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12.29.04 i don't usually go in for this end-of-the-year bullshit. but evan's top 10 songs of the year list (posted to friendster) intrigued me. mostly because he included a track from that rilo kiley album that i thought smelled like dogshit. (of course the rest were predictably excellent; we expect no less from evan). anyway, it got me thinking about what my picks would be. plus, i'm so bored at work this week that i need something totally consuming to do. so, here are my top 10 songs of 2004.
# 12.27.04 i got a second dock for my ipod, to use at work, and now i'm realizing that it doesn't work quite the way i had expected. i had planned to keep my ipod linked to my home computer with auto-syncing keeping both up to date. then, i want to play tracks off of my ipod at work, without syncing. so i want my ipod to be manually managed at work, but auto-synced at home. anyone know how to do this? i could just deal with manual syncing at home, but then i wouldn't be able to rate tracks while i was listening on my ipod (one of my favorite things to do). there are just too damn many ipod downloading/syncing programs out there to figure out if any of them will enable this, so i'm asking you, diligent reader. found: music publisher, which, rather inventively makes your ipod available to the network as a shared music folder. it's buggy, certainly not a perfect solution, but it seems to be working for now. also showing potential: ipod decloak which makes an oganized folder of aliases to the files on your ipod. you can drop those aliases into itunes and link the files in your library to your ipod. again, less than perfect. # 12.21.04 this morning i woke into a dream, the kind where you are no longer sleeping, but have yet to regain control over your own thoughts. in this dazed state, i felt a desperate need for the approval of some strange set of missionista kids, a group of unwashed, hipper-than-thou boys and girls dressed in the trendiest thrift store rags and living together in squalor. they stood around in their grungy kitchen, judging me and my ability to create anything of purpose because i wasn't living a life of greater sacrifice. clearly i have some issues here with guilt and rejection. or maybe i'm afraid of DIY-hipster kids from the mission? hard to say. # 12.19.04 i've mentioned it before, but after taking something of a hiatus, i've come back to quicksilver on my mac. i left the application for a while when i began having problems with my computer (due to corruption in my installation of os x thanks to some funky memory) and only recently came back to it. since i last used the app, it got a very thorough revision, in which most of the originally functionality i enjoyed (inner-app functions) got stripped out in favor of a plugin based system. and i love it! the program is that much faster, more responsive and more extensible than before. and it's stable! if you use your mac a lot, or rather do a lot when you're using it, you should check this program out. with a little energy toward picking out the most appropriate plugins for your configuration and customizing the program's catalog (no need to index my library folders or p0rn, please, but i'd like to go deeper in my documents folder) i think you'll find this little application wildly helpful. # really interesting article in this week's times magazine, about blogs and privacy and the blogger's need to protect and respect that of others. it's an interesting point, what with all of us sitting here spouting out the personal, emotional and sexual details of our lives for all to see. especially since there aren't any hard and fast rules, and certainly no way (or right) to police blogs and the bloggers who might reveal too much about the intersections of the lives of themselves and those around them. since i'm not much for drama in general, there isn't much material in my life that lands me in the censorship zone. nevertheless, i do work from a loose set of rules about what i will and wont write about, and how to handle those involved if i do write about people i know. and of course, as those of you who know me in real life would attest to, i'm diplomatic to the disgusting nth degree. still, i wont post anything about work or coworkers (when i do, it's completely in abstract and free of any detail). jessie and i both keep the personal parts of our life together offline, so you don't read about fights or sex or those embarrassing personal details that couples know about each other (although we've certainly had occasions when each of us have inadvertently escaped some of those details). and when writing about friend's personal problems (if at all, because there's very little in that zone that would be relevant here) i try to always obscure personally identifiable information. do i manage to hold myself to these rules? not always. certainly i'm saved by an allegiance to relevance (which is an awkward idea, because this blog has very little formal definition of subject, so i have to use the term relevant very loosely) that comes from my (limited) experiences with journalism (erm, the high school newspaper and a surprisingly informative journalism camp program). have i ever burned anyone on here? i'm not sure. i don't think so, but perhaps i'm forgetting. what then, if anything, do you do to protect those around you when blogging? # 12.15.04 you know all those weird nerdo socio-tech fads that are always popping up? like warchalking or flashmobbing or 'toothing or whatever? well, the other day, i was on the bus (38, geary, outbound) coming home from work, and someone tried to bluetooth a picture to my phone. the first thing you'll notice about this is that i have my phone's bluetooth function always enabled. the second thing you'll notice is that i'm staring at my phone while i'm on the bus. stop, because neither of those are relevant to this story. so i get this message, "receive file BIGFOOT.JPG? YES or NO" and despite my own best attempts at caution (are there viruses for cellphones yet? can they spread over bluetooth?) i was compelled to download it. my stop arrived at that moment, so i couldn't send another picture back to them, but i did find the time a few days later to send a picture of my feet to a stranger's cellphone. so, what does it mean? is this another fad? more importantly, is there any way this idea could be co-opted for the purposes of finding anonymous sex? # slightly belated, but happy birthday anyway, neighbor! # 12.13.04 this website doesn't usually traffic in celebrity gossip, but this is too good to pass up: ellen degeneres and portia di rossi dump their respective girlfriends to get it on. # i'm on the bus this morning, mesmerized