Posts (page 2)
Today while waiting for the N train, I witnessed some guy with a sausage and egg bagel get attacked by a pigeon. It flew directly at the bagel, like it was trying to fly through a plate glass window. He had to swat it away, physically. The pigeon attempted this three times, and after the last rebuff, it flew to a nearby fence and watched him eat the bagel. It was unnerving.
So, I was wearing this shirt the other day, and one of my co-workers' girlfriend saw it and was all, "so, who is that an advertisement for?".
Kind of made me sad.
I want a desktop mac. I really would like to be able to buy one. I already have an iBook that I use all the time, and I am not a mac fanboy by any means, but I would like one machine that I can boot into and both run a basic server playground on (python, apache, etc) in a linux-y environment and some win32 games while not being subjected to windows. I mean, I already run linux most of the time these days (at home anyway), but I still have to boot into windows just to play a quick pick-up game of CS:S. It's not optimal.
Looking at Apple's current lineup, I can either buy another, faster laptop (no point right now), an iMac (not happening, since I don't need to pay the extra $$$ for a built-in widescreen LCD, because I already have one), a mac mini (tempting, but the intel graphics processor is a joke) or a mac pro ($$$). The pro is the only one that I could conceivably play games on, because it comes with a geforce 7300 GT standard, but what I don't need is all the extra high-powered stuff that comes with it. All I need is one processor, about a gig of ram, ~100 GB of storage and a decent video card. That shouldn't cost me more than two grand. It shouldn't cost me more than ONE grand. I haven't paid more than that for a desktop since 1994, and they all have been acceptable gaming machines for their time. Where is the mid-level hardware? Why can't I find a mac for me?
Reffering to individual blog posts as "blogs" is wrong wrong wrong. Please tell me I am not alone on this one.
Get ready, I am about to praise Mircosoft. Hear me out.
Microsoft, one thing you really do right is hardware. Specifically, keyboards. My old MS Internet Keyboard has some of the best key action out of any keyboard I've ever used (short of the old IBM model M), and its layout is really not too bad, despite the extra useless buttons.
Because I liked that keyboard so much, I bought myself a new keyboard at work last week (yes, I had to buy myself a keyboard. start-ups, you know) and I noticed that the new MS models boast spill resistance. Nice touch, I thought, but I wonder if it's any good? Fast forward to today, when I order lunch in, and when it gets here, I run to the fridge to get a mineral water. Little did I know that they had just been put in there, and were kind of shaken up. I open it at my desk and *poof*, fizzy mineral water all over my desk and keyboard. Last time I had that happen at work, it was time to buy a new keyboard. This time? Just turned it over, spent a minute or two running a paper towel between keys, and here I am, typing away again. Not bad. Not bad at all.
What was the highlight of this past weekend?
It was pretty awesome when I payed for a round of drinks with my credit card on friday night and accidentally put the adjusted total after tip in the tip field of the receipt instead of in the total field, thus effectively tipping the bartender as much as the entire order. That was a nice little shock to see on my online bank statement sunday morning. Luckily, this has probably happened more than one, so the bar owner was pretty forgiving when I called them this morning and smoothed things over without complaint. Still, I think I'll stick to paying with cash from now on.
What's the one CD that will totally remind you of the Summer of 2006?
I'm hoping it will be whatever Modest Mouse releases in August. Or September. Or whenever. I just hope they actually release it.
Hate junk mail? Don't we all. Ever since moving into my current apartment over two years ago, I have been fairly vigilant about getting myself removed from all forms of junkmail advertising. I followed most of the instructions on this page and mostly had success; I no longer receive random credit card offers (due to the DMA opt-out, I would guess) or Valpak coupons. That was a bulk of it right there. The big offender, however, is Shopwise. Shopwise is distributed by ADVO, a direct mail marketing company. As is pointed out on many pages on the web, you can opt-out of ADVO junkmail with an online form located here. Thing is, the form is broken, broken, broken. How broken? Let me tell you!
So, I actually used that form (back when it was working) to remove myself from their mailing list. It didn't work, as I still receive the Shopwise flyers to this day. So I have tried on multiple occasions to re-submit my information using the online form. After being repeatedly denied (script timeout), I decided to take a look under the hood and see how they were doing their form submission. There, I found the work of a bunch of dirty, dirty n00bs. Formmail. They are using formmail to send the remove requests. The most insecure script ever. I'm sure either their mail server is either so crippled by spammers exploiting it (oh the irony!) or that they have long since disabled the script due to abuse. Either way, that is why the form no longer works: they fucked up the implementation. I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't been fixed on purpose, either.
So where does this leave us? You can try snail mail, but a nice side effect of using formmail is that the email address it posts to is embedded right in the form. In this case, it's ntwksrvs@advo.com. Rock n' roll, kiddies, have at it. However, if I were you, I'd send it from either a throw-away email address or an account that you use specifically for email that you know will be added to a spam list (hello hotmail!).
For me, however, it looks like I will need to specifically notify them that I am still getting their flyers, without the signature "missing child" card included (this is the obly piece of mail in the whole bundle that has their information on it). according to their FAQ:
The circulars are still being delivered without the Missing Child Card (address label). If this is the case, please notify us so we can contact the Post Office to advise them that you were removed from ADVO’s mailing list and that ADVO is no longer sending you the circulars.
So, it looks like it's the post office's fault this time. I'm not surprised, the 94117 post office is one of the flakiest I have ever witnessed, repeatedly not doing their job in regard to forwarding or holding mail on request, and sometimes not even picking up mail every day. So, if you have requested to be removed from ADVO in the past yet still receive the flyers, use the email address above to let them know. That is what I intend to do right now, and I will update you all with information later, if I get a response.
Hello! So, social blogging! I like it, and here's why:
Entire websites dedicated to you writing about yourself are so 2001. No one wants to have to visit your site everyday to read what you have to say, especially if it is just dear diary type writing. That stuff is so simple and breezy that it is almost conversational rather than literary, which doesn't stand on it's own very well, unless you are very good at it. It works better when other people can easily respond and pick up the other side of your conversation. When they have to come to your site to do that, you assume the role of a grandstander of sorts, which may or may not work for you, depending on your writing style. I'll go so far as to say that it might be why many people are even adverse to personal blogging, since they they might not consider writing about yourself to be a good reason to take a grandstand. Enter the social blogging site, a place where you can write personal content in the company of others doing the same. You are now part of a group rather than a island. Being in context as such reduces the assumed self-importance of trivial posts and
comments, making them part of the overall interaction paradigm of the
site itself rather than a solo act.
The only other place I have really done "social blogging" has been on Tribe.net. For reasons that I won't go into at length, Tribe is no longer an attractive option for me. What it did offer at the time, however, was much better responses to posts and a better idea of who was reading what I had to say than I ever did on my own site. It was kind of like posting a topic on a messageboard rather than writing an blog post, since there was always someone around to read what you had posted. Often posting an entry was more like offering a topic for discussion rather than making a statement.
Vox looks poised to capitalize upon this kind of interaction. The directed focus of the site on blogging and user-to-user communication means a greater focus on giving users what they need to create better posts easier, and also to see what others are creating at the same time. Being in context
engenders more interaction, which builds a stronger community. and now that it has been built, hopefully they will come.
