Recently I have been happily blogging, reading, and enjoying the online LJ community. The public sharing of lives -- even what I grew up thinking of as "secrets" -- has been fascinating. Good fascinating. I was constructing my blog-as-therapy theory as recently as this morning's exercise-bike reverie. Sure, I was mulling, I may not want to know the details about someone's toenail-fungus-induced insomnia.  Yet, there is health in sharing personal pains with others who will step forward to sympathize and to share their own hurts.  There is reassurance in the basic similarity of experience.  While I am personally not yet likely to [...]

Today's Internet yak breeding adventure has had me go through the posts of the LJ'ers who danced at the specialty tip at the International Association of Square Dance Clubs' convention. (See otterpop58's list of LJ dancers at the tip and urso's pictures).  I counted three squares dancing and another square of watchers when we got together Sunday. Reading  about the people I've seen in the hallways and squares is great fun.  My Puritan New England upbringing keeps me from marking all the LJ'ers as "friends" (apparentparadox has a good discussion of Internet "friends")... I don't want anyone to think I'm getting to pushy [...]

Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation creates the opportunity for the hard right to swing the Supreme Court further into reactionary activism. The President's brief statement on the vacancy this morning managed to include a political swipe at moderates by suggesting that the Senate should prepare itself to act "responsibly" by quickly rubber stamping approval for whomever Bush nominates. MoveOn is organizing an electronic petition to Senators asking that they resist the attempt to stampede them into approving a nominee. MoveOn thinks Bush is going to announce his choice after deliberating all the way until next Tuesday. They want to turn in [...]

Our very nice meal for six last night at Garabaldi's in Oakland was cheapened by the restaurant's policy of adding a 20% gratuity on the bill.  That percentage is too aggressive for the mediocre service we received. If you’re going to add a generous tip to the bill for a table of any size, you best guarantee very good service. Our service was not good, much less very good. At the end of the evening, I talked to the manager about being unhappy having to pay 20% for such service. She agreeably said we weren’t required to pay the service. Huh? [...]

Today Apple released iTunes 4.9 which includes support for free podcasts which you can download from within the iTunes program. iTunes will check every day, every hour, or whatever you tell it for new shows from many different sources — currently 3000 — that include ABC, public radio, ESPN, and even the San Francisco Chronicle.  When iTunes finds a new show from one of the sources you’ve subscribed to, it downloads the audio to your computer.  iTunes will also synch programs to to your iPod if you’ve told it to. Nice!  Even on its first day, there are many news programs and [...]

Today’s bright and shiny oddness is a meme that tries to decide what I might be interested in by … Step 1: extracting my interests.COMPLETED. Step 2: extracting users who share my rarer interests Interests Processed: gay square dancing, challenge square dancing, COMPLETED. Step 3: extracting *their* interests . COMPLETED Step 4: Counting and sorting interests . COMPLETED […]

We arrived at Mission and 9th just in time to see the Dykes on Bikes Women's Motorcycle Contingent start off the parade yesterday.  We schlepped ourselves and our offerings to David's office with a front window on Market Street where we watched the whole parade.  Yep.  The whole thing. Most of us didn't believe that the Pride parade ever ended.  We'd never lasted on the streets until The End. But at 2:04 the yellow safety monitors walked by signifying the finish to great show. The photo gallery has pictures of squaredancing (including a few pixels of fuzzygruf),  grandees like Mayor Newsom and the Widow Norton, local [...]

We got the car back from the auto body shop Thursday morning. The shinny new hood opened, closed, and rested in place perfectly. It was ready when promised and the guy that wrote up the order even called me during the day Wednesday to let me know I could pick up the car whenever I wanted. Matt's Auto Body isn't like the cluttered shops I remember.  There was no hemming and hawing about parts availability or wondering if this spring went with that hood assembly. The estimate was done on a computer that suggested parts and gave the estimator diagrams of what [...]

The dishwasher we bought from Sears last month came with a $50 mail-in rebate.  I know that most people don't bother to send in for the rebate (one Consumers' Union statement I saw said 60% of rebates go unclaimed).  But, I filled in our forms, copied, pasted, and mailed certified with return receipt.  The result?   A Sears 50-Cent Check I called the 800-number and everyone was nice, helpful, and unsurprised.  They promised another check to make up the balance. It came. The Second check