| On the 10th day of NaBloPoMo... |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|09:32 pm] |
Ten bits of randomness.
1. Today's date is 11/10/09 (written in US format, at least.) PopWatch celebrates with 11 covers of "The Final Countdown". In the heyday of Arrested Development, I had that as my ringtone to pay tribute to GOB. But I changed it out of embarrassment when people thought I genuinely liked the song.
2. Just watched last week's White Collar. Cute show, but it's not grabbing me.
3. Speaking of USA shows ... I hate those two-minute teasers they stick at the very end of episodes. I also hate how Bravo now includes a short two-minute scene between commercial breaks halfway through an ep. Yeah, it's done to foil DVR users, but it's still quite annoying.
4. Thanks to far too many years of drought, North Georgia needs a ton of rain. I *love* rain, especially when I'm curled up inside my home. But even I am starting to GET SICK OF IT. Today we've experienced the joy of the remnants of Tropical Storm Idea. For the heck of it, I checked Weather Underground and learned that Atlanta has received approximately 24" of rain since Labor Day. A bit much, no?
5. For some reason, this week I haven't been able to get Google Reader to load on my iPhone's Safari. Very frustrating, as I like being able to check my RSS feeds during lunch. Many other sites are also slow, but they eventually began to load once I cleared the cache and history. Still no luck with Reader, though.
6. Google is offering free airport WiFi through mid January. Just my luck that ATL and DFW -- my two airports for holiday travel -- aren't included.
7. Televisionary grumbles that talking about an episode that has already aired isn't a "spoiler". I generally agree with his points, though international viewing complicates matters. And I agree with those who say in the comments that keeping spoilers out of *headlines* is a smart move to help out people who use RSS readers. I've deleted a few feeds for that reason. Ultimately, people can post whatever they want, I guess. Nobody has a right to stay unspoiled. BUT. Using some simple courtesy -- like keeping spoilers out of headlines and the first paragraphs, and including a warning -- would be quite welcome.
8. The other day, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rayruz requested comments fic, and I threw one into the ring. Since her post is flocked, I'll paste it here. ( Coulda woulda shouda. )
9. My paid account expired last week, and in the auto-renewal they also charged me for another year of extra userpics. I knew about it a few days in advance and meant to cull my icons down to 35, which should've been easy because I barely use most of these. But, as usual, I was too lazy to actually do it, and I ended up with another $9.95 charge. Ah, well. I do want to track down some icons I've seen and liked on others' LJs, such as the XKCD "The world is awesome" animated .gif (like this). Anyone know where I could find it?
10. I got a bunch of fresh-picked apples at the orchard on Sunday, and I planned to make my favorite apple muffins tonight. Unfortunately, I forgot to buy buttermilk on the way home today. Grr! (Yes, my life is so tragic.) |
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| King County web team only partly fails |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|08:11 pm] |
In regards to this blog post from four days ago, I just found this in my inbox tonight:
Back in 2007, King County initiated discussions with the federal government’s Department of General Services Administration (GSA), who administers the DOTGOV domains on the Internet, regarding King County’s web address. King County wanted to register the user-friendly address “kingcounty.gov”. Simultaneously, the GSA wanted King County to relinquish the address “metrokc.gov” in order to comply with their web address policies and also due to possible confusion with the city of Kansas City, Missouri. After negotiations, it was agreed that both would occur–King County would receive use of the domain name “kingcounty.gov” and King County would relinquish control of the domain name “metrokc.gov” effective January 31, 2009.
…
We share your concern for effective and consistent service to our citizens. King County’s web site is critical to those services. It was for that reason that King County pursued the “kingcounty.gov” name. In fact, as you can see from the GSA’s policies regarding naming conventions (http://www.dotgov.gov/dnc.aspx#county), GSA policy requires us to have the web address “kingcounty.wa.gov” or “kingcounty-wa.gov”, however, in our negotiations with the GSA, we sought a very simple name to ensure that our citizens receive the benefit of the most logical and easy to remember address possible. It was for the reason of compliance with GSA policy that we surrender the legacy name, and with the impending shut-down of that old address, King County is now in compliance with that federal directive.
There’s a bit more and a tiny bit of interesting metrics on usage of the old name, but that’s the gist of the situation I mentioned.
Absolutely reasonable and absolutely understandable given the situation, but almost completely (near as I can see) unexplained until I fired off a “what is this?” e-mail that also CC’d the King County Executive’s office. From some searching around just now, I can’t easily find any reference to nor mention of the specifics behind this online. That’s the sort of stuff that should be, you know, mentioned to your users and stake holders. King County has a blog–it takes only one quick blog post or alternately a press release to communicate this out.
