June 1, 2001

In every crowd, there's one or two hecklers. In response to you troublemakers, I say: underscores and dashes are quite unacceptable; and also, linking me by name is just fine, because it *is*, after all, my name. But be warned: if you think mis-punctuations of my domain name make me ornery, just wait til some poor soul fouls up the hyphen in my tricky tricky last name. [11:02 am in girl meets web]

June 3, 2001

My ADSL connection is apparently developing an alien intelligence of its own. I have sated its whimsy by disconnecting my router; to reward me for my obeisance it has begun connecting at bootup without my having to deal with the software that heretofore required four clicks or so to get online. The sudden and mysterious change is for the better, but now I'm worried about what will happen next time I piss it off. [10:28 pm in girl meets web]

if Jakob Nielsen never said "the existence of a site search should never nullify the requirement for an intuitive navigation system," he should have, and I hereby urge him to address the topic: some righteous scolding of the web-building community on the subject is sorely overdue. Also: more 'professional' web content providers ought to be dating their output. In a medium where information can be either instantly broadcast or archived for discovery by users years from now, it's unacceptable to present an article on The Very Latest on anything without some objective context as to the age of the information. (the same holds true for code just as much as for prose. give me a date, give me browser version information, something, anything, i'm dyin' here.) [11:52 pm in tech/biz]

June 4, 2001

While HR people and managers eyeing me from the other side of a vast and gleaming conference table will always make me nervous, I have been having lots of fun of late with technical interviews. While meeting with a company's alpha geek squad, I can breathe a bit more easily in my suit, kick back and talk smack about Microsoft. At those times I can almost forget that I'm supposed to be acting all impressive and hireable and stuff. At one recent meeting, a programmer and I traded tips on our favorite PHP websites and books. He offered me HotScripts.com's PHP pages and I offered him ONLamp.com. My Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 for his PHP Developer's Cookbook. Useful information nuggets, to be sure. It was almost like fun, except with pantyhose. [1:41 pm in tech/biz/girl meets web]

it's been remarked upon and moaned about and offered as placation for some misunderstanding about six million billion times, but once again it occurs to me that, boy, on the Internet, no one knows you're only being a wiseass. It's (easier? more fun? cardiovascular workout on the cheap?) to interpret all questionable comments as purposeful personal offense, and to fly off the handle accordingly. Here's my Karma For The Masses moment for the day: breathe, folks. Just breathe. [4:50 pm in girl meets web]

June 6, 2001

The smell of blooming magnolias is one of the happiest scent-memories I have. [3:07 pm in girl meets web]

June 7, 2001

Sometimes, even now as we all settle uncomfortably into the gasping and sputtering rhythms of Year 2 A.B. ("after bubble"), I am filled with awe at the possibilities the web has to offer, the conveniences and speed and instant gratification of life online. Other times, however, I am poleaxed by the sheer number of businesses who, although online, simply Do Not Get It. Gather round and let me tell you a story: I need pants. I need pants. Or skirts, those are even better. Things to wear with my vast collection of blouses and sweaters, essentially. Last night, I went to the mall with this need in mind. I thought I was going to have an honest-to-goodness positive shopping experience when I walked into Benetton and saw a lovely skirt, all crinkly and cotton and A-line-ish and ankle-length and in this sort of beigey-green shade, the color of ill-attended August lawns, and then look! they have them in mauve and black too! One of each, maybe. But it was not to be. They didn't have my size in any one of the three colors. No sweat, think I: I'll hit the web. My first stop was benetton.com. Hmmm... looks like a corporate brochureware site.... but wait, there's a little animated graphic that says "shop online". Cool. Click that... and get asked to choose between Italia, Deutschland, and the United Kingdom. Ummm. Okay, then, UK, at least I can read it. Ten nightmarish minutes of cruddy navigation and expired-session errors later, I run for my life to Google, where I do a search for +Benetton +"online store". Why look! The first hit is BenettonOnline.com! Well, why wasn't that linked from the corporate site? Never mind, I've found it now, and all is well. Except that... BenettonOnline seems to be a mockup or a prototype of a (not very good, even) website. There's navigation graphics, there's links and stuff, but none of it works. I am, apparently, to wait for them to "re-open soon". But if I want, I can visit the site of the company that built the BenettonOnline "website". Augh! Augh augh! The mind boggles to think that Benetton paid money, probably lots of it, to at least two web shops to do at least three websites for them, and they all suck. Meanwhile, I have friends who can design circles around me, who can code to put me to shame, and they are out of work. Also: I still don't have a pretty new skirt. There is simply no justice in the world. [1:01 pm in tech/biz/girl meets web]

