Wow, that was fast. Mike Amundsen added weblogs.com support to his new .NET-based Weblog service.

We just got back from spending the day in Monterey with Dan and Caroline Shafer. What an awesome day. All you New Yorkers can kiss my a$$. While it is about 20 degrees back in NY, today it was sunny and 70-something. Unbelieveably great weather. Oh, wait, that's just an average day in California.

So, after we had a nice lunch Dan and Caroline took us over to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. If you haven't seen it, you're missing one of the world's most beautiful museums (and, yes, I've been to the Guggenheim). Anyway, thanks Dan for such a nice day!

Mike Amundsen just pointed me to his new .NET Weblog service. More to come soon, but he's building a weblog tool and service using Microsoft .NET.

He tells me it supports SOAP and XML-RPC and it supports the blogger API. RSS .92 support is in there (2.0 coming soon). It doesn't yet ping weblogs.com, but that'll come soon too.

Oh, and he supports the trackback feature that Moveable Type has. Interesting looking.

Maryam (who needs to get her own freaking weblog): "When I say an alpha male is a predator, I don't mean that in a perjorative way. James Bond might be an alpha male, created by the media, but so is Jesus Christ (and I'm not a Christian). He got all the girls. Being an alpha male means being strong and knowing how to use it. Sometimes strength means blowing up tanks. Sometimes it means turning the other cheek. An alpha male needs to know when to use his strengths. In Robert Scoble's case, he needs to make the bed so we can go to Monterey." Hey!

Maryam again: "you know, I once asked a guy 'am I pretty' and he told me 'well, Maryam, in a room full of ugly women you'll be the prettiest one around.'" Well, honey, to the question of whether or not you're an alpha male -- if you're in a room full of weaklings you'll be the biggest alpha male. Hey, since you're the only male in this room, you're the alpha male of this room." Oh, thanks for making my birthday Maryam! Heh. And, to that guy who didn't say she's pretty: you're wrong. Maryam's awesome.

I see someone warned about potentially offensive language here. Just one question: why is talking about sex offensive? Why don't webloggers warn when we'll see a pro-war post? Or, why don't we get offended when we see murders on TV? Or, why don't we get offended when a company releases video games where the whole purpose is to rip off cars and blow away cops? Seems our society is really screwed up if people get offended about talking about touching your own skin to make you feel good. Or, are you just offended because Halley and I are talking about what really goes on when people chase each other for the purposes of hooking up? Sometimes I hate American sexual prudishness. There's a LOT more to get offended about than that. Hey, how about Enron execs? Tobacco companies? Sugared cereal marketing toward kids?

More from Maryam: "Robert, you are my alpha male, beta male, and every other kind of male." Mmmmm. Now, where's my birthday present?

Update: Oh, did she just call me an egotistical bastard? Heh.

Maryam (my wife) says I'm all wrong about Alpha Males. Here, I'll introduce her. Hi Maryam, so how do you get an Alpha Male? (Keep in mind that I'm not an Alpha Male).

Maryam: "I agree with Halley. Alpha Males are predators. They want to hunt their prey. They love to chase. Sometimes they love the chase more than they love the prize. All the same, they are much more attracted to innocence than experience."

Robert: "Why?"

"Because they are egotistical bastards and they want to teach you and mold you and show you how wonderfully cool they are. They want to corrupt your innocence. That's what makes them tick. Satan in Paradise Lost was an alpha male, not Adam."

Chris Pirillo has been posting some gems lately. Today he posted "Call for Help Random Crap." Hey, have you noticed that lately I've been saying "oh" too much? Oh. (Yeah, you'll need Microsoft's Windows Media Player to view these, sorry).

Paul Andrews of the Seattle Times puts Windows XP and Linux to a two-month test. The winner might suprise you.

One idea I'm going to try on Monday: wouldn't it be cool if NEC had a bunch of its new Tablets for Webloggers to use at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference?

Ahh, I see the O'Reilly folks are getting another emerging technology conference underway (Glenn Fleishman is speaking). Last year's conference got a lot of buzz. I can't afford to go, but I'm looking forward to having a few weblogger parties. Personally the cool thing about conferences is getting together with interesting people you otherwise wouldn't meet. Oh, did I mention that I live about one mile from the place where the conference will be held? Anyone up for a hot tub party?

