Archive for June, 2007

Self-censorship

I’ve self-censored. An entry from yesterday is no more, copied off to the lock-and-key world of LiveJournal.

It wasn’t so much that the post itself was so revealing. It’s more that today I have a great deal more to say on related health matters, but I don’t think I want to blog about my health right now. It’s not the whole “wow, that’s so personal” factor. It’s more that I feel as if to write about my personal health issues is to subconsciously, or maybe blatantly (I’m not really sure), ask other people–who might know me or might not know me–to give a crap.

I have very few rules here in this blog. But I think I’ve found that, while I generally write with the hope that someone will give a crap about whatever subject I’m writing about–John Edwards, Dick Cheney, religious fanatics, sucky Sprint customer service, Charles Nelson Reilly, my dog Herman–I feel extremely uncomfortable when I realize that I’ve made the subject Toastie, because that then implies that someone is supposed to give a crap about Toastie, and that is NOT the purpose of this blog.*

* Or, at least, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Tags: livejournal, metablogging, toastiest
Category metablogging |

Pizza Hut’s New Pizza-Lover’s Pizza

I can’t figure out how to embed this; guess you’ll just have to click on the link
(Warning: the default for this link is to play the sound immediately)

Tags: humor
Category food and drink |

See this film: Knocked Up

Knocked Up gets a whopping 97% fresh rating from the “cream-of-the-crop” critics on Rotten Tomatoes

I saw it. I liked it. A lot. (I don’t think I’m good at reviewing movies, so I don’t try. Some people don’t care at all what critics think; they never agree with critics. I generally try not to go to movies with those people, because they generally like a lot of movies that suck and think that a lot of great movies suck).

Tags: movies
Category Uncategorized |

More retired generals speak out against Bush

Retired Gen. George Washington Criticizes Bush’s Handling Of Iraq War

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Revolutionary War veteran noted that while Hussein was a tyrant, that alone did not justify a "conflict that seems without design or end."

[thanks to RP from LJ for posting this]

Tags: george w bush, humor, iraq
Category Uncategorized |

Toastie Caption Contest #1

Continuing today’s theme of inaugurating blog series, I submit this photo for captioning. Since I don’t know if I’ll get any replies, I suppose I should at least take a stab at it myself…

Benedict: So, it feels good to kill thousands of innocent Muslims, eh?

Tags: george w bush, religion
Category Uncategorized |

Why I like Where I Live #1

I was doing some yard work, which isn’t saying much since my front year is about the size of two bowling lanes. But I do what I can to beautify what’s there on $30 a month. I have no idea what I’m doing, since I’ve always lived in apartments, and growing up in ritzy Central New Jersey, we had landscapers. Anyway, a minivan with a middle-aged couple pulled up just to compliment me on my landscaping work. It turns out that they own and rent out the house two lots away, and they’re happy to see someone caring about how the neighborhood looks.

Is this really a Durham-specific post? No, I suppose not, although I suspect that in the Raleigh and Cary sprawling subdivisions, $30 a month in mulch and clearance-sale plants from Home Depot won’t win you any praise. You had better spruce up your place, or else your neighbors will talk sh*t about you behind your back. Maybe this happens in other parts of Durham. Maybe I shouldn’t call this “Why I Like Durham”. I’ll call it something else…

[I actually haven't blogged anything positive that I can find. I'll need to start doing that a little more].

[And I have bought stuff from Stone Bros, so it's not like I don't support my local businesses].

Tags: durham, local miscellany
Category durham |

Ultimate Schadenfreude

Tags: schadenfreude
Category celebrity |

Einstein on Bees

Just in case anyone has recently heard the Albert Einstein quote suggesting that the human race would only have four years left if all the bees were wiped out, I thought I’d mention that there’s no evidence that Einstein ever said anything like this. It’s not that we shouldn’t be alarmed by the bee problem. But people with a point to make, such as that humans have really f*cked up the environment over the past couple of centuries, ought to stick to facts whenever possible, because there’s a sh*tload of those; no need to invent quotes from Einstein. (It reminds me of how Fahrenheit 911 and Michael Moore could have received more universal acclaim if he just toned down some of the blatant manipulation and speculation. I hear his new film Sicko has more fact and less speculative red meat for the left. But I digress…)

(If there is any solid evidence linking Einstein to the bee quote prior to the work of some European beekeepers in the 1990s, let me know. I’ll be happy to offer a retraction).

