed...
So I've decided to move tomorrows prizes to today, and change the final prize to be more T-shirts. By putting more money into shirts, I might get quantities that will allow me to add an additional design or two. As an added benefit, this means more people will win prizes. So I think it's a good solution all around. Anyway, back to tomorrow's today's prizes...
On occasion I receive emails asking me if any of my photos or DaveToons or drawings are available for sale as prints. I suppose I could have printed out stuff on my inkjet and sold it to them, but this seemed like a cheap rip-off to me. So I started searching for a way to have my stuff professionally printed with impeccable quality, yet be of reasonable cost. After a few months of research and buying test-prints, I finally found a solution...
When the Artificial Duck Store reopens, I'll be selling a limited selection of quality Giclée Pro-Prints on a choice of fine art papers or premium photo satin matte. The brilliant inks used are pigment-based which ensures a long print life and quality reproduction. They really are quite nice, and look great when framed.
I'll start with a few of my favorite photos, some DaveToons that have been optimized specifically for print, and add a couple of limited edition items. If people actually end up buying them, I'll be adding new prints from time to time.
In celebration of this new addition to the store, today's contest will feature photo and print prizes...
TODAY'S $225+ GRAND PRIZE DRAWING...
Polaroid A515 Digital Camera ($80 value). This digital camera may be pretty cheap-ass, but it does have 5 megapixels, 4X zoom, 16MB built-in storage, and a 1.7" LCD screen. That's good enough to snap a few photos of your kid, your dog, or whatever... which will come in handy when the next prize arrives...
A Flickr Pro Account Gift Membership ($25 value). Organize your photos online, then show them to the world with this one-year gift membership to Flickr. If you already have a Flickr account, this will extend your membership by a year.
Two Giclée Pro-Prints from the Artificial Duck Store ($70 value). Decorate your life with a couple of classy prints designed by yours truly. These prints are both beautiful and versatile... Embellish your living room with a great photo. Put a DaveToon in your baby's room. Or even use your prints as a really expensive liner for your cat's litter box.
Three Artificial Duck T-Shirts ($51 value). Yep, that's right, get any three shirts you like from the Artificial Duck Store... keep them for yourself, or give them out as gifts that will impress those lucky people you deem worthy of wearing them!
World-Wide Shipping (up to $35 value). No matter where you live on planet earth, rest assured you won't have to pay a dime to claim your prize because shipping is included.
And that's not all, today you also have two other chances to win...
TODAY'S $52+ RUNNER-UP PRIZE DRAWING (TWO WINNERS!)...
One Giclée Pro-Print from the Artificial Duck Store ($35 value).
One Artificial Duck T-Shirts ($17 value). Pick any shirt you like from the Artificial Duck Store, and be happy knowing that you'll be wearing a T-shirt that makes you at least 10% hotter the minute you put it on!
World-Wide Shipping (up to $12 value). Of course shipping is included, because that's the way I roll here.
AND NOW FOR THE RULES...
Okay then, if you didn't leave 10 comments in the past year, PICK FOUR of the five questions below, and be sure to include the answers in your email entry to CONTEST EXPIRED! All the answers can be found in the Blogography History links listed below or by using the "Search Box" in my sidebar...
Remember, the entry deadline is TOMORROW at 9:00pm P.S.T. (Seattle time)! Good luck!
10 BLOGOGRAPHY MOMENTS IN HISTORY, YEAR THREE: 04/05-03/06
Dave makes his first (but certainly not last) bid to become Pope... and then contemplates his Papal super-powers.
Dave gets a lot of hate-mail for this one... I guess comparing the US dollar to toilet paper is a bad thing.
Dave learns how to peel a banana from a monkey.
Dave creates DaveLand, the Daviest Place on Earth!
Dave finally gets all political and shit.
Dave still gets emails from crazy bitches over Dead Hooker Babies.
Dave creates the entire universe (with the assistance of His Divine Monkey).
Dave is tired of lame Collectible Card Games, and decides to create his own CCG.
Dave fulfills his life-long dream to walk upon the Great Wall of China.
Dave celebrates his 40th birthday... then dies and comes back to life as a zombie.
UPDATE: THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED! NO ADDITIONAL ENTRIES ARE BEING ACCEPTED!
As I mentioned yesterday, votes for the second shirt design to be printed are really, really close (and if you haven't voted yet, you can still get your choices sent in by clicking here). With no clear victory for second place, I've decided to change this last day of prize drawings, and put the money into more shirt prizes. That way, I can get the order quantities high enough that I can print and extra design or two.
So, in addition to the 5 FREE shirts I have for the T-shirt vote drawing, I'm adding another 25 FREE shirts for everybody who enters today's contest (all you have to do is pay the shipping costs!). That's 30 freebies total being given away for
That's like uhhhhhh... $510 in shirts or something. This brings the total prizes for this year's blogiversary to over $1000, which is pretty sweet!
AND NOW FOR THE RULES...
Okay then, if you didn't leave 10 comments in the past year, this time you have to answer ALL SEVEN of the questions below, and be sure to include the answers in your email entry to CONTEST EXPIRED! All the answers can be found in the Blogography History links listed below or by using the "Search Box" in my sidebar...
Remember, the entry deadline is TOMORROW at 9:00pm P.S.T. (Seattle time)! Good luck!
10 BLOGOGRAPHY MOMENTS IN HISTORY, YEAR FOUR: 04/06-03/07
Dave discovers that PayPal sucks total ass because they stole his f#@%ing money!
Dave reviews the most magical breakfast food ever: Hello Kitty Pop-Tarts!
Dave creates his now-infamous alternatives for a hospital's lame "Pain Chart".
Dave decides to write a line of books for dumbasses.
Dave reveals his cross-dressing past.
Dave decides to build a monument to his greatness.
Dave has a dream.
Dave writes that entry about bluetooth headsets that gets him a lot of hate-mail.
Dave meets bloggers Eve and Dave3, then gets a shocking surprise on the streets of New York City.
Dave finds out that the gays have invaded Chicago.
Tonight the last of the Blogiversary IV contests are ending, so tomorrow I can take all the entries to somebody not affiliated with Blogography and have them draw the winners. That will bring the week-long celebration to a close, and I can move on to another year of big blogging fun.
In the meanwhile, I am still trying to get the Artificial Duck Co. store ready for its grand re-opening on Monday afternoon. It's been a long-time coming, and a really difficult road to get here. I thought the hardships were over once I moved to Yahoo! Merchant Solutions, but it turns out my problems are just beginning.
One of the major reasons I decided to go with Yahoo! was that they had inventory control. This was really important to me, because I didn't want people to order something that was out-of-stock and be disappointed when I had to tell them they wouldn't be getting it. With inventory control, I would finally have a way to let people know if they could order an item or not. I would use Yahoo! tags to access the inventory status of an item/size, then use the yes/no result to display a graphic to let people know if they could order a particular size...
Except Yahoo! doesn't allow you to do that with their "store tags." In order for a customer to know whether or not something is in-stock, they have to add it to their cart. If it ends up in your cart, congratulations, you can order it! Otherwise you get this ugly stupid-ass error message...
What the fuck?!?
What sense does it make to have inventory control if you can't tell your customers what the inventory level is BEFORE they add something to their cart? This is pretty stupid, and basically cuts the usefulness of this feature in half.
So now I'm going to have to MANUALLY adjust the inventory indicators every time something changes, which sucks ass. Heaven forbid that I actually go on vacation or something.
Why is it that somebody can't build a reasonably-priced merchant solution for small businesses that doesn't suck? Is it really so incredibly difficult? I can only hope that Google jumps into the game and fixes this shit like they seem to be doing with everything else.
It's a very special Blogiversary IV edition of Bullet Sunday!
Come back and read this after you skip down to see if you've won anything... I'll be waiting.
Did you win? If you did, many congratulations! If you didn't, I'm sorry about that, and maybe you'll win one of the other events I've got planned for later in the year. And, just in case you're curious as to how the winners were chosen... I had nothing to do with it. I instead enlisted a friend who has no idea who the people were who entered (and doesn't even bother to read my blog in the first place). That way, the drawing is fair and impartial, and that's the only way to really run a contest. Here's how it went...
Here are the winners for this year...
• FIVE FREE SHIRTS... The five winners for voting on the shirts I'll be printing for this year's run are...
• TWENTY-FIVE FREE SHIRTS... The twenty-five winners for entering ShirtFest on Thursday are...
• BUTTON CONTEST... Here are the winners for the Buttons Contest from Wednesday...
Grand Prize Winner: Cynical Dad
Runner-Up Prize Winner: ~jtm
Runner-Up Prize Winner: Kyle Ice
• PRINTS CONTEST... Here are the winners for the Prints Contest from Thursday...
Grand Prize Winner: Cavan T.
Runner-Up Prize Winner: Avitable
Runner-Up Prize Winner: Sven P.
And that concludes Blogography's Blogiversary IV Celebration! Congratulations again to all the winners, and my most heart-felt thanks to all of you who keep reading Blogography... I wouldn't be doing this without you!
Dave2
UPDATE: Well, crap. I turned on the store, everything looked great, but the first three orders couldn't process because of some kind of communication problem with my bank for verification of funds. Bleh. Everything will be just fine soon... very soon...
In what can only be described as a miracle, the Artificial Duck Co. store is on-schedule for its grand opening tonight tomorrow.
Probably pretty late tonight around noon tomorrow, as there are still some things that need to be tested.
Getting to this point wasn't easy... I had no idea that setting up a "real" store for myself would be so hard. I've done it dozens of times for other people but, when it comes to making a store of your own, there's an unimaginable amount of work that has to happen. Honestly, it's too much work for something that's supposed to be just a hobby, but oh well. Soon it will all be over.
The best part of setting up shop has been designing various features I want the store to have. Some things aren't working quite right on Internet Explorer (surprise, surprise), but the "Build-A-DuckyButton-Set" page seems to be working just fine. Creating the "About Us Page" was also loads of fun (assuming I don't get sued by Paramount!).
By far the worst part of setting up shop has been the shipping charges. The US Postal Service is changing rates and eliminating services on May 14th, and so all of that has to be accounted for (since none of my orders will be shipping until early June). Shipping is always a tricky beast, because I want very much for what I charge to be accurate so I'm not ripping people off. I hate ordering a T-shirt on the internet and having shipping charges be $12 when I know the company is only going to pay $5. Rip-off! The problem is that if you goof up and accidentally charge too little, you stand to lose a horrendous amount of money very quickly. And it doesn't help that Yahoo!'s rate charts can't be calculated by shipping zone, which is kind of stupid because that's how all the carriers set their rates.
But other than the shipping rates and the aforementioned lack of inventory display, Yahoo! hasn't been that bad to work with. I don't know if I will be able to afford to stay with them because their rates are so incredibly high, but I'll wait it out a few months before deciding what to do about that. It sure would be nice if Yahoo! would just take a straight percentage though. Rather than the $100/month + 1% I'm paying now, it would be a lot better for me if they just took 3% or even 5% so I wouldn't be hit so hard on months where I'm not selling much. I didn't build my store to make money, but it would be nice not to lose money.
Anyway, it's been an adventure. Check in tomorrow when everything should be up-and-runnning (crossing my fingers) at Artificial Duck Co.!
Well this is fun.
What was supposed to be such an easy task has turned into a complete nightmare. Despite having all my products chosen and graphics made, getting merchandise processed at the Artificial Duck Store has been far from easy. I've re-keyed all 136 items FOUR TIMES in an attempt to get everything working. The good news is that I've finally figured out what was going wrong, and know how to fix it. The bad news is that I have to re-enter everything a FIFTH time.
Oh well, the shirts and DuckyButtons are up and running now, and I'll get to the prints and photos in the morning.
For all of you who voted for shirts, I'll be sending out your coupons (with a nice bonus for making you wait!) later this evening. If you've already placed an order DON'T PANIC! Just let me know and I'll adjust the amount before you're charged.
And oh yeah... we have four T-shirt winners this year!
As far as votes go, "A Little Geeky" was far and away the winner. "Try Evil" was a firm second place. "Blogography" was ahead of "Try Evil" for a while, and then tied within 2 votes with "Bad Monkey." It was all very close, so I just decided to print them all. Mostly because I want to own all of them myself!
A pity the stuff won't be arriving until early June, but I think it's all worth the wait!
Anyway, thanks so much to everybody who helped me to celebrate Blogiversary IV this year... you are much appreciated! Here's looking forward to another year.
No internet again. I give up.
Is there a dictionary out there for texting from a mobile phone, because this is taking forever? i nd 2 lrn 2 txt...
Do you ever have those days when the last thing on earth you want to do is write in your blog?
That's me today. Well, maybe it's not the last thing... I mean, I'd rather write in my blog than be kicked in the balls, for example. But it's definitely on my list of things I don't want to do today.
Not that I actually have such a list but, if I did, it would probably look like this...
THINGS I DON'T WANT TO DO TODAY...
Yeah. That pretty much sums it up. Hopefully I will feel different tomorrow, otherwise I'll end up having to post naked pictures or something...
This is a pre-recorded episode of Blogography from Thursday, May 31.
Not only do I have to pretend it's Monday, but I also have to pretend to write in somebody else's blog! Assuming that everything went as planned and I found somebody to post my entry, I'm filling in over at Kapgar today. But be forewarned, I used this as a shameless opportunity to draw up some DaveToons that I've never been brave enough to post in my own blog. Somehow it doesn't bother me to sink to new levels of tastelessness and debauchery on somebody else's blog though. I'm such a cheeky bastard.
Click here to read it... if you dare.
This is a pre-recorded episode of Blogography from Thursday, May 31.
I've just written five entries (plus a guest-blogger entry!) to post while I am distracted from blogging for a bit, which means I've got two to go until I (hopefully) return to "live" daily blogging again next this Thursday. The problem is that I have nothing left to write about. Well, I probably do, but I've been future-blogging for almost two hours now and feel empty. Things become even more complicated when you consider how the world of next Tuesday might have changed since I wrote this entry (and how disappointing would it be if the planet explodes before this is even posted?).
So I decided to make a list of nine cool things that could happen in the next five days before this entry posts. Why nine? Because it fits so nicely in a three-by-three grid...
Wow... can I just interject here to say that Kristen Bell and I would make a cute couple? She should totally date me!
Anyway, now that I am done playing Nostradaveus, I suppose I should get to work on my (hopefully) final prerecorded entry. Heaven only knows what I will come up with to write... maybe I should just draw a DaveToon and be done with it? Though I just finished drawing four of them for Kapgar, so I don't know if I really feel like doing another one tonight.
If only I could find those naked pictures, my problem would be solved...
OMG! I TOTALLY FORGOT HOW TO BLOG!!
But if that doesn't frighten you away, I ramble on for quite a bit in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
I am about ready to cry.
And I don't mean actually cry... like when you get kicked in the balls... or Veronica Mars gets canceled... or you have kidney stones or something. I'm talking about that fake sobbing you do when you want to garner sympathy-sex from your girlfriend or get a cookie from your grandmother. The kind of over-the-top weeping that kids do when things don't go their way.
All because I'm feeling horrible and I'm exhausted and I just had to drive 2-1/2 hours home.
And now I have to write in my blog.
But I don't feel like writing in my blog, so I'm thinking if I cry everybody will feel sorry for me and either offer me sympathy-sex or a cookie. And that would be better than everybody being mad at me because I don't feel like writing anything tonight.
As most Blogography readers have probably already heard, our own "New York City's Watchdog" has shared the unbelievably sad news that he has lost his five-year-old son (known to Cereal Wednesday fans as "Puppy Monster") in a tragic accident.
At times like this, I truly am at a loss for words. Watchdog is a part of our "blogging family," and my heart goes out to him and his family at this unimaginably difficult time.
If you'd like to help out, Avitable has set up a donations page via PayPal. If you can't afford to donate, please consider leaving a note of support over at Watchdog's site. I'm sure it will be much appreciated, so thanks in advance for whatever you can do.
All our thoughts are with you, Watchdog.
It's always difficult for me to come up with something to say on Independence Day. Mostly because one of my favorite Blogography entries is from the 4th of July two years ago. I think it pretty much sums up how I feel about freedom, liberty and all that other cool stuff America is supposed to stand for. The entry also has diarrhea and puking in it, which is always fun.
And speaking of fun, I swear this holiday gets more redneck every year...
"Let's get drunk and blow shit up" could one day take the place of "In God we trust" as the USA's national motto (if it hasn't already).
But, of course, we can't forget the flaming balls...
Something else all too typically American here is that "Proud American" is proudly made... in China.
Wow am I exhausted.
It's positively frightening how dead the blogosphere has been today.
I can only guess that everybody is on extended holiday from Independence Day, and/or just doesn't feel like blogging now that summer has arrived. Not that I can blame them. The weather here has been incredible lately (92° with clear blue skies) and, if I didn't have work to get done and T-shirts to ship, I'd probably be ditching my blog and out there enjoying it as well.
But I kind of have to blog today because... ooh... ooh... ooh! There's a date for the Chicago blogger meet now...
Mark your calendars for August 25th! Last year in Chicago was a total blast and was attended by a number of notable bloggers, including...
And, of course, ME from right here at Blogography.
This year promises to be equally sweet, and the location will be picked out once we all have an idea how many people will be showing up. An early favorite is the remarkable Pizano's Pizza on E. Madison in The Loop. They, of course, have a fantastic award-winning Chicago Deep Dish pizza, but it's their crispy buttercrust pizza that's the cat's meow.
Oh great, now I'm going to fall asleep with Pizano Pizza buttercrust fantasies in my head.
Home-delivered by Elizabeth Hurley, of course.
So there I was, waking up after a good night's sleep* so I could check my email, when Harry Potter dropped by for an unwelcome visit.
The very first email I opened was sent to my Blogography address, and had a subject line of "Hard Rock Cafe Hong Kong." Thinking that somebody had news of yet another unfortunate cafe closing, I opened it up only to find that is was a photo collage of pages from a book with notes scrawled above them. But not just any book, it was Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, the final book in the series (not yet released).
This was completely baffling. From appearances, the person sending the photo had fully intended to spoil the book for me. They knew me. They knew I like the Hard Rock Cafe. And they used an email subject they knew I was likely to open. About the only thing they didn't know is that I don't care about Harry Potter, and have read only the first book, part of the second, and made it through the third only by skipping large chunks of it. So seeing all these spoilers meant nothing. The sender's address looked disposable, so I didn't even bother replying.
A couple of emails later, and it's a comment notification for my blog... that turns out to be nothing more than a dozen Harry Potter spoilers typed out in ALL-CAPS (left anonymously, of course).
WTF?!?
Why would anybody work so hard to ruin a book that I'm not even interested in? I can only assume that I am not alone, and soon the entire internet will be plagued by juvenile assholes with nothing better to do than try to ruin the ending of the book for people. I just wish that I could figure out what in the heck they have to gain from this. If making other people unhappy is their incentive, that's pretty frakin' lame.
*Last night I adopted drastic measures so I could finally get some sleep... PILLS! Two sleeping pills, a melatonin, and a Midnite, all combined into a sleep cocktail that managed to knock me out for an entire seven hours. I worry about trying this kind of thing too often, but it's nice to know I can get some drug-induced rest from time to time.
And now, before I go, why not head on over to NYC Watchdog's Cereal Wednesday... not only is he one of the best-dressed vloggers out there, but you could win a box of Krusty-O's cereal!
Today I'm packing up my undead monkey and heading over to Geeks of Doom to review the movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry starring Kevin James and Adam Sandler (a direct link to the review is here). This is a pre-cursor to my becoming a columnist there in mid-August, after an invitation by site-runners (and my good blogging buddies) Empress Eve and Dave3.
For those of you not familiar with "Geeks of Doom," it is the group blog formerly known as "GeekZine," which quickly became one of my favorite news sites because it's packed with geeky goodness on comics, television, movies, and pop culture. With the transition to Geeks of Doom now complete, it's an essential daily read for me, and I'm honored to be writing for the site...
I've been presented with more than a few offers to write and draw for other blogs and websites, but have always turned them down... even when they were going to pay me. I just never felt that there was anything I wanted to say outside of Blogography. But this opportunity proved entirely too tempting, and the idea of working with Eve and Dave was something I just couldn't pass up.
I'll be sure to mention when I have an entry up in case anybody is interested... or you can head over to Geeks of Doom and subscribe to their webfeed. The information contained within may very well save your life*
*In the event of zombie invasion or other geek-related disaster.
In a mere two weeks, I'll be in Chicago for big-time fun and excitement, culminating in Saturday's blogger meet-up in the city on the 25th. Just like last year, the guest list is packed with a great bunch of people, and good times are sure to ensue!
Right now, we are planning to meet for dinner at Pizano's on Madison, in The Loop. But before we can make reservations, we need a head-count. If you are able to attend, please email me so I can call up and make reservations next week. Even if you've already told me you're coming, It would be great to have confirmation that your plans haven't changed.
Last year, dinner was just the beginning, and the festivities continued on into the night, as we just couldn't get enough of each other. Talking with people who "get" blogging is a treat, and I cannot wait to hang out with everybody again this year. Hope you can make it!
In other news, I've finally given up waiting for the mailing tubes to ever arrive for mailing out Artificial Duck Co. print and photo orders. I've done some test-mailings in boxes, and everything has arrived in great shape, so I'm just going to start mailing them out that way. This kind of makes me feel bad, because $5 of the price for the prints was to accommodate the cost of the tube and additional mailing charges. Now that I'm not using them, I've overcharged everybody by $5. To make up for it, there will be some extra goodies sent along with the orders. Again, thanks so much to everybody for their patience while I got this all sorted out!
Cover of the Artificial Duck Co. Print and Photo User Guide Booklet.
And now, it's time to get ready to head back to the coast for the weekend...
Things may be a little strange around here for a few days. I am upgrading Blogography to Movable Type 4.0, and it will take some time for all the templates and stuff to be transitioned to the new format.
The decision to upgrade something that ain't broken is always a difficult one, but I need to start learning the new system in anticipation of clients who ask me to work with it. I had thought about creating a test-blog, but ultimately decided to just forge ahead with this one. Your motivation for learning something new is considerably higher if you have something at stake...
Here's hoping that I don't totally f#@% things up, because I don't have a lot of time before I have to leave again.
Say a prayer to the blog gods, because here I go...
UPDATE: Okay... who didn't say their prayers! Things are so f#@%ed up that you'd swear I had planned this crap. Not only won't anything publish properly, but MT4 is balls-slow. As in agonizingly balls-slow.
UPDATE: Oh shit! Shiiiiiiiiiiiit!!
UPDATE: Hmmm... uhhh... comments are working again. Notifications are slow, slow, slow to arrive though... much like everything else.
UPDATE: I kinda think that everything is working properly now. I had hoped to upgrade my templates to use some of the new MT4 features, but Movable Type's weak link has reared its ugly head once again... crappy documentation. You look up a tag that you want to use, and are presented with the bare minimum of information. No examples. No external references. Nothing. I would attempt to dissect the default templates to see how things work, but when you upgrade an existing installation (even to a clean directory), the default templates go missing. Any attempt to add a new template and copy over the defaults manually is defeated by missing links and modules that I can't seem to locate. Maybe when I have more time, I'll try again... but holy crap! This is VERSION 4 and there's STILL no frakin' documentation!! WTF? What good are new features if nobody can find out how to use them? Movable Type could be the greatest application in the universe, and it wouldn't mean shit because without good docs, who is going to want to work with it?
Bee-Boop!
It's a sound I remember well. A sound I loathe with every fiber of my being. A sound I thought that I had eliminated from my life forever.
Bee-Boop!
It's that annoying sound that a Motorola mobile phone makes when the battery is running low. Last night some dumbass in the room next to mine left his dying phone behind while he was away. I can only imagine that he was out banging some crack whore, and didn't want the inconvenience of having his wife call while he's acquiring his latest STD (why else leave your mobile behind?).
Bee-Boop!
Meanwhile, I had to try and work while that stupid mobile phone kept begging for somebody to charge it. Eventually I cranked up my iPod so I wouldn't hear it, but that's not the way I work best. I need silence.
Bee-Boop!
The owner eventually returned around 10:40pm... but waited an agonizing ten minutes before plugging-in his phone (sorry buddy, but washing your dick in the sink is no substitute for a shot of penicillin). Silence was mine at last, and I started in on my work once again, confident that my troubles were over.
I would be wrong, of course.
Around 1:30am I was beyond tired and decided to finally drop into bed. I took a couple of sleeping pills, hoping that I might be able to sleep-in late and get a full eight hours rest for once. Heaven only knows I need it after a week of not getting much sleep at all.
But the phone rang at 7:00am, waking me from a dead-sleep...
Since they hung-up on me, I'll now take a minute to respond...
Dear Anonymous Blogography Fan Callers,
Thank you so much for your phone call bright and early this morning at 7:00am! I cannot help but be touched. It's people like you who make my blogging experience all the more satisfying and worthwhile. By taking the time to let me know just how much you care, I'm even more inspired to keep writing in my blog. Your enthusiasm and kind words are a beacon of light in the darkness of my existence, and I am ever so grateful to you for sharing your feelings with me!
Love You!
Dave2
And one more thing before I forget...
After napping for a couple more hours, I had to go out most of the day for work. Around 2:00 it was scorching, and I decided to take a break from the heat. I bought a bottle of Vitamin Water and took a seat in front of an office building where they were kind enough to put benches around a large planter. While I was sitting there, I looked down and noticed a small worm struggling on the hot sidewalk. It had rained earlier, which probably drew him out of hiding, but now all the moisture had evaporated leaving him high and dry. I was pretty sure the little guy was a goner, but I kicked him aside, picked him up, then set him in the planter under the shade of some greenery. Maybe he would get lucky and recover.
A woman sitting two seats away from me was talking on her mobile phone loud enough for me to overhear her disgust as she said "Gross! Some guy just picked a WORM up off the STREET!!" I immediately turned towards her and said "Don't worry, if you were to collapse dying on the sidewalk right now, I wouldn't lift a finger to help YOU out."
Then I walked away mad at myself because I knew that I undoubtedly would help the bitch if she collapsed on the sidewalk.
But I'd "accidentally" step on her mobile phone and smash it into a million pieces while I was trying to save her hater ass. Karma, and all that...
Two of the hotel spiders have disappeared, leaving me with one sole window-mate remaining. At first I thought that he might be dead, but then I saw him wandering around his web and upgraded his condition from "dead" to "feisty zombie." He's out for blood alright, and it's only a sheet of double-paned glass that separates him from mine.
From a distance, Wesley (that's what I named him) is a fairly innocent-looking creature. He's small (less than an inch in length) and could even be considered "cute" if you can get past the fact that he'd gladly kill you if he had a bit more size on him. But when you put your camera on super-zoom, Wesley looks pretty terrifying...
He's not somebody I'd like to have as a house-guest, that's for sure.
Anyway, I'm all ready for Davecago2 tonight, and am really looking forward to seeing everybody...
UPDATE: Well, I was planning on posting about the event tonight, but it's past midnight and I have to be up at 5:00am... so I guess my Davecago wrap-up will have to wait for another day. Suffice to say that it was big-fun, as always, and a big thanks to everybody who made the trip!
Today has been a much better experience than yesterday. Instead of wanting to shoot people in the face, I merely want to break their knee-caps or give them a wedgie or something. Of course, I'm blogging early, and so there's plenty of room for massive trauma to strike before the day is done.
That probably sounds pessimistic, but I prefer to think of it as realistic. And THAT probably sounds defeatist, but I prefer to think of it as not setting myself up for disappointment.
In other news... it is SO on, bitches!
I don't know where or what time yet (suggestions welcome!), but I will be working in La La Land during the week and totally ready to meet on Saturday for big fun and excitement. So if you think you'd like to come hang out with swell bloggers and have a bite to eat, please email me at dave@blogography.com so we can get a head-count and I can make name-lanyards and reservations and stuff. Hope you can make it!
I haven't asked Paris if she'll be able to attend yet (she's working on both a new album and a new book), but I've got my fingers crossed...
Lil' Dave is totally not wearing panties in this shot...
Next up will be Orlando, hopefully in October, but I haven't planned my schedule that far out. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing tomorrow.
Okay... okay... okay...
For far too long I've been promising to write about the trip that Bad Robert and I took to Las Vegas a few years back. Well, since I don't have anything else to blog about today, I'm finally going to spill the beans. It's a tale filled with adventure... alcohol... gambling... women... Madonna... and even a little magic. It's the story of how two guys from the sticks, wide-eyed and innocent, took a journey to Sin City that would change their lives forever. Nothing could prepare me for the things I'd see and experience in Vegas, especially once I... I... I...
Hey, wait a minute... why does it feel as though I've already blogged today?
Oh... I did already blog today...
Avitable is taking a week off, so I filled in over at his place.
I guess I'll save my Las Vegas story for another day.
UPDATE: Holy crap! Illeana Douglas has joined the cast of Ugly Betty! Just when I think this show can't get ay better...
Today was a totally miserable day, and I don't really feel like blogging.
Except I just can't help myself.
Probably because tomorrow promises to be even worse, but more likely because there's nothing good on television Mondays at 9:00. Once I've watched Chuck and How I Met Your Mother, it's game over.
Today on my way to work I stopped at the mini-mart so I could grab an orange juice. While I was deciding if I wanted pulp or no pulp, I got a call from a number I didn't recognize. "Is Candice there" the guy asked. "Nope, you've got the wrong number" I replied. "When she gets back can you tell her I called?" he said. "You've got the wrong number... there's no Candice here!" I repeated. "Shit!" the guy says "she wrong-numbered me!" Not knowing what else to say, I mumble "yeah, that's a tough break... bye!" and hang up.
Five minutes later, iPhone rings again from the same number. "Dude, there's no Candice here!" I say immediately. "Yeah, I just thought I'd check and make sure I didn't mess up" the guy says. "She must have been pretty special," I offer sympathetically. "Yeah, I thought so... sorry to bother you" he replies awkwardly as he hangs up.
Is it really so hard to just put the poor bastard out of his misery rather than get his hopes up like that?
Relationship head-games are the worst.
And now, before I go, is there anybody out there with a couple billion dollars burning a hole in their pocket? I'm looking for financing to create my own airline. The schedules out of Seattle are not at all convenient for me, and I'm tired of having to take that horrifying 6:00am flight out of Wenatchee to make a connection. On top of that, the planes would look totally bitchin'...
And, as if that weren't enough... you get wider seats, more legroom, in-flight internet, and free chocolate pudding on every flight! Life is better with DaveAir!
Ooh! Look at me! I'm blogging on my lunch break!
It seems everywhere I go, bloggers are making confessions. Kevin confesses to murder. Vahid confesses he has no idea what's going on in Burma. Dustin confesses his secret longing for a Mac. Amanda confesses she didn't have the brain she thought she did. Foo Diddy confesses she can't whistle or chew gum. And Ms. Sizzle confesses her undying love for me (though, to be honest, you really have to read between the lines on that one).
It's all a little intimidating, and I feel I really should be confessing something too.
So here we go...
I totally want to go to a Spice Girls concert on their new world tour...
Dave Spice says GIRL POWER!! Zigazig ha!
Don't ask me why, because even I don't know.
All I do know is that if I could get tickets and if I could squeeze it into my schedule, I would SO be there.
And in non-confessional news... thanks to everybody for their nice comments on my vlog entry yesterday. For anybody who's curious, here's a Vlogging FAQ...
And lastly, before I forget, everybody needs to go vote for Obi-Steven over at Kimberly's blog. I'd ask you to vote that she gets a web-feed as well, but I can't find a place to vote for that.
So this would be the start of Bullet Sunday: Year Two. And this week I'm posting the bullets from my iPhone! Still don't know how to do images for iPhone entries though. I'll have to look into that one of these days.
• Seattle... In addition to the Seahawks win today, I was pleasantly surprised to find that more people than expected are interested in an early dinner blogger-meet in Seattle next Sunday. I will send out an email with more details soon, and look forward to seeing everybody!
• Blogography... When I first thought of using "Blogography" as the name of my "new" blog back in March of 2002, a Google search returned no results for the word. So I bought the domain and, after a few false starts, the rest is history. Now a Google search shows that there are dozens (if not hundreds) of sites on the web named "Blogography." This doesn't bother me at all, because it only makes my internet identity stronger as more and more people become familiar with the term (it's like free advertising!). This is all fine and good until one of these other "Blogography" sites starts ranting about how my blog is stealing their traffic. This had me starting to feel all sympathetic... until I noticed that their blog was only three months old. Jeez, buddy. Come up with something unique, and maybe you wouldn't have this problem.
• Stalked... I'm having fun updating my Twitter and Flickr feeds throughout the day. It isn't nearly as time consuming as I had expected, because I am usually sending stuff at times where I have nothing better to do anyway... like sitting at a stoplight or talking on the phone or whatever. Anybody who wants to follow along with my daily insanity can do so on my DaveStalker™ Page. Later in the week I've got some traveling going on, so it should prove interesting to see how the updates go then.
• iPhone... Still totally in love with my iPhone after all these weeks. I use it constantly, and am amazed that I am still finding things I didn't know (Image Capture, which comes with MacOS X, will offload iPhone images!) and things I didn't think I could do (you can use iPhone functions, like notepad, while talking to somebody over speakerphone!). It's just ridiculously cool. And yet... I still have two things that bother me: the crappy camera (unless lighting is absolutely perfect, your images will look awful because there's no way to adjust exposure that I can find) and lack of GPS (how much sweeter would Google Maps be if it knew where you were?). Hopefully Apple will be addressing these points in future-models.
• Buttons... Tim informed me Friday that the replacement part for our button machine arrived, so anybody with buttons on back-order with the Artficial Duck Store should have them by the end of the week! At last!
Hmmm... Sunday Bullets are kind of boring without pictures.
Now THAT was a party!
When I first received Avitable's invitation to his annual Halloween party, I knew I wanted to go... I just didn't know how I was going to work it into my schedule. But where there's a will, there's a way, and I managed to get everything moved around so I could fly down to Orlando for a single day(!) and attend.
Boy was it worth it. Dozens of people showed up, and Adam went all-out... transforming his entire home into a zombie-infested house of horrors. What was remarkable is the sheer amount of detail that went into the planning of it. So many little touches that made the entire experience perfect...
I'm giving all my photos to Avitable so he can post them (it's his party, after all), but thought I'd share some images of your's truly from the event. The costume I made was of "Holovirus-Insane Rimmer" from the brilliant British series Red Dwarf. It's one of my favorite shows ever, and this character was featured in one of my favorite episodes ever. And, as if that wasn't enough, it's got Mr. Flibble, the psychotically evil penguin hand-puppet in it...
The idea was that the geekier people at the party would recognize my character and get a laugh out of it... but even people who had no idea what Red Dwarf was would find it funny as well (but for an entirely different reason). Here's me and Avitable...
And me and Marilyn Monroe Miss Britt...
And me with an anatomically scary Mr. Fab (Mr. Flibble was hypnotized by his piece!)...
A big thanks to Avitable for the invite and for throwing such a fantastic Halloween bash!
And now I really should take a nap before I have to go to the airport in four hours. Later today there's a blogger meet in Seattle.
Hmmmm... looks like I'll be blog-partying from coast to coast today.
It seems strange that I've attended several blogger meets around the country but have somehow managed to overlook the major metropolitan city right here in my back yard... SEATTLE!
Well, last night that was finally rectified as the very first Daveattle Blogger Meet-Up was held. Unfortunately, it was kind of last-minute and had to happen on a Sunday, but people were kind enough to show up anyway...
It was a great group of bloggers and a fun meet...
Dinner was most excellent at Capitol Hill's Elysian Brewing Company...
Sizzle, Me, Rick, Kristin, Rick's wife Julie, Tracy, and Tracy's friend Holly
Thanks again to everybody who took time out of their weekend to hang-out with me, and I hope we can do it again next summer!
Meanwhile, on the television front...
This was my last episode of Chuck. How in the hell could such a brilliant concept be so utterly and totally ruined so quickly? I am so f#@%ing tired of Chuck being such a whiny little bitch ALL THE TIME. He has two modes...
Back to work...
What... what's happening? I have nothing to blog about.
About the only interesting thing that happened was that I drew up some produce for a project this morning...
Oh, and I also saw a UFO zoom across the sky on my way home from work. A pity I wasn't abducted or anything, because that would have at least given me something to blog about.
Now I'm depressed at the thought that I might actually have been abducted, but the space aliens wiped my memories of it before returning me to earth.
Unless I was anally probed, in which case I'm thankful to have forgotten the incident.
Okay... so I get home, sit down to write my daily entry, and there's no internet! Bleh. Oh well... I guess I really was too tired to blog tonight anyway.
Thank heavens for iPhone, or I'd be internetless and crazy.
Why is it that everywhere I go, the weather turns uncharacteristically cold?
Just one day after Belinda was lamenting the terrible heat in Orlando, I arrive and it's so cold that I'm having to wear a jacket. Now I arrive in San Francisco, where the weather is generally mild this time of year, and it's so cold that I'm wearing a sweatshirt plus a coat and gloves! Harsh! If I were back home, cold temperatures would be normal and I could deal with it... but here? It's a little more than depressing.
Much like having your suitcase miss your connecting flight.
But things like this are really to be expected on one of the busiest travel day of the year, so I'm not bitter.
No, my bitterness comes from my flight out of Spokane this morning as I listen to the man in the row behind me talking to the woman he is sitting next to...
SCARY MAN: Do you frighten easily?
WOMAN: Uhhhh... no. Why? Is there something that's going to frighten me?
SCARY MAN: I just want to let you know that the next noise you hear may sound like a wild boar sneaking up behind you, but it's not. So don't be frightened when you hear it...
• • • SCARY MAN CUTS LOOSE WITH A MASSIVE, TOTAL PANTS-RIPPING FART • • •
WOMAN: Oh my gawd!!
SCARY MAN: See, no wild boars! You're safe!
I mean... seriously... what the hell?
It's very rare that I'm at a loss for words, but this is one of those moments. I was half-way considering turning around and saying "Do YOU frighten easily? Because the next noise YOU hear may sound like a foot being broken off in your stupid ass which, I assure you, it most certainly is."
Some people just shouldn't be allowed to mingle with the general populace.
And by "some people" I actually mean "most people."
Anyway... after finishing up some work, I had a perfectly wonderful dinner with Dan from Therapy Beckons and his lovely girlfriend here in the city. Just the thing I needed to help me forget about cold weather, airplane farts, lost luggage, Britney Spears' child custody battle, and the George W. Bush presidency.
Well, not really... but 4 out of 5 ain't bad.
People are always astounded to learn that I get a steady stream of hate-mail for my blog. I could pretend that I'm not astounded as well, but it's a mystery to me too. Because when you compare Blogography to other blogs out there, I'm downright tame. I rarely post anything nasty, political, or controversial... and it's got monkeys and cartoons in it!
For the most part, I don't much care about the haters who feel the need to write to me. They're usually just random whack-jobs who come here from a Google search. They read a single entry (or just a part of an entry), ignore the other 1,961 entries, and come to the conclusions they hate me enough to let me know about it. The breakdown works out to be something like this...
With statistics like that, it should come as no surprise that the vast majority of my hate-mail gets deleted immediately. Most of the time I don't even bother to read them before sending off my standard reply ("Thank you so much for your lovely letter regarding Blogography, and I look forward to making you even more angry in the future!") then hitting the delete key.
It's not that I mind having people hate me.
I'm just offended that they're so fucking stupid about it.
I mean, when the subject of an email you receive is "u're blog sucks" (I shit you not, that's one I got just yesterday)... exactly how am I supposed to react to that? I naturally conclude the author is a complete dumbass. Not only are they so stupid that they're blissfully unaware that they've abbreviated "YOU ARE BLOG SUCKS," but the abbreviation of "u're" is the exact same length as their intended "your" (if they were smart enough to know how in the hell to write in the first place). And if the subject is that asinine, why in the hell would I read the rest of it?
If somebody is going to hate on me, I wish they would at least be literate and entertaining about it.
I've been blogging long enough to know that there is no telling what is going to set people off. Sometimes I write entries that I think are going to be controversial and unleash a flood of hate mail, and get nothing. Other times I write what I think are charming and uplifting entries, only to get death threats and people telling me how much I suck. It's a crap-shoot, and I gave up a long time ago trying to figure it out.
Yet reader reaction still crosses my mind.
And, while it doesn't ever really influence what I write, it does make me question myself from time to time.
But it's not the same for comments I leave on other people's blogs.
I'm a cheeky bastard, and that apparently gives me free reign to joke around or say crazy crap and then never even consider that there might be consequences. After all, it's not my blog! I wouldn't intentionally comment with stuff that might get another blogger in trouble or anything... but after I write on their blog, I just don't worry about repercussions.
Now I am slowly starting to regret that, and here's just one example of why...
Over a year ago, Pauly wrote a hysterical entry over at his Words for My Enjoyment blog extolling the virtues of adult diapers, from which I'm republishing a small part here (you really should go read the entire thing, because it's dang funny)...
...Wear them all the time, wherever you want, whenever you go out in public. Don’t be afraid of people’s opinions, since everyone will be wearing them. Forget about "holding things in" from this day forward and feel free for once in your life. Make the elderly finally feel embraced instead of ridiculed and remove the teasing from the adolescent equation that affects so many children in a negative way. Give every person in this world the opportunity to live, learn, grow and urinate anywhere and anytime without societal pressure to "hold themselves in."
Adult diapers for everyone. It’s an idea whose time has come.
Inspired to "let myself go," I went ahead and left the following comment...
I heartily agree… but am having trouble finding adult diapers that offer full protection, yet have a slim profile. I tire of the embarrassing looks and stares I get while wearing my diapers in public!
Now, that was meant to be a joke. Ha ha funny and all that. I don't really wear diapers.
At least not yet.
But that hasn't stopped dozens of people from emailing me with advice about my "diaper problem."
Some people genuinely want to help out and offer diaper tips. Others want to make fun of me. Still others want to ask me questions about my "diaper habit" (or, heaven help them) ask me to send them photos of me wearing diapers (which is the email I got today). It's all pretty messed up, and has exposed me to a secret world of adult-diaper-fetish aficionados that I really didn't need to know about.
All because I didn't consider the consequences as I was hacking out a ten second comment.
Which is a shame, because the convenience of being able to pee in my pants is an idea that's starting to grow on me.
"That's quite an ego you got there. With your blog and your DaveStalker nonsense, your entire life is nothing more than a narcissistic delusion"... the email said in an annoyingly green text color.
An ego? ME?!??
Do you really think so?? What could ever give you that idea?
Is it because I tell everybody I'm a total genius? (from the entry DaveQ)...
Is it that I think the world revolves around me? (from the entry Dave)...
Is it that I want a 50-story marble monument built in my honor? (from the entry Monument)...
Is it because I think I'm Jesus? (from the entry Jesus)...
Or is it because I think I'm God? (from the entry Intelligence)...
You're going to have to help me out here, because I'm just not seeing it...
Call me an insensitive bastard, but I hate getting forwarded "inspirational" and "funny" emails.
I realize the people who do the forwarding think they are being kind by sending me this stuff. They feel that because they find something hilariously funny or warmly comforting that everybody else will too, so they want to share it. Stories of lost puppies finding their way home against all odds. Sweet poems about how much Jesus loves you. Tales of people triumphing over adversity. Humorous accounts of children saying something embarrassing at the wrong time. It's all there for the forwarding, and it drives me nuts.
And the latest abomination to be cluttering my inbox?
LOLcats.
Which I'm guessing stands for "Laugh-Out-Loud Cats."
This phenomena of adding badly spelled and oddly phrased sayings to wacky pictures of cats has taken the internet by storm. Everybody just LOVES LOLcats! One of the most inexplicably popular seems to be this idiotic image...
And I just don't get it. I certainly don't find it "lough-out-loud" funny. Or even mildly amusing.
When I'm not being inundated with LOLcats in the blogs I read, they're being forwarded to me in emails several times a week.
I'm hoping that the fad dies out soon, because I'm really close to creating my own LOLcats to send to people...
Cat image stolen from Blogography.
Cat image stolen from Rippin Kitten.
Cat image purchased from iStock Photo.
Which is probably safer than my first idea of making "LOLpussys" out of something altogether different.
= ahem =
Meanwhile, back to my Hannah Montana addiction...
I'm slowly catching up on all the episodes thanks to nightly marathons of the show on Disney2. But I'm starting to get really confused on a few things...
Hmmm... I really should get back to work. Here it is 10:00, and I've got entirely too much to do before bedtime.
Something is broked and I can't get today's entry to post. Comments still work just fine, so I have no idea what's going on. Looks like I get to hand-code stuff today, and have a new project for tomorrow morning. Goody.
This Tuesday has not been so super for me.
Why should I mess up an entire day of doing nothing by blogging?
Sometimes, lazy is good.
Weird. Neighborhood dogs are barking at the eclipse and won't stop.
Can't say that I blame them. The lunar eclipse is approaching its zenith, and is starting to reveal the moon as this giant blood-red disc. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and I have a clear-skies view of it all.
Unfortunately, I don't have a camera even remotely capable of capturing the amazing sight out my window. All I get is a fuzzy smear that changes color every time I shoot the moon...
Anyway...
There's a "meme" of sorts blowing through the blogosphere, where people are making a list of stuff that's irritating the shit out of them. I debated whether or not to participate, but then came the morons at Citibank, with a phone call that went something like this...
CITIBANK: In order to assist you, I'll need your Social Security Number.
DAVE: Ummm... I'm calling about a credit card you sent me that I didn't request. I'm not going to give out personal information until you tell me why it was sent.
CITIBANK: Then I can't help you.
DAVE: Then please connect me to a supervisor.
CITIBANK: I cannot connect you to a supervisor until you give me your Social Security Number.
DAVE: Are you KIDDING me? I'm not giving you my Social Security Number! How do I know that you're actually Citibank?
CITIBANK: YOU called US from a number on the back of the card! Who else would we be?
DAVE: No. I called a number from the back of a card that I didn't request that could easily be a forgery in some elaborate attempt at identity theft.
CITIBANK: I am NOT able to help you until you give me your Social Security Number!
DAVE: Then you WILL put me through to a supervisor... and don't tell me you won't do it without my Social Security Number, because this is a serious situation and I am not taking "no" for an answer. This is a card that YOU sent me that I DID NOT REQUEST!! Don't make this be MY problem.
CITIBANK: I'm putting you through to security.
Then I had to go through the shit all over again, until the security guy finally told me that the account had been cancelled. But I'm still enraged that Citibank is so fucking stupid to treat people like this when identity theft is running rampant now-a-days. You would think that they would take something like this very seriously, and be more realistic about the information they require to handle something so critical. If somebody tells you that you've sent a credit card they never requested, you don't need a Social Security Number to investigate the situation. Dumbasses. Citibank's horrendously idiotic policy has me so floored that I am still deciding whether or not to take this up with VISA International.
And now, while I'm at it, here's some blog-related crap that I'm going to get off of my chest. Of course, none of this is about YOU, so don't worry about it. Unless, of course, it really is you...
• Don't Assume I Don't Have Family, Friends, or Relationships...
It's strange how some people believe that just because I choose not to write about something, it doesn't exist. And no matter how many times I try to make it clear that I don't discuss these subjects, it doesn't stop people from telling me that I need a girlfriend... or need to get laid... or that I'm lonely... or whatever. The truth is that they just don't know anything about this stuff unless they know me personally. To imply otherwise is just stupid.
• Don't Be Pissed Because I Won't Tell You About My Work or Personal Life...
Some people think that even though I don't talk about certain subjects in my blog, that I'm perfectly happy to reveal absolutely anything they want to know via email. When I write back and explain that I don't talk about my work or personal life with people who are not my friends or family, they tend to get upset. Apparently, these people feel that if they read Blogography every day, this entitles them access to all aspects of my life... no matter how private. Well, I have news for them, it doesn't.
• Don't Insist I Give A Crap About Your Abusive Ass...
When people email or comment only to be an ass, they might as well not comment at all. Disagreeing with me is fine, I respect the opinions of others and feel that diversity is what makes life interesting. But being an abusive dumbass flamer troll is an annoyance that I'm not willing to deal with (other than to click the delete button).
• Don't Think That I Feel I'm Better Than You...
This is the one that really bothers me. Every once in a while, I'll get an email from somebody who thinks that the reason I blog about my travels and the cool things I get to do is because I'm bragging or something. This is just silly. I blog about the crap that's happening in my life. So if I'm traveling, that's what I'm going to write about. If I were bragging or implying that I was superior because of it, I'd start each entry with "HA HA FUCKERS! GUESS WHERE I AM AT AND YOU'RE NOT?!? SUCKS TO BE YOU, LOSER!!" Believe me, I know how lucky I am that I get to see and do the stuff I get to see and do. But I also work very hard and make a lot of sacrifices to get there, so the last thing I'm going to do is "brag" about it.
And, on that note... HA HA FUCKERS! I'm off to book my flights and hotels for next month.
Blaaaaaaaargh.
I spent all night trying to post a guest-entry over at Mr. Fab's blog, Pointless Drivel (probably Not Safe For Work... or anything else, for that matter), but nothing I tried would work.
Stupid WordPress.
Oh well. Assuming that somebody can help me get it posted tomorrow, there's big fun with Sculpey modeling clay over there...
I've never played with Sculpey before, and was shocked at how difficult it is to make stuff out of it. Everything I tried to build just ended up looking like a big ol' mess.
Guess I'll be sticking with my computer from here on out...
UPDATE... Thanks to Shelli and her kick-ass admin privileges, my post is now up...
Today was a wacky day of catching up on work and trying to arrange travel plans for another three trips I've got coming up.
And looking over Apple's FREE iPhone Software Development Kit (or SDK) which was released this morning. If you're not a programmer, it can be somewhat technical and boring, but you can watch His Holiness Steve Jobs describe what's going on via QuickTime here (the demo hotness starts just over half-way through). Suffice to say... I am completely blown away. I simply did not anticipate that the SDK would be so refined, polished, and powerful. Developers are going to be FLOCKING to the iPhone, which means iPhone users are in for some incredibly cool stuff come June when the 2.0 software upgrade drops. I have some concerns about required distribution through the iTunes Music Store (though if you give your stuff away for free, there's no charge once you've paid the $99 developer fee), but overall I am very, very excited. iPhone is going to OWN the mobile market... sweet!
Anyway, somewhere along the day, I was asked to make a fake "tabloid magazine" prop for a play that's being put on at the High School. It's fun doing wacky stuff like this from time to time...
I would so totally buy this!
And now for another installment of Response to Hate-Mail...
Dear Dumbass,
Thank you for your wonderful email chastising me for "showing disrespect to The Queen of England" (from this entry, I'm guessing). A few points... #1: Her Majesty is not the "Queen of England," but instead constitutional monarch (The Queen) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, and Head of the Commonwealth. There hasn't been a "Queen of England" since 1603. Since your IP address is actually located in England, I can only express my sadness that your educational system is apparently as bad as ours here in the USA. #2: I have nothing but the upmost respect for Her Majesty, and wouldn't dream of showing her any disrespect. If wanting to be her friend is disrespectful, then this world is in deeper trouble than I thought. #3: I've read a couple biographies of The Queen, and actually admire Her Majesty for taking on a job she never asked for and performing it to the best of her abilities. Her Majesty has led an exemplary life in service, has done so with dignity and devotion to her people, and deserves nothing but respect for it. I know I'll demand nothing less when I'm king of the world, so fuck you for implying I feel otherwise...
Good night... I love you my Apple iPhone!
Oops. I made an entry yesterday but forgot to set it to "publish" while I was trying to fix stuff on my blog. Better late than never, I suppose.
The thing about messing around with your blog template is that it's a never-ending battle. There's always One More Thing that you want to fix or change, and you can go positively insane trying to get it all figured out. I've been working on an iPhone template off-and-on for weeks and don't feel any closer to finishing it than when I started. It doesn't help that Movable Type has crappy documentation for the complicated new template structure introduced in version 4. Oh well. It's just a matter of finding spare time to sit down and rip through the learning curve via the infamous "trial-and-error" method.
Alas, spare time is always in short supply, so everything sits unfinished.
Though I did change my header graphic while on a long, boring phone call the other day, so I guess that's something.
Or nothing, depending on how you look at it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I can't blog anymore because Mr. Bun and I have real work to do...
Say goodbye to Mr. Bun! He's off to Iraq next week!
Except when I say "real work" what I actually mean is "go home and read the pile of comic books that arrived in the mail yesterday."
I just hope Mr. Bun doesn't drop his little poop pellets on my Batman books like last time.
UPDATE: My blog is getting hammered by people refreshing to see all the header graphics, so I've made it easier for those wanting to see all fifty headers to see them by following this link.
Nothing to see here... move along... move along...
Thanks to everybody who has been leaving comments and sending me e-cards while I've been sick. It's nice to be so beloved by the blogosphere.
Well, maybe not "beloved," but at least "well-liked."
Anyway... for everybody who tuned into The Jester Show expecting to hear me there last Wednesday, I'm sorry you only got ten minutes of Dave-time. I had to be rushed to the hospital so I could scream and cry in a room full of complete strangers. Which, when you think about it, is a lot like appearing on The Jester Show... except Jester isn't there and nobody is recording it.
Well, now that I have a big bag full of pain-killing drugs to keep me somewhat sane, Jester has kindly agreed to have me on again tonight. If you don't mind all kinds of not-appropriate-for-children talk, I invite you to join me at The Jester Show tonight at 7:00pm Pacific, 10:00pm Eastern on BlogTalk Radio...
When you combine my 20% gay fierceness with Jester's 100% gay fierceness, that's 120% gay fierceness all in one radio show, which just might exceed the BlogTalk Radio standards for overall gay fierceness...
For more about my appearance on The Jester Show, you can read my Blogography entry from last week.
And now, if you'll excuse me, there's a bottle of pills calling my name.
Errr...
But while I am still in a pain-induced cranky mood, is it just me... or is this the stupidest fucking BlogHer Conference ad ever...
"What happens at BlogHer stays at Blogher?"
Oh really?
Bull-fucking-shit.
What happens at BlogHer will be written about in no less than 1000 blogs ("OH MY GAWD... DOOCE IS HERE!!!"). Every tiny possible BlogHer detail will be posted on Twitter ("OH MY GAWD... I JUST SAW DOOCE!!!"). Flickr will be busting at the seams with BlogHer photos ("OH MY GAWD... HERE'S A PHOTO OF DOOCE WALKING INTO THE BATHROOM!!!). There will be BlogHer podcasts ("OH MY GAWD... IF YOU LISTEN CAREFULLY, YOU CAN HEAR DOOCE DROPPING A DUECE!!!"). YouTube will be overrun with BlogHer video ("OH MY GAWD... HERE WE ARE CHASING DOOCE IN THE PARKING LOT!!!"). For three days in July, I can assure you that the shit happening at BlogHer is not going to be staying at BlogHer, it's going to be posted to the internet in every conceivable way.
Which is kind of the point, isn't it?
But I guess if BlogHer wants to trot out that tired old "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" rhetoric (which would have been somewhat excusable if the conference actually took place in Vegas instead of San Francisco), then more power to them. Perhaps enticing ladies to attend by making them think they're going to have some dirty little weekend away from the husband/kids/whatever is how they sell tickets. I just find it sad that a network built to empower women on the internet has to resort to such an obvious sexist cliche as "girls weekend away."
Seriously... five years? FIVE YEARS?
I already rehashed the early history of Blogography for Blogiversary 2, which you can read here, so I won't be going into all that again. I did consider reinventing my history with colorful lies so it would be more interesting, but my early entries suck so bad that nobody would believe it.
In any event I have been blogging for five years now, and that's reason to celebrate!
Just like my previous Kick-Ass Blogiversary Celebrations, I'll be giving away hundreds of dollars worth of booty (along with a few surprises) over the next four days, so be sure to check back and enter! Here's the schedule of events...
Unfortunately, past experience has taught me that there are always dumbasses who try to spoil things, so I am compelled to waste the first day of my Blogiversary posting a bunch of rules so I can (hopefully) anticipate any ass-hattery that might ensue from giving away free stuff. Have fun with that!
OFFICIAL BLOGOGRAPHY KICK-ASS BLOGIVERSARY 5 CELEBRATION CONTEST RULES...
And now, on with the show...
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
I started creating T-shirts for my blog because I wanted them for me. It was never my intention that anybody else would wear them. I'm selfish that way. But after writing about my idea, I found out that many of my readers wanted the T-shirts too, so I created my first T-shirt on the occasion of my first blogiversary. It was a simple design with Lil' Dave in a box with "Blogography" printed below it, and I ended up selling 26 of them. Given the number of readers I had at the time, this was a huge success, so I decided to do a new design when Blogiversary II came around... this time with Bad Monkey on it. I sold 51 shirts, almost double what I had done the year before. I remember being dumbfounded, because I didn't even know that I had 51 readers.
A tradition was born. Every year there would be a new Blogography T-shirt. For Blogiversary III, sales more than tripled to 170. Last year I released four new designs and ended up selling and giving away almost 400 shirts. Insanity.
Part of the reason the shirts are so successful is because they are quality screen-printed with fun designs.
But mostly they're popular because they're cheap. I sell the shirts at a price that's just enough to cover my costs (though last year I did a bad job of estimating foreign postage and ended up losing several hundred dollars!). I'd rather sell my shirts as inexpensively as I can so everybody can afford them. It's more fun that doing it for the money.
Anyway, since everybody did such a great job of helping to pick a design last year, I'm going to put it up for a vote again this year. Not only is it helpful to know what everybody wants, but it allows me to keep prices cheap since I can order in larger quantities. I originally gave all voters a $10 off coupon so they could get a cheap shirt... but response was so great that I was able to offer the $10 off all year long! Hopefully I can offer good discounts again this year.
Here are the selections you can vote on...
Hmmm... that's a little small. Let's try zooming in...
Shirt #1: BAD MONKEY GYM.
Shirt #2: BAD MONKEY GIANT HEAD.
Shirt #3: FINE READING.
Shirt #4: RED WAGON.
Shirt #5: MONKEY PEACE.
Shirt #6: MONKEY BUTTON.
And now for today's prizes!
GRAND PRIZE DRAWING...
Three Artificial Duck T-Shirts ($51 value). Yep, that's right, get any three shirts you like from the Artificial Duck Store... keep them for yourself, or give them out as gifts that will impress those lucky people you deem worthy of wearing them!
Six Sets of DuckyButtons ($24 value). Pick any six sets you like, or create your own 5-button sets. DuckyButtons are sure to bring a smile to your face... or to anybody else's you meet when you wear them. And since you're getting 30 buttons, that's a month's worth of sweet wearable art to wear and share!
Twenty-Five Custom-Made DuckyButtons with Your Design ($25 value). Email us any one design or photo you like, and we'll turn it into 25 beautiful custom buttons of your very own! Use them to promote your blog, impress your friends, or distribute wearable pictures of your cat... so long as it isn't copyrighted, we'll make buttons from whatever you want!
World-Wide Shipping (up to $35 value). No matter where you live on planet earth, rest assured you won't have to pay a dime to claim your prize because shipping is included.
And that's not all, today you also have twenty other chances to win...
RUNNER-UP PRIZE DRAWING (TWENTY WINNERS!)...
One Artificial Duck T-Shirts ($17 value). Twenty lucky readers will be able to pick any shirt they like from the Artificial Duck Store, and be happy knowing that they'll be wearing a T-shirt that makes them at least 10% hotter the minute they put it on!
One Set of DuckyButtons ($4 value). Your choice of one set of super-sweet DuckyButtons in whatever designs you like to wear and share!
SHIPPING NOT INCLUDED! YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY EXACT SHIPPING CHARGES TO COLLECT YOUR WINNINGS!
AND NOW FOR THE RULES...
Everybody can enter! There's no minimum number of comments you have to leave in order to have a chance at winning. All other rules specified on Day One apply. Please remember that shipping charges are ONLY included with the Grand Prize. Winners are responsible for all duties and taxes that might apply.
HOW TO ENTER...
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
PLEASE NOTE...
As with all of the new Blogography stuff presented this week, the shirts will be printed sometime in May for Delivery in June. This will give me time to accept pre-orders and figure out how many pieces I'll need to have printed. Winners will be announced on Bullet Sunday 79 on April 27th, and the Artificial Duck Store will reopen at that time so everybody who wants to buy stuff can get their orders in.
HATS, BITCH!
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
A long time ago (9 months) in a galaxy far, far away (Atlanta, Georgia), I met up with fellow blogger Copasetic Beth for THE event in the South last year: Davelanta. We had big fun touring the infamous World of Coke Without Lime, but the best part was when Beth gave me a beautifully embroidered hat she made featuring DaveDevil inviting the world to "Try Evil."
I love that hat.
It has been my faithful companion as I travel the globe, keeping my head warm, my messy hair hidden, and my life complete...
Everybody else seems to like my hat too. This was made perfectly clear to me when some bastard tried to steal it while I was waiting at an airport. Of course, this meant he had to die. But then I remembered that I'm not quite that evil, so I had to let him go. Though I do remember hoping he died of shame after I was finished screaming at him.
And so... when it came time to think up prizes for Blogiversary 5, this choice was obvious. All I had to do was threaten bribe beg ask Beth if she'd be willing to make them for me. Luckily she said yes, and so I came up with three new styles I liked, meaning I'll be offering four styles total in the Artificial Duck Co. Store...
The hat Beth gave me is a super-high-quality Champion® 6-panel brushed cotton twill cap with adjustable strap. It's so comfy to wear that I wouldn't dream of selling anything else. And, needless to say, the embroidery is top-notch... beautifully stitched in painstaking detail. Make no mistake, these are one fashion accessory you can't live without!
And now for today's prizes!
GRAND PRIZE DRAWING...
Three Artificial Duck Embroidered Hats ($57 value). Sweet! Today's winner gets to snag three new hats from the Artificial Duck Store... keep them for yourself, or give them out as gifts that will impress those lucky people you deem worthy of wearing them!
Six Sets of DuckyButtons ($24 value). Pick any six sets you like, or create your own 5-button sets. DuckyButtons are sure to bring a smile to your face... or to anybody else's you meet when you wear them. And since you're getting 30 buttons, that's a month's worth of sweet wearable art to wear and share!
Twenty-Five Custom-Made DuckyButtons with Your Design ($25 value). Email us any one design or photo you like, and we'll turn it into 25 beautiful custom buttons of your very own! Use them to promote your blog, impress your friends, or distribute wearable pictures of your cat... so long as it isn't copyrighted, we'll make buttons from whatever you want!
World-Wide Shipping (up to $35 value). No matter where you live on planet earth, rest assured you won't have to pay a dime to claim your prize because shipping is included.
And that's not all, today you also have four other chances to win...
RUNNER-UP PRIZE DRAWING (FOUR WINNERS!)...
One Artificial Duck Embroidered Hat ($19 value). Four lucky readers will be able to pick whatever hat they like from the Artificial Duck Store, becoming the envy of everybody they meet every time they wear it!
One Set of DuckyButtons ($4 value). Your choice of one set of super-sweet DuckyButtons in whatever designs you like to wear and share!
SHIPPING NOT INCLUDED! YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY EXACT SHIPPING CHARGES TO COLLECT YOUR WINNINGS!
AND NOW FOR THE RULES...
If you've left ten comments* at Blogography between April 30th, 2007 and April 19th, 2008, just send an email to the address in the next section and you're entered! If you haven't left ten comments, you'll need to answer five of the six questions below in your entry in order to qualify...
NOTE: All answers to today's questions can be found on this entry (click to see it).
*If you need to confirm how many comments you've left, you can always use my search page. Just type in the name you comment under and select "Search Comments Only" from the drop-down box. When in doubt, answer the questions... you aren't penalized for doing so. If you can't get a count, think you have 10 comments, and really don't want to answer the questions, send me an email and I'll search for your comment count via your email address.
HOW TO ENTER...
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
PLEASE NOTE...
As with all of the new Blogography stuff presented this week, the hats will be made sometime in May for Delivery in June. This will give me time to accept pre-orders and figure out how many pieces I'll need to have embroidered. Winners will be announced on Bullet Sunday 79 on April 27th, and the Artificial Duck Store will reopen at that time so everybody who wants to buy stuff can get their orders in.
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
For as long as I can remember, I've been a big-time game fan. Card games, board games, video games... I love them all. I enjoy them so much that I've even created my own games over the years, either by modifying existing games or coming up with something all my own.
When thinking up ideas for
But these won't be some cheap-ass cards you won't want to play with... no way! Blogography cards are being printed on casino-quality black-core paper stock with a pro-dealer protective coating. The sample deck I ordered shuffles like a dream and deals like butter! They're perfect for adding a whole new level of coolness to a Texas Hold 'Em tournament, and a great way to spice up your next card game.
Each and every card features an entirely new piece of custom artwork, created specially for this deck. The face cards have Lil' Dave dressed up as kings, queens, and jacks, each rendered in an individual style. As if that weren't enough, careful attention to detail ensures that when you call out "one-eyed jacks and suicide kings are wild!" that the proper jacks have one eye and the correct kings are totally suicidal. This isn't just a cutesy novelty, but a fully-playable deck that's suitable for serious card players...
But just because you can play a serious game with the cards doesn't mean you can't have a little fun too! Each number card features Bad Monkey in an illustration from four different genres: Sci-Fi (Spades), Romance (Hearts), Horror (Clubs), and Adventure (Diamonds). When you put the cards in order, they tell a story...
Whoa! Things aren't looking too good for our monkey heroes! I wonder how they get out of this mess? The stunning conclusion can be found on cards 7 through 10!
