I note with considerable amusement that my Facebook friends list no longer includes S. Wolfram, esq.
November 2007 Archives
I do believe I'm going to take the weekend off: leave the laptop at work, let the nightly build fend for itself, do my best not to think of Wolfram Research at all until Monday morning.
A phrase that's popping up everywhere these days: messenger bag.
The Christmas catalogs cluttering our mailbox all include a page or two of messenger bags, and by a strange coincidence ceej mentioned the other day that she's bought herself a new messenger bag.
Perhaps, thought I, this is a sign that I should look into getting a messenger bag for myself. So I poked around a bit on http://www.timbuk2.com/ and http://www.tombihn.com/, and learned two things:
- Messenger bags are pretty spiffy: waterproof, lots of useful pockets, comfy shoulder strap, etc., etc.;
- They're also rather expensive: a fully tricked-out Tom Bihn bag runs about $200.
I don't really like the WRI-issue laptop bag I'm using now - too big, too heavy, pockets are mostly useless, etc., etc., blah blah blah - but I'm not willing to spend $200 on a replacement.
MSNBC says:
KHARTOUM, Sudan - Thousands of Sudanese, many armed with clubs and knives, protested Friday outside the presidential palace in Khartoum, demanding the execution of a British teacher convicted of insulting Islam for allowing her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad.
I'm reminded of the Atheist's Prayer:
O Lord, save me from your followers.
Apple: We just shipped Safari 3, with lots of spiffy new features.
Mozilla: We just shipped beta 1 of Firefox 3, with lots of spiffy new features.
Microsoft: We just...uh...we fixed a memory leak in Internet Explorer 7! Sort of. No, it's not really fixed, it's more like "not as broken as before". Um.
(I must confess: I stole the idea for this post from Jeff Atwood.)
My old web site - the late, lamented http://patrick-rice.net/ - had a link to my amazon.com wish list. Jennifer pointed out this morning that my TypePad thingy doesn't have a wish list link.
No problem, thought I. I'll just add one.
That turns out to be harder than it sounds. For some reason, my amazon.com wish list doesn't show up in searches: enter my email address - current, previous, even the long-gone Netcom address - and amazon.com says, Never heard of him.
TypePad has a built-in wish list link thingy, but I can't configure it because amazon.com can't find my wish list.
Amazon.com has its own widget thingy - during the configuration of which I discovered that there are no fewer than seven Pat Rices with wish lists (greetings, doppelgangers!) - but it's ugly, and it's too big to fit nicely in the sidebar. (When I said 150 pixels wide, I meant 150 pixels wide. Not 174 pixels, thank you very much.)
Finally, in desperation, I created my own link to the silly page, and put it in the Links section over there on the right.
Just now I deleted the last.fm application from the iMac. I never could get the tracks I played on the iPod to show up on my last.fm profile, and it just wasn't worth the effort to figure out the problem.
I'm keeping my last.fm account, at least for a while. Perhaps in a year or two they'll spiff up their iPod support a bit. (Though I suspect that long before that happens they'll have deleted my account due to inactivity.)
Facebook says:
You are now friends with Stephen Wolfram.
EEK!
Plaxo: got a connection request this evening from John Maynen. John & I went to high school together - Buffalo Grove High School, way back in the Carter Administration - and I haven't seen him since the 1990 high-school reunion. Nice to hear from you again, John.
last.fm: finally got the scrobbler thingy to work (dumb word, 'scrobble'; couldn't they have come up with a better one?); alas, their spiffy-looking now-playing sidebar is just a little too wide to fit in my TypePad design. I suppose I'll keep messing with it. (Maybe it'll fit on the right side...?)
Today is the 139th anniversary of the Battle of the Washita.
When I moved my music collection from nessus to the iMac - in March of last year, that was - the play counts were all reset to zero; so I recreated the Never Played playlist, and set about slogging through all 8,155 songs (videos, podcasts, etc.) a second time.
(I hear the loyal readership asking themselves, Why? Why not? It's my project.)
For a long time, it seemed that I was making no progress at all, but lately the end of the tunnel is showing a glimmer of light: the Never Played playlist is down to a mere 882 items, approximately 75 hours of music. I might finish by year's end, if I work at it.
