Saturday, June 04, 2005
Baseball thought
I never write about baseball, and I may never write about it again after this entry, and you might already be skipping this one just in case. So I'll try to be brief, and this isn't actually about any specific baseball team or player. My thought is actually about the hitting with "Runners in Scoring Position" issue, henceforth to be abbreviated to RiSP.
RiSP simply means you are batting with a baserunner on second and/or third base, where they are, in theory, in scoring position; I.E. they'll get to home plate ahead of a throw if the batter gets a hit. Hits in that situation are very useful, since obviously enough, the object of baseball is to score more runs than the other team scores. There may also be a runner on first, but that's not considered "scoring position" since they can't score from there unless the batter hits a double or triple or homerun. The logic seems to be that a batter can be expected to stroke a single with a RiSP, but that more than that is luck.
Anyway, the situation stuck in my mind since the batter, Dave Roberts, was doing very well with RiSP this season, and he was 12 for 25 or something like that. In the bit of game I saw, he came up with men on first and third and no one out, and got a hit. Unfortunately, it was a little bouncing bunt type thing that just crawled past the pitcher. Roberts reached first on it, the man on first went to second, but the man on third did not head for home, since he couldn't be sure the pitcher wouldn't get to the hit and throw him out at home plate.
My question was, does that count as a hit and a success with RiSP? I mean yeah, technically it's a hit, and there was a runner on third, IE in scoring position... but he didn't score! He wasn't out, and Roberts kept the inning going, but should a batter be credited with a hit and success in that situation when the runner didn't actually score? After all, the whole reason they keep track (unofficially or otherwise) of hitting with RiSP is because it's assumed said runners will score if there's a hit.
The whole record keeping is suspect anyway, since in theory you could bat ten times with a man on third and less than two outs, hit a sacrifice fly nine times, strike out the other time, and on the year you'd be 0-1 with 9 RBIs when batting with RiSP. And it's clearly a pretty janky stat, when you take it to that extreme. Of course most of them are.
Customer Service, or not...
I've mentioned this in past blogs, but one large difference between myself and my dad is our expectations for customer service. Perhaps it's a generational thing, or perhaps it stems from my relatively recent immersion in a service sector job at the stadium here in San Diego, but I have absolutely no expectations of decent service at all. I know how disaffected and dumb and bored service workers are, and if my order comes up remotely like what I wanted and it's still sort of hot and there aren't any obvious traces of spittle in it, I'm satisfied. Dad, on the other hand, actually expects people to do a good job, and even worse, to care.
So on his second day in the hospital, when he was at last able to take solid food and wanted to discontinue the liquid diet he'd been stuck on, he talked to the nurse around 11am, and said he'd like a solid lunch and some sort of soup. She said she'd get on it and wandered back to the nurses' station. Five minutes later dad wanted some more ice chips to suck/crunch on, and sent me down to get them. When I arrived the nurse we'd talked to earlier was just leaving in a coat, and when I asked what kind of soup they'd had available (dad wanted something light; vegetable or chicken, rather than cream or beef) she had completely forgotten about ordering his lunch and was on her way to get her own. To her credit she stopped and called down to the kitchen and put in his order before going to get her own food, and I was there for another hour or so before heading off to get my own lunch and to do some yard work at dad's house.
When I returned in the evening, around 6, dad was eating and looking exasperated. His food had just arrived, he said, 6+ hours after it had been ordered, and of course they sent him some sort of beef stock soup. It had been a huge ordeal too, with the kitchen calling up to his room saying he was still in the computer on a liquid diet, not a solid one, and the nurse insisting he wanted solid with soup, and dad even got on the phone at some point and told them what he wanted. That happened around 1pm, and then there were more calls around 2:30pm, and then he finally got "lunch" at nearly 5:30. My mom (dad's ex) was even there some during the afternoon, and during the interminable wait for soup she said she'd just go down to the cafeteria and buy some... and of course the cafeteria had closed 20 minutes before she got there.) On top of that, moments after he finished eating his late soup, it another nurse came in with a dinner platter, with chicken and some sort of creamy pasta. Food he had no room for and didn't want anyway.
