Category: blog

I’m thinking some of you may be interested in this Electoral Vote Predictor. Let’s take the guessing out of elections! It’s interesting to note that between yesterday and today, Kerry’s overall total went down, however his number of strong supporters went up. I don’t know what that means, and knowing is half the battle, so where does that leave me?

(Courtesy of Eclecticism)

This posting is a community experiment started by Minding the Planet to see how a meme represented by a blog posting spreads across blogspace, physical space and time. It will help to show how ideas travel across blogs in space and time and how blogs are connected. It may also help to show which blogs are most influential in the propagation of memes. The original posting for this experiment is located at: Minding the Planet; results and commentary will appear there in the future.

Please join the test by adding your blog (see instructions, below) and inviting your friends to participate — the more the better. The data from this test will be public and open; others may use it to visualize and study the connectedness of blogspace and the propagation of memes across blogs.

The GUID for this experiment is: as098398298250swg9e98929872525389t9987898tq98wteqtgaq62010920352598gawstw98qwrt189849813907azq4 (this GUID enables anyone to easily search Google for all results of this experiment). Anyone is free to analyze the data of this experiment. Please publicize your analysis of the data, and/or any comments by adding comments onto the original post at Minding the Planet; Note: it would be interesting to see a geographic map or a temporal animation, as well as a social network map of the propagation of this meme.

Instructions

To add your blog to this experiment, copy this entire posting to your blog, and fill out the info below, substituting your own information in your posting, where appropriate.
Required Fields

(Note: Replace the answers below with your own answers)

1. I found this experiment at URL: http://stupidevilbastard.com/index/seb/comments/testing_meme_propagation_in_blogspace_add_your_blog/
2. I found it via “Newsreader Software” or “Browsing or Searching the Web” or “An E-Mail Message”: Newsreader (SharpReader)
3. I posted this experiment at URL: http://neverhood.net/
4. I posted this on date (day, month, year): 03 August 2004
5. I posted this at time (24 hour time): 14:08:51
6. My posting location is (city, state, country): Fairfield, New Jersey, USA

Optional Survey Fields

(Replace the answers below with your own answers):

1. My blog is hosted by: HostDime
2. My age is: 27
3. My gender is: Male
4. My occupation is: IS Administrator
5. I use the following RSS/Atom reader software: SharpReader
6. I use the following software to post to my blog: WordPress
7. I have been blogging since (day, month, year): 14 January 2003
8. My web browser is: Firefox

…for now. Last night was the last night. This is my final day as a tenant in this fine apartment, that has served me well for 4 years and 1 month. It is also my final day as a resident of this fair city of Hoboken. I wish I could have gone out with a bigger bang, rather than a prolonged gasp. Oh well, it’s not like we can actually plan life. I’m typing this in a rush, because we need to move this desk over to a friend’s place (time for a new one). And, due to my horrible planning, I won’t have Internet access until the 8th (I know, it’s ridiculous).

Anywho, all updates will be coming from work for a while. The new apartment is looking great, this one is looking sad. I’ll try to do a bigger post later (maybe I’ll hang out at work after hours). See you on the flip side.

This was a very fun quiz – so everybody rush over to take it:

What Type of Villain are You?
mutedfaith.com.

(Courtesy of Steve)

It’s now my final week doing any sort of living in Hoboken. And at this point, it’s barely even a week. Lisa and I will most likely not be staying in my current abode past Wednesday (although my hope had been for a deadline of tonight). So now I’m trying to say my temporary goodbyes to people and partake in any fun-filled evenings that I’m afraid I might miss out on in the months to come.

Last Monday night was a sort of “Last Call” for me at the Nag’s. Heather has worked Mondays for such a long time, and that was indeed the night that we had formed our friendship. Our relationship is a weird one, and I doubt I could even begin to explain it here (seeing as I myself don’t even understand it). But there was a time when she would call me Tuesday afternoon if I had failed to show up one Monday night without warning. So I dropped by to bid her adieu, although I hoped to make another appearance soon enough. The evening was a little odd, and eventually too many people piled in to make it a proper goodbye. At least we got to talk a bit, and hopefully Lisa and I and will have her and Joe out to our place for dinner sometime.

Tuesday turned out to be much better, as Dan had an extra ticket to see The Psychedelic Furs at Maxwell’s. Unforunately Joseph was missing from the group, otherwise it was an excellent coterie comprised of Dan, Vinnie, Andres, Dawn, and myself. The show was incredible – far better than I can describe for now – and included a performance of “Pretty in Pink” that forced me to call up Lisa so she could hear it. Once I sort thru the pics and find a setlist I plan on writing more. Along with the wonderful company I came with, I also ran into Amy and Mark (from the Nag’s), and Allen Teper (of My Pocket Zoo fame) who let me know that those ukulele boys were about to drop a new EP that I now must pick up. The evening ended with Vinnie and I talking way too indepth about music over a few pints. He’s a guy whose opinions I can truly appreciate because they mirror a number of my own whacked out ideas. We could have talked well into the morning light, but eventually I had to call it quits on account of being a working stiff. Oh well, it just leaves more for us to discuss next time.