In other news: I signed up last week for an account on last.fm, mainly so I could have one of those now-playing lists over on the sidebar. (Everybody else has one. I don't want to be left behind.) Alas, I can't get it to work: it says I've played 9,000 tracks (more or less), but also says I haven't played any of them recently. The sidebar thingy keeps coming up empty.
Just this evening the last.fm application noticed I have an iPod, so maybe my iPod listening will start showing up now. If not, there won't be much point in keeping my last.fm account....
Scorching headache this morning.
Perhaps I am merely a bit dehydrated, or under-caffeinated.
My subconscious - a churning mass of irrelevancy; be grateful it's not whispering in your ear all the time - tossed out a question just now: What happened to FilmLoop?
I mentioned FilmLoop here two years ago ("It's the wheel...reinvented", November 4, 2005). What have they been up to since then?
According to the TechCrunch article FilmLoop Betrayed by Investors? the FilmLoop story ended badly:
One day, the founders and employees of FilmLoop had a viable company with $3 million in the bank. The next day they had no stock, no job, and no company.
Poor 'loopies, screwed by the VCs. Hope their next company works out better....
Just now I encountered the curiously-named http://www.rememberthemilk.com/:
We created Remember The Milk so that you no longer have to write your to-do lists on sticky notes, whiteboards, random scraps of paper, or the back of your hand. Remember The Milk makes managing tasks an enjoyable experience.
Basic accounts are free, or upgrade to a Pro account for $25/year.
I can't think of a single reason why I need an online to-do list manager - another one, I should say, since I already have a Plaxo account (which I never use) - but that's never stopped me before.
Whenever a new online service goes live, I have an irrational compulsion to sign up, just to claim my favorite username before somebody else does.
Grandparents & cousins (two of each), plus an aunt & uncle, all came from Bloomington and/or Normal this afternoon to visit.
There was bowling (final score: Jake, 88; Natalie & Ryan, 74). There was pizza for dinner. There was blood on the carpet (but not much, and swiftly cleaned up).
The relatives have all gone home, and the house is strangely quiet without them. Jake is watching television. Sam is playing, but - judging by the smell - he really needs a new diaper. Jennifer is reading.
It's been years since these commercials were in heavy rotation on the Discovery Channel, but Jennifer & I still get a chuckle by saying, "Hello, meteor!" to each other.
Yet another $400 consumer-electronics device: the Vudu, http://www.vudu.com/:
VUDU has arrived. The revolutionary VUDU box and service deliver instant access to thousands of movies directly through the television, without requiring a computer or cable/satellite TV service.
Um. So, with vudu I can use my broadband connection to download movies directly to the vudu box, without going through a computer? That's nice.
But I'd still rather have an Apple TV box (albeit with a considerably larger disk).
Just back from a splendid Thanksgiving Dinner at the grandparents' house in Arlington Heights.
Jake's winter coat didn't come home with us. Oops.
The first grade classes at Jake's school had a Thanksgiving feast today: applesauce, corn muffins, potato casserole, and pumpkin pie, all of which the kids made themselves. (I imagine grownups handled the actual baking.)
Parents were invited; we let Jake decide which of us he wanted to come. "Papa," he said, and so I went. I was the only father in the room, but the mothers were reasonably tolerant of my intrusion into MomSpace.
I was assigned the task of dispensing applesauce. I think I was a little stingy about it, because there was quite a bit left over after the first serving. Oops.
A roomful of six-year-olds can get really loud....
The elusive Morgan County - which defeated two previous attempts (May 27, 2005; and May 27, 2006) - bagged at last.
...Heroes is getting interesting again.
Rands in Repose says:
A bunch of people sitting in a meeting, staring at their laptops, is a fat meeting. The people sitting at their laptops have no incentive to change a thing because they're lost in whatever has captured their interest on their laptops. This is a lazy meeting full of people who are ignoring the most important question: "How do we figure out how to never have this meeting again?" Even worse, an organization that lets this meeting exist is a rotting organization. It's a company where it's slowly becoming acceptable to sit there and do nothing.
I used to go to meetings at WRI. Now I get work done instead. Other people go to meetings - and they bring their laptops with them, so they can get work done.
