My Addled Brain

I’m gonna have to start a blog on BLAB just so I can get back to not posting here. It’s just been the fourth full day of it’s existence, and already TampaBLAB has 34 blogs. There were two more that I rejected because they didn’t have a feed - but I did notify them of how they could obtain one. I am nothing if not a benevolent dictator, after all. But already, I see some issues with the system:

• Times are all screwed up.
• Some posts are being double- and triple-posted.
• Bits of HTML sneak in where I don’t want them.

I’ve got a solution for the last issue that I’ve already implemented. The first two…are a little trickier. There’s a new version of Feedwordpress that may, or may not, solve some of these problems. If it doesn’t, I’m gonna have to go get messy with the code. Contents may settle during shipping - if something goes awry over there, I’m probably breaking something I can easily unbreak. I think.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin

Why aren’t critics
like Michael Medved lauding
this movie’s morals?

I mean, if the man can draw a connection between morality and the lives of penguins (note to MM: oops), then he’s gotta be telephoning strangers of the virtues of Steve Carrell’s opus to the guy that never got any. Right?

For those of you joining the BLAB on it’s inaugural launch, please, please, please, link to it. If you are of the type who prefer graphical type clickies, you’ll find three flavors on the Frequently Asked Questions page: webvertizing size 135×75, standard 100×25, and the ever ubiquitous pixel button. Remember, every time you link to the BLAB, an angel gets their wings.

Secret project #2 is done -and it is my gift to our great big Tampa blog community. Inspired by a conversation I had with the award-winning Tommy a few months ago, I decided to put together an online gathering place for us - where our blogs can co-mingle, and everyone can not only follow their favorite blogs, but get to know some new ones along the way. Yeah, I know, I’m going all Leave it to Beaver on you, but this online thing has been good to me, and I wanted to figure out how to give back. So, without any further ado…please welcome TampaBLAB to the world.

It’s original purpose was to be a blog aggregator - a blogger signs up their blog(s), the blogs are added in, and every so often (ok, hourly) the system checks out the sites that are registered, looks for new posts, and gets their information. The post excerpts are then posted, along with the title, categories, and whatnot. It’s all very fancy, I assure you. The only thing you’ll need, other than a blog, is some sort of RSS/Atom newsfeed. Dunno what that is? Well, if you use Blogger, Wordpress, or Movable Type, chances are you’ve got one. And if you don’t - well, you’ve still probably got one, or at least have a plugin available for your blog software of choice that can provide one for you. (This note to Gax - already tested your PostNuke. You’ve got a feed, but all it has is the post title. Get yerself a plugin, mang!)

I tested it with about 6 different blogs for almost a month while I was working on getting the kinks out. I think we’ve got the majority of the issues cleared, but if you find something amiss, please mail me at the system admin address, which you can find in the footer of every page. Depending on the response to this (which I hope will be big - but I’m counting on y’all to get the word out), I may need some help keeping things running - not in the monetary sense (at least I don’t think so, I’ve got tons of bandwidth), but with moderation and maybe some coding. But that stuff’s down the road. For now, all I really want from you fine people is to sign up and spread the word!

And we thank you very much for your support.

Congratulations to Tommy, r*, and David Pinero for their nods in our very own Weekly Planet’s Best of the Bay. The effort and dedication they put in to them definitely shows, and I’m buying the first round for ‘em when Tommy gets more info on the celebration. There’s also a crapload of mentions in this week’s tbt* about other local sites, but I’m too lazy to type them all out. As usual, Tommy shows us how it’s done.

I shall celebrate the birth of my sister as I celebrate another, equally-important day.

Yar! We be wishin’ ye the happiest of birthdays, lass. Don’t ye be drinkin’ too much rum - them GW boys got a nasty case of scurvy, and ye needs yer wits about ye.

Nothing like being a day late on commentary. C’est la vie.

It’s seems the journey of John and Linda Dollar, those two pinnacles of modern child rearing, has come to an end. They plead no-contest to charges that they tortured 5 of their 8 adopted children, using such GITMO-approved devices like a cattle prod, pliers, mallets, and the ever-popular imprisonment and starvation techniques.

Did I say GITMO? I meant Taliban. Sorry.

For their stellar efforts in the continuing effort to change the childhood experience from a series of confusing and disappointing events (i.e. bullies that take your lunch money, there’s no Easter Bunny, what’s that noise coming from mommy and daddy’s room) to a consistent living-with-Jason-Vorhees-and Freddy-Kreuger existence - an improvement only by Machevellian standards, the early-to-mid-50s Dollars receive 15 years of jail, 15 years of probation, served concurrently. No word on whether they’ll receive a copy of Nazi Death Camp: The Home Game.

15 years for torturing children? Are you kidding me? I could sell weed near a high school and get the same sentence. (Attention potheads: I don’t sell weed. Sorry.) Why did this plea deal even occur? They blamed “what [they] were taught by biblical principals” for their crimes, and their “apology” might as well have ended with “if you say so”. The Dollars are not just unfit parents, they’re unfit human beings. They were facing a sentence ten times what they pled to, and should have served every last minute of them. The prosecutor had mountains of evidence. There was no way these two could skate off with a free pass unless the jury was made up of expatriated Hutus and Janjaweed militiamen. Instead, they stand the very real possibility of walking out of jail to live out the last bit of their pathetic lives in freedom, without ever having admitted their guild outright. They had them dead to rights, and the prosecution tossed them a comparative softball.

The only solace one might derive from this is the kids will not have to testify to what happened in court. Is that enough of a fair trade?

Broken Flowers

As much as I love
Bill Murray, I wish he would
play someone with balls.

I’m sure something happened in that movie, but I’ll be damned if I know what.

It’s more of a…test.

Muahahahahah.

Maybe it’s the four days of training.

Maybe it’s working for a company with more people than I may have ever met in my lifetime.

Maybe it’s the twisty corridors that line the place (my suggestion that they offer sherpas to guide new employees for the first few days was…disregarded).

Maybe it’s a mixture of all these things.

But it’s probably sitting down to my first day, getting my mail set up, and discovering I have 140 emails in my inbox.

Did I mention I have a new job? Because I do, you know.