Monthly Archives: December 2008

General, Hollywood, Uncategorized

Just In Case You Missed It and Other Holiday Items

1 Comment

Howdy.  Got a lot of good “workin” done for a change today, so I have to be quick on the bloggeration front.

Wanted to put a post out here to make anyone digesting soloshootsfirst via RSS that there is news on my New Year’s Eve plans, and a special page on the site dedicated to it.  Some of the plans are still in flux, but there definitely WILL be a party, in a specific place (or two), at [a] specific time(s), and this is one of my favorite things: really easy for visitors to the site to post comments on the page for all to see in relation to the party.  So if you have thoughts, ideas, or feedback, feel free.

That’s the last mention I’ll have of the party in the blog itself until the day gets much much closer…

In case you are looking for some gift suggestions for me during the holiday season (and it’s just a coincidence that this is brought up after the birthday shindig), there’s a page for that, too.  I will be updating it periodically if I get other ideas, so it may be worth checking more than once.

What else ya got?  Schrubbe pointed me to a post yesterday about how Caprica is getting the green light on the SciFi channel.  Seems like there’s some potential there.  But mostly it makes me think about how season 4b of BSG is going to be starting on January 16.  Who wants to have a catch-up watch party in advance?  After the new year, maybe?

OK, half an hour to go; better do something…

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

Eat It

1 Comment

I find myself in a quandry as my place of employment changes over to a completely web-based email and calendaring system.  For about 4 or 5 years now, I have used my email client (either Outlook or Thunderbird) as my RSS aggregator as well.  I’ve been quite happy with this setup, because I like having browser windows open for Internetting, not really for mail, or word processing, or all the other crazy crap that seems to only be in “the cloud” these days.  In my mind, the beauty of RSS was that is could take the Internet and deliver it to me like mail.

One other issue that I have to admit has started to crop up in Thunderbird is that, since I read feeds in a few different places, I end up with repeats of “new” content, or subscriptions that are out of sync.  So, even though I could probably just stick with Thunderbird and use it only as a feed reader (and I might), I am entertaining other options.  Here are a few of the things that I’d like:

  • I want a reader that I don’t have to pay much attention to. I’m gathering the feeds because I want my cage rattled when there’s something to read.  Even if I’ve gathered a number of feeds in one spot (to avoid traveling to all those sites), it’s still not worth it to me if I have to actively go and look at that page.  So, I need a fairly concrete and active alert system.
  • Which items are new should be completely obvious. This might seem like a “duh” request, but I note it largely due to the RSS functionality built in to Firefox, which, while simple to use, doesn’t have a very intuitive display scheme, and it doesn’t notify you when there are new items.
  • Syncing all my subscriptions would be nice. But it’s not necessarily required.

Soooo, the options that are immediately clear to me are the following (do you know any others?):

  • stick with Thunderbird
  • use the live bookmarks feature in Firefox exclusively
  • pull all my feeds into my netvibes page
  • start using Google Reader
  • download a completely different RSS client (fat chance)

There must be options that I’m overlooking, or things I’m not thinking of, so if you have a comment, by all means feel free to share…

General, Uncategorized

Rash Endorsement

1 Comment

Per Wordy’s mention in a post from a couple weeks back, I am now on accuradio for my holiday listening pleasure (I listen to Christmas music at work exclusively during the month of December).

I only loaded this mother up about 15 minutes ago, but I am in favor over the live365 that I’ve gone with in the past because it seems I can narrow down the music selection more specifically within this “holiday” genre (i.e., no En Vogue singing “Sleigh Ride” right after Mannheim Steamroller; both nice selections, but if you don’t want to mix them, you shouldn’t have to).

So, if you’re looking to give your season a soundtrack, give it a try.

General, Uncategorized

Welcome To the Saddle. Please Climb In.

1 Comment

After what feels like at least a 2-week period of not-being-at-work-too-often, time to settle in for the month of December and the home stretch of the fall semester.  This time of year is usually peppered with students who forgot they had a bill to pay to go to school, but even more of them are too busy catching up on all the work they haven’t done all semester long.  So it should be slow, but steady.

At home, I’m going to be focusing on decorating my house for the holidays this week, and getting a jump on shopping.  I have a number of gifts already planned and noted, so it’s just a matter of getting out on the ‘tubes to do the buying.  I’ll also be finishing up a bit of writing, and getting together a plan for New Year’s Eve / my birthday.  FYI, the party is set for Wauwatosa and the Mundschau house, more details to come…

I don’t know how you feel about it, but it seems like the signs of winter are in full force: snow on the ground, Christmas season is here, Red Arrow park is open for skating…  Enjoy your holiday season!  Hopefully I’ll be able to focus enough to work, too.