I mention this all because of our reactions to it. That's exactly the sort of thing I expect from hospital food, or really from any place where you don't actually see them make the food right in front of you. You'll wait, they'll screw up your order, and the person who brings it to you will have had nothing to do with the actual preparation of the food, and will be no one you can productively complain to. Dad complains anyway, while trying to be nice about it, out of some misguided impressing that anyone actually gives a damn.
They don't. They really couldn't care less. Trust me; I worked at the stadium for ten years and I never once saw a single employee there actually give a fuck about anything any customer complained about. Complaints were dealt with purely on a "Will I get fired for this?" basis, or a "how much of my time will dealing with this take. basis. I fell into the later category,
most of the time, since I was selling poison, on commission, with a very limited time frame to sell it in. Baseball and football games only last so long, after all, and people mostly stop buying grossly-overpriced sweets towards the last quarter of the event. So while I didn't really care if their $3.50 spoonful of ice cream was the right flavor or temperature, any time I spent standing there talking to them about it was costing me sales and money. It was quicker for me to simply give them a new one and then browbeat my stand manager into refunding me for the bad one than it was to argue with the customer in the first place.
I should also mention how frivilous most of the customer complaints were. I was understanding when people got a bug in their cotton candy (a not uncommon experience, given how sticky the stuff is and how many bugs flew around the stadium and the cotton candy spinning area) or when their ice cream was completely melted or something like that. But when they bought a water from a guy walking around in the hot sun, and it wasn't quite ice cold, or when they wanted a blue cotton candy and we only had pink left, I was much more of the "Whatever." reaction.
And those were people with
real complaints; I couldn't even tell you how many dozens of times someone came up to me with about one bite/sip left of their pizza/cotton candy/ice cream/beer/etc and said that it wasn't any good and that they wanted their money back. The obvious, "Well, you seem to have been able to force 95% of it down your pie hole." comment was always a temptation. Particularly rude/drunk guys usually tried the pizza one, and if I were really in a hurry I'd just say, "No. You ate it already." and run off. By the time their beer-slowed brain processed my comment I'd be long gone, and walking down to the pizza stand was way too much work for them to bother with. I was occasionally tempted to require them to return the pizza, ideally into the nearest trash can, but that probably wouldn't have gone over very well either.
Background check aside, the typical customer service continued the next day, when dad was being discharged. He needed a medical chair thingie, one that he could sit down on in a half-crouch with sturdy arm rests, and in the morning the hospital said they'd get him one before he left that afternoon. Lunchtime came and no chair, and then when he was being discharged and ferried home around 3pm they said they'd have it delivered and promised it would be there by 7pm. I wasn't actually there to hear this proclamation, but if I had been I would have laughed out loud. "Of course it will be delivered at 7pm on a Friday night." I thought when I heard it, and figured dad would be lucky to get it by Monday, by which time he probably wouldn't even need it anymore.
Mom and the stepdad came over for dinner Friday, and we all had pizza and salad out on the back patio and enjoyed ourselves. When they were leaving, after watching most of
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow on dad's glorious HD TV, dad asked me to turn on the font light and see if there was a card or failed delivery notice or something like that, from the medical supply. I managed not to laugh aloud, and even went and looked to humor him.
It arrived Saturday around noon, and seems to be fine. But of course dad's got to mention how they promised him it would be here Friday evening, and this gets the delivery guy defensive and he starts digging out invoices showing that he only picked it up this morning, etc. Meanwhile I'm standing there praying to my non-existent god that it would end soon so I could carry the thing into his bedroom and take off the plastic wrap and get it operational. The delivery guy doesn't care, he had nothing to do with the time frame, the hospital delayed, etc. And even if he did, what good will it do to complain? He'll just be annoyed and go even slower the rest of the day to get even, and he hates his shitty job anyway. You might as well complain about the smell to a manure salesman.
The customer service idiocy was capped off Friday evening, when dad rode home from the hospital with a friend while I was dispatched to the CostCo pharmacy to get his pain killer prescription filled. The hospital didn't call it over; they just gave us a piece of paper with the doctor's writing on it, which was the first mistake. I handed in the card when I got there and they told me it would be a 45-60 minute wait. If it had been called in it would have been ready when I got there.