Halley Suitt has done too much! Now she's getting emails from females about "how do you get an alpha male?" She says that you can't, that an alpha male will get you. Well, that's bulls$%t. I hang around a few alpha males, and that sounds like alpha male posturing. There's lots of things you can do to get an alpha male:

1) Advertise. Er, start a weblog. How much do you want to bet that Halley is getting calls from Alpha males who find her interesting, at least? It's still not common in today's society to find women who love putting their opinions out there. As an alpha male told me at a party: chase smart and interesting women. I've had plenty of beautiful women and believe me, they are boring. Yeah, you can have great sex with a beautiful woman for a week, but someday you're gonna come up for air and want to have a conversation.

2) Know yourself and what pleases you. There's nothing as dull as a woman who says "I have never masturbated." (And you know Alpha males will eventually get around to asking such personal and prying questions). First off, she's probably lying (alpha males really don't have time for liars or people who play games). Second off, how can you know how to please an alpha male if you don't even know how to please yourself?

3) Have experience. Alpha males have no time for you to "learn on the job." If you haven't been outside the state you're living in, you probably won't attract an alpha male. If you haven't done several different jobs in the past five years, you probably won't attract an alpha male. Get some life experiences first, then go after the alpha males.

4) Have another alpha male already. Nothing gets alpha males going more than competition. Alpha males love to steal women from other alpha males.

5) Be interesting (do something interesting). Run for office. Sing in front of 1000 people. Be on TV. Start a new computer company. Alpha males love women who are leaders and who do things. Yeah, if you are extraordinarily beautiful, you might be able to get away with not being interesting, but what happens when you're 50 and no longer extraordinarily beautiful? If you're a doer, you'll still have alpha males chasing after you.

6) Call up an alpha male and ask him to dinner. You'd be amazed how many alpha males I know hang out at home most nights with nothing to do.

Oh, Derek has a wonderful little run in with AOL's customer service. That made my birthday just wonderful! (Thanks to Jeremy Zawodny for the link)

I've been following all the Eldred v. Ashcroft stuff going on and what's amazing to me is that I -- an ordinary citizen -- can not only read the daily thoughts of someone who's gone before the Supreme Court, but I can have a conversation with him.

Tell me again that weblogs haven't changed my life.

By the way, to the jerks who post negative comments in Larry's comment section: yeah, I'd like to see you go up and do a better job.

Last week I was talking to a guy named Tantek and I had no idea who I was sitting next to. That's the danger of having a weblog party. Someone interesting might show up. Today I was over at Jeffrey Zeldman's weblog and found out just how much work TanTek has been doing. Tantek is his real name, by the way. It was made up by his parents. Tantek's weblog is very interesting, by the way. Oh, and if you ever get him near an Xbox, take note: he kicks ass at Halo -- we played at Chris Pirillo's house until 2 a.m. or so.

The new Jupiter Technology Analyst Weblogs are really great. I've already sent them all around NEC. I hope the other technology analysts start doing them soon.

Brad's right: DVD-Audio is awesome. You guys gotta hear the difference a DVD-Audio disk makes on my system over a good old CD-ROM.

Marc Canter (the guy who started what became Macromedia) is talking about Pointcast and other products in that space. Yeah, all that stuff was ahead of its time. Imperfectly done, too. I remember liking Pointcast, but when I couldn't copy and paste text from it, and I couldn't email links to specific articles to my coworkers, I uninstalled it. The web came along shortly thereafter and didn't have those two limitations.

Happy Birthday to me! I'm 38. Wow, that means that if I live to be 76, I'm now halfway there. Of course, I might die in my sleep tonight (if that happens I'll really be pissed cause Dan Shafer is taking me to lunch and to the Monterey Bay Aquarium -- Dan's the guy who used to run CNET's Builder.com).

Oh, sh*t, Mighty Girl just got laid off from CMP Media since CMP closed its "New Architect" magazine. You know, the publishing industry is in a full out depression. Just check out the dearth of editorial jobs in the San Francisco area on Craig's List.

Why does publishing suck? I've been thinking about this a lot lately and it comes down to: why read magazines anymore for information? They are always totally out of date and many of the authors usually give away better tips anyway online on their weblogs.

Of course, there are a few things that are printed on dead trees that are doing well. Oprah anyone?