insert randomness here
Ruari Ann Robinson
Born: April 30, 2009
Weight: 7lbs 9oz
Height: 20 1/2 inches
Hair: Red
Eyes: Blue
Our daughter is one beautiful little girl. She sleeps well and doesn’t fuss much. Mom is recovering quite nicely. Olie is digging her. The dog is confused.
Me? Tired.
Now to catch up on some work and pretend that I’m back in the real world.
In case you haven’t been following the CPSIA uproar, start here at Overlawyered for commentary and links, links, links!
In the meantime, here was a funny I came across from a comment by Heather Idoni on this post .
In the town of Beddubble, far out on the Moor,
there lived a small tot, who was not more than four.
Little Annabelle Ruth (her close friends would recall)
had swallowed the string off a dilly-dunk ball.
And then in the Spring of two thousand and one,
she died of the thing that the string must have done.
They were sure of this fact, though the details were thin –
“Something HAS to be done, we have GOT to begin!”
Those dilly-dunk balls that tots spin on a string
are quite dangerous toys — What a horrible thing!
Rant.
What do you do if a client starts staring at the forest instead of the trees?
How frustuating!
When I recently placed a client inside a framework that would ease their content input I was slapped on the back for the simple sophistication that the CMS provided. Weeks later I’m being slapped in the face for how the site “feels”. This despite meager input of new content from the client. Not my content, their content.
It seems web gurus are always faced with this dilemna. The only analogy I can think of is providing a service that builds the car, the car lot, the advertising, the sales staff, the financiers, the HR, the management, and even the cleaing ladies to someone who want to call themselves a car dealership.
I have a desire to shred the NDA. I think a judge would back me on that.
Do or do not. There is no try.
Master Yoda.
Well the contractors have finally finished. Insulation, drywall, mudding, and electrical are complete.
This weekend’s homework assignment will be to paint, paint, paint.
Carpet should be installed next week. God willing.
Then, at last, the move in.
To see more about this project check out these past posts:
For those who aren’t even Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans you may want to tune in to the Bucs-Raiders games today. Sure there are playoff implications: if the Bucs win and the Cowboys lose, the Bucs go to the playoffs as a wildcard.
But more importantly than that is the fact that it will be Monte Kiffen’s last game as a Bucs coach. This one man revolutionized modern defensive strategies in the NFL with his signature Tampa 2 defense now common throughout the league. Next year he will be joining his son, Lane, at the University of Tennessee in hopes of undoing the losing tradition of recent times thanks to Fatboy Fulmer.
The same old orangesicle Bucs of the past were replaced by probably one of the strongest core of coaches with Tony Dungy at the helm. Since then several defensive assistant coaches have gone on to bigger and better things including head coaching positions.
But since Dungy could not string together the perfect season, the Glazers replaced him with Little Napoleon himself – Jon Gruden. Yes in his first year he won the Super Bowl but with Dungy’s team. (For all you Gruden trolls out there it’s finally time to admit that fact.) But since that glorious season the Bucs have struggled on and off. Last year being a good example of stumbling in to the playoffs only to get smacked around by the eventual SB Champ NY Giants. Gruden was rewarded with a contract extension.
Little Napoleon is his own, selfish, self-righteous man. An ego-maniac who has single-handedly transformed the Bucs into a team I no longer recognize. Now with the departure of Kiffen, the possible retirement of Brooks and Barber, and the ascension of the young and inexperienced Raheem Morris to defensive coordinator the transformation of my once beloved team will be complete.
Who’s to blame? The absentee Glazers only interested in ManU asses-in-seats figures? Maybe. The fans willing to put up with Little Napoleon in hopes that one day we would have that impressive offense he had under Gannon in Oakland? Maybe. Allen the puppet GM? Maybe.
My vote is for the tantrum-thrower. The excuse-maker. The screamer. The snarler. The berserker.
Hell, even Napoleon’s own people eventually exiled him.
I think I’d like to see Gruden on Elba, too.
My favorite Christmas song. What’s yours?
The Fairytale of New York – The Pogues featuring Kristy MacColl.
It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you
Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I’ve got a feeling
This year’s for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true
They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me
You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night
The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing “Galway Bay”
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day
You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it’s our last
I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you
Jeff at Yellow Dog is thinking about his books.
Thanks to TiVo and the flexibility of running my own business I’ve actually had more time to read these past several months. It has been a joy I have missed since, oh, college.