In the course of making my run of hail-mary phone calls, I reached one woman who abruptly hung up on me when I explained that I was looking for some family I hadn't talked to in a while. Maybe she had disowned her family too.... read full entry [8:45 pm in journal abstracts]

My own personal little Museum of Site Designs Past gains another entry tonight, with this journal design from late 1998. The layout dates to back when I had only about a dozen entries, and doesn't necessarily translate well to a database-backed index of nearly a hundred entries. But, you know, there it is, converted over to PHP and MySQL goodness but otherwise left unchanged, in the name of historical accuracy, for all one of you who have mentioned on more than one occasion that you miss the "big eyes" design :) [10:54 pm in girl meets web]

June 8, 2001

It's true: Suck and Feed seem done for. It really does feel to me like the death of Kozmo all over again. When I'm eighty, grumpy, and toothless, I'm going to bore my grandchildren with stories of the good old days when the web could bring you ice cream and cigarettes and intelligent, timely original content, instantly or almost-so, and for free, or for free*. [4:00 pm in tech/biz/found links]

June 11, 2001

The once-and-former Friends of Jezebel's Mirror has moved to a new home and a domain all its own at mirrorproject.com. Now featuring searchable goodness, which I promptly tested by looking up both of the photos featuring yours truly---found them here and here. Way cool: the site is even easier to get lost in now. [12:31 pm in found links]

it would seem I'm being billed for going over my storage quota. said storage quota is 100MB. time for some belated spring cleaning. [10:54 pm in girl meets web]

June 12, 2001

Overheard: "These are ColdFusion guys, so I'm sure they can do HTML." Stuff and nonsense! HTML is not a lowest common denominator of all Internet-related skills. Not good HTML, anyway. Most any trained monkey can stick <P> tags into a document and call it HTML, but talented HTML developers carry around exhaustive mental references of browser quirks, implementation bugs, standards recommendations, and useful tricks and hacks and fixes that are only learned by spending good time focusing on presentation of client-side content. Assuming an applications developer knows that stuff is like assuming that the engineer who designed your car's engine could also have designed its dashboard. Maybe it could happen (Two Guys in a Basement Auto Design?), but if the car's going to be something really great, you'll let the guts experts design the guts and the interface experts design the interface, with the crucial understanding that the two skillsets complement one another but are not the same. And if you do happen across the rare gem who can do both brilliantly, then smile, shake his hand and say as little as possible, because he's smarter than you are. [3:47 pm in tech/biz]

June 14, 2001

BrainDan is my current favorite person. Someone who will do pro bono copy-editing for you at midnight on a Wednesday is someone who deserves a little gratuitous link-love. [12:20 am in found links]

Today and yesterday, the air conditioning at my job/not-a-job has been out. Bad timing, as it's been in the upper eighties all week (that's "30 or so" for my vast international fanbase). It's crazy... people wandering the cubes barefoot or finding any excuse to ride the elevators to other cooler floors, rowdy shouts of "someone turn the heat up, it's chilly in here!" The staff was on the verge of a riot when suddenly, the Ice Cream Fairy slipped in, deposited gallons of ice cream and boxes of ice cream sandwiches and popsicles in the kitchen, and then departed unnoticed. Now, we're all still a little slap-happy, but somewhat placated. I don't even mind that there's chocolate ice cream on my white sweater. [1:33 pm in girl meets web]