The real fun began 45-60 minutes later, when I returned and waited in line to pick up the pills, only to be told that they couldn't fill the prescription since the "date" slot on the prescription card hadn't been filled in. So they'd faxed the document over ot the hospital and were waiting for it to come back completed. Now realize that the prescription had been written maybe 2 hours earlier, and that anyone at all could have just written in 6/3/05 in one second, and all would have been well. I said, "Give it here and I'll put in the date." but of course that's not allowed. Procedures must be followed. I suppose they have rules about that sort of thing, but think of the logic there; say I'm some junkie faking my way to a prescription for this non-narcotic, non-additive pain killer that's costing me a whole $1.69 with my dad's medical plan... how likely am I to screw up the form and leave the date blank, when I know that's required? It's obviously a mistake that's only going to be made by an honest customer who never even looked at the form, and given that the pills didn't even cost two bucks... why bother with faxing and the hospital and all of that?
They did though, since thinking is hard, and dad had to wait until Saturday morning for me to drive over and get his pills.
The gist of all this is that I think it's quaint that dad actually expects better, and it's interesting that I get annoyed by it when it's obviously stupid, but not when it's just incompetent. I guess I expect people behind the scenes to be slow and stupid, but hope that when given a very simple choice or task, like writing in the date on a prescription to enable it to be filled promptly, I feel they should pass the idiot test. I'm as naive and wishful in that way as dad is about other things, I guess.
Overall, is it worse that he still expects decent service, or that I no longer do? Do you prefer cynicism or optimism?
Friday, June 03, 2005
Interneting for Fun and Not-Fun
My dad worked for a major computer company for years and years, so it shouldn't be surprising that he has integrated the Internet into his daily life. What is surprising, to me at least, is how he’s gone about doing so. He doesn't blog, or email that much, or read blogs, or surf very much, or game at all, or anything like that. No, what Dad does is work.
He pays his bills online, he buys things, he tracks his investments, he uses eBay, he makes airline reservations, and so on. All practical things, all useful things, and none of them exactly fun things. This isn't bad, and in fact it's commendable, especially as compared to my ability to sit online for twelve hours without ever once doing anything even remotely productive. It's just interesting that he's so task-oriented and efficient online, when he's online about 1% as often as I am. I was a relatively early adapter too; spending many hours a day online back in the late 80s and then through the 90s; I've had broadband for nearly a decade, leaping on as soon as cable modems became available/affordable, and I've seen the Internet grow by leaps and bounds. If I'd started my own site way back then, rather than working on a gaming site owned by someone else for more than six years before doing this site, I'd have an impressively-aged copyright date. Hell, I've been doing this site for more than three years now, and that makes BlackChampagne.com relatively ancient, in Internet time.
My point though, is that it's ironic that I have been online so much more than my dad, and for so much longer, and yet he does far more real life things on it. I buy airline tickets online, and occasionally order something from amazon.com , but that's about it. Most of my online activities are purely mental, as I read things, learn things, play games, write blog posts, and so on. I suppose you could say that those things have made me grow as a person and have shaped my intellectual state (such as it is) but why can't I do fun stuff and informative stuff while also being productive? More specifically, why don't I want to use the Internet to replace real life activities I find tedious? I hate writing checks and opening bills, so why haven't I migrated those activities to online bill paying? I hate going out and shopping and browsing and talking to idiot sales people, so why don't I order more stuff online? It is a mystery.
(One cool thing about online bill paying, which dad showed me how to do in case I had to do it for him if his hospital stay had dragged on, is that his bank guarantees payment once he’s made it through their bill paying service. So when their computer somehow screwed up one of his credit card payments some months ago, and he had electronic proof that he'd paid the bill on time, the bank took care of issuing another check, canceling the first one, and they even covered the late fees and interest. Good luck trying to get that sort of service from the postal service, eh?)