Two months ago, I read about Not Another E-book LLC, which has a spiffy new e-book reader...only you couldn't actually buy one yet. Real Soon Now, they said.
Today, I read about the Amazon Kindle, another spiffy new e-book reader...that isn't available yet. Real Soon Now, says Jeff Bezos.
(The Cybook - which is what Not Another E-book LLC is selling - is now available: only $450. If I bought one, I wouldn't have any money left over to buy e-books....)
Two questions:
- Why did I spend the last two hours doing work, even though it's Saturday night and I'm on vacation?
- Will any of the cow-orkers notice, or appreciate, that I did?
Fired up the scanner this afternoon, and fed it some Halloween pictures.
Grandpa is coming over from Normal today, to visit the grandchildren.
Microsoft's amazing & wonderful installer technology - it uses a database, so it must be amazing & wonderful - can't save them from dumb mistakes, as described by 'softie Aaron Stebner:
Windows Vista includes the .NET Framework 2.0 and 3.0 as OS components. The .NET Framework 3.5 includes Windows Vista OS hotfix packages for the .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1, and both of these hotfixes require reboots in order to complete installation. The .NET Framework 3.5 setup wrapper contains logic to handle these reboot requests and notify the user, but the Windows Update service in Windows Vista also runs in the background and listens for this type of reboot request and pops up dialog boxes like this to notify the user that a reboot is needed as the result of installing an OS update.
Unfortunately, if this dialog appears during the .NET Framework 3.5 setup or during installation of a product that installs the .NET Framework 3.5 as a prerequisite (such as Visual Studio 2008), and the user chooses to restart using the Restart Now button on this dialog, it can cause the system to reboot even if the .NET Framework 3.5 or Visual Studio 2008 setup is still running. This can leave the system in an unknown state if these setups are installing something at the time of the reboot.
They're not going to fix it in 3.5, either. (That would be work.) Maybe in 4.0, by which time it will be entirely too late to do anyone any good.
(I suppose it isn't really an installer bug. It's a bug in Vista, which shouldn't pop up that silly reboot-now dialog. But either way, the 'softies screwed up.)
Poor Mr. Sam, he's got a bit of a cold: his nose is running, and he coughs a bit now & then. No fever, though.
Whatever it is, I think I've got it too. I don't feel sick, but I've been sneezing & coughing much more often than usual.
Apparently the Villa Caffe, over in Mahomet, has closed.
We only had lunch there once, but it seemed like a nice place. Too bad it's gone.
Sometimes I get bug reports like this...
Severity: Critical
Component: Installer
Problem description: Windows installer breaks coffee machine.
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Launch installer
2. Go to break room
3. Coffeepot is empty
Comments: Please fix immediately.
...and wish the bug tracker had a more forceful response than Not a bug.
I haven't used my Pownce account very much in the ten days I've had it. Pownce has some interesting features, but Twitter is still better for what I do (i.e., pointless microblather, posted from my phone & displayed in a sidebar on TypePad).
The Pownce people have inexplicably given me an additional ten invites. I'm up to sixteen now, and have no idea what to do with any of them.
I suppose at some point my unused invites - which, I'm sure, will be all of them - will expire. But for now it's rather awkward to see You have 16 invites! every time I log in.
I took this picture - from the Duncan Rd. bridge over I72 - on October 9th, and sent it to Flickr. It never arrived.
After a while, I gave up & sent a second copy, which arrived almost immediately.
And now the prodigal photo returns, after a thirty-five-day absence. Where have you been, little photo? What wonders did you see?
I suppose it's more likely that one of Flickr's servers crashed, taking with it a big chunk of incoming photos, and the Flickr folks have only just got the files back from the data-recovery service; but I like to think instead that my cheesy little picture went walkabout for a while, to see a slice of the big old internet before settling down to a comfortable existence at Flickr.
Dear Cow-orkers:
No, the build system can't read your mind.
Please make a note of it.
Thank you.
I will not be signing up for accounts on:
- http://www.orkut.com/ - I had an account, years ago; I deleted it.
- http://www.ning.com/ - If I created my own social network, would anyone join?
Thoughts on tonight's episode of Heroes:
- I still don't like the Guatemalan Wonder Twins. I am impatient for Sylar to kill them.
