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January 2002

Geeky Weekend

If nothing else, it was a rather geeky weekend. I’m in the middle of transferring the last of my domains over to Pair; Planet SOMA should arrive there in 24-48 hours, and I’ll be through with Verio for good. I will be happy…

I’ve also transferred the contact forms on all the sites (as they all lived at Planet SOMA), fidgeted with the SSI (sometimes successfully and sometimes not), and made other tiny changes to my assorted Apache configuration files to clean up the mess that my hosting had become over the past year. If you run into anything strange, please let me know…

Other than the above, my weekend involved burgers at the Bullshead, getting pissed off that no store I went to had the TV I wanted in stock (although every one had it on display and Sears even had about ten of them on the floor), and the consumption of multiple doughnuts…

And yeah, I miss you too…

Invoice Day. And Idiots.

I prefer not to count, thanks…

Anyhow, it’s invoice day. That usually puts me in a good mood, even though I won’t see any checks for about three weeks. If something doesn’t change, this might be my last really big invoice day for a while; it actually even covers some stuff dating back to last summer. There’s not a lot on the horizon right now…

Of course, it’s also bill-paying day. I’m not so fond of that part of the transaction…

Must be rough all over: I had someone email me asking me for a job at Planet SOMA today. I have to say I’d probably never hire someone who was incapable of determining that Planet SOMA is a personal website, especially when the page from which they contacted me says at the very top “this is a personal website”…

Remember when people used to be able to read and used to actually do so before embarrassing themselves?

Bratty Coworkers

I should know better than to do favors for my co-workers. When you work largely with spoiled 12-year-olds (most of whom happen to be in their twenties and thirties), you can expect that any favor will result in either (a) your getting screamed at by the very person you were trying to help, or (b) an expectation that said favor will continue indefinitely, and will also breed newer and better favors…

Today’s result was (a). I went out of my way to help and I caught shit. To hell with them. They can fend for themselves, unless my intervention will somehow make MY life dramatically better or easier…

There. I feel better now…

Better

I’m pleased to announce that, as of tonight, my mild stomach distress is all gone and everything’s solid as a rock. You may read that last statement as a metaphor or as too much information, at your sole discretion…

And I’m sorry not everyone can say the same…

Speaking of sorry, I’m very sorry to have purchased a Chronicle today and noticed that Zippy is no longer there. At the rate it’s going, the Incredible Shrinking Chron will soon be even smaller and more pointless than the Examiner, which ain’t easy…

Plagiarism?

Say you’re doing a web search looking for some information. In the course of this research, you find a cached copy on Google of a published article from a recently-demised business weekly. The author of said article (a college professor, professional writer, and former Libertarian gubernatorial candidate in a certain southern state) might very arguably have plagiarized your work, quoting some passages almost verbatim and all without attribution.

How exactly do you express your displeasure to this individual? He was presumably compensated for his “work” and, given his profession, should presumably “know better”. Is it worth seeking him out, if only to let him know what an asshole he is?

Hernias for All

How’s this for a creepy New Year’s Eve: Rick and my dad BOTH got hernias on New Year’s Eve and BOTH went to the emergency room in the middle of the night. Makes a little stomach distress at my house seem pretty tame by comparison…

Anyway, more Christmas pictures here and here. In case you missed ’em, mine are here and here…

TV for a New Year

NBC has now moved its affiliation from KRON to KNTV and, despite the hype from the newspapers and the stations involved, the world has not suddenly come to an end. As a matter of fact, I suspect that few people’s lives have been impacted in any meaningful way…

But it was sort of cute watching the countdown last night as Jay Leno started. I imagine that the studio audience in Burbank (where they get neither station) could barely conceal its enthusiasm…

At least some things never change for long: starting next week, we’re back to three Simpsons reruns a day on KBHK…

Adios 2001

With the exception of a major positive near the end of the year, 2001 pretty much sucked and I’m glad to see the back of it. It’s hard to be sentimental about a year where one of your oldest friends dies, you spend time in the hospital with heart problems, your country is attacked by terrorists, and Bravo replaces “St. Elsewhere” reruns with “Thirtysomething” reruns…

That’s not to say the whole year was all bad. I met some great people (notably Becky, PJ, Sparky, Juan Felipe, and the aforementioned Mark), went some great places (the road trip from hell, Fresno, and more), and actually got things accomplished. I put together a lot of websites, one of my own had a record traffic day, and I somehow managed to support myself…

But what a great end to the year, depsite the fact that I was sort of sick, Mark was sicker still, and even Rick was sick for a while. I had great visitors, great food (which may explain the rash of stomach-related illnesses), great snogging, and I even found a used copy of “Willie Wonka” on DVD…

As I move into 2002, my ticker’s still a little problematic, I’m planning to quit smoking by the end of the month, I’m pondering how to support myself this year, and I’m entering a bit of uncharted territory in my personal life. And I’m pretty excited about all of it…

Happy New Year, and thanks to everyone who’s hung around thus far…