The other side of this odd coin is that Dad hardly uses the Internet for anything I use it for. He reads some news and sports info online, but he’s basically old school about that sort of thing. He prefers newspapers and magazines and TV for his entertainment and information, and just uses the Internet for a few things, and then turns off the computer. He has researched a few hobbies online, but he's very practical about it and mostly just looks for cheap places to buy stuff he likes, or reads a bit about it and feels happy with that. I've never seen him using Google just to follow links and gain info for fun, or wind up reading web pages for hours as he follows one interest after another. (You know, the sort of bullshit surfing that led quite a few of you to this page in the first place.) It's weird, since Dad is a huge expert on numerous things. Wine, golf, some types of art and food, and more. He just got that information from real people, or from books. He reads a ton too, but mostly novels, and that's understandable, given the generally-execrable quality of literature online. *
cough*
If there's any logic to this, it's that we both still do what we started off doing online. I was online all the time back when there wasn't anything productive online. There weren't any financial services online, and while you could get sports info or follow the stock ticker, the online versions of those things were far from high quality. You could read weird things written by weird people, or play games, or email your ass off, or waste many hours with random surfing, though. In fact it was pretty much mandatory.
When dad started using the Internet regularly, it was much more organized and there were lots of useful things. Banks, online stores, bill paying options, and so forth. He’d long since grown set in his ways of reading the news and gaining info about sports and such, so he didn't really change that with the Internet. He got on to be productive and efficient and adult, and that’s what he did, and when he’s done that he gets offline.
These are not the only two ways to be online, of course. Malaya is somewhat like me, in that she's perfectly capable of spending many hours online just surfing and having fun and playing games and such. However she also uses the Internet quite a bit for maps and directions and all the sorts of things you used to have to actually talk to people to learn. She'd probably do a lot more of the stuff dad does, except that she doesn't trust the security of it, and would sooner throw out her old checks and bank statements without shredding them into confetti than she would give her credit card or bank account to any business or service online. She also uses the Internet as a data mine far more than anyone else I've ever known, and that's because she loves learning new stuff, and while books are fine, there are infinite sources online, and most of them are free.
I don't know enough about Malaya’s pre-Internet information-gathering and other behaviors to compare how she's changed or substituted with the aid of the Internet, but I never said this was a comprehensive survey or anything, now did I? With any luck she'll hop in on the comments and enlighten us all.
Home dark home
So here I sit, squirreled away in my old bedroom, typing and half asleep and strongly considering an early bedtime. Dad's home from the hospital, which is good, but he also wanted to go to bed at 9pm after not sleeping much last night, and he wanted to keep his door open and a fan blowing out the window in the spare bedroom to keep the air circulating. That's also good, except that it forced me in here and forced the door closed and forced me to be quiet, which immediately caused me to become restless.
Dad improved in record time, going from nauseated and weak and miserable and over-medicated to bored and healthy and hungry and ready to leave in less than a day. Fortunately, the doctor agreed and they released him Friday afternoon befire his restless pacing and constant nurse conversation caused problems. I drove over to the hospital for my second visit of the day, and helped pack up all of his stuff while we waited for a sedan-driving friend of his to arrive. Dad's car is sporty, and fun to drive, as I can well-attest after the past few days, but it's got deep bucket seats, and is not at all the thing for a person fresh off of lower back surgery.
Dad's been talking about getting a new car lately, and hinting about giving or selling me his old one (though it's still newer and much nicer than mine), but he doesn't seem real inclined to go forth and do that immediately, just on account of his back. I had vague thoughts of going with him to get something reasonably fun to drive but without cockpit seats, and then driving his car back up to SF in a few days, but there's no way that's going to happen, with him hoping to be back to driving his own car in a couple of weeks, and planning to rent something until then.
Car bullshit aside, Dad's walking better now than he was before the surgery, and once he's healed up he should be back to playing golf and riding his bike and all sorts of stuff; he's far from being old and decrepit. In the meantime, I'm doing just about everything around here, since the doctor told him not to lift anything heavier than five pounds for several weeks. It's worse than that too, if you can imagine, since it's not just lifting, it's straining in any way. I was going around the house, spraying silicone lubricant on window frames and such today, since leaning over a windowsill and tugging sideways on a heavy sheet of glass actually requires quite a bit of effort, when you think about it. Much more than picking up a stack of plates, for instance.