- Adam is evil, but he will repent. (And then die, just like Darth Vader.)
- If Adam is immortal, does that mean Claire is immortal too?
- Bob is evil. (Just like in Twin Peaks. Perhaps it's a rule that all characters named 'Bob' must be evil.) He will turn out to have a boss who is even more evil, but he won't show up until season three.
- Mohinder worked with Claire's father - no, I will not call him HRG, thanks for asking - for eight episodes, trying to bring down the Company, and accomplished...nothing at all. That whole plotline was just dropped on the floor.
- At least we've left 17th-century Japan behind. I hope.
- I'm tired of Niki. Her story was the big clunker of season one, and she hasn't improved much in season two.
The writers' strike has put Heroes on hiatus: three more episodes, then it's rerun time. Perhaps Tim Kring will use the downtime to fix what's wrong with the show.
But will enough viewers come back, once the strike is over, to keep Heroes on the air?
I signed up for an account on last.fm after all.
But I didn't sign up for accounts on:
...which ought to count for something.
Over the weekend, somebody attacked the bus-stop lady statue with a can of red spraypaint.
I imagine she'll be getting a bath soon.
Update: I paid a visit to the bus-stop lady at lunchtime today, and she was back to normal. It rained a bit this morning, so whatever the red paint really was - cleaning solution? bird deterrent? - it must have been water-soluble.
Interesting reading: A Nerd in a Cave over at http://www.randsinrepose.com/.
This evening I did not sign up for free accounts on:
- http://www.last.fm/ - Somebody already grabbed the username I wanted for myself.
- http://www.multiply.com/ - I already have a Plaxo account I never use.
- http://www.travelpod.com/ - I have TypePad and Flickr.
- http://upcoming.yahoo.com/ - It's easier to find local events by reading the newspaper.
- http://www.xanga.com/ - I'm way too old for Xanga.
- http://www.yelp.com/ - I don't live in San Francisco.
I don't expect the loyal readership will be impressed by my self-restraint, given the number of unnecessary accounts I already have.
NOAA recorded a high of 66° today, which seems rather unusual for mid-November.
Mr. Sam seems to have picked up a cold or something. His nose is leaking some nasty clear baby goo (memo to self: two-year-olds, runny noses and long-sleeved shirts are a bad combination) and his voice sounds a bit scratchy.
But there's no fever, and he seems generally in good spirits.
Jennifer & I took the kids to see Bee Movie at the Savoy 16 this afternoon. It didn't go well.
Sam lost interest in the movie fairly quickly, then got mad when we wouldn't let him run loose in the theater: so I took him out in the lobby and did my best to keep him entertained.
The theater doors fascinated him, and he tugged on each & every one, trying to get in. (Fortunately, he's not strong enough yet to open any of them.) He was particularly interested in the doors leading to American Gangster, and went back to them again and again.
I told him that's not a movie for two-year-olds, but that didn't stop the remarkably single-minded Mr. Sam.
Bee Movie wasn't Sam's first time at the movie theater. We've also taken him to:
- Shrek the Third (May 28): watched the whole thing, didn't squirm or complain very much.
- Barnyard (April 8): watched for half an hour, got bored, went with Papa out to the lobby.
- Charlotte's Web (December 31, 2007): watched half the movie, got bored, went with Papa out to the lobby.
...so I'd say he's one-for-four. That's pretty good, if you're a baseball player....
LOTTO PRIZE PAYOUTS FOR SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2007
PLAYERS MATCHING 4 OF 6 NUMBERS 1,356
EACH PLAYER WILL RECEIVE $31.50
The coat Jake wore last winter is just a little bit small on him this year, so after lunch - McAlister's Deli, where to my dismay I discovered that the giant spuds they sell are in fact two normal-sized spuds stuck together - we hit the local Target for some new cold-weather gear.
Jake is now the proud owner of a puffed-up blue parka, some black & white camouflage snow pants, and a set of bright orange gloves. (I suppose if playing in the snow gets boring, he can go direct traffic or something.)
Jennifer says there's going to be lots of after-school playing in the snow for Jake & Sam this winter.
Speaking of snow, I hope it's a little more spread out this time, instead of showing up all at once (as it did last February).
