East of the Sun, West of the Moon

It must be that time of the year already again, here’s yet another typing speed test:

Wheeee! Next!

An ocean of video clips as found on YouTube and Google Video. Almost too many.

• Not so good is that every other profile page has music embedded and initially I couldn’t seem to convince the myspace account settings that I really don’t want those to automatically play. Ugh!
• Not so good is that the profile pages are a throw-back to webpages of 5-10 years ago, but with double the (browser lagging) content.
• Good is that MySpace appears to make an effort to prevent spamming. I can’t write in (group) forums yet for instance, because my account is less than a week old.
• Not so good (from my perspective) is that it encourages ugly hacks to get customized CSS in place, instead of just giving in and providing a single look’n'feel entry for the experts to play with. What happens now is that you can enter HTML/DHTML/CSS bits in other fields and users dump it there so it’s loaded halfway the page instead of at the beginning. Ugh.
• Good is that MySpace has a private profile option for the younger kids.

I’m currently vaguely looking around MySpace; You know, where all the cool kids hang out these days, or something.

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone reading here is out there too and wouldn’t mind extending their network some more?

Finally deleted my Friendster profile, since it had been collecting dust for at least two years and all I was getting was the occasional nudge email from the site itself.

Then I wandered over to Orkut, which I had recently unlocked by finally associating my Orkut account with one of my Gmail accounts, actually intending to do the same thing there. Instead, I ended up updating my profile a little bit and weeding out the list of communities, deleting the ones that are either overrun by the Brazilian crowd (which now accounts for about 73% of the population, the US is a measly 11%) or haven’t had any English-language activity in a year or so. That made the list a bit more manageable and increases the likelyhood of me occasionally dropping by to see if anything interesting has happened.

Meanwhile over at the DGD Twiki there was another flood of bot-registrations to clean up. Must really get around to it to install a captcha of sorts in its registration process, to slow them down for a while!

Someone noticed my relative absence and gave me a nudge. So just to assure anyone else who doesn’t automatically ditch dinosaurs and still reads this: I’m still here, just… busy. Shocking, I know.

On days like this I quite like Buy.com:

• I ordered two items yesterday (January 25th).
• Picked the budget shipping option (free shipping) because I’m not in desperate need for them, just want to have them so I can move along on some (personal) project in the long run.
• Budget shipping means 7-9 (business) days.
• I check the FedEx order tracking this morning: Wow! It’s on the vehicle for delivery!

I guess it helps that it was shipped from Texas, which is a pretty straight line up to get here.

Update: It’s been delivered now, so it wasn’t some bizarre fluke in their webbased tracking service.

This sums up pretty nicely what I don’t miss about having office meetings:

A study conducted by the University of Minnesota found that the amount and length of meetings correlate with “negative effects” (burnout, anxiety, and depression) on its participants.

Brainstorm sessions on the other hand can be very useful, but can, assuming all participants are decent typists, be just as easily done online. Sometimes it’s actually better, if that means that they are forced to consider what they’re about to contribute before they hit enter.

Josh’s rant reminds me of how it amazes me every time again when after one night of snow they cancel schools for a snow day. You would think they would be better prepared, that they check the weather channel or some other vaguely sane forecast like other people.

Actually, so far we haven’t had one yet while the previous couple of years it’s happened after the first snow of the season and after that only if there is a lot of snow. It’s as if they needed that first snow to remind themselves “Oh, this is what it’s like, whoa” and then after that they can handle it again. You would almost think I live in Georgia or something.

On the one hand I don’t care one way or another what it’s called, it’s a money-wasting fest and very few people stand still to pay attention to the (more recent) Christian origins of today, they just want to open their presents, watch the game, etc.

On the other hand I don’t care one way or another what it’s called, I’ve long since stopped believing in any god, Christian or otherwise, so whatever it’s called, I’m not all that interested.

On the… third hand I don’t care one way or another what it’s called, it’s my birthday but after moving to the U.S. I’ve given up on celebrating it on the actual day and am opening gifts together with my father-in-law now on the 28^th to avoid being overwhelmed by the aforementioned gift-fest. Sure, it coincided with Christmas just as much when I was still in the Netherlands but as the whole gift-giving there was at that point still mostly concentrated around December 5 (Sinterklaas or Sint Nicolaas, look it up) that didn’t get in the way nearly so much.

All that side… Merry Christmas, happy holidays, etc. Hope you enjoy visiting your friends or relatives if you do and if not, hope you get some well-deserved peace and quiet.