At this point I'd think it was painfully obvious that you simply must own a couple decks of Blogography Playing Cards, which is why I'm giving some away! Check out today's fabulous prizes...
And now for today's prizes!
GRAND PRIZE DRAWING...
Six decks of Blogography Playing Cards ($42 value). A half-dozen freshly-printed decks are yours, each card featuring an original DaveToon drawing. Host a Texas Hold 'Em Poker Tourney and be the envy of all your friends! Also makes a great gift!
Bad Monkey Joker Print ($15 value). Add class to any room in your home! We've taken the Joker card from the Blogography Playing Cards deck, enlarged it, then reproduced it with pigment inks on archival paper for a nifty print that's suitable for framing!
Six Sets of DuckyButtons ($24 value). Pick any six sets you like, or create your own 5-button sets. DuckyButtons are sure to bring a smile to your face... or to anybody else's you meet when you wear them. And since you're getting 30 buttons, that's a month's worth of sweet wearable art to wear and share!
World-Wide Shipping (up to $35 value). No matter where you live on planet earth, rest assured you won't have to pay a dime to claim your prize because shipping is included.
And that's not all, today you also have four other chances to win...
RUNNER-UP PRIZE DRAWING (FOUR WINNERS!)...
Two decks of Blogography Playing Cards ($14 value). Four lucky people will get two decks of cards... one to play with and another to share with a friend (or keep them both if you're greedy!).
One Set of DuckyButtons ($4 value). Your choice of one set of super-sweet DuckyButtons in whatever designs you like to wear and share!
SHIPPING NOT INCLUDED! YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY EXACT SHIPPING CHARGES TO COLLECT YOUR WINNINGS!
AND NOW FOR THE RULES...
If you've left ten comments at Blogography between April 18th, 2007 and April 19th, 2008, just send an email to the address below and you're entered! If you haven't left ten comments, you'll need to answer five of these six questions in your entry in order to qualify...
NOTE: All answers to today's questions can be found on my 100 QUESTIONS page.
*If you need to confirm how many comments you've left, you can always use my search page. Just type in the name you comment under and select "Search Comments Only" from the drop-down box. When in doubt, answer the questions... you aren't penalized for doing so. If you can't get a count, think you have 10 comments, and really don't want to answer the questions, send me an email and I'll search for your comment count via your email address.
HOW TO ENTER...
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
PLEASE NOTE...
As with all of the new Blogography stuff presented this week, the cards will be printed sometime in May for Delivery in June. This will give me time to accept pre-orders and figure out how many pieces I'll need to have printed. Winners will be announced on Bullet Sunday 79 on April 27th, and the Artificial Duck Store will reopen at that time so everybody who wants to buy stuff can get their orders in.
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
Yikes! We're already at the final contest of Blogography's Kick-Ass Blogiversary 5 Celebration!
Of all the reasons I enjoy blogging, getting to meet my readers in person has to be my favorite. That's why I've made an effort to organize blogger meets whenever I can, and created such events as "Davecago," "Davelanta," and "Davelando" (among others), so I can meet as many people as possible...
Today you might notice that I've added a new section to my Tab Bar above. It's called "event," and will keep track of all the blogger meets I've devised so I can visit with my readers in Real Life...
But the page isn't as full as I'd like it to be.
Which is why today's contest is designed to fill it up a bit more...
That's right... for this final contest, I'll create a "Dave Event" as close to where the winner lives as possible (almost anywhere... see the rules below). I'll treat you to lunch or dinner, and we can invite any other Blogography readers who might be in the area (they have to pay their own way though!) so we can all hang out and chat.
And as if basking in my glory wasn't reason enough to covet this prize, I'll be showing up with a big box of Blogography goodies...
Four Artificial Duck T-Shirts ($68 value). Any four shirts you like from the Artificial Duck Store... keep them for yourself, or give them out as gifts you'll know they'll treasure forever!
Four decks of Blogography Playing Cards ($28 value). Four freshly-printed decks are yours, each card featuring an original DaveToon drawing. Host a Texas Hold 'Em Poker Tourney and be the envy of all your friends!
Six Sets of DuckyButtons ($24 value). Pick any six sets you like, or create your own 5-button sets. DuckyButtons are sure to bring a smile to your face... or to anybody else's you meet when you wear them. And since you're getting 30 buttons, that's a month's worth of sweet wearable art to wear and share!
Twenty-Five Custom-Made DuckyButtons with Your Design ($25 value). Email us any one design or photo you like, and we'll turn it into 25 beautiful custom buttons of your very own! Use them to promote your blog, impress your friends, or distribute wearable pictures of your cat... so long as it isn't copyrighted, we'll make buttons from whatever you want!
A Custom DaveToon Print Created Just for You (priceless!). That's right... personalized DaveToons are a rare thing since I barely have time enough to draw them for my own blog... but just because I like you, I'll create a new toon just for you, then print it on archival paper with pigment inks so it's suitable for framing.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS...
Is this a joke?
Nope!
That's quite an ego you got there... why in the hell would anybody want to meet you?
I dunno, but feel free not to enter the contest.
Really? You'll fly anywhere?
Well, almost anywhere. Here are the conditions...
Surely you won't travel to meet me if I live outside the USA!
Actually, I will travel to meet you outside of the USA, so long as the above conditions are met. If you take a look at my travel map, you'll see I'm no stranger to foreign travel. I'm flying on airline miles and lodging with hotel points, so it doesn't make any difference where I go.
How do I know if my local airport is served by Northwest Airlines?
You can check the list maintained at Wikipedia by clicking here.
I live outside the USA and Northwest Airlines doesn't fly to my country... can I still enter? It's possible that one of Northwest's partner airlines can get me there on airline miles, so please send me an email and I'll check.
I live in a small town that doesn't have airport... can I still enter?
Yes, but you would have to make your way to a city served by Northwest Airlines in order to claim your prize from me personally. Sorry about that, but I really can't make time to rent a car, take a train, hop on a bus, or endure whatever other expenses required to show up at your doorstep.
There simply isn't an airport I can get to which you will fly to... can I still enter?
Sure. But I'll have to send you your prize in the mail.
When will you deliver the prize?
I'll have to work that out with the winner, but it will probably be in July, August or September since I should have the new merchandise by then. As anybody who has read my blog for any length of time already knows, my schedule is complex and very tight, but I'm sure I'll find a way to squeeze it in. Of course, if I can't come to an agreement with the winner, I reserve the right to send the prize in the mail as a last resort.
Where will we meet?
Well, if there's a Hard Rock Cafe handy, that's my location of choice! If not, it's no big deal, we'll figure out a public place (probably a restaurant) to meet.
What if Northwest Airlines goes bankrupt or something?
As with all prizes being given away during Blogiversary 5, awarding of prizes is solely at my discretion. If circumstances outside my control conspire to prevent me from delivering the prize then there's nothing I can do about it, and will have to come up with something else or (worst case scenario) eliminate the prize.
What if I don't have a blog... can I still enter?
Of course! A blog is not required to win the prize... this contest is open to all Blogography readers.
What if I've already met you or have already attended a Dave Event?
It doesn't matter if we've met or not... I'd be glad to see you again if you won!
HOW TO ENTER...
Since this is such a monumentally different prize than usual, the rules are a little different. Instead of getting a single entry into the contest, readers can get multiple "tickets" to enter. The more tickets you have in the hat, the better your chances of winning. But how do you get tickets? I'm glad you asked!
THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED! LOOK FOR THE WINNERS ON APRIL 27th!!
I will search through all my comments between April 18th, 2007 and April 19th, 2008. The number of comments you've left gets you tickets...
IMPORTANT: I will be searching for your comments using your EMAIL ADDRESS. So if you've used multiple email addresses to comment in the past year, please let me know so I can be sure to get an accurate count!
But what if you don't have 15 comments? Or what if you have 15 comments, but want better odds of winning? No problem! If you answer 10 of the following 12 questions correctly, you'll get a ticket!
HINT: If you don't know the answers, you'll have to work for it! Try using the search box that can be found in the sidebar of every Blogography page! ALSO... the first ten answers can be found on entries from my Best Of section.
Good luck!
PLEASE NOTE...
As with all of the new Blogography stuff presented this week, these prizes will be made sometime in May for Delivery in June. This will give me time to accept pre-orders and figure out how many pieces I'll need to have made. Winners will be announced on Bullet Sunday 79 on April 27th, and the Artificial Duck Store will reopen at that time so everybody who wants to buy stuff can get their orders in.
First of all, thanks to everybody who has been kind enough to take time to participate in Blogiversary 5. A lot of work went into everything, and it's nice to know people are enjoying it.
When I built the "Dave Events Page" for my tab bar, it was a last-minute idea that came together at 2:00am one sleepless night. I felt I pretty much had to create it in order to show that yesterday's contest was real. People could easily assume it was some kind of scam or whatnot, and I thought that if I showed all the other events I've been to, then linked to people who could vouch for me, it might seem a little less crazy. Traveling to meet my readers and other bloggers is nothing new in my universe, but seems very strange to most people.
As you can imagine, compiling such a complex list that spans four years is no easy task. Especially at 2:00am.
Mistakes were made.
Many, many, mistakes.
Not only did I miss people, but entire events as well. Not to mention all the bad links.
So... the page has been updated continuously since 5:00pm yesterday as people email me corrections and I spot errors. I've also added a section for other "blogger events" I've attended (like Avitable's Halloween Party and TequilaCon) so nobody get's left out. If you want to know how or where I met the good people in my sidebar, I'm hoping they are all accounted for now!
And speaking of the contest...
For my faithful Australian readers heartbroken because Northwest Airlines doesn't service their fine country... I have news. Turns out I CAN make it to Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, and sometimes Cairns by using miles to book on Korean Airlines. So feel free to enter the contest, as this would be just the excuse I need to finally visit Australia...
See you tomorrow when all winners will be revealed!
Well then... that was a hoot, wasn't it? Except when I was unloading up my car just now, got biffed in the face with a box of books, ended up with a bloody nose, and am now sitting here with kleenex shoved up my nostril. Good times.
But before we get to who won what, I'd like to take a minute to thank each and every one of you who come to read the useless crap I post at Blogography each day... whether you're brand new or have been visiting for years. I don't know how I've managed to attract such an amazing group of readers, but I appreciate each of you for wasting your valuable time here. Contests and prizes seem a wholly inadequate way of saying "thanks," but stalker laws forbid me from showing my gratitude otherwise.
And now... on with the show. I had an uninterested third-party draw names for each contest here except the Grand Prize, which I drew myself...
T-SHIRT CONTEST WINNERS...
Grand Prize: The winner of three Artificial Duck Shirts, six sets of DuckyButtons, 25 Custom DuckyButtons, and free world-wide shipping is...
• Atomic Bombshell
Runner-Up Prize Winners: The twenty winners of an Artificial Duck Shirt plus a set of DuckyButtons (shipping not included) are...
• Hello Ha Ha Narf
• Andy H.
• Jeffrey W.
• By Jane
• Poppy Cede
• Cody F.
• Laci C.
• Anthony M.
• Kyra from Shaping My Way
• It's Me Penelope
• Colin B.
• Wes K.
• Sinjin P.
• Kapgar
• Fran H.
• Kilax
• Run Jen Run
• Captain Underpants
• Adena B.
• Emily S.
The winning T-shirt designs that we'll be printing for the Artificial Duck Store will be announced when the store re-opens on Monday or Tuesday!
HAT CONTEST WINNERS...
Grand Prize: The winner of three Artificial Duck Embroidered Hats, six sets of DuckyButtons, 25 Custom DuckyButtons, and free world-wide shipping is...
• Angela B.
Runner-Up Prize Winners: The four winners of an Artificial Duck Embroidered Hat plus a set of DuckyButtons (shipping not included) are...
• Foo Foo
• Jester
• Jake T.
• Neil T.
PLAYING CARD WINNERS...
Grand Prize: The winner of six decks of Blogography Playing Cards, a Bad Monkey Joker print, six sets of DuckyButtons, and free world-wide shipping is...
• Long Story Longer
Runner-Up Prize Winners: The four winners of two decks of Blogography Playing Cards plus a set of DuckyButtons (shipping not included) are...
• Naomi I.
• Jacki D.
• Amandarin
• Troy D.
DAVE EVENT WINNER...
Grand Prize: The winner of a "Dave Event" near them, four Artificial Duck T-shirts, four decks of Blogography Playing Cards, six sets of DuckyButtons, 25 Custom Ducky Buttons, and a personalized Custom DaveToon Print is...
Announced in the video below! (for my valued readers who are deaf, have hearing difficulties, don't have sound, or can't play video, I've added a transcript of the video in an extended entry)...
And that's all she wrote! Thanks so much for another great year!
Congratulations to all the winners, and I'm sorry if this year wasn't your year. Maybe next time? Everybody who has won something will be receiving an email explaining how to claim their prizes soon.
IMPORTANT: For anybody who didn't win stuff that they really, really wanted, I will be re-opening the Artificial Duck Store with the new merchandise on either Monday or Tuesday. I'm trying to thank everybody for participating by offering drastically reduced pricing on pre-order merchandise, but a few of my costs are still in negotiation. The minute I'm able to secure the best pricing possible, I'll re-open the store and announce it here on Blogography. Sorry for the delay, but I'm working hard to make sure everything is as inexpensive as possible so that the most people possible can afford to buy it.
Thanks again everybody!
And now on to the video transcript...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
Still working on the Artificial Duck Co. Store. I've got one more page to build and test before I can go online... probably tomorrow morning (this stuff is complicated!). The good news is that enough people expressed interest in the Blogography Playing Cards that I doubled my order and got some pretty sweet pricing. Hopefully a lot of people will want to buy them or else I'm going to be sitting on a LOT of cards for a very long time.
In other news... SHIRTS, BITCH!!
The winner (by quite a large margin) was MONKEY BUTTON!!!
The runner-up (in a much closer race) was BAD MONKEY GYM!!!
I will be printing both of them. The "Classic T-Shirts" will be kept in-stock. "Ladies Shirts" will be printed only to cover pre-orders, but not kept in stock. This is because they just don't seem to sell over the long-haul. I get a good enough initial order, but the rest of them just sit on the shelf.
In other good news, I've decided to re-stock ZOMBIES ATE MY BRAIN!!!
Entirely too many people keep asking me when I'm going to get these back in stock, so I've decided to order them with my next print run. I guess it just goes to show... everybody loves zombies!
The problem here is that I don't have enough space to store all these shirts.
So I'm going to put some of the older inventory shirts on close-out at ridiculous prices... $5 for "Classic Shirts" and $4 for "Ladies Shirts" while supplies last. Sure I'm going to lose money, but think of all the closet space I'll free up!
New designs will be on half-price pre-order pricing of $8.50 each (regular $17.00). That's to thank everybody for voting... and also apologize for having to wait until June for shipment.
But there is one small problem.
Usually I do not charge for an order until I ship it. The problem is that Yahoo! (the company who runs my shopping cart) deletes all credit card information after two weeks. If I were to wait until I ship in June, I wouldn't be able to collect the money. So, unfortunately, I'm put in the position of having to charge immediately for all the pre-orders. Hopefully this won't upset people too badly, but I don't really have any other choice.
And there you have it.
Totally sweet, awesome quality stuff at insanely low prices. Could you ask for anything more?
I love my readers entirely too much.
It was just one night.
But the memories will last a lifetime.
TequilaCon 2008.
Epic.
Win.
Thanks to everybody for an awesome evening!
Until next year...
After skipping Bullet Sunday last week to announce the winners for Blogography's Kick-Ass Fifth Blogiversary Celebration, I'm back and fully loaded in Newark, New Jersey!
• Shop. My apologies for everybody who has been patiently waiting for the Artificial Duck Co. Store to re-open. TequilaCon kind of took priority after I found out that I would have to change all the shipping rates now that the post office is raising prices again. When I get back tomorrow night, I'll get to work on that and (finally) open the store for business. Hopefully you'll find it worth the wait.
• Edgeless. AT&T's "Edge" data network for my iPhone has always been crappy. It's painfully slow. Even worse, you can never tell if your connection has stalled, or is just running slower than usual. But this weekend AT&T reached new depths of f#@%ing shitty service in that there was NO Edge service in downtown Philadelphia all weekend. I can only guess that things keep getting worse because more and more people are buying iPhones and overloading the network, but I don't give a crap about that. I pay a chunk of money every month to have mobile internet access, and AT&T is failing to provide it. If things don't change soon, I smell a lawsuit (if there isn't one underway already). FAIL!!
• New Yorked. The problem with visiting New York City is that there is never enough time to do all the things you want to do. As I am getting ready to leave, I find myself wanting just one more day back in the city. Or a week. Possibly a month. Why oh why can't I have billions of dollars so problems like this weren't an issue?
• Tequila. Ah yes. TequilaCon 2008. It's practically impossible to sum up in a mere bullet point just how awesome an experience it was. Meeting so many bloggers for the first time was cool, of course... but what made this year such an epic success story was how great everybody was. So nice... so friendly... so much fun... such a terrific bunch of people... it was impossible not to feel as if you were amidst long-time friends. Which, of course, many of us already were (albeit virtually). And, by the end of the night, everybody became. I continue to be amazed at how every blogger event I've ever been to has been so fantastic. And TequilaCon 2008 is easily the top of the heap. A huge thank-you to Jenny for pulling it all together again this year. You are amazing...
Jenny celebrates TequilaCon Rockettes' style! We love you Jenny!
• Photogenic. Many of my photos have been uploaded to a set on my Flickr account (which you can find here). Jenny has also set-up a Flickr Group Pool where everybody can upload their photos (which you can find here). If you attended and have photos to share (be kind!), please contribute!
Blue Steel, baby! My brutally hot sexiness cannot be denied!
Dee Dee and I lend a helping-hand to TequilaCon co-founder Brandon!
It's Tequila Man! And, yes, we are all completely sober in this shot!
And now, it's time for bed. Where I am sure to be dreaming about TequilaCon 2009.
I've been getting a steady stream of comments and emails from people asking questions about TequilaCon. Since Jenny appears to still be in recovery, I've done my best to answer them.
How did TequilaCon get started?
Jenny gave a brief overview when she announced TequilaCon 2006. In summary, to quote Admiral Ackbar... "IT'S A TRAP!" Jenny tricked two fellow bloggers into meeting her in Chicago.
How many TequilaCons have there been?
Four... Chicago (September 26th, 2005), New York (May 7th, 2006), Portland (March 10th, 2007), and Philadelphia (May 3rd, 2008).
Who decides where TequilaCon is going to be held?
Co-cofounders Jenny and Brandon make the decision in consultation with the Official TequilaCon Planning Posse.
Where is the next TequilaCon going to be?
If Jenny knows, she's not telling! She usually makes a final decision and posts an announcement three months or so before the event so everybody wanting to attend has time to make plans. The location seems to bounce between the East Coast, Mid-West, and West Coast, so I'm guessing next time won't be in the East (since there was just a TequilaCon in Philadelphia).
Any chance for a TequilaCon outside the USA?
I'm guessing no, but never say never! TequilaCon is mostly attended by US bloggers, so having it outside of the US would make it difficult for past TequilaConners to attend. Maybe Jenny and Brandon will decide to have an international "satellite event" in addition to TequilaCon one year but, so far as I know, there are no plans for it.
Is TequilaCon an invitation-only event?
Nope! Anybody can come. All you need to do is send Jenny an email once she opens registration so she knows how many people are going to be there. Watch her blog over at Run Jen Run for news and TequilaCon happenings.
Can I bring my spouse/lover/friend/significant other?
If you think they won't be bored hanging out with bloggers all night, then sure! Be sure to include your +1 when you send Jenny your registration info.
How much does it cost to attend?
To attend the event itself has been free. But your travel expenses, lodging expenses, and any expenses at the event (food, drinks bowling, whatever) are your responsibility.
If I don't have a blog, can I still attend?
If bloggers you'd like to meet are going to be there, then sure!
If I don't drink alcohol, can I still attend? What if I don't like tequila?
Of course you don't have to drink tequila (or any kind of alcohol at all!) to attend. But please keep in mind that this is TEQUILACON and alcohol will be served. Drunken behavior will ensue. If this bothers you, then you may want to reconsider attending... the last thing anybody wants is for you to be uncomfortable.
Why name badge lanyards?
The first TequilaCon I attended (#3 last year) was held at The Kennedy School in Portland, OR. This was an amazing venue for the event, but it's huge. There was some concern that people showing up wouldn't be able to find fellow TequilaConners amongst the crowd of people, so I decided to make name badge lanyards. Once TequilaCon was over, they made a fun memento of the event, so I decided to make them again this year.
What's with the buttons?
Lanyards themselves are kind of boring, so I bring lots of button "flair" so people can customize their name badges to suit their individual tastes. It's just something fun to do. There are three kinds of buttons, as you can see here being modeled by Jenny as she drops "Blue Steel" on you...
What happens to the lanyards made for people who don't show up?
The lanyards are a take-home souvenir of the event. If somebody didn't show up, their lanyard is destroyed.
And, lastly, a question asked specifically of me...
Are you mad at people who said they were coming to TequilaCon, but didn't show up?
No. Well, maybe. If somebody got sick or had something come up at the last-minute, then of course I'm not mad. That's life, and shit happens. But I will admit to being a little upset with people who know in advance that they are not coming and didn't bother to let Jenny know so she can tell me not to make them a lanyard and buttons. The materials to make this stuff costs money, which I'm happy to donate, but I don't like throwing money away when I don't have to.
And that's all she wrote! More TequilaCon photos have been added to the Flickr Group pool, so if you want to see what all the fuss is about, here's the link.
Happy Mother's Day!
I don't feel much like typing right now, so I've decided to drop a video for today's 80th edition of Bullet Sunday here at Blogography!
For my valued readers who would rather see a transcript of the video, I've added that in an extended entry.
Have a super awesome week everybody!
On to the transcript...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Lately it has been striking me funny how I am living two entirely separate lives.
There's my online life, which you are seeing here on my blog (plus on Flickr, Twitter, and so on). And my offline life, which is my friends, family, work, and such.
I used to have no problem keeping them separated, but they're starting to merge from time to time...
I haven't yet decided if this is a good or bad thing.
Maybe if I sleep on it...
Dear Isabella,
Yesterday I went to my mail box and there was a package in there! I was very excited to get a present in the mail, and so I ran all the way home so I could open it.
And what did I find inside? Why, it was a Webkinz Monkey and a letter from you!
Thank you very much for my new pet. I have called him Bad Monkey because he reminds me of Lil' Dave's pet monkey. He is a lot of fun, and likes to sit next to me on the couch while I watch television. It is good to have a new friend!
In your letter you said that I should go to webkinz.com and enter a secret code so I can play with my monkey online. This is very cool! Now my monkey has a house on the internet! It is fun to buy new furniture for Bad Monkey's bedroom. I like pirates, so I am decorating it to look like a pirate ship. I even bought Bad Monkey a pirate hat!
He likes to sleep on his pirate bed next to his favorite toy, a plastic guitar...
He also likes to climb up to his Crow's Nest Chair so he can keep an eye out for scurvy dogs who want to steal his treasure...
Bad Monkey also likes to eat a lot. His favorite foods are Potato Chips and Bug Sandwiches. He also likes Chocolate Pudding... just like me! Here are foods I like to feed him...
I like to give my monkey a bath so he stays clean and healthy...
In Webkinz World, you have to buy things with KinzCash. It is fun to win KinzCash by playing games. I bought a game called "Dogbeard's Bathtub Battles" which is a lot like "Battleship." If you win, you can get 40 KinzCash...
There is a word game you can play, but I am not very good at it...
Instead I like to play Quizzy Bear's WhizKinz game. I am very smart... like super-genius smart... so it is easy to win more KinzCash by answering questions...
With all the KinzCash I won, I bought a yard for Bad Monkey to play in. Now I am saving my KinzCash so he can plant a garden...
Thank you so much for sending me such a great present!
Your Friend,
Dave2
Working 19 hour-days has put me in a goofy brain-damaged kind of mood.
I finally got around to reading my email tonight and found that a young boy (with help from his mom) had written to tell me that it's not polite to chew with my mouth open.
This was scary-puzzling to me. Because not only am I'm an advocate for closed-mouth chewing, but I'm also horrified at the thought of small children stalking me. Not knowing what this kid was talking about or where he might have seen me, I wrote back and asked.
Turns out he wasn't writing to me, but to Lil' Dave...
Hmmm... apparently my enthusiasm for corn is responsible for corrupting children by teaching them bad eating habits now.
See, there's a reason I tag my blog as containing adult content.
I'm going to put off the rant I had planned for today because I'm just too happy right now. I made my final call-in for jury duty and found out I have been dismissed! w00t!
So what to blog about?
Fortunately, the answer just appeared to me as I learned of the GAY PRIDE CHALLENGE from The Spirit of St. Lewis Blog! Apparently this was started by Kelly's Rambling along in life... with a bit of PRIDE blog. The rules ask that you post a picture he took of his gay pride flag, like this...
... and then you tell your coming out story.
Which is easy for me, because I came out the minute I found out I was 20% gay. No mucking around in the closet for me! Not only was I totally proud to discover I was partially heterosexually-challenged, I immediately embraced my honorary membership in the gay community.
And here is my story.
For as long as I can remember, the only interest I've ever had in homosexuality was restricted to the gay fine arts... namely, certain aspects of its photography and motion picture culture...
But all that changed on April 13th, 2005.
It was on that day I blogged about how I was all squeeeeeeee! over the budding romance between Logan and Veronica on Veronica Mars. In the comments, Karla remarked at how I was being SUCH girl. I agreed with her and admitted that I just couldn't help myself. Then, before I know it, somebody suggests that I take the now-infamous Channel 4 Gay-O-Meter Quiz. Here is my reaction after I was told that maybe I'm acting like a girl because I'm gay...
Well I don't think that's the situation here... according to the test, I'm only 20% gay.
Hey, hold on a second...
HOLY CRAP!! I'M 20% GAY!!
And here I've been telling myself all this time that the reason I love Veronica Mars so much is because I it's so well-written and Veronica is hot. Now I know it's because I'm 20% gay and didn't even know it.
From there, things moved fairly quickly. Three days later, I was asked in a comment why I hadn't announced my new-found gayness with a DaveToon, so I did...
Out and proud. Out and proud.
Surprisingly, all my readers were very supportive of the news.
They were so supportive that I found new-found freedom to tell everybody about my man-crush on Ryan Reynolds...
... and reveal my adventures in discovering gay-friendly music by such artists as Kylie Minogue...
... and write a gay-themed Bullet Sunday where I congratulate Reverend Ted Haggard on his douchebag hypocrisy...
... and hang out with several hundred of my closest gay friends at an Erasure concert...
... and do my part for Queer Nation by speculating on why stupid homophobic bitch Sally Kern doth protest too much...
... and, of course, appearing on The Jester Show so I could get "injected with The Gay" and proclaim my fierceness...
... and even attend my first Gay Pride Street Fair so I could get protested...
So there you have it. The story of how I went from not knowing anything about The Gay... to discovering I was 20% gay... to embracing gay culture with all of my heart.
Well, okay... it's just 20% of my heart.
Since I'm now having to deal with another new-found revelation about my sexuality... I think I'm 80% lesbian.
Because, damn...
= ahem =
Let's hope that I'm in a worse mood tomorrow so I can post my rant.
Isn't that why people come here?
I mean, before I started posting pictures of hot lesbians...
Once again my rant is going to have to be postponed, because I am just so frickin' overrun with drama that I can barely function.
Today the blogosphere (or, to be more accurate, a small section of the blogosphere) imploded. If you run in the same blog circles as I do, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, it's no big loss, because drama is drama regardless of the details. Suffice to say there was a very disturbing, very public, turn of events that ended badly. This had a ripple effect throughout The People's Republic of Blogistan* where a great many people were left with dropped jaws saying "what the fuck?"
For the most part, I am unsympathetic to the bloggers involved. If you are going to disclose every frakin' detail of your sordid affair to the entire internet... but then disappear when things turn to shit... well, people are going to speculate, gossip, and discuss the situation because you invited them to. And yet, to say I am unsympathetic does not mean I wish anybody ill-will. On the contrary, I am hoping with all my heart that everybody comes through this okay and can find happiness once again. All I ever want is for people to be happy and live in peace.
But enough ambiguous chatter, let's talk about me.
I am the polar opposite of a life-sharing blogger.
I do not discuss my family, my offline friends, my work, my relationships, or anything that's truly personal. This blog is all at once a highly superficial yet deeply reflective look at my life. Or at least (being honest here) the parts of my life I choose to share.
Take yesterday, for instance. It was a very, very bad day. But all the horribleness revolved around things I choose not to blog about, so I posted a DaveToon of my world raining shit and hoped that people understand this is all I have to say about the situation. Fortunately, most do.
But today's events have me thinking back to a conversation I had with my good friend Bad Robert a few weeks back.
Robert observed that I invite my readers to speculate about the Big Picture because I leave them hanging for details. At first I protested, but (and this is the thing about Bad Robert's brilliance) I quickly realized he's absolutely right. For everything I don't reveal or discuss, it's like opening a big door towards speculation. It's human nature.
So am I really any better off than those who choose to share their dirty laundry?
Apparently not.
People read about my frequent travels and speculate that my career is everything from hired assassin to jewel thief to gigolo to terrorist. The truth is far less interesting but, since I'm not talking about it, I might as well be inviting other people to guess...
FACT CHECK: I'm a graphic designer. I fly around a lot for all aspects of my work, and often add-on extra personal time to my trips because I love to travel and see the world. I am, for the most part, forbidden from sharing details of my work, and so I don't. It's really as simple as that.
People read my joking around about being 20% gay, don't read about any girlfriend, and speculate that I'm 100% gay. Again, the truth is far less interesting but, since I'm not talking about it, I might as well be inviting other people to guess...
FACT CHECK: I'm straight. If I were gay I would have no problem being the most "out" homosexual you know, because my friends, family, co-workers, job, and beliefs just wouldn't care. There's no reason for me to be in the closet if I were gay, and I wouldn't be. Just because I don't blog about women in my life doesn't mean they don't exist.
And so on.
This is not to claim that I don't ever reveal myself on my blog.
There are occasional glimpses into my life that I consider highly personal.
There are other times I've written an entry and realize that it tells a lot about who I am even though it actually says very little.
Sometimes I surprise myself by drawing a simple cartoon that reveals me more deeply than any words could ever express.
Occasional controversial topics do enter into the fray from time to time as you would expect them to.
Though people tend to forget, I have blogged about sexual encounters, albeit in a way that admits to nothing.
And, of course, women and romance are not entirely off-limits, I just don't get too close.
Even my family turns up on rare occasions, if people were to take a minute to notice.
And so on.
Is it better to reveal everything and risk repercussions?
Or is it better to reveal very little and risk speculation?
I honestly cannot say.
Something tells me that this would get a little too personal.
* The People's Republic of Blogistan, courtesy of mah Hilly-Sue.
It's a very sad Bullet Sunday, as I just learned George Carlin has died.
• Broked. Sorry about the missing images from Friday's entry. I don't quite know what happened, but I'll look into it when I get off work on Monday.
• Daveattle. You might have noticed that I've added some new people to the "Bloggers I've Met" in my sidebar. That's because last night was Daveattle 2! I was ever so grateful that a terrific group of bloggers showed up to eat, drink, and chat... a good time was had by all...
• Evidence. It's always a good idea to bring a camera to these things, because you just never know when blackmail-worthy material is going to pop up. Not pictured is Bryan, who managed to avoid the cameras (which is pretty much what you have to do when you're wanted for murders in three states)...
The reason they all look so happy is because they're drunk.
Or maybe because Kristin brought fun prizes!
Dustin and Sizzle being sneaky.
Vahid and Sizzle strike a pose while The Fella serenades them.
Matt and Dustin agonize over trying to operate their tiny cameras.
Tracy gives Chris a prison tattoo, apparently making him her bitch.
A scary buffalo head at Linda's Tavern.
Kristin sharpening a knife so she can remove The Fella's spleen.
• Sleepytime. And that about wraps it up! Thanks to everybody who took time our of their valuable weekend to hang out, and I hope to see everybody again soon!
This is a recorded message.
Dave is not here right now.
Dave and his monkey are guest-blogging over at Cynical Dad today...
Unfortunately, Dave's Webkinz pet is still on a rampage. After being ripped off by the Webkinz eStore, his righteous fury has resulted in a swath of death and destruction through Webkinz World that shows no signs of stopping. When he was last spotted, he was headed towards The Wish Factory...
The remainder of this entry NOT appropriate for children or those who are traumatized by cartoon violence!
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Once again, I am not here today. I am over at Karl's blog Secondhand Tryptophan where I am guest-posting for his annual "Summer of Love" event.
Because I start traveling this week, I decided to do something special since I won't have time to do anymore guest posting for a while. Heck, I'm still trying to figure out how I am going to find time to write in my own blog. Maybe I should have started my own "Summer of Love" and got Karl to post for me! A pity I'm just not that smart.
In any event, what I am doing today is posting a naked photo of myself over there. It's something I would never do on my own blog, but Karl said "there are no rules" and "you have carte blanche," so I figured "what the heck?"
I'm sure Naked Dave will raise a few questions, which I am happy to answer below...
Yes that's really me naked.
The photo was taken back in 2001.
It was taken by my then-girlfriend who decided to goof around with my digital camera.
I have no idea why I kept the image, except that it's a pretty darn fine picture, if I do say so myself.
This is not the only naked picture of me on the internet. Somewhere out there, somebody has posted a photo of my bare ass. And no, I'm not telling you where it is (though it's totally worth tracking it down because, let's face it, I've got a totally hot ass).
No, I can't send you a high-res version, because Hilly has gone and trademarked DaveCock. From my Twitter Feed...
No, she didn't trademark DaveBalls, so my testicles still belong to me.
For the time being, anyway.
UPDATE: With so many blogs going under, I've decided to archive my guest-entry just in case it disappears over at Karl's.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Before there were blogs, there were online journals, of which I had two. They were hand-coded in html and difficult to update, but they did keep my readers (all four of them) updated as to my travels and happenings. Then tools came along to make online journals easier to update and they were re-branded "blogs," but it was all the same to me. I'd start a blog, get bored, kill the blog, start a new blog. Eventually i decided to make a real effort at "the blogging thing" and Blogography was born. It was killed 6 months later.
But then better blogging tools came along and Blogography was reborn. Five years later, it's still here.
I honestly don't know why. It should have died off years ago.
I'm guessing it has to do with the "blogging community" that's given me so much. New friends. An extended family. Many good times. Some bad times. And a lot of laughs. I'm guessing it's the same for a lot of bloggers. You keep going because you can't imagine not going on and leaving the community behind.
But then money had to come along and fuck up everything.
Advertising. Merchandising. Revenue sharing. Commissions. Free merchandise. Travel. Book deals. Speaking engagements. Sponsorships. Conferences. Professional bloggers. And a myriad of other things that have made blogging as big a business as anything else out there.
Most of the time, this money is pretty insignificant. Maybe a blogger puts Google Ads on their blog and makes a bit of cash so they can pay their hosting costs and perhaps buy a pizza each month... and that's fine. I've said many times that ads don't bother me. So long as a blog is worth reading, I honestly don't care if they try to make a few bucks. Plaster you blog with ads, it doesn't make any difference to me because I don't visit for the ads and can easily ignore them.
And yet, there's a tipping point.
That point at which the dollars are no longer insignificant and a blogger realizes that there's money to be made.
And wherever money gets involved, drama is sure to follow.
This is not to say that money has to be involved for there to be drama. It doesn't. Drama can be motivated by a number of factors, and I'd guess most of them have nothing to do with dollars. But it's the money-drama that's the most interesting... because nobody involved will admit that it's about the money!
Once you've breached that tipping point, you can claim all you want that you're blogging for the love of it all, but it's a load of crap and everybody knows it. At that point it's all about building readership and leveraging that readership for a monetary pay-off. It's the holy grail that oh so many bloggers aspire to and, once they have it, will do most anything to protect. After all, once you've made serious bank from blogging, how could you lower yourself to go back and do it for free?
And that's where the trouble begins, because things inevitably turn nasty. Sometimes, because a money-blogger thinks that the best defense is a good offense, they'll mount an attack on other bloggers to "defend their blogosphere territory." Other times, a money-blogger realizes that nothing elevates readership better than controversy, and so they'll invent drama where there is none (or escalate drama that's already there) to snag readers. However the money-drama occurs, the money-blogger can't ignore it because battle-lines are being drawn and losing territory means losing revenue.
Not that they'll admit to it.
You'll never see a money-blogger say "There is a blogger that has come to my attention who is clever and fresh and writes about the same subject matter I do. If their readership keeps growing, I fear that they may start cutting into my revenue, and this simply cannot be allowed. I've got a book coming out and am a paid speaker at MoneyBlogger 2008, so my only option here is to attack them now while I still have the power to protect my brand. So when I say that this blogger is a talentless hack who steals ideas from other people and is a stupid doo-doo head, I hope that you will act like the mindless minions you are and join me in destroying them. Oh... and did I mention that they are a godless communist who likes to kick puppies and perform abortions in their spare time?"
Then the entertainment really begins, because the money-blogger being attacked will mobilize their readers for an offensive. Other bloggers will weigh in on the drama with their own opinions to build alliances. Still other bloggers will wait for the drama to die down... then stir it up again so they can create all new drama with themselves at the center of it... all in the desperate hope of snagging a few more readers so they can cash in and be a money-blogger too.
On the surface, it's a pretty battle filled with righteous indignation and the best of intentions. Underneath it all, there's the money.
No matter how strongly they pretend otherwise.
Most of the time I'm able to comfortably skip past the money-drama and ignore it. In rare events, this is not possible, though I try not to drag my own blog into the fray except in broad strokes (like now!), preferring to comment elsewhere.
And this is where I finally bring this entry full-circle by saying how the money-drama relates to me.
It doesn't.
Except that's not what some people think, and therein lies the problem.
People see that I sell crap at the Artificial Duck Co. Store and think I'm raking in the big money.
Which is laughable on so many levels. Last year the store lost me over $1200. Obviously I don't run it to make money, I run it because my readers like having the stuff. I like having the stuff. I sell the hats for $12. The hats cost me $12. I sell the T-shirts for $8.50. The T-shirts cost me $7.50. I sell the Playing Cards for as little as $2.50 (for an eight-pack). The Playing Cards cost me $3.00. No big money is being made. The $1 from the shirt goes to a fund to help my sister pay for medical expenses she has from kicking the shit out of cancer a second time (sorry for the massive profit margin on the shirts there, but I love my sister quite a lot).
I don't make money off of Blogography and, for the foreseeable future, that's not going to change. That's not why I blog. There's some very, very cool new merchandise in the pipe for Blogiversary 6, but it will be sold at my cost as it always has been. Even though I parted ways with my publishers (yes, both of them!) I still plan on releasing the first of my books next year (even if I have to self-publish). I think we all know that's not going to be a money-maker... but I worked hard on it, think people might like to read it, and so I'm going to make it available to them as cheaply as I possibly can. I'm far more interested in Blogography readers being able to afford my stuff than trying to wring money out of them.
But no matter how transparent I try to be as a blogger, I know that there will be those who don't believe me. There's always going to be a small group of people who are convinced that every time I say I like a product, some company has their hand up my ass and is paying me to say it. There's always going to be people who simply cannot accept that I'm not making huge bank from T-shirts and hats. It's human nature, and I certainly don't begrudge them for believing whatever they want to believe.
Except when they go telling it to other people as if it were fact.
In which case they can go fuck themselves. Twice now I've seen my name and my blog dragged into some outrageous shit because some money-blogger is trying to create drama and make a name for themselves. Which is monumentally stupid when you consider that I'm not in this for the money. More importantly, I'm not competition! You think I'm worried about losing advertisers from advertisements I don't have? There's no benefit in my engaging in your drama other than to spell out how monumentally stupid you are for assuming I would care.
So be a douchebag money-blogger wannabe and stir up all the shit you want, if you're so inclined.
I'll still be here not giving a flying fuck.
My day did not get off to a very good start.
Two kids prank-called me at 3:30am and tried again before I had my phone put on "do-not-disturb." They were staying here at the hotel, because nobody at the switchboard let a call through. Where the heck are their parents? Because this was my ONE SHOT at getting some decent sleep, and it was completely destroyed. Tomorrow I have to be up a an insane hour for my flight back home, so my only hope of catching up on my rest is if I can sleep on the plane (which is unlikely).
Things got a lot better once I met up with Beth (who makes all the awesome hats in the Artificial Duck Store) and Kevin. We ate lunch at the very cool (and delicious) "Savage Pizza" located at "Little Five Points." The quirky neighborhood is most famous for The Vortex, because it's got a very cool entrance...
From there we went to Atlanta's terrific High Museum...
They have a lot of incredible artwork there, but the main reason I wanted to go was to see "The Funeral of Atala," a very moving painting by Girodet that's based on a reinterpretation of "Romeo and Juliet" in Chateaubriand's popular 1801 novel, Atala. The image depicts Chactas, a Natchez Indian mourning and burying his love Atala after she commits suicide because she feared breaking the vow of chastity she made to her mother. It's an absolutely beautiful and powerful work of art...
There are many other interesting pieces, like these two which I have renamed "For The Win!" and "Purple Cow Dressed as a Lion Eating a Taco"...
After the museum, Beth and Kevin took me to an Atlanta institution... The Varisty (a massive drive-in restaurant)... so I could experience a delicious Frosted Orange drink. We sat in the "schoolhouse room" where everybody sits at those little desks they give you in elementary school. I had to steal this photo from Kevin, because my iPhone camera decided to stop working for some reason...
From there it was time for Davelanta at the Hard Rock Cafe Atlanta. Probably the most obscenely loud Hard Rock property I have ever been to. The music was way, way too loud, but we had a great time anyway. Here's me with Beth and Kevin...
Then Mentally Rehearsed showed up...
Then Coal Miner's Granddaughter...
And then Geeky Tai-Tai and Mr. Geeky Tai-Tai, Mike...
Despite nearly going deaf, we all had a great time, and decided to move across the street to a quieter venue so we could more easily talk.
And there was Key Lime Pie.
For what started out as kind of a crappy day, it sure ended well!
Later this week I will be taking off for Southern California to experience Comic-Con 2008 in San Diego. Believe it or not, I've never been before, so I am really looking forward to it. The entire convention is sold-out for all four days but, fortunately, I bought my tickets and made my hotel reservations way early, so I think I'm good to go!
The only problem is trying to figure out which events I want to attend. Sure there are some things I'd like to see... but there's nothing so life-altering happening that I absolutely have to do it. With that in mind, I think I'll just play it by ear and wander around until something looks interesting to me.
I take that back... there is, of course ONE event that is positively unmissable, and that would be Dave Diego on Saturday night!
w00t!
If you will be in the vicinity of San Diego and like to drop by to eat, drink, and chat with a swell group of bloggers... please email me at dave@blogography.com ASAP so we can make reservations for dinner and get you a name badge!
And now for two more days of torture before good times begin...
I spent the morning at Comic-Con, which was even more insane than yesterday... something I would have never thought possible. The crowds were just obscene. Fortunately, I was concentrating on visiting original comic art vendors today, which was probably the least offensive (crowd-wise) of the entire show floor.
If only I had several thousand dollars burning a hole in my pocket, I could have actually afforded to buy something!
Yesterday I focused on all the positive and wonderful things about Comic-Con, this time I wanted to list some of my gripes about Comic-Con. For those who don't care about the show and are sick of reading about it, I've put it all in an extended entry.
But even better than drooling over amazing works of art all morning was attending Dave Diego this evening! Fun times were had by all, and it was great to finally meet some new faces behind the names from blogs I enjoy...
It was mother-daughter day, starting with Juli and SJ...
I was thrilled that Amandarin and Adam were able to make it, because she is here to actually work at Comic-Con...
At first Vahid was immune to Hilly's considerable charms...
But there's only so long you can hold out against Hilly, and Vahid was soon smitten...
Which was a good thing, because Hilly required assisted in getting decked out in Blogography Flair...
Cutest couple of the evening award went to Jester and Uncle Monkey Boy...
Also finally got to meet Othurme, along with new Jester Friends Daniel, Richard, and Paul...
Karl and Bret were also there... but they always seemed to be making out (TequilaCon-Speak for "out having a smoke") on those rare occasions I had my camera out, so I had to steal this photo from SJ...
After drinks, dinner, talk, and drinks, we called it a night so disrespectable people could get home at a respectable hour. We're classy like that.
Tomorrow I'm going to take in the last hours of Comic-Con 2008 and see if I can meet up with some friends while I'm in town. Not a bad way to spend a Bullet Sunday.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
I had gotten all fired up and wrote a big long political rant for tonight... but then remembered that I don't really do politics on my blog and deleted it.
This was kind of painful, because I spent 45 minutes writing it (whereas my average blog entry takes 10-15 minutes). Oh well. Sometimes writing down how you feel can still be therapeutic, even if nobody ever sees it. Suffice to say that I am not happy about the latest bullshit being shoveled our way, and am in a state of constant amazement that people are so willing to sit back and take it. I wonder just how bad it has to get before people are outraged enough to start rioting in the streets?
So now I got nuthin' to blog about...
I'd feel bad about that, but I have to get up in six hours so I can fly out again.
Taking a bad situation and making the best of it, my unexpected trip to Portland ended up being a great excuse to email Vahid, Lewis, and Blair for a last-minute dinner in the City of Roses. Thanks to Twitter, Miss TSM_Oregon herself (Tracy) saw that I was in town and was kind enough to join in as well.
When I stop and think about it, this is pretty amazing. Just four years ago, all the travel I do made for a life of loneliness and isolation. Now, thanks to blogging, there's someone I know everywhere I go. A last-minute trip to Portland is no longer just a chore to I have to get through, but an opportunity to meet up with friends. Friends I never would have met if not for writing here at Blogography and getting involved in the PRB.
Since I live in a tiny town where "ethnic food" is considered to be a burrito with extra cheese, Vahid was kind enough to suggest Indian for dinner, which sounded perfect. I stuck to my restrictive diet as best I could, but the food at India House all sounded so good that there was no way I could settle for a stupid salad, and ended up having their Vegetarian Sampler Platter. Delicious.
My diet already blown by eating gluten (beer and naan) and cooked vegetables (everything else), Vahid decided to exploit my love of gelato and add dairy to the list of forbidden foods I've consumed today, and took us all to Mio Gelato. Since they had Stracciatella among the flavors, I was a very happy camper.
Lewis and Blair had to be responsible parents and get back to their kid, so Vahid, Tracy and I soldiered onward to The Boiler Room for karaoke. Tracy claimed to be able to sing, so we wanted her to put a microphone where her mouth is and prove it. She was first up as karaoke started... and proceeded to blow the doors off the joint by singing Linda Ronstadt's "You're No Good." Her performance made me pity everybody else in the room who had put a song in, and the guy who came after Tracy just stood there with the microphone in his hand saying "you expect me to follow that?!?
Having nothing left to prove, Tracy hit the road for her drive home, leaving Vahid and I to play video games at Ground Kontrol. Back in the day, I used to be pretty good at these classic games, but now I just suck ass. Games like "Donkey Kong" where I used to blow through levels in record time and set high scores totally owned my ass. I never made it past the first level.
Having totally failed at video games, we met up with one of Vahid's college buddies for one last beer at Bailey's Taproom.
All in all, a good night! Thanks to everybody who was kind enough to hang out with me.
UPDATE: Ooh! I forgot PDX has free wi-fi! Uploaded a photo montage of us.
This morning I had to unblock the FOX News Channel on my TiVo so I could tell it to record =shudder= The O'Reilly Factor tonight. This goes against my policy of unnecessarily exposing myself to lying dumbass fucktards, but I'm hoping the horror of having to watch Bill O'Reilly will be offset by the person he's interviewing: Barack Obama. If O'Reilly will shut his stupid mouth long enough to let Obama speak, it should be a fascinating show.
Still, I fully plan on slamming no less than three shots of Jägermeister and having a Rum & Root Beer handy to take the edge off.
It's times like this that make me wish hardcore drugs were cheap and easily available. And legal, of course.
In happier news, the dates for the blogger meet-ups in Austin and San Francisco have been set.
If you'd like to come along and hang out with some extraordinary blogging-type people, then please send me an email at dave@blogography.com
Hmmm... O'Reilly starts at 5:00. I wonder how early I should start drinking?
It's midnight and I just stopped work for the day a half-hour ago (even though I have tons left to do). Since I started working at 5:00 this morning you'd think I'd be a little bitter about a 16-1/2 hour work-day, but I just spent two weeks in the Hawaiian Islands so it's not like I have much cause to complain.
So here I lay in bed, listening to Wincing The Night Away by "The Shins" for the millionth time, all the while tap-tap-tapping away on my MacBook and contemplating what to blog about. Usually the problem would be that I'm too beat to think of anything worth writing, but the opposite seems to be true tonight. There's dozens of things I could blog about... I just can't choose.
I thought I was going to talk about my contest for Bullet Sunday #100 coming up in three days, but I haven't figured out exactly how it's going to work.
Then I was going to write about Davestin coming up next Friday, but that seemed more appropriate for this Friday.
Just a second ago, Phantom Limb started playing and it made me want to write about how it may very well be my favorite song of all time (which is surprising because it's not by Depeche Mode), but I doubt anybody would find that amusing except me.
Then I had considered blogging about Katie Couric's truly terrifying interview with Sarah Palin that's been splattered all over the internets, but I am so rattled at the possibility of Palin getting anywhere near The White House that I may go into hysterics. At this point, I would hope that even hardcore Republicans are scared of the doomsday scenario which would have McCain winning the election and then dying in office, leaving us with "President Palin." It's a possibility so horrifying that I cannot picture it in my head without making "BLEEP BLORP" noises and sobbing uncontrollably.
Then I started thinking about how technically the day has already ended and I shouldn't be worried about this blog entry at all since it's now tomorrow and I should be worrying about that entry.
Except I have to get back to work in five hours and can't afford to be worrying about anything if I want to get any sleep tonight.
I could really use a cookie, a glass of chocolate milk, and a handful of sedatives.
Thanks to everybody for their kind emails and comments about my recent allergy-related health problems. Between the drugs and eliminating peanut products, things have been going okay... for now at least. Still getting random welts, but they're not nearly as severe.
One final reminder... tomorrow, October 1st, is the last day to leave a comment entry for my Bullet Sunday 100 celebration. Act fast, because comments will be closed for entries at 9:00pm Seattle time.
In celebration of Google's 10th birthday, they've put their oldest available index online from January, 2001. It's kind of fun to do a search for things that didn't exist back then. Like Apple's "iPhone" (which was a different product by an entirely different company) or "iPod" (which was nothing more than an acronym) or even "Blogography"...
When I first came up with the idea of naming my new blog "Blogography" back in February of 2002, the first thing I did was type "blogography.com" into my web browser and come up empty. The second thing I did was type "blogography" into Google where I also came up empty. I didn't know for sure if I really wanted to name my blog "Blogography" so I thought on it for a month (hey, registering domains was expensive back then!). Eventually I took the plunge on March 27, 2002 (after sobering up from my birthday, I'd imagine), and the rest is history.
Amazing to see how far things have come in just 7-3/4 years...
Around 64,600 pages! There are dozens (hundreds?) of sites calling themselves "blogography" now, but back then the term didn't even exist. You can do your own searching back in time by visiting Google 2001. But act fast... they're only keeping it active for one month.
Wow. What an amazing day.
And to think I almost missed it.
Originally, I was flying into San Antonio for some plans there, then driving up to Austin (because that's where Wayne and Karla were at). When my plans in San Antonio fell through, I had to cancel my entire trip to Texas. But then at the last minute I decided to go to Austin anyway. I had only been to the city a few times before, had never met Wayne in person, and it's a lot cheaper than going to Norway to say hi to Karla.
The day started with me ironing all my clothes.
Usually when the TSA pulls my suitcase for extra screening (which is ALWAYS) they are pretty good at putting everything back together nice and neat. This time, not so much. Every piece of clothing I packed had become a massive ball of wrinkles. Since I suck at ironing, they were only slightly less wrinkled after I had finished, but at least I had the satisfaction of knowing I tried to make myself look presentable.
Then it was time for lunch with Wayne from The Blog of Whall. I won a contest over at his blog a while back, and was given a choice of prizes. I picked "lunch on me the next time you're in Austin," and was here to collect. I was expected the 99¢ menu at Taco Bell, but Wayne went all-out and took me to The Shady Grove, a very cool restaurant which is the epitome of Austin's hippie culture. It's places like this that seem to typify the city, but not Texas as a whole. Indeed, if you were to visit only Austin, you might assume that Texas is a liberal, left-leaning, Obama-loving, Blue State. The reality is quite different, as shown by this electoral map from the last presidential election...
It's kind of interesting, because Austin is almost defiantly proud of being different. The wait staff at Shady Grove were wearing T-shirts saying "KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD!" which just about sums it up. After some darn fine chips & queso, we managed to get a table for delicious burgers out in the inviting Austin sunshine. Despite some political differences on some issues, Wayne and I are more alike than different, which made for great conversation and a terrific lunch. But no worries, I'm pretty sure I've convinced Wayne that Obama for president is the way to go, so Austin's Travis County going Blue in November is all but assured.
Then tonight it was time for Austin's premiere blogging event: Davestin!
Here's Karla modeling the Official Davestin Lanyard after we arrived at Opal Divine's Freehouse...
Here's Wayne, much happier now that he's supporting Obama...
Here's Ren from "Renagerie" with Wayne's lovely wife Christy (no, I have no idea how Wayne managed to get her to marry him either, the lucky bastard!)...
Going clock-wise from the lower left to lower right, that's Mags from "The Corrosion" and Karla May from Pine Curtain Refugee" and Lindsay from "Malcontent Mama" and Oliver and Lee from "I Love Beer" and Jaye from "Putting the 'Fun' in Disfunctional" and Karla from Tales of a Texpatriate and Badger from "Badger Meets World" (our resident palm-reading expert). Bookhart from "Up From Sloth" appears to have escaped...
No, wait a second... there's Bookhart down at the end there! And me, eating awesome pepper-fries with delicious chipotle mayo...
After dinner some of us headed off to The Jackelope for much drinking and merriment! Unfortunately Wayne had to run home and do some campaign work for Obama so he, Christy, and Ren couldn't join us. But he did give me a super-sweet Pearls Before Swine book to read on the plane-ride home tomorrow before he left, so it's all good.
After drinking entirely too much, I stumbled back to my hotel for some sleep. As I was looking across the street at a neon sign which said "Hospitality On Call" and wondering if it meant what I thought it meant, I heard somebody calling my name...
...only to discover that a friend I haven't seen in almost a decade was staying at the same hotel! This awesome coincidence called for even more drinking and merriment, at which point I think I must have passed out, because I honestly cannot remember how I got here to my hotel room.
Oh well. I still have my iPhone, camera, wallet, and all my clothes, so I guess everything worked out in the end.
Or not, depending on how you gauge a successful evening out on the town in Austin.
This is an entry in two parts. First I am going to go insane. Then I am going to cry.
Let's start with the insanity, shall we? In response to my entry yesterday about voting no on Proposition 8 in California, a reader brought to my attention the even more outrageous Proposition 1 happening in Arkansas. This truly vile ballot item facing voters in "The Natural State" would prohibit cohabitating couples from adopting or providing foster care to children. Put another way, only a married couple would be allowed to provide a home for a child in need. To put it still another way... unmarried sinners and God-hating faggots need not apply.
Even when facing unbelievably ludicrous shit like this, I honestly do try very hard to see an issue from all sides.
But how in the hell do you do that when somebody honestly thinks that being stuck in an orphanage is a better environment for a child than a home where they are wanted, loved, and cared for? Even in a Prop 1 supporter's most depraved homosexually-themed nightmares, how is an unmarried couple for a family or a gay couple for a family worse than no family at all? How is it that being married automatically makes you perfect caregivers for children? As I read through mind-boggling comments by scary homophobes on Prop 1 news sites, it apparently has to do with exposing innocent children to "perverts" and turning them gay by example. I can't even dignify this with a response except to ask "if being raised by a straight couple guarantees a child won't 'turn gay'... where do the gays come from?"
Study of the issue has brought me no closer to understanding how children are better off if Prop 1 passes, thus denying them loving homes that are all too rare.
I mean, seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?!? Shit like this makes me insane.
See, I told you so.
And then...
It seems whenever I write an entry in support of gay issues, it opens up the question of "why" as in "Why do you care about gay rights when you're not gay." Sometimes readers guess it's because I've met bunches of gay bloggers, which is indeed part of it (I also have gay "real life" friends and people I work with who are gay), but it's not the driving force behind my activism. Others assume it's because I'm gay myself, which I've already addressed... or because I somehow think it's funny, which I assure you I do not.
The simple answer is because I am a human, and believe that nobody should be treated differently because of how they're born. Whether it be because a person has blue eyes... or freckles... or is tall... or is short... or is gay... or whatever. That's how they were made, that's how they are, and that's how they're going to be. To punish somebody or treat them as a lesser person because of who they are is discriminatory cruelty and not very human at all.
The long answer is a little more complex.
I've never written about it before because it's also a lot more personal.
If anybody cares, I've done my best to explain it all in an extended entry.
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Generally speaking, I don't think much about the things I write on my blog. Each day when I find a free moment, I sit down and type out whatever happens to be crossing my mind at the time. There's no real agenda or message I'm going for, it's just random crap that's mostly useless and occasionally entertaining. This is not to say that I don't have lucid moments... every once in a while I've actually got something to say... but nobody's going to confuse Blogography with anything that's to be taken seriously. I draw cartoons with monkeys for heaven's sake.
This is a system that serves me well, even if it does result in my having to deal with random hatemail and nasty comments every once in a while. If you put yourself out there on the internet long enough, the hate is inevitable, regardless of how ridiculous you are.
Knowing that doesn't make it any easier, however.
Today I deleted the entry I had written rather than invite the inevitable hatemail that would have come from it. I just don't need the drama right now.
So instead, here's a cartoon of a monkey to look at...
Hopefully tomorrow I'll stop thinking when I blog again. It's a lot more productive.
Blame it on Brandon and Shari.
But mostly Shari.
Brandon tried to sneak into Wenatchee unnoticed, but it's a small city and Shari was in the right place at the right time and spotted him. Since she has his phone number, there was no escape. I'm sure Brandon tried to deny it and blame his appearance on a twin brother or alien pod-person, but the jig was up. Since Shari didn't make it to the TequilaCon Planning Meeting in Chicago, she demanded a special Emergency TequilaCon Post-Planning Follow-Up Dinner here in Wenatchee.
It was a commandment I couldn't refuse...
Yes, iPhone has the shittiest camera in a mobile phone ever.
So now I'm behind in work and don't have time to blog.
And it's all their fault.
I'm now a bit worried that the two remaining TequilaCon Planning Committee members who didn't make it to Chicago will demand post-planning meetings of their own. But since both of them seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth, I'm probably safe.
If I had to guess, I'd say Dustin contracted the ebola virus, went insane, then died in a gutter somewhere in Tijuana.
If I had to guess, I'd say Sibyl inherited 5 billion dollars, became a recluse, and is living in a palace in Dubai.
If I had to guess.
This is a replacement entry.
I had written up a long entry discussing the sad trade imbalance which has been closing more and more American companies and killing US manufacturing, but then something very cool happened, so I didn't want to post anything depressing today. Instead I think I'll just comb through my photograph archives and find something there.
Something like this...
All better.
The last day of the year is great time to be a blogger. It's a time when you get to re-visit all your entries for the past 364 365* days and see just how pointless and futile your life really is.
As usual much of this year was spent traveling, and I managed to rack up 127,320 air miles on eleven airlines. This seems about average for me now, but pales in comparison to seven years ago when I would easily get up to 200,000 miles and beyond. I haven't yet decided whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but it's nice to spend time at home every once in a while.
And now some choice bits of random Blogography crap from the year that was 2008...
JANUARY
• Made it to the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Biolxi at last, after my previous attempt was thwarted by Hurricane Katrina.
• Was finally able to admit it's all about me.
• I said my final words on LOLCats...
• Returned to Cologne, Germany so I could be attacked by bears and get insulted by Disapproving Poster Man...
• Visited Warsaw, Poland, which was amazing in ways that I just can't articulate...
• Saw the gayest building in all of Europe...
FEBRUARY
• Found out that Poland really doesn't like President Bush very much...
• But Poland totally loves me, which is all that really matters...
• Went back to Cologne so I could partake in the Kölner Karneval where I was given the hottest scarf ever, got to see transgender Viking warriors, and gape with awe at the giant flaming wheel of meat.
• Relived the horror of dating the "Do You Know Girl."
MARCH
• Attended the TequilaCon 2008 Planning Meeting in Portland, Oregon.
• Changed Blogography's header graphic and hung out with Mr. Bun before he was shipped off to Iraq...
• Traveled to Oslo, Norway on my birthday so I could FINALLY meet Ms. Texpatriate herself, Karla!...
• Spent the day in Bygdøy in Norway to see some of the most amazing shit on earth.
• Took the train to Göteborg, Sweden to meet my very good blogging friend Göran and take in the sights.
• Went back to Oslo so I could get the crap scared out of me and visit PERVY STATUE PARK!
APRIL
• Developed my own line of luxury condoms.
• Experienced the excruciating pain of kidney stones while in Salt Lake City, and finally got to meet Marty (albeit in a drugged-out state of pain-killer euphoria).
• Posted one of my most controversial DaveToons ever.
• Came up with a business plan for Davebucks Cocoa...
• Had my 5-Year Blogiversary celebration where I gave out my biggest prize ever...
MAY
• Goofed around in New York City with Vahid.
• Went to Philadelphia for THE blogger event of the year... TEQUILACON 08!
• Went to Philly Pride 2008 with Dustin and Vahid!
• Went to see Eddie Izzard perform in Chicago with Jenny.
• Explored the world of Webkinz.
JUNE
• Told my 20% coming out story.
• Developed the best software idea ever.
• Exposed the truth about gay marriage.
• Had an awesome time at Daveattle!
• Endured a dilemma with malt liquor...
JULY
• Shared a naked photo of myself.
• Talked about how moneybloggers ruin everything.
• Avoided being poisoned to death at Johnny Rockets....
AUGUST
• Found out I have mutant healing powers like Wolverine!
• Attended the wonderment of DAVECAGO!
• Delivered the winning prize for my Blogiverary 5 celebration by attending the very first Dave Louis event where I had the best orgasm of my life at Ted Drewes...
• Back to Salt Lake City so I could meet Marty again... this time without being drugged out of my mind.
• Theorized how my new diet might cause my ass to explode.
• Had big fun during an unexpected trip to Portland.
SEPTEMBER
• Went to Hawaii for vacation...
• Railed against the hypocrisy of John McCain.
• Reminisced about Blogography on the occasion of Google's 10th Birthday.
OCTOBER
• The inevitable finally happened when I met Wayne (and other cool bloggers!) at the first ever Davestin Event while saying hello to Karla (again) in Austin.
• Provided historical evidence of my chocolate pudding addiction...
• Back to Chicago for the TequilaCon 2009 Planning Meeting, where I finally got to experience Puppet Bike!
• Exposed myself in my most personal entry ever.
• Revealed my second-worst date of all time.
• Had an amazing time at DaveFrancisco.
NOVEMBER
• Off to Orlando for Avitable's Annual Halloween Party dressed as MURDER CLOWN!!
• Shared the joy of my Hannah Montana Musical Pen..
• Gave one of many reasons that Bill O'Reilly is a total fucking dumbass (as if anybody really needed me to tell them that).
• Explained Wisconsin to non-Wisconsonians.
DECEMBER
• Took a break at Walt Disney World.
• Visted the PostSecret exhibit in Arkansas.
• Got stuck in Seattle for a week thanks to Snowmageddon 2008.
• Lamented being trapped in a box.
And that was 2008. Everybody have a safe and happy New Year as we head into 2009, and thanks for reading!
UPDATE: *OMG! It was totally a leap year this year!
Once again something is broked and I can't get today's entry to post. Comments still work just fine, so I have no idea what's going on. Again.
What a way to start the new year.
I still can't figure out what the problem is with my blog. If I insert an entry directly in to the SQL database and force a rebuild, it will show up no problem. But writing an entry directly fails. I guess I must have blown up something while trying to fix the admin search thingy.
Typical. It's not enough that my template still breaks under crappy Internet Explorer in the comments, now I've got something new to worry about. Meh. Maybe tomorrow.
Wah. I want a new blog.
w00t! I finally managed to fix my blog! Apparently, it was a "permissions" issue. Easy.
Today was a beautiful day, filled with sunshine and a relatively nice weather. This caused much of the snow on the roads to melt, which is great until around 6:30 when the temperature drops below freezing again. Then wet roads turn to ice. But they don't look that way in the dark... they just look wet.
Which is why an idiot driving the car behind me nearly crashed into my ass.
Instead they managed to do some wild acrobatics and swerve to a snowbank on the side of the road. They were going slow enough when they hit that there was no damage, but still... who doesn't understand the concept of water turning to ice when it gets cold? And why are the people who don't understand this concept still allowed to drive in wintertime? Shouldn't there be testing for this kind of stuff? It's not rocket science...
WATER + COLD = ICE = SLIPPERY!!
Perhaps I need to print that on a bumper sticker. Or add a chapter to my upcoming book explaining how ice works...
We now return you to our regularly scheduled blog program...
So TequilaCon 2009 is in Santa Fe.
To read about how that came about, Brandon has a story up on his blog.
But Brandon has a tendency to whitewash the more questionable aspects when it comes to recounting events like this, so I thought that I would fill in a few of the gory details that he's left out... BULLET STYLE!!
