Day: August 18, 2002

Categories
Weather

T-storm

The storm rolled in this morning, sending thunder ahead in warning, like the drums of a potentate’s caravan.

Boom. Boom. I’m coming

BOOM. BOOM. Getting closer!

I got out of bed and stood at the bedroom window, watching the winds whip the trees, the flashes of lightning, and the heavy rain. I’ll never tire of thunderstorms.

About a month ago a t-storm took out the computer of a friend of my roommate, this with the machine plugged into a surge protector.

Two weeks ago a co-worker of my roommate got a call from the security company that monitors his home: his home was on fire. He raced home only to find a mess where his home was. Lightning had hit a copper pipe attached to his gas furnace and caused the furnace to blow up. Luckily, no one was home.

Thunderstorms. I really love them. However, it’s not a good idea to take a shower in a storm, talk on the phone, play golf, or work on the computer. After all you never know when you’ll be

Categories
Weblogging

Idiots proliferate

There’s yet another article out about weblogging, this one Living in the Blog-osphere by Steven Levy at Newsweek.

It started out with promise, though mixed with the usual condescension:

So what kind of Weblogs live in the dark matter? There are endless personal journals like Zack’s, exposing thoughts and experiences that range from the somewhat profound to the stultifyingly banal. There are collectively millions of links to obscure items tucked in dusty recesses of the Web. There are blogs devoted to cats, blogs about knitting, blogs about 802.11 wireless standards, blogs about “The Golden Girls” TV show, blogs about baseball, blogs about sex (hey, it is the Internet). One blog is written in the voice of Julius Caesar, tracking the Roman’s progress as he takes on Gaul. There are blog short stories and a blog novel in progress.

And then, rather than provide links to these “dark matter” weblogs, and interviews with writers of same, he continues with the same mundane questions asked of the same A-listers: Dave Winer, David Weinberger, Glenn Reynolds, Meg Hourihan, Rebecca Blood, Ev, and so on.

Worse, he writes example postings into his example weblog, a grotesque parady of the phenomenon.

David Weinberger, you have the ear of these people–why the hell aren’t you hitting these people upside the head and cluing them in on the ‘real’ world of weblogging? Levy makes weblogging look as exciting as reciting a shopping list. And providing safe but quotable sound bites isn’t helping anyone.

Here’s a clue for Levy and the other so-called “professional journalists”: no weblog entry is as banal as most of these mainstream “what is weblogging” articles. If we talk about what we have for lunch today, at least what we write is original.

How absolutely deadly dull.

Categories
Weblogging

Dark matter posting

Today for lunch I had homemade tacos, with fresh lettuce and tomato, cheddar cheese, and spiced beef, served up in a hard corn shell. I always put a sweet-spicey tomato dressing on top rather than salsa.

Afterwards, I played with my cat, Zoe. She’s ten years old, a beautiful silver tabby, and still playful as a kitten. She has two green eyes, though one is turning brown.

Now I’m going back to working on my book. Later I might go for frozen custard.

(All of this is blogspeak for Up Yours, Newsweek.)

Categories
Political

And another into the dead zone

Just when you thought that we were going to have a typical weblogging Dead Zone (i.e. the weekend), more juicy tidbits pop up.

An open letter from a neighbor to the North: You have become a nation of monsters, America. Hypocrites. Murderers. Fools. And an accompanying MeFi thread.

We in the US are more than aware of what’s happening here, and many of us are doing what we can to counter actions of Bush, Ashcroft, and others. Perhaps if Mr. McDougall spent a little more time on the internet, reading, and a little less time writing uncontrolled, vitrolic, and counter-productive rants, he might meet a few of us “Americans” who aren’t monsters, hypocrites, murderers, and fools.

(But I wouldn’t recommend he start with Metafilter.)