Mean Mr. Mustard let me know that someone I had previously blogged about was back on campus. Work campus. Not school campus. And he let me know she has a blog. All for the price of a pancake. He's a great friend. So this is a bit of an experiment. I strongly recommend Kate's blog, Wayward Betty. It's good writing. Funny. Writing for the sake of writing - not a mix of comical observations, software and beer links, and variegated mental masturbation (e.g....the sort of "nod to nothing") in which I indulge. As someone with a master's in writing, I can appreciate her blog for what I should do, but refuse to do. And while I fail to believe anyone worthwhile comes from Milwaukee (let's see how carefully my wife reads my blog), Kate's stories are enjoyable and descriptive.
But my experiment relates to my own blog, and the bloginess that is blogging and reading other blogs and being mentioned by bloggers without knowing that you have been mentioned. Kate...if you ever find your way here, via redirect tracking, casual search of Google, statcounter, or some other similar tool, my challenge is this, can you find yourself on my blog? Don't start digging through the last few days or weeks or even months. Think back to when you last worked with the esteemed Mean Mr. Mustard and myself, even though you might not know us from Adam...s...es. Can I use a plural for Adam if I mean it to refer to the saying that refers to the Biblical Adam? After all. There was only one. Dibs on Adam. Mean Mr. Mustard gets to be "you don't know him from Eve" if Adam requires the singular. If you just can't figure it out, lob a guess my direction and I'll confess to the correct post(s). There's not a dearth of writing so, like horoscopes, there's no shortage of ways to see yourself in at least one bit of writing.
Sincerely, Scooter and Mean Mr. Mustard/Eve (by Proxy).
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Like Poetry
I think there's something vaguely poetic about using the Google translate button on a foreign language blog. I quote from Zeta Blas's Blog, The Abstruse Gusarapa below. I can't decide if my favorite line is "But back to the breast" or "But lately, I started to creak more than the bed of my neighbors nymphomaniac."
"A sweet mustard txunami fell from the breast, frozen in the air, and exploded at the plate creating a striking pictorial effect, and even art ... if it were not for the couch, table and pitcher also received his own. Copilot says my couch that this mustard has the texture of vomit around Madrid tripe and a flavor that does not lag behind its appearance. But back to the breast. Why fork froze in mid-bite? It will not be for lack of appetite for a server, which has never suffered from such terrible evils. The cause is Telecinco and in particular its nightly newscast. Always had this information as a news esputadero drinking moderately distantly impartial and serious. But lately I started to creak more than the bed of my neighbors nymphomaniac. What puzzled me yesterday, stunned ojiplático. The theme was the Sheikha. We fucked up, now it seems that there are Sheikha, what was once a discreet package stuffed into a black scarf that barely peeked eyes on official travel, now emerges as if from a cocoon and plant their ovaries compared to actual respectable : Sheikha, with capital letters. Beside it a shapeless, predictable and expendable: The check, say the sheik, with tiny, but with candied fingers to sign contracts and promissory notes."
http://blaszeta.blogspot.com/2011/04/vuelve-jequesa-vuelve.html
"A sweet mustard txunami fell from the breast, frozen in the air, and exploded at the plate creating a striking pictorial effect, and even art ... if it were not for the couch, table and pitcher also received his own. Copilot says my couch that this mustard has the texture of vomit around Madrid tripe and a flavor that does not lag behind its appearance. But back to the breast. Why fork froze in mid-bite? It will not be for lack of appetite for a server, which has never suffered from such terrible evils. The cause is Telecinco and in particular its nightly newscast. Always had this information as a news esputadero drinking moderately distantly impartial and serious. But lately I started to creak more than the bed of my neighbors nymphomaniac. What puzzled me yesterday, stunned ojiplático. The theme was the Sheikha. We fucked up, now it seems that there are Sheikha, what was once a discreet package stuffed into a black scarf that barely peeked eyes on official travel, now emerges as if from a cocoon and plant their ovaries compared to actual respectable : Sheikha, with capital letters. Beside it a shapeless, predictable and expendable: The check, say the sheik, with tiny, but with candied fingers to sign contracts and promissory notes."
http://blaszeta.blogspot.com/2011/04/vuelve-jequesa-vuelve.html
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Bar Trash
A shout out for a high school friend who's got a shared blog about the life of a bartender, Bar Trash. You can find what you shouldn't do if you don't want to be considered a douche by the bartender, what bartenders think about kinds of customers, and gems such as the celebrity bartender trivia, which includes, "Asked if he could smack me on the ass and called me ma’am. Answer…Brett Favre."