He's a reasonable man, thankfully, and not one of those old timers who think that everyone should go to bed and get up whenever they do. I can't sleep late here since my room gets bright at dawn and I wake up at 6, doze for 20 minutes, roll over, sleep for half an hour, cover my head and nod off for another fifteen minutes, etc. But at least I've got the option, rather than having some maniacal host who comes storming in to unplug my computer at 10pm and demands I get up and join him as he digs for nightcrawlers at dawn.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
The smell of sickness
Another day and another day spent in the hospital. Dad's improving, thankfully, and after a morning spent spacing out on whatever the latest medication he's proven allergic to, he came down a bit in the afternoon and early evening and was able to keep his jello down. I was there from 10 - 2:30 or so, before leaving to get a late lunch and chop back here to water the plants and get the mail and other such minor household tasks. I've been surfing a bit for the past hour, and now I must gather things and head back to the hospital again. I'll likely be there until nearly 8, when visiting hours end, at which point I'll head over to mom's house and have dinner and play with her cats and get back here just in time to go to bed to get up semi early to head back over to the hospital Friday.
Yes, it's almost as much fun as it sounds.
The good news is that dad might be discharged Friday evening, if he keeps improving, and once he's home I'll be on call here, but not as regularly. Plus I'll have my laptop running and should be able to get some work done in between bringing him liquids and helping him get out of bed and such. Whee!
It's not really all that bad, and I don't mind taking care of him after all he's done for me over the years... but I can safely say I would not be a good nurse; money isn't enough to make me want to do this sort of thing.
And the hospital doesn't really smell that bad, though the tottering and infirm figures in their billowing gowns sort of give me the creeps. Fortunately I will remain forever 29 and toned of muscle, so there's no need to worry about anything like that.
AOhelL
One last thing before I get to an early bed so I can get up and go to the hospital again... I'm not real happy with the look of this temp blog either, but it was the least loathesome of the various templates available on short notice, and since I set this up in just an hour or so late Monday night, knowing I'd be off to the airport again Tuesday morning, I didn't worry about appearance that much. I did edit the template a bit to add the temp blog notice on the right, but thought that I'd be doing more tweaking with the look once I had time in San Diego.
Unfortunately, as the last post spelled out in rather tedious detail, I've had virtually zero computer time thus far here, and I don't know when that will be changing. I'm supposed to be spending my computer time here editing my last chapter anyway, so you'll probably have to put up with this look for the duration of my week here. I should have some more content posts tomorrow, at least. I wrote some on the laptop last night, but tonight I'm pecking away on my dad's old standard keyboard, and entering these words directly into the blogger posting script and not bothering with much/any links or HTML stuff since his computer set up and especially the AOL browser is such a complete piece of shit that I just can't stand surfing with it.
Huge top and bottom tabs and bars and control panels, 800x600 resolution on a 17" monitor forcing me to side to side scroll, crappy old mouse without side click buttons for surfing, none of my bookmarks, and weird anti-virus and pop up blocking software that has kept me from accessing about 1/4 of the sites I've tried to hit. I can see why some people don't surf much; it's just not worth the trouble with such technical obstacles, and that's not even mentioning the viruses and spyware dad's computer gets nailed by on a regular basis.
Then again, perhaps I should inflict just this sort of technology upon myself at home; it couldn't help but force me to spend more time writing. Or perhaps learning to use the abacus.
Busy sucks
It's bedtime Wednesday night, my 2nd day here, and counting the last 30 minutes I've been online about 40 minutes since I arrived in San Diego. Hence the lack of blogging, despite this shiny new blog anywhere/anytime thingie.
I haven't been that miserable, oddly enough. Tuesday I arrived in the early afternoon and spent much of the rest of the day talking with dad about his medical issues, legal stuff, financial stuff, and so on. I also got to do lots of chores around the house; basically all the stuff that needed doing yet hadn't been done lately due to his hurting back and impending back surgery. Cutting overgrown plants, watering the yard, moving heavy objects around the house, and so on. We then went out for a quick dinner and stopped by mom's house for a while after that before going to bed as early as possible, due to his absurd 4am wake up time Wednesday morning.