Tags: environment
Category Uncategorized |

Spamazon

PC World – Spam Law Test (circa 2004)

Amazon.com, which continued to send e-mail after our opt-out request, acknowledged the error. A spokesperson blamed a technical aberration, which the company tells us has since been corrected.

I suspect the spokesperson for Amazon was spouting a bunch of b.s. They still ignore opt-out requests. I hate to be so brutal as to flag Amazon.com email as spam, and, in truth, I really can’t as long as there’s the remote chance that I might one day have affiliate earnings. I’ll just have to create a special filter.

I don’t buy anything from Amazon. The expulsion of gas in your face when you try to stop their marketing emails is one reason. The second is that they rely too much on a hyper form of business intelligence that is constantly in your face when you visit their site. “We noticed you bought this book back in 2003, three people on your street bought this CD, and eight people who went to your school just bought these. Therefore, we think you might be interested in X, Y, and Z. We hope you find our attempts to live inside your brain useful!” Actually, no, I find it all wholly obnoxious. I actually expressed a similar opinion with much rosier words back in June 2005 when I interviews with Amazon in Seattle. Some exec asked me for my honest opinion on something I wish Amazon did better. I told her I thought their site was way too cluttered. I don’t know if I didn’t get the job because of that answer or because I did a poor job of explaining when I would use an array and when I would use a hash. Being proficient at Perl really wasn’t a significant job requirement, but I was interviewed by a Perl geek who seemed appalled by my ignorance. (Not getting the job is not a reason why I don’t shop at Amazon. I’m pretty comfortable with the first two reasons).

Tags: consumer alert, technical stuff
Category Uncategorized |

The purpose of toastie.st

I feel compelled to mention from time to time what this blog is and what it is not. I do not pretend or intend to be a “Durham blogger” in the sense that I will intentionally make an effort to write about Durham, local issues, or anything that might be of relevance to anyone who cares about such things. Simply put, I have a blog, and I live in Durham. It would be disingenuous to say, at this point, that I don’t consider at all whether anyone out there will find any relevance in something I post. In fact, I do presume that at least one person out there will find something amusing, interesting, or compelling about something I’ve bothered posting. That being said, I know there are posts that will be completely irrelevant to 90% of those reading this. But, hey, that’s what feed readers are for.

The label of “blogger” is an awkward one for me to embrace, because I am more or less doing what I’ve been doing for most of my life–writing stuff down. It’s only been the last few years that I’ve written stuff down such that others can stumble upon it. And it’s only been the last couple of months that I’ve writing stuff down within a framework that makes my words easy to stumble upon.

The grand irony is that those whom one would expect to know me the best–long-time friends and family–aren’t avid readers. I suspect that a couple of them might check this out from time to time, but I’ll define ‘avid’ as both checking it out and acknowledging that they check it out. Semantics aside, there are plenty in the friends and family category whom I am fairly certain have never even seen this blog.

So I don’t know what my expectation is. If a week were to go by without a comment, it might affect me. It’s one thing to write for one’s own sake, to get thoughts out and, as a bonus, connect with some people. It’s another thing to be aware that you have readers and then, one day, to find that you no longer have readers.

Anyway, I meant to offer just a short preface to what was going to be a mention of my “Top 10 Toastiest Posts” section that I’ve had on the page for a few weeks. I’m manually generating that from some website stats. I thought it would offer a new visitors a quick snapshot of what’s in here. I could’ve chosen posts that I thought were representative and flattering, but I think the method I went with–pure hit counts–creates a diverse list, and it includes plenty of posts that I’m honestly not very proud of but nonetheless wrote for the world to see. I wondered if there’d be a chicken-egg issue here, as posts I list here are more liable to remain as most-visited posts, but I think that’s how popularity of anything works. Incumbency is a tough quality for a competitor to overcome. (Odd analogy, I know, but I think it somewhat works…)

Tags: metablogging, toastiest, year-in-review 2007
Category metablogging |