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, May 11, 2009
New Tagline
Ming's wife told me, while I was waiting for AAA to fix my flat tire, that she saw something that she wanted to take a picture of so I could put it on my blog: two birds humping under a car.
So in the future, if I decide to remove "Pretty much as it says, a lot of nothing about nothing" as the tagline, I will replace it with, "What you imagine when you think of two birds humping under a car."
Actually, it seems appropriate.
So in the future, if I decide to remove "Pretty much as it says, a lot of nothing about nothing" as the tagline, I will replace it with, "What you imagine when you think of two birds humping under a car."
Actually, it seems appropriate.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
GPS Skullduggery
I apologize for a dry spell lately. I have a new Blackberry and I recorded a bunch of fun photos on it and then realized I deleted them before it was actually done emailing them, which means they're completely gone. I'm wiser, yet sad. Gone is my picture of Kyle eating breakfast with Ming and I over the weekend. Gone are the pictures I took at my father in law's 60th birthday. A loss because they were fun pictures of kids. But at least I don't have to explain why I don't have any pictures of the bevy of women with their T&A falling out who were at the boxing match next door. Gone is my picture of a guy who looks like She Says' husband in silhouette, pointing at a hair stylist sign just as she was complaining he needed a haircut. Gone is a picture of a second sign from the same location where a guy seems to be doing something unmentionable to himself. However, I still have pictures of a Snuglie and one of Pimento's eggs, so I'll post those later.
I did learn how to record Eryn saying "I love you Dad" onto the Blackberry. At least I have that going for me. I can annoy other managers with cutesy kid crap until they're done with me.
She Says sent me a warning today about the evils of owning a GPS. This isn't a huge deal as I don't own one and, just like everyone else, I'm cutting back on spending so I'm unlikely to buy one. But it was interesting because a local blogger, Bill Roehl of Lazy Lightning, blogged about exactly the reverse on the same day, and even in my county. So now I don't know what to do...it's a real poser. Buy a GPS so a thief can capture it. Or buy a GPS to capture a thief.
From She Says:
GPS
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football match. Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard..
When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.
The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean up the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.
From Lazy Lightning:
The first is a complaint out of Burnsville about someone receiving stolen property...
“The Officer plugged the GPS unit into his vehicle and determined where the “home†location was for the unit. The Officer contacted an individual listed to that location and determined that an individual who resides there has the same make and model GPS unit. The passenger got picked up by his ride and the suspect vehicle was inventoried and towed."
I did learn how to record Eryn saying "I love you Dad" onto the Blackberry. At least I have that going for me. I can annoy other managers with cutesy kid crap until they're done with me.
She Says sent me a warning today about the evils of owning a GPS. This isn't a huge deal as I don't own one and, just like everyone else, I'm cutting back on spending so I'm unlikely to buy one. But it was interesting because a local blogger, Bill Roehl of Lazy Lightning, blogged about exactly the reverse on the same day, and even in my county. So now I don't know what to do...it's a real poser. Buy a GPS so a thief can capture it. Or buy a GPS to capture a thief.
From She Says:
GPS
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me that someone she knew had their car broken into while they were at a football match. Their car was parked on the green which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard..
When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.
The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house. They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean up the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty the house of its contents.
From Lazy Lightning:
The first is a complaint out of Burnsville about someone receiving stolen property...
“The Officer plugged the GPS unit into his vehicle and determined where the “home†location was for the unit. The Officer contacted an individual listed to that location and determined that an individual who resides there has the same make and model GPS unit. The passenger got picked up by his ride and the suspect vehicle was inventoried and towed."
