Monday evening: A very fruitful day . . .

1. First, I got some stuff accomplished at work, and since I am driving to Syracuse after work tomorrow, I got some time this afternoon and did the following:

Got althea_eastrid's car serviced.
Went to Staples and exchanged the printer cartridges, getting the ones that will actually work on my printer.
Went to the Post Office.
Dropped some stuff off at the Warren County Building.
Went to the library.
Went to the bank.
Went to the pet store.
Dropped off a half-dozen ties at the dray cleaners. Thesee are ties I have not worn in the better part of a year.

2. It might be St. Patrick's Day, but I did not do any of the following:

Drink Guinness.
Drink beer.
"Pull a nutty" in some bar in Southie.
Get drunk.
Puke.
Eat corned beef.
Wear Green.
Sing "Danny Boy."
Get a tattoo.

In fact, no beer today.

Seriously, St. Patrick's Day is the No. 2 Amateur Hour when it comes to drinking. It's behind New Year's Eve and ahead of Super Bowl Sunday. Brew pubs and real beer bars dread it.


3. Not that there was ever any doubt that evilnicola was my daughter.




4. But you know what's really funny? I never drank coffee in high school, college or the first three years of my sportswriting career. I might have had an occasional one, but not often.

What happened? I took a job as a managing editor in Iowa and had to open the building at about 5 a.m. to get the typesetting started. I made coffee for everyone, but the room with the milk was not open, so I drank it black.

5. It's really funny. My friends' list seems to be equally split between, "OMFGWTFBBQ! How could Live Journal do this?" and "Not a big deal."

I can tell you that this blog will be up and running on Friday, although if I follow through on my plan to go to Cooperstown on the way home from Syracuse, there may not be many day-time posts.

Friday is Post McPostypants Day

/sarcasm on

Please join me in celebrating Posty McPostypants Day.

It's this coming Friday from 0:00 to 24:00 GMT (four hours later than EDT).

Post every half-hour if you can, and comment in every post that you see in that time.

Let's counteract the Chicken Littles of the world.

/sarcasm off

Just a vent.

Explaining "No Post Friday"

Clearly, some of you do not eat, sleep and drink LJ or do not have friends' lists of 350+

To paraphrase  artisticphoenix, you have lives.

Speaking of which, N., you may want to stop reading now. I *know* you don't want to read all of this.  ;)

But some of you have asked, and I am a teacher. ;)

Bear with me. This is my take.

In the beginning, there was LJ. It was founded by folks who sorta had the idea of a commune, and many people feel that LJ was -- in many ways -- a commune. No "censorship," no "stupid decisions." Etc. It was warm and fuzzy, and there were rainbows and unicorns.  [OK, maybe not rainbows and unicorns.]

(Of course there *were* complaints about changes back the, but that's not the point here).

LJ was sold to a company called SixApart, a bigger blogging company, and then was bought by a Russian company.

SixApart made some changes that many of the old-time members disagreed with, including pulling a number of communities (many later reinstated), getting anal about breast-feeding groups and eliminating a number of interest searches, including fanfic. Many fanfic/con types were really upset. Some of this was driven by a fundamentalist group that contacted SixApart. There was a point in this fiasco when you could not search for "breast cancer."

Now, under the new owners, two recent things have happened. First off, there was another "interest search" purge, eliminating potentially titillating topics.

Second, there was an unnanounced change in creating new accounts.

Until last week, you could create a free account with no ads. As of last week, if you choose to create a new free account, you have to have ads on it.

People were very upset by this change and felt the new ownership handled it poorly by announcing it in a comment on a thread.

One of the arguments made by the founder of LJ (who was recently named to the LJ Advisory Board but was not consulted on this) is that the free accounts produce the content that brings people here.

That led to people talking about a one-day strike to show the new owners what would happen if people chose to not post. This was the part I heartily disagreed with.

From what I could see, since there was also anger about the latest friends-list stuff, those folks jumped in, and in some cases, they were responding only to what they saw as "censorship."

Now, what's interesting is that my friends' list seems divided in thirds -- there are those who are upset, those who think the people who are upset are over-reacting and those who do not know it's going on because they have real lives. ;)

That all led me to post a snarky, sarcastic post, which I have now ammended to have sarcasm tags on it. As I said earlier, it frustrates me when people react to LJ changes the same way hardcore D&D folks react to their character getting killed by a Turbonium Dragon (or a Gazebo).

Feel free to add/comment on this summary.

Other things that drive me nuts . . .

Yes, I read too many message boards, blogs, etc.

We all need hobbies.

One of the place I go -- and sometimes wonder why -- is Teachers Net, and I read the general teachers' chatboard. There are other, more serious educational boards. This one's a free-for-all.

I get to read fun posts like these, some of which  were spawned from a question about whether our petrs will go to Heaven.

1.  If your spouse dies and you remarry and that spouse dies and you remarry, which will be your spouse in heaven. Do they get to choose or do you?

2.      Post: Will animals, reptiles,insects go to Heaven at death?

Posted by I don't believe they have a forgiving spirit or soul. on 3/17/08

Just read the first few paragraphs and surely your thoughts may convince you to say NO.
Will animals,reptiles,insects go to heaven at death?

3.  A middle school was faced with a problem.After putting on their lipstick,some girls would pucker up and press their lips against the bathroom mirrors,leaving many lip prints.

One day,the principal thought of a way to put an end to this problem.She called all the girls to the bathroom and had the custodian meet them there.She explained to the girls that the lip prints were causing extra workk for the custodian because he had to clean the mirrors every day.

To prove to the girls how difficult it was for him to clean the mirrors,she asked the custodian to clean one of the mirrors.he took out a long-handled brush,dipped it into the nearest toilet,and thoroughly scrubbed the mirror.No lip prints were seen on the mirrors again.

If you teach, you have heard that one before.

4.  Sorry for my part in the threadjack about best books. I think the Amish book just touched a nerve with some of us who love animals.
News stories have been done which say Amish country is synonymous with puppy mills. This is not a case of prejudice.

If you google Ammish + puppy mills you will get over 7000 hits. The puppy mills are apparently run out of barns and are kept very hidden. This practice is very prevalent in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and Virginia. Some local and major news stories have been broken about
this terrible practice which says that the Amish in Lancaster county churnout over 200,000 dogs annually.

They estimate it makes a profit of over $4 million a year for Amish and Mennonutes "farmers". The dogs live a cruel, sad life of solitary confinement in filthy conditions. Neal I'm with you. If dogs don't go to heaven (and other living creatures) then I don't want to go there either.

[Mostly debunked lower in the thread.]

5.  Post: Dungeons & Dragons

Posted by PST on 3/16/08

I have some students who seem to be obsessed with this. Is this game something that is OK?

Once the poster said she thought banning Harry Potter was "foolishness," we knew we could convince her that, yes, D&D was OK.

It's always amusing.