We actually got up then, and were at the hospital by 5 and he was off to anasthesia by 6:15 and under the knife an hour after that. I didn't stay around then, returning to dad's place to go back to bed. I woke up at 10, went back to the hospital, waited 2 hours until his surgery ended, talked to the surgeon (who said everything was fine), drove over to mom's for lunch and talk and play with her now 9-month old kittens, and then back to the hospital around 3... and didn't leave there until nearly 8.
Dad was in a room, but was still super groggy and sleepy, plus he was sick from the drugs and couldn't eat or even drink anything yet. And he kept dozing off, waking up and horking up icky yellow ooze, and so on... for like 4 hours. On the bright side, I got through about 300 more pages of Martin's Game of Thrones, and I'm really enjoying it. Even in 15 minute bursts, with constant interruptions by a dozing father and intruding nurses.
When dad finally started to feel better visiting hours were almost over and I was well past hungry, so I bid him good night and took off. After a couple of quick errands I dined with mom and the stepdad, enjoyed the food and company, went for a several mile after dinner walk with mom, played with the cats some more and showed her some kali stuff, and got back here at 11, just in time for a quick shower and a quick phone conversation with Malaya, during which she asked why I had set up this new blog if I wasn't going to make any damn updates on it.
Which takes me right back to where I began.
Monday, May 30, 2005
Best Book News Ever
http://www.georgerrmartin.com/nextbook.htmlAs Malaya said, "Boo yah!"
Conveniently enough, I finally started re-reading the first three books in the series on the flight home from Chicago, and I hope to work my way through at least book one while in San Diego, all the better to refresh my memory for the forthcoming books 4 and 4.1. (Read Martin's post for details.)
Chicago Wedding Fun
I'll blog about the Chicago trip and my friend's wedding in more detail once I'm in San Diego and have time (and energy) to write tomorrow night. But just for now, and to have something on this page to link to from the main BC home page, here are some quick thoughts.
Toll roads suckWe have toll bridges in the Bay Area, but they're bridges; you expect to pay to cross major bodies of water. And they have actual living humans in them to take your toll; $2 or $3 on most of them now. The toll highways in the Chicago area are different; they're hard to tell from regular highways on the maps, they wind all through the major areas of the city and suburbs, and they have on ramps and off ramps and such just like normal highways that our taxes go to create. The difference is that all of the off ramps have toll booths on them to keep you from getting off for free, and every few miles the three or four lane highway expands to 15 or 20 lanes, each of which has a toll booth... an automated toll booth with a plastic basket to hurl your change into.
Don't have any coins? Well I guess you sit there until you die, cause they don't take cash money or credit cards, and you don't know that until you roll up to the first one with your California wallet and California cash in hand. Luckily for our weekend, Malaya had her shoulder bag with her and was able to dig out enough nickels and dimes to get us through the two eighty cent tolls, and then the third one, for a seemingly-pointless thirty cents, had a human in one of the booths, who gave me back seventy cents for my dollar.
Locals buy the fast pass, and they obviously know to stock up on coins, and if we'd been driving one of our own cars we'd have had plenty of quarters, but in our rental, with no tip off from the rental company or the maps or the road signs, (they said "toll road," but nothing about "coins only") we damn near starved to death out there.
No Cops RuleThis was somewhat ameloriated by the fact that there are no police anywhere in the Greater Chicago Area.
That's not actually true; we saw one or two downtown and we saw one with a victim pulled over early morning Monday on the way to the airport, but there were never any cops in any position to inconvenience us. We would have seen at least a dozen rolling through equivalently-busy downtown streets in SF or Oakland, and we saw one, as we were leaving the city on Sunday, and he was white, skinny, and driving along with one arm out the window while looking about as imposing as
Barney Fife.
I drove all the time, and on those toll roads with their 55MPH speed limits, we were very seldom under 85MPH there and 60 in the 35 zone done town, and I felt completely safe doing it since.... there are no cops anywhere in the Greater Chicago Area.
