Sean’s Blog

So in my attempt to get back into the whole social networking groove, I finally took the plunge and joined Twitter.  For those of you that don’t spend far too much of your precious lives online, Twitter is a micro-blogging service.  No images, no movies, all posts must be less then 140 characters.

I really don’t know how useful I’m going to find it, but I was really impressed that when the California wildfires flared up earlier this year, a lot of people were able to notify their families of there status via twitter (since phone lines were down).  Now I know there is absolutely no way that I will be able to get my parents to ever go near or use something like twittter, so I needed a way so that non twitter using people could see my twitter posts (called tweets).

After looking into some plugins, I decided that I would just publish the RSS feed to a page on the site.  So if you are looking for my most current information, it will be on the Social page.  I don’t plan to use twitter a whole bunch, but we will see where things take us.  I also set up a twitter client for my blackberry (no sms, text messaging bad!) so I can update when I not at the computer.

Since most of my friends don’t use twitter, I’m sort of in the awkward position of having no one to follow.  I had Twitter scan my email addresses and all it came back with was Penelope Trunk (of the Brazen Careerist).  It just seems weird to me to follow popular bloggers who I’ve somewhat interacted with.  Maybe I am missing the point of the whole thing though.

So if you know me and use twitter, go ahead and follow me.  If you just want to follow me and don’t know me, I’d be more then happy to expose you to my ramblings as well.  I plan to give it an honest try and see how things work out after a couple of weeks.

I like to share stuff.  I like find a lot of stuff on teh interwebs and I would like to share it.  The problem I run into, is that almost no one I know actually uses Google Reader, which has a nifty interface for sharing.

So sharing through reader is kind of out of the question.  After some searching, I found this nifty feature.  Basically it is a small snippet of Javascript that allows you to publish your shared items on a page of your choosing.  Here is the documentation from Google.

So I went and created a page.  I’ll add things to it from time to time that I find interesting as well as any notes that I have.  If you click on the “Read More” link, it will take you to the Google Page where all the notes I’ve added to shared items will be (if you care).  Take a look at the Shared Items page.

I go back and forth with the social media thing. Granted, it has made the web a much more interesting place to be. But 90% is pure and utter crap. Instead of communication, it seems like a bunch of people making connections then having nothing to talk about.

Such was the case of the disastrous Myspace.com experiment. I got on Myspace way late in the curve. And although I ran into a couple people that I haven’t talked to in a while, it didn’t really open up any worthwhile conversations and became a spam magnet. So I left.

I’ve been thinking about it though, and it really seems that you get out what you put in. So I’m going to give it another shot. I’m going to go hit the big networks and see what I can see. Hopefully this will work out better. I’ll keep you all appraised on how it goes.

It’s 80 degrees and sunny outside and I am stuck at work. Ahh, the joys of being part of a 24X7 operation. Besides working today, it was a pretty good weekend. We spent along time in clearing out the the ivy that has slowly been trying to consume the house and then mulching the flowerbeds in the back yard.

We also walked down to the ice cream place down the street since I have been on a milkshake kick for the past couple days. Last, but not least, we installed a squirrel bungee, which has the potential to be INCREDIBLY AWESOME.

So I get to be at work on a day nobody is updating their blogs, going through back issues of xkcd (which is just brilliant) and I ran across a great commentary on the whole “managing your image online” debate :

I found these two things today that were just hilarious:
You almost feel sorry for the telemarketer:

Much more geeky, but still as hilarious:

I keep going back and forth on how to run this blog.  I want something that isn’t constrained to a topic and is just generally about me, but I also like to write about technology and would like to make an attempt at running a serious blog (ie by serious I mean getting more professional about it, not tone).

When I started out I had two blogs.  This one and a technology focused blog.  I sortof lost interest in the tech blog because I was still learning about blogging and how to best do it.  It ended up going under, but I think I am going to give it another shot.

In the last year I’ve learned a lot about blogging and social media in general and I think that this will help me to write a much more value packed and professional blog since I’ve been around the corner and have made a lot of mistakes that I’ve learned from.

What that means for you is that I am going to take this blog as really a personal blog.  A sort of catch-all that random things I’m interested in will show up on.  It probably means that i won’t be able to blog on this site daily, but who knows.  Over the last couple of months I’ve found that I really enjoy writing again and posting isn’t the chore that it was when I started.

Keep an eye here for when I officially kick off the new site.  It should only be a couple of weeks from now.  I really want to have some great content lined up before I start and am working through a couple of ideas now.

For a while now I’ve been using Remeber The Milk and while it is useful, the reason I’ve really come to love it is for how it lets me keep track of books.  I read a lot and, like most of you, I am always finding or hearing about books I would like to read.  The problem is that I can never remember them, let alone while I am browsing at the library or bookstore with eight thousand other books staring at me.

Enter Remember the Milk.  Whenever I run across a book that I might be interested in reading, I add it to the list.  Most of the time, I’ll  check  to see if it’s  available at my local library as well.

When I go to the library, I’ll check out some books from the list.  If I see anything that catches my eye browsing, I’ll add it to the list.  This is where the mobile feature of being able to use it on my Blackberry really shines.

When I get home, I’ll add a personal task to return the books I checked out due by the date and mark the books in the list as completed.  This system should really work with any task manager, but RTM just makes it really easy for me.

Friday night, Jess and I went to see Flight of the Concords. Having told a good amount of people, I was kind of shocked that not many people know who they are. they have a show on HBO that just finished up it’s first season and I’d totally recommend it. I generally am not a fan of musical comedy but…

IT’S BUSINESS TIME!

So May 16th has come and gone and no Economic Stimulus Check has shown up in my bank account.  I was getting pretty worried that there was some sort of snafu, but then I ran across this piece of information.

Apparently, if you used TaxAct software to file your taxes (like I did) and chose direct deposit, you will be getting a paper check.

Looks like Taxact routed the direct deposit through a 3rd party bank, which neither they nor the government is going to do for the rebate check.  So now I know where it is, it just means that I am going to have to wait at least another 2 months for it.  What a pain in the ass.

That being said, I liked filing with TaxAct and will probably do it again.

Here’s the schedule for those of us waiting for paper checks.

Bridge of Birds - Barry Hughart

A while back on Whatever, there was a discussion on literary one hit wonders and Barry Hughart was talked about quiet favorably. I’d never heard on Hughart or Bridge of Birds before and I though that I would give it a try. Boy was I glad I did. Bridge of Birds is a very funny book. The best way I can I can describe it is like a kung-fu Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

After the children of his village are poisoned, Number Ten Ox goes to Peking to find a wise man to help cure them. With very little money he is laughed out of all the houses of the reputable wise men and stumbles in on the drunken Master Li who “has a slight flaw in in his character”. From there they set out to find the Great Root of Power.

I can’t possibly go into where the story goes from there, but it includes sword dancing ghosts, the most desirable women in the world, giant invisiable hands, and underwater cities. The names in the book are great : Henpecked Ho, Cut-off-their-balls Wang, Ma the Grub and others.

Lastly any book that references the All China Freestyle Blasphemy Championship is OK in my book. I would really recommend this book for great fun read.