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Facebook Reflections
I've been reading this article by Time.com, "Does Facebook Replace Face Time, Or Enhance It?" It's an intriguing question (there are a bunch of related articles at the bottom around Facebook as well). In the spirit of my recent discussion about Wordle and Technorati, the article seemed a motivator to talk about other services I use. Over the last few months I've seen some of my blogger friends move to Facebook (with a decrease in activity or cessation of their blog, or a bit of cross posting), or take up a semblance of online communication again via Facebook since their blog lapsed into disuse (at Code Freeze last week, Neal Ford made a point of pruning those dead feeds in order to eliminate a source of distraction). Other friends and family, who would never have blogged, have found a home on Facebook, poking, updating their status, and posting the odd set of photos. I update my Facebook status once in a while, or throw a link at a friend who might appreciate it, but I find myself using the service as more of what the article refers to as a "self-updating address book", one that ties together people I know from my past (high school) and people I know now (work). Usually it's not something along the lines of this quote:
"Jenny and I, along with three of our childhood pals from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., learned that a dear old friend had ended her seven-year relationship through a Facebook status change. We expressed dismay, albeit through Facebook's IM feature, that we had to learn such potent information in this impersonal way."
I'm not saying that they're right and the friend should have let them know in person. Quite the opposite. If you can't come to terms with remote communication as a norm, or at least the norm as a catalyst for most communication, you're not making the leap to the digital culture and it's too bad your children will one day have to listen to your diatribes about how in the good old days you saw everyone face to face and now everything is bad and, by the way, what should you do with the sea shells? I did learn about a friend's divorce via Facebook when she changed her status. And I'm guilty of letting people know I was in the hospital with an infection via Facebook, although primarily because of the immediacy of Facebook over blogging and because the interface to Facebook via my PDA is much cleaner and easier to access when you're falling asleep too fast to type anything substantial. I imagine Twitter would have sufficed just as well if my friends were Twitterites. The full story of something as personal as surgery, or divorce (only if Pooteewheet never throws away the Discovery Channel defective rock polisher she's hidden in the house, which I prefer to call by the appropriate title "trash"), generally follows on my blog, which sees 1/30th of the "friends" I have on Facebook.
I think the difference for me between the two is that my blog has been for me, while Facebook is not. If I'm updating my status on Facebook, it's an announcement to the effect, "Hey, I'm alive and you can find me if you're looking for me." If I update my blog, it's because I'm thinking about something, want to work out something I haven't quite formulated in my head, want to record something for my future use, or want to record something for Eryn to read some day. Only secondly is it a place to share information with others, although I make the effort to record details around processes and experiences I think are helpful in a wider context, like packing on RAGBRAI, doing a Biztalk install or n-depth updategram, and fixing the green screen if streaming Netflix. Because I record so much out there, it is a good update for what me and my family are up to and how I'm feeling, something I can't capture in a Facebook status blurb. I rationalize away the need for a Christmas letter because of my blog. If you're a Facebook friend, you don't need a Christmas update because you and I probably don't see each other facetime wise at all. If you read my blog, you don't need one because you know what I've been up to for the last six years, no doubt in more detail than you're comfortable with when bumping into me.
Because of that, I don't run into this issue, "but stays logged on to Facebook all day at work, and then spends an hour or two, or lately three, at night checking in with old acquaintances, swapping photos with close friends, instant messaging those who fall somewhere in between." I devote a little bit of time to my blog and trust that the next time I have facetime with whoever reads it, we'll have a good place to start a conversation. Facebook feels more like sending thank you notes, and if I post something non-flippant I have to individually IM and comment to everyone who thinks it's interesting. The idea of doing that at work, where the context switching interrupts trying to think about mainframe migrations, is enough to keep me from ever being a Facebook regular.
Over the years, I've been asked several times, "Where do you get the time to blog? I could never find enought time to write something almost every day." Blogging is easy. Thirty minutes max for most posts, it's focused, and I can practice some writing skills I need to bring to other efforts. If you add up Facebook time, status updates, poking, VW bug and jail escapes, and hopping between IM-ing and responding to a few comments, it can easily chew up considerably more time for less mental gain, although it may seem like less if you can coordinate it on your PDA in the minutes on the bus, at the doctor, or walking between meetings.
I should finish with an answer to the initial question. Facebook doesn't replace face time. It enhances it. It's a way to keep in touch and now and then generate enough of a poke to give people an insight into when they should be contacting you in person to see how you're doing, or to catch up with you when you're in the neighborhood despite time having moved you far apart, or as a gentle reminder that you should be getting together because their kids seem older than the last time you saw them. If it reduces face time at all, it's with your family when you're busy facebooking instead of spending time together, and then it's just one of a number of equivalent distractions, not a sole culprit.
"Jenny and I, along with three of our childhood pals from Saratoga Springs, N.Y., learned that a dear old friend had ended her seven-year relationship through a Facebook status change. We expressed dismay, albeit through Facebook's IM feature, that we had to learn such potent information in this impersonal way."
