A little change every four years does a body good.
Jan 20, 2010
The site has had an interesting history. It started as the Cynic’s Tea Party in 2001, then switched to Title Deleted in 2005. Now, after kicking the idea around in my head for a few months, I’ll be changing back to the Cynic’s Tea Party.
Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten more bitter as I’ve aged. Maybe it’s because I’ve gotten more exasperated at how these darn kids are doing things, but I still have essential hope that they won’t be total idiots. At any rate, it’s time for a name change. The domain’s been redirected to this site for years, and titledeleted will redirect, so people won’t totally lose their places. I don’t know yet that I’ll change the design, because the design’s gotten to be like an old friend. But the domain will be changing this coming weekend.
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I love these guys...
Dec 23, 2009
I lived in Canada for a while. I enjoyed it very much. But I also know some facts about Soviet Canuckistan, namely: something like 40% of its population lives within two miles of the US-Canada border; and much like the U.S. midwest, it has miles and miles of miles and miles - particularly in the center of the continent. So the song is appropriate! Some commenters, themselves Canadians, said that this should be the Canadian national anthem.
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from the Blade Runner soundtrack
Dec 22, 2009
Smashed two fingers, so my typing is slower than normal (I had my previous entry all typed up beforehand, for something else) so I’m resorting to music videos. Yes, it’s kind of a cheat; but then again hopefully I’ll share something that folks will appreciate.
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Absence makes the feet grow warmer
Dec 22, 2009
I grew up in Arizona and central California, so I didn’t see snow every year – or every other year – or, basically, whenever we traveled to where it was.
When I was five or six, my family went camping up in snow country and somehow or another I was being pulled on a sled over a frozen lake. At one point, Dad had paused, and I noticed a hole in the ice. I put my mittened hand down into this hole of water…and quickly found out Why One Does Not Do That. My next clear memory is of sitting in a building (probably a first aid station or ranger station) with a Marathon bar and a mug of cocoa…and feeling my fingers slowly and painfully thawing out.
When I was thirteen, I went on a ski field trip with my entire eighth-grade class. I had never been skiing before, but this was just The Done Thing to Do. I rented skis and paraphernalia the week before, got up at oh-dark-thirty in the morning to catch the bus that would drive us four hours to the ski area, and piled into the bus. I spent the morning on the bunny runs, and in the early afternoon I went off with a boy I liked, who got me to go up on a ski lift to a certain ski run. I went along, rode to the top, and got off…a bit wobbly. I got my skis turned the right way, went down a hill, maneuvered around some moguls and past other skiers, and shakily thought, well this isn’t so bad! And then…I went down the real ski run. (That hadn’t been the ski run, more like the staging area between the ski lift dropoff zone and the ski run itself.) I was screaming like a banshee, dodged other skiers as best I could, and tried to maneuver onto one side or another of the ski run so that I would not be in peoples’ way…and so that I might have a better chance of stopping myself. I finally did…by running into or over something. I fell facedown, twisted an ankle, and had to be helped down the ski lift. I spent the rest of the day in the resort, again with a mug of cocoa (and this time, some painkillers.) I found out that this boy I liked had taken me, a brand new skier, up onto a black diamond run – the most challenging ski runs. For some reason, I haven’t ever had much enthusiasm about skiing since then. Not much interest in that boy, either.
When I was thirty, a snowstorm dumped a foot of snow on the ground overnight. I got up and went out for my usual 7am walk in the nearby park…and the park was absolutely beautiful. I was the first set of footprints on that thick blanket of snow. I walked around the frozen pond, down by the beach, and up to the old harbor. Someone else had been there, and on a bench they’d built a snowman sitting down, dressed in toque and scarf and winter coat, one arm across the back of the bench. The next morning was different, of course. Even though there had been a very light dusting of snow overnight, there were footprints all over from people and dogs. The snowman was missing his head, and a dog had colored one leg a distinct yellow shade. The magic was somewhat dimmed.
Last year, I had just bought my first house. The city got socked with a winter storm, and more snowfall than we generally see – we only get this much snow once in a human generation. The city’s not really equipped to deal with this. Our regular snowfall is half an inch or an inch, enough to look picaresque but not enough to build up or even, in many cases, stay on the ground through the day. People were waiting two hours for the city buses, kids were stranded out in the snow after dark because their schoolbuses couldn’t get to them, and the city’s transportation minister was saying, “I’m not having any problems getting around on the roads.” (Well, yes ma’am, you own a four-wheel vehicle. Now do you care to go pick up all those freezing schoolkids…?) This was a Great Big Snowstorm, though. I found out that my house retains heat very well, I was grateful that I was a telecommuter and didn’t have to try driving in that stuff, and I got some gorgeous photos of the trees and moss-lawn on the east side of my house, all covered with snow. I now also am the proud owner of a pair of Yaktrax and a snow shovel. (Trying to shovel appreciable amounts of snow with one’s kitchen dustpan loses its appeal fairly quickly…but even if a person managed to get down to the local hardware store, either other people had already bought the snow shovels, or the delivery trucks with more snow shovels couldn’t get through.)
This year, we might have snow on Christmas. Then we wouldn’t. Then we might. Then we wouldn’t. Now we definitely aren’t - and it will even be warm-ish for Christmas, with partial sun and temps in the low 40s.