Update: Somehow I managed to publish no fewer than nine copies of this post. No, I don't know how it happened. The clones are gone now.
For the last few years I've been running as many transactions as possible through my credit card, so as to accumulate BonusBuxtm: these can be cashed in for real money, once the pile's big enough, so they're a great way to finance purchases of unnecessary electronic devices and/or software.
I had the notion this evening to put the mortgage payment on the credit card: that would really pile up the BonusBux. Alas, the mortgage people won't let me: the automatic payment system works only with checking accounts.
Sam didn't take much of a nap this afternoon, so he's been rather volatile since. The least frustration or disappointment will launch him into a full-volume tantrum.
At dinnertime, he decided it was more fun to throw his mac & cheese than to eat it, so I took it away from him, which prompted a fifteen-minute meltdown. (For a little guy, Sam sure can be loud sometimes.)
He settled down after a while, but there have been frequent aftershocks through the evening.
Sometime when I wasn't paying attention, the Macc Lads back catalog became available on iTunes.
For years, the only Macc Lads album available (in the U.S., at least) was the Twenty Golden Crates collection. It would be great fun to have the Lads' entire beer-soaked oeuvre.
Walking to the bus stop this morning, I passed behind a house guarded by two fierce dogs: they charged right up to the fence, barking furiously & making it very clear that if only they could get to me, a messy & painful demise was all I could expect.
Had these mastiffs weighed more than about two pounds each, I might have been worried.
Had post-surgery followup #3 this morning, with Doctor #4 (who really was running only a little behind schedule, despite my grumblings on Twitter).
She looked at my hand, asked a few questions, then had her nurses test me with the grip-o-meter (identical to the one Mr. Physical Therapist used; perhaps it was the same one, and the clinic staff are always squabbling over whose turn it is to have it).
I can pull 56kg with my left hand, which seemed to impress the nurses. They kept saying things like "strength of a bear" and "bonecrusher". Who, me?
When Doctor #4 saw the grip-o-meter results, she pronounced me cured. Then she asked when I'd like to start on the left hand (which also has moderate CTS, though not as bad as the right hand was).
"I sorta promised the wife I wouldn't do the left hand during the winter," I said. "She doesn't want to have to drive me around in the snow." Doctor #4 and the nurses all laughed at that.
The current plan is for me to call them in January and set up a surgery date, probably sometime in April. But for now, I'm done with doctors & physical therapy.
Facebook praises their new advertising system:
First of all, what's not changing:
- Facebook will always stay clutter-free and clean.
- Facebook will never sell any of your information.
- You will always have control over your information and your Facebook experience.
- You will not see any more ads than you did before this.
In order:
- If you want to be 'clutter-free and clean', lose the screaming, flashing banner ads.
- I don't believe you. If makes money for Facebook, and it isn't against the law, you'll do it.
- Really? Can I turn off the ads?
- What about that movie ad that showed up in my news feed the other day?
Facebook also says that ads will become 'more relevant and more interesting'. Does that mean I won't have to put up with any more dating-service ads featuring cleavage-flashing women half my age?
I must confess to a certain skepticism here....
Last night, the carbon monoxide detector decided that it needed a new battery, so it began chirping.
Loudly.
At one o'clock in the morning.
I've been dealing with some nasty headaches over the last few days, along with a general lack of energy and the occasional sneezing fit (six in a row might be normal for certain unfortunate individuals, but not for me).
Perhaps I'm coming down with something.
CNN says:
Facebook has unveiled plans to target advertisements by injecting them into its members' conversations, and now the popular online hangout must persuade its users to embrace the initiative.
I noticed today (or what it yesterday?) that my Facebook home page - in addition to the ubiquitous, unavoidable Buy Yourself a Woman ads (which are as embarrassing as they are annoying) - there's now an ad for some movie, mixed into the news feed as though it were real news.
It is to barf.
I'd be much happier if I had the option to pay for an ad-less Facebook account: Facebook Pro, only $25/year (or whatever).
While poking around Amazon.com this evening, trying to find a lanyard for my phone (I have this irrational fear of losing my phone), I ended up in the camera accessories section.