I'm not saying that they're right and the friend should have let them know in person. Quite the opposite. If you can't come to terms with remote communication as a norm, or at least the norm as a catalyst for most communication, you're not making the leap to the digital culture and it's too bad your children will one day have to listen to your diatribes about how in the good old days you saw everyone face to face and now everything is bad and, by the way, what should you do with the sea shells? I did learn about a friend's divorce via Facebook when she changed her status. And I'm guilty of letting people know I was in the hospital with an infection via Facebook, although primarily because of the immediacy of Facebook over blogging and because the interface to Facebook via my PDA is much cleaner and easier to access when you're falling asleep too fast to type anything substantial. I imagine Twitter would have sufficed just as well if my friends were Twitterites. The full story of something as personal as surgery, or divorce (only if Pooteewheet never throws away the Discovery Channel defective rock polisher she's hidden in the house, which I prefer to call by the appropriate title "trash"), generally follows on my blog, which sees 1/30th of the "friends" I have on Facebook.
I think the difference for me between the two is that my blog has been for me, while Facebook is not. If I'm updating my status on Facebook, it's an announcement to the effect, "Hey, I'm alive and you can find me if you're looking for me." If I update my blog, it's because I'm thinking about something, want to work out something I haven't quite formulated in my head, want to record something for my future use, or want to record something for Eryn to read some day. Only secondly is it a place to share information with others, although I make the effort to record details around processes and experiences I think are helpful in a wider context, like packing on RAGBRAI, doing a Biztalk install or n-depth updategram, and fixing the green screen if streaming Netflix. Because I record so much out there, it is a good update for what me and my family are up to and how I'm feeling, something I can't capture in a Facebook status blurb. I rationalize away the need for a Christmas letter because of my blog. If you're a Facebook friend, you don't need a Christmas update because you and I probably don't see each other facetime wise at all. If you read my blog, you don't need one because you know what I've been up to for the last six years, no doubt in more detail than you're comfortable with when bumping into me.
Because of that, I don't run into this issue, "but stays logged on to Facebook all day at work, and then spends an hour or two, or lately three, at night checking in with old acquaintances, swapping photos with close friends, instant messaging those who fall somewhere in between." I devote a little bit of time to my blog and trust that the next time I have facetime with whoever reads it, we'll have a good place to start a conversation. Facebook feels more like sending thank you notes, and if I post something non-flippant I have to individually IM and comment to everyone who thinks it's interesting. The idea of doing that at work, where the context switching interrupts trying to think about mainframe migrations, is enough to keep me from ever being a Facebook regular.
Over the years, I've been asked several times, "Where do you get the time to blog? I could never find enought time to write something almost every day." Blogging is easy. Thirty minutes max for most posts, it's focused, and I can practice some writing skills I need to bring to other efforts. If you add up Facebook time, status updates, poking, VW bug and jail escapes, and hopping between IM-ing and responding to a few comments, it can easily chew up considerably more time for less mental gain, although it may seem like less if you can coordinate it on your PDA in the minutes on the bus, at the doctor, or walking between meetings.
I should finish with an answer to the initial question. Facebook doesn't replace face time. It enhances it. It's a way to keep in touch and now and then generate enough of a poke to give people an insight into when they should be contacting you in person to see how you're doing, or to catch up with you when you're in the neighborhood despite time having moved you far apart, or as a gentle reminder that you should be getting together because their kids seem older than the last time you saw them. If it reduces face time at all, it's with your family when you're busy facebooking instead of spending time together, and then it's just one of a number of equivalent distractions, not a sole culprit.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Cracker
For a bit of fun reading, go check out Pharyngula's post about a guy trying to sneak a communion wafer out of a mass (characterized by some as a kidnapping). It had so many comments (and that didn't include the email and death threats) that he had to cut it off at 1000 and start a new thread.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Blogoversary
In a sort of general way, within a week or so, it's the third year since I started Nod To Nothing. An anniversary. That's a lot of writing. I think the positives are generally that it forces me to think about what it is I've done in the past and change my modus operandi a bit from year to year. While that's not the only reason I do things like RAGBRAI, it contributes. And I meet some fun people who talk to me and trade ideas and interests, even if they don't invite me to their housewarming barbeques. Ahem. You know who you are. And I get to keep up on the day-to-day, or maybe week-to-week is more accurate, happenings of my friends and family, which is a vast improvement over the old snail mail days. And my daughter will have rock solid proof of the things I did as her parent, evidence I sadly lack on my own parents who made me play in cabinets, gave me old pipes and spools as playthings, encouraged me to swim in the ditch at backwater duplexes, and engaged in slave labor by making me glean potatoes and/or tomatoes. All I really have visual proof of is that they dressed me up as a clown.