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I take this as a good sign
Dec 18, 2009
About two weeks ago, Ursa had a fit. Not “he got upset at something”, but literally - had a fit. Managed to tear up a set of sheets (and add another rip to my comforter cover), was nonresponsive for a little bit, walked a bit wobbly afterward…but it didn’t happen again, and after about 5 seconds of seizing and maybe another five minutes of slowly recovering, he carefully got down from the bed and walked around the house.
The night after his fit he slept on the bed as usual, and in the morning he came down and ate his breakfast as usual. He climbed on the cat tower, he used the litterbox, he demanded that I turn on the tap for him in the bathroom, he curled up on the bed for his first mid-morning cat nap, all the normal things. I took him to the vet for full blood and urine tests (it was about time for his one-year checkup anyway) and the tests all came back negative for diabetes, cancer, FIV, any of the more common causes for one-off seizures in cats. He seemed to be doing well. I got wind of a pet-food recall by the company that makes and distributes the food I had all three cats on earlier, and while this was a different food than I was feeding him and was confined to the other side of the continent - and specific lots besides - one of the effects this food could have was neurological problems. I switched all three cats to a new kind of food, and also started feeding them all a little bit more of the wet food - partially because Ursa’s got to have another tooth removed in a month or so because you can see it’s out of position; and partially because Monkey’s getting thinner now that she’s coming hard up on 14 years of age.
Last night I heard scratching and rustling. I looked over the side of the bed, and there was Ursa. Playing. Gamboling. Frisking. Throwing his mouse up in the air, bounding after it, batting it around, throwing it up again. This is the first time in about a month, possibly longer, that I’ve seen him behave like this!! Maybe it’s the greater amounts of wet food. Maybe it’s the switch away from the old dry food. I don’t know. All I do know is that cat-napping is better than having fits, even little ones…but playing like this? He was acting like a kitten again. I can’t imagine cats doing that if they’re feeling unwell in the slightest.
So I’m vastly relieved. And Ursa is sleeping again, after an exhausting morning of pushing the feather-toy under the open bedroom door, running to the other side, and pushing it back again.
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Hey you damn retailers, get off my cyber-lawn!!!1111eleventyOMG!!
Dec 16, 2009
I’ve been on the internet since 1990, and the World Wide Web since about 1993. That means that compared to the majority of the population, I’ve been doing the online-geek thing for quite a while.
I remember when I web log was literally that: a log of places you visited on the web. It wasn’t an online journal or a way to share “what you did that day” or “who you were” (that was a finger file or a .plan), it was like what today’s Bookmarks and Favorites lists are. And you’d share these with other people.
I remember when checking IMDB for something involved sending a very specific text string to an email address. You would then receive a text file with the information IMDB had about that movie, show, performer, writer, director, producer, what have you.
I use some social media: I use Twitter, and I maintain several blogs. (I am not on MyDeadFaceJournalBookSpace. Future employers and clients do not need to have that ease of access to every single thing I do in my off-time, and neither does most of the rest of the world.) I have a Flickr account for one of my blogs. And I actually run a web hosting service and have for the past eight years. But I still consider the web to be as much the province of individuals as the new way to sell stuff. I get a might pissed off when I have advertising shoved into any orifice the retailers can reach. While I think that retailers have just as much right to use the web as individuals, and don’t think that they should pay some kind of extra tax, I wish that I knew all of the possible ways to put up a fence around my online presence to keep the retailers out unless I specifically invite them in. There are plenty of things that just annoy the living snot out of me.
What tool is it that retailers use to automatically follow anyone who uses a given word in a tweet? I’ve been followed by all kinds of sites and businesses selling all kinds of things that I have no interest in buying…and they started following me after I used a specific word. When I posted about the tarot’s major arcana I was suddenly followed by sites selling tarot decks, tarot interpretation services, even tarot reading courses. When I posted a joke about astrology, I was followed by all sorts of horoscope sites. A post about tie-dye nail painting got me followed by some self-proclaimed hippies (who were at least in my area of the country, I’ll give them that) selling tie-dye shirts, sheets, and gods greater and lesser know what else.
I want to know the name of this program so that I can contact my geeky programming friends and have them build an app that will automatically evaluate anyone’s Twitter history and if they include lots of retail-ish posts…automatically cut them off.
I don’t necessarily want to go to the trouble of hiding my tweets from public view. If some random individual out there thinks that I post interesting or funny things and wants to keep following them, great. Let them follow. I know that whenever I see a “protected tweets” sign I rarely put through to follow that person, even if I’ve come to find them through the tweets of someone who I do follow, because they may not want to hear from anyone else. It’s kind of like being in a public place like an airport or a park or a cafe and seeing someone who’s sitting alone, reading a book, not really speaking to anyone else. They may be a perfectly cool person. They may even be a person with similar interests. But unless they’re engaging with the other guests, I feel like I’m intruding if I go talk to them. Likewise, I don’t want to give off unintentional “don’t bug me” vibes. But dangit, I really dislike when I notice that I’ve gotten a few new followers…and they’re all retailers who tweet nothing but “this sale” and “that sale” or what have you. I know that advertising is a bugbear; and advertising via word of mouth is not something that you can easily finesse. But following someone just because they use the name of a city and you offer photography services in that city…that’s about as graceful as a pregnant yak.
I’ll have to start hitting them with my cane.
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