• Planning. I've already blogged about how Jenny summoned the TequilaCon Committee to Chicago for a pre-planning meeting. Only three of us were foolish enough to actually go... myself, Vahid, and Brandon. What I didn't mention is that Jenny showed up dressed in sun-goddess robes and insisted that we address her as "High Priestess Many Goats."
• Whiteboard. When I posted a picture of Brandon Photographing the Official TequilaCon Whiteboard, I blurred out the cities listed...
But now all can be revealed. Here are the eleven cities ultimately considered after hours of debate...
After some alcohol, Pac-Mac, and discussion, the final three locations were narrowed down to Vancouver BC, Las Vegas, and Santa Fe. After some alcohol, Pac-Mac, and a lot more discussion, Vancouver was axed because of passport requirements. That left Las Vegas and Santa Fe. After some alcohol, Pac-Man, SO much money, and a spinning whiskey bottle, High Priestess Many Goats declared Santa Fe the host city for TequilaCon 2009...
This is probably for the best, because Santa Fe feels more like a TequilaCon city, whereas Vegas is kind of obvious and commercialized.
• Drunken. When Brandon says that he put on the Sometimes Rabbit head and tried to get Jenny's cat drunk, it sounds like a clever allegory for setting aside the folly of one's youth and embracing the responsibilities of adulthood... but was, in fact, putting on the Sometimes Rabbit head and trying to get Jenny's cat drunk...
That's three bullets, which is probably three too many, so I guess that's all for today. Sometime in February, I'm guessing a venue in Santa Fe will be decided upon, and the official details will be posted so everybody can make their travel and lodging arrangements. In the meanwhile I urge you to drop by Jenny's blog if you are interested in the event so she can put you on the Official TequilaCon 2009 Mailing List...
I've decided I don't want to be on the Official Mailing List. That way I can crash the party unannounced.
Twitter is what they call a "micro-blogging" service that allows you to post quick 140-character updates throughout your day and have them compiled into a webfeed with other Twitter users. I signed up for it as a joke when I made my DaveStalker™ page, and thought I'd get bored with it in a week. That was several months ago.
All this time I've been treating Twitter as a "disposable" medium to post random crap. Except Twitter isn't disposable. It's not only archived in several places, but shows up in Google searches as well.
This was made known to me this morning when I received an email from a former co-worker who was looking for me on the internet... and found my Twitter feed. This came as a bit of a shock. I don't really think about what I post there, so I had no idea what it was saying about me.
So I took a look, and pulled some random tweets of mine from the past couple months...
"Thinking of breaking my vegetarianism if only I could find some unicorn meat. I hear it's magically delicious!"
"I WANT HOT COCOA!! HOT COCOA, BITCHES!!!"
"Getting ready to make love to the Swiss Miss Instant Cocoa packet. Oh how I love your creamy hotness, Swiss Miss!"
"As a tribute to crack-whores everywhere (bless them!), I am blasting Amy Winehouse music while waiting for the MacWorld keynote to begin."
"Oooh! It's Madonna... she's going to dress me up in her love! I hope all my immunizations are current."
"= tee hee = I'm leaving comments while naked and eating pizza. Praying that an errant drop of molten cheese doesn't ruin my day."
"I'd say that the Hewlett-Packard B9180 printer is shit, but it aspires to be that good. It dreams of one day becoming shit."
"Gah! Whores!"
"I an so totally hammered right now. Thank heavens for spell-chuck!"
"Oooh! It's a hamster!"
"DANCE HAMSTER! DANCE YOUR FURRY ASS OFF!"
"I make no apologies for being an Apple whore. They can take mundane shit and make it fascinating. Microsoft? Exactly the opposite."
"I hate watching Wheel of Fortune when some bitch is 'woo-woo-ing' it up like a drunken whore at a frat party. SHUT UP! JUST STFU!!"
"A guy at my flight's gate is praying the rosary. What does he know that I don't know?"
"Oh. He's a priest. I guess they don't have to have a reason to pray the rosary."
"I want Johnny Lee Miller's wardrobe from the movie 'Hackers.'"
"Wow. You know the weather in Seattle is bad when you can't even order up a hooker to your hotel suite! I wonder if they get hazard pay?"
"Shit shit shit shit SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!"
"I have fleeting moments of feeling happy with my life, but just as I try to grab ahold of them, they vanish. Now I wait for the next moment."
"Drunk girl at airport yelling to anybody who will listen that she needs some pot. And possibly crackers. I can't tell what she's saying."
"If your child is posessed by Satan, please leave it chained in the basement instead of bringing it to Disney World."
"EMBRACE THE HORROR!!"
"Wow. Disney's Animal Kingdom has a very big anti-poacher bias. Where are the poachers to present their side of the story?"
"I hate people. Just about everybody. Well, everybody except you, of course."
"If every day was like today, I'd be sticking my head in a Cuisinart and punching 'puree' or maybe 'chop'"
"You know the French Fries are going to be fucking fabulous when they're so greasy that ketchup won't even stick to them."
"Hey! The rumor is true... blood really is hard to wash off your hands!
"Oddly enough, I never have this kind of trouble when it's my own blood. I wish this mess would stay a pretty red when it dries on the walls."
"Wheee! It's like finger paints, but with hematological goodness baked right in!"
"Oooh... Paula Abdul's stalker has turned up dead! Lesson to live by... Don't Fuck With Paula Abdul.
"Holy crap... I've run out of hot glue sticks. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEBODY GET ME MORE HOT GLUE STICKS!! I'm shooting blanks here, people!"
Meh. Could be worse I suppose.
It just goes to show, there is nothing posted to the internet that can't come back to haunt you in the future.
So when those photos eventually pop up, please understand that I was young and needed the money...
I am typing this at 9:00am from Seattle, Washington, USA. I will be leaving for the airport in an hour.
I am typing this at 11:00am from Cologne, Germany. 26 hours later.
To me, this day didn't exist, and I never really know what to do about that. I blog every day, so something has to go here... but what? How do you write about something that didn't exist? Where did that day go?
Maybe it got lost... like my luggage.
Where to begin with Lisa.
Lisa and I got off to a rocky start. She had been dropping by Blogography with witty comments for a while, so I added her blog to my feed reader and started following her writings at Clusterfook. After a while of back-and-forth we had arrived at one of those "blogger friendships" that seems to develop with people you know online but don't really know at all. We'd email from time to time, but it was all superficial niceties that precluded any real personal connection.
All that changed after I had been traveling for a couple days and finally had a chance to catch up with blogs. Lisa had written a frustrated rant about how she gets tons of comments when she blogs about stupid crap, but when she writes asking for help raising money for cancer research, there was nothing. She then went on to say some harsh words to her readers about "not caring about cancer" and pondering why she even bothered to try and make a difference. At first I was confused, until I read her previous entry asking for sponsorship in a cancer-walk. Then I was angry, because not only was I not given a chance to offer support before she lashed out, but because I have a sister who had just had cancer surgery for a second time. I left a comment basically saying "GIVE PEOPLE A CHANCE, IT'S ONLY BEEN ONE DAY!" and "HOW DARE YOU TELL ME I DON'T CARE ABOUT CANCER!"
I expected that would be the last I heard from Lisa.
But I was wrong.
She wrote to me and apologized. And she insisted on sending my sister one of the bracelets she sells to raise money for cancer research. It was all very surreal and unexpected, because that's just not the way that superficial online relationships usually work.
But this was Lisa.
She had survived cancer three times and knew that life was just too short for this kind of crap.
And then, just as we were getting to be much better friends, the bomb was dropped. Lisa had cancer again. Lisa was fighting for her life again.
We finally met in person a month later at TequilaCon 2008 in Philadelphia. Lisa arrived way early with her husband, "Dude," to help claim space at the bowling alley for the event, but I had already slammed two shots and was working on a beer by then (social functions are much easier for me once I've got some alcohol in me). After introducing herself and Dude then saying "hi" to everybody, Lisa cried "DAVE!!" and ran up to give me a big hug.
At last.
She then announced that she "has to get a picture of this important moment" and handed her camera to Dude. "It can't be too important if I'm drunk" I tell her...
"Oh they're all important" she replied.
I don't know what I could possibly add to that. Except that I will miss her.
My thoughts are with Lisa's husband, daughters, friends, and family today. Your every moment with Lisa was important to her.
For the first time in months, my idiopathic angioedema (random swelling due to the release of histamines by my mast cells) dropped by for a vist, causing a massive welt to appear on the bottom of my left foot. This is annoying, but relatively harmless (as say... compared to my tongue or throat swelling up so I suffocate and die) so I just tried my best to ignore it. But then I remembered my allergist had prescribed some massively concentrated antihistamines to try, so I took three and waited to see what happened.
What happened was a miracle. Instead of taking ten hours to go away, the swelling disappeared in under two.
Which is good news, right? I should be celebrating. Except...
HOLY CRAP DO THOSE PILLS TASTE HEINOUS!!!
Imagine taking a handful of aspirin, multiplying it's horrible taste by 100, then rolling it in toxic waste. THAT'S what these pills taste like. And apparently they're quick-disolving, because they had already started melting in my mouth by the time I could get a glass of water to my lips. In very short order, my tongue was coated with a taste so foul that I very nearly had to vomit... twice.
I scarfed down pizza, cookies, Coke, garlic bread, spicy pepper hummus, and chocolate. The taste was still there. I then brushed my tongue, sprayed it with antiseptic, then gargled with mouthwash. The taste was still there. I eventually found some Altoids, and they finally managed to destroy the taste... replacing it with something not much better.
Depending on the body part affected, next time I may just let it stay swollen instead of facing the agony.
Much like the agony I feel when I see people asking questions that can easily be answered by searching Google. It happens all the time on places like Twitter, and I just don't get it. It takes the same amount of time to type out a Google query as a tweet on Twitter, so why not just Google that shit and get your answer immediately instead of bothering other people for it?
So now I've created a new Blogography page called "Google That Shit!" which I will put in a keyboard macro. Whenever I see somebody posting a question that could have been asked and answered on Google, I'll toss up a link to it. How else are they going to learn?
Some people may think this makes me an asshole, and they're absolutely right.
But that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make in order to create a better internet for everybody.
You are welcome!
The New York blogger meet-up is NEXT SATURDAY! If you want to attend and haven't emailed me yet, please do so ASAP. If you have emailed, you'll be getting an email from me asking for confirmation.Once there's a head-count, we can decide on a venue and get some reservations made. We usually meet early... around 5:30pm... so we won't have to wait too long for a table, and can have time after to hit a bar and chat.
Hope to see you there!
Now I wants me a real New York bagel.
Once again feeling like the luckiest person on earth that I can show up in a city far from home and manage to find such an amazing group of people who would spend their valuable time hanging out with me. I don't know that I could ever adequately express just how much it means, but every time in every city... from the bottom of my heart... I am so very grateful. Who could have ever imagined that this stupid blog would add so much to my life? The people I meet, online and offline, have made my world so much bigger... so much richer... than I could have ever imagined.
Anyway...
The day was pretty simple, actually. Newark to New York. Hotel room not ready. Upper East Side. Downtown. Johnny Rockets (veggie burgers in stock, w00t!). Hotel room still not ready. Hard Rock Cafe Yankee Stadium. Hotel room ready! Times Square. Dave York. Union Square. Times Square. Good times had by all.
Thanks so much to those who could come along!
As usual, I was too busy talking with everybody to remember to take pictures... but a lot of photos were taken, so I'll be sure to link to them once they're up!
Just some random notes...
• If you're going to visit the brand new Hard Rock Cafe at New Yankee Stadium, it's probably best to NOT do so on a game day unless you have tickets to the game. It took me 20 minutes of going from one place to another to another to another before somebody would actually let me in the cafe. I guess everybody thought I was trying to sneak into the game or something, so I kept getting passed around. The cafe itself is smaller than I thought it would be, but quite nice...
• I usually don't like to have blogger meets at Hard Rock Cafes because the loud music makes it hard to talk, and they are usually more interested in turning tables than letting people sit round and chat... but the Hard Rock Cafe Times Square was absolutely fantastic. Again! We had an amazing server taking good care of us, and it was a great experience all the way around. Thanks to everybody there for making Dave York... and now Dave York 2... such a great success!
• When it comes to embarrassing you on your birthday... even when it's not really your birthday anymore... people you consider to be friends will happily report you to the "Birthday Humiliation Squad" so you have to stand on top of a chair in the middle of a crowded restaurant with a flaming hot-fudge sundae in one hand (your dignity in the other) while people scream "happy birthday" at you... all because they think it makes for great photo fodder on their blogs. The bastards!
• When they say "DO NOT TAKE THIS MEDICATION WITH ALCOHOL" on your prescription labels, it's probably a good idea to follow those directions. A couple shots of Jäger on top of my pills had my brain struggling to keep up with happenings around me. Which can be fun... or dangerous... depending on the situation.
• I really am one of the luckiest people on earth. Thanks again to everybody for such a great night!
UPDATE: Photos are slowly coming through. Like this one of my and ETinNY he sent me...
Peace out, baby!
And this shot of me accepting my un-birthday humiliation from Dawg's Flickr Set...
I'm the King of The World, bitches!
And some terrific shots from the ever-adorable Poppy's Flickr Stream (she has marked a set for Dave York 2, but only put one photo in there!)...
Dawg and Poppy with B.E. Earl.
Robin, Libragirl, B.E. Earl, Me, and Cissa!
How non-New Yorkers envision a ride on the subway.
UPDATE: And now Bellaventa and Libragirl have put up a set on Flickr...
UPDATE: And now Cissa has put up her set on Flickr...
I'll add more as I find 'em!
Despite having to work half a day, three really nifty things happened that had me walking on air all afternoon. I guess it doesn't have to rain shit every day after all.
But enough of me talking about how spectacular my life is here on my blog, let's talk about how totally spectacular I am on other people's blogs as well. Because by the time this is finally published to Blogography, my guest-entry over at Snackiepoo's site will have posted. I don't want to spoil any surprises or ruin the fun, but I can tell you there will be eggs...
For more eggciting ovum action, be sure to check it out...
Tomorrow I will be flying off to Seattle late at night so I can catch an early plane to Santa Fe the following morning. Yes, TequilaCon 2009 is finally at hand.
My first TequilaCon experience was #3 in Portland, Oregon for the history-making 2007 bash. I had actually planned on attending #2 in New York the previous year, but I couldn't work it into my schedule. This is indeed tragic (and one of my few regrets in life is that I didn't try harder to attend), but life goes on. Albeit not as well as it could have.
Anyway, now that Jenny has posted the Official TequilaCon 2009 Poster over at her Official TequilaCon page, I thought I'd write up another "Behind The Scenes" entry that everybody seems to like so much. This time on how this year's poster was created.
When plans were coming together for TequilaCon 2007, the perfect venue had been decided... The Kennedy School. It's a former schoolhouse that was converted into a nifty hotel, bar, and restaurant complex. The only problem with such a place is that it's massively huge. There was a very real concern that people would show up to the event and not be able to find each other! That's when I came up with the idea of making posters for the registration table in Brandon's room, and name-badge lanyards for all the attendees so they could find each other. There was no direction on what these things should look like, so I thought it might be cool to alter a Jose Cuervo tequila bottle and use that. I found a fantastic photo online, paid the photographer for a release, and two hours later the first Official TequilaCon Poster was born...
The lanyards were a hit, so when TequilaCon 2008 was in the planning stages we decided to do them again, even though the venue didn't really require them. Initially, I had no plans on revisiting the "bottle" idea from the previous year. Instead I was going to use a shot glass and etch the info on the side of it, as shown by this lo-res lanyard badge sketch...
It was a nice concept, but it didn't offer nearly the impact from last time. Even worse, what would I do for the future TequilaCons which would certainly follow? It would be nice if everything somehow tied together from year to year. That's when it dawned on me that there were hundreds of different tequila brands out there, and my best bet was to just choose a different bottle each year. Taking my camera to the local liquor store, I decided Pepe Lopez had a fantastic label that would look nice when modified so I snapped a few photos, painted in my own background, and the second Official TequilaCon Poster was created...
This year, the lanyards and posters were a no-brainer because people have come to expect them (we also discovered that they come in handy when you drink so much that you forget your own name). The only issue confronting me was which bottle to use. Vahid sent me a number of great suggestions, and on one of the pages was a bottle of 30-30 that seemed a perfect fit. Their label is really distinct and beautiful, so the decision was easy. What was not easy was finding a bottle of it that I could photograph because my local liquor store didn't carry it. Fortunately, the store in a neighboring city did, and the rest is history...
If you want to see all the gory details on the image was made, I've put the whole story in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
It's Bullet Sunday from beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico! I am still in an alcohol-induced Bad Place right now, so we'll see how it goes...
• Assembly. When planning out TequilaCon, you really never know how things are going to go. The biggest question mark is always the venue. Will the establishment embrace the insanity and welcome us, or will they tell us to get the hell out? To see exactly how that was going to play out, we marched down to The Pink Adobe an hour early. Much to our relief, they were definitely willing to help out. Our server, Jessica (who was amazing from start to finish), set us up in a private room upstairs... complete with a private balcony and bathroom! While we were waiting for the space to be set up, we got the party started...
Looking plenty cowboy in our new boots.
Of course, nobody in Santa Fe actually dresses like this.
My dangerous dance with Jägermeister begins once again.
• Space The venue was absolutely perfect in every possible way, as Jenny can attest...
My name is Nathaniel... I like to DANCE!
• Party Somehow, TequilaCon always seems to work out perfectly. As if Fate has determined that TequilaCon is blessed by the gods or something. This time was no exception. I'm pretty sure that everybody had a most excellent time. Tons of photos are sure to be posted around the internets soon, but here's a couple to get things started...
Tequila People in our personal party space.
Partaking of the powerfully painful Black Dragon signature cocktail.
• Surprise. In what can only be called the TequilaCon surprise of the decade, Dustin flew in at the last minute so that TEQUILA MAN could make an appearance...
Get ready for... TEQUILA MAN!!
The Official TequilaCon Planning Posse strikes a pose with Tequila Man.
Once the bar closed down at The Pink Adobe, we wandered the streets of Santa Fe until we found a new bar to hang out in. The official party came to a close at midnight... but some dedicated TequilaConners carried on until the early morning.
All in all... another amazing event. Thanks to everybody who came, the city of Santa Fe, and the gracious staff at The Pink Adobe for putting up with our madness.
Until next year!
The internet is a parade of non-stop entertainment. Especially if you have the twisted sense of humor that I do when you're surfing it. Because once it has been filtered through my demented mind, even the most mundane blog post can become a cavalcade of excitement. And yet, more and more I've found that no filter is needed. So many people on the internet are wacky-insane now that they hardly need my help to be entertaining.
Which is not a bad thing, because I'm sure people consider me to be wacky-insane too.
And they're absolutely right, of course.
I try very hard not to lose sight of this as I traipse through the blogosphere, but it is becoming more and more difficult. As an example, I'll come across a blogger who says that they're being attacked by a bunch of other nasty bloggers and I'll immediately become sympathetic. I'll dig a little bit, see that the blogger actually is being attacked, and become angry. Then I'll probably write a nice comment or fire off an email of support to them, because I've had my share of senseless attacks and hatemail and know what it's like.
And then... inevitably... other truths will come to light. Perhaps I'll find out that not only did the blogger have these attacks coming, but they are far worse at dishing out the venom than anything they're receiving, and there's a reason they're being attacked. Or maybe the blogger invited the attacks to get noticed. Or maybe the attacks weren't even really about them, they're just jumping into somebody else's war because they like the sympathy they get when they play the victim. Whatever the case, 9 times out of 10 I'll end up getting burned because the blogger in question is lying, delusional, paranoid, lonely, ignored, or just plain crazy.
But not crazy in a good way.
The horrible part is that I never seem to learn my lesson. I guess deep-down I want to believe that people are being honest about why they're being attacked... even though I know the odds are against it. Heaven only knows I've seen enough psychotic dumbasses online to realize I should be more careful, and yet I always seem to forget these people just when I need to remember them most.
Oh well... having your trust taken advantage of is all part of the blogging game, I guess. Obviously I can live with that, because I'm still here.
It's watching other people get duped that's getting to be too much to bear.
I keep wondering how much more I can take before I'm the one going all psychotic dumbass in my blog.
Though I'm probably there already and just don't realize it. Isn't this entry proof of that?
Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there! It's yet another Bullet Sunday, this time from beautiful Savannah, Georgia!
• Blogiversary. Okay, okay... I realize that April 18th, Blogography's six year anniversary, blew by and people are wondering what happened to my annual Kick-Ass Blogiversary Celebration (especially since last year was such a huge success). Well, I had big plans for the event, but everything kind of fell apart when the economy tanked. One company doubled their price in-between the time I asked for a price quote and the time I submitted the project. Another company that was working on one of my most favorite Blogography products ever has (literally) disappeared off the face of the earth (and took my deposit with them). Other companies I deal with have gone out of business or been sold. Add in TequilaCon, Davedon, Davenburgh, kidney stones, work, and non-stop travel... and, well, you get the picture. So instead of concentrating all my Blogiversary projects into one week, I'll be sprinkling them throughout the year as I manage to complete them. Starting with today...
• Ask Dave! Some of you may remember my "Ask Dave" Dashboard Widget for MacOS X. It's a tiny app that allows you to ask Lil' Dave a question, and he'll shake his magic screen to have an answer appear. It's thoroughly useless, but ever since Apple allowed apps to be built for the iPhone, I've wanted to convert it over... so I could have something SIX TIMES MORE USELESS! Introducing Ask Dave! for iPhone and iPod Touch!
It's pretty sweet and has some cool features... but, best of all, it's FREE! If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, head on over to the Official Ask Dave! Page and get it! And if you don't have an iPhone or iPod Touch, now you have an excuse to go buy one!
• Bindle Binaries. And the reason that the Ask Dave! app is free isn't because of me. It's because of David Syzdek of Bindle Binaries. When I realized that I wasn't smart enough to create the app on my own, I started looking for a company that I could hire to build it for me. As the price quotes began to roll in, my heart sank when they ended up being way outside my budget. I would have to either abandon the project or charge for it. But then I got the idea that maybe it would be cheaper to find somebody who already had a "Magic 8-Ball" app and have them put my graphics on top of their existing code. I downloaded every free "Magic 8-Ball" app I could find, picked my favorite one, then wrote to the author with my idea. The rest is history. David liked the project, agreed to release it for free if the code could be open-source, and started work on the app immediately. So, if you enjoy Ask Dave! don't thank me. All I did was draw some cartoons. David is the one who figured out a way to put it together... came up with a way to animate the backgrounds... added all the little touches that makes it feel like an iPhone app... put in untold hours squashing bugs and getting it to work... it's all him. Thank you, David!
Sadly, this is my last day in Savannah. I'd be upset about that, but tomorrow I'm off to new adventures...
It's heatwave edition of Bullet Sunday!
• Hot. It's eighty-eight degrees Fahrenheit outside.
• Hotter. I am guessing it's ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit inside... because the air conditioner is broked. I try to compensate by eating ice cream and drinking ice water, but it's just not happening. All that does is make me realize how bloody miserable I am when I stop.
• Up. I saw Pixar's latest animated miracle, Up, and found it to be scrumtrelescent.
• Upper. Seriously, Up is one of the most beautifully animated spectacles ever made. That wouldn't be saying much if the story sucked, but this is Pixar, so the story is genius as usual. Crotchety old widower Carl Fredricksen decides to have the adventure of a lifetime by tying thousands of balloons to his house and floating to South America. Unfortunately, an overly-helpful and annoying Wilderness Scout named Russell accidentally gets taken along for the ride. Hilariousness ensues. I don't know if Up displaces Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles as my favorite Pixar movie... but it comes darn close. I'd call the film "flawless" except I did have two small problems and one bigger problem with it. To avoid spoiling things, I've dropped that in an extended entry.
• Twitter. I already feel as though Twitter is a massive waste of time... especially when things like "blip.fm" get involved and people are tweeting every frickin' song they listen to (Why should I care about your bad taste in music? Do people actually click on blip.fm links?). Or, even worse, those who live-tweet television shows and sporting events. Why would I want to read tweets about something I don't even want to watch? Or, if I am watching, I ALREADY KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING AND DON'T NEED TO READ ABOUT IT! Factor in other annoyances like re-tweets, private conversations, and Follow Friday (SERIOUSLY, IF I WANT TO KNOW WHO YOU FOLLOW, I'LL VISIT YOUR FOLLOWERS PAGE!)... and Twitter is mostly noise anymore (don't even get me started on blog post announcements which announce posts that I've ALREADY READ from a webfeed subscription). Bleh. I wish I wasn't so addicted to Twitter. My life would be a lot simpler.
• Twitterer. But now the ultimate Twitter annoyance has struck... TWITTER GAMES! I keep getting "SpyMaster" invitations, and it's only a matter of time before "Mob Wars" invades. This may very well be the last straw for me. If I can't find a Twitter client that gives me the ability to filter out all the distracting shit that is clogging up my feed, I may just give up. Or unfollow a couple hundred people.
And now I really need to catch up on some sleep. If you've already seen Up, and want to read me nit-picking over this excellent movie, that's in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
When it comes to avatars, I like photographs best because you can put a face to what somebody wrote. So even though I think Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey would make better avatars for me, I always bite the bullet and upload a photo of myself.
Unlike SOME people (ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem... etc. etc... YOU know who you are!).
This is my default avatar...
Whenever I sign up for a new social media site or online service or user forum or whatever, that's what I use. It's fairly current, doesn't look too hideous, is perfectly square, reduces well, and is stored on my desktop so it's ready to go at a moment's notice.
And most of the time it's fine because I don't use those kind of sites very often.
But Twitter is a service I use every day, several times a day. Whatever photo I use on Twitter is something I see constantly. Consequently, I get bored with my avatar after a while and am compelled to change it. To keep track of the photos I've used, I put copies in a folder. Today, I changed avatars again, and noticed that folder is getting quite full. Turns out I've used 21 different images for Twitter so far...
Meh. Perhaps one of these days I'll find myself an avatar I like well enough to keep for a while.
But before I go... while puttering around the internet today, I found this to be very cool and this to be totally reprehensible.
Originally, I wasn't going to be able to attend ConFab in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky because I had previous plans. But eventually everything came together and I flew out of Seattle last night at 10:30pm, arriving at LEX around 10:30am this morning (via Detroit). It was a very, very long night with practically no sleep (which is why I am so very grateful to Mr. Shiny for picking me up at the airport!).
But it was all worth it, because Brad and Turnbaby truly outdid themselves, and a fantastic group of fun people turned up for the party. I had a great time, and once again was amazed at the kind, funny, generous, entertaining, wonderful people you can meet in the blogosphere.
I decided to wear my pirate shirt, which was accompanied by hair styling from Miss Britt and eye makeup from Hilly-Sue. Being a pirate kicked up my innate* hotness up to eleven, and my customized drinking cup completed the ensemble...
Now, according to Twitter, I had sex with everybody at the party and snorted heroin off of Karl's ass. This is a bit of an exaggeration.
So far as I know, the only person who got any pussy tonight was Hilly-Sue...
And now, since I have to fly back home in the morning and it's already 2:30am, I suppose I should get some sleep.
Or at least try to.
*And by "innate" I obviously mean "nonexistent."
I'm holding a Twitter contest!
Prepare yourself to win a fabulous prize package worth nearly FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS!!!
That's right... none of this lame-ass "Win an iPhone" bullshit that's being Re-Tweeted every five minutes... I'm giving away FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS in prizes! Just look at the cool stuff you can win...
A GULFSTREAM G550 JET! ($45,000,000 value)
A PAIR OF 2009 FERRARI SCUDERIA F430s! ($600,000 value)
AN ALL-EXPENSES-PAID AROUND-THE-WORLD CRUISE! ($80,000 value)
FOUR MILLION DOLLARS IN GOLD! ($4,000,000 value)
TOTAL PRIZE VALUE: $49,680,000!!!
Here's all you have to do to enter...
And that's it! Best of luck to everybody who enters!*
Or not.
Because I am so fucking sick and tired by all this stupid contest crap that is taking over everybody's favorite social media distraction.
When you fire up Twitter, it asks you one question: "What are you doing?
And, in the beginning, that's what people used Twitter for... quick little updates to let people know what they were up to in-between blog posts. But, like all things, Twitter inevitably evolved. Soon people were using it to say "good morning," ask questions, get advice, post photos, say random shit, and much more. Then Twitter abuse started happening. People started broadcasting personal conversations (even though that's what Direct Messages and Email are for). People started posting when their blog is updated (even though that's what a webfeed is for). People started selling shit (even though that's what eBay is for). And people even started... God help us... Twittering all the songs they listen to with "blip.fm" (even though that's what Last.fm is for). Then came the abomination known as SpyMaster. And so-on and so-on. People rarely say what they're doing anymore.
But the worst was yet to come.
Now companies (and even individuals) are holding contests. Usually for an iPhone. These contests require you to "Re-Tweet" their blog URL or some other annoying spam-like shit that clogs up the service and flushes it even further down the crapper of uselessness than it already is. As more and more people hop on the Twitter contest bandwagon, it's only going to get worse. I anticipate that pretty soon I'll be longing for the "good ol' days" when people were just blip.fm-ing every frickin' song they're listening to instead of re-Tweeting every damn contest that pops up.
But whatever.
I suppose it's just par for the course. The web was ruined when assholes started adding pop-ups and other annoying crap. Email was ruined when assholes started sending spam and unsolicited crap. It was only a matter of time before the assholes ruined Twitter with their contest-spam crap.
Oh well. So long as companies can count on Twitter users whoring their shit for one-in-a-million prize-winning odds... it's the cheapest way to advertise, and probably ain't going away any time soon.
* Prizes do not include taxes, duties, fees, delivery, or any other supplemental costs.
I'm not here today. I'm blogging over at Anissa's place...
UPDATE: Just in case something goes missing, I'm copying my guest post in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Last night I got zero sleep. Neither reading a book nor sleeping pills helped, and I finally gave up around 3:00am. At first I tried thinking positive. Here was an excellent opportunity to get caught up on my backlog of work! Unfortunately, my brain was all mooshy, so I couldn't concentrate. Instead I ate a sandwich and watched a couple episodes of Star Trek before it was time to get up.
Today was nothing but a blur as I wandered around in a zombie-like state. My only goal was to not make anything explode.
Which is really too bad, because if anything had exploded, I'd have something to blog about.
Instead I'll make do with boring tales of blog development...
My first career path was a computer programmer. I got started fairly early, and was taking programming jobs while I was still in high school. Eventually I got tired of writing code while my friends were all out partying, so I quit. It's not that I didn't like the work... I just didn't like how it took over my life. From there on out, I switched to graphic arts for a career, and only coded for fun. Now any programming I do is usually something simple for my website in PHP or Javascript. The problem is that I'm really rusty, so even simple tasks are a time-consuming exercise in frustration.
Like tonight.
My MacBook was working on some processor-intensive 3-D renderings, and so I couldn't use it for anything major or I'd slow things down. It was the perfect time to work on a few site improvements, because a text editor doesn't use much of the computer's processor power.
One of the things I've longed to do was be able to add search terms to my "Google That Shit!" page URLs. This way, when I send somebody there, I can pre-populate the search box with the words they should be searching for. I thought it would be really simple... I'd just hunt down some snippets of code that somebody else had used, modify it slightly, and away we go. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any code snippets.
So I spent the next three hours trying to get the code working. I eventually figured it out, but it's a kludgy solution that will probably break more often than it works (if you don't believe me, just go to the "Google That Shit" page and look at the source code!).
The good news is that now I can send search terms! Just add a "?" to the URL followed by search terms divided by "+" characters. Like this... SEARCH GOOGLE FOR CHOCOLATE PUDDING.
I can even refer site specific searches like this... SEARCH BLOGOGRAPHY FOR BETTY WHITE.
Now I don't know if I should be proud of myself because it actually works... or embarrassed because the way it works is so ugly.
If you're viewing this site in Internet Explorer 8 it might appear messed up. Or so I've been told by a half-dozen people.
Needless to say, I may die of un-shock. Microsoft has been screwing up the internet for a decade so why should they stop now? Oh well, from what I can tell everything looks fine in Safari, and Firefox, and Opera, and even my frickin' iPhone... so I guess it's something IE-specific. Yet again. I jumbled a few things around that I though might be suspect, but won't have time to thoroughly check into the problem until next week.
In the meanwhile, I guess my blog will just have to look like crap in the latest Internet Explorer fiasco...
A lot of people are asking themselves why in the hell Microsoft cant make a standards-compliant browser after seven revisions. Web standards, after all, ensure that everybody sees the internet the same way. At this point I think it's safe to assume that it's not because Microsoft can't make a standards-compliant browser... they just don't want to make a standards-compliant browser. They just don't give a shit, and are once again using their massive market share to dictate that everybody look at the internet the Microsoft Way.
This is rather obvious when running the Web Standards Project Acid 3 Test, which has been out for over a year. Internet Explorer 8 returns a score of 20 out of 100. EPIC FAIL...
Apple's Safari browser passes just fine...
EVEN MY FRICKIN' iPHONE CAN GET A SCORE OF 97...
I mean, seriously, what does it say for Microsoft when a PHONE is better capable of surfing the internet than their browser? And it's never going to stop. Microsoft will continue to screw over web developers just because they can. Internet Explorer is the de-facto browser for bajillions of Windows users, which means more hacks, work-arounds, and kludges (not to mention untold hours of frustration) for anybody who wants their web pages to be seen properly by a huge chunk of people.
And don't even get me started on how Microsoft wants MS Word to dictate how we view email.
I need a cookie.
Tonight as I was waiting for my computer backup to process, I started going through my webfeeds to clear out any dead blogs I might be subscribed to. There were a lot more than I thought there would be... twenty-seven to be exact. The fact that these people have (apparently) given up on their blogs and moved on with their lives is not surprising. Most blogs don't last more than a year, and those that do seem to suffer burn-out as they pass year two. Even hitting that magical third year hump isn't the guarantee it once was. With social networks like Twitter and FaceBook becoming more and more of a time-sucking vortex, people seem to be blogging less and less.
What is surprising is how most people have chosen (presumably) to end their blog.
They just disappear one day and don't come back.
Thirteen of the blogs I deleted have a last entry which gives no indication that the author was even considering quitting. On the contrary, eight of them were making promises for future posts... like "I'll post pictures when I get back"... and "I'll write more about that later." Of course, those days never came. I can only assume that they were killed in a tragic accident or somehow ended up with amnesia and forgot they even have a blog.
Six of the blogs just kind of petered out. They posted less and less until all they were posting is random updates weeks (or even months) apart saying something like "I'm still alive" or "Haven't had time for blogging recently" or "Wow, I'm neglecting this blog lately, but I promise to start writing again soon!" Of course, they rarely do.
Five of the blogs mentioned something about "taking a break" or "going on hiatus." That's all well and good, but if it's been longer than six months, I'm just going to consider it a permanent hiatus.
Two of the blogs went private.
Only one blog... one... posted "It would seem I'm not blogging here anymore, so I guess I'll be shutting this site down soon." It's refreshing to have somebody actually come out and say it rather than leave you hanging and wondering if they're dead or alive. No promises. No dragging it out for a slow, painful death. Just a decision to stop blogging one day, and a note to let people know about it.
When I eventually pack it in, I hope that's the way I'll go. It only seems polite, really.
Hmmmm...
As I sit here staring at a blank screen, I realize that I've done absolutely nothing blog-worthy today. I worked for four hours, then spent my afternoon and evening doing all those little things that I never seem to have time to do. Before I know it, it's 11:00pm and the day has gone. My first instinct is to call Bad Robert because just five minutes on the phone with him would give me enough material to blog about for an entire week. But he has a job which requires getting up at an insanely early hour and is most certainly already in bed.
Blogging can be so bloody difficult sometimes.
With no Bad Robert to help me, I now turn to my How to Blog the Blogography Way flowchart to see what I should do next...
Ah, here we go then...
Well that wasn't so difficult after all.
Every time I make the three-hour drive to Spokane, it seems longer and longer. It may only take three hours but it feels like ten. Luckily, I've got the best pizza on earth waiting for me when I arrive, so it's almost worth the agony.
Anyway, I've already had my delicious pizza and visited The Comic Book Shop, so now I'm needing to turn in early tonight. I'd just like to mention one more thing before I go, because you can WIN FABULOUS PRIZES if you help out...
This Saturday, I will be participating in Blogathon 2009 over at Therapy in the Making along with these fine people here:
We'll be raising money for my absolute favorite charity: Doctor's Without Borders. I've mentioned this wonderful organization many times here at Blogography, and this is what I had to say about them when I was asked if I had any real-life heroes...
There are many amazing heroes throughout history, but if forced to pick just one, I'd have to say anybody who is a part of the Doctors Without Borders group. These amazing people boldly go where angels fear to tread to offer medical assistance to people who otherwise wouldn't get any. A quote from their site... "Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors Without Borders or MSF) delivers emergency aid to victims of armed conflict, epidemics, and natural and man-made disasters, and to others who lack health care due to social or geographical isolation." How amazing is that?
These incredibly brave medical professionals have absolutely no political, military, or religious agenda. It's a truly international organization which is fully impartial in any conflict, and is committed to providing care where it is needed, regardless of who is needing it.
That's right, after Blogathon is over, everybody who sponsored us will be put in a drawing for prizes! I will be including some stuff from the Artificial Duck Store, including a grand prize package which include hats, cards, buttons, and a rare opportunity to own a CUSTOM Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey print!
Here's all you have to do to sponsor us and be entered in the drawing...
And that's it! You can donate however much you like... even $10 will help a truly worthwhile organization bring medical aid to people who really need it. And rest assured that your money will go to where it's supposed to, because you'll be giving directly to Doctors Without Borders... we don't make you go through any third parties to send your donation.
And that's it! I am looking forward to participating on Saturday, so please sponsor us if you have a few bucks to spare!
I'm not at BlogHer in Illinois. I'm not at Comic-Con in Caifornia. I'm working in Washington State.
This sucks twelve shades of Sunday, because I would gladly be at either event than stuck here.
The good news is that it really takes the pressure off having to write something for Blogography. After all, with the tons of news, blogs, and tweets coming out of Chicago and San Diego... who would notice if I put up something that sucks? Maybe I should just press my ass to my webcam and post that. Except I really don't want to get ass-prints on my laptop screen since I just cleaned it yesterday. I also worry about being flexible enough to webcam my ass without hurting my back, so I'd probably end up having to hire a stunt-ass anyway. Which begs the question... where exactly would one hire a stunt-ass? It's not like they advertise in the Yellow Pages (well, they might in L.A., but certainly not in my neck of the woods).
And now I'm just tired. Tired of driving. Tired of working. Tired of staring at a computer screen.
But not tired of playing Lego Batman on the Wii.
Which is probably a lot more fun than stupid BlogHer or dumb Comic-Con anyways!
At least that's what I'm telling myself...
Just a reminder that I will be joining in for the 2009 Blogathon over at Therapy in the Making on Saturday...
If you'd like to sponsor us as we raise money for Doctors Without Borders AND be entered in a drawing to win some nice prizes, here's all you have to do...
Doctors Without Borders is an international medical humanitarian organization working in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. This is a truly amazing group of very brave and dedicated people, and Wikipedia has a good overview of the incredible things they do to make this world a better place.
See you over at Colin's blog!
I'm wrecked!
Today I took two shifts live-blogging over at Therapy in the Making to raise money for Doctors Without Borders during Blogathon 2009.
Since I am a pretty crappy writer, I came up with the brillaint idea of drawing a new DaveToon every 30 minutes for my two 2-hour shifts. This didn't seem like a big deal, because they only take ten to fifteen minutes to draw once I come up with an idea. And when I'm writing for Blogography, the ideas for the toons just pop in my head as I sit down to blog...
But sitting down cold with no ideas and trying to come up with a new DaveToon every half hour?
It's a lot more difficult than it sounded.
Each and every time I was in a full-blown panic as I rushed to finish before the posting deadline. But it was all worth it because Doctors Without Borders is an amazing organization. And just because Blogathon 2009 is nearly over doesn't mean you can't still donate to support the great work they do for people all over the world...
If you missed Blogathon, I'm re-running all eight of the DaveToons I made...
The rest are in an extended entry. Be sure to check them out after the jump!
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Ooh! I'm not here today! I'm guest-blogging over at the lovely Lady Penelope's blog!
Errr... or I guess I'm there tomorrow. Which is today here in the USA with the time change. I think.
What?!? Where am I again?
Oog. I is confused. Just click here...
And now I'm off to pack for PART TWO of my four back-to-back-to-back-to-back trips...
Well today was certainly a big bucket-full of awesome win.
I spent the afternoon with Beth and Kevin, who were kind enough to go to lunch with me, then wander around MODA for a while. But the real treat was when they took me out to Stone Mountain Park. It's a pretty impressive place, featuring the world's largest piece of exposed granite. What makes it truly amazing is what you don't see... because most of this mammoth rock is buried underground. Hard to believe when you can't even fit the small exposed part into your field of vision from the parking lot...
You can take a gondola to the top, which is pretty sweet considering there was no way I was climbing the thing in billion-degree heat!
From the gondola, people look like ants crawling over the mountain...
Out on top of the rock is quite a view...
From there we went back towards Atlanta for Davelanta3 at The Cheesecake Factory where an amazing time was had by all...
Kevin, Beth, Diana, Kim, Val, Mr. & Mrs. Muskrat, Heather, and Anissa...
not pictured is Julie, who ditched our sorry asses so she could go to
a much better party with a group of much classier people!
I have to get up for work in four hours, so I'll post my recap, photos, and links tomorrow. But I do want to take a minute to thank everybody for coming. I can't believe what amazing people show up at these things, and it means the world to me that I get to hang out with y'all. How lucky am I to have made such good friends through this silly little blog?
I just hope that I didn't smell too funny after sweating off ten pounds on top of Stone Mountain.
It's Bullet Sunday from a rain-soaked location somewhere in Central Georgia!
• Heat. I'd rather be too hot than too cold. So you'd think that Georgia in the middle of summer would be like a dream come true for me. But it's not. I am getting really tired of sweating my ass off every time I have to go outside. In that respect, Central Georgia is no different than Central Washington, because we've been breaking 100° on a regular basis there. It's just that when I work here I have to go outside a lot more often than I do back home. Back home I sit in an air-conditioned office all day long and my ass stays intact. Which begs the question... why has nobody invented air-conditioned underwear? I find it sad that we can put a man on the moon, but can't solve the sweaty ass dilemma. Apparently, science is dead.
• Davelanta 3. As I had mentioned last night, the latest installment of the annual Davelanta blogger meet was a lot of fun, and everybody seemed to have a good time. Still can't believe that I get to meet such amazing people everywhere I go...
Just like I promised, here's a roll call of the fine people who were kind enough to spend their valuable time hanging out with me (taken from my DaveEvents Page)...
I've marked all Davelanta 2008 Alumni with an asterisk. If Mentally Rehearsed hadn't already made plans for the weekend, we would have been at a 100% repeat from last year, which speaks volumes as to how much fun a blogger meet can be. If you ever have the opportunity to go to one, I encourage you to drop everything and do so!
• Magic. Tonight while I was eating dinner, my waiter cleared the table next to mine and was taking a pile of dirty dishes back to the kitchen. As he was walking, a napkin blew off the top of the stack and slowly started to float to the floor behind his back. When the waiter noticed this, he stopped and lifted his left leg up behind him... caught the napkin on his foot... rotated his foot around front with the napkin still sitting on it... reached down and grabbed the napkin... then put his foot back down on the ground and continued walking to the kitchen as if nothing had happened. It was like a magic trick of some kind, and I felt like breaking out in applause after witnessing such beautiful visual poetry in motion. After paying my check and exiting the restaurant, I tripped over my own feet and very nearly came crashing down in the parking lot. Irony... it's what's for dinner.
• Classy. Language evolves. As an example, "awful" used to mean "full of awe" and was used much like how we use the word "awesome" in modern times. But the word evolved until it now means "something bad or unpleasant." In other words, "awful" currently has the exact opposite meaning that it used to have. This is a rather drastic example, but you get the point. ANYWAY... the word "classy" used to mean "wealthy and educated." Over time it came to mean "stylish in looks." Then it evolved further until it could also meant "stylish in behavior." In other words, you no longer need to be wealthy or educated in order to be considered "classy." And while I am sure that being wealthy makes it easier to be classy, it's certainly no guarantee. From my experience, it's just the opposite. My favorite example is flying First Class, which is filled with self-important, self-entitled, embarrassingly abusive assholes who have zero class... vs. flying Coach, which is less comfortable, but filled with a better class of people (probably because you're all bonding over mutual suffering?). I don't really have a point here, it's just something I felt like blathering on about as I confirmed my First Class upgrade for my flight home on Tuesday.
And, on that happy note, I think I will try to take a power-nap so I will have the strength to go back to work in an hour. Staying up for 20 hours straight after four hours sleep has done nothing for my mental health.
This is an entry I originally wrote on June 15th. But I never was able to finish it, and instead went with Bad Monkey pooping in a diaper. Since then, I've changed, updated, and altered it a half-dozen times, but still ended up not publishing it for one reason or another. Then Hilly went and posted something along similar lines today, so I figured it was probably time I just went ahead and let it go (after cutting out several paragraphs of angst, then updating it again to be more current)...
I want to take a break from blogging, but I don't know how.
It's not that I don't have anything to blog about... I just don't have anything I can blog about. The only things going on in my life right now are work and personal stuff, neither of which I choose to talk about online. So instead I muddle through, posting even stupider crap than usual just to keep my blog going at a time when blogging is the last thing I want to be doing. It would be nice if this were a temporary situation, but right now there's no end in sight.
The obvious solution would be to go on hiatus. But I'm fairly certain that if I gave up blogging for any length of time, I would end up abandoning it all together. The only thing that keeps Blogography going is my habit to post every single day. The minute I start skipping days or filling in with guest-bloggers is when I might as well shut down altogether rather than spiral towards the inevitable.
But I'm not ready to say goodbye. At least not yet.
So I've been trying to renew my enthusiasm for blogging by doing a lot of guest-posting, taking part in Blogathon 2009, limiting my time on Twitter and FaceBook, meeting up with other bloggers, coming up with recurring content ideas, and trying to steer clear of memes and other "easy" filler.
I don't know if it's working just yet, but I certainly hope so.
Because blogging has come to mean an awful lot to me, and the thought of having something so important die off is painful. At first I thought it was because of the relationships with readers and fellow bloggers that I've been lucky enough to find... but ultimately I think it's the relationship I've built with myself here that's the most important. While not a personal blog by any means, Blogography has become an outlet for self-expression that would be very hard to replicate any place else. It's an opportunity to step outside the horrors of Real Life once each day and finding a part of my life I can share... even if it is just a drawing of a monkey.
My blog may just be a reflection of a small part of me, but it's still me.
And I think that's something worth saving.
So I'll keep trying.
I'm not here today... I'm guest-posting for Craig over at Puntabulous!
My day wasn't spent wandering around Denver as planned... but working.
I did get out for a quick walk down the 16th Street Mall in the afternoon, but the heat eventually drove me back to my air-conditioned hotel for still more work. And though I didn't finish nearly enough of what I needed to get done, I finally threw in the towel around 4:30.
Because it was time to meet up with Tug, Hot Doctor's Wife, and Howard at the Hard Rock Cafe for Daveorado!
As usual, good conversation and good times ensued. That I get to continuously meet amazing people like this in my travels is a gift for which I'm wholly inadequate at expressing my gratitude. All I can say is thanks to the three of you for taking valuable time out of your Saturday to let me hang out with you. Hopefully it won't be another six years before I am able to come back!
After dinner, Howard and I decided to get our Tarantino on and see Inglourious Basterds. The film was total genius, and I loved every minute of it. Particularly shocking to me was how amazing Brad Pitt is in the flick... this is easily his best performance since 12 Monkeys. But the hands-down standout, scene-stealing role in the film belonged to Christoph Waltz's brilliant portrayal of Col. Hans Landa. The guy had to walk a very fine line to get just the right balance of humor and terror, and did it so admirably that the film was elevated to an entirely new level of greatness...
I have no idea how Quentin Tarantino does it. He always manages to write exactly the right dialogue, then cast exactly the right actors to speak it, then direct the entire film flawlessly, then pick precisely the right music to drive it all home. I don't think "visionary" manages to adequately express how astounding a talent he is when it comes to crafting a film, but it's the best word I can think of to describe what it is he does.
Which, in this case, is to create a film that has many levels, yet blends them all so subtly that they disappear into a singular brute-force narrative. By the time we get to the film-within-a-film theater scenes (which seem to be a thinly-veiled commentary on all the killing that the audience has been manipulated into rooting for thus far), all I can do is shake my head in disbelief that any one man can possess such talent...
I can hardly way to see what Quentin comes up with next.
Today was filled with surprises, and all in a good way... for once.
I started out kind of early, because I wanted to head back down the strip and see my friends off before they left to the airport. As we were wrapping things up, they asked me if I was going to the Grand Opening of the Hard Rock Cafe, Las Vegas Strip Edition. I had read that the opening was being postponed, again, so this kind of caught me off guard. So after everybody was bundled up in a taxi, I walked down The Strip and confirmed that the new property was indeed opening up this morning at 11:00.
Score!
After waiting around for 35 minutes, I was the first one "officially" up the escalator to the new venue where I found...
Disappointment.
This is an absolutely beautiful restaurant. Unfortunately, it's a pretty shitty Hard Rock Cafe. And let me tell you why... it's the memorabilia. Or lack of memorabilia, to be more accurate.
From the very moment that Eric Clapton hung his guitar on the wall of the original Hard Rock in London, rock memorabilia has been an integral part of the Hard Rock "experience" for its visitors. When you walk through those doors and see the expanse of one-of-a-kind items, it's like a rock-n-roll museum you'd find in your dreams. For music-lovers, its perfect.
But not here. Not this time.
The memorabilia is so anemic that the place barely feels like a "Hard Rock" at all. It's sad, actually. As an example, here's the bar area. How much memorabilia do you see?
Uhhh... yeah... there's a few mannequins in the background. And what about here in the main dining room...
What is that... like SEVEN whole pieces and two televisions? Compare that to but one small corner of the Hard Rock Cafe in Biloxi's hotel and casino property...
Or Lisbon, Portugal...
Or Foxwoods, Connecticut...
Or Memphis, Tennessee...
Or even the cafe they just closed in Salt Lake City...
... Just to name a few. Now those... those are Hard Rock Cafes!! The memorabilia is so thick you're swimming in it. You have to visit again and again just to see it all. THAT'S WHAT A HARD ROCK CAFE IS ALL ABOUT!!
But this new cafe on The Vegas Strip? Almost nothing. In fact, there are entire sections of the restaurant which are practically devoted to nothing. Here's the upstairs bar...
And the mini "Hard Rock Live" stage...
And some kind of small VIP room also upstairs...
Occasional random pieces hidden away, but really nothing. NOTHING!! This is supposed to be a Hard Rock?!? The only thing that keeps the place from being a total failure is the staff, which is terrific. And also the sweet "Microsoft Surface" touch tables they've got scattered around the joint (like the one behind the curtain above). You sit down, and it's like a giant iPhone on steroids with its awesome multi-touch interface. Here I am looking at pins from various cafes...
You can toss them around, rotate them, move them in and out, stack them... or even pinch and pull them to zoom in for a much, much closer look...
Other toys include a memorabilia viewer for cafes around the globe which you pick out from an actual spinning globe. This is cool, because it's not like this cafe has much memorabilia to look at here...
They even have distractions like puzzles, videos, and even a piano...
Alas, it's by Microsoft, so you have to brace yourself for all the crashes and failures...
Knowing what this cafe COULD HAVE BEEN almost makes me cry. All that wonderful space that COULD have been crammed with awesome memorabilia from the Hard Rock's extensive collection... wasted. I have no idea who is designing this shit, but somebody needs to stop them. Take the Hard Rock back to what it is at its core. Take it back to what makes it special. Take it back to what people want to see. Take it back to what makes me want to travel the globe and see them all. Take. It. Back.
Sigh.
After goofing around at the Hard Rock for a bit, I headed back to the hotel to meet up with the Official TequilaCon 2010 Planning Committee... Jenny, Vahid, and Brandon. The day kind of went like this...
Drinks. Accusations. Threats. Apologies. Sunglasses. Cigarette holders. News. Drinks. Slots. Slots. Drinks. Craps. Slots. Video Poker. Drinks. Drinks. Drinks. Drinks. Drinks. Slots. Dinner. OFFICIAL TEQUILACON BUSINESS...
Then Walking. Goodnight Brandon. Slots. Drinks. Video Poker. Slots. Walgreens. And lastly, the Fremont Street Experience...
And there you have it. Just another boring day in Las Vegas, Nevada.
UPDATE: I had a long email conversation with somebody who basically asked "who are you to define what is or isn't a Hard Rock?" Which I thought was odd, because they're pretty much self-defining (as the photos I posted above will attest). But even setting that aside, just look at a description of the HRC Hurghada from the Hard Rock Cafe's own web site...
So, even at the Hard Rock Cafe corporate offices, the abundance of memorabilia is looked upon as a defining trait of a good cafe. If I'm seen as "defining" a cafe, I'm only doing so from the definition provided by the organization themselves.
Over the next couple days I'm having my blog templates upgraded, so there may be some problems pop up while things get sorted out. I was going to do a redesign at the same time, but I kind of like my blog the way it is.
A couple people asked me "how I did" in Vegas. Since I made it home alive, I'd say I did okay, but I don't think that's what they are talking about... they want to know how much money I won or lost. The truth is that I am not much of a gambler, even though I seem to be luckier than average.
Which is to say that I lose less money than average, because at the end of the day, the casino almost always ends up the winner. Given the addictive nature of gambling, it helps to have a plan. To make sure I don't go broke, I set myself a daily budget based on the total amount of loose change I've managed to collect over the last year or so... $264. This spread out to $64 for the first half-day, and $100 for Saturday and Sunday. My luck played out something like this...
So I lost $181. Which isn't bad when you consider it gave me three days' worth of entertainment AND was under my budgeted amount of $264. This would be great if I hadn't burned through the remaining $83 at the new Hard Rock Cafe an The Vegas Strip buying Grand Opening collector's pins. Oh well.
And now I'm home again... collecting my pocket change for the next time.
My morning routine is a rather complex series of events which is based on a number of "What-If" scenarios. Such as if I wake up and can't move because my joints are messed up, I then have to take pills so I can function properly. But these pills can trigger an idiopathic angioedema swelling attack... usually in dangerous or uncomfortable places.
Like the bottoms of my feet, which ballooned up with painful welts that made walking and driving a difficult and agonizing experience this morning. A massive dose of antihistamines helps some, but it still takes a serious chunk of time for the swelling to subside. In the meanwhile, I am having to hobble around in pain all day long. Not a fun time.
As of 10:00pm tonight, my feet are still in pretty bad shape, so I am taking some serious drugs which will probably have me passing out any minute now.
I'll see how far I can get...
I received a rather interesting comment about my rant yesterday from somebody accusing me of being "anti-Apple" (oh the sweet, sweet irony). I would have gladly published it... except they used a couple of slurs which I refuse to publish on my blog. The gist of the comment was that my "tirade" against MobileMe was unjustified, and I "obviously haven't been using it lately, because it performs flawlessly." This is laughable for a number of reasons, one of which being that I use MobileMe several times a day to sync information between my various Macs (when it feels like syncing anyway). But mostly it's bullshit because iDisk is a complete and total piece of crap which has NEVER worked. Here's an example...
Today I bought a couple new iTunes songs on my work computer. I wanted to transfer them to my laptop when I got home, so I thought I'd drag them into my iDisk where they'd be waiting for me. Except dropping the first music file in my iDisk immediately made The Finder drop to its knees and become unresponsive. After ten minutes, I decided to give up and restart the Finder. Except this is what I got halfway through the process...
Game over. MobileMe's iDisk was able to crash the Mac's Finder file system so thoroughly that it couldn't even be restarted. A complete reboot of the entire computer was required. And this is not an isolated incident. This is an easily reproduced problem that happens ALL THE TIME for no apparent reason. So I am not talking out of my ass here. When I say MobileMe is a flaming pile of shit, it comes from experience.
And, in happier news, have you seen the latest images to come from the Hubble Telescope after it was updated and refurbished? Holy cats, it's beautiful stuff...
I could literally stare at stuff like this all day long. Thank you NASA for using some of my tax dollars in a way I whole-heartedly approve of. I look forward to many, many more incredible images from Hubble.
And now the drugs are starting to kick in, which means I should probably stop blogging before I hurt myself.
And I'm off for a wild weekend in DutchyLand with the Bitch that is Dutch...
Also in attendence will be the Lady that is Penelope and the Tai-Tai that is Geeky.
With a roster like this, only time will tell if I manage to survive the event.
Here's hoping that if (by some miracle) I do survive, I'll not be permanently damaged...
As the grand Bitchsterdam festivities are not until tomorrow, those of us in DutchyLand early had decided to goof off in the picturesque city of Delft in South Holland. It's a rather important city in the history of the Netherlands, and is famous for it's Chinese-style pottery and being the birthplace of the painter Vermeer.
After arriving in the city, The DutchBitch, Geeky Tai-Tai, her husband, and myself decided to take a speed-boat cruise on the Delft canals. Except the speed-boat never went over two miles an hour, which made for a relaxing start to our day...
The canals are smaller than those you'll find in Amsterdam, which makes them that much prettier...
The Central Square still has many old buildings, though apparently they're not quite as old as you'd expect because the city was razed by fire and then later destroyed again when a gunpowder factory exploded...
Geeky Tai-Tai and The Dutch Bitch outside of the Delf Cathedral...
Delftware hand-painted pottery is a big tourist attraction and incredibly expensive if you buy the "real" stuff. Fortunately, there's tons of imitation pottery around for the tourist trade...
Given that this is the Netherlands, one of my most favorite foods on earth is easily available... potatoes and mayo...
But the food for which Delf is made famous is Poffertjes, which are little pancake-type thingies that are served up with powdered sugar & butter and are totally delicious. Much to the annoyance of Dutchy, I kept mis-pronouncing them as "Pooferglarg" or "Poofterjarb" or "Pooferflargen"... which, if you follow any of us on Twitter, was responsible for terrorizing the Twitterverse last night...
Amazingly, there was a restaurant we found which proudly proclaims that "Bill Clinton Ate Poffertjes Here"... and has somehow survived the experience...
All in all, it was a perfect way to spend the afternoon...
After dropping off Geeky Tai-Tai back at Schophol so she could spend some quallity pooferflargen time with her husband (without annoying bloggers around), we goofed off for a while until the celebrated arrival of The Lady Penelope. From then on, it was Wine-O-Clock, pooferflargen, chips & dip, Wine-O-Clock, pooferflargen, Twittering, Wine-O-Clock, pooferflargen, laughing, Wine-O-Clock, and pooferflargen for the rest of the evening and into the early morning...
For everybody on Twitter who had to suffer through the experience with us, I apologize.
But not really.
Because we had an awesome time, and it's hard to make apologies for that.
The day started off with an interesting twist... the hot water heater in Dutchy's house went kaput. The ladies managed to track down a hot shower for themselves (use your imagination here, heaven only knows I did), while I volunteered to stay behind and take a cold shower. So as to spend as little time as possible being chilled, I devised a plan whereas I would hose myself down, suds myself up, then rinse myself off.
It was a good plan. At first. Hosing myself down wasn't too bad, as it only involved a few seconds of contact with the icy water. Sudsing myself up was equally trivial. Where things went terribly wrong was in the last step.
Because it takes considerably longer to rinse soap off than to put it on.
And the entire time I was standing under that freezing stream of water... I could Not. Stop. Laughing.
Which probably made a terrific impression on Dutchy's neighbors, hearing a guy laughing hysterically while in the shower (let's hear her try to explain THAT one away!).
What finally made the laughter stop was when I looked down and saw the my once-magnificient pooferflargen had shrunk to the size of a peanut. There's just nothing funny about that.
Fortunately, Dutchy's cat was nonjudgmental on my plight...
But the morning's adventure in shrinkage was all made worthwhile when Dutchy made my wildest fantasty come true... her and Penelope took me to a snack bar so I could get some frites met mayo...
But the awesomeness did not stop with the fries and mayo.
It was taken to the Next. Level.
Because I was able to also have a cheese sandwich as well. A cheese sandwich made with "Old Cheese." Beautiful, sexy, tasty, aged Dutch cheese. On a roll. That looked like this...
While I looked like this...
Then, after a lunch so delicious I achieved orgasm, we went wandering in the local shops so I could make fun of the native products. I think this one speaks for itself...
Unless you're familiar with the French language, in which case it seems perfectly sane.
But if you are not familiar with the French language, you may be wondering how much more hilarious a product name could get than "Douche Creme."
I'm glad you asked...
I can't quite decide which one I like best. There is a case to be made for both Douche Oil and Douche Scrub. But there was no time to debate the merits of these douchey products because Bitchsterdam was at hand, and we had to head up to Amsterdam. Where we ran across a new batch of elephants! Including this beauty...
... on the way to the Hard Rock Cafe...
Where an amazing group of people consisting of Mr. Geeky Tai-Tai, Geeky Tai-Tai, Bra-Dutch, The Dutch Bitch, ME!, and The Lady Penelope got together for a wonderful night of food, drinks, and a lot of laughs...
Despite all that, there was still time for my Jägermeister habit to corrupt the innocence of Penelope's seasoned wine-loving palette...
All-in-all in was a wonderful evening at the Hard Rock Cafe...
Because I was the luckiest bastard on the planet this night, as I got to go back home with THIS...
All my thanks to The Dutch Bitch, for hosting such a fantastic event!
"Let me get this straight. You're traveling half-way around the world... for a party?"
Lately I've been reconnecting with some of my former high school classmates on FaceBook. It's been kind of fascinating to me because we've never been close as a group, even though some of the close friendships are still intact. Case in point: our 25-year Class of 1984 reunion fell apart before it ever got started this year. It's sad, but not a big deal to me because I undoubtedly would have been traveling and couldn't go anyway (just like our 10-year). But we all served time together in the public school system so there's a common bond there that can't be broken no matter how hard we try.
So far as I know, only two of my graduating class are blogging. One of them is me. What this means is that I'm pretty easy to track down, even though I'm not so much tied to my "real name" but my "online identity" of Blogography. All it takes is a Google search and there I am. And now that I'm connecting on FaceBook it's even easier to find me because I'm linked to a bunch of former classmates there.
And this is where it gets interesting. Because my blog entries are duplicated on FaceBook as "notes."
It's interesting because my blog is highly superficial, as I don't talk about work, family, relationships, or anything I consider to be "personal." So while people from my past can find me easily enough, they can't really know me online. This is a paradox to be sure, and lately I've been trying to grasp what it must be like for old friends and acquaintances to stumble across my online life.
And let's face it, the online version of my life is pretty bizarre.
To say the very least.
This was driven home last Wednesday when one of my former classmates wrote and said "Let me get this straight. You're traveling half-way around the world for a party?"
Answering this question in the affirmative just raises more questions, namely "You're traveling half-way around the world to stay with random people you met on the internet?!? Are you crazy? And there's no real way to explain that to somebody who isn't involved in a blogger community and still appear sane. Believe me, I've tried.
Though, even if you remove blogging from the equation, it doesn't make much difference in my case. I once flew to Copenhagen for just 9 hours so I could attend a birthday party of a non-blogging friend. I guess I am crazy like that.
Oh well.
At some point you have to stop trying to explain your life and just live it.
I guess I'm there.
So there I was, walking through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport feeling quite satisfied after a date with a Qdoba Veggie Burrito when I heard "DAVE!" being shouted out.
Now, I am not so vain as to immediately think that every time I hear my name it's somebody is calling for me. The odds, after all, are pretty remote given that "Dave" is a fairly popular name. Perhaps if my name were "Heinrich" or "Flavious" I'd be more confident but, alas, I almost never assume somebody is calling me when I'm away from places I'm known.
Like a big airport, for example.
But it turns out that I was the Dave in question this time because it was Brandon and Death? from Down With Pants! It was an almost surreal experience given that I've tried to meet up with Brandon for years and had a couple of near misses from past travels... twice in L.A. and another couple times in Seattle. But it was also a nice way to spend an airport layover.
Happy coincidences like this happen more often than you'd expect. Running into fellow blogger Timothy at the Apple Store in New York, for example, was pretty freaky-cool. And I've been recognized a couple of other times in airports too... mostly thanks to the Blogography T-Shirts I'm usually wearing. Such is the power of blogging, I guess.
Anyway, it has been a very long day and I have to get up early in the morning, so the remainder of tonight's entertainment will be provided by Ashton, a young kid who was a fellow passenger on my flight. Ashton likes to talk. A lot. And at very high volume, non-stop. Fortunately I had an iPhone full of videos to watch, but was privy to his antics as we landed in San Diego which went something like this...
ASHTON: I see lights outside there are a lot of lights outside and they are different colors and there are lights out there I have to go potty.
MOM: You can't go potty now, they've locked the doors while we land.
ASHTON: I have to go potty I have to go potty I HAVE TO GO POTTY REALLY BAD!
MOM: I'm sorry, but you'll just have to hold it.
ASHTON: I HAVE TO GO POTTY REALLY BAD I have to go potty and if I don't go I'm going to pee my pants I'M GOING TO PEE MY PANTS I'M GOING TO PEE MY PANTS!!
MOM: It's only a few minutes. You can hold it until we land.