2007:
1,312 posts since I started, 117,400 hits since the beginning (about 80,000 in 2007) - and I still have blogger friends I talk to on a regular basis. A few more than before, even. I think my hits will drop off a bit though as I transition some of my photos from my old ISP to Flickr. Google images searches hitting my blog accounted for quite a few hits. Easter Penis alone (bottom of the post) seems to account for 17 hits a day. And cuckolding generates quite a bit of interest, even though it really has nothing to do with me other than my penchant to comment on Dan Savage.
Snip from 2006:
"902 posts, over 36,000 hits since I started counting (18,000 in 2005, a little overy 16,000 so far this year and averaging about 2400 a month), and a bunch of blogger friends I like to talk to on a semi-regular basis. Seems respectable, though I obviously don't rate as much over two years as a clever picture on Worth rates in a day. But my value isn't as obvious as the picture - I'm more of an acquired habit."
2007:
1,312 posts since I started, 117,400 hits since the beginning (about 80,000 in 2007) - and I still have blogger friends I talk to on a regular basis. A few more than before, even. I think my hits will drop off a bit though as I transition some of my photos from my old ISP to Flickr. Google images searches hitting my blog accounted for quite a few hits. Easter Penis alone (bottom of the post) seems to account for 17 hits a day. And cuckolding generates quite a bit of interest, even though it really has nothing to do with me other than my penchant to comment on Dan Savage.
Snip from 2006:
"902 posts, over 36,000 hits since I started counting (18,000 in 2005, a little overy 16,000 so far this year and averaging about 2400 a month), and a bunch of blogger friends I like to talk to on a semi-regular basis. Seems respectable, though I obviously don't rate as much over two years as a clever picture on Worth rates in a day. But my value isn't as obvious as the picture - I'm more of an acquired habit."
Saturday, July 21, 2007
PT-141
I won a Flak Radio (mp3 - here's their audio feed) contest to unofficially name a nasal sex spray. Flak Radio is a web-radio show hosted in the area, so in a few weeks, I'm supposed to go on the show and share my ill-gotten gains (there's controversy over at The Deets!) with Taylor Carik and James Norton - a bottle of Reyka, lava rock-filtered vodka. It's not a trip to Iceland with nine of my closest friends (Reyka's current promotion), but I didn't have to out the email addresses of nine of my closest friends either, so it sort of balances out.
Pooteewheet seems very amused.
Pooteewheet seems very amused.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
How to View All Your Posts
I learned this from Chris Crowhurst's Brit Blog - how to view all your blogger posts at once. Note, you can just change the number portion to adjust, and you may time out on your pictures, but just refresh once or twice while your browser caches and you should get everything.
http://nodtonothing.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000
http://nodtonothing.blogspot.com/search?max-results=1000
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Et al.
If you're not a regular reader of my sister, I recommend at least this post. I fail to see how she can hold me responsible for her terror of haunted houses when she terrorizes my niece by making her sit on the laps of strange fat men. Big brothers are supposed to be sort of jerks now and then...mothers are a different story.
Speaking of Christmasy things...I've been reading and enjoying this blog by J-Money of North Carolina lately, who I found via Planet Dan's comments. In particuar, I was highly amused about this post about a pastry, this post with a link to the New Kids on the Block singing Funky Funky Christmas (that's the Christmasy part - sister LissyJo, referenced earlier, was a huge NKotB fan), and this post because my friend Mean Mr. Mustard's boss could be substituted into the picture and I'd think it was just as funny, if not funnier.
Speaking of Christmasy things...I've been reading and enjoying this blog by J-Money of North Carolina lately, who I found via Planet Dan's comments. In particuar, I was highly amused about this post about a pastry, this post with a link to the New Kids on the Block singing Funky Funky Christmas (that's the Christmasy part - sister LissyJo, referenced earlier, was a huge NKotB fan), and this post because my friend Mean Mr. Mustard's boss could be substituted into the picture and I'd think it was just as funny, if not funnier.
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