Unlimited desert at someone else's wedding = fat little piggiesThis one actually applies more to me than to anyone else there, since I made at least half a dozen runs down the desert table while most people were waddling around, groaning about how full they were. I had maybe half a dozen of the equisite white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, but I mostly hit the fruit. There were strawberries (with warm chocolate fondue) and huge platters of bites of honey dew, cantaloupe, and pineapple. I must have had half a pineapple during the course of the evening, for I love them in inverse proportion to how often I eat them, an unfortunately mathematical function caused almost entirely by their disproportionately-high price in the local markets.
One of the coolest things at the wedding was the parting gifts table, which had big trick-or-treat'ers delight bowls of mixed shiny candies, scoops to ladel them up with, and cute little orange Chinese food take out boxes, personalized with the name of the wedding couple. People (us included) were filling those boxes with the Hershey's Kisses, miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, peppermint patties, and hard candies, and chortling off into the night.
I doubt that anyone else took an extra box over to the fruit stretch and filled one with pineapple chunks and strawberries, though. They made a lovely accent to our conteniental breakfast the next morning.
I can not write a short post to save my life.But we knew that already...
Welcome to Technology
So, blogger.com software in use. I've long talked about (usually verbally with Malaya, but "talked" in the "blogged about it" sense as well) doing my site as an actual blog, like with updates that I type into some sort of automated thingie and publish immediately. I'd never gone through with it though, for a wide variety of stupid reasons, most of them sloth-related.
I've now done it though, and you're looking at it. For the next week (and possibly longer if all doesn't go well) I'll be in San Diego, staying at my dad's house while he undergoes some medical procedures. I didn't want to bother with setting up FTP and HTML writer and other things on his computer, or on Malaya's Mac laptop that I'll be taking with me to write fiction on, so this is the compromise. It's also a trial run, and if I like doing this instant gratification type thing I might keep doing it, though I would reformat the blog in some major way to intergrate it into my current site layout, nav bar, etc. That would probably require some software other than the default blogger.com stuff I'm using now, but we'll worry about that later.
There is no set posting schedule, but I'm going to be writing about the weekend I just spent at a friend's wedding in Chicago, and what I'm doing in San Diego, and all the usual news posts and bullshit I do, though I'm going to be busy in real life and trying to write, so hopefully there won't be that much surfing. I'm actually sort of annoyed that dad (finally) got DSL a month or two ago, since in the old days of his "tin can and string" AOL dialup, there was no temptation to surf at all. He'd ask if I wanted to use his computer to get on the Internet, and I'd feel like my grandmother was asking if I wanted to watch TV on her old 4" black and white Zenith. Not that my grandmother had a 4" black and white Zenith, but you get the idea.
I'll get to test something out though; does high speed internet rule so much that even the AOL browser can't ruin it? We shall see.
That's enough for now, and for now I'm leaving comments open, since I've never had them before. So comment if you so desire, or click to read what various German Internet gaming spam bots had to say.
Archives
2005-05-29
2005-06-05
2005-06-12
2005-06-19
2005-06-26
2005-07-03
2005-07-10
2005-07-17
2005-07-24
2005-07-31
2005-08-07
2005-08-14
2005-08-21
2005-08-28
2005-09-04
2005-09-11
2005-09-18
2005-09-25
2005-10-02
2005-10-09
2005-10-16
2005-10-23
2005-10-30
2005-11-06
2005-11-13
2005-11-20
2005-11-27
2005-12-04
2005-12-11
2005-12-18
2005-12-25
2006-01-01
2006-01-08
2006-01-15
2006-01-22
2006-01-29
2006-02-05
2006-02-12
2006-02-19
2006-02-26
2006-03-05
2006-03-12
2006-03-19
2006-03-26
2006-04-02
2006-04-09
2006-04-16
2006-04-23
2006-04-30
2006-05-07
2006-05-14
2006-05-21
2006-05-28
2006-06-04
2006-06-11
2006-06-18
2006-07-02
2006-07-09
2006-07-16
2006-07-23