ASHTON: I CAN'T HOLD IT I'M GOING TO PEE MY PANTS there are lights outside and they are getting brighter hey we're going down now and the plane is going down down down to the airport going down. [ INSERT MORE NONSENSICAL RAMBLING HERE UNTIL WE LAND AND THE SEATBELT LIGHT GOES OFF ]
[ ASHTON MAKES A BREAK FOR THE BACK OF THE PLANE ]
MOM: Ashton! Wait! Come back! You're not going to get into the potty!
DAVE2: Oh I think they'll be glad to let him in given the alternative.
[ ASHTON DOES HIS BUSINESS AND RETURNS ]
ASHTON: HAH! I found a potty that wasn't locked because you can tell they're locked when the handle was down but the handle wasn't down on one of them so I tried to open it and the door opened because they forgot to lock it and the handled was up so I got in and could use the potty and they forgot to lock it so I got in and I didn't have to pee my pants because I tried the one with the handle that wasn't down and it opened are we getting off the plane now people are moving and we're leaving the plane and I didn't even get to listen to all of my book but that's okay because I can listen to it later and... [ ASHTON FADES AWAY AS I RUN TOWARDS THE AIRPORT EXIT ]
Some children really should come with off-switches, and I have a profound respect for Ashton's parents that they manage to get through life without one. Hopefully he does sleep from time to time, though he never seems to run out of things to say, so maybe not.
And now it's time for sweet slumber so I can get up entirely too early in the morning.
I can't blog today because I'm flying all the way to Florida for a visit with Hilly-Sue followed by random encounters with other bloggers and a big Halloween party.
There are definitely worse ways to spend a week.
Your beloved King and Queen of the People's Republic of Blogistan made an appearance at Avitaween tonight...
Thanks to The Avitables for yet another genius Halloween party extravaganza!
Apparently, there's legislation underfoot that will force bloggers to write a disclaimer when they're being paid to write about stuff. It has something to do with FTC guidelines governing endorsements, which is kind of silly if you ask me. Honest bloggers are going to disclose that kind of stuff anyway... dishonest bloggers are going to lie regardless of any guidelines they're handed.
So, in the interest of full disclosure, I am going to be reviewing a book I was given by a fellow blogger. He did not ask me to review his book, he just asked me if I'd like to read it. I said yes. And I'm going to review it because I liked it... not because I got it for free. If I didn't like it, I would have undoubtedly not reviewed it. Not because I felt I was under any obligation for getting a free book... but because there just wouldn't be much point in it. Of course, if the book was a steaming pile of crap, I would have been obligated to warn everybody to stay away and not to waste their time. I'm a decent human being that way.
Anyway... here's a look at Mercury Falls, the debut novel by Rob Kroese, who is probably better known as "Diesel" from Mattress Police...
I was prepared to hate Mercury Falls, mostly because the official web site had it positioned as being in the vein of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is one of my favorite novels of all time. You simply do not go setting yourself next to a giant like Douglas Adams and walk away unscathed. It's just not done. I don't care how funny you think you are, such a statement only serves to set the reader up for disappointment.
"Mr. Kroese... I have met Douglas Adams (twice!), and you sir are no Douglas Adams."
And yet...
I enjoyed this novel.
A lot.
The story sounds as if it might be a mash-up between Kevin Smith's film Dogma and Douglas Adams' Infocom Game Bureaucracy, but actually has a unique voice all its own. Basically, the end of the world is upon us (for real this time), and the bureaucrats of heaven and hell are each maneuvering to come out on top. The Apocalypse only gets more complicated when a fallen angel (Mercury), an End-Of-Days reporter (Christine Temetri), and the newly-appointed Antichrist (Karl Grissom) enter the picture. Everybody has an agenda, and nobody is quite sure who's playing the side of the angels... or demons... as the plot to save the world unfolds. Hilarity ensues.
I found Mercury Falls to be really clever, with an abundance of witty dialogue and enough twists to keep things interesting right up to the last page. Chunks of the book are very funny, as one paragraph after another was dripping with a biting humor that seems unsustainable, but Kroese somehow manages to keep going. Things do bog down a bit when somebody gets mired in explaining the bureaucracy of heaven and hell, but never in such a way to kill the story. I particularly liked the characters, each being fully-realized with enough baggage and personality to make them memorable (after meeting Karl, you'll never think of the Antichrist the same way again, that's for sure!).
The novel is infused with numerous pop-culture references and an inexplicable affinity for linoleum that drives a lot of the story's humor. This would usually spell disaster because the plot gets shoved aside to make room for jokes, but everything seemed nicely balanced and just kind of "worked." By the time the "Four Attaché Cases of the Apocalypse" debuted, there was no turning back. I was completely absorbed in the world of Mercury Falls and admired the way new elements were constantly being added to keep things fresh. A pleasant change from authors who blow their best material in the first three chapters and then coast to the finish line.
My only real problem with the book is the cover art. First of all, the cover barely has relevance to the story. The two famous cherubs taken from Raphael's master work Sistine Madonna are cute, and there are cherubs in the tale... but they do nothing to communicate the story's main plot (the Apocalypse) or nature of the work (humorous). This is a darn shame, because the story deserves so much more than yet another recycling of artwork that has been so overused as to become generic (and has probably been printed on everything from condoms to toilet paper). Sadly, it's so overused that most people don't even realize that it's not even a painting, but a small piece of a painting...
But hey, if you're not being backed by a big publisher that can afford to commission custom artwork, there are certainly worse public domain images you could use, so it's hard to fault the artwork too much (though giving a liner credit to Raphael for his art would have been nice). At least it's beautiful to look at, even if it doesn't really tell potential customers what the story is about.
Sadly, I can't be so forgiving for the cover's letter kerning, which is pretty bad (though not the worst I've seen). Why in the hell people putting book covers together can't take five minutes to adjust letter-spacing so it looks decent is beyond me. Even if it was bad kerning, I'd be okay with it... so long as it was consistent. The "A" and "L" in "FALLS" are jammed together, for example, but "M" and "E" in "MERCURY" (which share similar exterior letterforms) are given breathing room. The spine's lettering is heinously fucked, with a surprise typeface change and such inconsistent kerning that one has to wonder if the designer was trying to spell things out phonetically. Written by
Maybe if I continue to bitch about stuff like this each time I review a book, people will start paying attention so anal retentive designers such as myself can shop at a book store without wanting to bash their heads against a wall.
Ahem...
Cover complaints aside, it would be easy to say that Mercury Falls is a "good first effort" for Rob Kroese... but it would also be inadequate. This would be a great read even if it was his tenth book. I enjoyed the story from start to finish and am happy to recommend it to anybody who enjoys humorous fiction.
Or is bored and looking for something fun to read.
Congratulations, Rob... I am anxiously awaiting your next book!
You can buy a copy in a myriad of formats by following the links at the official Mercury Falls website.
UPDATE: Well lookey what we have here... Mercury Falls was picked up by Amazon's independent publishing arm, AmazonEncore. The cover features 270% better kerning and now has an illustration kinda related to the story!
Well played, Mr. Kroese. Well played.
I'm working today and don't have much time to blog. Fortunately, mah BFF Hilly-Sue has rescued me for blogging material by being born on this date. All hail the Queen of the People's Republic of Blogistan on her birthday!
I need a taco salad...
Fellow bloggers have influenced me in more ways than I'll ever admit.
Most times.
Other times, like now when I have nothing else to blog about, I'm happy to admit anything.
Back in mid-October, Josh of ("Josh is Trashy" fame) ran across an old Richard Scarry book from his childhood called Cars and Trucks and Things That Go. His entry brought back all kinds of memories for me because I loved Richard Scarry books when I was a kid. They never displaced Curious George as my all-time favorite, but I spent a lot of time reading them because they were a lot of fun.
Anyway, Josh took a second look at the book and found out that some of the illustrations were actually pretty messed up when viewed from a more adult perspective. He added his own dialogue and hilarity ensued...
Genius!
It's the second illustration that changed my life. I loved it so much that I recreated it as my desktop picture...
Which is probably a bad thing, because it's been influencing my behavior. Whenever something crappy comes my way now, I stop everything and say "This is bullshit!"... All day long... Every day since...
It's kind of amusing when I'm alone.
But a different story entirely when I'm in the middle of a business meeting and suddenly feel compelled to say "This is bullshit!" to a client or co-worker sitting at the table. It's even worse when you say it in the check-out line at the grocery store because the bitch ahead of you has 14 items in the "10 Items or Less" lane.
I can't help it. It works in just about every situatuon. Including other Richard Scarry illustrations...
If you want your life to be ruined too (thanks, Josh!) you should check out his original entry.
I just spent 20 minutes writing a blog entry that I ultimately cannot post.
I then spent 10 minutes being mad because I had just wasted 20 minutes of my life.
And then I spent 15 minutes realizing that the 20 minutes I had spent writing was actually kind of healing to me, at which point I was pissed at the 10 minutes I spent being mad. It's a vicious circle. But ultimately I came to two inescapable conclusions: 1) Getting mad is, more often than not, pointless... and 2) Some doors are better left closed...
I am so very thankful tomorrow is Friday. Not that Fridays really mean much... I still have to work the weekends... but at least the work stops piling up on Saturday and Sunday.
Oh yeah! And one last thing before I go...
Because it drives me nuts when idiots present historic inaccuracies as facts, I am compelled to point out that the original motto of these United States of America was considered to be "E pluribus unum" (in Latin) or "Out of many one" (translated into English). While never ratified by law, it did (and does) appear on The Great Seal of the United States, and has since 1776 (really, you can look it up on Wikipedia!). "In God we trust" didn't become our official motto until 1956 when it was made so by act of Congress (so much for separation of Church and State).
Which is why the next time I hear some moron saying "...and that's why our founding fathers made 'In God We Trust' our national motto..." as the basis of an argument, you'll understand my overwhelming desire to punch them in the face.
Getting mad may be pointless, but stupid is stupid.
The reason I try to avoid saying anything negative about people, places, and things is because no matter which person, place, or thing you badmouth, it's going to be somebody's favorite. The reason I know this is because people badmouth my favorite things all the time.
There are exceptions, of course. Even a cursory review of my past blog entries would reveal that I fail miserably when it comes to not saying negative things. Here's just a few of my failures...
• Microsoft
• Internet Explorer
• Apple
• Ann Coulter
• Nancy Grace
• Bill O'Reilly
• Rosie O'Donnell
• David Caruso
• Stride Gum
• Spelling Bees
• Jared the Subway Sandwich Whore
• President Bush
• Dick Cheney
• Pat Robertson
• President Obama
• Hillary Clinton
• Clowns
• Orly Taitz
• 12 Grain Bread
• TicketMaster
• FOX News
• John McCain
• Tony Danza
• Kelly Osbourne
• Dr. Phil
• Judge Judy
• Martha Stewart
• Pat O'Brien
• Paul Marx
• Mayor Greg Nickels
• And many others...
But here's the thing. I don't apologize for any of it. I feel what I feel then I write what I write. If I offend somebody because I've badmouthed their favorite thing, well... it's my blog and that's really too bad. They don't have to read it. Because unless I've gotten the facts wrong or said something that was interpreted wrong, I'm not going to apologize for how I feel about something.
Which presents a problem when somebody emails me saying I should apologize for hating on the television series Dollhouse because it was their favorite show and now it's been cancelled.
Um, yeah... while I do feel bad because my favorite shows seem to get cancelled all the time... am I sorry enough to apologize for saying I think Dollhouse is (was) a steaming pile of crap?
Not really, no.
I will apologize for not trying harder to avoid saying anything negative about people, places, and things though.
My bad.
I'll work on that right after I dump out this Ronzoni Bistro "Rotini with Tomato Basil Pasta" which is probably the worst pasta I have ever eaten in my entire life. Seriously, if you want to know just how bad pasta can taste, by all means go try a bag of this heinous stuff.
When traveling during the winter months, I always try to leave a day early to make sure any weather delays or other problems don't screw up my schedule. It's a necessary evil that I usually loathe because the last thing I want to do is be stuck traveling an extra day if I don't have to. But when traveling to Atlanta I never mind so much because there's some really good blogger friends that inhabit the area. Since I didn't have any travel problems, this left me all day to hang out with the gang and do some really cool stuff. Sweet!
The day started out at the High Museum to see a special exhibit by one of my absolute heroes... Leonardo Da Vinci. His works have such profound meaning to me that I never pass up an opportunity to see an exhibit, and this was almost too good to be true. Even better, Kevin, Beth, Diana, and Muskrat were kind enough to accompany me (after a lecture on how we couldn't point to anything with an ink pen because the pen might explode on the priceless artifacts... if we simply must point at something with a writing instrument, golf pencils would happily be provided). I thought the exhibit was wonderful, featuring some incredible pages from Leonardo's sketchbooks...
If you're in Atlanta, it's well-worth a stop. The exhibit runs through February 21st.
After lunch in Buckhead, Kevin, Beth, and I headed back down to the Alliance Theater for a show by Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called "Peach Drop, Stop, and Roll." It's a highly-Atlanta-specific performance that shows no mercy in ribbing some of the city's most famous (infamous) places, people, and traditions...
If you're an Atlanta local looking for a laugh, the show has been extended to December 27th, and is worth a look.
Since it's impossible to have too much to eat when visiting Atlanta, we decided to go eat miracle French fries at Five Guys back in Buckhead since there was an establishment next door that has a Coke Freestyle Soda Fountain Machine. This miraculous piece of Epic Win is able to custom-mix over 100 soda flavors on demand, including my beloved ORIGINAL COKE WITH LIME!!
After our pre-dinner, we headed up to Maggiano's Little Italy for real dinner, where we met up with Julie, Heather & Ty-Man, and Muskrat & Deb. A fantastic time (and fantastic meal!) was had by all, though not one of us seemed to think of taking a photograph.
The reunion was made bitter-sweet by the absence of some dear blogger friends, including Anissa, who has been in the hospital since Tuesday after suffering a massive stroke. It was less than four months ago that she was sitting right next to me... laughing along with everybody and stealing a bite of my fried macaroni & cheese balls...
Anissa, looking lovely in fuschia on the far right.
For anybody looking for news on how Anissa's doing, her husband Peter has been posting updates over at Hope4Peyton. There was also a nice piece in yesterday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution (thanks to Father Muskrat for the link). All my best wishes to the Mayhew family for Anissa's recovery.
And now I'm back at my four-star College Co-Ed Party Hotel blasting Thompson Twins in my earbuds to drown out the hard-partying in the next room and down the hallway. I requested a late check-out tomorrow so I can (hopefully) catch up on the sleep I missed from last night and tonight. I don't know if that's going to work, but I can only guess everybody will take off for church in the morning to leave me with some peace and quiet for a while.
Fingers crossed.
For some reason, I don't even remotely care about blogging today.
I tried to care, but long work hours over the past several weeks have driven it out of me.
But it's not as if I don't care about anything. I still care about lots of things. As an example, right now I am caring about the weather on Wednesday. I have to fly out then, and this is the time of year that flights start getting cancelled. I also care about these Rold Gold Braided Honey Wheat Twist Pretzels I am eating right now. Deeply. They are as addictive as crack. Or so I'd imagine... I've never actually been addicted to crack. And I really care about the new Iron Man 2 promo poster that was released today...
I loved the first Iron Man and hope the sequel doesn't suck.
And then there's more to care about... Anissa's progress, five slain police officers in Lakewood, my next care package to Iraq, Elizabeth Hurley making more movies, Elizabeth Hurley liking vodka, not to mention Elizabeth Hurley selling beef jerky...
Why oh why couldn't Elizabeth Hurley have come to me to design her packaging? Seriously... I would have done something really nice for her jerky!
Ah well. Now I've got to care about work.
What else is new.
Home at last. And so very, very tired.
In other news, I'll be a VERY SPECIAL GUEST on an ALL NEW EPISODE of Jestertunes Radio THIS COMING MONDAY, DECEMBER 7th! The show starts at 4:30pm Hawaiian, 5:30pm Alaskan, 6:30pm Pacific, 7:30pm Mountain, 8:30 Central, and 9:30 Eastern times here in the Americas. If you're outside of those time zones, you can find your local time at the World Clock Converter...
Bookmark the TalkShoe site now so you can join us! I have no earthly idea what we'll be talking about, but good times are always assured on The Jester Show!
Except for that time I had a kidney stone attack on-air. That wasn't a good time at all. Any show that involves you being rushed to the hospital is about as far removed from a good time as a show can get. Well, for me anyway.
So tune in on Monday and see what horrible new tragedy will befall me on-air!
UPDATE: Jester's comment reminds me that I should probably mention that The Jester Show is R-Rated. It's probably X-Rated. If you are a sensitive individual who doesn't appreciate foul language, explicit talk, and adult situations, then it's probably best that you NOT tune in. Wow. Now that I think about it, maybe it's best if I don't tune in either. I'll do the show with potholders pressed against my ears while saying "LA LA LA LA LA LA!"
It's Pearl Harbor Day!
Last year I made my second trip to the USS Arizona Memorial. It's about as beautiful a tribute to those who lost their lives as you can imagine...
Thanks to all of you who gave so much.
And thanks to Jester for having me as a guest on his show tonight. Here's links to the things that came up...
Good show!
About six years ago I wrote a short sci-fi story called "Ageless" for a friend's birthday that had kind of a Twilight Zone style twist at the end. The story was about a scientist who created a device which would tell you with absolute certainty the age at which a person would die. He used his invention to become world-famous and very wealthy because people were lining up to know about how much longer they had to live. That way, they could take crazy risks, live life to its fullest, and blow all their money before their "death year" rather than save it for a rainy day that would never come. A sub-plot involving an evil life insurance company's plot to steal the device was also in there somewhere.
At the end of the story, the scientist finally decided to use the device on himself and discovered that he was already in his "death year" at age 32, and would most certainly die before his 33rd birthday just six months away. He flew into a total panic, and spent every day obsessing over how and when he would die. Finally, after only two weeks of being driven insane by the thought of his impending death, he committed suicide.
The big "twist" came the following day when a newspaper story announced that a cure for aging had been discovered. People could drink the "Fountain of Youth" drug and live forever. Hence, they would remain the same age until they died from unnatural circumstances. Had the scientist not become death-obsessed and killed himself, he would have indeed died at age 32... but hundreds of years in the future.
It wasn't the greatest story... and the plot had probably already been done before somewhere... but that wasn't the point. It was fun to write, and made a great birthday present for my friend (as the scientist in the story was given his name).
Every year since then, my friend calls to remind me that his birthday is coming up, apparently in a bid to get me to write him another story. Today was the day he called, and I had to once again tell him that I didn't feel I had any stories left to tell.
After I hung up the phone, I suddenly realized why that is.
It's because I write in this blog every day. All my stories end up here.
So happy birthday!
Odd. I nearly forgot to blog today. So here I am in bed with midnight quickly approaching and nothing to write about. Unfortunately I was sketching all day for work, which isn't something conducive to blog fodder. I need to find a new career which involves explosives and super-models... now there's a blog entry!
The one ray of sunshine in my day was finding out that I don't have to appear for jury duty on Monday (but have to call back again on Tuesday). Yes, I was called to serve AGAIN. This pisses me off more and more each time, because I'm called in constantly, yet there are people I know who have only been called once or twice in their entire lifetime. Heck, I've been called FOUR TIMES in the six years I've had this blog... September 2003, February 2006, May 2008, and now in December 2009 (and at least three times before that). And each time I have to somehow find a way of clearing two weeks off my schedule, which is absurd given that I have a hard time scheduling more than a solid week of VACATION at a time. If I do end up being called in, it will take every bit of restraint I have not to stand up and scream "FUCK YOU, YOUR HONOR... WHERE'S MY JUSTICE?!??"
Except I think you can go to prison for that.
And in prison you don't have access to either explosives or super-models.
I'm not much into social network gaming because I just can't find the time to keep up with them. But then along comes Gowalla, which is a location-based travel game. Now that's something I can get into! Basically, people use their GPS-enabled iPhone to create locations which other people can then "check-in" to and get a stamp on their virtual passport (apparently other mobile phones, like Droid, are in the pipeline soon). If that were the end of it, Gowalla wouldn't be much of a game. But there's more.
In addition to collecting passport stamps, you're also looking for achievement pins and collectible icons.
The pins are added automatically when you do things like complete a pre-existing trip... or check-in to a certain number of locations... or do some other task, like visiting 10 different coffee shops or something.
The icons are a little different. Some are permanently awarded for visiting specific places, like Powell's Books in Portland, The Space Needle in Seattle, or The White House in DC...
Others are found at random. You can drop these items somewhere so somebody else can trade their items with them... or you can put them in your Vault, where they will be stuck forever...
Unfortunately, once you drop an item somewhere, it's pretty much GONE until you find another one. It's not like the Pokemon Pokedex which keeps track of the items you've found. Sure you can put it in your Vault, but then you can't trade for other items. This seems to be a disappointing flaw, but I guess that's what makes some icons more rare than others.
Locations are created by Gowalla users. If you create a spot then drop an item there, you get credited as the spot's "founder." You can create all kinds of spots for all kinds of locations. As an example, here's a church, museum, and a grocery store...
It was fun wandering around town so I could create spots and drop items for fellow Gowalla users to collect and trade. Kind of like geocaching taken to the next level, I suppose. Though it's a quasi-virtual level which is still fun, but lacking the tactile thrill of uncovering a treasure.
In any event, if you have an iPhone and like to wander, it might be worth checking out...
NOTE: Gowalla abandoned its users (plus all the work we did) and closed up shop in 2011.
w00t! It's the last Bullet Sunday of 2009!
• TQ 2010. The moment we've all been waiting for has come. Jenny has announced the venue for TequilaCon 2010...
I am sooooo looking forward to another awesome TequilaCon event!
You can read my wrap-ups for TequilaCon 2009 here... TequilaCon 2008 here... and TequilaCon 2007 here.
• Kindle 2. I bought my mother a "Kindle 2" electronic book from Amazon. I was waiting on Barnes & Noble's "Nook" because it looked a little niftier in pictures, but the reviews were less than stellar so I went back to the Kindle. The device itself is pretty sweet, and a lot easier read from than I had expected. Sure it would be nice if the "e-ink" display had whiter whites for better contrast with the "type" but if you have decent light, it's not bad at all. Bumping up the type size seems to help. In any event, my mother likes it quite a lot, which is all that really matters...
You can buy new books directly from Kindle easy enough (assuming you have a 3G signal... shopping over EDGE is painfully slow). The good news is that new e-books are released at the same time as the hardcover, but cheaper. As an example, the latest James Patterson release "I, Alex Cross" retails for $27.99, can be bought on Amazon for $18.33 (including tax & shipping), or delivered to your Kindle instantly for $10.79 (including tax). But the best news is that you can get free sample chapters of most books to decide if you want to buy them or not, which makes shopping for Kindle more like shopping at a book store. Overall, I'm impressed. Like most electronic devices, I wish Apple would overhaul the user interface to something more intuitive, but it's all good.
• Totino's. I left work at 3:00 because I was tired and hungry and couldn't stand the thought of sitting at my desk one more minute. Despite a rumbling tummy, nothing really sounded good... EXCEPT A CHEAP-ASS 99¢ PIZZA FROM TOTINO'S!
So few foods can give you 46% of your daily fat content, 36% of your saturated fat, 6% of your cholesterol, 24% of you carbs, and a whopping 56% of your daily cholesterol requirements... all in one convenient box! Genius!
Annnd... I'm spent. Assuming I don't die from my poor nutritional choices in food, I suppose I'll be back tomorrow.
Every year I tell myself that I'm going to take a blog vacation the week between Christmas and New Years, and every year I forget about it. Instead, I just slog through the blogging lull with lame crap that I'd just as soon forget because it's always the exact same thing: I'm working my guts out and don't have the time or energy to write about anything when most everybody is avoiding blogs anyway.
Especially today, when I came home early from work because I was sick. It feels like food poisoning, but I don't know of anything I could have eaten that would have poisoned me. All I've had is a Carnation Instant Breakfast drink, a handful of Tim's Cascade Potato Chips, a can of Coke, and some Uncle Ben's Brown & Wild Rice. Perhaps it's not food poisoning and I've got radiation poisoning or swine flu or something.
Anyway... since tomorrow I will be looking back at all things 2009 here on Blogography, I thought that today I'd take a look ahead. Here's just a few things I'm looking forward to in 2010...
• Whatever Apple Is Cooking Up Next. Whether it's the much-rumored iSlate tablet computer... or something completely different... there always seems to be something really cool just around the corner for an Apple Whore like me.
&bull The iPhone Being Unchained from AT&T: If Apple has any sense at all, they won't renew their exclusivity with the bad service poster-boy that has become AT&T. To be honest, I can recall one... just one... problem with their service when trying to make a call to another iPhone user in Las Vegas this year. Other than that, I've had no worse service than I've had with Verizon. But competition would be a good thing, and I can only hope iPhone service will get even a little bit cheaper because of it.
• Blog Parties: There are two blogger events I cannot miss each year: TequilaCon and Avitaween. The venue for TequilaCon 2010 was just announced as Vancouver on April 24th, and I'm already counting the days.
• Iron Man 2. One of my favorite movies of 2008 was Iron Man and I'm hoping that the sequel is just as good.
• Movie Magic. In addition to Iron Man 2, we also get Tron Legacy, Toy Story 3, Arrested Development: The Film, and the massive casting coupe that is The Expendables, starring Sylvester Stalone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mickey Rourke, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis, and the late Brittany Murphy. Good times.
• Invincible. I'm kind of falling out of touch with comic books lately, but one I never miss is Robert Kirkman's Invincible. This year "The Viltrumite War" which has been anticipated for nearly 70 issues, finally begins. I have no doubt that it will be the comic event of the year.
• Re-Reading Calvin and Hobbes. Every time I see The Complete Calvin and Hobbes sitting on my bookshelf, I have to resist the urge to read it. I haven't read it since it was released in 2005, and am trying my best to forget as much about the strip as I can so it will feel new again. But I could never forget the magic. 2010 is the year.
• Someplace New. Every year I set a goal to travel to someplace I've never been before... this year is no different. I have no idea where I'll end up, but that's the best part.
• The Flying Car. Because, seriously, isn't it about time?
• Another Year of Blogography. Yeah, I know. Blogs are dying all over the place, people are writing in their blogs less and less, and new kids on the block like Twitter are taking over. But how can I give this up?
A new year is just a day away...
It's the easiest blog post of the year, when I get to re-visit all my entries for the past 365 days and see just how pointless and futile my life really is! Much like last year, a lot of my time was spent traveling. I racked up 164,000 air miles on seven airlines. Unlike last year, I had only minimal flight delays and cancellations, which was a pleasant surprise.
And now the traditional random Blogography snippets of crap from the year that was 2009...
JANUARY
• Admitted I have a Twitter addiction.
• Goofed around at SeaWorld with mah Hilly-Sue in San Diego, where we rode the Buckets of Death, learned to BELIEVE, and joined the cult of Shamu the whale...
Seriously, how cute are we in this photo?
• Was traumatized when Ms. Sizzle and I were sexually assaulted by Etta James at her Seattle concert.
FEBRUARY
• Was nearly brought to tears at the Nazi Documentation Museum in Cologne, Germany.
• Traveled to the beautiful island of Mallorca in Spain to visit the new Hard Rock Cafe there and see the sights...
• Revealed ten honest things about me.
• Suffered from my drug abuse.
• Said goodbye to a friend and learned what is really important...
MARCH
• Disapproved of First Lady Michelle Obama's wardrobe choices...
• Spent a weekend goofing off in Seattle with my BFF Vahid.
• Re-lived my life as one of the Spice Girls...
• Had an absolute blast meeting up with friends in Davedon...
• Experienced the "magic" of Stonehenge...
• Back to my favorite city on earth... Davenburgh!
• Had the worst airport layover in the history of airport layovers.
APRIL
• More blogger meet awesomeness at Dave York...
Dawg and Poppy with B.E. Earl.
Robin, Libragirl, B.E. Earl, Me, and Cissa!
• Tried my hand at some inappropriate Broadway reviews.
• Reveled in the glory that is TequilaCon Santa Fe...
MAY
• Expressed my disappointment with the current state of Cracker Jack prizes.
• Explained a problem with my MASSIVE NOZZLE.
• Gave a behind-the-scenes look at the Blogography Show when Whall was a guest...
• Took a trip to Savannah, Georgia and visited the magnificent Bonaventure Cemetery.
• Released the most important iPhone app ever...
• Visited mah Hilly-Sue in her new home of Orlando where we got to be pirates and then go see Jesus at The Holy Land Experience.
• Started up the Lil' Dave and Lil' Wayne MAC VS. PC cartoons...
• Told ignorant asshole Paul Marx of the Baltimore Sun to go fuck himself.
JUNE
• Attended the spectacular ConFab blogger event in Lexington, Kentucky.
• Debuted Baby Dave and Naughty Monkey for a guest-post on Anissa's blog...
JULY
• Finally saw Duran Duran in concert with my sister.
• Took a look at my wild-and-crazy days of youth...
• Revealed the secret of How to Blog the Blogography Way.
• Joined in on Blogathon 2009 where I live-blogged new DaveToons every half-hour to benefit Doctors Without Borders.
• Had the opportunity of a lifetime when I went to see Hayao Miyazaki speak in L.A. with blogging buddy Howard from The Web Pen Blog.
AUGUST
• Ah, the wonder of exploring the biggest rock in the world and the joy of attending Davelanta3...
• Explained the Love Equality Formula and said NOH8 the best way I know how...
• Had the adventure of a lifetime when I guest-posted at Puntabulous...
• Gave evidence as to why I was the most adorable baby ever.
• Another fantastic blogger meet, this time at Daveorado...
• Got to see my favorite band ever, Depeche Mode, in Salt Lake City with WarpedGirl 16 and Marty from Banal Leakage!
SEPTEMBER
• Hit Las Vegas with the TequilaCon Planning Posse for event planning, debauchery, and ELVIS...
• Took an amazing cruise to Alaska where I walked on a glacier, then went rafting with eagles, and ended up hiking with bears...
• Got to see one of my favorite bands, the Pet Shop Boys, at their Seattle concert.
• Explored my virtual career path...
OCTOBER
•Just one word: pooferflargen.
• And then there was the life-altering experience of attending Bitchsterdam...
• Finally got to see the adorable spawn of The Bombshell and The Ninja in SoCal.
• Could there possibly be anything better than three days at Disney World with mah Hilly-Sue?
• I dunno. But swimming with dolphins with Robyn and Rachel comes close...
• And so does a wild night at Avitaween and non-stop pussy...
• Went Hard Rock Cafe hopping in Washington DC and Baltimore.
NOVEMBER
• Learned the Tao of Bullshit with Josherz...
• Made some tentative plans for 2012...
• Back to Atlanta for time with friends and Freestylin' Coke.
DECEMBER
• Not a lot, really. I did write this massive blog entry though.
And that was 2009. Everybody have a safe and happy New Year as we head into 2010, and thanks for reading!
Having a blog can sometimes be a very, very strange thing.
Mostly because of the people who end up reading it. Well, not you, obviously, but you know... those people.
You know, the people who happen across a blog, read ONE entry, then feel that they know absolutely everything about you and have all the information they need to judge you. The people who feel that their opinion is the only one that matters, and if your opinion is contrary to theirs, then you're wrong and evil and stupid and don't deserve to live. Yes, I'm talking about those people.
Usually, I just delete the comments and emails from those people because their abuse just isn't worth it. They've already condemned you, and nothing you say or do will ever change their mind.
Oh, sure, every once in a while I get a comment that is so outrageous that I simply can't stop myself from publishing it... like the crazy-ass pageant mom who trashed me in a comment over something I never said or even hinted at. But that's rare. Most of the time I just don't bother.
Like when I wrote an entry in support of the National Equality March on Washington and got a comment telling me that I am a "condescending fuck" and "demeaning to gays" (or something like that)... for supporting gay marriage. Apparently, only gays can offer words of support and encouragement to gays or else they're just being snobby patronizing elitists. DELETE!
Or when I wrote how much I enjoyed The Holy Land Experience theme park and called it "inspirational, even if you're not a Christian"... only to get a comment telling me that "people like you" (heh) "only go there to mock Christians and ruin the park for everybody with your Godless perversions" (or something like that). Apparently, only Christians are allowed to say nice things about Christian things or else they're just being snobby patronizing elitists. DELETE!
Or when I wrote about my worries over having intestinal distress from my doctor-mandated restrictive diet and got a comment telling me that "real people suffer from intestinal problems and their lives are made worse by ignorant assholes like you who only want to make fun of them" (or someth... no, that was exactly what they said). Apparently, only people with severe intestinal disorders can joke about having diarrhea or else they're just being snobby patronizing elitists. DELETE!
Honestly. You can't make this stuff up.
Tonight while I was watching Food Network's Throwdown with Bobby Flay, the challenge was making Belgian Waffles. This reminded me of a comment I got when I wrote about my favorite thing about visiting Paris...
This resulted in a bizarre, profanity-laden comment from some American guy who was tired of "ugly Americans" (such as myself) insulting foreign cultures and making us all look bad.
Because I like waffles.
Well, damn. Apparently I am just a snobby patronizing elitist no matter what I do.
DELETE!
That comment still hurts, even after all these years.
Which is why I ended up healing my pain by buying a new Belgian Waffle baker from Amazon tonight. Just to be sure I didn't suffer a relapse, I also ordered some Stonewall Kitchen Waffle Mix.
Don't judge me.
Sometimesa little retail therapy is all we snobby patronizing elitists have to keep us warm at night.
After dealing with my work emails this morning, I had a bit of extra time and decided to take a quick look through my feedreader. One of the first new blog entries to pop up was from my buddy LeSombre, where he was explaining his bus route to work and how a small detour today turned his 50-minute commute into a whopping 1-hour and 35-minute ride. He wrapped up his entry by theorizing that he might have to try winter cycling as a more efficient way of getting to work.
"How nice!" I thought. "LeSombre is trying to be all environmentally conscious and stuff, when most people would just drive their car to work. Good for him!"
But then I watched a speech that Sarah Palin gave at a tea-bagging rally, and suddenly realized that I've been looking at this whole thing entirely wrong...
"But my plastic surgeon doesn't want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose!"
After listening to Sarah Palin kick ass and put things into perspective as to what "America" REALLY means, I now realize that when people talk about the "pussification of America" they are actually talking about the "pussification of NORTH America... BY CANADIANS!"
Because, seriously, 50 minutes in a frickin' BUS?!? REALLY?!?
It's LeSombre's kind of thinking that explains why Canada is still a third-world country. Well, of course ALL countries are "third world" when compared to us, which begs the questions "what's a second-world country?" I dunno... perhaps The United Kingdom when Maggie Thatcher was running things... but I digress. The point is that I am totally embarrassed to be sharing a continent with the American wannabes that call themselves "Canadians." How they managed to win hosting duties for the Winter Olympics when they don't even have a Disney theme park is a mystery to me.
I mean, come on, they're half-French for crying out loud!
Just look at this "bus route" that LeSombre takes to work every day. It practically screams "pussy!" Where's the spirit of adventure? Where's the sex and violence? Where's the ideals that are true to the AMERICAN WAY?!? What good is their "free socialist health care" if THIS is how you have to get to work each day? Hey, if this is what it means to live in a communist country like Canada, then I want no part of it...
Now let's take a look at how a REAL AMERICAN would get to work (click map to enlarge)...
NOW THERE'S HOW YOU FUCKING COMMUTE TO WORK IN AMERICA, DAMMIT! Please note that's there's no bitching and whining about a frickin' BUS anywhere in that route.
Also note how once you acquire a Canadian Forces* tank, that you no longer have to pay attention to roads, and can go directly to your destination. How cool is that?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go scrounge up $1000 so I can buy a ticket to go to Sarah Palin's next tea-bagger rally. A rally for TRUE Americans** to fight for taking back The United States of America from the godless socialist regime that is destroying the greatest country on earth!! Because THAT, my friends, is what DEMOCRACY is all about!***
And to have testicles put in our mouths, if I'm understanding this whole tea-bagging thing correctly.
* Canadian Forces is kind of like the US Millitary... but without the ability to actually defend their country or invade anyplace (they rely on TRUE Americans to do that for them, but don't pay any taxes to us... the bastards!).
** Well, TRUE Americans that can afford to spend $1000 a plate, that is. But that would be ALL Americans, because POOR Americans are not REALLY Americans at all... otherwise they'd be wealthy! This IS the land of prosperity, after all. It says so in The Constitution!
*** Unless, of course, your democratically elected president is a Democrat, then it's not democracy at all... because everybody knows that elections are only democratic when Republicans win!
February is a pretty dead month for blogging because all I ever do this time of year is work. Even I don't find that to be entertaining, so I have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find something I can write about. Fortunately, I have a Twitter account to steal from, which is about as bottom of the barrel as you can get.
Of course, even Twitter isn't the best source of material right now, as I usually ignore it so I can Get Stuff Done. But every once in a while I have a free minute while I'm on the phone or waiting for a 3-D image to render or whatever. Then I can wax poetic to the Twitterverse with my usual brand of madcap insanity. If you already follow me on Twitter, then this can be considered a "best of the worst" summary. If you don't follow me on Twitter, then boy are you in for a tweet!
Errr... I meant treat.
Sometimes I share health tips and free medical advice...
Sometimes I feel like going full-on political...
Sometimes I say things that will incriminate me in a court of law...
Sometimes I share my email with everybody...
And I am happy to follow-up with any updates...
Sometimes I share my frustrations with topics of the day...
Sometimes I offer helpful suggestions, like when John Krasinski from The Office was rumored to be a possible candidate for playing Captain America in the new movie, I had the perfect idea for casting Cap's sidekick "Bucky"...
I mean, seriously, they make such a great pair as Jim and Dwight on The Office that it could totally work. Except I got a few nasty comments, so I had to put my Photoshop where my mouth was...
More Twitter madness follows in an extended entry...
As the clock edges ever closer to midnight I sit here trying to think of something I can blog about, and hoping that something interesting will happen in the world very soon now just in case I draw a blank. Such is the life of a blogger in boring February.
Then Twitter lights up with the news that a massive earthquake has struck in Chile, generating a tsunami warning that could very well threaten the entire Pacific Rim.
If this isn't the perfect example to be careful what you wish for, I don't know what is.
All my thoughts are with the people of Chile as I mentally prepare myself for the onslaught of tragic imagery that is sure to be awaiting me when I wake up in the morning. I'd like to think that after the horrific photos released from Haiti that I'd be numb to this kind of thing by now... but it never happens.
Just one of the down-sides of being human, I guess.
Late last night while I was waiting for an email response, I thought that I'd go through the 37 abandoned blog posts in my "drafts" folder. The majority of them were unfinished, but a few were completed entries that I decided not to post for one reason or another (usually because they were angry rants that I thought I had better sit on for a few days). Surprisingly, a full half of the abandoned posts were either geeky or technical in nature, and I ended up ditching them because nobody except me would ever care to read them.
Then, just as I was ready to do a DELETE->ALL on my drafts folder, I had a change of heart. That was a lot of work I was about to trash, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. This is what always happens, and I justify it by saying "well, I'll finish them up and post them someday"... secretly knowing that it will never happen. That's how I ended up with 37 drafts in the first place.
But just because I didn't want to post them here doesn't mean that I can't find another home for them. It was then that I got the bright idea to dust off my Tumblr account and re-brand it as a repository for all the crap that's left over from my blog. Blogography Bits was born...
I've temporarily slapped a DaveToon on a Tumblr template, but I'll eventually integrate it into my site when I find some free time.
So far I've posted...
With more to come.
Maybe nobody will bother reading my leftover crap, but that's okay. It's still a happier alternative to deleting stuff that doesn't work out for my blog!
For the most part, I stayed silent on the internets today out of solidarity for the National Day of Silence. After I posted my blog entry last night, that was the end until I got home from work.
For those not in the know, the National Day of Silence is where hundreds of thousands of students nationwide take a vow of silence to bring attention to bullying and harassment of gay, lesbian, bi and transexual students in their schools. After hearing first-hand about the horrors that students can face for simply being who they are, it's a cause I am compelled to support. It's tough enough to get through those awkward school years without facing such unbearable cruelty day-in and day-out...
In entirely different news, I found this photo I took while I was in Venice, and now I am a little obsessed with going back there...
Beautiful sunsets, great food, and a new Hard Rock Cafe. What more could you want?
And away we go...
Wish us luck at the border. I am hoping that I don't have to submit to a full cavity search this time.
It's only 9:00, but I'm already in bed. I feel that I've earned it seeing as how I woke up at 3:30am this morning to try and get caught up on work. The only problem is that A) I have a blog entry to write, and B) Somebody in the neighborhood is working on a construction project with hammers and power tools. As if that weren't enough, C) Today was an altogether bizarre day, which means my head is not is a place conducive to sleep.
I can break down the bizarre happenings as follows...
And now that hammering has finally stopped, so I guess it's time to try and get some sleep. Tomorrow is another very long day.
I'm making a futile effort to update my non-functional blog on Bullet Sunday! Nothing is more fun than coming back from a long trip and finding out that your blogging software refuses to publish entries!
• Bridge! After spending Friday visiting every "Featured Gowalla Spot" in Manhattan (and one in The Bronx). I noticed that there were only three spots left to claim in NYC... The Statue of Liberty, JFK International Airport, and The Brooklyn Bridge. Since the three times I've visited Lady Liberty are enough, and I had no intention of going all the way out to JFK, that left me looking at The Brooklyn Bridge badge. I hadn't walked the bridge in over a decade because I always just take the subway to get to Brooklyn. But it was a beautiful day and I had time to kill, so away I went...
It was a fantastic walk, and left me wondering why I don't make time cross the Brooklyn Bridge every time I'm in New York City.
• Brooklyn! One of the best reasons to cross the Brooklyn Bridge is to have pizza from Grimaldi's...
Alas, it's rough to visit the place when you're alone because they don't sell individual slices. I probably would have ordered an entire pizza just because it tastes so good, but I didn't have two hours to hang around waiting for them to open. Instead I just wandered around the pretty tree-lined streets for a while before heading back to Manhattan...
• Spot! One goal I had for myself was to create a Gowalla Spot while I was in New York, but most of the good ones have long-since been taken. I didn't want to just pick some random business I'd never go to, but instead was looking for something a little more interesting. I finally found it when I saw that a metal sculpture honoring the Brooklyn Bridge creators on the centennial of the bridge's opening...
You can see the spot I founded over at Gowalla.
• Bagel! I ate two bagels every morning I was in New York City. When I wasn't eating bagels, I was eating slices of pizza. As I sit here writing this, it has suddenly occurred to me that I won't have another decent bagel or pizza slice until the next time I end up in New York, which could be months (years?) away. Now I am filled with dread at the thought of eating my next "bagel," which will probably not be from NYC and taste like rubberized crap. It's sad, really.
• Wind! Just like yesterday, gusting winds were ripping through the city which made air travel a bit problematic. My flight was delayed four times before I had even made it to Newark, which was a very bad thing because I had a tight connection in Seattle to catch my flight home. Ultimately we "made time up in the air" and so I was able to get to my connecting gate with three minutes to spare. Sometimes you just get lucky. Well, I usually don't, but most people do.
I miss New York already.
I'd try and fix my blog so I can publish this, but it's past midnight and I have an early day.
I am writing this entry knowing full well that I won't be able to publish it (just as I haven't been able to publish my Bullet Sunday entry from yesterday). It may seem insane, but if I get out of the habit of writing every day I'd probably stop blogging altogether. I'm a creature of habit that way.
All my attempts to fix Blogography have failed. I think something got seriously screwed up when I tried to update an entry during one of my web hosting company's many, many service failures. Now the entry is "stuck" somehow, and nothing works. My only option is to delete my blog, do a fresh installation of the software, and then import all my templates, entries and comments back into the system.
It's a little scary to realize I could end up losing seven years of my online life if things go terribly wrong.
In other news, Frank Frazetta, one of my favorite artists has died. Though many people may not recognize his name, it's certain they have been exposed to his work. As one of the gods of fantasy illustration, Frazetta has churned out countless works of originality and stunning beauty for everything from posters to book covers. I first became aware of his work from the covers he created for several Edgar Rice Burroughs novels, including the "John Carter of Mars" books...
Thanks to Mr. Frazetta for helping to fuel my imagination for so many years. Though lost to us now, his work will endure.
UPDATE! Thanks to kind suggestions from one of my readers, things are up and running again! Thanks, ManBearPig... whoever (or whatever) you may be!
And I'm off...
With company like The Bitch Who is Dutch and The Lady Who is Penelope, everybody pray I survive the weekend!
That's okay... I didn't really feel like blogging tonight anyway...
Every fucking time my site goes down, Media Temple has some new excuse as to why it's happening. Then they mark the issue "resolved" even though I know damn well another outage is just around the corner. This has been happening for YEARS, ever since they moved their shared-hosting accounts to a "(gs) Grid Server" architecture. And even though the "Grid Server" has been a massive, catastrophic bucket of FAIL! since day one, they continue to cling to it like some miracle is going to happen any day now, and it's suddenly going to be the stable, reliable hosting platform they promise in their advertising...
RELIABILITY? SERIOUSLY?!? It's this kind of delusional bullcrap that drives me bat-shit insane... even more so than the outages themselves. HELPFUL HINT: GRID SERVER DOES NOT WORK! IT NEVER HAS! Even when it's running, it's still slow as shit... sometimes to the point of being unusable. And lest we forget that Media Temple offers NO BACKUP SERVICE. That option was removed from my control panel when I was moved to the "Grid Server" and has never returned (it was promised for a while, but now this critical service which even the cheapest web hosting companies offer as standard equipment has been forgotten). So on top of being unstable, unreliable, and unresponsive, Media Temple hosting is also unsafe.
It's everything you dream of in a web hosting company!
I am so sick and fucking tired of Media Temple treating every new incident as an individual problem that can be checked off as "fixed" when the Big Picture is that their "Grid Server" hosting sucks ass and will likely NEVER be fixed. On the contrary, things just keep getting worse and worse as the problems become more and more frequent.
I have just over six months of my contract before I can walk away from Media Temple's busted-ass bullshit hosting. I am literally counting the days...
Hopefully I can last this long so I don't end up losing all the money I put into my contract.
Seriously... AGAIN?!? I keep getting some kind of "connectivity error" when I try to post...
Just my luck I've been hacked or something.
Actually, that would be lucky for you... I don't feel very lucky at all.
I have to get up early, early for work in the morning, so I did what most bloggers would do in these circumstances... spend what precious little valuable time I have making appearances at two other blogs!
Unfortunately this means I don't have any time left to spend on my own blog. Well, at least not if I want to have time to read yet another exciting chapter of the genius that is "Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama" by Bill O'Reilly*.
Anyway, here's where you can find me in the blogosphere tonight...
That's two, two, TWO Canadian guest blog posts in one day!
My work here is done.
*And by "Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama" I actually mean the latest issue of "Penthouse", which is far more politically insightful.
One of my favorite blogs is Letters of Note, which is a fascinating collection of letters by famous persons which have been nicely transcribed. I happened across it a year ago while researching Alan Moore's work on Marvelman, and have been a huge fan ever since. Pulling a few recent entries from the webfeed, there's a letter from John Lennon saying Yoko Ono doesn't sweat, a speech for President Nixon if the moon landing should fail, John Byrne's introduction of Kitty Pryde to X-Men, and a letter from J.K. Rowling to a young fan about her plan for seven Harry Potter books. The site is addictive, and there's some amazing stuff to be found in their well-organized archives.
It's all good stuff, but this morning's entry "To My Widow," is particularly touching. It's a letter written by doomed South Pole explorer Robert Falcon Scott to his wife when he realized the expedition party wouldn't survive the journey back...
I became interested in the so-called "Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration" after visiting Frammuseet (The Fram Museum) in Norway, which is home to a ship used for expeditions to both of earth's poles... including the Amundsen Antarctic expedition which beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole by 35 days...
It's a fascinating period in history, and one which has been continuously reinterpreted since it began. Historians have alternately praise Robert Falcon Scott as a hero, then dismissed him as incompetent. Despite all that, Scott's journal (which has been brilliantly reproduced in blog-form!) makes for interesting reading. Humans are at their best and worst while on the cusp of discovery and high adventure, and first-hand historical accounts are a treasure.
In other news... it's Black Friday today! A magical time for our consumerism culture to run amok!
I try hard not to buy something "just because it's on sale," so this day isn't particularly special to me. But I do need to get a new television to replace my ailing one, so I'll keep my eyes open and see if anything interesting turns up. Hopefully I'll find something before mine dies completely, because television is where humanity finds itself on the cusp of awesome discoveries and high adventure
Or at least it will be until the last episode of Hannah Montana airs early next year.
As somebody who endeavors to take the high road in most things, I ended up deleting the blog entry I hammered out for today. Sometimes it's better to just let sleeping dogs lie.
At least for now.
As always, I reserve the right to unleash my righteous fury at a later date.
2010 -> AUDIO -> VIDEO -> DAVE
JANUARY
• Realized the right tool for the job won't actually get me a free date with Elizabeth Hurley.
• Opened my big mouth and got the entire wine-connoisseur world pissed at me.
• AND NOW, FROM THE BLOGGER WHO BROUGHT YOU PENIS SALAD...
• Found out that somebody stole my monkey.
• Found a vagina on the sidewalk.
FEBRUARY
• Discovered that Canadians are responsible for the pussification of America, and showed them how REAL AMERICANS GET SHIT DONE!!
• Seattle FINALLY got a Hard Rock Cafe, and I got my 125th visit.
• Released my medical findings on a cure for the common cold to Twitter (and so much more).
MARCH
• That Crasher Squirrel has been showing up everywhere...
• Just like Lindsay Lohan's cootchie...
• Took my annual Birthday Vacation and ended up in Dutchyland, and Brussels, and Bucharest, and Transylvania, and Prague.
APRIL
• Explained why Roger Ebert is WRONG about video games not being art.
• Attended THE blogging event of the year... TEQUILACON 2010 VANCOUVER!
MAY
• Went to New York for a-ha's farewell tour and to hang out with awesome people while Betty White made her Emmy-winning SNL appearance.
• Got the tackiest phone call ever.
• Took a dump on Lost and then went out for pizza with RW, which ended up having far-reaching consequences you'll find out about later this year.
• Summed up my position on the BP oil spill.
JUNE
• Saw the Worst. Movie. Ever.
• WAY TO GO BLACKHAWKS!!
• Had more fun than should legally be allowed at Bitchsterdam 2!
• Rush Limbaugh is a vile piece of shit.
JULY
• Saw one of the best episodes of television ever (thank you Steven Moffat, The BBC, and Dr. Who!). I can honestly say that I think this is the only time I cried in all of 2010.
• Sarah Palin is a fucking idiot.
• Went on a tour of the USA with stops in Hollywood, San Diego for Comic Con, and Atlanta for Watermelon Beer, and Tulsa, and Kansas, and Chicago.
AUGUST
• Explained to haters who don't like being referred to as a hater that they kind are.
• Paid a visit to mah Hilly-Sue and FooDiddy in Sacramento.
• Got a visit from Muskrat and Whit in Seattle.
• Was inspired beyond my ability to express by the final words of a legend.
SEPTEMBER
• Took a Mediterranean vacation and saw such remarkable places as Barcelona, and Malta, and Tunisia, and The Amalfi Coast, and Rome, and Portofino, and Corsica, and Monaco. As if all that wasn't enough, I got to have breakfast with Mickey Mouse!
• Remembered The Golden Rule and became the biggest evil dumbass inhuman monster of them all.
OCTOBER
• Nearly crapped myself watching a television show.
• Partied down in rural Wisconsin... a good place to be!
• Got all poitical for a minute.
• Wore purple for a very important cause...
• Went to Albuquerque to gamble away my money at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino there.
• Found out my iPhone can take some pretty decent photos if I bother to stop and look around because there's an app for that...
NOVEMBER
• Went back to Atlanta, this time for Pumpkin Beer and good friends... then a tour of THE WALKING DEAD!
• Took a look at porn and handjobs in the interest of airport security.
DECEMBER
• Want to know where to go on vacation? Here are some of my suggestions!.
• "Take your stupid war and go fuck yourself with it."
• Took some pictures in the snow.
• Took on stupid bitches and the law, and went ape-shit over net-neutrality, and was shocked as hell by a moment of lucidity from Pat Robertson.
And that was pretty much what happened with me in 2010. How about you?
Hope your 2011 is a good one, and thanks for reading!
I am posting this at 11:11 on 1-1-11 because it seemed like a good thing to do.
When it comes to New Year's resolutions, I'm pretty boring because I have the exact same New Year's resolutions every year. The same five goals going on for heaven only knows how long. This year is no different, except I am working on some projects which will definitely add some excitement to my 2011. More on that later.
Here's my score card for fulfilling my resolutions in 2010...
Here's hoping that the Pop-Tart people keep making new flavors so I can fulfill my resolutions again this year!
And now for what's new this decade...
I work. A lot. And while it's work I love, the fact that it's non-stop and never-ending has sucked most of the joy out of what I do. This year I am trying to rediscover the joys to be found in creativity by coming up with projects just for me. Five new projects to go with the same five resolutions I do every year. Five projects centering around stuff I like to do, but don't get to do so much any more...
And here we go...
DAVE'S FIVE PROJECTS FOR 2011
• The Hard Rock Project. I owe the Hard Rock Cafe a huge debt for continuing to inspire me to travel to new places. When I think of all the awesome cities I've discovered that I would have never visited if not for a Hard Rock being there, my gratitude knows no bounds. Coming up with a project to celebrate my love of Hard Rock collectibles wasn't easy, but then I saw my closet packed full of their T-shirts and the HARD ROCK 100 PROJECT was born. For 100 days I'll be wearing a favorite Hard Rock T-shirt from my collection and sharing the photo both on my DaveCafe fan site and my DaveCafe Flickr feed. Here is Day One (which you can read about by clicking on it)...
• The Artificial Duck Project. After losing my T-shirt printer, twice, I kind of let the Artificial Duck Co. store languish for a year. That's going to change. I've been working on some new T-Shirts and will be getting that set up at yet another printer soon. But that's not all... more totally sweet crap you can't live without is being planned and should be appearing this Summer.
• The Writing Project. After being invited to RW's house for pizza and plenty of good conversation, I realized that I wanted to start writing again. I used to write stories all the time, and loved the escape I got from it. But then my blog kind of took over all my writing time and I stopped. This Spring that's going to change in a big way. You'll be finding out all about it sometime in March.
• The Drawing Project. Before computers took over all my design work, I used to draw, paint, and even sculpt. Don't get me wrong, I love designing on the computer, but it's not the same as "getting your hands dirty" with a pencil and a drawing pad. Proving that one thing leads to another, The Writing Project led to me finding The Drawing project. It's been a lot of fun, and should also be debuting in March.
• The Secret Project. Yeah, this one is going to take a while... most of the year, in fact. I'm waaaayyyy over my head this time. And loving every minute of it. So far.
And that's it. Plans are already in motion.
Here's to an interesting 2011.
I have never told the whole story of how my blogging mascots, Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey, came to be. I thought perhaps I would save it for their tenth birthday in 2012, but something has come up to change my mind. Thanks to an offer too good to refuse, I managed to purchase a custom Gowalla stamp featuring the DaveToon Duo. For those not familiar with Gowalla, it is a location-based social networking game where you can follow where your friends go, collect location stamps, find interesting new spots, and keep track of the places you've been.
Until recently "custom stamps" were only available to "landmark" spots like The Eiffel Tower or to spots that the Gowalla Team liked (usually in Austin, where they are based). But there was an entry-price stamp test program I signed up for and, voilà, Blogography has it's own stamp...
My logo on the left, the Gowalla stamp interpretation on the right (enlarged 250%).
And now the story of how I cam up with Bad Monkey and Lil' Dave. So I can do a good job of it, I've got back through all my old file archives and pulled out all my early sketches and drawings, so you can see how things came together from the very beginning.
Surprisingly, Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey were not created for Blogography. They were originally drawn up to solve a problem at my other blog, DaveCafe, which is a travel journal and review site for all the Hard Rock Cafes I've been to.
The problem was that I love the Hard Rock, and I felt really terrible when I had something bad to say about one of my visits. Trying to distance myself from my own criticism, I came up with the idea of having an alter-ego who would talk about anything "bad" which would leave me to be the hero and talk about all the good stuff from my visit. Since I've long been fascinated by monkeys, I thought that it would be cool to have a kind of "Curious George" sidekick... but wicked-crazy instead of curious to deliver the bad news.
And thus the idea for "Dave and Bad Monkey" was born while I was in New York on July 13th, 2002.
When starting out on a project like this, I often fill an entire page with a "base" element (in this case, a head-shape) then draw up numerous variations around it. At this point, I was mainly concerned with getting the hair right, but was also working on the eyes and nose. The mouth was always going to be a simple slit from the very beginning, as the Dave character was supposed to be "neutral" when delivering his review...
As I drew more and more variations, I was refining the hair to be more styled. In the beginning, it's simple shapes and pen-tool scribblings, but ends up having curves to look more realistic. Once I got to the last head, I thought the hair was getting a little too perfect. Which doesn't really look like me at all. My hair is a perpetual mess, and so I went back and redrew the last row to have a more spikey look in the bangs.
Below is a close-up of some of the characters above. Originally, the eyes were all round, but I went back and started trying ovals. I wasn't sure of the right size so I played with that as well...
After filling the page and getting to a hairstyle I liked, I realized that my head-shapes were too vertical. Computer screens are wider than they are tall so I wanted a character which would economize height. Working on a copy of the file, I turned all the heads horizontal and rearranged the hair and facial features to fit...
The wider head made Dave look much, much younger, so I toyed with the idea of adding a five o'clock shadow so he'd look more like an adult.
At this point, I thought the round eyes made Dave look stoned so I changed everything to ovals. Then I became convinced that the oval head-shape was lazy, and started playing around with the idea of using more of a squashed-egg look instead. Once I did that, the rounded hair was starting to look "over-styled" to me again, so I went back to my original concept and started messing around with simple pen-tool spikes for hair...
After a number of head-shape iterations I decided to go back to an oval. The egg-shape made his cheeks look pudgy, and I liked the simplicity of an oval better. Wanting to simplify things further, I removed the lines in the ears. I had abandoned the five o'clock shadow for a while but eventually came back to it because I thought it made my character more unique...
It was around this time that I became obsessed with the nose. Up until this point they had all tapered at the bridge in order to add depth to the shape. But I disliked having something so pointy on the face. The only thing spikey was supposed to be the hair, and so I re-drew the nose with a consistent pen width. It still bothered me, but at least it looked "right" on the face now. The last thing I worked on was the hair. Since Dave was flat I liked the idea of making the hairstyle two-dimensional. That way I could just flop his hair to make him point in the other direction.
After roughly two hours of sketching across six Adobe Illustrator pages, I had narrowed down the design to two choices...
At this point, my decision was easy. The rounded hair looked like a strange comb-over and seemed a bit ordinary. The spikey hair was more cartoony, interesting, and reminded me of one of the greatest cartoon characters of all time, Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. So all that was left was to create a Bad Monkey sidekick. There was no sketching this time around. I removed the hair and face from Dave, shrunk it, then just drew a monkey face on it. The total design time for my monkey pal was probably five minutes...
The problem was that he didn't look very "bad" and came across as kind of sedate. I thought the beady round eyes would add a little crazy, but it wasn't enough. Thinking I was over-thinking things, I went ahead and published the cartoon heads at DaveCafe and went to bed.
Then couldn't get to sleep. It really bugged me that Bad Monkey was getting short changed, since using him as a scapegoat was what caused me to create the cartoons in the first place. Rather than do variations of a dozen different monkey heads, I just kept tweaking and fine-tuning the drawing I already had. I remember adding spikey fur on his head, but he looked too much like Dave. Eventually I thought I'd just draw him screeching with his mouth open because it was the only way I could think of to make him look a little insane...
And just like that, I had found Dave and Bad Monkey!
Except not quite.
When I reduced the heads down to size, Dave's mouth looked a bit like a grimace, so I redrew it as a smile. And hated it. His nose, which had always bothered me, looked like a blob when outlined in black, so I changed it to something more subtle. I wasn't terribly happy with the end result, but it was getting very late, so I went ahead and published them anyway...
And that's how the characters would stay for nearly a year.
Tune in tomorrow for the exciting finale...
Can you feel the excitement? Can you? Well I'll see you tomorrow then!
Here it is... PART TWO of the story of how my DaveToon blog mascots came to be! If you haven't read Part One yet, you'll probably want to do that first.
Right off the bat, I'm going to have to apologize for lying to you yesterday. I had promised that I'd be sharing NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D but, alas, I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow so I can get a few problems with the 3-D to 2-D rendering sorted. It will be worth the wait though, I promise!
Anyway, getting back to the story... Bad Monkey and Lil' Dave had been languishing on my Hard Rock fansite, DaveCafe, for just over a year. Then, in September of 2003, I was preparing for a trip to visit Hard Rock Cafes in Reykjavik and Stockholm. A fellow Hard Rocker in Japan had once given me his "Hard Rock business card" and I decided that was a handy thing to have. I could put my email and website address on it and hand it out to Hard Rock fans I meet. My cheap-o ink-jet printed cards ended up looking like this...
At this point, the DaveToons had (literally) become my calling card for DaveCafe. But it was this humble blog where most of my time and effort were going. Finally, inevitably, on February 11th, 2004, worlds collided. I had written a Blogography entry where I mentioned a monkey showing up at work with an ebola virus, and it occurred to me that I could make Bad Monkey be that monkey. But he and Toon-Dave were only heads, so I had to slap together some bodies for them. Since I thought it was important for people to know where they came from, I put the DaveCafe logo on Toon Dave's shirt...
You'll also note that I had to figure out how to make Toon-Dave's head turn, which was a lot more complicated than you might guess. It took hours for me to figure out how that might work, since he's so firmly rooted in two dimensions. Eventually, I just slapped an ear on the side of his head where I thought it should go, then worked the hair around it.
Now that Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey had more than just heads, it was time to redesign my DaveCafe site. I announced the coming change around the end of February, 2004...
And the site went live in April with Toon Dave doing all kinds of interesting stuff...
For the next couple of years, Toon Dave continued to make dozens of appearances at Blogography. Bad Monkey made zero appearances. He was meant to embody negativity over at DaveCafe, and I made a conscious effort to keep him there. About the only thing new to happen was that Toon Dave got a very important addition to his anatomy in January of 2005 (I thought it was pretty impressive, but Avitable would take it to an entirely new level a few years later)...
While not really "new," in June, 2005 I decided I wanted to try my hand at animating DaveToons. With absolutely no experience, I started studying what it would take to make them speak. The idea was to create a cartoon talk show called Dave's Bad-Ass Blogography Show...
The following month I played around with the idea of making them move using Flash...
It was a fun experiment, but proved far too time-consuming for me to take seriously. Maybe one day I'll find the time to actually make a complete animation. Maybe.
2006 was the year things started changing. First of all, Bad Monkey made the first of many, many appearances in January. I finally found a use for him where he could be as bad as he wanted to be...
Granted, it was a pretty crappy appearance. Bad Monkey's body was just Toon Dave's body colored brown. Still, it was a start.
And then things really changed.
When DaveToons first started appearing in Blogography, they were specifically designed to be as fast and easy to draw as possible. Toon Dave didn't have hands, he had mittens. Fingers take time to draw. Bad Monkey didn't look like a monkey, he looked like a person dressed as a monkey. Lanky limbs and tails take time to draw. Everything was colored flat and boring. Shaded color takes time to draw. I was perfectly happy with all the DaveToons looking crappy because they took almost no time to slap together.
But eventually it started to reeeeaally bother me. The more appearances they made on my blog, the more upset I'd get that they didn't look as good as they should. So on May 6th, 2006, I spent a couple of hours and started over from scratch. With a DaveToon I titled Best Friends, Toon Dave and Bad Monkey were reborn...
It took about a year for the transition to fully take effect, but the look had finally been fixed. Now that the look was fixed, it was the name "Toon Dave" that was bothering me. Toon Dave was no longer just a toon version of myself. He was an entirely different character with an entirely different life. Fortunately, when I guest-blogged over at Hilly's Snackiepoo blog in August of 2006, the solution was at hand. She called her mascot "Lil' Snackie" and so "Toon Dave" became "Lil' Dave" and the name stuck...
After that? Well, I briefly played around with animation again...
...but Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey would stay pretty much the same throughout their many new adventures over the next two years.
The next "Big Thing" wouldn't happen until the end of 2008.
And it was SO big that nobody ever saw it. Until tomorrow. Tomorrow, at long last, NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D! And exactly WHY were Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D two years ago? Well, that's a very good question. And I'll explain that tomorrow too!
I have to warn you though, it's a very sad (and very expensive) tale, so bring a hankerchief.
At long last... PART THREE of the story of how my DaveToon blog mascots came to be! If you haven't read Part One yet, you'll probably want to do that first... and then Part Two is right here.
Okay. Okay. I know. I made a promise that yesterday I would reveal for the first time anywhere NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D. But, because of some kind of technical problems with a software upgrade, I couldn't render them into 2-D pictures. So last night I made a few phone calls to get that sorted, and here we are.
But before I reveal the images, you're probably wondering exactly WHY Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey would be rendered into 3-D in the first place. That's a very good question. There's actually two reasons...
Now, you have to admit that either of those reasons were awesome enough for me to want to get 3-D models made. Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey dolls? AWESOME! A Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey video game? AWESOME!
And so I paid a very talented computer animator a lot of money to make the models.