Among the various lanyards, lens caps, photo frames, etc., etc., there's a set of zoom lenses for HD camcorders, the most expensive of which costs $85,000. That's just for the lens, mind. I shudder to think how much the camcorder must cost.
I almost added it to my wish list, just to make people laugh. (I have this theory that somewhere amongst the uncounted millions of items for sale on Amazon.com is something truly outlandish, like a used Lear jet or 747. I want to put it on my wish list, but - alas - I can't find it.)
Flickr and TypePad play nicely together - whenever I mail a picture to Flickr, it's automatically forwarded to TypePad - with one exception: the posts created by Flickr on TypePad have no categories assigned to them.
I have to manually set the category on each & every one to Flickr, which is rather irksome.
I had hoped there was some way to set a category automatically, either at the Flickr end or the TypePad end; alas, a few minutes' perusal of the help for each turned up nothing.
In other I-have-no-life news:
I found an announcement from last September of a Facebook application for del.icio.us: add your bookmarks to your Facebook mini-feed, etc., etc. It might have been available then, but now it's gone. (Why? Was it broken? Is a new version coming Real Soon Now?)
NOAA reports that the 7:00am temperature was a frosty 28°.
Faced with this sudden bit of winter, some people might have left their shorts in the closet and gone for something warmer. Not me!
Instead of ActiveSync 5.0, which Windows CE users have been expecting for years now, the 'softies have rolled out the Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime:
Microsoft Sync Framework is a comprehensive synchronization platform that enables collaboration and offline access for applications, services and devices. It features technologies and tools that enable roaming, sharing, and taking data offline. Using Microsoft Sync Framework, developers can build sync ecosystems that integrate any application, with any data from any store using any protocol over any network.
Will it talk to iSync? It would be nice to have a single address book, calendar, etc., on the iMac, on nessus, and on the (not quite dead yet) X30.
Remember, remember the Fifth of November
The gunpowder treason and plot
I can think of no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Nessus has two disks: a 57GB boot drive, and a 76GB second drive (purchased some years back to hold my iTunes music library). The latter isn't used for anything these days, so I had the notion to reformat it and use it as a backup drive.
Alas, Windows Live OneCare refuses to back up to an internal disk. Only an external disk - USB or FireWire - is acceptable.
The reformat grinds slowly on, despite this: 19% complete. I hope it finishes by morning, so I can log out & let Jennifer check her mail.
Since having accounts on Pownce, Tumblr and Twitter just isn't enough, a week or two ago I put in a request for an account on Jaiku.
Alas, Jaiku was acquired by Google last month, and -
Jaiku will continue to support its existing user base. Jaiku users will be able to invite new friends, but new user registrations have been closed for the time being.
- which means no Jaiku account for me.
Lately the antivirus software on nessus has been tossing out warnings that it has detected & neutralized the Win32/Malagent trojan (about which neither the antivirus software nor its online documentation at microsoft.com had anything helpful to say), so I thought I should give nessus a once-over and clean up any messes that might be lurking there.
I started a complete system scan six hours ago, and it's only 84% complete. It hasn't popped up any messages, which - I hope - means it hasn't found anything.
I wonder how Dave Cutler feels about the 'softies having turned Windows NT - which, you'll recall, used to brag about its C2-level security - into a system no more secure than MS-DOS was.
Lunch today was at the Pizza Hut on Mattis (like last time, Jake had a coupon for a free pizza). No blizzard this time - 60° and sunny - and the pizza & breadsticks were quite tasty. But the service was very slow, and the waitress tended to forget things.
I suppose they might have been understaffed & overwhelmed by an unexpected Sunday afternoon lunch rush (four tables!), instead of merely indifferent & incompetent; but I'm inclined to suspect the latter.
My cash-register conversation - with the manager - didn't go well:
"What did you order?"
"Er...pizza, breadsticks, ...."
"Did you order" - and here she rattled off some pizza order I didn't quite catch.
"Didn't somebody write this down?"
"She" - gesturing at the waitress, who happened to be walking by - "did."
"Then maybe she can tell you what we ordered."
No tip for you, losers.
Cousin Cheri commented on one of my Flickr photos this morning.
I added her as a contact on my Flickr account. Look at me, I'm networking.
It seems unlikely that the loyal readership (either of you) would be interested, but my shiny new Pownce account comes with six invites.
