You know about my general dissatisfaction with the Friday Four Or Five Or So. Many of you share that dissatisfaction, expressed either through answers or commentary or the very sensible choice of simply not doing the FF.

After receiving much encouragement in comments and emails, I’ve decided to strike out on my own. Between now and next Friday you’ll see the birth of… something.

The (current) concept is: “Past, Present, Future.” Three “questions” per week. I’m sure you get the gist of it. I’m probably going to dedicate a subsection of this website to the meme instead of threading it directly through the main page (though my answers will appear here, naturally).

So I’ll be spending the next few days building some website materials and arranging things, blah blah blah. What you can do to help is to suggest themes. Not questions per se, just themes I can wrap three “questions” around. Please use the email link over on the side (directly under the duck logo) instead of the comment box so I can easily collate and credit the suggestions. Thanks!

What you can comment upon is whether you think I’m nucking futs for trying this… or if you think my idea blows goats. Better I find out now than a month down the road, no?

So I’m sitting at home last night poring through the email, and I see

“Private Dancer” – the world’s first pole-dancing game for the PC…

on the Ogg Vorbis mailing list.

Naturally, I had to respond.

*laughter* Um. Um. Where to start? Let’s see…

“Well, it’s about damned time!”

“Aren’t the terms ‘private’ and ‘pole-dancing’ sort of mutually exclusive?”

“Boy, this will sure raise the credibility of Ogg Vorbis in the gaming
community. Where porn leads, others are sure to follow.”

“And the objective of the game would be… what, exactly?”

“How long will we have to wait for a Mac or Linux port of THIS game?”

“What’s their target audience? Lonely guys with cash to burn who can’t
work up the nerve to visit their local strip bar?”

“Soundtrack by Tina Turner! Or, not.”

“Finally, a game that can fully utilize the scroll wheel on my Logitech
mouse!”

“Just what the world needs: Ogg-ified strip-club music.”

“Giving the term ‘DirectX’ all new meaning.”

“I can’t wait for this to be mindlessly copied by game publishers
everywhere, just like they did with Doom.”

“It may be out of character for me to take a stand against computer
gaming, but on this one I have to say: GET A LIFE!”

A dozen ought to do, yeah. For starters.

And for my efforts, I received

8-DDD

You’re a treat, man.

And that’s what it’s all about. The adoration of… well, one person out in the far distance. You betcha.

I left work at noon today so I could watch the kids while Wendi does important-type stuff like “job-related activities.” Her schedule is less flexible than mine.

The titular tidbits (gee, that sounds naughty!):

1) The T1 switchover happened, and I didn’t feel a thing. Yay, Qwest. I’m sorry I didn’t update this morning when it was over. Eep.

2) I’m now using two of the tools found at Textism: The Referer Page tool and the Google Hilite tool. Now when visitors arrive here via Google they should see their search terms highlighted on the page. Nifty, wot?

If I wasn’t so deeply attached to Monaural Jerk I might give Dean Allen’s Textpattern a spin when it comes out. There are some very, very interesting things (to me) in that system. Maybe I’ll use that the next time I decide to host another journal site…

It’s not as though hordes of websurfers visit this site at 7:30am Pacific time, but at about that time tomorrow morning Pacifier/Northwest Link/Europa/whoever will have US West… er, Qwest moving our T1 from the Vancouver office to the downtown Portland office. We may be “offline” for up to half an hour. We may be offline longer, actually, but everyone involved insists it should only take five minutes.

By the way, this also means Entercom’s main website will be unavailable for exactly the same period of time. The good news? The line costs are supposed to go down once the move is complete, and we should be entirely routed through the “new” Pacifier networking structure. Hopefully that translates to “fewer outtages,” but you won’t catch me holding my breath.

UPDATE: Yes, that means Mari and Wendi will be unavailable as well as Newsradio WORD. And webmail, for all three of us who get email on this machine.
Pacifier