Unfortunately, neither of these awesome projects came to be. I'll explain what happened in a minute, but let's get to the 3-D renderings, shall we?
First up... BAD MONKEY! Note that his tail is sticking straight out. This is on purpose, because it would be animated bouncing up and down as he walked in the video game, and it was easier to do this if it were starting from a straight position. The animator would curl it when he defined how it would move in the walk cycle...
Pretty sweet, huh? It took a LOT of back-and-forth with the animator to translate a
And then there's Lil' Dave. Who needed to start out naked with no hair for video game reasons I'll explain later...
And here he is with clothes. The hair wasn't finished exactly right at this point, but it was getting close...
So the models look great, what's the story?
THE DOLLS.
The dolls were going to be very cool. VERY cool. Their arms and legs would move. They would have fun accessories. They would have awesome packaging. They would come in three versions (called "Colorways" in the biz)... 1) Classic Dolls, 2) ZOMBIE Dolls, and 3) Limited Edition BLANK "Paint Your Own" Dolls. Unfortunately, the company handling the job went out of business. My dream of having Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey vinyl dolls (along with an $800 deposit) vanished overnight.
THE VIDEO GAME.
If the loss of the vinyl dolls was tough on me, the loss of the video game was devastating. In addition to being out the money I invested in having the models made, I was out hundreds of hours in pesonal time. I wrote the game story. I helped design game levels. I designed the level maps. I drew hundreds of concept sketches. I painted hundreds of object textures. I invested time working on things like "walk cycles" and "cut scenes." Then one day I got The Call. The school was converting to some kind of learning internship agency. The theory was that this would be better for the students because they'd be getting hands-on experience at real gaming companies. The reality was that there wasn't enough internship positions to go around. So even if the guy working on my game could get an internship, he would then be working on the company's projects and not mine. Instead he lost his education financing and had to stop working on the DaveToon game so he could find a new school.
This was a real shame, because it would have been a pretty cool game. It was designed to be relatively easy, so young kids and adults with no gaming experience could play. But it was still funny enough that even a gamer would want to play to see what happened. The story revolved around Lil' Dave trying to avoid an invasion of robot monsters and solving puzzles so he could find his way home. Along the way, Bad Monkey would show up to help... and sometimes hinder... his progress. Lil' Dave replenished his health by finding chocolate pudding cups hidden around in the game. You couldn't really "die" while playing, but you could get thrown into "Zombie Mode" if your health ran out. If you couldn't get out of "Zombie Mode," you'd turn into a ghost (with no hair or clothes... just a glowing outline), fly back to the beginning of the level, grab a new body, then have to start over.
And there you have it. The NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN images of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey in 3-D!
And the really sad story as to why you never saw them.
Maybe one day somebody will come along and want to work on the game again. Or maybe I'll get bored sometime and write a blog entry with the NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN sketches, paintings, bits and pieces that I spent a big chunk of my personal time working on in 2009. The good news is that you might finally understand what I was trying to say with this entry. And this entry.
So what's next for Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey?
Well... there are always possibilities. I definitely plan on new T-shirts. There will absolutely be more DaveToons on Blogography. And there are other things... secret things... I've got ideas for which may or may not happen.
When it comes to Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey, you just never know.
Welcome to a totally unexpected... PART FOUR of a series detailing the evolution of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey over the years. I say unexpected, because I thought yesterday was the end of it, but I got some emails and questions, so I thought I would extend another day.
First of all, a look at what could have been with the "colorways" of the DaveToon vinly dolls I was working on before the company closed-up shop. Here's the painting instruction sheet I made for the manufacturer (I removed the paint color notations so you can see the characters better)...
The dolls would have come as a set in a custom-designed box with a clear plastic window in the front and various "accessories" tied to a background card behind them. I hadn't actually drawn the box, because I was waiting to get the final shape, but I had sketched out some concepts based on an old G.I. JOE box I had found. The idea was to make it look slightly "vintage" and show all the features and accessories as EXCITING FEATURES on the back and sides. The box would be the same for all the versions, but a space would have been reserved to sticker the three variants...
And that's as far as I got. I was supposed to get prototype dolls and a bunch of other stuff for the deposit I payed, but I never saw any of it. For those who asked, the pricing is a tricky business, because I hadn't gotten information on duties and taxes and shipping fees. My goal was to sell the "Classic" dolls for $15-$17, the "Zombie" dolls for $22-$25, and the "Custom" dolls for $30-$35... but that could have gone up or down depending on how everything ultimately got costed out. Considering a single 6-inch doll usually sells for around $40, I thought my pricing was pretty good. The idea wasn't so much to make money, but to simply cover the costs of making the dolls... just because I wanted them! Oh well.
One of the most popular questions I continue to get is "How do you draw your DaveToons?" I had answered this question in a smart-assed way back in September, 2006 (NSFW!)... but it's probably time to give a serious answer. While I don't have time to create a comprehensive "How-To" showing every last detail as to how things are done, what I CAN do is run through all the steps it takes to draw one of my characters...
BUT FIRST, FAIR WARNING: I will absolutely concede that this will look a heck of a lot easier than it actually is. If you are not familiar with Adobe Illustrator, then you should understand that this is a program that takes years to master. I have been drawing with Illustrator most every day for over twenty years and there are still things I have problems with. I just want to be sure that somebody reading this doesn't think "Wow, this is simple! I'm going to draw cartoons too!" then run out and spend $600 on Adobe Illustrator only to find out that it's not quite as easy as all that.
With that having ben said, you can see the basic concepts that go into how I approach the "DaveToon Look" in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
And so I had a few spare minutes and decided to update my blog software.
Things haven't quite gone as planned, so now I'm having to restore from a backup and try to figure out what went wrong.
Bad Monkey is on the case...
Avitable recently wrote a blog entry titled "What's Better Than That?" (which was a continuation of a blog entry he made in 2010) where he asked his readers to contribute a "greater than" chain of items. I came up with a few random topics, but felt uncomfortable just tossing them out without any explanation, so I decided to make a blog entry of my own.
For reasons I will never understand, I have a big problem with drinking out of anything made of plastic. I hate drinking from plastic containers of any kind. The feel of it is wrong, and the idea of it touching my teeth freaks me out. For this same reason, I don't use plastic drinking straws. Unless I've got a plastic cup, then I use a straw because it's a lesser amount of plastic touching my mouth. Ideally, I want to drink out of something made of glass. Paper cups are okay too. Of course, just about anything is okay compared to plastic. Hideous plastic.
I'm not talking about a style of cuisine. I'm talking about food in a country. With this in mind, Italy is the country where I most love to eat. Pizza, pasta, gelato... all my favorite foods are Italian. The problem is that Italian food seems to always diminish (or outright suck) outside of Italy. Take my favorite dish, for example: Fettuccine Alfredo. At the original restaurant where it was invented in Rome, it's made from impossibly thin noodle ribbons mixed with lots of butter and parmesan cheese. THE END. Go to Olive Garden here in the States and suddenly "Fettuccine Alfredo" becomes these thick, gummy noodles covered in a weak cream sauce that's got some garlic and other shit in it. THAT'S NOT FETTUCCINE ALFREDO! It would be like ordering a hamburger and getting a slice of chicken between two slices of turnip. After Italy, I like eating best in Spain and right here at home in the USA. The worst place I've been to eat is Korea. Not because the food is necessarily bad, but because vegetarian options are severely limited. After four days of kimchee and pickled vegetables, I didn't want to eat anymore.
All of my favorite music is stuck in the 80's. That's when Depeche Mode, The Thompson Twins, OMD, New Order, The Smiths, Erasure, Duran Duran, and loads of other bands I love were at their peak. No other era of music even comes close. Though I have to say that I've really been liking the latest stuff I've been hearing from the likes of Matt & Kim, Foster the People, Mackintosh Braun, and such. Add in the awesome new album by OMD, and the 2010 decade is off to an exciting start. Then comes the 1990's, which I like pretty much because the earliest parts were a continuation of the 80's, and a lot of bands I love continued to release new stuff. That was also when the "Seattle Sound" exploded and I loved being in the middle of it all. After that I'd have to go with the 1960's, simply because that's when the Beatles were dominating. From there on out... meh. I thought the 2000's were pretty lame for the kind of music I like. And the 1970's were polluted with really bad disco, which I hated, so badly that I took refuge in the emerging punk rock scene. As for the future? If the great stuff I've been loving recently continues, I'm looking forward to the decade.
Here's the deal. I love Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. These two movies alone are more beloved by me than all other sci-fi in the universe combined. But then Return of the Jedi came out and fucked up everything because George Lucas wanted to sell cute Ewok toys more than he wanted to tell a compelling story. Even so, The Star Wars Trilogy sat at the very top of my list... until the prequel trilogy was unleashed. Thanks to Jar Jar Binks, Annie Skywalker, and stupid-ass shit that reduced Star Wars to idiotic burp and fart jokes, the unthinkable happened. Star Wars was ruined for me. As much as I tried, I couldn't un-watch The Phantom Menace. It was then that my love of Star Trek (the ORIGINAL cast series and films) grew brighter, eclipsing Star Wars in a way that was previously unthinkable. Sure I thought that the sequel series kept getting worse and worse (Voyager was so awful I stopped watching), but the bulk of the Star Trek Universe is pretty good stuff. Even so, everything else in sci-fi falls way, way behind Star Wars.
I understand why most of the world thinks Disney is the premiere source of animation on earth... honestly I do. The golden age of Disney spans decades, and has given us some of the most breathtaking animated features ever seen. But the films of Hayao Miyazaki are mind-blowing. They use animation as a way of telling stories that are truly revolutionary and remarkable. Animation allows us to break the bounds of reality. But Miyazaki breaks the bounds of imagination. I dearly love and treasure his every work, and when you take his entire oeuvre you get something unmatched in brilliance, eclipsing even Disney. Then along comes Pixar, whose work I also love. They simply don't know how to make a bad film, and may eventually overcome Disney in terms of masterworks. No list of animation favorites would be complete without Aardman, responsible for Wallace & Gromit and other genius. If I were to continue, I'd have to put Satoshi Kon on the list. Possibly Dreamworks. I'm sure there are many others.
You simply cannot exceed the greatness that was the original "Bond Girl"... Honey Rider as played by Ursula Andress. She set the benchmark for everyone that would follow, and has one of the single best entrances into a film ever made. Over the years new Bond Girls would come and go... some of them cool (Pussy Galore), some of them hot (Mary Goodnight), some of them bizarre (Xenia Onatopp), some of them boring (Octopussy), and some of them just plain bad (Christmas Jones). But the ones I always liked best were the Bond Girls who were beautiful and badass. I loved Melina from For Your Eyes Only because she was ruthless in her revenge, and equaled Bond in smarts. Jinx was played by Halle Berry... so enough said there. And Michelle Yeoh's turn as "Wai Lin" was so kickass that I found myself praying that the character would be reprised in the next Bond film. When compiling my list, I was surprised that there were very few Bond Girls I actively disliked. Most of them rose above the typical "damsel in distress" crap that women usually get relegated to in films like this, which I didn't realize until now. Interesting.
Shocking, I know. But seriously... nobody can touch them. Nobody comes close. For now.
And now?
As I write this, it's 8:11pm on April 19th, 2011. Thanks to events in Terminator 2, Skynet has just become self-aware and we're all doomed. I, for one, welcome our machine overlords.
Anyway...
You know how when you go to eat a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup how you have to go through all the hassle of removing that stupid brown paper cup? What a horrible waste of time! Who wants to mess with that crap? I buy Reese's Peanut Butter Cups because I want to eat them... not because I want to play around with stupid paper!
Well, the people at Hershey must have felt my pain and frustration, because they've released NEW Reese's Minis. Tiny little peanut butter cups that are UNWRAPPED, just like God intended...
So now there's no time blown on futzing with that stupid paper cup. You can just tear off the top and pour them into your mouth directly...
Now THAT'S how I eat a Reese's!
Annnnnnnd... SHIT! My entire website is down. Either Media Temple is dicking around with things AGAIN, or Skynet really has become self-aware, and I will never be able to post this entry!
Looks like Blogography has been terminated.
UPDATE: Annnnnnnd... we're back.
I've been mostly out of touch for the past several days, which is what happens when you spend every waking minute trying to get caught up with work before leaving for a week.
So I can then get behind all over again.
Two of my favorite lovely ladies in the blogosphere are celebrating milestone birthdays!
Becky turned 40 yesterday! I first met Becky at TequilaCon 2008 in Philadelphia. Since then we've bumped into each other at blogging events such as Avitaween and ConFab (where I learned that Becky packs a knife, and will totally cut a bitch for reals). By the time we first met that fateful day in May, I had already known Becky for months (thanks to the power of the internet) and thought she was awesome. But her online awesomeness pales when compared to her in-person awesomeness. Meeting Becky is not just a happening, it's an event. An experience. You fall in love with her instantly and become insanely jealous when she's talking to somebody who's not you. Despite turning you into a psychotic stalker, I highly recommend The Becky Experience if you even have the opportunity.
CRAZY-ASS BECKY TRIVIA MOMENT! For years on the internet, Becky was known as "Hello Haha Narf." When she first started appearing, I remember people asking me what in the hell that meant. I told them I didn't know. But the truth is I really did. Pinky and the Brain is one of the greatest cartoons ever made, so of course I know that "Hello Haha Narf" was how Pinky started his letter to Santa in the Christmas episode. To this day I have no idea why I lied. Maybe because I thought it was Becky's story to tell. Maybe because I liked the idea that I knew something about Becky other people didn't. Maybe I thought it was funny. Or maybe in addition to turning you into a psychotic stalker, Becky also turns you into a lying liar who lies. The world may never know.
Suebob turns 50 today! Unfortunately, I haven't met Suebob in person yet. I came really close in 2007 when she was going to come to Dave L.A. but didn't for some reason. Probably because after she said she was planning on coming, she took a minute to actually read my blog and decided for her personal safety and sanity that she shouldn't. And that's okay. I totally understand. If I read the crazy crap I write on Blogography, I would be afraid to meet me too. So no hard feelings. You go ahead and have a happy birthday, Suebob, and try not to think of me sitting at Lucky Strike sobbing quietly while asking everyone that passes "Where is Suebob? Have you seen Suebob?" Because I will be okay. Eventually. =sniff!= For the past 50 days, Suebob has been featuring charities on her blog where people can make a donation in lieu of a present (including my favorite charity). They are worthy organizations all, so please drop by and donate to somebody on her list if you have a few bucks to spare.
CRAZY-ASS SUEBOB TRIVIA MOMENT! Suebob's blog is called The Red Stapler. I actually have a red stapler at work! It's a beautiful Swingline 747 stapler that I bought way back in 2002 and it still operates perfectly today. I think Swingline made red staplers specifically because Milton had one in Office Space, and it looked so cool that everybody wanted one. At least I know I did... but I had to wait three years before I could buy one.
Happiest of birthdays to you both!
My blog died last night.
And a part of me was wanting to let it go.
That lasted about fifteen minutes. Then I started freaking out at the prospect of eight years of Blogography being flushed down the toilet. So I started going back through all the steps I took to upgrade my database to see if I could figure out what went wrong. When that didn't pan out, I started pouring over my backups to see if I could reconstruct the data. No luck. So I gave up.
Today I looked at it on my lunch hour, but gave up again. Then after work I finally called tech support.
An hour later, everything was back to normal.
Just in time for me to start packing my suitcase...
I've got a loooooooooong day ahead of me tomorrow.
Sometimes I feel like the luckiest person alive.
Had a fantastic evening with some fantastic blogger friends here in Atlanta...
And though I tend not to use the word "adore" very much... Anissa Mayhew, whom I adore and love more than chocolate pudding... was in attendance after too many Davelantas past. We missed you.
Missed you bad.
It's hard to believe that it was two whole years ago you were nibbling on my balls* at The Cheesecake Factory you naughty minx you...
And then this year, as if to prove that we can't have an Atlanta blogger meet without somebody being in the hospital, Geeky Tai-Tai decided to get pneumonia.
Hope you're feeling better, Geeky Tai-Tai!
*Deep-fried macaroni-and-cheese balls... get your mind out of the gutter, people!
People can make fun of Amy Winehouse and mock her death as much as they want. It won't change the fact that she was a remarkable artist who created music that a great many people, including myself, really loved. A month ago I was lamenting that she hadn't come out with a new album in five years and was crossing my fingers that something would be released soon. Now, it saddens me greatly that anything we get... if anything at all... will be released posthumously.
I am not going to deny that she had serious problems and did some crazy shit. Amy was a very troubled and tortured person, and dealt with it the best way she knew how. Unfortunately that involved a lot of abusive behavior that would be tough for anybody to survive. But not one bit of it made me enjoy her music any less. Because no matter how out-of-control and batshit crazy she was in her personal life, in her songs she made perfect sense.
I'd say that I will miss her music, but the truth is her music isn't going anywhere. I just wish so badly she would have stuck around to make more of it. And, on that note, my favorite of so many favorites...
The rest of my day was $600 in repair costs for my car's brakes.
Hanging out with my sister on a flawless afternoon.
Meeting up with some remarkable Pacific Northwest bloggers.
Life is the bittersweet joy and hurt of it all. I am so incredibly blessed to have friends and family to make even my worst days good again.
Oh how I wish Amy Winehouse could have found the same.
I am mostly bored now-a-days.
Which is odd, because I am never lacking for something to do. Most of my waking moments are spent working, but in-between I still watch an occasional television show or catch up with the internet or view a video or read a book or something. How can I be this bored if my days are so packed? What else am I looking for?
I honestly don't know.
But it explains why I am constantly taking on new projects even though I don't have time for them. It's why I got RW to join me in creating Thrice Fiction. It's why I went ghost-hunting in Kentucky. It's why I do volunteer work that sends me to Hawaii. It's why I fly around the world visiting Hard Rock Cafes.
It's why I blog.
But despite all my efforts, it never seems like enough. Now even the crap that used to excite me is starting to become boring, which sucks. Maybe I need to start skydiving again or something?
Only time will tell.
If I don't end up bored to death, that is.
As I've mentioned several times to anybody who will listen, my favorite podcast is Hey! That's My Hummus! which is a creation of my most excellent blog friends, Mr. Shiny and Faiqa (both of whom are on a blogging sabbatical while they're working on the show, so I linked to their Twitter feeds).
If a Jew and a Muslim walked into a podcast you get, well... "Hey! That's My Hummus!" It's an awesome show filled with respectful discussion of numerous topics with a humorous slant. If you're not listening to it, you should be.
Anyway...
With Faiqa being in San Diego for BlogHer, Shiny asked if I would like to "virtually guest-host" a
So I agreed, and you can listen to my episode right now by clicking on this link!"
It's an awesome show because it has both me and Batman in it.
Oh... and Faiqa and Shiny too.
BONUS! BEHIND THE HUMMUS SECRETS! (spoilers! listen to the podcast first!)
As I was looking through my email in-box this morning, I happened across a message that, from all appearances, was spam. After all, how many real emails do you get where somebody is offering you an all-expenses-paid trip out of the country? And all I had to do in return was write articles about my journey and take some pictures (i.e. what I always do when I travel). Talk about sounding too good to be true! Free travel would have to be at the top of my dream list!
Amazingly, the offer turned out to be legit. They found my blog, liked my travel writing and photography, and wanted me to be a guest corespondent for them... all to a really cool destination.
Alas, I couldn't work the trip into my schedule.
Damn.
Needless to say, I was bummed the rest of the day.
Not that I have cause to complain, mind you. I already travel quite a lot... it's just having to pass up on something FREE that's bothering me.
Argh.
Broked again.
As this is November 1st, it's time for MOVEMBER, when a lot of guys will be trying to raise money for prostate cancer research and other men's health issues. They will do this by asking people to sponsor them as they valiantly use their ability to grow facial hair for the betterment of all mankind.
Since I am already sporting facial hair out of sheer laziness, I've decided to have Lil' Dave take up the challenge, and I'll post his progress throughout the month...
But, since cartoon characters can't enter the fundraising bid, I'm asking that you please sponsor everybody's favorite sometimes-inappropriate dad blogger... Michael "The Muskrat"...
Photo taken when I went ghost-hunting with The Muskrat. He's the one on the right.
You can visit his MOVEMBER page by clicking this link. Please consider making a donation if you can... every little bit helps!
And then...
So I wouldn't have to drive home, then turn around and drive all the way back to Seattle for work today, I crashed at my sister's house last night. And while I did shave an hour off my commute, I still had to battle Seattle's horrendous traffic this morning. This meant over an hour in my car listening to the radio.
Big discussion of the day? Kim Kardashian deciding to get a divorce after 72 days of marriage...
Now, I fully admit that I don't know much about this woman. Probably because I don't give a flying fuck about the idiotic "reality television" garbage that's taking a shit all over my television. All I know is that her and her sister get paid millions of dollars to act like morons on TV, and Kim Kardashian got paid millions more for some kind of two-part "Wedding Special" that aired on the E! Network.
Then, a little over two months later, she decides that she doesn't want to be married after all. I'm assuming she gets to keep all the money from her "TV Special." I'm also assuming that this crap will guarantee that her reality show gets picked up for another season so she can whore out her divorce for even more millions.
Well, more power to her, I say. If people are so fucking stupid that they want to watch this shit on their televisions, then you go, girl. Get yourself paid. I have no problem with Kim Kardashian exploiting her excessive messed-up "life" for profit.
But what had me screaming my head off at the radio as I was driving down I-5 is how this "One Man, One Woman Union"... despite being a complete sham and a cash-grab... is considered the "only acceptable form of marriage" by hate groups like The National Organization for Marriage. Whereas a committed gay couple wanting to get married is not.
In all seriousness, I am sick to death of this stupid shit.
All these assholes who have nothing better to do than crap all over other people's happiness by dictating whether two consenting adults can or cannot get married in a country founded on freedom can just go fuck themselves. Sideways. Then die.
Nonsensical stuff like this gets me so angry I can barely see straight. I spent most of my morning in an absolute rage. While I was working I was composing a blog entry in my head... ranting endlessly about how full of crap people like Maggie Gallagher and Rick "Piece of Shit" Santorum are for their hypocritical lunacy. It was going to be my most profanity-laden, explosive blog post ever.
But then I checked my Twitter feed while on a break and saw that somebody had re-tweeted this gem from Star Trek's Lt. Sulu, George Takei...
Exactly.
EXACTLY! Thank you Mr. Takei.
So-called "traditional marriage" between a man and a woman has been doing a great job of fucking up things for decades all by themselves. With a skyrocketing divorce rate now exceeding 50%, blaming the gays for ruining things is about the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.
Which makes sense, because the people cramming this bullshit down our throats are about the stupidest fucking people I've ever heard.
Here's hoping they all die out real soon now so the rest of us can move on.
I'm in Atlanta 3-5 times a year now, so I stopped doing the whole "Davelanta" blogger meet-up thing. I was getting paranoid thinking about everybody going "Shit! Dave's going to be here AGAIN? Wasn't he just here a couple weeks ago?!?" So instead I just Blog/Tweet/Facebook when I'm going to be in town and let people "opt-in" if they feel like meeting up... or "opt-out" by pretending they never saw it.
Except I found out that some people never saw it for reals and got left out, so I feel bad. Maybe if I sent out an email telling people when I'm here and asked them NOT to come, they wouldn't feel obligated to show up, but would come anyway if they really wanted? I dunno. Miss Manners doesn't offer any advice for this kind of stuff.
Anyway... I did end up having a terrific evening with The Muskrat, Whipstitch, and Coal Miner's Granddaughter tonight. We did the usual catching up and talking about what's going on in our lives, but this time there was an entirely NEW activity... reading aloud your favorited tweets. That ended up being good for all kinds of laughs because, apparently, the tweets that most people mark as a favorite are the funny ones. Good times.Muskrat, that magnificent bastard, showed up sporting his Movember mustache. This means it must be time for an update as to how Lil' Dave is doing...
As always, if you can donate a few bucks to a very worthwhile cause, please visit The Muskrat's Movember Donation Page. Every little bit helps!
And now, I get to revel in the joy of doing nothing, because my work has been moved from Sunday morning to Monday night. Sweet! Doing nothing is one of my most favorite things to do!
Though I think everybody knows the odds of me actually doing nothing are fairly slim.
Sometimes I hate being me.
Except when I get to have dinner with awesome blogger friends like tonight. Then it's pretty awesome being me.
If you've been following this blog, then you know that my good blogging friend The Muskrat has been participating in Movember to help raise money for prostate cancer and other cancers which affect men.
In order to help him get even more donations, Avitable and I are having a contest with FABULOUS PRIZES!!
All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment below letting us know you contributed. That's it!
After Movember has ended, we'll draw a winner for the following prize package worth well over $100...
• A CUSTOM DAVETOON and AVITATOON!
That's right! If you're our winner, Adam and I will each draw a cartoon just for you! Both toons will be printed on high-quality paper and sent to you ready for framing You can see a previous DaveToon winner here. ($ priceless!)
• A 12-MONTH AVITABLE WALL CALENDAR!
Adam has filled a calendar with twelve whole months of Avitable hotness for your monthly viewing pleasure! Contains profanity and partial nudity, so you know it's good! ($12)
• ARTIFICIAL DUCK CO. STUFF!
I've still got some hats, T-shirts, and playing cards left... and I'll assemble a nice selection of Artificial Duck Co. merchandise chosen especially for you! ($50+)
• THRICE FICTION MAGAZINES!
As if all that wasn't enough, you'll get two beautiful printed copies of the first two awesome issues of THRICE FICTION magazine! ($15)
• SHIPPING!
Whatever gift package you choose, it will be shipped free of charge within the USA. If the winner is outside the USA, they are responsible for any shipping charges over domestic shipping costs (you can just PayPal it to me after I get the pricing from the post office and email it to you).
And there you have it! Please donate to this very worthy cause and you might just win!
REMEMBER! All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment below letting us know you contributed. That's it!
This is it! The final stretch of Movember is upon us!
First I'll update with how Lil' Dave is doing, then I'll tell you how you can enter to win AMAZING PRIZES for a mere $5.00 donation to help fight prostate cancer!
Hey! That filled in there pretty good! Surely that's worth a donation to The Muskrat's Movember Page, right? AND IF YOU DONATE NOW, YOU CAN WIN AN AMAZING PRIZE PACKAGE!
All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment either below or on the original contest page letting us know you contributed. That's it!
After Movember has ended, we'll draw a winner for the following prize package worth well over $100...
• A CUSTOM DAVETOON and AVITATOON!
That's right! If you're our winner, Adam and I will each draw a cartoon just for you! Both toons will be printed on high-quality paper and sent to you ready for framing! ($ priceless!)
• A 12-MONTH AVITABLE WALL CALENDAR!
Adam has filled a calendar with twelve whole months of Avitable hotness for your monthly viewing pleasure! Contains profanity and partial nudity, so you know it's good! ($12)
• ARTIFICIAL DUCK CO. STUFF!
I've still got some hats, T-shirts, and playing cards left... and I'll assemble a nice selection of Artificial Duck Co. merchandise chosen especially for you! ($50+)
• THRICE FICTION MAGAZINES!
As if all that wasn't enough, you'll get two beautiful printed copies of the first two awesome issues of THRICE FICTION magazine! ($15)
• SHIPPING!
Whatever gift package you choose, it will be shipped free of charge within the USA. If the winner is outside the USA, they are responsible for any shipping charges over domestic shipping costs (you can just PayPal it to me after I get the pricing from the post office and email it to you).
And there you have it! Please donate to this very worthy cause and you might just win!
REMEMBER! All you need to do to enter is go to The Muskrat's Movember Page and donate $5 (or more if you want!) and leave a comment either below or on the original contest page letting us know you contributed. That's it!
Don't you hate it when there are tons of things for you to blog about but nothing you can actually post? That's me today.
And now I'm tired and want to go to bed. But since I have to blog about something, I just decided to go for it. Post all the crap that's been wearing me down and be done with it.
Hopefully.
So here goes nothing...
Got a panda from my bag of Fritos and ended up stapling over the whole spaghetti stain. At first I thought "bless my credit card" but then I wonked about Latvia and thought "two seahorses on that dog vomit!" So now I say folding box the whole cheesy bread and poop waggle that burrito sauce. I'm just not blarg on that swamp cooler (if you know what I balsamic vinegar). I wish I wasn't so pirates about the electric razor, but what can I pillow case? She's such a whore.
Fonzie collated my banana clip, but I was raving with the bugle in a gift box. That undressed the whole glovebox, which meant the sunglasses had to reverse engineer Willie Nelson. Needless to pickle chip, that wasn't skipping the video tape on that blanket. So now summer squash is plunging the futon and plastic bag is vacuuming the entire moon base. This has fleegboggled the beer headphones and pencilled a sound of my spice rack. If things were any mason jar I'd have to ski to hockey jersey or I'd violin their oil filter. You can't fishing trawler this bunny puppet and expect doggie treat for my force field. What an asshole.
So there was bonsai peppercorn and Tupperware bowl on slippery feet. It was taco seasoning. But then revolver the nuclear waste and all I could newspaper was my gummy bear. I iron the butter lettuce to shark tank but the paved Zamboni never pup tent or revenge. This has subway the stairwell... and not the flushable parrot cage. FOR CHARCOAL FILM CANISTER!! What romper kitten hoe wanders that?!? Fedora grout? sandwich collar? I have no fucking clue.
Hand sanitizer. Air sickness plumber lightbulb. Carrot. Who cares?
Loading dinosaur every souvenir retro-banana, which Cozumel the finger-paint. Now muddy water tarantula the foomlargo ALL THE ANGELA BASSETT! Fall the microphone damage, because penmanship has no plaid internal. Now rubber brake crying, if marble staple poison would ever magnification warp drive into crisis hand swamp. They're pressure celery, but it's not like I can do anything about it.
Whew! Feels great to get that all off my chest. Maybe now I can get a decent night's sleep.
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
Overall, it was an okay year. Launched a new magazine. Got to escape the country and go to Venice, Spain and Australia. Got to meet one of THE BEST BANDS IN THE WORLD, Matt & Kim, in London. Didn't kill anybody. And any year you don't have to kill somebody can't be all bad, right?
JANUARY
• Did a three-part series on the evolution of Lil' Dave and Bad Monkey, including a look at what could have been.
• Wrote an essay on Violence and America.
• Decided that I needed a new zodiac sign.
• PENIS!
• Explained why it doesn't suck to be me when it comes to travel.
FEBRUARY
• Had an amazing day in Marbella, Spain.
• Ate some PATATJES MET!!
• What the world needs now is Unity and The Golden Rule.
• Had to take an unexpected detour that ended up being worth the inconvenience.
• Was horrified by the monsters who believe that a child lucky enough to have two daddies who will love and cherish him forever is unacceptable... but a child who is orphaned, unwanted, or unloved is somehow better off. Little Samuel is home at last.
MARCH
• One of the biggest events of my year: launched Thrice Fiction Magazine.
• Took a break for a vacation in Venice, Italy.
• Had the absolute best birthday of my life when I got to hang out with Matt & Kim in London!
• Oh yes. Now that he's home, it sure looks like having two dads for parents is ruining poor little Samuel's miserable life.
• As if meeting Matt & Kim wasn't amazing enough, I got to see OMD in concert AND got to attend their rehearsal before the show!
APRIL
• Gave a behind-the-scenes look at how the cover of Thrice Fiction came to be.
• Speculated that I'm not the only one whose life has been put in danger by a baking addiction.
MAY
• Went to Hawaii for work... and my Puka Dog addiction.
• Wondered for the hundredth time why Americans aren't rioting in the streets when they have so many good reasons to do so.
• Everybody panic... IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!
JUNE
• I'm corrupting America's youth, one breakfast at a time.
• Had some Photoshop fun in the face of a riot on "Don't Give a Fuck Day."
• Showed some love for National Chocolate Pudding Day.
JULY
• This year, a Very Special Davelanta.
• Went ghost-busting at the most haunted place in America.
• MEGA CAVERN AND HOT BUTTERED BALLS!
AUGUST
• Rick "Piece of Shit" Santorum loves cock.
• My sleep routine leaves a lot to be desired.
• Decided to help out the Republicans with political advice via Happy Endings.
• Was traumatized to find out THIS happened to one of my favorite restaurants on earth.
• Took a short break for some hero worship.
SEPTEMBER
• Saved a baby and pondered the fickle finger of fate.
• Finally managed to take that Trip to Australia that I always wanted.
• Hiked around Uluru (Ayer's Rock) as the Lord of the Flies in the Australian Outback.
• Fulfilled a life-long goal of diving The Great Barrier Reef.
OCTOBER
• Got to spend the morning with Mooselet and Koalas.
• Um, yeah... went sailing in Fiji.
• Took time out for some EXTREME snorkeling with sharks and sea snakes in Fiji... then hung out with dolphins.
• Went purple for a very good reason.
NOVEMBER
• STUPID DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME explained on Guy Fawkes Day.
• WHORE!
DECEMBER
• DEATH TO THE WILHELM SCREAM!!
• A deer tale... a feel good story if there ever was one.
And that about wraps up 2011. Not a bad year, I guess. And you?
Hope your 2012 is a good one, and thanks for reading!
The amount of hate-mail/hate-comments dropping on my blog have reached new highs lately. It had died down to one a week for the longest time, but now I'm getting at least one a day. I'm guessing it has to do with Washington State getting ready to pass marriage equality and the court decision coming up on Prop 8, because most of the mail/comments are from entries where I talk about that kind of stuff.
Not surprisingly, nothing I've been getting adds anything remotely interesting to the conversation. Instead it's just anonymous profanity and/or insults directed towards me, which is immediately deleted.
The thing that upsets me about all this is not that people are compelled to toss a little hatred my way... but that they're so bad at it. Their profanity is just pathetic and funny, and their attempt at insults aren't even vaguely insulting. It's all just so amateurish and lame.
So, in an attempt to improve the level of hate-mail/hate-comments on my blog, I've decided to help out the haters by giving them some tips on how to hate better. First I'm going to list the five most common "insults" they use... then I'm going to give them a far more insulting alternative...
Ur Gay.
I can see how bigoted homophobe guys might take it as an insult when somebody calls them "gay" (or some slang approximation thereof) but, since I'm not a bigoted homophobe, this has zero impact as an insult. You might as well be calling me "left-handed" or "short" or "blue-eyes"... they're all wrong, but it's not like I give a shit. On the contrary, being called "gay" is pretty much a compliment in my book. Many of the gay dudes I know are some of the most kind, strong, interesting, hard-working, honest, decent people I've ever met. They also tend to be better-looking and better-groomed than me. To be lumped in with a group like that (even mistakenly!) is not something I mind one bit. No, I'm not into guys, but I have plenty of gay friends that mean more to me than any crap I take for standing with them. So unleash whatever homophobic bullshit on me you want if it makes you feel more secure about your own sexuality. I'm here to help!
MORE INSULTING ALTERNATIVE: "Ur Thoughtless." The very foundation of my beliefs is based on being thoughtful towards others... even if they're being assholes towards me. I am not always successful (especially when I am angry) but I do try. Being told that I'm not trying hard enough is about the most hurtful thing somebody can say to me.
Ur Liberal.
I get labeled as a "liberal" all the time. I'm the first to admit that my political sensibilities do tend to fall in the liberal spectrum, but it's almost always having to do with human rights and environmental issues. Yes, I think the very poor (particularly children) shouldn't have to go hungry or be denied medical care. Yes, I support humanitarian foreign aid efforts. Yes, I am 100% onboard for citizen equality issues such as same-sex marriage. Yes, I believe in a woman's right to choose (even though my personal beliefs may be otherwise). Yes, I am totally supportive of anti-discrimination legislation. Yes, I think the government should have some oversight when monitoring food safety, education, and environmental matters. Etcetera. Etcetera. And if somebody wants to call me "liberal" or "progressive" or "socialist" because of my beliefs, then so be it. But even though I don't consider myself a "liberal," that doesn't mean I'm going to be gravely offended in being labeled one.
MORE INSULTING ALTERNATIVE: "Ur a Hippie." I value hard work highly. So having somebody equate my humanist beliefs with a drugged-out, love-bead-wearing, guitar-strumming, ponytail-bedecked, do-nothing hippie squatting in a park somewhere is pretty damn insulting. I'm about as far away from a hippie as I can get considering I'm not a millionaire but, when it comes to unfounded name-calling, this one gets me riled every time because I Just. Loathe. Hippies. So. Darn. Much.
Ur Conservative.
I get labeled as a "conservative" more often than you might think. Usually by "liberal" friends who simply don't understand how I could possibly agree with anything that any conservative might ever say. Ever. But... there are areas where I absolutely do. Usually when it comes to fiscal responsibility, the folly of entitlements, the one-sidedness of subsidies, and the overall concept of getting government the fuck out of every aspect of our lives. True conservatism promotes personal freedoms as a cornerstone of our society. The fact that so many self-proclaimed "conservatives" completely ignore this fact is not the fault of conservatism... but the hypocrisy of morons who don't know what they're talking about. So go ahead and call me a conservative, because I actually do know what I'm talking about.
MORE INSULTING ALTERNATIVE: "Ur Heartless." It's not my fault that so many faux conservatives come across as heartless bastards, but being lumped in with these people is something that truly stings. I was once called "heartless" because my lack of support for government beef subsidies "hurts small cattle ranches." But I know full well that it's the massive conglomerates with cruel livestock conditions and horrendous pollution that are the biggest beneficiaries of the billions of dollars that our government hands out. Not to mention the health risks that come from cheap beef production. But even knowing what I know, the thought of somebody thinking me heartless is pretty hard to take.
Ur Stupid.
Being called "stupid" is about as popular as it is laughable. Because what I am, in fact, is a genius. Not just a self-proclaimed genius, but an actual certified genius with the IQ test scores to back it up many times over. And when one of my ass cheeks is probably smarter than the dumbass calling me "stupid," it's not like I can ever take their crap seriously. Odds are that they call people "stupid" because they're too fucking brain-dead to debate the issue with any kind of discourse. They read something here and think "I disagree with this statement, therefore the person who wrote it must be stupid!" and away they go. Want to contest my opinions and observations? By all means please do. I love a healthy debate, and think that everybody can learn from other people... even somebody as smart as I am. But call me stupid? All that does is confirm to me that you're the one that's a fucking moron.
MORE INSULTING ALTERNATIVE: "Ur uninformed." Before I form an opinion on anything, I really do try to examine the issue from all sides. I can't learn everything, obviously, but I want to at least have a grasp on the generalities before I go spouting off. So if I've overlooked something obvious and am truly uninformed on some aspect of an issue... then bringing that up is about as big a slap in my face as you'll manage (well, verbally, anyway).
Ur Untalented.
This usually comes from somebody commenting on one of my DaveToons. Now granted, if my crappy cartoons were all I had to go on, I'd probably call myself untalented. They're crude, amateurish, and repetitive, so I get it. But to judge the entirety of my talent (or lack thereof) based on one cartoon you happened to run across is really shortsighted. I don't get paid to blog, so they're supposed to be crude, amateurish, and repetitive... they're designed that way so I can create them quickly and move on to something that's going to pay me! But, whatever. I do a lot of work with a lot of people and a lot of companies who like my work and respect my professionalism, so calling me "untalented" over a stupid cartoon will fall on deaf ears.
MORE INSULTING ALTERNATIVE: "Ur boring." My blog isn't always as exciting as it could be. But since I don't write about work, friends, family, or relationships, there's a huge chunk of my life that's not going to end up on Blogography, so this is something I have to live with. But just because I'm blogging about this new brand of toilet paper I bought, that doesn't necessarily mean that this was the most exciting thing that happened. It just means it was the most exciting thing which I could write about. So even though I know my blog is boring at times (and can't be helped), it doesn't make it any less hurtful when somebody reminds me.
And there you have it, haters! Here's hoping the next round of insults I get from you will be much better than the weak-ass, anonymous, pussified, dumbassery you usually send my way.
And I'm off...
And so it was that we came unto the Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam for the merriment of Bitchsterdam 3 and a grand time was had by all. The DutchBitch was there, of course, along with Breigh and her husband Xander. And I finally got to meet Invader Stu as well...
Unfortunately, the battery on my pocket camera was dead, so I only have these few photos from my iPhone. If any of us had thought to take a group photo, it would have looked something like this...
I can't wait until Bitchsterdam 4!
Happy Cinco de Mayo! Happy Super-Moon!
Today when I dropped by YouTube, I got a notification that I had Google Videos that can automatically be transferred over. I think they had mentioned sometime last year that they were shutting down their video services, so the end must be nigh.
I didn't even remember using Google Video, so I clicked through to find that I had just one... my very first vlog entry! Apparently I gave a quiz, and the video was my way of providing the answers. But it's me we're talking about, so I had to take time to be a total nut-job first...
Interestingly enough, my original entry for it had a full transcript, which I don't even remember writing.
Anyway, you might want to check and see if you have any wayward videos hanging around Google before they cut off access completely.
Ooh! You can WIN FREE STUFF in this entry! Read on, fair reader...
Since starting this blog, I've refused at least a hundred offers to review crap, promote crap, or sell crap. So when a guy from Moo Printing emailed me with an offer of free business cards,. I was going to say no. But then he also offered to let me GIVE AWAY free business cards if I'd review my Moo experience. So I said "okay!" because I love my readers more than I love not lying.
And because I had a good experience with Moo in the past for my clothing tags, I figured there was a good chance I wouldn't have to say anything nasty in my review. That would be really awkward.
So I'll skip to the good part first. I LOVE MY NEW BLOGGER CARDS!
Moo makes it ridiculously easy to create great-looking cards, stickers, postcards, and other cool stuff.
Once you've selected what you want to print, all you have to do is decide what you want for a design. I created new DaveToons to upload, but you can easily import images or graphics from Flickr, Picassa, SmugMug, Facebook, and even Etsy...
And here's the thing that makes Moo so frickin' awesome... you can have a separate design for the front of EACH individual piece! Ordering 100 business cards? All 100 can have a different photo on them! If you use less images than the number of pieces you're ordering, Moo will attempt to evenly divide the cards between the designs.
What's cool about this is that I was able to make cards for both my blogs in the same box to save money over ordering two different cards separately. I made Bad Monkey cards in four different colors for Blogography, then made Lil' Dave card for DaveCafe (which I uploaded twice so I would have extra...
Then you turn the card over to design the back. You can select colors, type what you want, then have Moo do the rest... or you can design something from scratch like I did...
And that's all there is to it, really. The whole process is dead-simple, and Moo lets you see what your finished cards are going to look like before you place your order. Once you're happy with things, all you have to do is checkout and wait.
When my cards finally arrived, I prepared myself for disappointment. Because the colors never seem to turn out like what you wanted... especially with the crazy, unprintable bright colors I used. But, surprise surprise, the printing was pretty darn good. The shading on Lil' Dave's face usually comes out all banded when printed, but the Moo printing had gradients that were smooth as butter. My "impossible to print" colors turned out much brighter than I was expecting (though not quite as bright as this photo from my iPhone shows)...
What really great is the paper stock Moo uses. The "Classic" paper I selected is a really nice 16pt thick stock with a satin finish that's soft to the touch. They also have a "Green" (as in eco-friendly, not color) stock that runs a bit higher. They "feel" good in the hand, and are sure to make an impression when you hand them out.
As shown in the first photo, Moo packs your cards in a classy but sturdy black box. It has tabbed dividers for "MINE" and "THEIRS" so you can even use it as a case if you want.
About the only complaint I had was that the cards were not centered in the cutting die very well when they were punched out. They're a couple millimeters offset. This doesn't seem like a big deal but, on something as small as a business card, you definitely notice it. I would think that Moo would be a little more careful given their high-quality standards, but there you have it...
Does it "ruin" the card? Not really. I stayed within the "safety margin" I was given, so nothing got cut off. Most people probably won't even notice. But to an anal-retentive designer like myself, it's kind of a bummer. And yet... they're still the best business cards I've ever had.
Moo has generously offered to let me give away a box of 100 "Classic" business cards (a $39.98 value) plus free domestic shipping (a $7.75 value). If you want extras like "Green" paper... or the nifty rounded corners I have on my cards... or rush shipping... or international delivery... or whatever... you'll have to pay the difference yourself.
To enter in the drawing, just leave a comment telling me your favorite sandwich. I'll draw a name at random from all the commenters in one week on May 23rd (so get your comment posted by May 22nd!). Be sure to leave a valid email address so I can contact you if you win (it won't be shown). GOOD LUCK! And thanks to Moo for not only my beautiful business cards, but for thinking of my readers too!
Wanna Moo too? Here's a direct link to their business cards page!
Okay... Okay... Okay... THREE EPISODES of Community tonight?!?
The first of the three was my favorite episode to date, which is really saying something considering the slew of frickin' amazing episodes that came previously. Not only did they faithfully represent the Age of 8-Bit Video Games perfectly, the characterization of each cast member in pixels was flawless...
The fact that the show is only getting a paltry 13 episode order next season is a travesty. But I suppose they have to make room for what ever shitty reality television crap they've bought to stink up the airwaves come Fall. I know that television is a business, and ratings and ad revenue are the only factors that really matter... but come on. Given the quality, critical acclaim, and rabid fan base of the show, NBC owes it to humanity to at least get Community up to 65 episodes so it can be syndicated.
But the network seems intent on killing it off.
And speaking of premature deaths...
This morning I got an email from somebody who stumbled across my blog from a Google search and wanted to thank me for writing about whatever it was they were looking for. It was a really nice note, and it's good to know that this blog has useful content squeezed in-between all the stupid crap I usually write about.
The interesting bit came at the end of the email when they said "I hope you've made arrangements to keep you blog around after you're dead because it would be a shame for it to disappear."
To which I replied "Nope. My guess is that Blogography will die shortly after I do, but thanks for the kind words!"
Then I got to thinking about how I really should be more distraught that nine years of my life will soon evaporate if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. But I'm not. Not really. I've toyed with the idea of deleting my blog a half-dozen times in the past, so why should I care if it happens after I'm dead? I suppose it's a little depressing to think that a domain scalper will undoubtedly come along and grab "blogography.com" so they can use it to link to a bunch of websites selling "generic viagra" or something. But that's life... and death... on the internet for you.
Eventually I'll be gone and forgotten just like 99.9% of everybody else on earth, and that's probably how it should be.
Unless somebody wants to finance that monument to my greatness I so totally deserve...
Congratulations to Foo at Foodiddy! She just won my drawing for a pack of awesome business cards from Moo!
But don't despair if you didn't win... you can still get 10% off your first order at Moo by following this link!
I apologize for not posting this earlier, but technical difficulties got in the way when I tried to upload a video of me drawing the winner's name like I usually do (format error?!?). Rather than wasting another day trying to figure it out, I just snapped some screen captures from the movie...
Thanks to everybody who entered!
Well that was fun! Kind of gets me psyched for my TEN YEAR BLOGIVERSARY CELEBRATION next April... it'll be crazy-delicious!
Gotta have priorities, yo.
Sometimes I regret that I'm a "daily blogger."
The reason I write daily is because I know my blog would die a long, slow death if I started skipping days. First I'd skip once or twice a month... then skip once or twice a week... and then, before I even realize it, I'm struggling to write two entries a month. At which point Blogography is dead. I've seen it happen with other blogs many times before. And so I continue to post something every single day, even if I don't have anything to write about or I'm going through something that can't be blogged.
Like today.
I got nuthin'...
Fortunately, I can totally blog about nuthin'. You're welcome!
The bad news is that my entire weekend was completely packed, so I didn't have any time to spend on the internet.
The good news is that my entire weekend was completely packed, so I didn't have any time to spend on the internet.
It's times like this that make me realize how much of my day I spend online. It's really getting out of hand, and I can't help but wonder what I've been missing in Real Life. Not that I want to give up the internet altogether... a big part of my life is here... but maybe I should be less obsessed with keeping constantly connected to it.
Internet addiction is a hell of a drug.
Which is a pretty deep thought considering I'm not even supposed to be here today. I'm guest-posting over at Christopher's blog...
This blog entry could self-destruct at any minute, so go check it out!
The story burning up the internets today is about a letter written by Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe in support of Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo (who is vocal advocate of marriage equality).
Making a long story short, Maryland Democratic politician Emmett C. Burns asked the Baltimore Ravens football organization to make Ayanbadejo shut up about marriage. Kluwe (also a supporter of marriage equality) thought this was bullshit, and decided to write an open letter to Burns to tell him how he felt.
The letter is sheer genius. Go read it immediately.
I'm guessing this image of Kluwe is a team photo, courtesy of the Minnesota Vikings?
As you might have noticed, the letter is filled with colorful language which has raised some criticism of Kluwe's choice of words.
This really hit home with me, because I struggle with whether or not I should use swear words most every time I write in this blog. When I first started blogging I swore constantly and didn't think anything about dropping
It was a practice that was destined to be short-lived. I use swear-words in real life when I'm fired up. So it's unavoidable that I'm going to use swear-words on my blog when I'm fired up. For a while I tried to disguise it... typing out things like "F#@%!" and "B#LL$H!T!," but comedian Suzy Soro commented that this is kind of stupid. Since absolutely everybody knows what you're trying to say anyway... why not just come out and say it?
She was absolutely right, and I've been cursing in my blog ever since.
Though I admit that most times I do regret it.
Somebody once told me that swearing is a sign that the writer is unintelligent. They don't know how to express themselves properly, so they foolishly have to resort to curse words to make their point. In some respects, I agree with this assessment.
In other respects, I'd argue that there's no word that can adequately take the place of "fuck."
And so I use it. Probably more often than I should... but definitely not as often as I want to. "Fuck" (and dozens of words like it) are forms of expression that I find helpful in communicating exactly what I'm feeling in a way that "shucky darn" doesn't quite reach.
Anyway...
Today I managed to get in my essential visit to America's Dog so I could get my Veggie Chicago Dog...
It was, as always, delicious.
Oh... and speaking of delicious food... I never check a bag when flying into O'Hare so I can grab a veggie burger at Johnny Rocket's before I exit through security. But yesterday as I approached the restaurant, I was horrified to see that IT WASN'T THERE!
WHAT THE FUCK?! Shucky darn!
I hate it when that happens.
They say that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, but in my case it's just not true.
The batteries in my Mickey Mouse wall-clock at work died at 7:28 while I was in Chicago. And since I arrive both after 7:28am and before 7:28pm I don't see the clock being correct even once. And since I don't even know if my office exists when I am not there, I'm not going to make assumptions about what happens when I'm gone. Logic would dictate that the clock does indeed read correct at 7:28am and 7:28pm, but I'm not going to drive to work to find out.
Because I have more important questions on my mind...
Which means nothing has changed, because that's what I'm going to be doing right now.
Well, that... and planning a trip to Bahrain.
This morning I boarded a plane for Cincinnati, Ohio so that I might rent a car and drive to Lexington, Kentucky. I would have flown to Lexington directly, but the cost of the ticket was hundreds of dollars more expensive, so I took a pass. The two-day car rental was a fraction of the price and a much better bargain.
The reason I was off to Lexington was to attend a party being thrown by The Couple Formerly Known as Mr. Fabulous and Turnbaby. I hadn't been to the previous two parties (despite having a fantastic time at their ConFab event back in 2009) so I knew I had to get to this one. Because, hey, how many parties can you go to where snorting heroin off of Secondhand Karl's ass is a topic of conversation?
Well, okay, lots of them. But not in Kentucky.
The theme of the party was "Hollywood Nights" and every attendee had to show up dressed as a recognizable movie character. As I was trying to decide what in the heck I was going to be one night, The Princess Bride was playing on television. So... The Dread Pirate Roberts I was to be...
As you wish! Photo by Adam Heath Avitable
I bought the head-scarf, mask, gloves, collapsible sword, and boot toppers... but sewed the shirt myself, and it turned out great. Luckily I had taken a sewing e-course from Whipstitch, so I already knew how to do the tricky bits required for constructing a poofy shirt. Good thing too, because you never know when that kind of knowledge will come in handy.
Anyway... it was all worth it, because the party was great and a good time was had by all.
And I got to dress up like a pirate.
Totally drawing a blank tonight.
Having a blog about nothing in particular means that sometimes nothing in particular shows up.
Don't pop that viagra just yet... because Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Credit! I pay for everything with my credit cards, because both my VISA and American Express earn me air miles and travel perks. So long as I pay my credit cards off at the end of each month, it's a winning scenario. At least is was until now. Because now stores are allowed to pass along the credit card fees they pay on to their customers. Which means any store not willing to absorb the fees are going to be adding 1.5% to 3% onto the total of your bill. Pile $25,000 onto your card for the miles each year and that could reach $750 annually. Suddenly those "free" air miles just got really expensive. So expensive that it's not longer worth it. If a "free" roundtrip domestic ticket is 25,000 miles (which cost $750 in fees), it's cheaper to just pay the $250-$400 it would cost to buy it outright. This really sucks, but I guess we need to wait and see how many companies start charging a fee before we know how bad it sucks.
• Sin of the City. The horrific nightclub fire in Brazil which killed at least 233 people is a sad reminder of how life can imitate art which is imitating life. Duran Duran's incredible "Wedding Album" features a song called Sin of the City which pretty much spells it out...
Kind of makes you wonder if you're taking your life in your own hands when you go out for a night on the town. Safety code violations are so commonplace and so rarely enforced in many places on this earth that it can be like playing Russian roulette. Eventually the tragedy will strike... it's just sheer chance that it will be on the day you are the one experiencing it.
• Asteroids! All this talk about companies wanting to send ships into space to mine asteroids makes my mind zero-in on one thing every time...
Of course, now that Atari is in bankruptcy and finally set to die once and for all, I suppose I should stop clinging to the past and look to the future...
I wonder if these companies remember that the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field are 3,720 to 1?
• WTF?! I guess marriage equality opponents are finally starting to realize that more and more people want their gay friends, family, and neighbors to be able to have the same right to get hitched as everybody else. This has resulted in some of them abandoning their absurdly ridiculous arguments against same-sex marriage... for even more absurdly ridiculous arguments?!? You know, I honestly try and respect views and opinions that are different from mine... but this has to be the stupidest fucking thing I've heard in ages: Only straight couples should be allowed to marry because only they can have a child unexpectedly, where gay couples have to plan for it? Seriously? THIS is what passes for a logical argument now-a-days? It's witnessing this level of idiocy that is eventually going to be the death of me. My brain simply cannot process this fucked-up shit, and one day it's going to hemorrhage... just you wait. When the blog entries stop, that's when you'll know I've finally had too much.
• WTF?! Part Two You know that you've been blogging too long when you get an email criticizing you for using a split infinitive. What fascinates me most here is not that somebody decided to go all grammar nazi on me, but that they thought I was unaware of what I had done. As if it were impossible for somebody to intentionally ignore a grammar rule that they feel is stupid (see what I did there?). I suppose that I could invite them to kindly go fuck themselves, but I wouldn't want to mistakenly cause their brain to forcibly hemorrhage. I can so relate.
Annnnd... tomorrow is going to be a long day, so I am going to regretfully take my leave of you now.
Uh. Yeah. About that blog post...
Usually I just bang out my Blogography entry at the end of the day once I've caught up on work and life. I have no idea what I'm going to write about, I just fire up MarsEdit and away we go. Most of the time this works out okay, but not always. Today was kind of different though, because I had an idea for a post that had been brewing all day long. It came to me in the morning, then kept building and building. By the time I was driving home from work, I pretty much had the entire thing composed in my head, and was quite pleased with myself for having such a great post idea during the usually-boring days of winter.
But then I decided to catch up with the world during dinner, which turned out to be a big mistake.
Because that's when I saw this...
And it's been all I can think about ever since.
On May 3rd we're getting another Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man movie.
Written and directed by Shane Black!
What else is there to blog about?
After a random look at my blog stats, I saw traffic coming from a website I'd never heard of before. So I clicked through to see what was going on and found this...
NOM lifts pro-gay blogger's personal travel photo
I'm already I'm filled with dread, and I haven't even read the story yet.
And, sure enough, it was my photo they were talking about. The "National Organization for Marriage," which I can only describe as the preeminent anti-marriage-equality hate-group, is using a photo I took as a part of their anti-gay propaganda campaign...
Having something you created being used to peddle bigotry and discrimination is not an easy thing to accept. Especially when it contributes to creating an environment so hostile that LGBT youth are killing themselves rather than having to endure it.
Groups like NOM go against absolutely everything I believe in. But having them drag me into their persecution of the LGBT community is only half the problem. The other is my belief in a free and open internet. Which is why my Creative Commons License (appearing on every page of this site) allows non-commercial usage of the stuff I share here. Granted, NOM violated this license by failing to attribute the photo to it's source in a way that shows I don't endorse their bullshit... but otherwise? Their non-profit status (which is another topic entirely) means that their use of my photo is most likely permissible.
And it's this dilemma that has me frustrated to to tears. How do I reconcile my belief in sharing information on a free internet with my desire to keep my works from being used to hurt people by hateful bigots like NOM??
I thought I might find help in the "moral rights" clause of the license...
"In addition to the right of licensors to request removal of their name from the work when used in a derivative or collective they don't like, copyright laws in most jurisdictions around the world (with the notable exception of the US except in very limited circumstances) grant creators "moral rights" which may provide some redress if a derivative work represents a "derogatory treatment" of the licensor's work."
Except they make it clear that the USA is a "notable exception," which means this is practically worthless.
So what to do? Two things I feel very strongly about seem to cancel each other out. Have an open license, and your works can be repurposed to hurt people. Have a restrictive license, and you're inhibiting the creativity of others to build and share on your work.
I don't know what the solution is. Maybe you can't have it both ways.
All I do know is that I don't support NOM's ruthless persecution of a group of people under the pretense of "protecting marriage." And, make no mistake, it is persecution. They don't like gay people, so they fight to keep them from having the same freedoms as everybody else. And if spreading misinformation and outright lies is what it takes, they'll do that. If allying themselves with individuals or organizations which advocate violence against homosexuals will forward their cause, they'll do that too. Whatever it takes to keep homophobia and fear alive so they can maintain this absurd illusion that marriage is somehow "endangered" by a mythical "gay agenda" that's out to destroy society.
This situation shouldn't be upsetting me as much as it is. It's the internet, after all.
But gay kids are being bullied. Gay kids are killing themselves. And it's groups like NOM that are creating a society which encourages these horrible things to happen.
And being party to that... even unwillingly... is more than I can take.
Looking strictly at the numbers, this blog is either a raging success or a dismal failure.
83,214 visitor "sessions" were reported at Blogography for the month of February (which is 9,795 less than January... maybe because it was a short month?). According to the documentation, "A session is initiated when a visitor arrives at your site, and it ends when their browser window is closed or there is a period of inactivity." On daily average, 624 people are accessing my webfeed, so I'm guessing around 17,500 of those monthly "sessions" are from regular readers, though not everybody uses a feedreader, so that number is probably a bit higher.
And the bulk of my remaining traffic? Search results. The majority of which are visitors from Google hoping to find something here. That's what happens when you've been blogging daily about random crap for nearly a decade.
So, from a numbers standpoint, I don't know if "83,214 sessions" last month is good or bad. Probably good for a relatively unknown blogger like me. But a terrible failure if you're a popular blogger like The Pioneer Woman (who undoubtedly gets millions of visits each month).
But I don't sell ads or make any money off Blogography, so the numbers don't really matter. I write here so my friends & family can know what I'm up to... and to keep track of what's going on in my life (five years ago today I was flying back from a TequilaCon Planning meeting in Portland!). From that perspective, Blogography is incredibly successful.
All the great people I've met and the wonderful friends I've made from blogging is just the icing on the cake.
Which is a fact I clung to this morning as I discovered yet another one of the blogs I read has closed up shop. This comes right on the heels of another blog folding earlier in the week (didn't see that coming).
We're dropping like flies.
I'm coming up on my ten-year blogiversary this April. I have no plans on stopping.
Which makes me either a raging success or a dismal failure.
It's getting harder and harder to tell.
Lately I've been having moments where I find myself not breathing and I have to remind myself to take a breath. It's very annoying. And has me wondering what in the heck is preoccupying the part of my brain that's supposed to handle the breathing. I suppose it's better than suddenly finding out your heart isn't beating, but still.
So far as Mondays go, this one was pretty heinous. Despite working my guts out from dusk 'til dawn I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped. I suppose that was to be expected, because, well, Monday. What was not expected was finding out that my automated backup utility was, in fact, not backing up anything at all. This was discovered right after I had congratulated myself because a missing file could just be downloaded from my backup. Except it couldn't, because I didn't have a backup, which made me very cross indeed.
Nothing like spending two hours re-doing work you had already finished.
As if that weren't enough, I am still having problems with my blog. For reasons I can't figure out, the back-end that manages everything has suddenly decided to randomly fail while I'm updating stuff. This has resulted in my map page having no map, and my archive page being a disorganized mess.
I'd fix all that, but I have bigger fish to fry.
Like making sure I keep breathing.
This morning when I woke up I had an awesome idea for a blog post, but have since forgotten what it was. I can only guess I was going to talk about the perils of not writing things down after you turn 40, but who can say for sure?
Fortunately it's Earth Day today, so there's that to talk about.
Uhhhh... yeah... be kind to the earth... or whatever.
Well that didn't go very far now did it?
Except... Earth Day is also the anniversary of my becoming a vegetarian. I gave up meat on this date back in 1988. Which means it's been 25 years since I've had a hamburger.
A quarter-century since I've had a chicken nugget.
And 9131 days since I've eaten bacon.
No. I don't know how I've survived this long either.
You'd think I'd be tired of blogging after ten years, but obviously I'm a glutton for punishment... because Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Blogiversary! And it really has been ten years since this iteration of Blogography began. I bought the domain in March of 2002 and farted around with a hand-coded blog for a year. But then I ended up deleting it and starting over on April 28th, 2003. I managed to salvage a few old entries so, technically, Blogography began on April 18th, but I prefer thinking of the 28th as my blogiversary because that's when Apple's iTunes Music Store debuted as well. In any event, I should probably be celebrating that I made it this long...
Or committing myself to an insane asylum for keeping with it for this long. One or the other. Maybe both.
• Pot! Google's auto-complete is sure revealing. Guess it's a good thing it's legal here now...
• Chase! And so I bought the latest LEGO video game for Nintendo 3DS. It's called LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins...
It's frickin' adorable.
It's also one of the most frustrating pieces of shit excuses for a video game I've ever played.
Billed as a prequel to the police-themed LEGO City Undercover for the Wii U system, this is a scaled-down version of the massive "sandbox" world of the original, but squeezed to fit in a 3DS. Even so, it's still a huge world filled with puzzles to solve and nifty stuff to collect. Along the way you have missions to accomplish which move you through the story and introduce you to the various areas of LEGO City. All of which are beautifully rendered, and yours to explore as your alter-ego, undercover cop Chase McCain. In an effort to mix things up a bit, McCain can adopt different undercover "disguises," each of which grants him new and unique abilities. It's all very clever and can be a lot of fun... when you're not screaming curse words at the game for being so horrendously frustrating.
I've been playing LEGO video games for years. And there's one thing they can never get right... vehicle control. Any time you have to drive ANYTHING in ANY LEGO game, you're assured of shitty, frustrating, worthless controls. Forget trying to actually accomplish something, you're lucky just to keep the damn car on the road. And there's a lot of driving in LEGO City Undercover. As if that weren't bad enough, certain scenarios require precision acrobatics that are beyond frustrating and pretty much destroy the game. It's astounding how the game can be so forgiving in some areas, but ruthlessly unforgiving in others, and it's enough to drive you insane.
Ultimately, there's enough humor, fun, and surprises to make me glad I bought LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins, but I sure wish that somebody would tell developer Traveler's Tales that frustrating does not equal fun. FIX THE FUCKING DRIVING CONTROLS NEXT TIME, ASSHOLES!
• Repugnant! Some people are such huge pieces of hypocritical garbage that they're pretty much irredeemable. Despite my defending her in the past, Sarah Palin has totally crossed that line. She probably crossed it a long time ago, but this latest round of bullcrap is what got me to take serious notice. What a fucking useless shit-stain on the fabric of society.
• Fugly! Wondering for the hundredth time why in the hell the United States has some of the ugliest fucking money on the planet. Seriously, Yes, I've harped on this before, but the latest release for the $100 bill is the worst yet and near vomit-inducing...
I know that rampant counterfeiting has made it so that certain design compromises have to be made to implement security measures... but this is fucking ridiculous. As if it weren't bad enough that our currency isn't worth a shit, we have to be embarrassed with this ugly, amateurish excuse for "design" that looks like shit too. Why can't they hire an actual graphic designer for important stuff like this instead of letting somebody's kid at the US Mint slap it together in Microsoft Word. Your (hideous) tax dollars at work, people!
And now I'm going to go contemplate whether I can survive ten more years of blogging.
One of the nice things about having a blog that's been around a while is that you have a record of what you were doing in years past. In my case, it's a record that spans ten years, which is pretty good.
Except not always. I was a sporadic blogger in the beginning and sometimes weeks passed between entries. So, in the beginning at least, there are stretches which are entirely unknown. Later years are better, however...
Of course, that's just the stuff I decided I could write about. Who knows what was going on between the lines.
Probably stuff I'm better off forgetting anyway.
Sometimes I have to wonder why I'm still blogging.
Especially when I have to deal with this shit all the time...
I spent an hour yesterday trying to post a picture of a monkey with a flag before giving up.
There's got to be a better use of my time than that.
Well, crap.
Forest fires are raging ten miles away so the air is choked with smoke. Which means I will be spending my days with stomach cramps and queasiness. I don't know why smoke affects me like that, but it does.
Every year.
Hmmm...