June 19, 2001

Yesterday: no internet connection at my job/not-a-job all day. S'okay, I'm only a web developer. Today: a hair dryer exploding in my hand into flames and acrid melting-plastic smoke. Tomorrow: I refuse to come out from where I cower beneath the blankets. Just try to make me. [12:16 pm in girl meets web]

Found in my referer logs: a new weblog by some guy who reads a lot. Amusing collection of Chuck Palahniuk-bashing review snippets today. Or actually, tomorrow... those wacky Australians. (as far as "better than Invisible Monsters" goes: in my humble, that'd almost have to be true.) [12:18 pm in found links/dead trees]

A lit'ry footnote for the internet generation: "It's not the case that in the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. In the future, everyone will be famous all the time---but only in their own minds. It is lookalike fame, karaoke fame. There's only one task it's equal to: it messes with the head."---Martin Amis, Experience [1:29 pm in dead trees]

It's People I Used To Work With Appreciation Day here at sapphireblue.com and so I present to you two new or newish weblogs or weblog-like substances by former co-workers of mine: The Mud Fence and LoriGoldberg.net. [3:27 pm in found links]

June 21, 2001

Happiness is bumbling into the lobby of your apartment building one evening and spotting, over on the ledge where people leave magazines (and sometimes mail, and sometimes stained-glass window hangings) that they're done with and others could perhaps get some use out of, several copies of Brill's Content, including the issue with the cover photo of MetaFilter's own benevolent dictator Matt Haughey. I snatched up the glossy stack and scuttled for the elevator and my apartment above... The incident gave me a smile, and a reminder that the web isn't quite dead, on a day when a both were desperately needed. [4:34 pm in girl meets web]

Newspoetry.com. That's really all there is to be said. [9:35 pm in found links]

June 22, 2001

Missing Pride Weekend in Atlanta makes me melancholy and nostalgic. While a resident there, I loved living in Midtown when Pride came around... it was better than Music Midtown, better than the Dogwood Festival, better than Montreux Atlanta, better even than the (late lamented?) Arts Festival. Funnel cakes and music and rainbow flags and t-shirts that say things like "Strong enough for a man, but pH balanced for a woman" and the drag show, don't forget the drag show... sigh. I missed DC's Pride Weekend entirely this year, but even if I hadn't I'd probably have still wished to be in Piedmont Park, laid out on the grass of Oak Hill and sweltering under the Southern summer sun, maybe with David and Phil and Jade, the boys in black mesh and Jade announcing to everyone and no one that she was REALLY a lesbian (REALLY) and hanging all over me in an effort to make the claim look authentic. But all that's past: Jade moved to Richmond three or four years ago, David and Phil to San Francisco a year later, and even Oak Hill itself has been the subject of violent "rehabilitation" more recently... what do you do with homesickness when home isn't how you remember it anymore? Get over it already, I guess. Places change, just like people do. [12:42 pm in girl meets web]

June 23, 2001

Almost.org is back with a brand new story. Go see! [2:36 pm in found links]

I've never been a pizza person, but there's this place in Atlanta near the Shoot-em-up Kroger that forever earned my loyalty several years back. Three things: 1.) they made the best four-cheese pizza money can buy, 2.) they also made "dessert pizzas", which are standard pizza crust that comes with not tomato sauce and meat, but cream cheese and fruit topping---I always got the cherry, and let me tell you, just the odor *alone* of one of these things steaming through your front door was enough to make you reckless with the delivery driver's tip, and 3.) once you'd made yourself memorable with a few of those generous tips, you could generally persuade your driver thereafter to bring you a pack of cigarettes too. Rumor had it beer was available if they knew you too but I never pushed my luck that far. That's what I call service---who needs Kozmo anyway? It's been years since I had pizza, dessert, or Marlboros from that place, but right now I have a *painful* hankering for a cherry dessert pizza. And a tall cold glass of whole milk. Mrm. [3:45 pm in girl meets web]

June 25, 2001

Have I ever, in all my life, been so exhausted, so weary, as I am right now? Maybe so, but I'm too tired to try to remember. I don't even have it in me to finish my tuna salad sandwich; given that tuna is my Lazy Food of choice (and that I haven't eaten in nine hours) that's really saying something. Now if only I could translate "beat" into "sleepy" I would be in business. [10:51 pm in girl meets web]