by the woman sitting next to the door. the entire carriage was empty, save for her and i. she sat in a single seat, the ones that are all alone by themselves, outside facing in on the rest of the passengers. i sat two back in the benches, knees propped high against the seat in front of me, headphones gently washing my brain in a protective hum. she's old. or rather, she's aging, the idea of someone much older. small, slightly puffy calves descend into simple black orthopedic lace-ups, tiny silver medallions clasped onto the toe of the shoes. nude stockings, old and wrinkled, tiny dark fractures giving the impression at a distance that her legs are scattered with fine dark hairs. she rests her hands in her lap, folded, clutching a small pocketbook that perfectly matches her featureless maroon skirt and jacket. no jewelry adorns her hand, no ring but for the tiny band-aid wrapped around the tip of her thumb. her face is set in a stern gaze, as cold and distant as the grey sky over our heads. her mouth turns down, the faintest hint of a frown that does not tax a single muscle on her waxen face. heavy rouge offers a caricature of cheek bones, dark eyes made more so by her own hand. her wiry gray hair is pulled back tightly, as if each strand might run the length of her insides, each tied to some vital organ, anchoring the entire apparatus of her from imminent collapse. # 12.12.04 i dreamt this morning that i got sent away for work. to a tropical resort. the only way to reach the island was to put on your bathing suit and jump into a lusciously warm and dangerously fast ocean current, which whisked you (and a small jet's worth of other people) away to the island on what i could only describe as a water freeway. there was even an overpass, bless them. somehow, it was very important to the corporation that i spend the weekend at this swanky hotel on an other-wise empty island. but the bathrooms were communal. i went with evan last night to see a movie. we picked up steven (these blog-less people, you'll have to get on freindster if you want visual aids) and got dinner at the upstairs-thai-place in the castro. my dish was served inside of a hollow pineapple, which evan had predicted would happen. afterwards, we saw kinsey at the embarcadero, where steven directed our attention to the fact that the wonky 80's wall-art actually says TIT. the movie was good, but not exactly compelling. even cheesy in parts. but if you're interested in the story of kinsey, it's worth checking out. sleepy, we all opted to resist the urge for bed and go out for a while. evan wanted to meet up with his new fling (i'd hate to assign more or less value to someone else's fledgling relationship, so i'll call him a fling, for better or for worse) max. unfortunately, max was at the cafe. do you know the cafe? if you do, you're laughing right now. it's not really my kind of place. steven had never been though, so it was worth going just for the look of shock and discomfort on his face. of course we ran into everyone evan knows, because he's such a party-host, but it was fun to meet some more of his friends and to connect our respective circles by a few more linkages (his friends had just parted ways with mike sullivan, apparently, and had just run into their friend aj, who it seems everyone knows). evan's friend, or maybe he was his friend's friend, (nathan?) called me out on my gee i wish i had gotten one more drink before last call lamentations by finding a friendly bartender and procuring one last, utterly unnecessary drink for me. it's quite embarrassing to be holding a half-finished cocktail when the lights turn on at the cafe. it's not the sort of place where reality's harsh light should shine. across the room, i spotted an old class-mate, ronaldo, from college. i kept my distance though, because it wasn't really a great night for an oh hi how are you what've you been up to we should really catch up let's swap phone numbers but we'll never call each other kind of conversations. especially in the castro. especially at the cafe. i'm afraid i'm allergic to that kind of moment. i finally left the boys, quite late, to the rest of their respective weekends, and came home to my warm bed and my warm boyfriend and the chance to write a next-morning-this-was-my-night post, just like dan might. because i have nothing else of worth to tell you. # 12.07.04 finally someone puts together a comprehensive list of san francisco's free wireless hotspots. not sure why this was such a challenge before, but metrofreefi's conglomerate of websites certainly has done it well. in addition to listing free wireless access points for a number of major cities, the site allows you to download some seriously easy-to-use listings to your ipod, broken out by region and city, and even offering the phone number of the hot-spot, in case you don't know how to get there. the ipod's a totally perfect way to store/retrieve this kind of information. # oh yes, happy pearl harbor indeed, jessie. you make thirty look younger and sexier than it ever has before. so much so that it just might put on a tight shirt and go out to meet some little 20-something bimbette for a quick blow later tonight. i mean, thirty's checking itself out in the mirror this morning, driving fast to work, looking for those old vhs of thirtysomething and hoping it didn't tape over them with crappy cinemax soft-core. it's a brand-new day for thirty, and it's all because of you. # 12.05.04 so, with nothing short of super-manic support from jamison, my blog is bandaged and drugged and once again walking around on it's crutches asking cute boys to sign it's cast. note that since comments seem to be irrevocably fixed, i'll now be monkeying around with MT-Blacklist while i try to find a happy balance between comment moderation and blacklisting. next chore: look into easy moblog as a potential solution to my moblogging woes. # 12.02.04 really, really funny new david sedaris story over at the new yorker. check it out now, before it goes away. (personally, i always feel like the new yorker's website depreciates archive content at an unholy rate.) thanks jessie # 12.01.04 so, like, basically, i've broken my blog. in addition to the comment counts being inaccurate, now i can no longer delete comments from the back-end (even those pesky spam comments!) and you fine readers can't leave them. it's a frustrating experience. not sure when i'll have time to figure this one out. # wonkette points out anderson cooper's little pronoun flub with jerry falwell last night. not that it doesn't seem like a big open secret, but you know. # « November 2004 | archive index | January 2005 » built with movabletype |
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