Tag Archives: General

Super Bowl XLIII – Steelers vs. Cardinals

Truly, I’m a San Diego Chargers fan, so the game doesn’t carry a lot of weight for me, but it is the Super Bowl and supposedly there will be many funny and entertaining commercials between the dark spaces.  I’m inclined to cheer for the Steelers since they represent the AFC.  So let it be known and here we go: I want the Steelers to win.  Big Ben shall keep his calm and methodically smash those tiny birds.

It’s a great day for a new championship.  Have a blast and party safely.  I’ll see ya tomorrow.  As the NFL would say, "Belive in now."

The Joy Of Entering Middle Life

I can’t really say what joyousness is to be expected about living in the realm of middle-lifehood.  I’m new to it.  I can say that other people seem always to be complaining about it, which I think is odd.  I’ve been telling people how excited I am to finally be old, because I am excited.  Now I can say and do things that I couldn’t do as my younger self, like tell folks I can’t be out late because I’m old and tired, drive slowly in the fast lane, or get up way too early on a Wednesday to do the grocery shopping.  (Let’s be honest, I’ve been doing most of these things for a while now, so not much will change.)

But even more exciting than any of that nonsense is the dating pool joke from Randall Munroe over at xkcd.  I get a kick out of every time I see it, so I’m sharing it here today with you.  It’s like a re-gift, except it wasn’t given directly to me, but, still, I choose to share it with you.

The downside to joking back with people calling me old is that when I tell them I’m excited about it, they get on about how I’m not really _that_ old.  It’s like they want to screw around either which way, but won’t just let me enjoy myself.  Sure, I’m not old, I am old, I’m whatever anyone needs me to be when it comes to defining age and body aches.  I’m up for the whole game.

So if this truly is the middle, then let me take a second and say thanks to all the folks that I’ve had the opportunity to meet, greet, and befriend during the first half of my existence.  I’ll be honest again and say it’s been a handful of head-smashingly strange times, but a perfect hoot.

Cheers!

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Essential Blog Commenting Features

There are only a couple of things needed, and really only one of them is essential, but the second is greatly appreciated.  The first and most important being a notification mechanism to updated comments since the last comment.  Meaning, if my comment to your post garners any responses, I want to know about it without having to spend time continually clicking back through your page.  Not only would that waste my time, but it would artificially inflate your stats.  Neither of us wants either of those things.  So please take the time to add a plugin, or some other tool, that enables this capability.  Else, don’t expect too many comenters to leave words on your posts.

The second, and maybe less important but still appreciated feature, is closing out the comments after so many days, be it 15 or 30, it doesn’t matter too much, but it definitely needs to be something reasonalbe.  Receiving a notification a year or so more past the post date isn’t terribly relevant.  Typically these trail off, so it’s not as big an issue, but the more posts to which you comment, the more likely you are to receive unnecessary notifications.  At some point we need to stop talking about old topics.  Thankfully WordPress 2.7 was smart/kind enough to make this option standard, with a default setting of 14 days.  Very handy.

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Six Degrees Of Temperature Separation

Over lunch on Thursday we were discussing energy efficiencies because of all the Green Building nonsense going on in California right now, and someone asked what temperature we had our thermostats set to in the winter.  I hadn’t really thought much of it, but between the six of us, I was the only one at 62 degrees Fahrenheit, and the rest were either 68 or 71.  Exactly either of those two.  (How strange that there wasn’t more of a range.)  So, I was shortly the topic of conversation as to how I could live in such a frozen environment.  To be fair, though, while my thermostat is set to 62, it rarely gets that cold.  Even with the windows open most of the day, the heater only kicks in around three or four in the morning.  Which wouldn’t be a problem, except the thing is so loud that it wakes me up, and I have to turn it down to 59.  Not a big deal because I’m in bed, but showering at 5:30 in the morning is another story.

Do you live Green at 62, or are you burning fuel in 71?  Higher?

For the record, I’m not setting my limit so low for the sake of the Earth, but because it’s not _that_ cold to me most of the day.  Sure 62 is quite chilly, but I’m usually asleep during that time of the day.  Nestled nicely.