Does anybody want a Pownce account?
Facebook wants to know my home town. I don't know what to tell it.
I've lived in various places, for various lengths of time: South Carolina; Gary, East Gary and Dyer, all in Indiana; Buffalo Grove, Palatine, Arlington Heights, Champaign, Urbana, Prairie View, Champaign (again), Savoy and currently Champaign (for the third time).
I've lived in the Champaign-Urbana-Savoy metroplex (heh) for sixteen years, and in Stately Rice Manor for the last seven years - both longer than anywhere else. So perhaps Champaign is my home town, even though I didn't move here permanently until I was 28.
But a home town is supposed to be where you lived when you were a kid. I was a kid in Gary, but I don't think of it as my home town.
A home town is also supposed to be a place where you know everybody, and where everybody knows you: a place full of people who remember you from long ago. By that measure, I don't really have a home town.
Maybe I'll just leave that field of my Facebook profile blank for the time being.
A more-or-less complete list of my online avatars:
- del.icio.us
- Flickr
- LibraryThing
- Plaxo
- Pownce
- TypePad (defunct as of June 2008)
- Tumblr
Maybe I got a little carried away, but I do actually use most of these.
I have 384 bookmarks on del.icio.us, 544 photos on Flickr, and 582 books on LibraryThing (a nearly complete list, missing only the ones that are boxed up in the closet: I'm too lazy to fish them out & catalog them). I have 3,881 posts - going back nearly eight years - on TypePad, with special bonus blather over on Twitter. Flickr and Twitter are both nicely integrated with TypePad, which is very handy for those all-important bus stop pictures.
The other accounts are more experimental.
Facebook might prove useful, someday. It's still a bit annoying in spots - I told it I'm married, but it keeps throwing Meet the woman of your dreams ads at me. Give it a rest, Facebook. I'm not into polygamy. (Nor, I suspect, is Jennifer.)
Plaxo is a bit like Facebook, but it seems I'm the only one (besides the ubiquitous Scoble) who's using it.
Pownce may or may not replace Twitter as the home for my bonus blather; but either I don't know how to use it or it's a bit lacking in features just yet. (To be fair, they're still ramping up.)
Tumblr might also replace Twitter, but that seems unlikely. (The 3.0 rollout hasn't gone well for Tumblr. The site keeps dropping offline. Overloaded with new customers, I suppose.)
Twenty years ago, my hobby was collecting software: I had an inexplicable compulsion to buy anything Microsoft shipped, and really ran up my credit cards doing it. ($200 for Windows 386, when I didn't even have a 386 machine? $400 for a Fortran compiler? Why?) These days, I collect accounts on social-networking sites. At least those are free.
MSNBC offers this rather disturbing news item:
ATLANTA - One in 60 older people may be walking around with benign brain tumors and don't know it. Even more may have bulging blood vessels in the head that could burst.
These results come from a surprising new Dutch study that finds brain abnormalities are not all that uncommon.
Wait, it gets worse:
The Dutch scientists found that 145 people - or 7.2 percent - had some dead brain tissue caused by a loss of blood flow. These are sometimes called silent strokes and usually don't result in a loss of speech or motion.
From now on, every time I get a headache I'm going to panic.
Earlier today, the Tumblr folks announced Tumblr 3.0, even more tumbly than version 2.0.
I may have to resurrect my Tumblr account - though if the Tumblr people ever read all the trash I've written about them here, they'd probably delete my account instead of resetting my password.
Update: one thing that hasn't been fixed in Tumblr 3.0: the reset-your-password system still doesn't work.
Update #2: it took a few tries, but my Tumblr account is operational once more.
The other day I updated my Plaxo account with my new email address (i.e., the one which I am trying very hard to keep hidden from spammers).
Plaxo very helpfully added a Pat has changed his email address notice to my Plaxo Pulse page (say that ten times quickly!). I wouldn't mind, except they included the new address in the notice, which means for the last two days it was broadcast to any of the fifteen million Plaxo users who cared to look for it.
And these people want me to keep all my contacts, calendar, etc., etc., on their site?
(I suppose it's possible that I'm misinterpreting what was in the notice. There's no way to tell any more, because I deleted it.)