One of the curious side-effects of having a blog that spans a decade is being able to look back and see what you were up to ten years ago. In my case, life was all about my motorcycle. That's a story that doesn't end happily, but it was an interesting time in my life.
And a fun one.
Which is why I should probably make a point of revisiting my archives more often.
When I'm not having fun in the present, I can always re-live it in the past.
This past weekend I got into a forum discussion about purchases we regretted having made. Popular choices included the Apple Newton (I loved mine!), Sony MiniDisc (which was awesome!), and Microsoft Windows Vista (okay, I totally get that one). Stuff like that. Initially I started out with little things that I had purchased recently... like the Pebble Smart Watch. But once the ball got rolling, I came up with all kinds of things I regretted spending my hard-earned cash on. So did everybody else. Thus it was decided we would each make a list of the "Top Five" worst offenders. And this morning I did just that. And since I don't have anything better to blog about, I'm going to post it right here...
#5 - PowerComputing PowerCenter Pro
Looking to save money on my next Macintosh purchase, I bypassed Apple's offerings for one of the new "Mac Clones" from Power Computing. I was suckered in by the fact that they had a faster machine with more powerful hardware for less money. Sold! Except... it wasn't up to Apple quality standards. At least not the one I got. Mine had issues with the video, which required numerous calls and two failed attempts at replacing the video card. Eventually, I ended up having to ship the machine back to Power. When I got it back, it was not the same machine (different serial number) and had less onboard RAM than the original machine I purchased. This required another half-dozen calls to get sorted. Eventually I got a working machine and was happy enough with it... but the amount of time it took to get there made me regret the purchase quite a lot.
#4 - Panasonic ANYTHING (but mostly their Recording DVD Player)
I have never had good luck with any Panasonic product. Televisions? Crap. Phones? Crap. VCRs? Crap. Everything I've ever purchased has been total crap. But then Kevin Smith was in an advertisement for the new Panasonic RECORDING DVD player! And how awesome would it be to record your own DVDs? Sweet! So I ignored all past experience and placed my order. Only to find that it would not record a DVD... no matter what I did. And every time I called Panasonic, it was my fault. I didn't buy Panasonic brand recordable DVDs. So I bought Panasonic brand recordable DVDs and it still didn't work. I didn't have the right quality cable. So I bought a new cable. I was overheating the unit by not giving it enough air space. So I moved it to its own table. The list went on and on and on. Finally, they agreed that there was something probably wrong with it... BUT I WAS EXPECTED TO PAY TO SHIP IT TO THEM FOR REPAIR! That's right, PANASONIC sells a DOA DVD player, but I have to pay to get it serviced! So I paid the shipping. Finally, a month later, I got it back and nothing had changed. Then when I called back, Panasonic refused to believe me... literally called me a liar... and said that the unit worked perfectly when it left their shop so I must have broke it. So I fucking smashed the pricey piece of shit non-recording DVD Player/Recorder and threw it in the garbage. Then vowed to never buy another Panasonic piece of shit product ever again. And I haven't. I fucking HATE the company. That should be enough agony but, unfortunately, there's one company I loathe even more. Hello, Hewlett-Packard...
#3 - Hewlett-Packard Photosmart B9180 Printer
Even though the Macintosh drivers were crap, I really liked this printer. Partly because the print quality was so nice... but mostly because HP had a "satin-matte" paper which you could peel from the backing and glue to different surfaces. And it was glorious. The pigment inks didn't crack when you folded it... the paper held color well... and it looked like a million bucks. But then the printer started failing within three months of having bought it. The printhead would randomly start scraping against the page, ruining your print. The head would randomly get "stuck" and refuse to finish a job, ruining your print. The printer would randomly decide to skip a color, ruining your print. As time went on, I was getting more ruined prints than good prints, which was a huge expense. That special paper and pigment ink cost a fortune. But that's not even the worst part. HP support was atrocious. They never had answers and said it must be my computer because the many problems were not reproducible. They promised to send me replacement ink and paper, but it never came. They promised to get back to me with answers, but they never did. At one point I was on the phone with HP and the customer service rep actually laughed at me. Eventually I ended up buying a second B9180 because I had a supply of paper and ink that I couldn't afford to throw out. Thinking I just had a lemon, I was optimistic the replacement I bought would be better. But it wasn't. This time it was the print head cartridges that kept failing AND the prints would be scraped up at random. To add insult to injury, they discontinued the special paper that convinced me to buy the stupid thing in the first place (twice!). Eventually the paper came back, but it wasn't the same, and refused to release from the backing. Now completely frustrated and hating HP with the fury of a thousand suns, I bought an Epson. I have never bought another HP product since.
#2 - 1999 Saturn SC2
When my old car was totaled while saving my life (it was between my office and a runaway heavy-duty work truck from the railroad), I didn't have time to shop for a new one. Then I saw a television commercial that explained how you could order a new Saturn online, so I fired up my laptop... picked the car I wanted... added way too many expensive features... and, just like that, my new car was ordered. Sight unseen. No test-drive taken. While on a trip to New York I got a call telling me that my car was ready to pick up, so on a layover in Seattle a salesman came and got me. Almost immediately I hated the car. The turning radius was huge. The visors were badly designed. The window controls were stupid. The dome light seemed to work at random. It was not much fun to drive. It wasn't even that comfortable. Ultimately, it was a terrible purchase and I fully intended on taking Saturn up on their 30-Day Return Policy. Except I was traveling the entire duration and never made it back to the dealership. So I've been stuck with the pile of crap for fourteen years. And things continue to go wrong. Despite ONLY having it serviced at Saturn, the "Check Engine" light has been coming on (even when reset) since 2009. The front license plate holder has fallen off, and it's a bitch to get back on. It's burning oil and doesn't even have 100,000 miles on it. And that damn turning radius... you never get used to having to make three and four point turns all the time. I hate the car. I really, really do. But since Saturn went under and my SC2 is pretty much worthless, I'm going to drive it until it explodes. Or I light it on fire and push it off a cliff.
#1 - Radius VideoVision Studio
Back in the good ol' days when I was doing video editing, I'd have to rent out a pricey studio whenever I got work. The problem being that video editing suites were incredibly expensive, the nearest shop was three hours away, and I never had the money to rent studio time to truly learn the system. Add it all together, and I often-times lost money on projects. The good news is that this lead me to create my own scores for videos so I could save cash by not hiring a "real" musician. Ultimately I ended up making a lot more money on the music than the video stuff, so it ended up being a blessing in disguise. But then VideoVision Studio came out and promised pro video editing on your Mac at home for the fraction of the price of renting a studio! Never mind that I had to spend thousands of dollars on tape decks, mixing boards, and VideoVision itself... I could have my own video editing studio and get rich! Except VideoVision never worked like it was supposed to. Even after I spent thousands more dollars on a faster Mac to run it better. Audio dropped or was out of sync. Video capture was glitchy. Output was marred by noise. It was a disaster. I never completed a single project on it, and ended up having to work two jobs to pay for all the useless crap I bought. All in all, this was the most expensive mistake I've ever made... even after I managed to sell some of the equipment I bought. For that reason alone it takes the top spot in my Most Regretted Purchases List. But somehow my regret goes much deeper than money. A career I was really interested in was completely destroyed, as I had to give up my dream to pay for its failure.
And there you have it... my most regretted purchases of all time.
Though, now that I think about it, I should have gone for a "Top Ten" because there's certainly been a lot of other purchases I've regretted. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, VANILLA MILKSHAKE POP-TARTS!
I fully admit that I'm a total hoarder when it comes to my travel. I save pretty much everything... receipts... ticket stubs... boarding passes... maps... brochures... everything. My thinking has always been that saving all this crap would make it easier to reconstruct my travels so I can remember where I was and what I did while I was there.
Then Blogography came along and all my travels were suddenly being documented.
At least for the past ten years that I've been blogging.
Yet I've still be saving everything out of habit. The problem is that all this stuff has been taking up space and I'm running out of room. And so I've been going through all my boxes of travel crap and throwing out most of it. There's no need to keep a receipt so I can remember the name of that pizza restaurant I like in Cologne, Germany... I just have to Google my blog, and there it is. I don't have to save the ticket stub from the Pet Shop Boys' first concert in Seattle to remember when that was... I just have to Google my blog, and there it is. Having your travels indexed on the internet is just so handy.
But what about my travels before I started blogging? I can't Google a box of crap, so what to do?
One of the ideas I'm toying with is creating blog entries for my earlier travels, then back-dating them. I'm not sure how I feel about the idea though. Is it cheating to have a blog with entries that pre-date blogging? Do I really care? I suppose I could start a second blog for my early travels, but I can't help but think that having everything in one place would be a better way to go.
I just don't know. Guess I'll think about it for a while and see where I land.
All I do know is that I'd love to throw out all this crap I have piled up which covers my travels from 1983 to 2002.
Suuuuuuuuck!
Sometime last night, my blog done broke.
It all started when I tried to change out the Google Map on my Travel Map Page. Google provides a link to custom maps you can build... and it totally worked for a while... but now it's just showing up as a blank space and I have no idea what's wrong. When I tried to change the template, Movable Type crapped out, and the entire back-end to Blogography became non-responsive...
UPDATE: This morning (Saturday) I started re-installing components one-by-one until everything magically started working again. The map is still blank, but at least I can post to my blog again.
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As usual, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
It wasn't the greatest year for me, but there were some definite highlights worth remembering. I'll probably stick mostly to those...
JANUARY
• Wrote a five-star review for one of the greatest books ever written...
• Made a case as to why Scotty (from Star Trek) is one of the baddest mutha-fuckers in the galaxy...
FEBRUARY
• Threw my tall hat into the ring in an effort to become the new Pope...
• My second tattoo! Had the first part of my forearm band inked...
• Partied like a rock star at Jester's birthday party.
• Had one of my photos appropriated by the disgusting homophobic bigots at the "National Organization for Marriage."
MARCH
• Wrote a rap about my bitter disappointment in receiving a Eggo waffle that was half missing.
• Finally found a broadway musical I didn't hate in The Book of Mormon...
• Took my first of two trips this year to one of my favorite cities on earth... New Orleans, Louisiana.
APRIL
• Celebrated the earliest years of my impeccable fashion sense...
• Flew to Salt Lake City to take in the latest brilliant tour by one of my favorite bands, OMD, with Marty of Banal Leakage fame.
• Flew to Los Angeles for a job and ended up getting to be Virtual Iron Man at Disneyland...
MAY
• Took a quick work trip to Washington, D.C. and ended up wandering around the city... and fighting Mr. Shiny over hummus.
• Flew to Pittsburgh to spend time with one of my most favorite people on earth...
JUNE
• Had a life-changing experience when Becky and I went to see Ke$ha LIVE in concert...
• Flew to Boston for one day to attend a party for a friend... and find a few surprises.
• CONGRATULATIONS BLACKHAWKS ON YOUR STANLEY CUP WIN!!
JULY
• Flew to Atlanta for some work... and say a farewell to Dante's Down the Hatch restaurant with my bloggity friends...
• Had a stop-over in DutchyLand for a trip to Maastricht and one of my most favorite foods on earth...
• Finally made it to the city of Helsinki for a quick vacation (and another Hard Rock Cafe visit)...
• Took a day-trip to the city of Tallinn in Estonia (and visited The Depeche Mode Bar at long last)...
AUGUST
• Flew to Las Vegas for my very first Elvis Wedding Experience...
• Back to San Francisco for Part Two of my forearm band ink...
• Found out that if the heterosexual thing doesn't pan out... apparently, I've got other options...
SEPTEMBER
• Off to Tampa to see my favorite band of all time, Depeche Mode, with a Certifiable Princess and her prince...
• Off to Philadelphia to see my second-favorite band of all time, The Pet Shop Boys, and hang out with some bloggity friends...
• Ran down some of my favorite recent video finds on the internet...
OCTOBER
• Took a vacation to Southeast Asia... starting in Saigon, where I became a millionaire (and got to check another Hard Rock Cafe off my list)...
• Flew north to Hội An to experience an all-new culinary adventure...
• Went on an amazing photographic adventure in the Vietnamese countryside...
• Explored the famous caves of the Marble Mountains...
• Flew to Hanoi, where I learned how to do tai-chi...
• Flew to Laos, for a bit of relaxation... and to see the beautiful sights...
• Finally had the opportunity to check Cambodia and Angkor Wat off my bucket list...
• At long last got to see P!nk live and in concert...
• Cry me a river, next-gen video game adopters. Wrote about videos games THEN vs. video games NOW...
• RED SOX WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!!!
NOVEMBER
• Money NOT well spent... my five most regretted purchases... EVER.
• Ranted against a massively flawed attempt at anti-GMO legislation.
• Disclosed Ten Things You Probably Don't Know About Me.
• As if flying wasn't bad enough... I'm completely against allowing mobile phones in-flight. The homicide rate on planes would suddenly be horrific...
DECEMBER
• Was devastated that Saltalamacchia left my beloved Boston Red Sox for Miami...
• Flew back to New Orleans, again, because I just can't help myself.
• RW and I closed out our third stellar year with our ninth issue of THRICE Fiction magazine!
And... that's a wrap for 2013!
Thanks to everybody for stopping by. I hope your 2014 is a very good year!
"Dave 2 will be the first to admit that his blog is mostly crap. But there's some interesting stuff in there if you're willing to dig through all that crap." — StuckyTruth
"Too much work." — Sam R.
If that doesn't sum up Blogography, I don't know what does.
Thanks for putting up with my crap, fearless reader!
I have no opinion on ketchup brands. Heinz, Hunts, Del Monte... whatever.
I have a very serious opinion on things that matter. Like taco sauce (La Victoria), cola (Coke), toilet paper (Charmin), and handbags (Dooney & Bourke).
And while having opinions is all well and good, sharing opinions can sometimes get you into trouble. Well, not "trouble" per se... but opinions can certainly get you unwanted drama. Especially if you share those opinions with the entire world on the internet.
This morning I went to approve some comments on my blog. One of them gave me an error, so I clicked through to see what was wrong. My guess is that the comment was too long, as I was having to scroll through pages of it before I got to the end.
Apparently somebody took issue with my opinion that Lost was one of the shittiest television shows ever to air on television because, after a great start, the writers didn't know what they were doing or where the hell they were going with the story. The point of the comment, if I had to guess, is that I am "too stupid" to understand how great Lost is, so my "opinion is invalid."
And so I started dicing up the comment so I could get it to post it over several comments... all so I could type some snarky one-sentence response to their ten-page rant. But then I realized just how much I don't give a crap over this person's opinion of my opinion, and just deleted it. That'll teach you to call me stupid, you stupid-head!
Or probably not. Because internet, and all that.
Just five years ago, I would have not only figured out a way to post that comment, but would have written an equally-long point-by-point response justifying my opinion. I don't know what's changed in me since 2009, but I can't fathom doing that today. I just don't care enough to put in all that effort over a television show that ended ages ago.
Especially a show that ended so badly.
Oops. There I go again.
My "not-my-day-job" job requires a lot of patience, perseverance, humility, dedication and, above all... flexibility. Most every appointment I make involves my being "squeezed in" to somebody's calnedar, and things often change with only a moment's notice. Most times I will fly into a city a day early and leave two days late because I just don't know when I can get in the door. Often times, the trip itself happens without warning because an opportunity arises. Once I got a call as I was driving home from the airport telling me I had to turn around, go back to the airport, and be on the next flight to Orlando (which left in 90 minutes). Good thing I had a clean pair of underwear left over.
Needless to say, making personal plans while on the job is not easy. Often times it's impossible. Not that this stops me from trying. Fortunately, most of my friends in far away places are very understanding and forgiving when it comes to my having to change or cancel plans. They know it's not my choice that I can't make it to dinner or show up for a movie... it's just part of the game.
But it's not something everybody can handle.
Next week I have to be in San Francisco. Last time I was in the city for work, it was very last-minute, but my appointments were pretty well nailed-down to the daytime. So I made plans to get a tattoo and attend a farewell party during my free evenings... knowing full well that either could be canceled without notice. Lucky for me they weren't, and everything worked out fine. Until I got an email from a friend who was upset that I didn't contact them for a meet-up while I was there. I explained that the trip was a last-minute thing and all my time was booked, but promised I'd let them know the next time I was in San Francisco.
Except when I went to message them on Facebook once my schedule had been tightened up, I found out that I had been unfriended.
Like I said, my wildly erratic work and travel schedule is not something everybody can handle.
Which makes me really appreciate those friends who can put up with me.
Because sometimes it's all I can do to put up with myself.
In my earliest days of blogging (back before it was even called "blogging") there wasn't any software to help you out. My first blog, "DaveWorld," was entirely coded by hand. Any time I wanted to add something, I'd have to manually edit the HTML code. This was a cumbersome process that was way too much work, so the blog died a slow death and was eventually deleted. My second effort, "DaveBlog," was created on the Blogger platform. This made things easier... but writing was still a chore. And customizing the look of your blog in any meaningful way was nigh impossible.
Then the husband and wife team of Ben & Mena Trott came up with Movable Type and everything changed.
With Movable Type, all the technical crap required to run a blog vanished. Third-party blogging tools like "Kung-Log" made writing a breeze. And since everything ran on templates using a dead-simple coding language, customizing your blog was a piece of cake.
Blogography was born, and I have Movable Type to thank for it.
Eventually Movable Type was sold. An Open Source version was released (and powers my blog to this day), but the focus of the platform was steered towards "professional" and "enterprise" environments, so development of the "free personal" version stagnated. An effort to create an independent version (called "Melody") died. Third-party support dried up.
Movable Type as a viable platform for small bloggers like was coming to an end.
And now the Open Source version is being suspended.
In order for me to keep using a supported version of Movable Type, I would have to purchase a 5-user "Pro" license for $600.
Well fuck that.
So now I am forced into something I should have done a long time ago... changing blogging platforms. I toyed with the idea of switching to Ghost, which looks to be coming along brilliantly, but my only real choice is the 10-ton gorilla of personal blogging: WordPress.
Which is not easy.
My webhosting company, Media Temple, doesn't allow software processes to last long enough to export all my data. So I have to hire a third-party to convert my entries and comments.
And, of course all my templates will have to be converted. The cost to hire somebody for the work is outrageous, so I'm having to do it myself. It's not rocket-science, but it's slow-going. Very slow-going. Everything I learned when building DaveCafe on WordPress has long-since been forgotten. And so I'm starting from scratch.
And so there goes my weekend. But the blog must go on.
Yay.
For better or worse, this blog is now running on WordPress.
Migrating was both easier and harder than I thought it would be. I was dreading converting all my templates because Movable Type has a far easier template language to work with. Much to my delight, it took me just under two hours. Much to my horror, the comments display looks like complete shit. And the comment form is wonky. I've spent around SIX HOURS trying to fix everything, but WordPress uses a stupid fucking HTML List Element to output comments, and all attempts to figure out how to style it have failed. I've read dozens of tutorials and read loads of documentation, but nothing works, and I have no idea why. So... something left to do, I guess.
Anyway... for anybody wanting to dump Movable Type and switch to WordPress, I have notes.
DATA
Movable Type's "Export" function has always been incomplete and terrible. They tried to fix this with a "Backup" function, but I was never able to get it to work. Ever. Part of the problem is that my hosting company, Media Temple, has a pathetically small time-out value for their Grid Hosting. If you have more than a couple hundred entries, this means Media Temple will never get to finish the job. So there goes my hopes of spending $49 at TP2WP.com for a quick and dirty conversion of my entries and comments to WordPress. Fortunately, Mihai at Pro-IT-Service has near-miraculous knowledge of all things Movable Type, and I was able to hire him to do the job for me for a reasonable fee (considering I have over 4,000 entries and nearly 52,000 comments!). He did a flawless job. Permalinks were preserved. Extended entries were merged to WP format. Categories were not only preserved, but he provided an .htaccess file update so that referrers to my categories would be redirected to a WordPress-friendly URL. Just like his previous work for me, Mihai totally delivered, and I couldn't be happier.
MIGRATION
My hosting company allows me to host multiple domains on my account. All I have to do is create a folder in my "domains" directory, point my NameServers to their servers, and I'm done. This made it dead-simple to install WordPress in an unused domain, then just rename its folder to "blogography.com" after Mihai migrated my data. All I had to do then was let WordPress know that its domain had changed and I was done. For some reason I thought it would be a lot more difficult.
STATIC
One of the things that I really, really liked about Movable Type was the option to go with statically-generated honest-to-goodness html files. You can do this with WordPress by using a clever plugin, but that adds a lot of overhead when you're working on converting your templates and are making lots of changes. For now, I plan on leaving things dynamic. But the security of having static html files that will still work even if your database craps out is something I'm too paranoid to resist for long. Even so, I am using the W3 Total Cache plugin so WordPress serves up pages more efficiently in the meanwhile.
SECURITY
Something you're forced to learn when switching from Movable Type to WordPress is that securing your site is a big deal. I learned this the hard way when I converted DaveCafe as a WordPress blog... and got hacked in four days. Yes, four days. I installed a bunch of security plugins to help clean up all the malicious code and my database, but was hacked again the following month. Eventually I just locked down WordPress completely by editing my .htaccess file so the back-end is completely inaccessible. Which means in order to work on DaveCafe, I first have to edit my .htaccess file. Then edit it back. Every time. It's a pain, but I only update the site a few times a year, so I can live with it. Obviously, this is not an option for a blog I'm updating every day. Enter the Better WP Security plugin. It seems comprehensive, so I'm hopeful. Then again, I've only been running for one day...
BACKUP
Back when I first began with my web hosting company, Media Temple, they had a backup tool included. But then they switched to their "Grid" service and backup was dropped. I never understood why. This is a BASIC FUCKING FUNCTION that even the cheapest hosting companies offer. Years later Media Temple managed to finally get around to it, but you have to pay for their premium "CloudTech" service to get it. At least you did. I have no idea what the situation is now. In any event, I'm done with dealing with this crap, so I'm using the WordPress Backup to Dropbox plugin to keep my data safe.
COMMENT SPAM
I frickin hate... HATE... CAPTCHAs. Every time I go to comment on a blog and I see I have to interpret some crazy-ass bullshit in order to post, I think twice about whether I want to put in the effort. To avoid this on my Movable Type blog, I used some javascript code called Obfuscator that passed code from the comment form to prove the comment was manually generated instead of a spambot. I haven't yet figured out how to use it with WordPress, so I'm relying on the included "Akismet" plugin to catch spam for me until I do. So far, so good. Akismet has blocked 32 pieces of comment spam in 6 hours. If this keeps up, I won't worry about figuring out Obfuscator after all.
SUPPORT
Going from a fringe product like Movable Type that few personal bloggers are using anymore... to a 10-ton gorilla like WordPress that everybody is using... well, it's quite an adjustment to make. I'm simply not used to having such a huge community available with instant answers to even my most bizarre problems. But the best part of WordPress is ACTUALLY DOCUMENTATION! Movable Type always had shit for documentation, and it's wonderful to not have to worry about putting up with outdated, shitty docs any more.
DEVELOPMENT
Another reason I'm ecstatic to finally be rid of Movable Type? WordPress has an active development community. Plugins are plentiful and current. You can extend functionality in just about every conceivable way. Finding new themes for you site design is easy... whether you want something free... or to pay for something more. And the apps! WordPress is well-supported because so many people are using it. My third-party blogging software, MarsEdit, barely supports Movable Type. Subcategories never worked right. A lot of features weren't supported. But with WordPress? An entirely different story. Everything works flawlessly. I can use categories again!
PAGES
WordPress has an irritating schema that omits the ".html" extension on Pages. I have no idea why since they have no problems appending it to Posts, but there it is. It isn't too big of a problem... slapping some 301 redirects in my .htaccess file fixed the problem nicely. Which is a good thing, since Google's Custom Search refuses to work without it.
TEMPLATES
And now we've come full-circle to WordPress template-building. As I said, Movable Type has the upper hand here in a big way because they use simple tags. WordPress uses PHP code snippets. Which makes getting anything out of WordPress a bit more difficult (and, in the case of formatting comments, a hell of a lot more difficult). Still, once you get the hang of it, it's not too bad. Just not as easy as it could be.
LINKS
When you've been blogging for 11 years, you're bound to accumulate a few broken links. Thanks to a plugin called Broken Link Checker, I now know I have 1,214 of them. Most are from people who left comments linking to their blog... which no longer exists. Kind of sad to see so many sites having died. I remain amazed mine isn't one of them.
CONCLUSION
Ultimately, I'm happy with the move. If the plugins I'm using will keep spammers and hackers at bay, I'll be very happy. My only regret is that I didn't do this much sooner. If you have a solution for migrating your data from Movable Type to WordPress, this isn't a difficult decision to make. The resources, tools, and activity benefits are pretty much a no-brainer.
And now I should probably work on getting my Archives page running, my comments formatted, and my comment form working... but it's past midnight and I'm all WordPressed out for the night.
P.S. Originally, I had coded big purple X's before all my posts on the WordPress blog so I could easily tell which site I was working on. After a couple hours, I actually grew to like them there (especially when scrolling through a long list of posts) so I think I'll keep 'em!
Time to put House of Cards on pause, because an all-new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Random! Sometimes when I'm stuck on a phone call, I'll fire up Wikipedia and click on the Random Article link for a while (WARNING: no telling where that link takes you). It never ceases to amaze me what pops up. Yes, there's a lot of random stubs that flash by... but there's always a few articles of substance that will teach you something. Today my articles were... HUMAN TOOTH SHARPENING!... CERATONYKUS!... FRISKNEY!... and the HOUSTON THUNDERBEARS! — But be careful. If you click too fast, you could skip by something interesting (like NEW KOREAN ORTHOGRAPHY!) and not be able to get back to it (your browser's back button won't work). And who knows what knowledge tomorrow will bring? (perhaps the BARCELONA INTERNATIONAL EROTIC FILM FESTIVAL!).
• Ellen! Even without her personal announcement, Ellen Page's speech for the Human Rights Campaign this week was powerful, inspiring, and well worth watching...
I hope Ellen Page knows just how much her words mean to a lot of kids struggling with acceptance... not only with their sexuality, but with all the challenges they face because they're different... or merely perceived to be different. The more people keep speaking out for treating people with decency and respect, the more attitudes will change. And the more kids will feel less alone as they struggle to figure out their path in life.
• Please! Oh please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please please let this happen.
• Bloop! Because I just can't help it, I now present The LEGO Movie blooper reel...
Awww! Is there anything cuter than LEGO minifigs?
• Search! For years, I've been integrating Google Custom Search into Blogography. But it's grown increasingly unreliable, and I'm tired of having it fail when I go to use it. So when I switched to WordPress, I decided to dump it. Only to find that WordPress search sucks. It sucks so bad. And so I found my way to the Relevanssi plugin. It's an order of magnitude better than what comes with WP, for which I'm grateful. I just wish it had pictures like Google does. Everybody loves search that comes with pictures! Bummer. I do like how it highlights the search terms though.
• Archive! And while I'm on the never-ending subject of my migration to WordPress, I am compelled to bring up how crappy their archiving is compared to what I was using with Movable Type. Hopefully one day you'll be able to navigate between monthly archives without a plugin, but not today. Hopefully one day you'll be able to navigate subcategories within a category without hard-coding IDs in an array, but not today. Both of these are not revolutionary features by any means, and it mystifies me as to why they aren't included. Luckily WordPress is ever a work in progress. So maybe one day.
And now, if you'll excuse me, another episode of House of Cards awaits...
I had some work calls to make during my lunch hour, so I decided to catch up on Facebook while I was making small-talk. Despite current bullshit studies by managers with too much time on their hands who say multitasking is counterproductive, I can't fathom wasting my time by not doing multiple things at once.
And so there I was discussing ink limits for printing on plasticized board... when I lose my ability to speak. I somehow manage to end the call as my heart starts crushing my chest.
Long-time blogging friend, Tracy Lynn "Kap" Kaply, is gone.
It's impossible to reduce Kaply down to words. She was hysterically funny, yes. She was exceedingly kind, sure. She was delightfully raunchy, indeed. She was keenly observant, absolutely. She was craftily opinionated, no doubt. But to keep piling adjectives on her seems somehow a disservice when no amount of words will ever paint the whole picture of who she was. You had to know her to love her and, even though I didn't know her exceedingly well, I came to love her just the same. Your life was far more entertaining with Kaply in it than out of it, and I just don't know what higher praise I can offer than that...
You will note that she is wearing one of my "Try Evil" T-shirts. When looking for photos of her, it was almost impossible to find a recent image where she wasn't wearing one. She'd wear them until they were falling apart, then ask me to send her another one. And I always did. She told me that the T-shirt said everything about her that she wanted people passing her on the street to know. Adjective-free, of course.
I think the first time I met Kaply in person was back in 2007 at the first Daveattle blogger meet, but we had known each other online for years before that...
I'm pretty sure she introduced herself with "Yeah, I'm Kaply. Try not to fall down at my feet or anything embarrassing like that." Which is oddly typical of the Kap I would come to know.
It's more than a little sad to see that Kaply is the second person in this photo to leave us. Rick Leonard, another wonderful human being, passed on a while back.
People wonder why I act like a two-year-old most of the time. It's because growing up means your friends start to leave you.
And Kaply is somebody I just don't want to say goodbye to.
So I won't.
I'll just say that I will miss her.
Now if I could just figure out to do with all these fucking "Try Evil" T-shirts I had custom-printed in her size. It figures that Kap would go and die on me before she had worn them all. So typical. It's just like her to be sure that I had something hanging around to remember her by.
As if I could ever forget.
The video was recorded on an old VHS tape which had been in service far past the point it should have been discarded. Carter's annoyance with the badly degraded image caused his right eye to twitch, but nobody in the room seemed to notice.
"Look! Look at this!" Carter said as his finger punched the rewind button yet again. Then, for what seemed like the fiftieth time, he pressed play.
The VCR lurched into action with a heavy "clunk" as the tiny television came to life.
A nondescript convenience store materialized out of a wash of video noise. The image was so bleached of color that it might as well have been black and white. The camera was focused on the service counter where a young man was ringing up purchases into a cash register. His customer, a middle-aged man in a full business suit, stood waiting with his wallet open.
There was no sound, but everybody's imagination was filling in the blanks. A 2-liter bottle of Coke. Beep Beep Beep. A bag of OREO cookies. Beep Beep Beep. A roll of mints. Beep Beep.
The image began to shudder as a blast of jagged white lines started rolling through the picture. Then, just as suddenly as it had been obscured, the image cleared again. The store clerk had finished ringing up the man's purchases and was dumping everything into a plastic bag. The customer tossed a wad of bills on the counter as a woman appeared behind him holding a six-pack of beer in her left hand.
"Here it comes!" Carter whispered.
The woman, who had very dark skin, closely-cropped hair, and was wearing a magenta mini-skirt that burst out of the muted display like a signal flare, was talking to the man now. It was impossible to know what she was saying, but the man appeared calm and relaxed.
At least he was until she pulled a gun out of the breast pocket of her heavy black leather jacket and shot him twice in the heart.
Carter laughed with a high-pitched squeal and started rewinding the tape again. "Just look at you there with your big gun and stiletto heels! What a mess you made!"
"I know, I was there."
The woman from the video sat bound to a high-back chair. Her jacket was now splattered with blood that had dried to a dark carmine color. One of her eyes was swollen and her lip had been split. This time the blood was fresh and glistened a bright crimson.
"Yes. Yes... you... were," Carter said with a grumble as he pressed play for what seemed like the fifty-first time. The woman's eyes rolled back in her head as the scene started yet again.
"Tell me, Monica, because I truly am curious... who got to you? Who convinced you that betraying me was in your best interest? Who was it that deluded you into believing this was survivable?"
On the display, a store clerk was ringing up a 2-liter bottle of Coke. Now, in the recorded past, he's reaching for a bag of OREOs.
The woman tried to shift her position to something more comfortable, but the tubing that tied her to the chair was too tight. She tried twisting her torso to loosen her bonds, but was defeated. With nothing better to do, she began to speak. Carter stopped the tape and tossed the VCR remote on a nearby table.
"Your interdimensional friends, of course," Monica said, her voice eerily flat and expressionless. "They told me everything. They spoke to me from a beam of sunlight and told me that you were going to destroy the world."
If Carter was surprised, he didn't show it.
"But you're wrong about one thing. They never told me this was survivable. I have no delusions."
Now something changed on Carter's face. Fear?
The woman began to speak again, but her voice was drowned out by a high-pitched squeal. Carter and his assortment of hired killers were all covering their ears. Monica would have covered hers if she could, but she was tied to a chair and couldn't move. It didn't matter. The sound was growing louder, and nothing was going to stop it.
Despite the deafening audio assault hammering into her skull and the brilliant white glow clawing its way out of her chest, the woman smiled. She had sacrificed herself so that the whole world might live. She had atoned for her many sins and, if there were a heaven, she was guaranteed entry. After a decade of despair, she finally had something to smile about. She finally understood.
And then Monica exploded in ball of light, taking six city blocks with her.
Carter died wondering how things had gone so terribly wrong.
Sixteen dimensions away, a sunbeam quivers in amusement. Tomorrow he will shift back through the time stream and find something new to play with. But today? This refraction is over, and he's hungry. He wonders what frequency of photons will be served for dinner. There are no shadows in his world.
I really hate having to leave the Netherlands.
Almost as much as I hate stupid "April Fools Day" pranks that get unleashed everywhere. And since there's always somebody who believes people's outrageous shit, the fools-pranking will never end.
At least Google puts some effort into their pranks each year...
The really cool thing about this year's gag is that this is something that will probably actually happen one day. It's only a matter of time before augmented reality games are this good.
The Virgin America & Nest prank was pretty funny too...
And since YouTube is where most of the pranks live, they decided to get in on the act themselves...
But my favorite? SelfieBot!
And now I guess it's time to climb in a metal tube for ten hours. Then drive in a car for two-and-a-half hours. Then go to the clinic for my smashed ribs for an hour.
Ha! April Fools! You can never get out of the walk-in clinic in under five hours!
See you across the pond.
For the first time... ever(?)... I had to take down a blog post.
Yesterday I said "If you don't hear from me again, I'm probably dead. After writhing in agony for hours." Right after posting that, I noticed there was a software update for my blog, so I installed it. After a few minutes I was all updated and good to go.
Until I sat down to write today's entry and noticed that the entry editor is... errr... "missing" for lack of a better word...
Uhhh... where do I type?
Well that's darn inconvenient! And since I am flying out early, early tomorrow morning it's not like I can fix it now.
So it's probably best that I take down yesterday's post telling people that if they don't hear from me I'm probably dead.
Now wouldn't it be ironic if I died right after removing it?
Almost as ironic as if my blog stays permanently dead and I never get to post this entry about my blog being temporarily dead.
"It's not like anybody is blogging any more."
"I still blog every day."
"Good lord, why?"
"Don't grow old, Pyotr, nothing but pain and disappointment wait for you there."
"I will try, grandfather! Truly I will."
"Promise?"
"I promise, grandfather!"
"Good!" said grandfather with a cackle that quickly collapsed into a fit of dry, hacking coughs.
Seven hundred and forty-six years later "Peter," as he was now known, thought back on his promise and cursed his grandfather roundly. Turns out it's not growing old that leads to pain and disappointment, it's existing.
Though, to be honest, that may have been seven hundred and forty-six years trapped in the body of a six-year-old boy talking.
There comes a point when you just can't function any longer.
I worked last night until 1:00am... woke up at 4:30am to work some more... took a quick nap from 7:30-8:00am... got cleaned up and went to work at 9:00am... came back home to work at 5:30pm... now it's 9:30pm and I've hit a wall. My brain just won't work any more.
Which is unfortunate, because I'm not even half-way through all the things I really needed to get done.
I either need to clone myself or seek a medically-induced coma.
The good news is that I had grape Kool-Aid and a cheese sandwich for dinner. I had been dreaming about them all day long. And now... it's just five hours until 4:30am rolls around again. It would be nice if I could sleep for most of that but, well, you know...
Luckily, I don't require my brain to blog.
For those who took time to "Ask Me Anything" this week, here are your answers.
As an FYI, I only had to delete one question (because it was about another person and not directed to me). This was unexpected, as I thought going 100% anonymous would have invited a lot of hateful crap. As it were, I only got a few questions by people who thought they were asking hateful crap. Thanks for surprising me in a good way, internet!
And so it begins.
For years now, I've been debating whether or not I should pull entries from my first two blogs (DaveWorld/DaveSpot and DaveBlog) and fold them into my third (and current) blog... Blogography. There's also a chunk of entries I saved from the first go-round of Blogography before it got rebooted in April 2003.
The problem is two-fold.
1) All my entries from "back in the day" were written at a time when I never even considered strangers wanting to read my crap. Entries were created for my friends and family only, and contained a lot of personal information I wouldn't dream of putting on the internet today. Obviously anything I re-post now would have to either be heavily edited or rewritten.
2) For the longest time I couldn't get it out of my head that posting old entries to my current blog was "cheating." I'm the first to admit that doesn't make much sense... but George Lucas fucking around with the Star Wars films over the years has freaked me out on the idea of mucking with the past. HAN SHOT FIRST — BLOGOGRAPHY BEGAN IN APRIL 2003!
But now, thanks to some encouragement from y'all, I'm over it.
The first entry I've decided to retro-post is from December 2000 when I visited Rome for the first time. It pretty much had to be re-written from scratch, because a lot of the original text was written through the perspective of a recent break-up with my then-ex-girlfriend. It was not a happy time, and the trip to Italy was a fortunately-timed escape from heartache.
You can read the entry by clicking here.
After all is said and done, I'm liking the idea of retro-posting more and more. I'll definitely be doing more as time permits.
I posted here yesterday. Isn't that enough for you people?
Any time I need a reason to keep blogging when most everybody else has quit, all I have to do is look at my visitor stats. For reasons completely unknown, people keep reading. Yes, the death of Google Reader had a big impact on my visitor counts... but the number of "unique visitors" stopping by keeps inching upward.
In short? Lot's of people visit here.
The bulk of my traffic has always come from Google searches but, in the past, those people never stuck around much. They'd get what they came for and move on. Now-a-days, however, a surprising number of people do stick around and keep reading. I'm not exactly sure why. Most of the time it's via tag links. Somebody arrives because a search led them here, they like (or hate?) what I have to say, then click through so they can read more posts on the same topic. And those topics can generally be ranked into a "Top 5" like this...
The first four categories are not that shocking. They encompass 75% of what I blog about (the remainder being day-to-day "DaveLife" crap).
The last one, however, is a bit surprising because I don't often write about politics. And yet, when I do, it usually ends up getting linked to from... somewhere... whether it's somebody agreeing or disagreeing. Writing about Rick "Piece of Shit" Santorum, for example, always result in linkbait because I'm so passionate about loathing the asshole, and people who also loathe him just love to share. That being said, posts that Conservatives could latch onto are the ones that seem to get the most attention. For example...
All the Right Wing love is nice, but I don't think I'll be signing up for the Tea Party just yet.
Anyway...
Guess I should send out a big "thank you" to Google for keeping people reading my bullshit.
Though I suppose having nearly 12 years of content to search through plays a part as well. When you've been blogging as long as I have, you've pretty much discussed just about everything there is.
Well, except Taylor Lautner. There are some topics beneath even me.
UPDATE: Shit!
Back in the olden days there was an activity called blogging. This was where people wanting to share their experiences, knowledge, and observations would create a website and, using a content management system, would post such experiences, knowledge, and observations for all the world to see.
Blogging was not always easy. Especially if you were a blogger that blogged every day. Because, unless you're an astronaut or Hugh Hefner, eventually you run out of blog-worthy things to blog about.
Enter memes.
In order to generate ideas for blog content, bloggers started developing quizzes, challenges, questionnaires, and all kinds of other idea-generating material to blog about. Not everybody appreciated memes... many people downright abhorred them... but when it's 11:55pm and you're desperate for something to blog about, memes could be your best friend.
One of the most popular meme generators on the internet back in the day was The Friday 5. Every Friday they would post five questions for you to answer in a blog post, which was an easy way to get it over with and move on to your weekend. Unfortunately The Friday Five was eventually discontinued, and there were many sad pandas across the blogosphere.
And so I decided to do something about it.
I created a new Friday meme generator and called it FridayQ.
It ran a little over a year from June 4th, 2004 until I got tired of doing it and shut it down on July 22, 2005.
For years after it died, the FridayQ lived on as hand-coded pages here at Blogography. I never deleted them because I had a lot of blog posts that referenced FridayQ and I didn't want to go back and have to change 52+ entries. Alas, when I converted my blog to WordPress back in February all the FridayQ pages were lost and, for reasons unknown, were never backed up. After 8 years, 6 months, and 22 days, the FridayQ was finally dead for good.
Until...
Yesterday I was updating the web code for my blog stats and noticed that somebody was trying to reach FridayQ. This got me curious as to how many other searches it was getting, so I checked. Turns out there were dozens of them throughout the year. Mostly from my own blog, but there were other surviving blogs out there still linking to the site as well.
Maybe I should look into restoring FridayQ then?
And so this morning I did just that.
I visited the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to see what I could recover. None of the graphics were there, but all of the pages had been saved. Sure, the archives were out of date by a few months, but that was an easy fix. All I had to do was go through my Blogography archives and copy the original questions. Easy.
But what about the missing graphics?
Time to pull all my old hard drives out of storage.
Surprisingly, every drive I tried actually worked. And I found a backup of the FridayQ images on my fifth drive...
Good thing I'm a packrat who doesn't throw old tech away, huh?
I uploaded the pages to Blogography, updated all the links, and voilà... FridayQ is served!
You can visit them for yourself by clicking here.
If you want to read all my crazy answers, you can check out my "meme" archive for 2004 and 2005. They're solid gold, people. Solid gold.
And now I just need to decide what to do with this box of old hard drives. They're probably not going to stay working forever. Hell, half of them require a FireWire port which doesn't even exist anymore (thankfully I have a FireWire to Thunderbolt converter!). Two of them are SCSI drives that would require pulling one of my old Macs with a SCSI interface out of storage to read. Hmmm... perhaps I should back them up to the cloud or transfer them to modern hard drives or something? They're all ridiculously small by today's storage standards... I could probably fit all of them on a single terabyte external drive no problem.
Blergh. One more thing added to my list that I don't have time for.
Like blogging every day. =sigh=
This post is scheduled to publish at 9:10:11 12/13/14.
Since that ain't gonna happen again for a thousand years, I felt obligated to play along.
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As usual, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
This year presented me with some harsh struggles, unwelcome challenges, and a lot of bad news. But there were some good moments in there that kept 2014 from being a complete disappointment, so here we go...
JANUARY
• Explained why I'm in favor of legalizing marijuana even though I don't use marijuana...
• Jester and I visited the Walt Disney Family Museum at long last, then saw the amazing Betty Who in concert...
• Made time to add another section to my forearm tattoo.
FEBRUARY
• Got angry.
• With much sadness, I had to say goodbye to a friend.
MARCH
• How I read.
• Flew to the Netherlands for PATATJES MET!
• Visited Glasgow, Scotland for Hard Rock No. 153...
• Revisited Florence, Italy for Hard Rock visit No. 154...
• Then went onward to Nice, France for Hard Rock visit No. 155 and nearly got killed in the process...
• Visited Friesland, the land of my forefathers, with The Dutch Bitch... then continued to the resort island of Schiermonnikoog.
APRIL
• Back to San Francisco for work and the same old routine, which means... MINI DONUTS!
• Can't go to San Francisco without another tattoo...
MAY
• Visited the new Palm Springs Hard Rock Hotel, which is No. 156 for me...
• Discovered the best damn veggie burger ever while in Chicago...
• And so... Apple is definitely broken.
• TILTED WITH HOT COFFEE GIRL... ZOMG!
• Finally saw Morrissey in concert on a trip to Tampa... AND HE DIDN'T CANCEL! WOO-HOO!
• Ate the world's best potato salad with Certifiable Princess then explored Ybor City where we found... THE BAD MONKEY BAR!!!
JUNE
• Once again flew to the amazing city of Pittsburgh and got to spend time with HelloHaHaNarf Becky, one of my most favorite people on earth... LET'S GO BUCS!
That's right... bask in our adorableness!
• Becky and I drove to Ohio so I could visit the Northfield Park Hard Rock Casino (No. 157) and Hard Rock Cafe (No. 158)...
• Thanks to my sister, I got to watch a Mariners game with field-level seats!
• It's over.
JULY
• Fuck you, you fucking fucks.
• Managed to live through another fire seasons in Central Washington...
• Visited Pigeon Forge, Tennessee so I could check off Hard Rock No. 159...
• Visited some lighthouses in Maine and ate the best blueberry crumble I have ever had in my life...
AUGUST
• Saw my favorite movie of 2014... Guardians of the Galaxy.
• If you've never suffered from severe depression... if you've never stood by helplessly as somebody you care about battles depression... if you've never made an effort to understand what depression is or what it does to you... then please, for the love of God, shut the fuck up about it.
• Bought a new camera lens... my first telephoto glass in many years.
SEPTEMBER
• Flew to Salt Lake City and got to meet one of my childhood fantasies... ERIN GRAY!
• Went to the Retro Futura Tour with Marty from Banal Leakage to see TOM BAILEY OF THE THOMPSON TWINS LIVE IN CONCERT!
• Added Hard Rock visit No. 160 to my list in Johannesburg, South Africa...
• Fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit Africa and go on safari with a trip to Mana Pools in Zimbabwe...
• Photographed lions while visiting Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe...
• Accidentally discovered a love for astral photography...
• Flew to Victoria Falls to see the largest falls by volume on the face of the earth...
• THINGS I LEARNED ABOUT A SAFARI VACATION IN AFRICA!
OCTOBER
• Took a short vacation from my vacation with a trip to New Orleans... and tattoo No. 6...
NOVEMBER
• Had the extreme pleasure of attending a reading by my favorite living author, David Sedaris...
• God bless America? If this is what we've come to, I sincerely doubt it.
DECEMBER
• Try showing a little class...
• Took some time to do some night photography while I was in Portland, Maine...
• Stopped by Minneapolis to meet up with some blogger friends and visit the Hard Rock Cafe Mall of America, which would be No. 161 for me...
• Flew to Sioux Falls so I could drive down to Sioux City and see my last Hard Rock of the year... a hotel and casino No. 162...
• Closed out my travel year with a stop at the World Famous Corn Palace.
And that was my adventures in 2014.
Here's wishing everybody a terrific 2015!
Happiest of New Years to you!
When it comes to New Year's resolutions, I'm pretty boring because I have the exact same New Year's resolutions every year. The same five goals going on for heaven only knows how long. This year is no different, so here we go...
I should probably add "keep blogging" on there somewhere, but that's pretty much a given at this point.
And what am I looking forward to in 2015?
• Travel! It's going to be really difficult to top Africa, so I'm not even going to try. Where that leaves me for my Fall vacation I have no idea. Maybe if I try something a little less ambitious this year I'll be able to afford a trip to Antarctica or India next year?
• Movies! Well, new Star Wars: Episode VII is obviously topping my list of films I want to see this year. And lest we forget, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant Man are dropping in 2015 as well. And then there's the long delayed Jupiter Ascending that probably won't live up to my expectations, but I'm wanting to see it anyway. I don't know how to feel about Terminator: Genisys, but am onboard with Jurassic World. Also on my radar... Kingsman: The Secret Service, Mission Impossible 5, Ted 2, and Seventh Son. And then there's The Fantastic Four. Sony's already screwed up the property twice, so I'm holding out little hope that third time will be a charm... but who knows?
• Music! Topping my most anticipated list would be Macintosh Braun's Arcadia, which has been teased for far too long. Interested in seeing what Imagine Dragons come up with for Smoke + Mirrors. Rumor has it Duran Duran, Drake, and Garbage are going to released something this year, which would be welcome. As would a new album by Slayer, but talk seems to have died down as of late. Lastly, Ludacris is going to be dropping Ludaversal this year after a five year wait... definitely looking forward to that. Meanwhile, rumors that Depeche Mode were heading to the studio this year turned out to be false, which is sad because I so want them to redeem themselves to me after their disappointing past two releases. And finally, from the Hope Springs Eternal Dept., please, please, please, let Tom Bailey make a new album this year. His set of Thompson Twin calssics on the Retro Futura Tour was so mind-blowing that I'm dying for new material.
• Fiction! One of the definite highlights of the past four years has been working on THRICE Fiction. I can honestly say that neither RW nor I had any idea what this would become when it started, and we're so very grateful for the successes we've had. None of which wouldn't have been possible with the wonderful writers and artists who contribute to each issue. Big plans are afoot for 2015, and I couldn't be more excited for where we're headed. As always, you can download every issue for FREE on our website.
• Apple! Please oh please let this be the year we get Apple TV.
• Ink! Last year I got two new tattoos. This year will probably be the same. I am hoping to finally find time to get my upper-right arm worked on this year, as that's been a long time coming.
As always, wishing everybody only good things in 2015. Something tells me this is going to be another year to struggle for me, but hopefully not as awful as most of 2014 was.
And so... updating WordPress ended up being a very bad idea, because Blogography done broked real good last night.
Which happens from time to time, I know, but it's no less irritating. Usually I would just stop the world and re-install everything from scratch, but that's not an option right now. Maybe come the weekend...
Sorry if you're one of the thousands of people who can't start their day without a dose of Blogography. Guess you'll be taking the week off then?
When Blogography broke down (again) on Monday, I was half-way tempted to just leave it broken.
This was just the excuse I needed to hang up blogging once and for all, as lately it seems more like a chore I have to do rather than an activity I want to do. But I've gone through rough patches like this before and have always cone around, so I thought it best to get things running again. If I'm going to quit, it should be a decision I make instead of a decision I'm forced into.
So here I am.
Still.
Guess there's no better reason to do a meme than that...
See you tomorrow, I guess.
I hope all you East Coasters have dug your way out of the blizzard by now... because Bullet Sunday on Saturday starts... now...
• Blog! Turns out the reason my blog keeps failing is because database tables are being locked, rendering me unable to post anything. I don't know exactly how to keep it from happening... yet... but at least I know how to fix it without reinstalling everything.
• Burma Shave! A few people wrote and asked what's with the "Burma Shave" sign I posted. Since the concept pre-dates even me, here's a link to Wikipedia that explains it all...
If you want to take a look at some of the clever jingles Burma Shave came up with over the years, there's a repository for that.
• The Pox! It doesn't matter that the whole anti-vaccination movement is bullshit and the people who have been most vocal in claiming vaccinations are harmful are lying assholes... people are buying into it, which means dead diseases, like measles, coming back with a vengeance. There's loads of material online to support vaccination as a critical protection for all society... but Night of the Living Dad has one of my favorite takes on the subject. Here's another...
Too bad people can't get vaccinated against insanity.
• Lost? Lost was one of the best shows to hit television. For the first season or two. Then it became an idiotic mess of stupid shit that was piled on top of more stupid shit where nothing was resolved and nothing made sense. I maintained again and again that the writers had no clue what in the hell they were doing and that there could be no pay-off for such random idiotic bullshit. And now? Yep, yep, yep.
• Park! "Nara Dreamland," Japan's answer to Disneyland that opened in the 60's, was eventually closed in 2006. Probably because Japan ended up with an "authentic" Disneyland of their own. Since closing, Dreamland has been left abandoned. I was curious to know if anybody had managed to take photos of the empty park, and was surprised to find some incredible shots on a blog by photographer/writer Michael John Grist...
Well worth your time to visit, if you're into this kind of thing!
• SkyMall! As a frequent flier, I was very sad to learn that SkyMall has filed for bankruptcy. Not that I would ever buy their crazy, overprice crap... but it made for some much-needed entertainment on more than a couple flights...
After all, who wouldn't want a suitcase scooter?
And... I'm spent. New bullets in five days.
Boy do I miss blogs.
I have an ongoing promise to myself that I won't go into work on the weekends until noon. Rarely do I keep that promise, because I'd rather intrude on my precious personal time than have to work until midnight on a a weekend.
This morning I actually managed to keep my promise to myself. And it's all Jack Fischl's fault. JACK is the reason that I didn't drag my sorry ass to work until 1:30...
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Back when blogging was a thing, I read a lot of blogs. Like seriously many. As in hundreds. At one point I was reading 362 blogs, 256 of which were personal blogs of interesting people with interesting things to say. I know this because I once mentioned it in a video...
A surprising number of these bloggers became friends that I still keep in contact with today... even though they have long-since given up on blogging. A few of them I manage to visit in person as I travel the earth. Most of them, however, I only manage to keep up with because of Twitter or Facebook or whatever.
It's not the same.
Twitter gives you 140 characters in which to express yourself. That's great for simple thoughts ("I went to the grocery store today"), but total shit for actual communication ("I went to the grocery store today and was attacked by a grizzly bear"). Wait, what? With blogging you'd probably get the whole grizzly bear story right down to the last detail. Now you get the bare minimum of details that always leave you hanging. If you're lucky, there might be a photo attached, but that's about it.
Facebook isn't much better. Sure you have more space to write, but most people don't use it. Twitter and text messaging has destroyed real personal storytelling forever. Instead you get meaningless updates about winning a trivia game or automated data dumps of how far somebody ran today or random links to random stuff... anything but the story of somebody's life.
Am I the only one who misses that?
Anyway...
This morning I was trying to come up with travel ideas that were off the beaten path yet affordable. Looking at my travel map, I noticed once again how Central and South America have barely been touched. This annoys me greatly, so I started poking around the internet for unique travel experiences in those regions. Eventually I landed on a site called Keteka, "Your gateway to authentic tours and activities in Latin America." And indeed they do have a variety of interesting "off the beaten path" tours that are reasonably priced.
After exploring the site for a bit, I happened to notice a section called "Stories from the Road" at the bottom of the page. The first link was "Jack's Blog."
And there went three hours of my life.
What a fascinating guy. He started a blog as a way to document his adventures in Panama with the Peace Corps, and his every entry is fantastic stuff. Entertaining stories about everything from daily life in the rainforest to battling bat poop. Suddenly I was sucked back into the world of blogs again, remembering how great it was to be an observer into somebody's life that's different from my own.
And that's the thing that makes blogging so wonderful... everybody has a life that's different from mine. Which means everybody's life is interesting to me, even though they may find it mundane.
Boy do I miss blogs.
Such a pity that telling your story and inviting people into your life is an artform that's dying out in favor of snippets of 140 characters or less.
Such is progress.
I guess.
So, if you want an awesome read from the glory days of blogging, Jack Fischl is your guy.
I recommend starting at the last page, which is the first page chronologically. Then on each subsequent page, you have to scroll to the bottom and read entries in reverse in order to keep moving forward. Confusing, I know, but it's worth the effort.
Here's the last (first) page of Jack's Blog.
And don't hate me for making you miss blogging. I still do this crap every day.
It just occurred to me that I totally forgot about blogging today.
Guess that's bound to happen from time to time.
Here's a photo of me as a baby with a monkey...
There. Blogging done!
I once again forgot about my blogiversary... Blogography turned 12 years old on the 18th.
Not that I blame me. Now that blogs are essentially dead, blogiversaries are not what they used to be. Back in the day when 50 comments on every entry was the norm and the blogging community was strong, I'd count down the days until my blogiversary and have week-long contests with fabulous prizes. Fun times ensued, and I'd energized enough about blogging to carry me through to the next year's celebration.
Those were the days.
So...
A dozen years posting stupid shit to the internet.
Yay, me.
Back in the good ol' days where blogging actually mattered, I refused many an offer to host ads on Blogography (I still do... on those rare occasions somebody actually bothers to ask now-a-days). Not that I was turning down any massive dollar amounts or anything... I would have earned well under $100 a month... but the money wasn't the point. I simply did not want to have my entire blogging life revolve around driving clicks to my website.
Which is what you have to do in order to make ads worth it. Just ask the fine folks at TVBlend...
In order to find out the answer to their burning question, you have to click through to their website.
A.K.A. "clickbait."
Whereas Super Hero Hype has a different, arguably less douchey approach...
Super Hero Hype doesn't make you click through to get the answer, they try to create a post that will have you wanting to click through to get more than just "the answer." Kind of a big difference, though the end result is the same... if you're a fan of Constantine, you'll be clicking through to the site in order to get the deets about the fate of the show.
And while I prefer the Super Hero Hype approach which doesn't hold a gun to my head for a click-through, TV Blend's tactics don't bother me enough to stop following their newsfeed... I just don't click through as much as I would if they were a bit more creative in how they go about initiating it.
But lest you think Super Hero Hype isn't above allowing others to put douchey clickbait ads on their site. Well...
ZOMFG! WHAT DID SANDRA BULLOCK LIE ABOUT?!??
Who the hell cares?
A lot of people, apparently. Because this kind of clickbait is rampant on the internet. You can't escape it. Everywhere you look there's something UNBELIEVABLE and AMAZING that will LEAVE YOU SPEECHLESS... but it requires a click-through to reveal what it is.
In some cases it's more than figurative... you literally can't escape it. Because an increasing number of websites... "ZergNet" for example... spawn infinite new windows with every click so you never leave their site. You're trapped in a maze of clickbait from which few break free.
Until you fall asleep at the computer.
Or close your browser window.
Or die.
Which is the only true escape from clickbait once you're on the internet.
Which reminds me... DID YOU KNOW THAT THESE COMMON HOUSEHOLD ITEMS COULD KILL YOU?!?
Updated WordPress.
Ended up with some kind of permissions problem for posting. Again.
The quick fix that's worked every other time didn't work this time.
My ambition for tracking down what's wrong and repairing it is hovering somewhere near non-existent.
No blog for you.
The little photos that accompany each entry on this blog are 15 years old today! Thanks to my friend Meagan for creating the custom-made photo booth that made it all possible.
I should probably update them one of these days, but I can never seem to bring myself to get rid of something that's been a part of Blogography since it began in 2003...
Last week when I realized that the 15th anniversary of Meagan's photos was coming up, I pulled all the photos of me posted to this blog and arranged them in ascending date order.
A whole lot of Dave can be found in an extended entry...
→ Click here to continue reading this entry...
Every once in a blue moon...
...I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to write in this blog. Today was a crappy day and just when I thought it couldn't get any crappier, IT DID. Then it was crap on crap on crap, which meant I had to spend most all of my time trying to dig my way out of shit.
Perhaps on days like today I should just skip blogging entirely.
But I don't want to kill that streak I've got going on just yet, so here you are having to read about crap.
Which is to say it's just another day at Blogography.
My plan was to spend all day at the office so I could get caught up from time lost during my whirlwind week of working in Maine. Alas, instead I spent almost the entire day stuck in bed sick. My guess is that lack of sleep has finally compromised my health, and I ended up vulnerable to a bad case of food poisoning around 3:00am.
The bad news is that I managed to get zero work done.
The good news is that I stumbled across my Tumblr that I never use and had a bunch of questions waiting for me! Here are some of them...
What's the scariest thing you've ever done? I'm tempted to answer "skydiving," but I get more scared in tall buildings than I ever did skydiving and parachuting. Being in the middle of earthquakes in both Seattle and Tokyo were pretty scary. Getting held up at gun-point was definitely scary... but that wasn't something I did, so I honestly don't know. Blind dates are terrifying to me, so let's go with that.
What was the best sex you've ever had? Any sex I'm lucky enough to have is the best... but, if forced to choose? Cologne, Germany, February 2008. Came out of nowhere. Took me completely by surprise. Was the amazing culmination of an incredible day.
How do I get these numbers off my television? I am not familiar with your television, but the "DISPLAY" button usually takes care of that.
What sites do you use for travel advice? Where can I get the best airfare and the cheapest hotels? For specifics, I like TripAdvisor quite a lot, but you have to take some of the absurd reviews you see with a grain of salt. For general travel advice, Nomadic Mike is about as good as it gets (he has great tips for cheap airfare as well). Cheap hotels depend completely on where you're willing to say and what class you're comfortable staying at. I use Priceline a lot. When there's a specific hotel I want to stay at, I've saved money with Trivago. Surprisingly, I sometimes find huge savings by using my AAA card (and, as a bonus, all AAA rates seem to let you cancel them, unlike Priceline and other bidding sites which are non-refundable). My general advice for saving money is BE FLEXIBLE! Some times are cheaper than others. Some destinations are cheaper than others. So long as you are flexible, you'll be best able to take advantage of deals you can find around the internet (signing up for fare alerts from FareCompare and Airfare Watchdog is a good start, but you should sign up for everything you can find!).
Where do you draw the line? I try very hard to draw the line when my actions will negatively impact others.
Where did you go to art school and what advice would you give sombody wanting to have a career in art? I didn't go to art school and an entirely self-taught. When it comes to advice, I honestly don't know what to offer. Now-a-days, getting started in a profitable art career seems more about who you know and what connections you have over anything else. That being said, crazy-talented people always seem to find a way to make a living at it. Problem is, most people who think they're crazy-talented (sadly) are not. This is not to say that you can't make a living doing what you love, it's just that in a day and age where clip-art makes everybody think they're an artist and there are sites offering $5 logos and such... well... it can be difficult. That being said... keep working at it. Get yourself out there. Let your work be seen. Don't be discouraged by negative feedback but instead use that feedback to better your craft.
Why are you still blogging? I have no idea. Except... a lot of "unique visitors" drop by every day which means people are still reading it, so there's that. My guess is that it's become habit. I just do it without really thinking about it. And then there's nostalgia. I've met a lot of amazing people through blogging, so ditching it isn't that easy.
And... time to try and get more sleep...
My decision to skip sleeping last night was probably the best decision I could have made. A meager three hours would only have only served to put me in a coma for my three-hour-fifteen-minute commute to work. A coma from which even 5-Hour Energy would not let me escape.
As an insomniac, I never get much sleep anyways. But no sleep makes me very stabby indeed...
Driving sleep-free was the least of my worries though.
The reason I always drive to Spokane at night is because driving it in the morning results in about two-and-a-half hours of staring into this...
I-90 runs due-East directly into the rising sun. And on a day like today, it obliterates everything on the road. I really need to get me a sun-shield one day, but until then all I had was some notecards and clothespins hanging from my visor to cut down the glare as much as I could. I also had sunglasses, but they don't really help when it's this bright.
Work was a brisk 50 minutes, at which time I should have turned around and headed back home.
But there was no way I was going to come all this way without having some of the Best Pizza on Earth courtesy of David's Pizza Spokane...
Waiting 25 minutes for them to open was torture, as I was totally falling asleep after finding a spot to park. I ended up setting the alarm on my iPhone to wake me up, which was probably the smartest thing I did all day.
David's Da Vinci pizza was amazeballs as always.
Then it was time for the three-hour-fifteen-minute drive back.
Which was awful, but at least I didn't have to spend the majority of it staring at a giant ball of flames on the horizon.
I stopped to pick up some crap at Costco on the way because I'm stupid that way. Then I drove to work because I'm incredibly stupid that way. Eventually I managed to get home... at which point I passed out for two hours.
Since waking up I've been wandering around in a haze, my mind still in a state of exhaustion from serious lack of sleep.
Which is why I decided it's the perfect time to post an entry to Blogography... this time I have an actually excuse as to why my incoherent ramblings are incoherent and rambling.
This morning I went to send a Bullet Sunday dedicated to the concert last night and it wouldn't post. I tried to login to Wordpress to see what's going on and couldn't. My guess is that one of the security plugins I'm running has once again gone off the rails, which means I have to go through a bunch of files and deactivate stuff until I figure out what the problem is.
Which is a pain in the ass, but if the alternative is having my blog hacked every week, I guess I'll take it.
Hasn't anybody told the spammers and hackers that blogging is dead? They're just wasting their time.
You were loved.
You will be missed.
Wordpress ate my post.
I don't have the energy to rewrite it, so I guess that will have to be another day.
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As usual, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
This year was difficult for many reasons, but I tried to make the best of it whenever I could. ...
JANUARY
• Restored some very cool old family photos...
• Finally made the switch from Apple's discontinued Aperture to Adobe Lightroom.
FEBRUARY
• Got angry at the lobbyist pig-fuckers ruining this country.
• Mourned the loss of the blogs in my life.
• Went to a birthday party in San Diego and took some photos...
• I love baby bats!
MARCH
• Had another encounter with Cirque du Soleil, this time with KURIOS!
• Flew to Memphis to visit their new Hard Rock Cafe, see the sights, and visit some friends...
• Spent the evening photographing beautiful Beale Street...
• Got my hands on the majesty that is the Retina 5K iMac.
APRIL
• Essential viewing for every American.
• Sang the praises of Netflix and Marvel's Daredevil.
• Took a trip to Vancouver so I could get detained, visit the new Hard Rock Casino, and eat TimBits...
MAY
• Had a less than stellar experience when visiting the new Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Lake Tahoe...
• Visited Anchorage to see the new Hard Rock Cafe there and take the Alaska Railroad so I could go glacier watching...
• Marvel at Miley Cyrus and Ariana Grande as they Don't Dream it's Over...
JUNE
• THE BLACKHAWKS WIN THE STANLEY CUP!
• Dropped some text on vitiligo.
• Spent too long obsessing over a video where a cat taking a nap got an unexpected ride...
• Equality nation-wide...
JULY
• Wrote a love letter to Back to the Future on the event of the film's 30th anniversary.
• America. A retrospective of greatness.
• Took a look back at some of my favorite television commercials from past years.
• Came the closest to death that I ever have.
AUGUST
• Said goodbye to The Daily Show.
• Took a trip to Los Angeles and visited The Getty Museum...
• Was disgusted by being disgusted.
SEPTEMBER
• Became enamored with a pencil.
• Said goodbye to PDX carpet after flying to Portland for a wedding...
• Finally, finally got to see a concert at Red Rocks... DURAN DURAN!
• Became obsessed with LEGO Dimensions...