June 26, 2001

"---i was always running around shouting, gimmetheball, gimmetheball, gimmetheball, yeah!" [5:02 pm in girl meets web]

June 27, 2001

The webmail client I use is down. My bank's online banking application is down. I'm feeling awfully surly at the moment, and wondering again about that lucrative career in panda-poo cleanup... fully y2k compliant! A co-worker suggested that perhaps I could package dried panda poo as fire pellets, since the digestive system of a panda is not terribly efficient and as a result there's lots of whole bamboo content in panda poo. I could even sell my Panda Poo Fire Pellets online; PandaPoo.com is available for sale at the low low price of three hundred dollars. Sort of a clicks-and-patties business model. The future is now. [11:59 am in girl meets web]

When a site's navigation is so bad, *and* the site search is so bad, that you resort to going offsite to Google to locate the information you want, it's time to do a usability review. I'm just saying. [3:00 pm in tech/biz]

June 28, 2001

My old IRC cohort Tom has graduated to the ranks of the TLD-equipped with his new site at brokenchair.org. [12:52 am in found links]

June 29, 2001

This week has been one nightmare after another and it's only getting worse. I think I miss lying around moping and drawing severance pay. Sad but true. [11:59 am in girl meets web]

July 2, 2001

It was an interesting weekend for encounters with strangers. Friday: one introduced himself to me as a "fellow online diarist". (hi will!) Saturday: another offered up, with a perfectly straight face, "I like your stomach." Sunday: and then there was the waitress who helped us discuss the acting career and the good looks (not necessarily in that order) of Jude Law. Humans are fun to watch. [11:39 am in girl meets web]

awww. we love you too. group hug!! [12:03 pm in found links]

July 3, 2001

Another old IRC friend graduates to top-level-domain ownership, with a lovely gothy site (o, irony: i seem to recall same accusation being leveled at me lo these many years ago, and it wasn't a compliment) at charlespadgett.com. It's been a very long time since we kept in touch but this new site is proof that he's alive and (one hopes) well so it makes me happy to see. [11:38 am in found links]

July 6, 2001

The writing I do here is of a selfish sort. I let you read it, true, but mostly it's for me. So I don't trouble myself much with things like revisions or drafts, don't bother to step back and re-read and think: how does this flow to someone who isn't me, who can't fill in the blanks I leave or who alternately doesn't care about the minute detail sometimes contained in my obsessive ramblings? And this is fine for my purposes most of the time but it becomes a habit and threatens, then, to be a weakness: on the rare occasions when I have a story to write for the purpose of being read, I find I don't quite know how to step into the shoes of an uninformed stranger, to read with a disinterested eye. I think that revision must be the most difficult part of being a writer... not that I, really, would know. [11:24 am in girl meets web]

For those who were unaware, particularly the ladies who were unaware, Jesse is a man of formidable prowesses both intellectual and sexual. Um, that's what I hear, anyway. Also: he likes peanuts. [2:13 pm in found links]

Jakob Nielsen's website, when viewed in Netscape 4, causes my Windows machine to bluescreen. There is humor somewhere in this, I'm sure. [5:53 pm in girl meets web]

July 7, 2001

Four days' worth of photos from my digital camera include: the inevitable cat pictures; more flowers in Don's garden; pictures from when we had dinner with Michael, Allura, and Tom; pictures from an overnight trip to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia; and pictures of the July 4th fireworks over the Washington Monument from our excellent vantage point atop the National Museum of American History. It's been a good week for getting out and playing... not so good for properly documenting any of the fun. I'll get to it. [3:46 pm in girl meets web]

... I told you I was working on it. New in /pix: fireworks at the Washington Monument. [5:12 pm in girl meets web]