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That Party Is Over

It’s been a good two weeks, having my brother home and all.  Logged a lot of family time and ate a month’s worth of home cooking in a very short amount of time.  (Dad and Mom make sure little brother gets many of his favorite meals.  We probably all gained a little weight, but it’s well worth it.)  Included two separate turkey dinners and a Tacos de Lengua feast last Saturday.  Which is to say, a lot of faces at the dinner table to show love.  I appreciate all them making time.  I’m thankful for that.  Much thanks to the parents, too!

Now, after my brother’s two week vacation, I need to rest.  You can bet we were busy late nearly every night visiting the local spots.  (Sorry, no pictures.  My camera never came out of its bag.)  I wasn’t on vacation so I had the joy of waking early to make my way to work.  I’m going to have a nap then see about paying my fine with the County library.  Seems I lost track of something.

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A Week’s Worth Of 50-Word Posts

It’s tough when you know you’re not going to allow for the necessary word count to fully explain a thought or idea, but it’s a fun challenge to say as much as possible, as clearly as possible, in a limited space.  The most attractive piece being the lack of pressure to completely fill the empty space.  Being tied to a maximum amount of words, created a more inviting environment for jotting quick thoughts.  I guess that’s the intent of micro blogging, except you only have a 140 characters, which isn’t quite enough to get 50 words.

A couple of the posts were worse off than the rest (There were only four or five, right?).  My Book Meme post not only left off Leah Culver’s Book Meme post , but should have instructed the reader to post the sentence in his own blog; a result of my shrinking the instructions to leave room for my own comment at the bottom of the post.  There just wasn’t space to say all I wanted.  Anyhow, a Book Meme search is pretty neat.

The second suffering post was that of my Google’s no good at social media post, and shouldn’t bother with acquiring Twitter.  Clearly, a point of view that requires a bit of elaboration supporting the claim.  Which is to say, that it’s work to write a full entry for such a topic.  I’ve put it on my follow-up list, and it involves things like Orkut, Lively, and PicasaWeb.  We’ll get there, don’t worry.

I enjoyed it.  It was an interesting exercise.  I had a handful of short posts I meant to write, but never got around to (as usual).  I’ll now be less concerned with my word counts, be they more or fewer.

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Book Meme

Only then she seemed to remember and with sudden abstraction she signalled for a taxi – Tender Is the Night , F. Scott Fitzgerald

– Grab the nearest book.
– Open it to page 56.
– Post the fifth sentence with these instructions.

Coincidentally, my bookmark has been on page 56 for two weeks.  Weird or Lazy?

In Missing Action, Like Who-Wha!

Don’t get me wrong folks, I enjoy this social blog media two point oh stuff, but sometimes the anti-typist world gets the better of my time and requires me to spend free moments sleeping rather than ranting about Valleywag bull nonsense.  Ya dig what I’m sayin’?  For real.

No excuses.

The Edible Crawl for the Cure was a smashing success!  While the gang and I ran through multiple eateries and drinking holes, we simultaneously contributed in part to raise nearly $20K for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  Nicely done! And a special thanks to Ms. Darby Flynn and all the midtown/downtown restaurants that made the event possible.

Too much food and good times left me legless for the Making Strides for Breast Cancer walk the following morning.  (My bad, Bennie Hannah .)  Still, we raised a good bit of cash for this event as well.  Collectively, the event raised more than they’ve been able to count so far, but as a team…well, let’s be honest, I don’t have it in me to tally the sum, and Ben isn’t available to do the math.  I think we made half our goal, though, if I had to guess off the top of my head.

But October is charity event month, or something, so it didn’t stop there.  In past years I _played_ in my company’s golf tournament, but this year I opted for a _volunteer_ role and worked the sinners’ stop along the cart path.  Tequila, Cigars, Beers, and Beer Girls, Oh-My!

2008 Golf Tournament

I leave Sunday for a housing conference in Monterey, then return for a pre-bachelor party the following weekend.  We’re not quite out of the busy woods yet, but we’ll be back, I’m sure of it. Although, I do have to admit my brother will soon be in town, and you’ll see nothing of me then.  So let me keep my fingers crossed and hope I make some time to repair the errors that are WordPress and my Theme combined, as well as set aside a few moments for writing about all that is politically silly and Measure O in Sacra-tamato.

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