Sunday, November 30, 2003

The Weekend in Review A quick rundown: Walked the two miles home from work Wednesday for the first time, a very pleasant stroll that prepared me well for the weekend ahead. Updated and started playing with my Cygwin toys. Will soon (I hope) be running KDE on Windows! Uninstalled a lot of dead wood programs to give me a little more hard drive space on the Windows side. Learned that you should use twice as much fresh yeast if your dinner roll recipe calls for dry yeast (wish I'd saved that link). Watched the Green Bay Packers deliver a turkey in Detroit (sorry, couldn't resist). Nearly ruined my day. Had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat with my wife, my stepdaughter, her dad, her husband (plus his mom, dad and one brother) and the two grandkids. I contributed the ever-popular green bean casserole (and nearly lost a fingernail in the process). Forgot to sing "Alice's Restaurant," though. Semi-accidentally participated in Buy Nothing Day on Friday (I don't think a newspaper counts). Saw Frank Solich's last game at Nebraska, beating (but not handily) the Buffaloes of Colorado. Still managed to get himself fired today. Had a second Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat at my son-in-law's parents' house (next door to ours). Fell asleep during a terrific Bill Moyers' Now program (got to see the Jim Bouton story, which made my day). Shopped for CDs for my son-in-law's birthday Tuesday. Can't tell you what they are, yet, but we got some holiday music too. Watched The Family Man on NBC. Took our golden retriever, Hobbes, for a long walk on a nearby hiking trail. Finished my reading for my class this week: first half of Adam Rome's The Bulldozer in the Countryside (no Amazon links here until Borders settles a contract with its striking workers in Ann Arbor). Helped my son-in-law set up the artificial tree. Watched still more football (and The Simpsons, of course) on TV. Resolved to pick up the blogging pace. That should bring you up to date. Now I can go to bed. 11:37:10 PM    comment []

Getting Back in Saddle One thing I've realized during these extended breaks from blogging is that I'm starting to get really selective about items I want to blog about. I now have three different RSS feedreaders that I play with: Bloglines, FeedDemon and NewsMonster (not to mention the built-in Radio aggregator). They all have differing, but somewhat similar subscriptions, and I check each out with varying frequency. What seemingly stays the same is how I read each article in the feed: "Well, that's interesting....but do I have something interesting to say about it? Does it "fit" in Notes from the Metaverse? OK, what doesn't fit in Notes from the Metaverse? So I don't blog it. Which leads to not blogging anything. Which leads to ... three posts a month. So, I have a new policy. I'm not going to rely on delivering quality links for the masses, though it remains likely there will still be copious links, as above. For the immediate future, however, this will be more journal-like, at least until I can figure out what the real mission of NftM is. What you will be getting is more consistent (striving for daily) posting, with good information and the occasional rant. Management here at NftM hopes you will find it interesting. 10:01:24 PM    comment []