A package awaited my arrival home last night. “Wait,” I said to myself, “I didn’t order anything from Amazon!”
Somebody, apparently, did:
A Midnight Oil single and a Tony Banks solo album! Imports, even! (See the stickers?) Don’t mind me, I’m just going to go all fanboy for a few minutes… and then I’ll give these babies a spin. (Reviews forthcoming? Most likely.)
It’s not like I need more self-absorbed nonsense on this site, but you know what? I’m just that kind of nonsensical self-absorbed guy. So, as I remember dates and get the urge to plug them in, I’ll be updating the new Timeline feature, powered by the now-functional Timeline WordPress Plugin. Huge thanks go out to David Gagne for making this nifty little tool.
(What? You wanted actual content, like I’ve been promising you for weeks? Hang in there. I’ll get to it. Honest.)
Well, now. The IM system I’ve used the longest, ICQ, has locked me out of my account. Apparently there’s an ongoing (and officially unacknowledged) problem with hackers getting into their database, resetting passwords and removing associated email addresses, especially on older accounts (like mine, a seven-digit account number). I’ve only ever had a small handful of email addresses over the years, and none of them are working to do password recovery.
ICQ’s support stance on this problem is, basically, “You’re screwed. Here, have a new ICQ number!” Thanks, but no thanks. It’s not like I was using the thing all that much. I’m just annoyed, not horribly inconvenienced. I suppose I could start using that Microsoft system a bit more, if necessary. (I know. I wasn’t going to create an account there, but it sort of came in really handy for my new job. My shame runs deep, I assure you.)
So, any of you who might still have had me on your ICQ buddy lists… take me off and block that user ID. I can’t use that account anymore, and anyone who can is a hacker.
(Before anyone chimes in with the snark: I don’t use the official ICQ client, my computer is squeaky clean, and there’s a history of this sort of thing happening at the server side. My geek cred is fine, thankyouverymuch.)
Adding to the joys (ha ha) of Friday the 13th, I’m also home sick today. Either I caught a bug somewhere, or the mongolian grill did something to my innards. Whee.
Those who know me are aware that I’m not exactly the world’s biggest animal lover. That said, I’d like some time alone with a blunt/spiky implement and the raging nitwits who broke into a Seattle-area pet shelter and beat the hell out of a bunch of helpless animals.
Words fail me. Others have some eloquence handy, though.
Yesterday’s post and this entry appear thanks to an interesting little piece of software called BlogDesk, which may provide a convenient enough posting interface that I’ll have an easier time updating this here journal.
Maybe.
The product, while generally nifty, sports a few interesting quirks. For instance, if (like me) you tend to insert HTML as you go, you’re going to be unpleasantly surprised by your post. BlogDesk tends to turn angle brackets into, well, angle brackets. You have to toggle over to “source” view to do anything meaningful in that regard, or use the “Insert HTML” command.
On the upside, it uses the <em> tag for italics and <strong> for bold face, thus supporting the recommended deprecation of <i> and <b>. (The basic idea is that you can and should decree via stylesheet what emphasized and/or strong text should look like instead of being restricted to simply italics and bold face. Never mind that almost nobody does this; it’s the principle of the thing, don’t you see?)
(Anyway. Ahem. Moving right along…)
BlogDesk is worth trying out, especially if you find yourself stuck sometimes feeling like you ought to post something but don’t feel like going to the trouble of firing up the browser and signing into your site’s administrative interface. It’ll post to WordPress and MovableType (among others), and will import your categories as well as allow you to set comment and trackback enabling on a post. I recommend giving it a whirl.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the following email message this morning:
You have been chosen to test the new email service at AnimeMusicVideos.org. You now have an email account of [address removed] to use if you wish.
Well, that’s very nice… but, what? I don’t need another email address! Sure, I’d love to have an excuse to use such an address, but I just don’t have such an excuse, and there’s no way I’m going to take the time to watch over yet another email account if there’s no need to do so.
This would barely be worth remarking upon, of course, but for the fact that I have a very, very, very hard time letting something like this pass me by. It’s going to take a fair bit of willpower to resist activating that account, just on general principles. Sad, isn’t it?
(For the story behind why I was offered my “very own” email account, see this forum thread.)
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