Which brings me to the collecting meme put forth by Jeff.
In college, I collected texts I thought were meaningful and would be of use for the rest of my life. I think I own a half dozen now and donated the rest. But I loved Strozier Library, Bill’s Bookstore and the Paperback Rack. Then a trip to NYC in 1997 brought me to The Strand, the best bookstore in the world. That’s when I realized maybe I loved centers of book exchange rather than the mite infested tomes themselves.
Post-college, pre-career, I took a job at Cosmic Cat Books — Tallahassee’s premier comic book and games shop. I was hired because I wasn’t a fanboy (a zealous collector of sorts). The fanboys who applied for the job were envious. What little I did know about comics dated back to the Secret Wars of the 80s. But I knew how a business was run.
I was amazed by the passion comics brought out in people and the amount of money they were willing to hand over for this emotional exchange. I licked my chops when a customer would stare over the counter at that alternate chromium cover of Generation X No. 1. Why? Because something worthless to me could be so valuable to someone else. Then again, the typical fanboy mocked my love affairs with Peter Bagge, Evan Dorkin, Neil Gaiman and other cape-less, alt-comic writers. After three years of underemployment, I managed to collect a whopping 3/4 of a long box of comics that I considered pretty darn valueless. It got lost during one of my many moves. I don’t care what those comics would have been worth today.
At the same time I was DJing at various clubs and music was valuable to me, especially if it came on a 12″. Milk crate after milk crate. CD organizer after CD organizer. The sheer weight of the collection was impressive. Then clubbing became passe and mp3s were it. Another couple of moves and I unburdened myself from the weight. mp3s were portable AND steal-able. Soon they too lost their value. Now instead of stealing the intellectual property of others I purchase my music through iTunes or Amazon but on very rare occasion. One value gained, another lost.
My computer career started in 1998. I started collecting 500 page manuals about software that would be obsolete every six months. A new edition of the manual is printed. I’m forced to buy and collect again. Remember, this was before the sharing of web 2.0. So no blogs, wikis, etc. Just messageboards that were clunky and support knowledgebases that were barely indexed and thus searchable. Luckily, the Net evolved rendering print, dead. The manuals were donated to Goodwill. It always made me feel guilty not because I was parting ways with these books but because so poor soul might buy one of these useless door stops for a buck.
I also collected more and more computer junk. Random hard drives, sticks of RAM, enough cables to hang a regiment. Stacks of CD-ROMs filled with various pieces of software and distros of Linux. Then in 2001, Mac OS X. Bought a used Mac and stuck with it. Then an iBook I still have (though I may be finally selling). And now a new iMac. Three computers in 8 years is actually a lowly number for a computer geek. The parts are fewer now. The cables…well, they’re still around for some reason. But the clutter isn’t what it used to be.
The fetish du jour? I don’t know if I trully have one. Maybe what I value is the intangible and everything else is junk.
50 mp3 albums for $5.00 each over at Amazon. Don’t know how long it’s going to last. Picked up…
Portishead – Third. Damn, it’s been 10 years since Dummy?!
Al Green – Lay It Down. Really frickin good for a 62 year old legend.
Beck – Modern Guilt. Produced by Danger Mouse/Gnarles Barkley’s Brian Burton.
Ra Ra Riot – The Rhumb Line. Took a stab at this debut full length release. Happy so far.
Lot’s of others but I limited myself to $20.00 and less stabbing (despite the price).
Of course, DRM-free Amazon rocks.
Gen Yers still lack discernment, percipience and skepticism. To wit…
Mo noted this evening that many of her students were using Blackle by Hype Heap Media as their search engine. Why? Supposedly because it is the “energy saving search engine” and saving teh [sic] planet is like cool and stuff.
If these little mush-minds actually did some fact checking they would see Blackle is bunk and since Blackle is powered by Google Custom Search and runs Google AdSense ads, every click on an ad goes into Heap Media’s pockets. Pure marketing to the stoopid.
For some reason this anecdote reminded me of the Dead Milkmen’s “Instant Club Hit (You’ll Dance To Anything)” lyrics:
You’ll dance to anything by any bunch of stupid Europeans who come over
here with their big hairdoos bent on taking OUR money instead of giving
your cash, where it belongs, to a decent American artist like myself!
Hey Mike if this post is incoherent it’s because I’ve been suffering from the plague for the past ten days. So bite me.
What I’m Reading