From a Washington Post story about the ongoing Chandra Levy investigation: "Investigators working these often-difficult [missing persons] cases place emphasis on those who were closest to the individual so they can begin to establish the habits, moods and behavior before the disappearance. In cases involving women, investigators also seek anyone with whom they were having a sexual relationship." ... but not in cases involving men? What---women don't know the men they sleep with enough to be able to provide investigators any insight into those men's moods and motivations? I'm really hoping this was just a sloppy, stupid mistake on the part of this story's authors, because I can't believe that the way it was written is the way it really goes. [5:33 pm in found links]

July 10, 2001

Dan of BrainLog was in from Seattle last night and the entire DC blogger crew turned out to show him a good time. In attendance were Mike and Dineen, Fred, Derek, Jenn, Missy, Jayme (who's actually not a DC blogger, but a Toronto blogger, woot), Thomas, Rick, and Jonathan (who already has some photos of the goings-on at his Photographica site), plus myself and Don (and can I just say it's probably going to take me months to remember to link him at almost and not ratbastard). We played lots of pool, drank more beer, and took even more digital photos, sure to be forthcoming at nearly all of the above sites very soon. Dan, it was good to meet you---come back this way sometime and we'll do it again---next time in a place with a bigger mirror in the ladies' room. [7:13 am in found links/girl meets web]

July 11, 2001

Whatever will I do without Mr. Wakeup? Now that I have an actual job, requiring me to get up in the actual morning, I am paranoid that this "service update" is going to end up turning into a permanent vacation. [12:06 am in found links/girl meets web]

The Day That Counts is July 17. Take a few minutes that day to get in touch with your elected officials (also, the President) and tell them that they've got no business handing out tax money to "faith-based" social groups. [9:38 am in found links/political]

I am thinking about starting to wear a hip-holstered paintball gun for the sole and express purpose of splattering the cars that barrel through red lights on the streets I walk between home, subway, and work. Don't know if it would teach the irresponsible drivers anything, but it would damnsure feel good. [6:19 pm in girl meets web]

July 12, 2001

Another new story at almost.org. [9:50 am in found links]

Lunchtime at 15th and H streets, northwest: The stately concrete-and-iron office building on the corner is being gutted and renovated anew. A crew of construction workers begins to dismantle a narrow column of scaffolding, standing one per story, a dozen up and down, as if on a ladder. The stainless steel bones of the skeletal structure are passed down hand-to-hand, and in this fashion the scaffold shrinks. Traffic and pedestrians flow in a continuous stream past the construction site, and one of the passers-by (a shapely woman wearing shorts and backpack) catches the attention of the men in hard hats. They whistle and cat-call over the noise of wheezing buses and impatient horns. The girl hears, and turns to look up. She spots the string of hooting men clinging to the side of the building. She smiles, and then raises her arm for a one-finger salute. The construction workers burst into raucous cheering and laughter, which does not fade until well after the girl with the backpack has disappeared.... god it's good to be back in the city. Eight hours a day of a sterile suburban office park was going to be the absolute death of me. [2:44 pm in girl meets web]

My cell phone vanished sometime yesterday afternoon. I am afraid someone swiped it on the Metro yesterday, but holding out hope that it may turn up still, that the good lost-phone karma I must surely have will come through for me just this once. [5:29 pm in girl meets web]

July 13, 2001

The jerk who threw Leo the Bichon Frise into traffic and killed him was sentenced today to three years in prison, the maximum sentence. I find myself hoping that they are three very long years. [1:53 pm in found links]

Online grocer HomeRuns.com ceases operations. First Kozmo, now this---people will have to start leaving their houses again. Tragic. [1:53 pm in found links]

Woohoo! My excellent lost-phone karma did in fact come through for me: I came home this afternoon to find a message from AT&T Wireless saying someone found my cell phone and called them to say they had it. I think that to ensure the continuation of that karma, I'll take a box of Krispy Kremes along when I go to pick it up. And if it vanishes again between now and then from where it sits in the security office of a company on the other side of town, I'll eat all twelve sticky-sweet doughnuts myself. [4:46 pm in girl meets web]