OCTOBER
• Sorry, I'm not Josh...
• iTunes is the shittiest software ever.
• Spent a beautiful day in Marin County...
• Went to see Walk the Moon with Jestertunes...
NOVEMBER
• Finally said goodbye to my piece of shit car.
• Took a step towards fulfilling a dream...
DECEMBER
• On a trip to Portland, Maine, I discovered that United Airlines Don't Give a Fuck.
• Delved into the world of home automation.
• Closed out my travel year by flying back to San Francisco so I could see The 1975 with Jestertunes.
And that was my adventures in 2015.
Here's wishing everybody a terrific 2016!
Blogography has been a frequent target of hackers, which has left me little choice but to lock it down as tightly as I possibly can. Part of the security I have set up is that the back-end can only be accessed from a specific IP address. Problem is that my new place does not yet have its static IP set up properly, so I stack up a week's worth of posts, unlock the system, post everything very quickly, then lock everything back down again.
Hopefully by the end of the month my old IP will be set up at my new installation and everything will be good again.
Until then...
Although it doesn't much look like it, I am still posting to my blog daily... I just can't get it there until I've got the whole Wordpress security thing settled with my new IP address.
The fact that it's taking so damn long to get it resolved is probably a sign to just give up, but I'll choose to ignore that.
For now.
Once I was hanging out at a bar with friends that featured live music. The band, which wasn't bad at all, was being badly heckled by a couple tables. For the first couple of songs, the band ignored the chants of "FREEBIRD!" and "NOW PLAY SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T SUCK!" But eventually the lead singer stopped the show and said something like "Hey, I get it. You don't like our music and that's fine. But, believe it or not, there are people who DO like our music and they've come here tonight so they can listen to us play. And you're ruining that for them. There are plenty of other bands out there and some of them probably play music you will enjoy, and you should probably go see them instead of us. But if you're going to stick around, be quiet and let us play. We'd do the same for you and your band... if you had a band. Which you obviously don't. If you did, you'd know how tough it is to get up in front of a room full of people to perform for them, and show us some fucking respect."
And it worked. One of the tables finished their drinks and left. The other stopped being assholes. And the reason it worked was because the band was able to confront the hecklers face to face. The hecklers couldn't hide from the consequences of their actions.
And then we get to the internet, where most of the people most of the time are hidden from the consequences of their actions. Why should they be quiet and respectful when their online "identity" is "BigLukeThe Exploder?" (or whatever... my apologies to BigLukeTheExploder if you actually exist).
Well, I want in on that.
Removing consequences from my actions sounds like a lot more fun than what I'm doing now.
So the next time you see an anonymous troll being a total fucking asshole on the internet... be kind.
It might be me.
So... a really good day to be one of my cats.
Long-time blogging friends Poppy and Dawg sent a Kitty Care Package for Jake and Jenny that came filled with all kinds of stuff they quickly became obsessed with...
Jenny is especially obsessed with the soft rainbow toy...
And, no surprise, Jake has laid claim to the Crunchy Monkey stuffed toy (he loves stuffed animals!)...
Thanks so much to Poppy and Dawg for making my cats' week!
For all those who wrote me emails or sent me texts or even called me... wondering what the heck happened that I had disappeared off my blog... thanks!
The explanation is both simple and complex. But let's start with what it is not going on...
I'm not sick.
I'm not dead.
I'm not on the lam.
I have not been abducted by aliens.
I have not given up blogging.
Here is what is going on...
As mentioned previously, the security I have on Blogography has been keeping me from posting. I can't disable the security, because I keep getting hacked (apparently having 15 years of Google-indexed entries makes you a desirable target). It has something to do with switching internet when I moved house, but in order to post now I have to log in to my blog, turn off the security, log out of my blog, log back into my blog, restart blogging services, post my entry, log out of my blog, then log back in so I can turn security back on.
It's quite an ordeal, and I really don't have time for it.
So I took to posting a week's worth of entries all at once in an effort to deal with it all.
That worked for five months.
And then it didn't.
No matter how many hoops I ran through, I couldn't get to the point where I could post. Not that this stopped me from writing entries. On the contrary, I was still writing every day like I always do...
I just couldn't do anything with them because I could never find the time to fix my blog.
Until today.
I finally backed up the database, uninstalled everything, reinstalled everything, then restored everything. And it seems to be working.
Which leaves me in a quandary. Do I just flood post a month's worth of entries as if nothing ever happened? Or do I chalk up the month of June as a loss and start up fresh? Who wants to back-read a whole month of the stupid crap that I post? Is this stuff even relevant after all this time?
I dunno.
My inclination is to summarize my month tomorrow on the 3rd. Then resume posting on the 4th... exactly one month from when I stopped. Then I can swipe some old material I wrote... refresh stuff that's no longer relevant... and get back to all new musings that my legions of Blogography fans demand!
As much as I loathe the idea of there being a month-long chunk of missing entries in over a decade of daily posting, I think this is the best way to move on.
Hope you enjoyed your vacation from me.
Sorry. Nothing to see here.
For at least a month. Probably more.
We're going to need some more coffee, because a very special Twin Peaks edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Twin Peaks! "She's dead, wrapped in plastic."You had to be there. Because no words I can write could ever encapsulate just how jaw-dropping amazing it was to be alive when Twin Peaks was first unloading onto an unsuspecting world...
Nothing like it had ever aired before... and, though many attempts have been made to imitate it, nothing has since. The mystery of who killed Laura Palmer is still lighting a fire in the imaginations of people around the globe even today. Though the second season faltered without the guidance of David Lynch, I still love every episodes and have viewed them numerous times.
• Made in Washington! "That gum you like is going to come back in style." While the fictitious city of "Twin Peaks" is located in Eastern Washington near the Canadian border, many of the real exterior locations were filmed in my home state as well. After I fell in love with the show, I made an effort to visit many of them...
A list of places I've sought out...
Filming for the new series took place in Washington again... it will be interesting to see if they came up with any new locations for me to visit.
• The Secret History of Twin Peaks! "The owls are not what they seem." In anticipation of the new episodes dropping today, Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost released a book tie-in last summer detailing the "secret history" of the town of Twin Peaks...
If you are a hardcore Twin Peaks fan, I don't need to tell you that this book is essential reading. Not only does it provide an expectedly bizarre history of the region (seriously, Frost tosses in Lewis & Clark, Sasquatch, aliens, and everything else you can imagine... along with some things you can't), but the book also fills in a few details of what happened after the original series ended. Much of the information is superfluous to the story... and it's a tough read if you are not familiar with the show... but I enjoyed it as a tasty side-dish to the main course, and am looking forward to the second volume, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, releasing October 31st.
• Twin Peaks: The Return! "I'll see you in 25 years." When it comes to doing weird shit on film, art house cinema has been doing it since the dawn of cinema. Some of it goes mainstream from time to time but, for the most part, it's a niche product that doesn't go anywhere. What made Twin Peaks so different and revolutionary is that the series managed to blend the weird shit of an art house film with an actual story that everyday people could find entertaining. Sure it digressed from time to time... but, overall, things were always moving. Interesting stuff was always happening on-screen to drive the story forward.
Now, a quarter-century later, Twin Peaks returns...
Something I've been waiting half my life to see.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
But here's the problem... David Lynch and Mark Frost have gone full-on arthouse and, if the first four episodes are anything to judge the series by, it's a steaming pile of shit. An absolute disaster that's weird just to be weird. And, unlike the original series, there's precious little else. Absolutely everything is weird shit. And it drags on and on and on. Take the third episode for example. The entire first half of the show is Agent Cooper trying to escape from The Black Lodge where he's been stuck since the end of the final episode. It's all complete nonsense, boring as shit, and does nothing to support what's come before. As for the second half of the episode? Dale Cooper meandering around South Dakota acting weird and doing weird shit. Only in the final five minutes does the story lurch forward again.
If there's a bright spot to be had, it's appearances by the original cast and a continuation of the original story... as scattered and slow as it may be. And I'm beyond thankful that Miguel Ferrer (FBI Agent Albert Rosenfield) and Catherine Coulson (Margaret, The Log Lady) managed to film scenes before their deaths. Unfortunately, it's all for naught, because Twin Peaks and everything that made it so amazing is barely here. And, unless things get radically better in the remaining episodes, I'm sorry they brought it back.
• The Sound of Twin Peaks! Twin Peaks would not be Twin Peaks without the music of Angelo Badalamenti. He created one of the most recognizable theme songs ever to grace television, and his Lauara's Theme added atmosphere to many moments in the show...
Another artist, Julee Cruise, became a household name from her performances on the show. David Lynch is continuing this tradition by ending the episodes with musical performances. My favorite from the new series is The Chromatics, singing a beautiful song called Shadow...
How very Twin Peaks!
And that's a wrap! "When you see me again, it won't be me..."
The world may be on the brink of disaster, but have no fear, because an all new edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Hey You Guys! LEGO Dimenions finally got around to releasing expansion packs for LEGO City Undercover and The Goonies. Both are excellent. Especially The Goonies, which is faithful to the source material in all the best ways. A lot of love went into this game...
Which makes me even sadder that the rumor is LEGO Dimensions is being discontinued after the Powerpuff Girls, Teen Titans GO!, and Beetlejuice packs are released this Fall. Such a shame. It just keeps getting better and better with each new release.
• Free Climb! Every year on Christmas Day I check to make sure that free-climber Alex Honnold is still alive. Things like this are why: Climber Completes the Most Dangerous Rope-Free Ascent Ever...
Photo by Jimmy Chin and National Geographic
Photo by Jimmy Chin and National Geographic
For the money, I maintain that Alex is the world's greatest living athlete. I cannot comprehend how he does what he does.
• If You Were Here! The Thompson Twins are one of my all-time favorite bands. If You Were Here is one of my favorite songs by the band. If you had told me that I'd like a cover of this track, I'd say you were crazy. But then Kitty Hawk released one years ago that is actually really good...
It will never take the place of the original, but it's nice to hear a different take on the song.
• Hasan! If you haven't already taken my advice and seen Hasan Minhaj's comedy special: Homecoming King on Netflix, you need to do that right now. And, when you've seen it and start suffering from withdrawals, you'll be happy to know that he is still over at The Daily Show... stealing entire episodes with a two-minute appearance...
If you have a minute, you should watch this segment...
Assuming you can. Comedy Central's video streaming goes down so often that I'm surprised they even bother...
Seriously. Minimum 50% of the time, Comedy Central is dead now-a-days.
• Sick. Of. This. Shit! This week in the news, Fucking Dumbass Bigot Says Gays Are Like Hitler, Trans Kids Are All the Devil...
Photo from YouTube / The New Civil Rights Movement
Uh huh. Hitler. Yeah. Got it. The Nazis killed up to 20 million people. That totally equates to gay and trans people just wanting to have the same rights as everybody else and, well... existing... and such. — What a repugnant piece of shit. What a complete douche of a human being. What a fucking asshole. But one day she'll be dead and nobody will care... NOBODY WILL FUCKING CARE... so there's that.
And, lest we forget that bigotry doesn't end there, also in the news this week: Anti-Muslim Protests Planned in 23 Cities Across the Country. — As recent headlines will attest, we are in more danger from white Christian terrorists than anything coming out of our Muslim communities. But, sure, let's protest brown people because it fits the narrative being rammed down our throats from the highest levels of government. What a bunch of hypocritical fucking "religious freedom" loving dumbasses. Apparently you have the "freedom" to be whatever religion you want... so long as it's Christian.
And... back to the day's disasters...
I found out that my long-time blogging friend Anissa died this morning.
Words completely escape me. There's nothing I can say that could encapsulate just how painful this is. And yet... I'm going to give it a try, because powering through life in the face of tragedy is what she was all about.
Anissa is joy to all those who knew her. No matter what she was going through... no matter what hardship she was facing... no matter how much she was struggling... you would never know it because her grace, humor, wit, and spirit always made you feel as though she hadn't a care in the world. Life, such as it is, was her bitch.
The irony of my last interaction with her on Facebook is not lost on me...
Tacos.
And here's where we go back to the start.
Though I had known her online for years prior, the first time I met Anissa in person was at Davelanta 3 in 2009...
Kevin, Beth, Diana, Kim, Val, Mr. & Mrs. Muskrat, Heather, and Anissa... not pictured is Julie, who ditched our sorry asses so she could go to a much better party with a group of much classier people!
I fell in love with her that night.
Which is not at all unusual, because everybody who met Anissa fell in love with her. She's STD-level infectious like that.
I sat next to her at dinner and remember it like it was yesterday. We were at The Cheesecake Factory, and a lot of our discussion revolved around their Deep-Fried Macaroni and Cheese Balls. We had much to discuss on the topic. Mostly because she was nibbling on my balls the whole time.
And then...
Not long after that infamous first meeting, Anissa had a stroke and her whole world changed.
Not that you would know it because, despite being confined to a wheelchair, Anissa herself did not change. She was still the same brilliant, beautiful, snarky, and entirely inappropriate person she had always been. Just slowed down a bit.
We finally met up again at another blogger meet in 2011...
Mr. Muskrat, Tyler, Heather, Adam, Anissa, Anissa's Friend(?), Beth, Kevin, and Mrs. Muskrat!
Seeing how Anissa was struggling was not easy.
Seeing how she was overcoming adversity was truly inspiring.
And she continued to inspire everybody she encountered for almost 6 years to the day I last saw her.
My heart is broken. What's left of it goes out to her husband and three children, all of whom were Anissa's everything. That she had a heart big enough to share with the rest of the world too is everything you need to know about her.
Well, that... and the fact that she really couldn't keep her hands off my balls that night. Not that I can blame her... they were delicious. If there were a Cheesecake Factory anywhere near me, that's where I'd be. With a Long Island ice tea and big ol' plate of deep-fried macaroni and cheese balls in her honor.
Rest in peace, my dear friend. You were loved so much by so many, and your having to leave us hasn't changed that.
Can you believe I was supposed to be on vacation this week?
I went into work for a couple hours and ended up being there half the day. The rest of my day was spent running back and forth to Sherwin-Williams for paint samples. By the time all that was over, my day was pretty much done.
If only Glacier National Park wasn't on fire, I could have been living an entirely different life right now... if just for a while. Instead, my mind is all over the place...
And now? Time to put away all my guest room furnishings since my friends didn't have to evacuate their home and crash at my place after all. So grateful. I mean, I love having company over... but not like this.
Stay safe, everybody.
Hmmm... I wrote a long blog entry for today, but think I need to take a minute.
Not the kind of consideration you're used to seeing when it comes to me sharing my opinions on Blogography, but this time I think I need to sleep on it.
Well, I should probably "sleep on it" all the times I get fired up about something. But what fun is that?
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As customary, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
2017 was far from ideal. And yet... compared to the bucket of never-ending suck that was 2016, it was a vast improvement. So I can't really complain.
JANUARY
• Said goodbye to President Obama, a president that I never learned to truly appreciate until the total disaster that's now occupying The White House moved in...
Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
FEBRUARY
• Took my cats to the vet for the first time, something I am definitely not looking forward to doing again in the New Year...
MARCH
• Went to Disneyland for work, then ranked my all-time favorite Disney attractions.
• Yesterday I listed my favorite albums of 2017. Last March I listed my all-time most hated songs that everybody else seems to love.
• Flew to San Francisco to see one of my favorite new musical artists, Wrabel, with my (literal) rockstar friend Aaron.
• Headed to Las Vegas, where I finally ziplined down Fremont Street, among other things.
APRIL
• Said goodbye to Lil' Spicey...
• Built a built-in desk... for my cats, apparently.
MAY
• Flew to Denver to celebrate my good friend Howard's 50th birthday with the Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2!
JUNE
• Built new built-ins for my bedroom closet, which turned out amazing...
• Had one of the biggest scares of my life during The Great Jake Escape...
• Back to Vegas again (for work this time).
JULY
• Said goodbye to my long-time blogging friend, Anissa.
• Welcomed Carl the RoboVac to my family...
• Flew to Maine for blueberries (and for work).
AUGUST
• Said a painful goodbye to my good friend and long-time blogging buddy, Howard.
• Lived through Raccoonageddon.
• Live-blogged my photographing the eclipse (with my cats).
• Read The Nashville Statement so you don’t have to.
SEPTEMBER
• Lived through another round of wildfires in my neck of the woods.
• Built a tunnel for a bird to escape my home before my cats could murder it...
OCTOBER
• Wrote "Second Amendments and Horse Shit" which surprised some people, I'm sure.
• Had some extra money that came my way and wrote about what I did with it... which included getting some old negatives scanned...
• Added Joy the Mopping Robot to Carl the RoboVac and my growing family.
• Got my cats into the Halloween spirit...
NOVEMBER
• Had a colonoscopy... and posted photos of my beautiful colon (you're welcome!).
• Flew to Maine and finally visited Acadia National Park...
• Visited the Eastern-Most Point in the USA at West Quoddy Head Light on a bad weather day...
• Was first in the USA to see the sun rise at Cadillac Mountain...
DECEMBER
• Flew to Buenos Aires and visited Evita at Recoleta Cemetery...
• Took in the view at The End of the World...
• Headed out across The Drake Passage in some of the roughest seas on earth...
• Fulfilled a life-long dream when I finally set foot on Antarctica for the first time...
• Photographed Antarctica icebergs at "night"...
• Explored the lives of penguins...
• Had one of the most amazing days of my life when I stepped foot on the seventh continent...
• Got up-close-and-personal with some whales...
• More penguin photography at Half Moon Island in Antarctica...
• Used Apple's new "iPhone Update Plan" so I could buy an iPhone X and post my thoughts on the astoundingly expensive thing.
And there you have it, the year that was the major events in my 2017.
Well, the ones I shared on my blog, anyway.
Thanks once again to my cats, family, and friends for making life bearable through the not-so-great times. Though, I have to say, closing out the year with my bucket-list trip to Antarctica certainly had it ending on a high note.
Here's to a good 2018, everybody.
There are times people ask me why I still have a blog. There are times I wonder myself why I keep Blogography going. The whole "blogging community" that seemed like it would last forever a decade ago has evaporated. Most of my blogging friends hung it up years ago or moved to Twitter or Facebook.
But not me.
It got to be a habit, it's still a habit, and there are still a lot of people visiting here (15 years of blog entries indexed by Google will do that).
I think, more than that though, is the nostalgia of what blogging once was that won't let go of me. I have met so many people because of this thing... many of whom have become dear offline friends. Blogging was family to me.
That's what makes it all worthwhile.
I am reeling this morning after learning that long-time blogging friend "Hot Coffee Girl," AKA Kelly, passed away. Such a kind and caring soul. And one who will be missed by many.
Once when I was in Chicago we met up to "Tilt" out the window of Hancock Tower in Chicago. As we were waiting for our ticket time, we stopped at a small juice bar at Hancock Plaza where Kelly proceeded to order a shot of wheat grass juice. This tiny little paper cup was filled with green sludge and cost a fortune, but she was totally loving it. And I was totally loving teasing her about it... which I did for years after.
I'm gutted that so many good friends met on the internet are now gone. Anissa, Lisa, Howard, Tracy, Rick... dear people all, each leaving a hole in our hearts. So glad I got to meet them in person, even though they became much more than a name on a computer monitor to me, even if we had never met at all.
Rest in peace, Hot Coffee Girl.
Traveling with one blogger friend to meet up with another blogger friend has to be one of the better things to come out of the internet.
That so few bloggers are out there now is more than a little depressing to me.
As somebody who is passionate about world travel and the free exchange of ideas around the globe, today is a sad day for me. After years of hacking attacks on my blogs which result in dozens of lock-out notices being generated every day, I've just banned a huge chunk of IP addresses from access... including all of China, Russia, and goodly chunks of several other Asian countries that are currently on the blacklist maintained by Wizcrafts.
Will this stop hacking attempts? No. I'm sure plenty of hackers will use spoofing or VPN services to keep trying. That's part of the game, and I accept it. But, after my second malware exploit this year, I had to do something to try and make it more difficult for hackers to get through, and this was my last resort.
I get no pleasure from it.
Denying access to somebody in China or Russia who runs across Blogography in a Google search and has genuine interest in something I have to say goes against my entire reason for having a blog. But I've been left with little choice. Every time my site is exploited, it takes precious time I don't have to fix it. I either have to do my best to block these hacks before they happen... or shut down my blogs entirely.
So here we are.
As is always the case, the few are ruining things for the many.
I started paying for CBS All Access because it was the only way to watch Star Trek: Discovery. I kept paying so I could watch The Good Fight. In-between all that, I started re-watching episodes of 60 Minutes, a show I've never had much interest in until I found out that CBS All Access has nearly 200 episodes available for streaming. My biggest problem with the show is how they take interesting subjects and drag them out to the point of tedium. Which is why it's such a great show to have running as background noise while I work. I can safely ignore it while still absorbing relevant snippets.
Until something pops up that destroys my ability to ignore it.
While watching an old 60 Minutes segment on Bob Mankoff... cartoon editor of The New Yorker... there was a segment about cartoonists pitching their latest yucks to him. Most of the cartoons get rejected, but a few get through. Among them is a cartoon about Tarzan...
Mankoff: "The apes are saying 'We found you and raised you as one of us, so we were just wondering at what point did you learn to shave?"
Cartoonist: "I have researched this. There is no iteration of Tarzan in literature, comic books, or movies in which he has facial hair. It makes no sense!"
Doesn't make sense?
Bullshit.
Bull.
Fucking.
Shit.
You don't have to be a Tarzan fan like me who has read all the books dozens of times to know this is 100% bullshit.
In the very first book... Tarzan of the Apes... the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel that started it all... the original Tarzan source for all the literature, comic books, and movies... it is explained that Tarzan started scraping the hair from his face because he understood he was a man, not an ape, and he was afraid of turning into an ape...
“But of these things Tarzan did not think. He was worried because he had not clothing to indicate to all the jungle folks that he was a man and not an ape, and grave doubt often entered his mind as to whether he might not yet become an ape.
Was not hair commencing to grow upon his face? All the apes had hair upon theirs but the black men were entirely hairless, with very few exceptions.
True, he had seen pictures in his books of men with great masses of hair upon lip and cheek and chin, but, nevertheless, Tarzan was afraid. Almost daily he whetted his keen knife and scraped and whittled at his young beard to eradicate this degrading emblem of apehood.
And so he learned to shave—rudely and painfully, it is true—but, nevertheless, effectively."
—Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
Which begs the question... exactly how much "research" did this cartoonist do that he didn't run across the reason his cartoon is stupid? Apparently he didn't even read half-way through the first Tarzan book.
I wish I knew why crap like this pisses me off.
Is it because the cartoonist lied and obviously didn't research anything? Is it because I get sick and tired of Tarzan being continuously misrepresented? Who knows. I wish it didn't piss me off, because then I wouldn't have to stop working so I can blog about it.
Blogography may be screwed up for a bit, but I'm still blogging!
After twelve years of suffering through my current web hosting provider, I'm moving to greener pastures.
When I first investigates Media Temple, they were more expensive than others, but billed themselves as a "pro" solution and were hosting some of the biggest sites on the internet. I figured the extra money would be worth it, and signed up.
And, for a while, I think it was worth it. They offered tools and goodies that most others were not, and their support was very good. I didn't like my annual bill, but I liked everything else.
Then they moved to a new "grid" architecture, and it sucked ass. Basic stuff like... oh... I dunno... SITE BACKUPS were gone. Downtime was rampant (and they never felt like reimbursing you for the time your site wasn't available). But they kept promising that they were working out the kinks and that the missing tools would be restored, so I stuck with them.
After two years, things stabilized. Downtime was still happening, but it was okay for a personal blog. And then? That was it. They just coasted along and nothing changed. And that backup tool? Oh... it's still coming!
A decade passes and I'm still fucking waiting.
I stuck around despite it all because I didn't want the hassle of moving. The thought of losing emails in the transfer was always a big deterrent.
And then? I kept getting hacked. I installed protection, which helped, but the attacks never let up. My hosting company doesn't offer any help in this arena what-so-ever (knowledge-base articles didn't much help), and so I've been attempting to handle it on my own. As I'm working on it, my "GPU" points ran out, and so I had to pay for overages... $38 for last month alone... in order to cover my backups and blog hits. $38 I can't afford.
And so I wrote to support from Media Temple.
After the bullshit canned answers I've come to expect, I couldn't take it another minute. Twelve fucking years as a customer, and they don't give a shit about me. No "Hey, sorry you're having problems we don't offer tools to deal with, so let us reimburse you the $38 as you're working through things because we value you as a customer!" Not even close. And so? They can just fuck all the way off. I'm moving to a new hosting company that may or may not be better, but at least I'm not paying a premium to host there... and, oh... THEY OFFER FUCKING BACKUP OF MY SITE AUTOMATICALLY!!!
A few things I've learned through all this...
Um... yeah... things may be messed up here for a little while. Everything is helplessly screwed up, and I'm trying my best to restore from my backup... but the backup software I purchased won't restore properly. And so I'm kinda trying to manually restore, which isn't going so well either. Such is life.
Back in April, I had my 15th blogiversary. And I totally forgot about it.
I don't know that I would have done anything special to celebrate putting my life on the internet for fifteen years... not like the old days where there were a week of contests and travel involved... but it would have been nice to at least acknowledge it. I guess that writing every day has become so automatic that I don't even think about it any more.
It feels more than a little strange that I keep it up considering how blogs are pretty much dead now. People are Facebookers or Instagrammers or YouTubers... but so rarely "bloggers." At least not any more. Social networks are owned by massive conglomerates who have displaced blogging with money-making machines that exploit our lives for cash. As was inevitable, I guess. That's just the way our world works. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Centralized spaces for human interaction make it easier and more convenient to make friends around the globe, and I do love my global online community. But there's still room for blogging in my life so here's to another fifteen years, I guess.
All those cat photos have to go somewhere.
Anyway... if you want to read a history of Blogography, I wrote it up back in 2005 for my second blogiversary here.
I'm not sure why I'm still blogging. Most bloggers have hung it up or have happily moved on to social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I'm just stubborn, probably. I've been doing this for so long (over 15 years!) that I don't know anything else.
And so long as I'm here...
Blogs may be dead, but those of us still hanging around are facing a lot of interesting changes. Changes in the way content is created. Changes in the way content is used. Changes in the way content is displayed. Which means bloggers are faced with two options... keep doing what they've been doing, or change with the times.
Wordpress (the blogging platform I use) is pushing hard for change. And the first step is coming November with Wordpress 5.0 and their new content editor... Gutenberg. It will allow for a lot of interesting new ways to create and display content. Whether or not users will take advantage of this is anybody's guess...
The templates used for Blogography's design are hand-coded to look like I wanted them to appear. For me to be able to display content properly from the Gutenberg editor and the new Wordpress "block-based" rendering engine (now and in the future) everything will have to be re-coded. I honestly don't know if I can invest the kind of time required... but hopefully.
Time to change with the times.
First of all...
I wish I could say that I never doubted... but there were definitely some moments! That third game? EIGHTEEN INNINGS loss to The Dodgers? Brutal. And I watched the entire thing from beginning to end while holding my breath. Last night was easier, but I was still a bit anxious all the way through. This is baseball, after all.
And so...
Blogography has never been a money-making endeavor. Even when I sold stuff it was always at-cost, which usually meant I lost money in the end. Nope, this is just a place to write my thoughts of the day and I never wanted to clutter it up with ads and other crap.
But that hasn't stopped people from trying to advertise here.
For a while there, I had a Google Page Rank of 7 out of 10. This is about as good as it can possibly get for a personal blog (8 and higher means you're a massively popular site like Apple or YouTube). Despite saying that I don't want ads unless you're willing to pay an obscene amount of money on my About Page, I was getting advertising requests several times a week. Vitamin supplements, clothing, vacation packages, makeup, cameras... even other blogs. I very nearly buckled when I got an offer of $1800 for six months... but it was for a sketchy online gambling site, so I declined.
Over the years my Google traffic has remained fairly good, but my Page Rank has plummeted to 5. When I read up on what this means, I found that it's because I am not using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and am not actively building link-backs. Oh well. The benefit of a lower rank means that people stopped bothering me for ads, so there was a silver lining to all of it.
Then, as the internet turned into a social media machine instead of being blog-driven, Google Page Rank fell out of favor with advertisers. Sure it's still kinda a big deal if you're trying to make money... Page Rank says where you'll end up in a Google search, after all. But since social media is so huge and bypasses Google's ranking system, it's not the indicator of a website's draw power (especially blogs) like it used to be.
And yet...
This little blog has been around for a very long time, is updated constantly, has a massive amount of content, and has hugely diverse number of topics (seriously, is there anything I won't write about?). On top of that, it currently has 105,483 backlinks and 1,428 referring domains. Which is nothing to sneeze at. Which is why I still occasionally get advertising offers. Like this one, which was waiting for me when I checked my email this morning...
Maybe... maybe... I would run an ad luring people to lose all their money if I were offered $10,000 annually. Maybe even $5,000 if I get another vet bill (STAY HEALTHY, JAKE!). But I'm not quite that desperate... yet.
Maybe I should be?
I dunno. If you ever see an ad on my blog, I haven't necessarily sold out or given up. It's just that I need the cash and my body ain't pulling on the street corner like it used to.
Today was the day I switched to my new WordPress 5 template for Blogography!
Then, after three hours of trying to make it work, I switched back to my old template again!
I don't know why I am having so much trouble getting what I want. It's really not that difficult to code these things. Especially when you are starting from an existing template (which I am) because you are woefully inept at coding a "responsive" site (which I also am). I'd skip all this and go back to coding what I know, but being "responsive" is a huge part of why I'm doing all this in the first place.
"Responsive" meaning that Blogography will be responsive to how you're viewing it and adapt accordingly. If you're in a web browser with a lot of screen real estate, you'll get an expansive experience with sidebars and menus and such. But if you're surfing on a smaller device, like your phone, it will automatically become more text-based so that it's easier to read. That's key, because an increasing amount of my traffic is from mobile devices. Eventually I expect it will overtake desktop browsers as the main way that people are reading my crap.
Hence the reason I'm switching over.
Eventually.
When I can figure out what in the hell I'm doing.
Which, hopefully, will be before my 16th blogiversary in April.
In the meanwhile I've put a sticky post at the top of my home page to explain why things might look messed up for a while.
If Facebook has a redeeming quality, it's their "Memories" feature where they give you a run-down of what you were doing on this day a year ago... two years ago... three years ago... and so on.
Well, kinda redeeming. I find that much of the time there's at least one painful memory which you'd just as soon not re-live, but that's life I guess. In general, it's a good thing though.
And that got me to thinking...
I should be able to do something like that for my blog!
I started writing out the code I would need, then remembered that there's nothing new with WordPress, and surely somebody else had already done this. Sure enough, there's a bunch of plugins available.
Alas, none of them work for me.
And so... I'm back to coding.
How else would you know that a year ago today I was returning from my Antarctica trip?
Or two years ago I was wishing you a Happy World Monkey Day?
Or five years ago I was saying goodbye to Peter O'Toole?
Or twelve years ago I accidentally smacked myself in the balls with a shampoo bottle?
Heaven only knows your life isn't complete without reading all about that!
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As customary, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
As you can imagine, 2018 was the worst year of my life so far. Just surviving it feels like a major accomplishment. All I can do is hope that 2019 is better.
JANUARY
• This year was largely about my cats and the hijinks they got into. So... no change from last year...
• Found out that Google thinks I look like Ryan Reynolds when I have the right haircut...
FEBRUARY
• Another year, another traumatic trip to the vet for Jake and Jenny...
• Saw the best movie of 2018: Black Panther.
MARCH
• Finally bought into the SONOS smart speaker ecosystem...
APRIL
• Said good bye to long-time blogging friend Kelly "Hot Coffee Girl."
• Took my new macro lens to The Keukenhof in the Netherlands...
Another day of Keukenhof wonderment at macro level...
• Finally made it to lovely Budapest...
• Finally made it to lovely Vienna...
MAY
• Returned to St. Louis and its Gateway Arch...
• Headed to Jefferson City to hunt ghosts at the old Missouri State Penitentiary with Coal Miner's Granddaughter and the Tennessee Wraith Chasers...
• Jake gets a new favorite toy...
• Saw another amazing P!NK show in Seattle...
• Had to rescue another bird from my savage kittehs...
• Started organizing my souvenirs from around the world...
JUNE
• Spent my weekend building a flower bed in my front yard...
• Upgraded Jake and Jenny's catio with a ramp and a massive climbing pole...
• Had the worst day of my life when I said good bye to my mom...
• Remembered my many travels with mom...
• Took a look back and wrote about The Elephant Out the Window...
JULY
• Wrote about finding inspiration amongst the heart-crushing tragedy of dementia...
• Built my cats an indoor feeding station...
• Another trip to Maine... this time with a torrential flood of rain.
AUGUST
• Saw an amazing show by one of my long-time favorite bands, Erasure...
SEPTEMBER
• Installed a mesh network with Google WiFi.
• Remembered back to the AIDS crisis, which wasn't that long ago.
• Flew to Salt Lake City to catch a show by The B-52's, Boy George, and Tom Bailey with Marty from Banal Leakage...
• Wrote an obituary and buried my mom when her marker finally arrived from the VA...
OCTOBER
• Was gutted when Jake got seriously ill...
• Had to make a short one-day trip to Hawaii and back...
• THE RED SOX WIN THE PENNANT! THE RED SOX WIN THE PENNANT!
NOVEMBER
• Was forced to remodel my remodel.
• Remembered my trip to Antarctica on my one year travelversary...
DECEMBER
• Happy birthday, Mom...
And there you have it... my 2018 year in review.
Thanks once again to my cats, family, and friends for making life bearable through the not-so-great times.
Here's to a better 2019, everybody.
Ages ago (when blogging was still a thing) I had "met" a guy named Craig on his blog, Puntabulous! It was one of the funniest things I've ever read and I became an immediate fan (so much so that I ended up guest-posting there). Sadly, Puntabulous! Has been lost to the ages (and the Wayback Machine has only spotty entries archived). Currently Craig's old site seems to have been poached by a Slovakian link farm or something, but we'll always have the memories!
Fast-forward nine years and I'm part of a gift exchange where, miracle of miracles, I get Craig's name. I'm never sure what I am supposed to buy for gift exchanges, so I decided to to mash-up some of his favorite things and make something for him (the only way I could be sure I wasn't getting him something he already had!). And those things are... LEGO, Power Rangers, Star Trek: The Next Generation, his boyfriend Steve, and his cabin.
Custom LEGO Craig posters it is then!
This is what I came up with...
I am a huge fan of LEGO video games, so I thought I could just draw little minifies doing fun things and be done with it. Except it was a lot harder than it looked to get them looking "real" so I ended up downloading a 3D model that I could pose in Blender...
Then drop them into the layouts I had come up with...
I didn't know much about the Power Rangers except that they would scream "It's Morphin Time!" and transform from super-powered-ninjas into robot dinosaurs. Or something like that. After little Google research I found out there were loads of Power Rangers series. I liked the logo for Ninja Steel because I could turn it into Ninja Craig. All I had to do was drop in Steve Blue Ranger and Rita Repulsa, and, done...
At first I had the same generic helmets for both Rangers but, upon closer inspection, I noticed that all the Rangers had different helmets! This meant I had to go back and re-draw them to be accurate...
I'm more of a "original series" guy than a "Next Generation guy," but had seen all the episodes (of course), so it was easy to decide what I wanted to do...
I drew Craig as Number One, Steve as Data, and was planning on putting a LEGO Enterprise-D in the background. But I could never get it to look recognizable in simple LEGO form. Then I did some cyber-stalking and found a photo of Craig wearing a T-shirt that had the "LEGO Space" logo drawn as an X-Wing circling the Death Star...
Very cool! The original logo is the one I grew up with and looks like this...
It was made cool again when they introduced Benny in The LEGO Movie ...
It was a simple matter to redraw it for Star Trek: The Next Generation like so...
My original idea (shown in my sketch above) was to have LEGO Craig in a majestic pose while Steve was being surprised by a bear in the background. The LEGO bear is a rare piece that goes for big money on eBay, but I was able to find enough photos of it that I could probably draw it. Problem is, the LEGO bear is kinda hard to recognize in a cartoon drawing, so I decided to give poor LEGO Steve a break and attempt to draw Craig's actual cabin in LEGO back there...
It ended up looking pretty good once I got the LEGO studs on the roof panels. Then I added some happy little LEGO trees and happy little LEGO plants and I was good to go. But my favorite part is the plaid shirt "print" on LEGO Craig...
Fun!
Has me anxious for February 2019 to get here so I can see The LEGO Movie 2...
Who knew that LEGO DUPLO would end up being so evil?
As I mentioned a few times (or maybe it was just yesterday), I'm building a photo wall in my stairwell. Originally it was going to be a wall for friends and family, but it became much bigger than that when I realized I wouldn't have enough wall space for everybody. So now I'm going to have a Blogger Friends Wall in the stairwell, another Blogger Friends Wall in the dining room, a Family Wall in the upstairs hall, and a Friends Wall in my entryway.
And figuring out how to go about it all is not as easy as it sounds. There are hundreds of photos to organize and frame which requires some planning. For the sixty-six photos in my stairwell, I measured all the frames I've been collecting over the past two years and drew up a schematic...
If you'd like to see a zoomable image, you can go to the project page I made right here. It has a magnifying glass so you can see everybody up-close-and-personal...
Despite being a huge amount of work and more frustration that I imagined it could be, the results are amazing...
My cats don't seem to know what to make of it yet. But they're keeping their paws off. For now.
The most important part of the plan was determining how low I could go and still see everything. If I were to put photos too far down on the wall, I'd have to be on my hands and knees to see them. After hanging test photos, I was able to see what photos I could see as I approached the stairs...
Then what I would see with each new step...
As I was testing placement I found out that my eye went to a different area depending on whether I was climbing the stairs... descending the stairs... or looking down from the second floor...
Going up the stairs I tend to look downward so I see the photos along the bottom. But going down the stairs my eyes tend to go down the middle for some reason...
This is perfect, because I end up seeing all the photos. Even the photos that are too high to be seen from the stairs are perfectly visible from above...
I couldn't be happier with how it all came together, and I actually look forward to using the stairs now so I can see my friends...
Even if hanging the photos at the top was a bit precarious thanks to my homemade scaffolding setup...
And now for my notes on creating this beautiful monstrosity...
And now on to planning my next wall.
Remember there's a zoomable image here that has a magnifying glass so you can everybody (maybe even yourself!)...
After a week of sunshine, of course it's raining on my birthday weekend. But I'm not complaining... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Change. This is my first birthday without my mom. It's also my first birthday without one of my oldest friends. I thought I would be overwhelmed with sadness, but I just feel numb. I guess you reach that point in your life when your friends and family start to go and that's just the way it is. You can either trudge on in life and make the best of what you have left... or you give in to the sadness and stop living altogether. I'm trying for the former. And if being temporarily numb to everything is what it takes, then I guess you do what you gotta do. For five decades death was a rare event for me and I suppose I'm thankful for that. Now that I'm on the back-end of my life, that's changing. I'm doing my best to accept this new reality. I'm doing my best to find new ways to be happy. I'm doing my best to keep doing my best every day. It's the least I can do to honor those I care about who aren't here any more. Life shouldn't be wasted on the living.
• Anti-Social! Stepping away from social media after having been completely submerged in social media is a weird place to be. The majority of my friends don't live anywhere near me, so things like Facebook are how we keep in touch. What I've learned these past weeks of being anti-social is this: Being in constant contact with people conditions you to take them for granted. It's a sobering realization, and something I am vowing not to forget. When I return to my social media life next week (or whenever), it's not going to be like it was. I want contact with friends to be meaningful and engaging... not empty and boring. Maybe posting less... reading less... doing less... will make my online relationships special again. Like they were back when we were all blogging. Or so I can hope.
• Dana! One of my all-time favorite shows was Sports Night, the brainchild of Aaron Sorkin (who would go on to create The West Wing). It was incredibly good television that I became obsessed with. A big reason for that was Dana Whitaker, played by Felicity Huffman. The same Felicity Huffman who is currently embroiled in a college admissions scandal. Apparently she paid a bunch of bribe money to have her daughter's SAT scores improved, thus paving her way to college acceptance. I am sure this will be spun into a heartwarming story showing the lengths a mother is willing to go to help her child... but fuck that. Her money already provided a life of unimaginable privilege for her kids. But she felt the need to shove somebody aside who actually worked hard to earn their SAT score? This is a shining example of everything wrong with this country (and the world in general). If you have money, you get to do whatever the fuck you want. Well... hopefully not this time. Hopefully, if she's found guilty, she goes to jail. How else is she going to learn?
• Dumbfuckery! Of course, not all parents learn anything from a tough lesson. Take this story, for example: It Took Two Months and Nearly a Million Dollars to Save an Unvaccinated 6-Year-Old From Tetanus. The key takeaway from the story is in the last paragraph... "The story ends mostly happily for the boy. A month later, he was completely back to normal, running and using his bike again. But it seems no lessons were learned on his family’s part. Despite the brutal ordeal and pleading by the doctors, they again chose not to vaccinate him for tetanus or any other diseases." At what point do child endangerment laws kick in? After I was run over by a shuttle van in France and arrived home, the first thing my doctor asked me after saying I fractured a rib was "Are you current on your tetanus vaccination?" When I said "I don't think so," he laid out a horrifying picture of what death by tetanus is like. It wasn't pretty. Why anybody would risk their kid's life with such a horrendous fate escapes me. Thank you, Jenny McCarthy.
• Inappropriate! It is so wrong that I nearly peed myself watching this clip?
Probably. But that's some funny shit right there.
• Off! And now I'm loading up my car for a trip over the mountains to spend my birthday with friends. I've had enough of being numb for a little while.
The End. THE END!
Ask any blogger what the bane of their existence is, and they are certain to answer "Broken links." Well... not really... if you were to ask me what the bane of my blogging existence is, I'd answer "Hate comments and death threats," but I blog about politics and cats and stuff, so I bring that on myself.
But a close second would absolutely be "Broken links," and it's such a massively annoying problem for long-term bloggers such as myself that I'm tempted to never link to anything ever again. NEVER EVER EVARRRRR!
Some of it is understandable. Fellow bloggers shut down their blogs... companies go out of business... websites are lost... that kind of thing. So when I find a broken link on an entry I wrote fifteen years ago, I'm honestly not surprised. The internet is ever growing and changing.
But when I find a busted YouTube link in an entry I wrote TWENTY-THREE DAYS AGO?!?
THAT'S LESS THAN A MONTH!!!
This was from a Bullet Sunday entry where I was talking about one of the best new shows on television: Alternatino with Arturo Castro. I absolutely love this sketch comedy series, and want as many of my readers as possible to know about it.* And so I linked to the premiere episode that Comedy Central posted on YouTube.
And now Comedy Central has decided to take down the video for some reason. Which is pretty fucking stupid no matter how you cut it... YouTube is a massive platform for exposure of the show... but what makes it go BEYOND fucking stupid is that they left a broken link. Okay... you don't want to have the entire first episode available for people to watch. Whatever. But why not just overwrite the episode with an advertisement or a promo piece or something so people who shared your stuff don't end up with a broken link from your deleted video?
Some "social media consultant" making six figures probably doesn't understand how social media works and came up with this brilliant decision.
And when I scroll through my archives, I see tons of busted YouTube links. Even for advertisements! Why would you delete an advertisement for your product? I guess I can understand it if the product no longer exists or was canceled or was discontinued... but the vast majority of the time, that's not the case.
I'm not really sure how to deal with this.
For links, there's not much to do except delete the link and try to have my entry make sense without it.
For YouTube, there's not much I can do there either. I suppose I could scrape the video, re-upload it to my own YouTube account, then stream from that... but there's two problems there. ONE is that I'd probably get hit with a copyright violation. TWO is that I feel bad denying valuable clicks to the original content creator.
So I dunno.
Perhaps I just find ways of talking about the things I like without linking to them. Which kind of defeats the whole purpose of The World Wide Web... but short of spending my entire life monitoring links on my blog, what else is there?
*Seriously. You have no idea. The fourth episode just aired and it is epic. If you are not watching Alternatino with Arturo Castro, you absolutely should be!
I started publishing regular updates to a website in the mid-90's (first called DaveWorld then DaveSpot then DaveBlog). Back then it was simply an "online journal" that was manually created and updated. By the year 2000 "weblog" (eventually "blog") was an increasingly commonplace term, and online publishing tools became available which made it easier and easier to do. My first blog was started in 2002, but was eventually scrapped in April of 2003 when I started Blogography.
Being a blogger in 2003 was a different world (wide web).
Most people had much slower connections to the internet and there were wild concepts like "bandwidth throttling" which could severely dampen your visitors' online experience (and will likely dampen it again if our pig-fucker politicians kill net neutrality). On top of that, disk space and bandwidth were precious commodities for which your hosting company made you pay dearly. More than once I'd end up with a massive extra fee on my monthly statement when a photo I posted went "viral" (a term than didn't even exist back then) and slaughtered my bandwidth quota. Because of the expense, bloggers had to be really careful about publishing images on their sites. Photos were rare. When you did post them, they were tiny and compressed to death. And back then they were likely scanned from paper photos or shot at really low resolution, so they looked pretty bad.
Looking back, it was a primitive time. But back then it was just they way things were (unless you were made of money) and we accepted it because we didn't know any better. Or have any other option, really.
A couple weeks ago I was searching through my old entries for something and started noticing how bad my early photos were. To save as much disk space and bandwidth as possible they were saved at 210×160 pixels then displayed at 420×320 pixels, like this shot of the Hard Rock Cafe Osaka Universal Studios in 2003...
Once bandwidth costs started dropping and people had faster connections, I upgraded to photos which were actually cropped to the full 420×320 pixels they were being displayed at, like this...
Not a ton better, but a bit easier to look at, which is why I went back through all my old images and "upgraded" them to the 420×320 size.
In 2010, I got a new camera and my images were "widescreen," so I switched to a full resolution of 500×330. This time I didn't go back and upgrade all my old photos because the size ratio was different (and I had so many entries that it seemed like it would be a lot of work).
In 2012-2013 I transitioned to bigger images, this time 600×400. If I linked back to an old entry with smaller images, I would usually "upgrade" the image (again) if I still had the original photo, like this...
Then on June 29th, 2012, everything changed. That's when I got my first "Retina display" MacBook Pro. It had a much higher pixel-density than previous laptops, and photos looked so much better on it. Unless you were looking at a website with standard-resolution images. So on July 10th, 2012 I switched to 1200×800 pixel images, but still defined them as 600×400 pixels so people with high-density screens would have far nicer images to look at. That's been my "default" ever since.
A couple weeks ago I decided to start upgrading my old images (again-again) assuming I still had the original photo available. I wasn't expecting much improvement but, even on those old paper photo scans, the images ended up looking much nicer...
A far cry from what I started with...
A part of me was wondering if I shouldn't go even higher... 2400×1600 pixels... because you just know that eventually we'll have VR displays or direct brain-implants to take us there. But these earliest photos wouldn't benefit from that much, so I've decided to hold off. Odds are some revolutionary new tech will come along to upscale lower-res photos anyway, so 1200×800 is probably good enough. For now. Maybe in the future I'll start uploading dual files for all my new photos. Just to save me time for when the inevitable happens? Worth a thought, anyway.
But image quality isn't the only upgrade I've been working on...
When I was in the "middle-period" of blogging where images were cheaper to host... but could still be expensive if I posted too many of them... I would sometimes host half of the images on an external service to share the load.
As these image hosting services disappeared (or started charging money!), I’d just delete the links to the images they held. This made early entries even skimpier than they already were, so when I started upgrading again-again, I also went back and added some of the missing images. On my post about Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, for example, that meant my photos weren’t just increased to 1200×800 pixels, the count went from two photos back to the five photos I had original posted. Pretty sweet.
I have a LOT of entries left to upgrade. Too many. Which is why I'm not going to kill myself in the attempt, I'm just going to do a couple dozen every week and see where that gets me.
Probably nowhere. Why do I blog again?
Prepare to be launched into a Galaxy far, far away... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Falcon Maps! It's interesting how the advent of Google Maps' "Aerial View" has forced Disney to change the way they build their theme parks. Originally, construction was treated like a movie set, where everything is just a big facade. The only thing that was themed is what people see. The best way to explain this is Main Street, where the dozens of little buildings you see on the ground are revealed to essentially be two giant buildings...
They didn't build fake roofs over each building because they didn't have to. Unless somebody chartered a helicopter, nobody was ever going to see it in 1955. But now there's Google Maps that anybody can call up on their phone, so they are more careful that the illusion is complete...
Had this been built in 1955, the fine detailing would likely have been ignored. The only thing they would bother theming would be what you could see from the ground. Personally, I think this is fantastically cool. You can literally see the Millennium Falcon parked at Disneyland, and that's no small thing.
An interesting aside here... apparently Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge has been a bit of a flop. People are complaining that there's only one ride and the rest of the place is just a giant shopping mall where you can buy overpriced souvenirs and food. That's it. Eventually a second ride will open but, again, that seems pretty lame. Perhaps Disney will add more stuff to make it more worth visiting, but right now it just seems like a cash grab. Another problem? Disney didn't recreate an authentic place from the movies. You're not walking around Tatooine or even shitty Jakku, you're at "Black Spire Outpost" which, let's face it, who cares? This seems like a major misstep, and I just don't get it. When Disney made an Avatar-themed land, they built Pandora from the movies so when you go there it's like stepping into the film. That's what people want to see, and anything less is inviting a tepid reaction. And that's exactly what Disney got.
• ZIM!!! One of the most impossibly brilliant animated series to ever grace our television sets was Invader Zim. In addition to being so brilliantly written, the look of the show was was blew my mind. It's just so beautiful. As if that weren't enough, it has GIR, Zim's robot companion, and one of my favorite characters of all-time...
Despite unprecedented critical acclaim, the series was uncerimoniously canceled by Nickelodeon because network executives are stupid. But now Netflix has revived the show for a new feature called Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus...
The movie has everything that Zim fans could want and, while it kinda-sorta wraps up the series, it also leaves things wide open for more. And I want quite badly for there to be more. Because can you ever truly have enough Zim in your life?
• Passport! I am not even going to spoil this. Just trust me when I tell you to click this link. Genius. Every last one of them is genius.
• Shazam? Ninety-one percent? Shazam got NINETY-ONE PERCENT on Rotten Tomatoes? Really? One minute it's childish and stupid as shit... the next minute there's a demon is biting somebody's head off. So exactly who was this movie made for? Psychotic children?
Even if you ignore the stupid glowing lightning-bolt-that-looks-more-like-a-triangle on his uniform, Shazam was awful. WHAT HAPPENED TO HAVING THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON? THIS SHAZAM IS A FUCKING IDIOT! About the only thing I enjoyed was Mark Strong as Sivana, despite the fact that he was a complete departure from the comic book's Dr. Sivana (and not in a good way, of course). I cannot fathom how this managed to rate 91%. I just don't get it. The only thing that kept it from total disaster for me is that they didn’t have any burp or fart jokes. At least I think the movie didn’t... I fast forwarded through the foster home stuff because all the kids were just so annoying.
• Days of Meat! On my blog entry for "The Impossible Whopper" I mentioned that it has been 33 years, 3 months, and 24 days since I last ate meat. A friend messaged me and asked how I could possibly remember the last day I ate meat. It's actually pretty easy. It was Earth Day, 1986. I remember it because my girlfriend at the time was a vegan and didn't want to kiss me because I "smelled like meat." I had a hamburger for lunch and she got mad because I "couldn't even go meat-free on Earth Day." And so I gave up eating meat right then and there. We broke up a month-and-a-half later, so I was going to go back to eating meat... except I was feeling better than I had ever felt. The allergies which had plagued me since adolescence were gone, so I stuck with a vegetarian diet. I've since learned that many people are allergic to the antibiotics they inject into animals, which probably explains why I was in such poor health my first 20 years.
• Cook Cook Cooking! Yesterday I spent a big chunk of my day in the kitchen making up meals to refrigerate and freeze. I made burritos. I made rolls. I made Mac & Cheese, I made quiche... and I made my grandmother's enchiladas recipe. While not rocket science, enchiladas make a lot of dirty dishes and a big mess (especially when you make the sauce from scratch). It's also time consuming to put them all together. And even though I started three hours before dinner-time, my cats were all excited because they thought they were getting fed. So it went something like this...
THE ENCHILADA WALTZ
Remove tortilla from the frying oil.
Put fresh tortilla in the frying oil.
"No, kitties, it's not dinner time yet."
Put the filling in the tortilla.
Put the cheese in the tortilla.
Flip the tortilla that's in the frying oil.
Fold up the enchilada and add it to the pan.
"No, kitties, it's not dinner time yet."
Repeat.
After a full day and two loads in the dishwasher, I flopped down on the couch exhausted. But then it really was dinner time for the cats and I had to get up again. I really wish that ten million dollars would fall into my lap so I could hire somebody to come in and cook for me.
• Visitations! For the first time ever, the number of people visiting my blog on a mobile phone has eclipsed desktop users. Guess I'd better work on a new "responsive" template sooner rather than later. Blogography looks okay on a mobile phone, but it could be friendlier on smaller screens...
The problem is finding time to actually code a new template. The tags and expected behaviors have changed so much since I made the current template that I would have to re-learn Wordpress in order to even begin! That seems like a lot of work.
And I guess that's all the bullets I have for this week.
This is the first post I’ve written entirely on my iPad. Thanks to iPadOS 13 (which was released today) and other apps stepping up their game, it’s actually a realistic option for me now.
Not that it’s easy, mind you.
It’s time consuming and clunky.
Take getting an image to appear in this post, for example. First I have to open the image in Adobe Lightroom for iPad so I can adjust it a bit. THEN I have to save it to my iPad so I can open it in Image Resize, because Lightroom DOESN’T ALLOW YOU TO FUCKING SPECIFY PIXEL DIMENSIONS WHEN YOU CROP A PHOTO. Once I crop it To 1200 × 800, I then have to save it to FTPManager Pro so I can upload it to my blog. It sounds simpler than it actually is. And it doesn’t end there. I then have to open up my WordPress admin panel to write the actual post. But since I want to use images where I put them instead of where WordPress wants them, I have to copy and paste code from old entries into new entries.
Like these photos of Jenny going after a fly in the window this morning...
She’s adorable, I know.
Eventually (hopefully) one of these days it will be a more streamlined process to edit and upload images and write posts. I’m guessing it took me three times longer to post this on my iPad than it would have on my MacBook Pro. With practice, perhaps I could get it down to twice the time? I dunno. Right now I’m just happy I can do it. An iPad is a lot easier to lug around than a laptop.
Snow may have arrived but the internets are toasty warm, because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• THE END? Years ago I told myself I'd stop blogging after 5,000 posts. Earlier this week I thought to look and see how close I am to that. I've posted 6,124 posts. And so... I guess I'm stopping at 10,000 then. You're welcome!
• Spidey! So maybe Sony isn't filled with buckets of dumbass after all. It was announced earlier this week that Marvel and Sony have come to an agreement for another Spider-Man film to be set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Given how FREAKIN' AMAZING a job Marvel has done with the character, AT LAST!, I'm unapologetically enthusiastic...
Apparently the deal may include bringing more Spider-Man-based characters than just Spider-Man. A part of me wonders if that's a good thing. But if anybody can figure out how to make it work, that would be Marvel.
• Stumptown! And... just like that, I have a new favorite show. Cobie is absolutely 100% bad-ass in every frame of Stumptown and I love it. You can watch the first episode on the ABC app for free without an account. I suggest you do...
Based on the comic book of the same name, it's remarkably faithful while changing enough to make darn good television. And, as if that wasn't good enough, it features a cast with Jake Johnson! Michael Ealy! Tantoo Cardinal! Camryn Manheim! They pulled out all the stops in casting this show. Top shelf all around!
• Flerfer Dumbassery! "IF THE EARTH IS ROUND AND SPINNING AT 1000mph, THEN WHY DON'T I GO FLYING OFF WHEN I JUMP UP IN THE AIR?!? THE EARTH MUST BE FLAT IF WE CAN JUMP UP AND DOWN WITHOUT MOVING!!!" — GAAAAAAAHHHH!!! IT'S SCIENCE, BITCH!
Literally EVERY SINGLE THING that dumbass flat earthers come up with as a reason that globe-earth cannot exist can be refuted with science. Not that that's going to stop anything. Dumbassery is contagious.
• Assholes! NEWSFLASH: Every word Ajit Pai says about Net Neutrality is a lie, including "and" and "the." — Well no shit! Ajit Pai only cares about the Telco lobbyist dicks he has been sucking. He's never given a crap about American consumers. Not even a tiny pebble shit. It's assholes like this who should be strung up and shot for selling out the country.
• TV! I hate to say it, but here it goes... APPLE'S TV APP FOR MaCOS X IS A STEAMING PILE OF SHIT AND I AM FUCKING EMBARRASSED FOR THE ENTIRE COMPANY FOR RELEASING IT! It's comically inept, buggy, and stupid... and once again has me regretting that I ever bought into Apple's media ecosystem. First of all, it's a crappy experience. You never know what's clickable because the cursor never changes. And when something is clickable, you don't know if your click is registered because the button state doesn't change and there's no feedback whatsoever. This means that you end up clicking again and again and again because you don't know if anything is happening. And the app is so fucking slow that it takes forever to acknowledge when something does happen. Apple essentially developed the modern home computer interface. And they are destroying their legacy with this bullshit. And it just gets worse. Have tons of purchases in your library? Hope you like scrolling! There is NO FUCKING SHORTCUT to get to what you need to be! Want to watch those Magnum P.I.? episodes you purchased? Typing "M" to get there does NOTHING! Just scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll.
Second of all, it's hard to search for the stuff you want to buy. You type in the search box and often times get random shit for an explicit search term. Then, assuming you do all kinds of acrobatics and manage to navigate to what you want, actually buying something is a joke. It's all a bunch of clicking and clicking and clicking because you have no fucking idea if you actually bought it or not because there's no acknowledgement until an email receipt arrives. AND THEN once you finally manage to buy something, IT DOESN'T SHOW UP IN YOUR LIBRARY UNTIL YOU QUIT THE APP AND START IT UP AGAIN?!? Oh... and when you DO quit and restart? It doesn't remember where you were, so you have to navigate back there again.
This is insanity, and I cannot fucking believe that Apple actually let this shit go out of beta. Assuming they even bothered to beta test it at all. I never thought I'd be longing for the original iTunes to come back, but here we are. Fuck you, Apple.
See You Next Sunday!
And here I am again with a Wordpress update that borked my blog.
I'd re-install it and restore the database, but I'm packing for a trip to the coast and so it will just have to wait. It's curious to me how the other blogs I update never have any problems, but Blogography is forever having problems.
Just lucky I guess.
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As customary, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
Last year losing my mom was the worst year of my life. This year couldn't help but be better by comparison. But I lost one of my oldest, dearest friends right off the bat, so now I'm horrified at what 2020 may have in store. I guess I've reached the stage of my life where it's all tragedy and loss from here on out? Lord, I hope not.
JANUARY
• Took a look at Schitt's Creek, one of the best TV shows ever...
Took a look at the Seattle Tunnel... and the horrible design of the new spaces it will allow.
• Built a magnificent photo wall in my stairwell...
• Experienced Poster Raising with the Amish...
FEBRUARY
• Converted another batch more DVDs and Blu-Rays to digital... and explained how you can do it too.
• Wished Jarrod Saltalamacchia, one of my favorite ball players, a happy retirement...
• Dedicated a post to Mufasa, Jake's toy lion, his favorite thing in the universe...
• Lamented the fact that SeaTac International Airport is still a shitpile of fail, even when they build something new.
MARCH
• Said good bye to one of my oldest and dearest friends...
• Watched as my home keeps getting invaded by trash pandas.
• Spent my 101st Caturday taking inventory of the cats in my neighborhood...
APRIL
• Watched the funniest stand-up of the year with Nate Bargatze's The Tennessee Kid (highest possible recommendation if you have Netflix)...
• Took Jake back to the vet after he ended up sick again. Still amazed that the little guy can't meow ever... EXCEPT when he is in distress...
• Found out the reason Jake was sick was because he fell off the stairwell banister. Absolutely heartbreaking (and more than a little scary), but he recovered like a champ...
• Built a bannister ledge tray to keep my cats from falling down the stairwell again...
MAY
• Talked about the series of travel books I made for my mom to commemorate each of the trips we took together...
• Shared my thoughts on the fucking disaster that was the Game of Thrones final season...
JUNE
• Once again shared a video on how tax brackets work because I am sick and tired of people believing the bullshit lies that are being propagated. I honestly don't know if this is the best way, but if we're going to discuss tax brackets let's at least be informed as to what they are. And with that in mind, here we go again...
• Said goodbye to Grant, an internet friend who will be sorely missed.
• A visit to the Chihuly Garden of Glass, a magical place crafted by one of my favorite living artists...
• One year on without my mom...
JULY
• Spent my lazy summer days floating down a river...
• Finally cut the cord and got rid of the toxic mess that my satellite television had become.
• Ooh... Upgrades (a process that is ongoing, by the way!).
AUGUST
• I have opinions. And they get me in trouble by all sides.
• Back in Vegas for the third? Fourth? time in 2019 and decided to take stock of my one-time Planet Hollywood obsession...
• Got to see Janet, Miss Jackson if you're nasty...
• Discovered the total magic of my favorite new thing... THE IMPOSSIBLE WHOPPER at Burger King...
• Got myself an Apple Card... an interesting beast to be sure.
• My obligatory Apple Card unboxing entry...
• Total outrage that Hallmark can't seem to ever get the details right.
• Jake and Jenny's cat personality analysis...
SEPTEMBER
• Jenny's perpetually adorable resting cranky face...
• Hell of a Day, Isn’t It? Talked about what happens when you lose that person you share an inside joke with.
• Impressed the internet when I joined in on the SHOW US A PHOTO OF YOUR KITCHEN CABINET meme...
• Shared my brief attempt at being a home designer.
OCTOBER
• Put my iPhone 11 Pro through it's paces... and shared my thoughts in it's incredible camera capabilities...
• Took my iPhone 11 Pro camera for a spin in my favorite American city.
• Your Heart Disease, Courtesy of Big Beef.
NOVEMBER
• Ranting against changing the clocks because it fucks up my cats like nothing else... and the quail are back...
• Flew to Minneapolis so I could experience Avengers: Damage Control in real-live kinda virtual reality...
• Caring for somebody with dementia involves telling lies and making decisions.
• Disney+ finally debuted with a slew of watchable stuff to occupy time I don't have.
• Thirty Dollars for Fish Entertainment...
• Get Angry, Then Laugh... same as it ever was... same as it ever was.
DECEMBER
• Happy Birthday, Jake and Jenny!
• And, oh yeah, I joined the Instant Pot cult!
• Finally replaced my dying MacBook Pro... with a MacBook Pro...
• Let's take a Very Special edition of Caturday to talk about how technology helps Fake Jake survives the winter!
• It's the little things which happen day-today that keep destroying me...
And there you have it... my 2019 year in review.
Thanks once again to my cats, family, and friends for making life bearable through even the worst of times.
Here's to a good 2020, everybody.
And so here we are in 2020. I am siding with The US Naval Observatory that says a new decade begins a year from now in 2021 and runs through 2030. But it's only natural to see a zero at the end of a year and think back to what's happened in the past decade. Fortunately, I have a blog that goes back to 2003, so I know exactly what I was doing a decade ago in 2010.
From a blogging standpoint, everything has changed. As in... ten years ago blogging was still a thing. Now, of course, blogging has been shoved aside in favor of Facebook and other social media. No idea why I stick with it. I am inclined to think it's just a habit I can't break. What I may do is rethink daily blogging and just blog when I feel like it. Problem is that once I start skipping days, I may not start again. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. If I get to it?
Personally I don't know what to think. A decade ago my mom was here and I had grandparents, now they're all gone. I was in a bad relationship, now I'm happy to be single with cats. I was much better off financially, but now I have a house and mortgage. I know I was happier a decade ago, yet I'm pretty happy with my life now too. I was a lot less healthy, but now I'm over fifty and closer to death. All things considered, I'd go back to 2010 in a heartbeat. But would I do anything differently to justify living all those years over again? Probably, if I knew what I know now.
When it comes to 2020 things are very much up in the air. Many things in my life are in strange places so it's tough to make plans. For once I think I'd be happy if things were to just stand still for a year. I do know that I will try to be grateful for every day that I have family, friends, cats, work, something to eat, and a roof over my head. Do I really need anything more?
And speaking of 2020, here is my favorite thing about it this year so far...
And to you, dear readers, here's hoping your New Year is a good one.
And... I killed my blog.
The template for this blog is really old. So old that it's starting to break with the newer versions of WordPress. Comments haven't worked properly in over two years. Commenter name and contact information is no longer stored and the comment field is wider than the blog container. Not that it's a tragedy since I don't get many comments now-a-days, but still... it annoys me.
And so last night* I set out to see if I could fix it.
Idiot that I am, I didn't backup my old templates. Nor did I write down the old settings I had. Instead I just plowed forward and made tweaks that I thought would make things work a bit better.
Nope!
Screwed everything up. Couldn't even log in.
Long story short... I had to download my blog archive, extract the template code, rebuild WordPress, rebuild my custom templates (faults and all), then re-link the database so my entries could be found again.
Time to complete? THREE DAYS!
I am writing this on Thursday, January 30th after having finally getting everything working again this morning before I headed into work.
