Hey you damn retailers, get off my cyber-lawn!!!1111eleventyOMG!!
Dec 16, 2009
I’ve been on the internet since 1990, and the World Wide Web since about 1993. That means that compared to the majority of the population, I’ve been doing the online-geek thing for quite a while.
I remember when I web log was literally that: a log of places you visited on the web. It wasn’t an online journal or a way to share “what you did that day” or “who you were” (that was a finger file or a .plan), it was like what today’s Bookmarks and Favorites lists are. And you’d share these with other people.
I remember when checking IMDB for something involved sending a very specific text string to an email address. You would then receive a text file with the information IMDB had about that movie, show, performer, writer, director, producer, what have you.
I use some social media: I use Twitter, and I maintain several blogs. (I am not on MyDeadFaceJournalBookSpace. Future employers and clients do not need to have that ease of access to every single thing I do in my off-time, and neither does most of the rest of the world.) I have a Flickr account for one of my blogs. And I actually run a web hosting service and have for the past eight years. But I still consider the web to be as much the province of individuals as the new way to sell stuff. I get a might pissed off when I have advertising shoved into any orifice the retailers can reach. While I think that retailers have just as much right to use the web as individuals, and don’t think that they should pay some kind of extra tax, I wish that I knew all of the possible ways to put up a fence around my online presence to keep the retailers out unless I specifically invite them in. There are plenty of things that just annoy the living snot out of me.
What tool is it that retailers use to automatically follow anyone who uses a given word in a tweet? I’ve been followed by all kinds of sites and businesses selling all kinds of things that I have no interest in buying…and they started following me after I used a specific word. When I posted about the tarot’s major arcana I was suddenly followed by sites selling tarot decks, tarot interpretation services, even tarot reading courses. When I posted a joke about astrology, I was followed by all sorts of horoscope sites. A post about tie-dye nail painting got me followed by some self-proclaimed hippies (who were at least in my area of the country, I’ll give them that) selling tie-dye shirts, sheets, and gods greater and lesser know what else.
I want to know the name of this program so that I can contact my geeky programming friends and have them build an app that will automatically evaluate anyone’s Twitter history and if they include lots of retail-ish posts…automatically cut them off.
I don’t necessarily want to go to the trouble of hiding my tweets from public view. If some random individual out there thinks that I post interesting or funny things and wants to keep following them, great. Let them follow. I know that whenever I see a “protected tweets” sign I rarely put through to follow that person, even if I’ve come to find them through the tweets of someone who I do follow, because they may not want to hear from anyone else. It’s kind of like being in a public place like an airport or a park or a cafe and seeing someone who’s sitting alone, reading a book, not really speaking to anyone else. They may be a perfectly cool person. They may even be a person with similar interests. But unless they’re engaging with the other guests, I feel like I’m intruding if I go talk to them. Likewise, I don’t want to give off unintentional “don’t bug me” vibes. But dangit, I really dislike when I notice that I’ve gotten a few new followers…and they’re all retailers who tweet nothing but “this sale” and “that sale” or what have you. I know that advertising is a bugbear; and advertising via word of mouth is not something that you can easily finesse. But following someone just because they use the name of a city and you offer photography services in that city…that’s about as graceful as a pregnant yak.
I’ll have to start hitting them with my cane.
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How time flies.
Dec 15, 2009
Five years ago, I had just moved into a little apartment (1BR, 450 square feet total). It had originally been one of the rooms of a 1930s-1940s motor court, so while there was a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a living space…it wasn’t huge. It was also built for transient folks, not long-term residents, so the insulation was nonexistent (though there was a heater…after a fashion.) The neighborhood was okay, not fantastic; but I had been renting a room for me and my two cats and keeping most of my stuff in storage for over a year. I finally was making enough money to live on my own, and had finally found a place that I could afford that wasn’t some narrow barracks of a mother-in-law unit in someone’s backyard, nor a despicable rat-infested hovel.
Five years ago, I was working for just over minimum wage creating PDF forms for a small company. I drove to work, worked in this nasty environment where the boss railed about his regular employees - even ranted at one of them to the guy’s face, but the guy wouldn’t leave because he needed the insurance. (Since this was the network guru for this itty bitty “company”, if this guy had left, said itty bitty company would have collapsed.) The boss looked like Kris Kringle, but perpetually griped about his diet, his wife, his lazy craptacular employees, the other workers (which kind of made me wonder what he said about me on those rare occasions I wasn’t there - I got there most mornings before the boss did), anything and everything. He was verbally abusive. He was scared of women, which meant that he had special loathing for myself and one other person, a female regular employee. Privately, I called this boss “Santa Claus with distemper.”
Now I am a homeowner - fairly recent, too, as I celebrated my one-year anniversary this past US Thanksgiving. I have two jobs, and am looking for a third - but I have two jobs. In the next year I will need to replace my hot water heater. In the next two years I’ll probably need to try and replace my car. I’m trying to find as many ways possible to get my home paid off earlier rather than later - as things stand, I’ll have to work until I’m 70 to finish paying this mortgage. And while I really like it here (though my brother thinks that I’ll be “upgrading” - though why I can’t fathom), I would feel a hell of a lot more comfortable if I didn’t have this much outstanding debt. I would not be at all unhappy to pay off my mortgage two, three, even five years faster. But things being the way they are currently, I haven’t even been able to throw money at the principal - which would have been quite nice, in my opinion.