July 15, 2001

My attempts at keeping up with the news back in Atlanta are sporadic at best. So it came to my attention only recently that Bill Byrne, chairman of the Commission of Cobb County, Georgia (home of Newt Gingrich and Bob Barr), plans to run against Democratic incumbent Roy Barnes for the Georgia governorship next year. I feel it's my duty to remind my friends in Georgia that Mr. Byrne was a vocal backer of Cobb County's 1993 anti-gay resolution which caused the suburban-Atlanta county to be rejected as a venue for any and all events in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Does Georgia really want a governor who is not only filled with hate for a class of people that includes his own daughter, but is willing to defend that hatred to the direct economic disadvantage of his constituency, and has proven his leadership ineptitude in myriad other ways as well? I certainly hope not, and hope that Georgia's voters next year will send Mr. Byrne right back to Cobb County where he belongs. [2:47 pm in found links/political]

July 16, 2001

It occurs to me that I have no discipline whatsoever. [7:18 pm in girl meets web]

July 17, 2001

I live less than a mile from Rock Creek Park. Probably a lot of people can say the same; it's a huge park that meanders for miles through DC and Maryland. It's a marvel to me that more people don't use it to get from one place to the other, inside the city: the roads have few points of entrance and egress, and fewer stop signs or red lights, so traffic moves quickly inside the park. I drive through it several times a week, to get to my sweetie's house, or to quickly get to West Potomac Park and the bridges to Virginia, and until I started my new job last week, I drove Rock Creek Parkway at least twice a day to get to my contracting gig in the suburbs. I remember how, before I moved here, the park seemed confusing and serpentine and utterly unrelated to everything I knew about the geography of the city. Now it's a friendly place, and I'm tickled when I find a new shortcut to somewhere-or-other that involves a jaunt through the park. Like the rest of the city, Rock Creek Park has begun to feel like a place that is truly, in some small way, mine. So it was a shock to drive though this morning, along Piney Branch Parkway, and come around a curve to suddenly see horse-mounted policemen and an ugly encampment of reporters, with their news vans pointing giant futuristic antennae to the sky. It was the search for Chandra Levy. The suited reporters and logoed vans looked so out of place there amid the trees and grassy picnic areas. I felt suddenly hostile, almost: go away, go away, go away. I wish they'd find that poor girl. I don't think it'll be good news, when they do, but I wish they'd find her, so it can be over. [11:54 am in girl meets web]

July 19, 2001

Never let it be said I was untrue / I never found a home inside of you / Never let it be said I was untrue / I gave you all my time / I gave you all my time --- Dead Can Dance, "The Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove" [10:19 am in girl meets web]

July 20, 2001

If you're a techie, you're not really in yet at a new job until you've pulled your first fifteen hour day. ...it is with dubious pleasure that I can now say I'm in. [12:47 am in girl meets web]

At the McPherson Square Metro station today, I saw a girl wearing a sandwich board and carrying day-glo orange signs that said things like "SIX MONTHS OF TYRANNY" and "ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE" and "SUPPORT THE VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS". She came up out of the subway and headed in the direction of the White House. It got a smile out of me on a morning I'd have really rather spent in bed. Can't believe it's been six months since Geedubyah set up shop in the White House... times flies when you're in shock and denial. [2:01 pm in girl meets web]

July 24, 2001

There are less than four payments remaining on Alfredo the Zippy Red Saturn (now referred to fondly as "Stumpy", ever since I knocked off the passenger side mirror while trying to get him into The World's Smallest Garage). As mundane a milestone as this may be, it's awesome to contemplate. I bought the car to celebrate my first real job, with IBM---it was what you did, when they hired you on full-time. I was nineteen and the prospect of *five* *years'* *debt* terrified me completely, which is what having no student loans and a fear of home ownership will do to you. It's amazing to realize that what feels like yesterday is really five years in the past. And amazing to think that I drove very nearly every one of the sixty-seven thousand miles on the odometer, the equivalent of more than two and a half times around the globe... the miles, like the years, look a lot longer before you've put them behind you. [7:23 pm in girl meets web]

oh, this is very very bad... it seems I had an ancient and forgotten copy of the dreaded and infamous formmail.pl on one of my domain servers. Some spamming bastard found it and used it to send out god knows how many spam messages advertising an online dating service. How do I know this? The spammer used my email address as the reply-to, and I received nine hundred and thirty bounce messages from invalid addresses. I shudder to think how many emails actually went through to someone. It is but a small consolation that the email address is one I never use, so I don't have to worry about blacklisting... Learn from my mistakes, kids: Formmail.pl from Matt's Script Archive is insecure, and if there's a copy installed on one of your webservers, you may be aiding and abetting spammers without even knowing it. Hie thee to your cgi-bin and delete that nasty thing. I did, and am feeling much better now. [8:26 pm in tech/biz/girl meets web]

