One of my other web projects, ajvanbeest.com, is slowly coming together. I’ve wireframed parts of it. I’ve posted a tiny bit of content there. And now, I’ve posted all the poetry that I had up at my old blog. Boo-yah!
*Note: There’s no new writing up there, yet. That’ll be on its way next. But the old stuff is nice, too. Especially if you haven’t seen it yet/in a while.
While my new blog template looks pretty fab on any of my LCD screens (the laptop, the 19-inchers at work, the *22-inch-widescreen* at work [drool]), on an old CRT monitor, it looks like how a pile of bloated, rotting wildebeest corpses smells.
So. My quest is not yet over. In the meantime, if any of you poor souls are torturing yourselves by trying to make out text that is exactly one-tenth of one-percent lighter than the background of the page, my I humbly suggest you try reading from my RSS feed. At least, if you don’t want your eyebulbs (a story for another time) to explode. And let’s face it, vitreous humor has been known to stain Dockers (that’s why I’m a Carhart man).
Don’t know what this RSS malarkey is? Check it: basically, it’s a way to pull info from all your favorite sites (like this one, right?) into one place so you can read all the latest info without having to actually go from site to site to site to… You get the picture.
All you need is a (free) RSS feed aggregator, and a couple minutes to set things up. There are plenty of RSS client applications out there, but I’m a particular fan of Bloglines. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s online, so you can access it from any computer that has an Internet connection.
See? I really *am* good for something.
The saga of the hijacked blog continues, sort of. J.D. wiped my content from his database, as per my request. I deleted all my files from his server. So far, so good.
Now, however, when you go to the old address, a page (insert image here) pops up with huge text screaming that “This blog is suspended.” Like it got into a fight on school property. Or wandered down the hall with a Geiger counter lying on top of radioactive sample checking the radiation levels from the fluorescent lights by a particular English hag’s teacher’s door (”Is it bad?” “I wouldn’t be standing out here if I was you.”).
Ahem.
Why can’t there be a notice that says something a little less stern, like, “Sorry this page doesn’t exist,” or “Hey, man, like, we’re pretty sure that dude moved on, you know?”
So my great Facebook experiment continues. I have a page — that I’m not going to link to because it’s lame — and a fair number of people — OK, eight, to be precise — have consented to be my “friend.” I feel so loved.
It seems like Facebook is a great way to dig up people from your past if you’re feeling a little nostalgic, but the actual exchanges between people are, from what I’ve seen, seemingly limited to “Hey, I haven’t seen you for, like, twelve minutes, man! What are you doing?” Sometimes, the pages have one half of a conversation, which is pretty *f-bomb* annoying, too. I can’t even get a cheap voyeuristic thrill by lurking on someone’s online reunion with an old s/o.
Here’s an idea for a radio call-in show: Put Jesus’s home phone number out there. Broadcast the results.
“Uh, yeah, is this Jesus?”
“…what the… Who is this?”
“This is Joe from Cincinnati. Am I on the air?”
“Are you on the what? Joe, do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Uh, it’s about five after three here.”
“Jesus Christ, Joe, I’m tryin’ to get some sleep here. What in God’s name do you want?”
“Uh, well, you see, I’m, uh, like, thirty three, and, uh, still like, living in my parent’s basement, and…”
“Let me save you a little time Joe; you’re a loser and you’re wondering what the hell to do. Am I right? Of course I’m right; I’m Jesus *bleeeeep* Christ. Now here’s what you do: Go down to the temple and see the pharasies; tell ‘em I sent you, and that you need about five sheckles so you can go BUY YOURSELF A LIFE.
“Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick, Joe! Move out of your parents’ house. Get a job. Sell the Star Wars action figures. Stop trying to pick up eighteen-year-old girls on MySpace. Is it really that hard? Now get the hell off my phone; The Jesus needs his beauty rest. You *know* that water ain’t gonna turn itself to wine.”
*Bounce!* “Daddy catch… me!” *gigglegigglesnort bounce!* “Daddy… catch… Auken!” *gigglesnortbounce thwack!*
“Wow, I bet that hurt.”
*snifflesniff*
“Here, let Daddy kiss it and make it better.”
*snifflesmooch*
“Don’t tell Mom you broke the wall, OK?”
*gigglesnort* “Daddy… catch…” *Bounce!*
…except maybe the basement across the street where the server room is. Where the server I’m rebuilding as a virtual machine host is. Where there are 10GB of RAM all in one box. *giggle*
The Boy, The Wife, and I spent a really nice evening at the Corny beach last night with Claudia and Andrew. It was nice to reconnect, and it was *really* nice to share some decent (read: body-surfable) waves with friends.
The Wife stomped into the house this evening, pissed off at the latest rabbit damage to the beans in our garden. “Well, I can now firmly say that rabbits don’t care about blood meal, but they do care if I’m out in the garden a lot.”
“Well, honey,” I said as I reached into the closet, “I know something else they’ll care about.”
Which is how I came to be marching around the yard in my crocs and pj pants, armed with a .22, and *ahem* resplendent in my bare-chested manliness. And no, I didn’t shoot anything, more’s the pity, but I did collect a couple priceless looks from passing motorists.
So I’ve officially signed up to with the American Red Cross to be a disaster response dude. I’ve filled out my application, allowed them to do a background check on me, and I imagine I’ll be hearing back from them next week. The lady I talked to sounded pretty excited about my skills (the ones I volunteered were ham radio and IT). It sounds like they could really use that stuff during their national disaster responses. So there I go.