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The tree is still alive, and will hopefully live for many many holidays
Dec 13, 2009
This is a dwarf Albertan blue spruce. It grows slowly, and tops out at 6 feet with a width between 2 and 2.5 feet. It lives in partial or full sun.
I think that, after the holidays (and in spring, once the ground unfreezes) it will do quite nicely in my side yard. Then in successive holidays I’ll just decorate it outside rather than get new trees every year. (I don’t know that this can safely be done on the other side of my house because Stupid Fecking Verizon put their cables there - that might interfere with the growth of a solid root ball for a tree of this size. Though maybe not…I don’t know.)
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Reflection, meditation, one moment of perfect beauty
Dec 12, 2009
I first heard this song when I was in high school, and developing my geek tendencies. The fact that it's essentially a list of facts and figures set to electronic/ambient music appealed to me on multiple levels. I originally had a hard time finding the album, since it was not carried at the local Wherehouse; and when CDs started to make it big this album was initially deemed "not moneymaking enough" to be re-released on CD. Finally, though...its time came round again. Now you can just pop on to Amazon or DeepDiscount or whatever site you use to buy music and type in "Vangelis Albedo 0.39" - the name of the album as well as this track - and you're good to go.
Several folks have created videos to this song, using various cosmos shots. But really, this is about the Earth - so the video that I chose to feature here is more appropriate. The images are amazing.
As you go about the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, planning this and that gathering, getting upset when this or that falls through or doesn't come up to snuff...stop and think about what's important (your friends and family, the bonds you have with them and the memories you create) and what's not important (transitory disagreements, where you have dinner, *when* you have dinner, how you greet one another, the holiday crowds, travel delays).
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I found the song!
Dec 10, 2009
You know, the one I woke up last night obsessing about? It's a cover of Song of the Siren, by the Cocteau Twins. Here's the video, hosted on YouTube:
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...that sudden urge to hear a certain song Right Now?
Dec 10, 2009
It was one of those bizarre desperation-things. I had spent about an hour reading in bed, turned out the lights and went to sleep…when suddenly I was completely and totally awake. I suddenly wasn’t sure if I had a certain CD in MP3 format - and even worse, half-thought that I might have sold this now-very-hard-to-find CD when I ripped it to MP3 format because I only liked about five songs on it and I wouldn’t ever need it again.
I turned on the light. Got up. Reassured the cats that, no, this did not mean that it was Oh Food Thirty (they followed me anyway, living on hope that I am stupid enough to give them an extra portion of Wet Food.) Went downstairs, opened the library - which I generally keep closed in the winter to keep some heat in the rest of the downstairs - and pulled out my first CD binder. There was the CD, okay good, okay fine, I owned it. Then up stairs (with the briefest of pauses to ask Ursa to get out of my way, no I was not going to give him more Wet Food even if he gave me the soulful-eye), into the office to turn on the computer and burn that CD to MP3 right then and there. I had kept myself awake with a sudden urge to hear this one song, and by all that was holy and much that was not, I was going to not only hear that song, but make triply sure that I could hear it whenever I wanted by just turning on my MP3 player…
...that was sitting in my bedroom, atop the hamper, where I hadn’t looked to see if I actually had the song there. My computer hard drive died about three months ago, meaning that I’d had to re-rip my entire MP3 collection. (Thank goodness I’m one of those anachronisms who believes in keeping the CDs one has purchased unless they’re absolutely dreadful.) My MP3 player was, of course, unaffected. So the song would be on there, right? Except it wasn’t. I wasn’t able to find the album, and since it was one of those “compilation” albums the music companies had released in the 80s and 90s, to try and cross-promote their stables of artists, I couldn’t go looking for the artist since I didn’t know it. (All I knew was that it was some goth/new wave singer covering Tim Buckley’s Song of the Siren.) Okay, so back to the office to find the album name. The computer’s woken up now, so after memorizing the album name I started the CD rip process. Back to the bedroom, where I couldn’t find the album name. But wait! Hadn’t I gotten all clever at some point and created a playlist? Yep, there it was. Okay, that much is done, The Track That Kept Me From Slumber is now on repeat-track on the MP3 player-stereo-thingie while I’m going to burn the CD to my hard drive…
...except that, apparently, I had already burned said CD to my hard drive when I was re-doing my entire collection. It was already right there.
Geez oh pete.
Back downstairs to put the CD away, because otherwise I’ll “lose” it - for real, this time. The menagerie follows me back down, right at my heels. Fog even chirps and turns right at the bottom of the staircase, toward the kitchen. She gets the other two convinced that This Time Food Will Be Forthcoming, and Ursa nearly trips me in his haste to get from just inside the library, where he preceeded me, to the living room on his way to the kitchen. I slam into the wall, thankfully NOT breaking-scratching-dropping the CD, and put it back. Then before I can close the library and head back upstairs (where all the residual heat in the house has gone, now that the downstairs heater vents are off for the night) I have to convince Ursa and Fog to come out of the library. (As soon as that door opened, they were both inside and sniffing around like mad. The room is closed off for four months out of the year to conserve heat, so in their wee brains any time I open the door it’s a Brand New Room.) I finally have to pick Monkey up and bring him out so that I can close the door and head back upstairs again.
Meanwhile, Monkey has now gone down and back up the stairs twice and is looking rather aggrieved (“Why can’t the bald ape make up her mind!!”). Ursa has finally given up on Quest for Wet Food and is back up on the red fuzzy blanket, where I’ll have to move him again when I finally go back to bed. And Fog is just bemused.
And I’m awake and keyed up again. Dang it.
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