The rest of my week was rather hectic, and filled with preparations for the move. The torrential downpour of Friday night meant that I had to skip out on a potential party (sorry Malina). Saturday Lisa and I headed down to my sister Christine’s (after dropping off boxes at the new place) to visit my 2 day old niece. Words fail to describe how absolutely beautiful and cute she is (and tiny!). Trust me, photos will follow soon enough. Although we swung by our friend Troy’s party for a brief appearance, there’s was no way we could make it to The Shannon for Matttt’s shindig. Fortunately his real b’day is today (I think) and CN6 will be featured at the Ristra. So anybody interested (I know it’s short notice) can catch me there tonight. Uhhh… more to follow, I gotta get out of here.

I have so much to say, as so much has happened over the past week. My main reason for keeping quiet (along with the usual “I’m too busy” excuse) is that I moved all of my domains off of thebox and onto a HostDime reseller account. Basically I didn’t want to deal with losing any posts or comments during the transition. I’m also very torn on the setup. HostDime is a good value and seems to be running well, but I really like the idea of having shell access, and I miss that – for now. There’s also the fact that I moved my install of WordPress into the blog subdirectory to clean up my main directory. But I’m still not sure if I want to completely redirect to neverhood.net/blog in anticipation of someday adding different content to the main page. *sigh* It always seems to be the little things that make me debate so much.

On a more personal note, most of our possessions are now in Montclair, but we’re still in Hoboken. The rest of this week will be a slow transition to get the rest of our crap over there (I need to pick an ISP before I can move my computers). While yesterday was a tad stressful (especially for Lisa) it went rather smoothly, and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Brian and Sean. Thanks again, and when I have more time I’ll tell you all about how things went down.

Angry Alien Productions does some cool animations called 30-Second Bunnies Theatre. Yeah, that’s right, bunnies. The latest is Alien, and now I have to watch all of the old ones – and buy some merchandise. I’m so lame.

(courtesy of Neil Gaiman)

At least that’s what I think my sister said. That would be the weight of Paige – my new neice. My sister Christine went into labor early this morning, and out pops a little girl only a few hours later. Quite a miracle, isn’t it? She’s my second neice – I also have 4 nephews. I guess it’s time for the girls to start making a comeback since this generation was hinting at male domination. We’ll see where it goes from here.

I will hopefully swing by and visit the new bundle of joy sometime this weekend. Unfortunately it’s right in the middle of our attempted evacuation of Hoboken. However, I have made it a habit to see the firstborns early on (although it took me something like a month before I got to meet Lucas). I’ll have to do some more paking tonight and try to get things ready for Sunday early. Which reminds me, if any of you are free on Sunday, there are rumors of a U-Haul truck showing up at my apartment and trying to load itself up with mine and Lisa’s possessions. If you are so inclined, we could certainly use some help in this endeavor. I’m more than willing to provide all participants with beer, and for those who don’t drink I’ll pour one out in your honor.

I get a lot of calls at my job. When you do tech support, you expect that. Only, tech support is just a small part of my job, and more than half of my calls are not even from inside the company. I spend so much time dealing with companies that want to sell me cheap toner, user training, copiers, phone systems, etc. It’s amazing that I get any work done at all. And the worst part about it – I can’t lie!

I know what you’re thinking – the same thing I scream at the TV everytime the computer scores against me. But I’m serious. I can bend the truth a little bit. I can talk circles around a question. I can do all sorts of potentially illegal activities. But ask me a direct question, and I’ll end up having to answer it if I can’t distract you. I realize that this confession is much like Superman admitting “Man does that kryptonite give me the heebee-jeebees.” But it’s not like I’ve got a whole bunch of evil archenemies out there looking for that weakness to defeat me. And if I do, you guys really suck if you haven’t gotten me yet. It’s not like you guys have much of a foe to combat. What’s my super power anyway? The ability to pretend that I’ve heard of any random band you mention? My lightspeed Guinness-drinking? Maybe it’s my irritating obsessive nature… anywho, where was I?
Continue reading “Solicitors – how do you spell that?”

Since I’ve started working more heavily on writing for my own site (as well as the installation of SharpReader) I have started following more and more blogs. For the first time, both my friends and other personal blogs categories are completely read. It’s a somewhat rewarding feeling, because now I can try to stay on top of other people’s writing. It also means that I can start sorting through all of the news and geek feeds I have and see which ones are worth keeping.

As a side note, although I like SharpReader there are a few quirks that bug me, and Luke hasn’t done an update in a while. Does anyone have any suggestions for a different RSS reader to try? Note, I really don’t feel like paying for one unless it’s really good.