Year: 2006

Reclaiming My Youth

My current task is to create some level of order in my new office. I’ve had mixed success.

I’d been holding off until I got a new desk, which I finally ordered last week for delivery on Thursday. So this weekend, I set about finding a place for it to land when it arrives. I thought it would be nice and easy once I got all the records organized and filed away in their new home in the closet, but there just keeps being more stuff.

The fact that I’m simultaneously trying to reclaim all the stuff my parents have been storing for me for fifteen years hasn’t really helped. But just look at this enticingly sexy sample of the stuff I’m finding in some of those boxes:

You should’ve heard the noises I made as I unpacked the above, along with a complete, unopened and unread Sunday Winston-Salem Journal from 1978 (with ads), and my collection of miniature Jungle Book figurines.

Pardon me while I re-live a childhood that may or may not have been mine…

MySpace. Blecch.

Funny, I was just about to write this same journal entry, almost word for word, particularly with respect to cheesy Geocities and Tripod sites from eight or nine years ago. I’ve never seen a MySpace page that wasn’t absolutely horrible and ugly and tacky and annoying.

The only difference is that I would’ve mentioned how annoying it is that random MySpacers are always trying to do inline links to my graphics from their godawful sucktastic monstrosities, thus stealing the bandwidth I pay for. But I’ve pretty much thwarted those attempts, with a few lines of code.

I also would’ve added this quote from the original article:

Or perhaps it’s MySpace’s “social” element that disturbs me. I’m a misanthrope. Everyone on MySpace seems young and happy and excited and flip and approachable, and this upsets me. Still, at least the teenage MySpacers are getting on with the business of being young and alive, unlike the fustier elements of the “blogosphere”, who just waste the world’s time banging on and on about how important the “blogosphere” is and how it spells the end of every old notion ever, when the truth is that, as with absolutely every form of media ever, 99% of the “blogosphere” is rubbish created by idiots.

Especially the word “blogosphere”. A word I refuse to write without sneery ironic quote marks either side of it. Because I hate it and it’s crap and I JUST DON’T WANT TO KNOW.

I think I like this cranky Brit…

Paranoid

New homeowner paranoia. We have a small water leak related to one of the showers that I’m trying to get fixed. A few minutes ago, right after taking a shower and lying down in bed, I heard this sort of rumble, followed by the sound of rushing water.

Panic-stricken, I ran into the hall just in time to remember that I’d set the timer on the dishwasher to start right as I’d be going to bed. Which, of course, explained the noise I’d just heard.

It’ll get less scary soon, right?

The “Rat Community”

Outcry that 1,000 rats were euthanized:

Tina Bird of Campbell said rat fanciers were in the process of mobilizing when the rodents were killed.

“Maybe they would have been better advised to leave the animals in their horrible conditions until we, the rat community, had a few days to get moving,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Be sure that animal lovers across the United States will be scrutinizing Petaluma’s actions and culpability for this slaughter.”

I’m sure Petaluma is just shaking to its very foundations in fear. Maybe Tina should’ve gotten into her Volvo and driven the 1000 diseased and damaged rats down to her house in Campbell. The “rat community” indeed. Fucking morons.