Aimless Wandering

I think it’s really cool that you consider me one of the cool kids that you want as part of your online social circle, really I do. However, please know just what it is that you’re inviting me to before you send the invite.

I’m talking in particular about Tagged. If you have joined it or thought about joining it, please take a good look at it first…

Let’s see, first there are the pushy invites the system generates –

You’ve got to love the little guilt trip that they try to send you on “Please respond or soandso may think you said no”

But do you know just what Tagged actually is? Before you provided Tagged with my address did you take 30 seconds to read what they do?

From the “About” page on the site: “Tagged.com is a premier social networking destination and an ideal place for advertisers to reach their target audience.” In other words, in the guise of “social networking” we find pawns to sign up for our “service” who then go and provide us with the e-mail addresses of their friends so that we can spam them and send them all kinds of garbage.

Heck, Tagged even spells it out further: “Tagged is experiencing dramatic growth Advertisers love Tagged because they get clear, uncomplicated access to our audience”

Now, I know I’m not very Web 2.0ish, I don’t have a MySpace, Facebook, or even a Flickr account. That being said, I thought that the purpose of all of the social networking sites was to help people connect with each other NOT to give advertisers an even easier conduit for spamming people.

So do you know what really burns my butt?   Ok, other than a flame about three feet high…

The weekly statistics that I have to submit to my boss - statistics that I’m pretty sure nobody reads, but heaven help us if we don’t get them submitted on time.  Now I don’t mind doing the weekly report, it’s not hard and I have a pretty good system going.  When I get the data I need, I can complete the report in about 30 minutes - and then claim that it took me at least 90 minutes to finish…

The trouble is that I have to rely on other folks to get me the data I need in order to complete the report, and if they forget to pull their data or just generally slack off then I can’t submit the statistics on time and I get chewed out by my boss because the numbers are supremely important to him.

So knowing that the statistics are due today, that I had yet to receive the data I needed, that I couldn’t begin to work on the report for the week - my boss decides to let the person who needs to pull the data I require go home early…

Ummm yeah thanks!

Have you seen this show? I saw it pop up in the guide on our DVR a few weeks back and watched it on a limb. I couldn’t figure out what this show could possibly be about, but based on the title I figured I wouldn’t have any desire to see more than one episode.

But it’s fascinating. The whole show (which is real and not a dramatization) takes place in Yellowknife Canada and on the roads supplying three diamond mines several hundred miles to the north. However, most of the trip isn’t on paved highways – but what they call The Winter Road, which is really just a fancy way of saying lakes that have frozen over. We’re not talking light loads here these are tractor trailers hauling 30+ ton loads of cargo. Oh, and the roads only exist for about 8 weeks – after that the temperature is too warm and the roads melt.

Just to add to the pucker factor of this experience, they’re on ice, in -40 degree temperatures, average about 20 Kph, and the shortest run is over 100 miles. They can’t stop on the ice, even if the weather is bad, most of these guys are driving for 20 hours straight…

Check it out if you get a chance…

So like any place of business, we have many users who could be considered “less than computer savy.” One of these users in particular decided I’m his go to person for any issues he might have - not a bad thing although it sometimes means I get 5 or six consecutive calls from him over a 10 minute period.

So after helping him this morning with taking a screen shot and then printing it out he says this-

Wow Dude look at me! This is making me look smart or something!

Ok, I thought it was funny…

I’m a big fan of the instant messaging program Trillian. It works with AIM, MSN Messenger, ICQ, and Yahoo, and it’s a nice compact little program. Instead of waiting for multiple applications to launch if I want to monitor my various IM names, I can just fire up Trillian and off I go.

The makers of Trillian thought it would be a great idea to come up with a version of their program for the iPhone, and they have - sort of… From engadgetmobile and Ceruleun Studios (makers of Trillian)

the Trillian Astra application has actually been “designed for iPhone, it doesn’t just happen to work with it.”

Huh? Wouldn’t that seem to indicate a flaw in your design process? Can it be honestly said that you have designed an application for a device if said application doesn’t actually work with a device?

While I’m hardly a road warrior, I do travel quite a bit.  A few years ago I found a great little program that I use to track my itineraries called Trip Tracker.  It was a great application that allows me to enter flight reservations, hotel reservations, car rental information and much much more in it.  It’s actually two applications, one that runs on the desktop and another that’s supposed to run on a Windows Mobile device.

Now you might be thinking “why do you need this program? Just enter the information in you calendar in Outlook…”  What makes Trip Tracker so valuable to me is that it syncs with Outlook, not only that but it handles multiple time zones with ease.  Just enter the information in the local time that it occurs in, and Trip Tracker makes the necessary adjustments so that it is entered into Outlook correctly.

The trouble is the manufacturer hasn’t updated it in years, and as a result it no longer runs on most Windows Mobile devices.  Since it places entries in Outlook it isn’t too much of a problem, but it would be nice to have something that had been updated.

Anybody seen something like this?  Even if it’s just a PC program and not a Windows Mobile program I would be really happy…

Nope, I still have gotten an iPhone, and despite The Wife calling me last night with one that a friend of hers purchased all the while professing her adulation of the device… I probably still won’t get one - Amazingly enough she even told me I could get one, WITHOUT me asking!

David Pogue of The New York Times did a great video review of the iPhone just before the device was released. If you haven’t seen it yet head over to newspaper’s website and check it out. He’s since come out an iPhone music video that’s worth viewing…

So we got notice last week that we are now under mandatory water restrictions.  The local water authority has declared that all users must reduce their water consumption by 15%.

Ok.

The problem is they don’t say how.  They offer several ways you can conserve water - all of which are ways that have always been promoted as methods to conserve water.

Everywhere I’ve been that has enacted water restrictions has published specific restrictions, whether it’s restrictions on watering landscaping to prohibitions on washing cars and other outdoor water uses.  Not here, all that we’ve been told is to reduce by 15%.

I’ve got to wonder if such an ambiguous restriction is actually effective.  We are in an extremely eco-friendly area, but if folks are given any real guidance for conservation will they actually conserve?

So if you’re a reader of The Wife’s blog then you probably know we have an issue with cat puke in our house.

So picture if you will our living room. Two super comfy recliners which the wife and I were doing our best to be absorbed in. At the other end of the room, our 7 foot tall, multi-level cat tree on which our youngest cat is lounging at the top most level, and our middle cat the next level down. Keep in mind these are two cats who tolerate each other at best.

Youngest cat all of a sudden sits up and makes that wonderful kitty retching sound – and leans over the side of where he is to aim his open gagging mouth right at middle cat below him…

Now our normal reaction when a cat starts yakking in this house is to curse a lot – but this time just the very thought that one cat might puke ON the other already had us giggling.

After a second or two of gagging, middle cat looks up at youngest cat and then after another second or two decides that maybe being in the target area for youngest cat’s hairball isn’t a good idea and slowly gets up and leaves.

Middle cat then hacks up the cause of his problem, launching it a good six inches and causing it to land on the arm of the sofa below with a distinct and resounding PLOP!

Is it wrong that we were laughing so hard at the flying cat puke that it hurt? Or that I looked at the wife , tears streaming down my eyes, and said “we should blog about that!”

So we’re sitting in the restaurant at lunch and the group behind us is having a conversation. Overheard before we tune them out –

“They come up here, drink the water, take showers and flush, and then we’re told we have to conserve water!”

So I had to wonder – which of these three should the people in question not do? Drink water, shower, or flush?