What I would like to do is purchase a spiffy new "Gutenberg-Ready" template and modify it so that it looks like my blog. Then I could do all kinds of cool stuff that the new WordPress editor allows me to do. Problem is that I don't have time. I'd hire somebody to do it for me, but I have even less money than time. And so... I guess I should just be grateful that Blogography keeps on running at all.
Until WordPress releases an update that breaks my blog completely. Which is any day now, I'm sure.
*The word "yesterday" being relative, in this case.
I started another woodworking project last night, lost track of time, and was too tired to go to the store as I had planned.
And so I went after work today.
Which was a huge, huge mistake because everybody and their dog was buying crap for their Super Bowl watch parties. The traffic is jacked up on the road to the grocery store on a good day... but today? Bedlam.
All I really needed was potatoes and eggs so I could whip up some potato salad for dinner tomorrow, but there were sweet savings in celebration of Super Bowl Weekend that I was compelled to take advantage of, so I guess it made the horrible trip worthwhile.
Now I'm too tired to blog.
I don't usually share work here that's not my own, but sometimes there's something that really begs to be shared, and I'm all too happy to oblige.
I ran across Michele Rosenthal's work many years ago when I was looking for an illustrator for a packaging project. She has a wonderful paper-cut-out kind of style that I love, and is able to distill concepts down to a simple presentation in a way that looks effortless. I've bookmarked her site (along with a hundred other artists) and check in from time to time to see what's new. A couple years ago, it what this work of sublime brilliance...
To see the full-size piece or buy a poster, you can visit her website.
Somebody posted it to Facebook today, and I was reminded of how great it was. But the best part was that Michele created some "stickers" that you could paste when you're debating with somebody online and they unload a logical fallacy to support their (poor) argument...
You can see all the stickers on Michelle's website here and here.
I used the stickers exactly one time.
It did not go over well... at all.
In fact, to say "It did not go over well" is a monumental understatement. Their initial reply to my sticker was pretty scathing and yet another logical fallacy. My response was another sticker.
I was unfriended and blocked.
So as not to lose the entirety of my online friends, I just set the stickers aside and decided to use them only in the event of a serious emergency.
Which is all the time, but I'm trying to show restraint. Hey, I'm guilty of logical fallacies myself. I just try not to be mean about it.
Well, mostly.
Today I was discussing an article about how Hollywood predicted a pandemic happening a decade ago. "Ten years seems like a lifetime ago. I don't even remember what I was doing back then... do you?"
The first thought that entered my head was "I barely know what I was doing a week ago!" The second thought was "Finally! My blog is actually good for something!" Because all I have to do is call up Blogography on my iPhone and there it is... on March 26, 2010 I was in Prague visiting the Hard Rock Cafe. And boy was that a great trip. Prague is one of the most beautiful cities on earth and I'm really grateful to have been able to visit...
Meanwhile, back in the plague-ridden future of today...
I've been pleasantly surprised to see the many authors, artists, filmmakers, and other creative types releasing their works to the public so everybody has distractions to keep them occupied while coronovirus-quarantined. One of my favorite discoveries has been a "Free Movie of the Week" over at Oh You Pretty Things. Last week was the documentary Helvetica, which was great. And now they are streaming Objectified through Monday. It's a documentary about designers and the objects they create for us. The draw for me was Jonathan Ive (formerly of Apple fame), but everybody in it is interesting. And the little stories around the objects being discussed are fantastic. You can watch it for free through Monday. Highly recommended.
Stay safe, y'all.
You may (or may not) have noticed that many times lately my daily posts to Blogography are showing up days late. I still write every day, but I've taken to holding off a while before I publish what I've written. Most of my posts now-a-days are blistering rants about current events and, after I've cooled down, I realize they don't really add anything to the conversation. So I delete them and dig into the drafts I've got written about cats, computers, and stuff, then put that up instead.
It's a tough thing to do, because these are NOT short posts. They are pages of material that can take some time to write...
But... maybe the therapy of writing them is enough for me. They don't really need to see print.
And so today's rant, which was not really something that should see print, has been tossed and I will instead be sharing photos of the flowers growing in my yard.
The flowers in my back yard were here when I bought the place. I can't take any credit for them at all. I pretty much just leave them alone and every year these beautiful flowers show up. There's these really pretty big fluffy flowers I like. No idea what they are called, but how cool are they?
Some are mostly pink...
Whereas others have a lot of yellow in their middles...
There are a bunch of roses... that I think are called "tea roses." They come in a variety of shapes...
The flowers from the previous owner in the front were all in pots that had to be hand-watered. Problem is that I travel too much to take proper care of them so I had to get rid of the plots and plant a bunch of new flowers that could be watered by the automated system. This year a neighbor picked out a bunch of different flowers for me and I was left with some extras. I bought a big wooden planter and just tossed them all inside. They've all done really, really well! Except at the time I planted them I didn't know what size they would end up. If I did, I would have put the taller ones in the middle instead of the outside. Oops...
Still pretty though.
Speaking of leftover flowers... I stuck one of them between the two giant purple things I bought previously. I thought for sure it would die from lack of sunlight, but it's actually been thriving! He seems happy there...
The rest of the flowers I planted are doing great too. I especially like the pansies...
And speaking of those big purple things, they are doing great. The bees absolutely love them...
Guess we'll see if tomorrow's post has to be deleted. It's Caturday, so I sure hope not.
This Wednesday entry will not be posted on Wednesday.
I don't have internet. I don't have celular service. I am completely off the grid.
I remember an email being circulated at work last week which mentioned something about an outage from 10pm to 8am, but I didn't plan to be at work during those hours, so I didn't pay much attention. I received NO notification that my internet would be interrupted at home. If I had, I would have probably ignored that as well, because I can always use the data on my iPhone to reach the internet, right? Nope! Apparently AT&T's cellular tower in my small city uses the same internet as my work and home, so that's non-functional as well.
It's this last point that really pisses me off.
AT&T never told me that my mobile phone would be down tonight. I was never made aware that my phone service was internet-dependent. And it begs the question... what the fuck happens if I have an emergency and need to dial 9-1-1 for help? Well, I'll tell you exactly what happens... nothing!
How in the hell is it that a mobile carrier can be run through an internet connection? Internet connections can be flakey as hell, and phone service really can't afford to be flakey as hell. And when AT&T says that they've "built the best and fastest celular network" they really haven't... because if they had, I would still have fucking phone service!
And it gets better.
Since I have no television, no Alexa, no Amazon Music Unlimited, I thought I could just play the media on my Plex server. Nope again! For whatever reason, the server could be found by my laptop and iPhone, but Plex would not play video. After much wheel-spinning I could play music, but it took forever for the data to start streaming. My Plex clients have been told to use the local network, but they refuse to do it because they're constantly looking for an internet connection. And of course my AppleTV was useless despite being plugged directly into the same hub as my Plex Server because apparently it needs internet to even function.
This is all something I need to look into, because being able to access my media without internet access is why I bought Plex in the first place!
What a shitty night.
I suppose I'll just take sleeping pills and go to bed. What else is there?
Oh wow... hate comments! It's been months!
Yesterday I wrote about the most romantic scene from a movie I've ever witnessed... the dance at the squash festival in the old rom-com Doc Hollywood... then compared it to a similar scene from the new rom-com Dashing in December.
But because the latter film features a romance between two men, that was apparently a bridge too far for some people to take. And so... hate comments! I can only guess that I was put on some kind of watch-list ages ago because every time something like gets posted, whomever it is that's hate-reading my blog apparently tells their entire cadre of like-minded friends to come leave nasty comments that I'll barely read (and never approve) because life is just too short. The IP addresses are from all over the USA, so it must be some kind of online group (One-Dozen Moms... is that you?).
What the issue always seems to boil down to is A) My acknowledging that LGBTQ+ people exist and this is somehow considered offensive and dangerous, because B) My blog has "cartoons" on it which attracts children who might see such unholy perversions as this...
And all I can say is... you're welcome!
Because if your kid happens to be gay and does come across something as innocent as a photo of two guys dancing together on Blogography, then maybe it will be a little ray of sunshine which validates their existence and helps them to deal with the toxic atmosphere you've cultivated which lead so many LGBTQ+ youth into self-harm and even death.
And if you're one of those people who would rather have a dead child than a gay child, then fuck you sideways, because you're everything that's wrong with our society. Nobody "turns gay" from looking at a frickin' photo like this. I mean, you didn't. Or did you?
The truly telling thing about hate comments FOR THE SAKE OF THE CHILDREN on yesterday's entry is the fact that I regularly drop F-bombs in blog entries and never hear a single discouraging word about that. So it's not all the things I write about here... only some things. Maybe before I started blogging I should have asked the internet for a list of things that are and are not acceptable? Well, too late for that now.
I can no more relate to a movie about gay cowboys falling in love than I can relate to a movie about straight people falling in love (apparently, =insert cry emoji=)... but I find them equally entertaining. Actually, I find the gay cowboy romance more entertaining because it's something I haven't seen a million times before (at least not since Brokeback Mountain fifteen years ago). Happy people falling in love are happy people falling in love and I just don't give a crap so long as it doesn't involve children or unwilling animals. And, on top of it all, Dashing in December is GOOD. Really cute stuff if you are into the whole Hallmark Christmas movie rom-com thing like I am.
And if you think that a bunch of hate comments is going to get me to change my mind about posting innocent photos of LGBTQ+ persons merely existing, read this entry and get back to me.
(hint: the answer is "no")
And now, because I love y'all more than sandwiches, here's the song Take Me Home For Christmas by Dan + Shay which plays at the end of Dashing in December. It's a totally great song... and doesn't have gay cowboys in it, if that's important to you for some reason...
Awwww. Santa puppies are the best puppies.
Last night it snowed. Not a ton, but enough to turn the world white here in the foothills of the Cascades.
Back on my 2014 trip, similar conditions were brutal, and it took a half hour to scrape the ice off my rental car and get the tires free from having been frozen to the ground...
But I can't complain too much. Being stuck in Portland in the bitter cold gave me the opportunity to go exploring with my camera and I got some really nice shots that trip because so few people were out braving the weather...
It will be interesting to see how my travel goes in 2021. Now that the charity has shuttered and work travel has halted indefinitely, it's entirely possible that I'll take just one or two trips a year for vacation or visiting friends and that's it. Quite a change from the dozens of trips I was making each year pre-pandemic. Though when you consider I had zero flights in 2020, even one flight will be a huge change from where I'm at now.
Oh well. I guess the frequent flier status and upgraded seats were good while they lasted. I had 5 years of good status followed by 25 years of amazing status and nothing lasts forever. Still... I will surely miss getting International upgrades. Domestic flights are no big deal. Seattle to Hawaii is just over 5 hours. Seattle to Orlando is around 6 hours. I can tolerate just about any seat for that long. But those 11+ hour flights? Having legroom and comfy seats makes a world of difference.
2006-2013 were my best travel years. When both you and your mom (who has zero status) regularly get upgraded to World Business Class for international trips... you know you are flying a lot of miles. An absurd amount of miles...
=sigh=
Those were the days.
In other news... hate comments continue to trickle in because I dared blog about the movie Dashing in December and showed a photo of two gay cowboys dancing together. I hardly ever read hate comments and delete them the second I know what they're about... but this morning I awoke to a comment which merely said "YOU WILL BE DAMNED!" and I had to really appreciate the artistry in that. A comment short enough that I had read the entire thing before I realized it. If I were to respond to this kind of idiocy (and I don't) it might be along the lines of "Settle down there, snowflake! It's not like I posted images of the gay cowboys kissing!"
Well I'll be damned. I actually did do that!
Please keep your hate comments short and to the point.
Most years, a third of my blog (or more) is travel stories. I'm constantly on the road, so there's a steady stream of things to blog about. This year, of course, none of my blog was travel stories because I never went anywhere.
Finding stuff to blog about is never difficult for me. Once a day I pick up my laptop and type out whatever is on my mind... whether it's commenting on current events or blogging about memories of stuff I did or just talking about my cats. Even though 2020 has been far more boring than other years, there's always something to be said.
Except when there isn't.
Yesterday there just wasn't anything to blog about, so I went to my "unfinished drafts" and picked out the iceberg story I had been working on since late November, changed it from current-tense to past-tense, and there you have it... a fresh new blog post. Kinda sorta.
Yesterday there were thirty-eight unfinished drafts. I posted one, deleted a bunch, and now have eighteen left...
These entries may be posted one day... or they may never see the light of day. Some of them are complete and ready to publish. Some of them are skeletons of entries that need some work. Some of them are just notes... like my annual yearly summary posts (Video20, Audio20, Tube20, and Video20). Those will likely be published (why break with tradition?), but right now they're just stuff I've jotted down that I've liked and aren't actual posts yet.
My list is ranked by completeness. Those at the top are done, but I've been hesitating to publish them for one reason or another. Song of The South Clearly Has An Agenda, for example, talks about the horrifically offensive and antiquated content of the movie, but also talks about the great performances, songs, and animation used to sell its agenda (which makes it worth watching if you are able to contextualize the film for what it is). I haven't published it because A) Much has been written about the topic already and I'm not entirely sure I'm adding to the conversation or just creating noise... and B) I don't know that my love of animation and Disney films is enough qualification for me to wade in on the movie's racist agenda when a true ally who is seeking to dismantle racism should be amplifying instead of overwriting Black voices. Maybe one day I will rewrite the entry so that I feel better about making a contribution instead of creating a distraction... but odds are it will be delieted because it's really long and would require a lot of work.
Big Sur is Not So Big, Sir is my review of Apple's laest operating system. I was accumulating notes all through the beta testing and was going to create an entry when MacOS X "Big Sur" was released... only to lose interest and never finish things up. Now it's so old as to be irrelevant, but I may retool it on a critique of the visual elements that Apple revised (which I detest).
And so... there you have it. If you ever see any of those entries pop up here on Blogography, you'll know that my life at the time was even more boring than usual and I didn't have anything else to write about.
Here's hoping 2021 we'll be more exciting for my blog... but in a good way this time.
For those who only read one of my posts each year... or anybody wanting a recap of the past year here at Blogography... this post is for you! As customary, I've jettisoned loads of the usual junk so this entry is "mostly crap" instead of the "total crap" they usually are.
This past year was not an easy one. But I made it though in (mostly) one piece, so I guess that's worth something.
JANUARY
• Ended up with my first visitors of 2020...
• Found out that I actually like mustard after all.
• Design my very own tiny house in case I need to move into one of them with my cats one day...
• Started cooking with Martha Stewart.
FEBRUARY
• Took a hard look at logical fallacies...
• It was my fourth anniversary of adopting Jake and Jenny!
• The Coronavirus arrives in force and it's the beginning of the end of traveling for my volunteer work.
• Wrote probably my most important entry of the entire year and talked about death, depression, loss, and remembrance...
MARCH
• Decided to take a pass on the Welsh Pork Cake when making my mom's Applesauce Bread...
• Like half the people on earth, apparently, I became addicted to Animal Crossing...
APRIL
• Like many others in 2020, I baked a lot of bread and talked about my Dutch oven of choice...
• Replaced my aging iPad with a brand new model so I could get some work done... and some other stuff...
MAY
• Just another day in the life with cats...
• Took a look at The Hookup Plan with the [woman sings in French] and a beautiful piece of music that went with it...
• Here we go again... What Are Little Girls Made Of?
JUNE
• More Mufasa drama...
JULY
• HOMEPOD IS SHIT AND APPLE IS THE WORST!
• Took a look at my favorite movie of 2020, The Old Guard.
• Said good bye to one of my heroes: Rest in Peace John Lewis...
Photo from Representative John Lewis via Facebook
AUGUST
• Waded deep, deep into politics... but it's okay because I relate it all to a movie.
• How big of a moron do you have to be to start renovations in the middle of a pandemic? Apparently it's this big right here.
SEPTEMBER
• Oh look! There's a raccoon party on my patio!
• Finally bit the bullet and got an Apple Watch...
OCTOBER
• Reflected on the passing of Eddie Van Halen, and learning to look with your heart...
• Started a love affair with my new best friend: Monosodium Glutamate.
• it's the fall that kills you.
NOVEMBER
• That time I tried to show a spider some love and accidentally went outside in my underwear...
• Life of a Chinstrap Penguin.
• Ended up in a place where I never thought I'd find myself... buying a "phablet." But here I am with an iPhone 12 Max.
DECEMBER
• On the passing of David Prowse, I took a look at all things Darth Vader...
• Unleashed a flood of hatemail because I dared to show a still frame of two men dancing in Dashing in December, one of my favorite films of 2020.
• Thank God I didn't show a still of them kissing.
• Took a look at how the COVID-19 vaccine works thanks to "Messenger RNA."
And that was the end of that. Not a very exciting year to be me. Or any of us, I'd imagine. See you again in 2021...
Happy 2021 to my blogging family and friends!
My day started with my cats chasing each other around the house, jumping on my bed at 5:10am. Rather than get all salty about not being able to sleep-in on my day off, I got up and set my SourJo bread starter out so I’ll have no excuse to not bake a couple loaves today. I tell you what, there can’t be a better way to start the year than kitties and freshly-baked bread, amiright?
2020 was a tough year. Without the usual nonsense in my life and my travels to distract me, I have been mired in my failures and obsessing over the people in my life that didn’t make it to 2021. Sometimes I wake up with my heart grinding in my chest and find it difficult to breathe because I just want my life The Way It Used To Be instead of what I have left. That’s not on the pandemic though. I think it’s just a part of growing older and being on the back-side of your life here on earth (unless I actually live to be 108. Oh God, please don’t let me live to be 108).
2021 is going to be a year of change for me. Hopefully for the better, but you never know. Absolutely everything is up in the air right now, and what becomes of it is anybody’s guess. For the time being I’m grateful to have a roof over my head, food to put on the table, cats to keep me company, a job to pay for it all, and people in my life I care about. I take nothing for granted because, as I’ve been made painfully aware, nothing lasts forever and life can change on a dime.
I don’t do resolutions, but I hope that I can find it in my heart to be a kinder person... a better person in 2021. I’ve been so beat down by the atrocities that unfold in the news every day that I’ve had to harden my heart and become more cynical to survive it. That’s no way to live, and hate is always more destructive to you than those you’re hating. I’ve tried so very hard not to hate. It’s been the overriding path I’ve attempted to walk since I started studying Buddhism in 1998. But I’m always tested. There’s always tests. And recent years have tested me like no other because there’s just so much awfulness in this world TO hate. But... maybe I can find enough peace in this new year to be more hopeful. To talk less and learn more. To look with wonder instead of being blinded by ignorance. To do more. Care more. Love more.
Don’t get me wrong... I’m still calling out the fucked up shit people do and say which brings harm myself and others. I’m not insane. If you know me at all, you know that NOT speaking out against pieces of shit is something I’m incapable of. If you’re willfully ignorant, I am not having your dumbassery. If you’re persecuting people living their best life at zero cost to anybody else, I am not tolerating your hatred. If you’re being an asshole, I am not embracing your abuse. It’s just that in 2021 I’ll be taking a blowtorch to your fucked up bullshit with 15% more love in my heart. Because I’m a good person that way.
And so... here’s to a new year. Hopefully a better year than the one we’re leaving behind. I’ll be doing my best to make it happen for me and for everybody, because I’ll be taking a blowtorch to my fucked up bullshit where I find it too. But mostly I’ll be watching trash television, scrolling through TikToks, and petting my cats which, let’s face it, probably does more good for the planet than being all shouty on my blog.
Besides, I have bread to take out of the oven...
All my best to you and yours from me and mine for a happy, healthy, and productive 2021!
Last night my web host updated PHP for my blog. Now nothing works. I'm sure it will all get figured out eventually... perhaps I'll just have to reinstall WordPress or something, but I really don't have the time to look into it right now. So I guess I'll keep writing entries and post them when I can figure out what's going wrong.
Wonder how many people will think I died because I got vaccinated? Too many, I'm guessing.
Where yesterday I had a little soreness in my arm, but was otherwise feeling great... today I have no soreness at all. It's as if the vaccinations never happened.
Except they did, which means my immune system will be up to speed to better deal with COVID in two weeks... which is May 5th, I guess. My plan is to go out and eat IN a restaurant. Something I haven't done in what... a year and a half now?
I will, of course, still wear a mask in public. Even though my immune system knows how to attack COVID, there are other people out there whose immune system is not, and I want to keep them safe. It's just a nice thing to do.
In a world where "doing the nice thing" is increasingly rare.
Welp... nobody will see this because I've had to put my blog into "static mode" after being hacked (not for content, they just injected code into my installation). Thankfully I have a file-change-plugin going on that let's me know these things. Here's hoping that I can get this figured out tonight. Sorry you can't comment, faithful blog reader!
STILL HACKED! I didn't have time to look at my WordPress install last night and this afternoon I've developed quite the headache. But fear not, dear reader, I will hack out my bullets this fine Sunday anyway, and hope that I can post them one of these days... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now soon...
• SHARRRRRRK! Discovery has announced that Shark Week begins July 11th this year! GO SHARKS!
P.S. Did you know that sharks predate trees on planet earth? It's true!
• It Burns! <sarcasm> Color me shocked </sarcasm>... CDC loosened mask guidance to encourage vaccination—it failed spectacularly. So stupid.
• It's Not Hard to Learn If You're Already Doing It! A-fucking-men to that...
@renegadescienceteacher LGBTQIA+ people are natural, valid, and welcome in my community. Both science and I have your backs. ##english ##lgbt ##nonbinary ##basichumandecency
♬ original sound - Forrest Valkai
Our preferred pronouns are just like remembering an honorific. Like "Doctor" or "Professor" or "Arch-Duke," and it's such a small thing to learn them. We do things to be courteous to others all the time, so why is this such a difficult concept to embrace for some people? You don't have to agree with it... just be fucking polite about it... because it's not your life... it's their life. Ooh! Look! I just did it and I didn't even think about it! So miss me with your bullshit excuses and just be kind to your fellow humans. That's the only way we're all going to make it.
• Fly the Friendly Skies! It's almost as if flight attendants should all be armed with tasers and have a zero-tolerance policy for your bullshit (like with this piece of shit and her bullshit right here). Start spouting off about your "right" to not wear a mask... tasered. Start being a disorderly piece of shit... tasered. Be a pile of garbage towards the cabin crew and try to assault them when they're just trying to do their job... tasered. If potential problems with these assholes were immediately dismissed with a nice tasering, the sky would be a safer, more friendly place for both passengers and crew. Nobody is forcing you to fly, AND THE CABIN CREW DOESN'T SET POLICY... THEY JUST HAVE TO ENFORCE IT! So if you're going to fly then you have to follow the rules in place and not be an abusive dick. Or else... tasered...
• Cancellation Station! Netflix has canceled Jupiter's Legacy and I'm like ORYL?!? I may die of unshock. They took what could have been a fantastic show and took a huge shit on it BY NOT FOLLOWING THE COMIC BOOK IT WAS BASED ON. Had they just used the original comic book series as a script we could have had something epic. BUT NOOOOOOO! What a waste. My thoughts on this turd of a series are here.
• Texas! Look, I'm pro-Second-Ammendment and all, but what happened to the days where the NRA was a gun safety organization? Before I was allowed to shoot a gun, I had to take classes and learn about responsible ownership. Just like owning a car, where you need training and a license, guns can kill people... so that should be the bare minimum, right? Not in Texas. Now they've got this absurd "Constitutional Carry" legislation in play which allows people in the state to buy a gun without license or training. You know... Texas... where a woman tried to shoot a puppy and ended up shooting her kid instead...
God what a dumbfuck asshole. This is just more ammunition for the anti-gun lobby, so great job there, moron. I hope the kid is okay.
And there's all my Sunday Bullets that may never be seen. Stupid hackers.
And so I attempted to get a plugin working on my WordPress installation... had to adjust my template so that the plugin could actually work... then ended up breaking my blog because reinstalling templates from backup after things refused to work wasn't fixing anything.
=sigh!=
At some point I'm going to have to pony up the money for somebody to completely re-do all my templates so they work with the new WordPress editor/engine... or just shut down my blog completely. I barely have time for blogging lately... let alone deal with crap like this.
And so... guess I get to write without posting until I find time to get my blog fixed. You know... again.
Facebook is the craziest thing.
I just got banned... again... for suggesting that anybody committing violence against airline cabin crew who are just trying to do their job by enforcing mask requirements deserves to get shot. I made no threat against any specific person, just commented on a scenario figuratively speaking. The result? Banned for 24 hours. Meanwhile, there's a guy I know who routinely gets highly specific threats of death or bodily harm... not to mention a woman I know who has received multiple rape threats... and Facebook is all "nothing to see here... business as usual... carry on!"
Fortunately on my blog I can say whatever the heck I want.
So I can make my feelings very clear here... people know that masks are required by airlines. So if you're reminded of that fact by a flight attendant and rather than obey their rules you instead assault other passengers or the cabin crew then, yes, absolutely, you should probably shot. There's simply no excuse.
Consequences and all that.
There's good news to be had, however, I've finally figured out how to fix my blog. What else could I do if I wasn't wasting time on Facebook with this stupid crap?
My blog is dead.
It was hugged to death by a Reddit post talking about Lake Powell's water level being so low that junk which is usually underwater is now fully exposed. Like a boat that sank. A comment on the Reddit post had a link to a Blogography post where I had a photo of the same boat 15 years ago...
And since I pay for the cheapest web hosting available, I don't have the bandwidth available to deal with such a massive amount traffic. Which means my blog just kind of shut down under the pressure of it all. Somebody had to post a link to the page cache on the Internet Wayback Machine.
In an attempt to (maybe?) head off such a thing in the future, I installed a plugin called "Simply Static" which is supposed to help by generating static pages so WordPress doesn't have to generate it every time it's requested. Not sure how it works since WordPress still gets the request and has to reroute it to the correct page via the plugin, but I guess it's worth a shot.
Heaven only knows that a resource as critical as Blogography should stay running at all costs.
On the bright side, getting the "Reddit Hug of Death" did get me an opportunity to upload a higher resolution shot that looks much better, so I guess there's that.
UPDATE: I couldn't get my Simply Static site to work properly, so I ended up reinstalling WP Super Cache. Maybe it will work this time around? I had to remove it a couple years ago because videos wouldn't play. Maybe that's been fixed.
I will still be blogging every day, but the posts will be saved and posted after a week's time. This is to help my blog caching plugin do its thing, because it keeps getting reset after I post and it's taking forever. I'm at a convenient breaking point, so the timing is good.
See you next Friday when (hopefully) things will be back to normal around here and I can flood Blogography with a week's worth of posts.
If you could ever say things were ever "normal" here to begin with.
When I got back on Friday, I posted all the entries I wrote while I was away.
They still haven't shown up on my blog, which leads me to believe that there is an issue with my new caching plugin. Oh joy.
UPDATE: Now everything is showing up except Saturday & Sunday??
UPDATE UPDATE: Welp. enough messing around for tonight. I'm beat. I guess my posts show up when they show up then.
The other day I needed some information off of an old computer. A computer I don't think I've turned it on in two or three years. When it sprang to life, I noted that I had some unpublished blog posts. Some of them were old versions of things I eventually published. Other posts were just abandoned completely for some reason.
Take, for example, this one...
This is what I see when I look at a map of the world...
To me, there's just a giant hole where India is located because I've always wanted to visit but haven't managed to get there. I've lost count of the number of times I've planned a trip but couldn't make it. I suppose
After the "I suppose" there's nothing. I have no clue where I was going with this.
Which could be why I dumped it?
I would still dearly love to visit India, but who knows if the world will ever open up again. Could be that it's just pandemics from here on out.
In which case I'm sure glad that I was lucky enough to see what I got to see of the world when I saw it.
Maybe the internet is trying to tell me something.
Maybe it's time to just let go.
My blog has been mostly-broken for months now. Strange things happen where posts don't get posted or are lost completely. But sometimes they post just fine. And I never know which of the three it's going to be. If the post gets posted... but then doesn't show up and is lost... there's nothing I can do. It's just gone gone gone. It's so commonplace to me now that I automatically copy the post before posting so I don't have to start over from scratch if it's lost. It's maddening.
And has me wondering if clinging to blogging is even worth it any more.
My traffic is as high as it's ever been, but that's mostly due to Google searches. Everybody else has moved on to social media and left blogs behind, so why not me?
I just don't know.
One of these days Blogography is going to break down (again) and I'm just going to leave it there.
No clue if it's Dreamhost, my internet, or what the hell is going on... but my blog takes fucking forever to load. FOREVER! Maybe it's the new "fast cache" plugin that's screwing things up? No idea. Which means it's just one more task to add to this weekend's "To-Do List." Which, as you might guess this close to winter, is packed full as it is.
The good news is that I managed to finish cleaning up my garage and putting away my woodshop projects so that I can park indoors. That's a task that got moved up the list because I've been having to scrape frost off my windows in the morning. And I really don't want to be doing that when the home I'm fortunate enough to call my own has a garage.
The bad news is that some of my projects got put away unfinished. That's going to really bug me, but maybe I'm going to have some time on the weekends that I can drag them out and get things completed.
BWAH HA HA HA!
Only joking. My motivation to do anything of use is at an all-time low. I'm lucky to be getting out of bed in the morning. And I probably wouldn't if my cats didn't need to be fed.
Which just goes to show that Jake and Jenny are good for something after all!
My website is coming back as "WEBSITE NOT FOUND" half the time... but if I reload, it's all there. I can only guess that it's my cache plugin acting even more weird than ever? The PROBLEM is that when I go to send POSTS to Blogography my blogging software can't find the site either. This is bad when I get an error... very, very bad when my posts seem to go through, but are, in fact, LOST FOR ALL ETERNITY!
So... what to do? Turn off the cache plugin so that I stop having problems... or leave it on because otherwise my blog will go down any time it gets an increase in traffic?
I'm leaning towards turning it off, but I'll have to look into that next week, because my schedule is stacked.
Last night I finally, finally managed to get my WordPress cache turned off so that hopefully I can post to my blog again and have the posts actually show up. My frustration level is at an all-time high, so despite wanting to not think about troubleshooting Blogography I just couldn't take it any more. So here we are.
UPDATE: Annnnnd... shit. Now it's more broken than it used to be. Guess I'm not done banging my head against a wall after all.
UPDATE: UPDATE: Yeah, I'm giving up for the night. Maybe later tonight if I have any brain cells left I can worry about it then.
UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE: Are... are we working again?
UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE: UPDATE: No. Fuck.
Thanks for spending another year with me here at Blogography! Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons for what's been a rather awful year. Again.
I'd wish for a better Christmas next year, but I did that in 2020 and look what happened!
I don't do Twitter or Instagram. I mean, I have accounts, but I look at them rarely and hardly ever post. TikTok is something I actually enjoy, but I never post there. I'm merely a voyeur. The only social media I'm involved in is Facebook and I hate it. They can randomly ban you for arbitrary reasons that make no sense. I once got a three day ban for posting "sexual content." There was nothing remotely sexual about it. I don't even understand how they came to that conclusion. I appealed, but nothing came of it. Meanwhile, friends have been targeted with threats of violence and reporting it only gets them ignored. Needless to say, if you're popular enough, powerful enough, or rich enough, you get to post whatever the fuck you want. Including hate and misinformation which is literally killing people.
But, alas, Facebook is a necessary evil because friends from around the world are there and it's the only way to easily keep in contact with them.
And then there's Blogography.
Blogging isn't the social platform it once was. It used to be that everybody had a blog and you kept in touch by reading and commenting back and forth around the blogging community. Now only the tiniest fraction of my blogging friends are still at it. Bloggers who were only in it to keep in touch moved to social media platforms because it was so much easier. Bloggers who were in it for the money left when the money dried up. Bloggers who were in it for fame abandoned it when the fame never came.
Those of us who remain each have our own reasons.
At this point, blogging is a habit for me. But I do like being able to go back through old posts and remember stuff I was doing my life. Next year I'll have 20 years worth, which is a big chunk of my time on this earth.
Although...
From a historical perspective, I sure wish that blogging existed in the 1980's.
That's when my life just started getting interesting, and all I have are random memories from 1985 through 2003. That was college. That was time with the best friends I'll ever have. That was when I first started traveling. Sure I have photos, but they're just snapshots. What happened in-between is a messy blur that's mostly lost because alcohol might have been involved. Had I written things down, I'd be able to remember them too.
What triggered this post was my struggling to remember details of my first trip to Japan in 1996. I had found a journal where I wrote out single sentences with a bunch of space between them. I had always intended to go back and expand on what I had seen and done so it would be documented and I wouldn't forget. Well, that was over 25 years ago now, so there will be no filling in anything. Half of the sentences are meaningless to me. Take this one, for example...
"I hear it is a custom over there, to exchange cigarettes as a form of greeting..."
All I know is that it was a tag line written in English on a cigarette vending machine in the lobby of my hotel (which I was able to find thanks to some Google sleuthing back in 2014). I guess I wrote it down because I thought it was funny. But four pages later I wrote...
"Lonely night in Akihabara. Was happy to get back to my hotel where my best friend Fred was waiting to exchange cigarettes with me again."
And I'm like WTF? Because I have no clue what that means. If I were to venture a guess, there was probably an illustration or a photo of a guy holding out a pack of cigarettes next to that tagline on the cigarette machine. And I guess I named him Fred. Or something. I haven't a clue. And there's no way I'll ever know. Unless they invent time travel. Or I invest in hypnotherapy... maybe.
If this trip had happened any time after 2003, it would have been documented here. If it had happened any time after 2007, it would have been photographed multiple times and posted. But oh well.
There's still 20 years sitting here for me.
I think my blog has been hacked. Blergh.
Turns out my blog had indeed been hacked. As when this happened the last time, I have no clue as to how it happened. Likely some vulnerability in my installation or something. This is incredibly frustrating because I had no idea what to do about it. I spent days Googling for help, but it all basically boils down to reinstalling WordPress and rewinding to an old backup. But how old? How long has code been injected into my site? If they did it once, couldn't they just break in and do it again since I don't know what happened and nothing weird ended up in my security plugin logs? Who knows.
This morning work was blissfully light, so this past weekend I took some time to make changes to my security settings... reinstall my templates... make a copy of my old backup (in case I haven't fixed anything)... and do some shifts on the back-end which will (hopefully) make a difference. I also turned on all the alerts so hopefully I will be notified if files change or somebody gets in.
I was, of course, still blogging daily, and was going to post all the entries I had been collecting but were afraid to post... but eventually decided to just summarize everything since it's all in the past and I don't care enough to review it.
Which brings us to something I should mention... Blogography is always a day behind.
I write my entries the day before they post (this is being written on Monday evening and posted on Tuesday) so I can review things and make sure I'm not posting something I'll regret. Which often happens after I hash out a rant or weigh in on something controversial. In those instances I am basically blogging my way into therapy, but after I've cooled down I see that it's just not something I should really be posting because it was only meaningful to myself.
This decision was reached last year when I went off on a blistering rant that I regretted posting when I woke up the next day. So I just decided to wait until the next day so I will (hopefully) not regret stuff as much.
Life really is too short for regrets.
As I mentioned, my blog was hacked and I was worried to post in fear of making things worse, so I stacked up my entries until I could take a look over the weekend. So far so good, as I didn't see anything amiss when I woke up this morning. No errant code being generated. No weird posts being linked to. Just some failed logins which were waiting in my email inbox this morning.
And since I don't want to review all my rants over the past week, here's what you missed (some of which I'm certain will appear in my upcoming entries because I can't just let shit go)...
FEBRUARY 25th, 2022
AS THE BUTTER CHURNS
This was all about things I learned that I was doing wrong when it came to securing my blog. I wrote this more for myself than anybody else, because anybody actually needing this information could Google it just like I did and get something more up-to-date than anything I was rambling about. So... yeah... useless. But it was all that was going on in my life at the time, so I'm choosing to forgive myself.
FEBRUARY 26th, 2022
CATURDAY
Now that the snows are melting and birds and other wildlife are everywhere, Jake and Jenny have been much more active than usual. No laying around the house... instead they are sitting at all the windows taking in the sights and hanging out in the catio to experience all the new smells that are being unearthed by melting snows.
FEBRUARY 27th, 2022
BULLET SUNDAY
Let's see... looks like I was discussing heartbreak for people suffering from the invasion of Ukraine... Girl Scout Cookies... Old TV shows I'd like to see resurrected... Sony's new Spider-Verse trailer for Morbius... Freedom Convoys... the Freedom of Information Act... and the mind-numbingly high cost of printer ink.
FEBRUARY 28th, 2022
PRE-SPENDING MY LIFE AWAY
I calculated out (roughly) what my meager tax refund would be so that I can buy stuff that I desperately need to get. A new chair, because mine is so uncomfortable that I can only work in it for an hour at a time. New shelves for my studio, because they are literally being held together with duct tape and fell down in the middle of the night terrifying my cats (but mostly me). And an Xbox Series S (AKA "the cheap one") refub unit to replace the one that I gave away, because I need something to treat myself after the crap year that was 2021... plus the price was too good to pass up (I'm choosing to look at this as an investment!) and I really want to play Halo Infinite.
And... that's a wrap. Hope you enjoyed not having to listen to me for four whole days!
I set my blog to auto-update... including the plugins. The latest security update made my blog so secure that I can't post to it!
Guess my thoughts on quantum inevitability as it relates to an infinite universe will have to wait.
I am tired.
Too tired to think about blogging.
But not too tired to scroll through TikTok while I eat dinner!
A little happy for your Monday... especially if you ever watched Boy Meets World (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@mattmort Getting my #firsttattoo ♬ i - Kendrick Lamar
I feel this to my very soul (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@fu3g0dieg0 That old ditty the flappers used to croon about! It was the bees knees! #genx #gaytok #fyp #fypシ #traderjoes #99redballoons ♬ original sound - DeeEm
Maybe it’s because I had a tough day, but this hit brutally hard. We do have a lot of work to do (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...
@the_shoe_fits #changetheworld #community #together #parent ♬ original sound - Daniel Black
I should probably go to bed now, but I think I'm too tired to think.
As you may (or may not) have noticed, my blog wasn't updating this past week-and-a-half.
I continued to write as I always do, but when I went to post anything to the site, Blogography returned an error saying that my "connection had been refused." I automatically assumed that my WordPress installation was borked because it keeps happening with increasing regularity.
But this time it wasn't WordPress's fault.
Eventually I figured out that the VPN node I had been using to access the internet was the same node used by somebody trying to hack my blog. When my security plugin on WordPress detected the attempt, it blacklisted the IP address. When I switched to a different VPN node, I was able to post everything that had been stacked up.
What are the odds?
This does have me concerned that people who use VPNs (and, seriously, everybody should be using VPNs) are going to have increasing difficulties attempting to reach content on the internet.
And where would the internet be without Blogography?
Far, far worse off, I'd imagine.
And, oh yeah... the trailer for the new Mission: Impossible movie dropped today! It looks bonkers cool!
This entire franchise has had some great stories. And the stunts are incredible. Can't wait!
This morning I started getting hit with attacks to my blog. Hard.
I was receiving hundreds of emails from my blog security software informing me that unauthorized people were trying to login, resulting in their IP address getting banned. I didn't really pay them any mind. Even if they get my username which, let's face it, WordPress makes easy... they have to manage to guess a rather complicated password (so complicated that I have zero hope of remembering it and have to rely on my password manager)... plus I have two levels of two-factor authentication enabled.
This makes it a bit tough to break through, but there's all kinds of WordPress vulnerabilities that get exploited, so it's bound to happen eventually.
There are attempts to break into my blog daily. But I have not had such a huge series of attempts like this in a very long time.
Maybe my previous entry had something to do with it? No idea.
Blogging to me is such a habit that I don't even think about it much. I haven't had to in nearly twenty years. When I have a free moment each day I just sit down and hammer out what's on my mind. Simple.
But the way I hammer out my posts is via a blogging app that does all the heavy lifting for me. It's called MarsEdit and I've been using it for a long time. The problem is that my blog is under constant assault by hackers who really, really want the deep Google index for Blogography to exploit for whatever it is they're selling. I get hundreds, sometimes thousands, of attacks a week. And because of this I've had to close some security vulnerabilities... including the access point that MarsEdit uses to post here. There's a newer, more secure way to use outside blogging apps, but unfortunately MarsEdit can't do that yet.
So now I've had to start using the internal editor inside of WordPress, which is less than ideal. It gets the job done, but it's a whole lot less intuitive and spontaneous as I've gotten used to.
Oh well. It wouldn't be life on planet earth if somebody wasn't trying to make my life miserable. This is just one more thing.
I need a week to catch up on life before heading over the mountains for the holidays.
See you post-holidays for my annual wrap-ups for 2022.
The first article I read in 2023 was this one: Bring back personal blogging. And it's interesting to me because every new year I debate whether or not I'm going to keep doing =waves arms= all this. The question has been especially wearing on me during the pandemic when I'm just not doing anything worth blogging about.
The article itself has some very good points though.
Social media, for all its popularity, simply doesn't have the community building that blogging did back in the day. I've made a lot of friends via blogging, and a handful of them are closer than many of my in-person friends. My guess is that this is because in-person friendships rely mostly on how often you see them, where blogging friendships rely mostly on how often you keep in contact with them. Even if you meet up with them in-person from time to time, your relationship goes beyond presence.
On April 18th, Blogography turns 20 years old.
Back in the day, I'd hold a week-long Blogiversary celebration with contests, new merchandise, and everything. Just look at this video from 2008 when the Grand Prize was me flying to wherever in the world the winner was so I could deliver prizes and have a party...
And so I did. I flew to St. Louis and had a great time!
I can't imagine doing anything like this now.
I mean, sure I still meet up with old-school bloggers from those early years. I met with one back in 2021, another in 2022, and will meet with another in March (proof positive that the article is right about the communities we built). But that's a far cry from all the "Dave Events" that used to happen... or even the larger gatherings like TequilaCon.
But it's this past community that still exists which makes blogging something I'm not quite ready to give up on yet.
So... here's to twenty years of blogging... and counting, I guess?
Wishing you and yours all the best in this New Year.
And... apparently my blog is borked again. I can update pages, but posts kinda fall into the void.
I used to use an app called "MarsEdit" which was a very nice composing tool. But it stopped working once the security on my blog changed because it doesn't support the required authentication now. I know that it was recently updated, but it doesn't look like the security was touched, so I started composing posts in WordPress directly. Problem is that WordPress doesn't like you to organize your own photos and wants to do that for you. I'm not a fan. This means I need to hand-code the photo HTML by hand. Also a pain in the ass.
AND THEN WORDPRESS EATS MY POST!
I wonder if it's a better option to compose the posts in MarsEdit and then copy/paste into WordPress? At least that way my posts wouldn't be lost if they didn't actually... you know... post.
=ponders-
Oh well. All that's going to have to take a back seat to fixing whatever is wrong with Blogography first.
The sad thing about the demise of blogs is that our online communities have been fractured.
Facebook is nice, but you can have friends half-way around the world living in the same city who don't even know that each other exists. Back when blogging was a thing, we'd regularly have meet-ups, and new friendships could be formed since everybody showed up to the same place and got to know each other in a social setting. There are days I miss blogging more than others (even though I'm still doing it)... and today is one of those days.
It's a lovely Spring day. As much as it can be, anyway. So I guess it's go time... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Opt-Out of Stupid! =sigh= The first Mother's Day without my mom was, as you can imagine, a soul-crushing event (and each one after is no easier). Not because it reminded me of what I had lost... because there wasn't anything that didn't remind me of what I lost... but because the weeks leading up to the actual day means being inundated with emails telling me to buy a gift for my mom. That's an assault that was incredibly difficult to deal with, because nothing would make me happier to be able to buy something for my mom again. Now-a-days, it's getting a bit easier because companies are allowing you to fine-tune your emails to not include events which my be tough on you. But of course there are total fucking assholes who want to make this kindness into something horrible. Because that's where we are now...
@jwilliamj “My political beliefs = anti 2010 meme”- @Matt Walsh #fyp #foryoupage #viral #foryou #leftistlogic #conservative #woke #stitch ♬ original sound - JJ
Just fuck you. Is there absolutely anything... anything at all... that can make you put yourself in somebody else's shoes for even two fucking seconds? I try to find the best in people, but I sincerely doubt it. Trading off of misery is apparently too profitable.
• Tattoo Me! I was outright called a "satan worshipper" once because I have tattoos. I told them that my tattoos have nothing to do with satan... only to be screeched at with "ANY TIME YOU DESECRATE THE BODY GOD GAVE YOU, YOU ARE WORSHIPPING SATAN!!!" And that's when I looked her dead in the face and said "Then hail satan and fuck off, I guess." Because I'm happy to confirm idiotic biases. I'm here to help. Which is why this resonates with me...
@nurse.alexrn My boss was crying laughing #nursesoftiktok #nurselife #nursehumor #nurseproblems #nursetok #medicalhumor #nursinghumor #nursetok ♬ original sound - Tank the GSD
People are so toxic now-a-days that unless you conform exactly to their ideals they go all asshole on you.
• Jenno! A conversation I had yesterday...
"Ooh! There's a new Hannah Gadsby special on Netflix!"
"You like Hannah Gadsby?"
"Sure. I mean, there's parts of her sets that don't hit with me, but that's okay."
"THAT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE A MAN!"
"I HAVE APOLOGIZED FOR MY GENDER MANY TIMES!"
"YOU CAN'T APOLOGIZE ENOUGH!"
"I'M SORRY!"
"Okay. You're good for another day."
"DAY? Can't we call me good for a month? Or at least a week?"
"No."
"Okay then, have a nice evening!"
"You too!"
"As good as the patriarchy will allow."
As it turns out, this is my favorite her specials.
• Lord of the... Rings?! These Wes Anderson parodies just keep coming. And are fantastic...
As always, I would pay serious money to see this film if it existed.
• Dooce. One of the most famous bloggers ever, Heather Armstrong, died this past week after losing her long struggle with depression (a battle she fought very hard, even going so far as to undergoing experimental treatments where her brain activity was stopped then restarted). This is awful. I think she wasn't even 50 yet? She's one of the old school bloggers who started around the time I did. I wasn't into mommy-blogging, but I ran across her posts from time to time and she was about as real as you could get online. Which is probably why she was so popular. I'd read things she wrote and think "Wow, I could never get that personal so publicly!"... and I'm betting that's what made her so relatable and beloved by the community that formed around her (even though lately she became infamous for blogging some pretty heinous things that I disagree with vehemently). Rest in peace, Heather. You can't get Dooced in heaven. Thinking of her two kids today.
• Tour of Wealth! Architecture YouTube is a bottomless pit of amazing homes and buildings for me. I can get lost there for hours. This one popped up this past week, and I honestly don't know how to feel about it...
If I had the money? Sure! I'd live there! Except... I just don't know how I could sleep at night knowing that I've used $250,000,000 that could have gone towards helping people. AND STILL HAVE MILLIONS LEFT OVER TO SPEND ON A NEW HOUSE... OR TEN! It's just so unfathomable to me.
Wishing you a good rest of your Sunday.
I do not take blog hiatuses very often. It's actually pretty rare.
Other hiatuses aren't nearly so dramatic. A couple times because I had things to deal with. A couple times because my blog was broken.
But this past week? There really isn't a reason. I just needed a week off. I have entirely too much on my plate to write about anything so I just... didn't.
Let's see what happened...
Since blogging is pretty much... well... dead... I might have to take a minute more often. I always thought that if I took breaks I would just stop altogether, but it hasn't happened yet. So maybe?
Remember back in the mid-2000's when I was having annual Blogiversary contests and creating cool Blogography swag for prizes and purchase?
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
And so do I every time I open my closet. That's because I kept a number of the T-shirts for myself. Most of them I wear only on special occasions because I'm down to my last shirt. But others? I wear to death. They don't look all that great now because the ink is flaking off, but the shirts themselves were quality and are still in good shape so I am happy to wear them anyway because they're darn comfortable.
There is one of my designs from 2006 that actually looks better the more it ages...
So cool. If I could have found a way to print like this when they were new, I would have absolutely done it!
Interesting to note that at the time I designed the shirt, Bad Monkey looked quite different...
And that was when Lil' Dave still had "mitten hands" as well. In-Between when I designed the shirt for the contest and actually printed it, Bad Monkey had changed to his current, thinner version... and Lil' Dave has actual fingers.
Good times. Good times.
Something I need given that there's no new episode of Ted Lasso tomorrow.
I am really torn on this whole "link tax" bullshit that's getting signed into law by certain countries.
Essentially this boils down to governments forcing major media companies like Google to strike agreements with news organizations. That way, when you search for something on Google (or Facebook or any company that monetizes results based on another company's content) and a result from a news organization pops up, Google has to pay them money because their content has been monetized by Google.
On one hand, it's like... okay... Google is making money by serving ads in their search results or news feeds, so why shouldn't the news organizations showing up in those results get paid for making Google rich with their hard work?
On the other hand... why the fuck should Google be held responsible for other companies not monitizing their own content? If you don't want Google to make money off of you, then no problem. Add code to your website's HTML instructing Google bots to not crawl your content. Problem solved. Why in the hell are governments getting involved in this? And if you're going to pass laws for news organizations to get paid for making Google money... why not everybody? Why not bloggers? Blogography is heavily indexed by Google, and I have a lot of content that gets looked at by Google search referrals. So where is my money??
I have to say... I am kinda on Google's side this time.
Which is something I haven't said very often.
Google is merely refering people to your content. It should be up to you to monetize everything once somebody clicks through to visit your site and read your stories. Run ads. Offer subscriptions. Whatever. Just be grateful that Google is sending you the business. How else will people even find you if you're not getting Google search referrals?
With the recently-passed "link tax" law in Canada, Google is telling the Canadian government to fuck off. They will just remove all Canadian news sources from appearing to Canadians who are now legally required to be paid. Sure Google will have less content in their search results to monetize... but they won't have to pay anything out either. I'd argue that this doesn't benefit Canadians at all, but what do I know? Google said the same thing to Australia and France, but eventually capitulated. It will probably be the same for Canada.
And the USA is likely going to be adding a "link tax" soon.
If I were Google, I'd do some things...
Ultimately I think it's important that news organizations get paid for their work. But to put that responsibility on Google is outrageous. That should be up to Google. And if people don't like it... then everybody can tell Google bots to not crawl their site until Google agrees to fork over the money and share their success. That's how the market works. If governments wants money to go to news organizations, then have that money come from the government.
Regardless of how this all shakes out, to have governments jumping in the fray is a terrible precedent. Today it's Google... what's tomorrow? Me? Every time I share a news story I'm going to be responsible for paying them money? I call bullshit. They should figure out their own monetization just like I do (which is $0 since I don't charge for anything, but still).
Have a government-mandated monetized weekend, everybody!
"What are you gonna do? Complain? And start a massive public fight with someone extremely famous and get smashed into dust by thousands of fans? No thanks. And that was my Uber, too! I paid money to have one of my jokes stolen by a multi-millionaire! When people hit a certain level of celebrity they start to think the world actually revolves around them and they can just take something if they want and say it's theirs." — hbomberguy, Harris Michael Brewis
Blogography has been going on for a while now. Over twenty years, to be exact. And the vast majority of that time I've been posting daily. As you might guess, having twenty years of content on the internet means that you've got loads of stuff for people to steal and claim as their own.
And it does happen. I regularly get people writing to me saying "Did you know this person is taking your stuff?" Usually it's DaveToons or my photos. Sometimes it's my posts. Twice it's been people stealing entire months of my posts and pretending to be living my life. Including the time a person stole my travel posts, including those talking about blogger meets that I had organized!
Back in my early days, I would write to them and ask them to credit where they got the material or take it down. Eventually that was too much effort so... as long as they weren't making money off my work... I just let it be. If they were making money off my work (when I myself am not), I'd usually send them a bill with a usage fee. They'd never pay it, but odds are they would take it down. A notable exception being a very famous blogger (circa 2007) who stole one of my posts (complete with my photos!). I sent them a bill for $2,500. They replied telling me "no" and said that I should be grateful that they were giving me "exposure"... except they weren't, because my name or a link to my blog was nowhere to be found. Rather than risking all-out war, I let it drop. Which is why when they had a spectacular downfall due to a bit of a scandal years later, I chalked it up to karma.
There is an exception to my kindness, however. If you're using my work to promote hate speech or to promote people who promote hate speech, I threaten legal action. At least I do now. Back in the day I was far more crude. Once some hateful "Christian" organization used one of my photos in an article condemning homosexuality. I was furious. But first I was devastated, because it came the day after a young gay man had taken his own life after relentless bullying. My photo was being used to create an atmosphere so toxic that this young man would rather die than have to live in it. And that caused me to become unhinged. So I changed their hotlink to point to a photo of gay oral sex which had "BLOW ME!" written on it. It was like that for at least two weeks before they noticed, at which time they wrote with their intent to sue. I told them to go fuck themselves, and to stop stealing my shit or I would be the one suing them.
On the other end of the spectrum, I also get people writing to me and requesting permission to use my stuff. So long as they are not making money off of it and it's not promoting hate speech, I always agree. And if they keep the copyright intact, I don't require them to credit me. If they're a charity or an educational organization, I even volunteer to make changes if it would be more helpful to what they're using it for.
And, yes, I do realize that there is likely a ton of my content that's been stolen which I will never know about. Especially by video creators, which brings us to the reason for this post. "hbomberguy" (AKA Harris Michael Brewis) whom I have been following for a while, just released an epic 3 hour and 50 minute video which discusses plagiarism on YouTube. And he has some fantastic examples within. I know that this is an incredibly long video, but it's well worth your time to watch. And I hope you do, because it's a treat...
I am confident that YouTube, as a part of Google, has all the tools they need to go after those who plagerize their content. But they won't be proactive like that because videos make them money with ad revenue, and it's not in their best interest to be proactive like that.
Except on behalf of major movie studios and record labels who have the money to seriously sue them if they don't at least search for stolen songs and clips from movies and television shows.
As for blogs like mine? We're entitled to nothing at all. Well, except plagiarism, obviously.
How typical.
But I'm used to it. And have been for a very long time.
Well, here it is. The entry where I recap all the things that happened in the year. Except... such a post only really made sense when I was actually doing lots of stuff (meaning prior to 2020). Not that nothing at all happened in 2023. Plenty of stuff happened. It's just that going through it all month-by-month doesn't really work when the notable stuff just isn't a massive list.
And so...
This was the 20th year of Blogography. Which means I've been blogging for 20 years. That's probably ten years longer than was relevant, but I'm nothing if not persistant.
This was also the 3rd year of Ted Lasso, my favorite television show of all time. They say it's the last year, but holy crap I hope not.
The greatest thing to happen all year? Grocery delivery is finally available in my area! As God is my witness, I will never step foot in the bedlam that is a grocery store again. Except when the delivery says that something I need is "OUT OF STOCK." Which, alas, is more often than I ever thought it would be.
The second greatest thing? The Dutch Bitch, one of my oldest blogging friends, visited me here in Redneckistan!
I had a lot of expenses this year, so I tried to save money wherever I could. The one exception was a seriously useless purchase of a Bad Monkey neon sign. It's pretty great...
I also bought new pair of SONOS Era 300 speakers, but those aren't totally useless. I get really awesome sound while watching movies now! And by "now" I meant nine months after I bought them because SONOS had to issue a fix so that Dolby Atmos would play on them without blowing up my SONOS Arc soundbar.
In the not-so-frivolous purchases department... I had to replace my hot water heater. Because of course I did. It was one of the few things that hasn't gone wrong with my house yet. And then I had to replace my HVAC system, because it turns out there were actually two things that hadn't gone wrong with my house yet.
This year was the first time since 2019 that I saw a live concert. And only the second time since 2019 that I saw a movie in a theater. Oddly enough, these were two activities I didn't miss as much as I thought I would. But it turns out I hate people, so being able to watch movies and concerts at home is the best.
I didn't catch COVID again this year. To my knowledge, I've never had it. Though I'm six-times-vaccinated, so it's possible I did contract it but being vaccinated made it so mild that I didn't notice. I am not doing incredibly risky stuff (except going to a concert and a movie) so maybe that helps too. I don't know.
I managed to finish my kitchen renovation after years of working on it. Still want to replace the floor, but that's something I'll likely never be able to afford. I also managed to get half of my yard renovated. In another couple years maybe I'll have the money to do the rest. But first I have to repair my upstairs shower (that was leaking).
Because I have time now that I'm at home all the time and don't travel 1/3 of the year, I ranked all the Pet Shop Boys songs. You're welcome.
Out of all the things I blogged about in 2023, I think the thing I most want to leave you with is this, which I ran across in August...
Hope you had a good 2023. And will have an even better 2024.
I'm trying to stay optimistic.
Hosting this blog is expensive. And difficult when you pay for it annually in order to save money.
When I was notified that my annual contract renewal was coming up, I decided to look around and see if it was possible to save some cash. I'm really, really trying to save every cent I can so I can afford to finish my home repairs and finish the work I want to do on my yard.
And so tomorrow I'll be moving things over to a new hosting provider. Hopefully it will all go smoothly and I'll see you on the flip-side.
If not, well... I'm not deleting everything off my current host just yet.
UPDATE: Well, that didn't go well.
Could I have persevered and eventually gotten through the move? Sure. But it ended up being far from easy, even after purchasing the tools that I thought would make it a cake walk. Ultimately the time it would have taken wasn't worth the money saved, so I abandoned ship and stuck with my current hosting company (which has been pretty great, all things considered).
Oh well. I had to try.
Being "on the internet" means that you're going to see some crazy shit.
While I was in Montana I got an email that was crazy shit indeed. Somebody sent me an invoice from Blogography to pay for Blogography that was sent by The Blogography Support Team...
The fact that they decided to look through my blog to find a photo to make it feel authentic gets big bonus points. If I wasn't Blogography, then I might have fallen for it!
Even if they spelled my name with a lower-case "d" in the opening.
And so...
No. I will not be paying portal me with payment me from support me. Though I was tempted to click on the link to find out exactly how much money I was asking myself to pay me.
But not tempted enough to risk a virus for looking.
Sorry to me about that.
=sigh=
It's really telling when you get some bad news... but because of what you've been through in the past, you have no idea what your reaction should be. Or even if the bad news is, in fact, fake news.
I was so naïve for so long. Now I'm just numb.
There's something that grinds my gears so bad... and that's somebody "reacting" or "reviewing" or "outright stealing" content for their posts. If you're going to build off of somebody else's work, then you give credit where credit is due. Anything less than that makes you a shitty fucking person.
I ran across this earlier in the week where YouTube recommended a "reacts" video where somebody played a different creator's video in its entirety, halting to inject a comment from time to time. Which is bad enough because they never really added to the conversation, BUT THEY DIDN'T CREDIT THE ORIGINAL CREATOR! Instead I had to track them down.
Turns out it's a British guy named Lawrence who moved to the USA and has a channel called Lost in the Pond. He makes videos which contrast the USA with the UK and it's pretty interesting. Take this one, for example...
That one is more factual, but most of them are more observational...
Many videos feel like they took some research to pull off, like this one which explores American things that are actually British...
But don't worry, he went the other way in his very next video where he explored British things that are actually American...
Now, for me at least, the content "creator" who took one of Lawrence's videos without crediting him has been blocked, whereas Lawrence has a new subscriber. I would have probably subscribed to both if not for the fact the original guy DIDN'T GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT WAS DUE!
Well, here it is. The entry where I recap all the things that happened in the year. Except... such a post only really made sense when I was actually doing lots of stuff (meaning prior to 2020). Not that nothing at all happened in 2024. Plenty of stuff happened. It's just that going through it all month-by-month doesn't really work when the notable stuff just isn't a massive list. And here we go...
The single biggest lesson I learned in 2024 is that Apple is a shitty fucking company who does not give a single fuck about your data. I started using their "iCloud Drive" which was more expensive than other options, but I wanted the benefit of integration with all my Apple stuff. And it was great. Until my data started zeroing out. I called support and we watched as file after file would be reduced to zero bytes in real-time. And they could offer no help except to suggest that I copy my files off iCloud Drive (no shit, I started doing that immediately). Of course I had backups, but recent files that hadn't backed up yet were gone. Very old files that never got backed up were gone. And after jumping through hoops Apple blamed me because "iCloud Drive is not a backup service." So if you're using Apple cloud storage, better get your files off of it before they're gone.
I paid loads of money to have my shower ripped out and rebuilt because a company I hired to diagnose a leak told me that was the problem. Except it wasn't the shower at all. It was the toilet. That's a lot of money down the drain. But at least the leaking nightmare is finally over.
I had kidney stones for the first time in many years (I used to get them regularly). But this time was different in that I suffered in absolute agony instead of going to the emergency room for drugs because I really couldn't afford to do that. Despite paying absurd amounts of money for "health insurance." I fucking despise that Americans pay a fucking shit-ton into "health insurance," whose only function is to pull money out of the system and make profits for health insurance company executives.
I ran across one of the funniest cat videos ever this past year, and here it is. The cat is speaking French, but there's subtitles...
Next up in cat news? Jake has a snaggletooth sometimes now...
After yet another eye surgery, I decided to get my eyeball lenses replaced and blogged all about it starting in Part One here (and here are Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, and a follow up post), and that's been very cool.
And, oh yeah, if you've ever wanted a lot of Drunk Dave stories in one place, here you go!
If you're a Disney Parks fan, I wrote a shitload of posts once I got back from Walt Disney World...
The Aurora Borealis visited a couple times...
I finally played around with that AI garbage that all the kids are talking about...
And I'm going to wrap this up in a surprising way by re-mentioning that I discovered the movie Half Brothers in 2024, which really struck a cord with me for some reason. I'm kinda obsessed with the movie, and it's become the film that I put on whenever I need background noise. It's just so well done, in particular the exceptional performance by Gerardo Méndez. This is a comedy, but he has to communicate far past this because there's a lot of heartbreaking stuff going on.
And that's a wrap on 2024. Hope everybody has a safe and happy New Year.
Today is the day I usually go into the office to box up all my 2024 files and get everything ready for 2025. It's a great day to do that because nobody is there to intrude and I plow through. But today, much to my surprise, people are actually working! And so I'm putting off my office clean out until Sunday.
Instead I'm cleaning out my laptop. I'm one of those messy people who just drops everything on their desktop and (wrongly) assumes I'll get to it later. Most of them are for work, so that's fairly easy to file away properly. But my personal stuff is more weird and complex. It's recipes. It's memes. It's stuff for this blog. It's photos. It's links. It's ideas. It's absolutely anything you can think of. That's not so easy to file away.
But anyway, here's some stuff that I think I collected for Blogography...
Here's an interesting land feature I found while randomly scrolling through Google Maps. It's a shockingly round island (René-Levasseur Island) inside of a shockingly round lake (Lac Manicouagan) in Canada. It's interesting enough to have its own Wikipedia page here. Long story short, an asteroid slammed into Canada 214 million years ago. And it must have hit near-perpendicular to make such a round hole. It's nicknamed "The Eye of Quebec."
Copyright Google Maps
Copyright Google Maps
Here's a video that I didn't end up using for Caturday because the camera wasn't pointed downward enough (or because YouTube made it into a reel, which displays weird). Still funny. Jenny ran around the corner at breakfast time to run upstairs. Little did she know that Jake was on his way down. She didn't even slow down or hesitate, but instead leaped right over him...
I don't know if I already shared this, but it's a cartoon that I absolutely love...
I have no idea why I saved this. It's a video from my doorbell cam showing the moon traveling across the sky in the upper-left corner there...
This is a photo that I was going to write a blog post about, but could never find a way to make it interesting. Basically, I was opening the drawers of my IKEA shoe cupboard looking for my water shoes and noticed that a shoe was missing. This makes absolutely no sense. I know it was there at one point. But now it's just... gone?!? How? Where did it go? I wouldn't have taken out just one shoe. Did somebody take it? I actually
This is a snack called "Kazbars" that looked amazing, so I took a snapshot of it to remind me to buy it. I ended up finding it (yep, delicious!), but never trashed the photo for some reason...
This is my favorite meme of 2024. It gets passed between my friends and I whenever we have a big expense pop up. It's especially apt for me going into 2025...
Oh look... it's the secret recipe for McDonald's Special Sauce that I've been meaning to try!
I ran across this "recipe" a month ago for Movie Theater Popcorn that I've been meaning to try once I get the ingredients...
And this recipe for School Cafeteria Cheese Pizza sounds amazing. I just found it a week ago and already I'm sad I haven't tried it...
And that's a sampling of what I'm having to deal with. I've got loads more just waiting to be organized and filed away. Happy New Year!
As I do every year, I started my day listening to Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech in its entirety. So many people quote snippets of it to support their personal narrative while completely ignoring the bigger picture, and that's why I listen to the whole thing every year.
I had the day off but ended up working most of it anyway. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow, so it seemed the smart thing to do.
Though now that I'm home and exhausted, perhaps it would have been smarter to stay home and zone out in front of the television? The world may never know.
UPDATE: And my blog is dead again. I don't know if it keeps getting hacked or what.
A couple years ago I didn't so much delist Blogography from Google as I stopped keeping Google in the loop as to what I was writing here. The pandemic had gotten to be more than enough to deal with, and referral traffic from people with an axe to grind wasn't something I felt like dealing with. A side-benefit was that the number of ridiculous marketing emails I received plummeted.
Then, over Christmas break I decided to rebuild my indexing and get Google to crawling again.
Obivously it worked, because this morning I received an email promising to "drive traffic and increase reveue for your website Blogography.com!" And it's like... what revenue? I ain't selling anything here. It was then I got to wondering just who in the hell would be stupid enough to hire some random company that's just spamming you with absolutely no effort made to even so much as look at your site to see if it generates revenue (even when they claim to have looked by adding some random link they found "interesting" on your site).
And so... yeah, my useless crap is back on Google now. But at what cost?
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