If they already did message this out back in 2007 or 2008, they didn’t apparently do so again almost a year later (a scale of years, in Internet Standard Time) when they finally flipped the magic switch before the old domain name goes dark for our regional government. An IT department’s job is to over-communicate. It doesn’t take much to do this. Lack of communications from IT is one of my biggest pet peeves professionally. Good on them to explaining it to me in e-mail, but now I wonder if they’ll actually post the reason behind this. At the least, it’s rather interesting for nerds. For everyone else around here, it will give people another reason to grumble about Kansas City and the Midwest. They steal our basketball team, now they steal one of our domain names…
Originally published at Joe Szilagyi .com. You can comment here or there. |
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| My most interesting photo? |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|10:29 am] |
I’ve got 1,870 photos on my Flickr account. I don’t think I’m a great photographer by any stretch. I point, I shoot. Sometimes I muck around with trying to get good lighting, angles, and all that. I can’t quite figure out why Flickr thinks that this photo is my best and most interesting, a long-distance photo I took of a woman’s profile at the Market in August 2008:
I actually think this one, from the same day, is much better. It doesn’t even make Flickr’s Top 20 for my photos, though:
I can never figure out their Interestingness formula.
Originally published at Joe Szilagyi .com. You can comment here or there. |
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| My most interesting photo? |
[Nov. 9th, 2009|07:29 am] |
I’ve got 1,870 photos on my Flickr account. I don’t think I’m a great photographer by any stretch. I point, I shoot. Sometimes I muck around with trying to get good lighting, angles, and all that. I can’t quite figure out why Flickr thinks that this photo is my best and most interesting, a long-distance photo I took of a woman’s profile at the Market in August 2008:
I actually think this one, from the same day, is much better. It doesn’t even make Flickr’s Top 20 for my photos, though:
I can never figure out their Interestingness formula.
Originally published at Joe Szilagyi .com. You can comment here or there. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|10:40 am] |
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http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html#6491717697360405394 Being something of a master in the art of compartmentalisation, and not a little prickly, most people seem to think me untouchable, a bit cold (or for those who don't hate me, 'reserved'). One tough nut. Certainly not the type to wear my heart on my sleeve.
But it is as much a cliche as it is the truth that appearances are deceiving. The person you think of as shy will actually talk your ear off, given half a chance. The most flowery, romantic love letters were written by absolute bastards. And under the shell of a cooly unemotional ex-prostitute beats the heart of someone who was only waiting for the right conditions in which love could blossom.
I'm not talking about passion. I am, indeed, passionate about T, hugely so. But if the last years have taught me nothing else it's that passion is usual, common even. It can be had by the hour if you're so inclined. You can fall for someone in an instant, for an instant. What this is, is something else.
So much has changed since last summer that I can hardly imagine, much less express, all of it. But I'll try. For the first time in years, I feel safe. No longer do I look in the mirror and see someone who puts up with emotional abuse because no one else would have me. I see someone who is free to choose to love and be loved, or be alone, whatever she likes.
I wake up in the morning next to someone who feels like... like nothing else. The road hasn't been easy, we've both had cold feet at different times, we've both questioned this. We both keep choosing each other.
I'm going to defer to a customary coyness in matters of emotion and say T hasn't changed my life, but rather, the way I think about my life. Since knowing him I have seen how to help myself be a better person - he showed me where the tools are - now that's worth a thousand times more than a rescue fantasy.
It may be my birthday this week, but my love, you're the one with the gift. Thank you. |
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| Fic: More than Kisses |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|06:04 pm] |
Title: More than Kisses
Word Count: 5791
Author: Mrs. Muir aka whenbuffysmiles
Fandom: American Idol RPS
Pairing: Kris Allen / Adam Lambert
Rating: NC-17
Summary: When Kris's world falls apart, Adam takes care of him.
Disclaimer: This didn't happen. Kris and Adam belong only to themselves.
( More than Kisses ) |
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| Cardboard coyote attack! |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|10:24 pm] |
Tonight's NaBloPoMo randomness:
We have a geese problem at my school. A flock took up residence on the grounds years ago, and it refuses to leave, even during the usual migration seasons. Although they're fun to watch waddling around in the mornings, they leave droppings everywhere and are a general nuisance. I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but a few days ago I saw these strange placards of dogs positioned around the lawn. The next day, they were moved to different locations. I finally asked today what on earth was going on, and a colleague told me that the placards are actually coyotes, meant to scare away the geese. And it seems to be working! Of course, they have to be moved to different places each day so that the geese don't figure it out. They look so delightfully bizarre that I had to take a photo. ( Stand-up coyotes! ) |
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