July 26, 2001

Oooooh, Monique has a sassy new (newish? I can't keep up) redesign. Why can't my site be that damned cute? Lavender-haired cartoon girls == gooooood surfin. [9:08 am in found links]

MySQL has a new logo. Although I'm quite fond of both MySQL and of dolphins, I'm not sure I'm feeling it. [2:46 pm in tech/biz/found links]

I'm afraid to know but I think I'm going to ask around anyway. [3:52 pm in found links]

July 27, 2001

No more periods, period? I was on Depo Provera for several years, and unlike the tale of horror told at a website linked in this Wired News article, I suffered no ill effects, beyond my rear end aching on the four days a year that I got my shots. I loved, repeat, loved, never getting a period. As far as I'm concerned, any drug to eliminate menstruation, provided proper safety testing &c., could only be a good thing. (And for the record, I think Depo Provera is perfectly safeas well, horror stories or none: remember that there are people who can tell you penicillin horror stories too.) [3:06 pm in found links]

July 28, 2001

I just received my first copy of Sircam---but it was in Spanish (Te mando este archivo para que me des tu punto de vista). Now that's a smart virus. :> [7:01 pm in tech/biz/girl meets web]

St. Machi writes to say that substituting one pound of hot dogs for the andouille sausage in my jambalaya recipe is "a very bad idea". ...I could have told you that. [8:18 pm in found links/girl meets web]

July 30, 2001

If Real-Life Businesses Tried To Bring In New Customers Like Pop-up Web Ads Try To Bring In New Customers, A True Story: I'm walking with a co-worker down 15th Street. We're hustling because lunch ran long and there's a meeting we need to get to. A man on a nearby bench calls to me as we pass. "Miss... Miss..." I'm guessing he wants money, or maybe a cigarette, so I keep going. But he persists: "Miss, you dropped something." I turn and look back, and see nothing. "Right there, you dropped it," he says, pointing to a spot on the sidewalk where I had passed. I walk back toward him, retracing my steps, inspecting the ground, and as I get closer, I still see nothing on the sidewalk at all. Exasperated, I'm about to ask him what game he's playing when he volunteers the information himself: "You dropped a shoeshine." I look down again, this time at the scruffy black leather Nine West boots I've had for two years and worn everywhere since, and looking up, I finally see the chamois cloths and bottles of polish on the bench. I narrow my eyes, and without a word, over the huckster's protestations, I turn to catch up with my colleague and walk away. [4:09 pm in girl meets web]

July 31, 2001

Augh. What will I do with my Tuesdays now? And does it make me a bad person that *that* is the first thought I have upon reading that Garrison Keillor will be undergoing open-heart surgery? [9:06 am in found links]

Etiquette Tips That Should Never Need To Be Offered, A True Story: if in making a visit to the snackie buffet (onion bagels, sugar cookies, coffee coffee coffee) that always exists at any class or seminar which you attend at the behest of your employer, your sole purpose is to swipe a napkin so that you may blow your sniffly nose---for god's sake, man, move somewhere else to do the blowing. [3:06 pm in girl meets web]

Cleaning out my inbox is good for me. I find addresses I thought I'd lost, I free up some hard drive space, it's happy all around. Sometimes I even find a URL I haven't looked at in years and am surprised & delighted to find approx. six tons of enigmatic and evocative writing... This is one of those. [6:02 pm in found links]

...throughout my life, people I used to know have had a habit of tracking me down and popping up from nowhere to say hello. ... read full entry [7:39 pm in journal abstracts]