--It’s another snow day here in the Upper Perogie Belt.Toney and the boys are home yet again.At this rate school will still be in session in August, and
small children will be bursting
into flames inside non-air
conditioned classrooms.I
can see it now, and it both frightens and amuses me…
Nobody at the board of education asked my opinion (the pricks), but I
think they’re playing a little fast and loose with the days off for
snow this year.I really
do.A few weeks ago I
heard they canceled classes for the entire district, because a copier
repairman showed up at the administrative building with a bad case of dandruff.
Thank you, I’ll be here all week!
--When I started my new
job I had no access to the internet, except for the company homepage
and a handful of job-related (boring) websites.Needless to say, it drove me crazy.
Then one day there was no filter at all, and I could look at anything
I wanted.Anything!This was kind of odd, because nobody else’s situation
changed.Suddenly I, and I
alone, had free reign.
Careful not to screw myself, I kept quiet about this development, and
was extremely selective in the sites I visited.The paranoid man who lives inside my head kept telling me I was
being tested, and watched.So
I didn’t give them anything interesting to observe.
And this lasted for at least a month.It was great; I could read the Surf Report comments, and
everything.It made my ten
hour shifts seem no longer than nine and a half hours.
But one night last week, near quitting time, I clicked on a link and
got the Big Red Hand of Access-Denied.TF?!I clicked
something else, and received the same message.What in the knuckle-crackin’ hell is going on here??
The next day the entire internet was clamped-down again, and it was
back to reading the menus of cafeterias at other locations of our
company.Hey,
did you see this?!They’ve
got a sundae bar in Santa Fethis week!Man, I wish we had a sundae bar...
It
was a sad state of affairs.
Frustrated, I started monkeying around with it.I began plugging-in random URLs, hoping to find a crack in the
firewall.And I quickly
realized Google wasn’t blocked.Hmmm…
It didn’t do me much good, though.I could do searches for web pages, but couldn’t access any of
them after the fact.Wotta
rip-off.I plugged in
gmail, and got The Hand.It
was just the search engine, it appeared, not all Google-related
properties.
Then a few nights ago I got an idea.What if I typed in google dotcom slash
gmail?And it freakin’
worked!It took me
straight to a sign-in page, then my inbox.Cool.
I tried it with Adsense, and that worked as well.And so did Google Analytics, a webstats service I use.And Google News too!As
long as google dotcom was at the beginning of the address, it would
let me through.
Last night I escalated it further, and signed up for Google Reader,
which allows me to read RSS feeds.I then subscribed to the feeds of most of the websites I’d
visit if I had unrestricted access to the web.And I’m basically going anywhere I want now, through Google!It’s highly exhilarating, this, um, exercise in
problem-solving.
Yeah, they’re watching my every move, aren’t they?
--I haven’t had a
chance to read it too closely yet, but I see the annual Village
Voice Pazz & Jop critics’ poll for 2007 has been released.Check it
out.
I consider this poll to be the final word (as final as possible,
anyway) on the music releases of any given year.Hundreds of the world’s most knowledgeable music critics
participate, and their opinions are all boiled down into one big
honkin’ master list.The
final results are usually pretty solid.
Scanning the Top 20 Albums, I find I do have a few immediate reactions.First of all, I can’t argue with number one. (Dammit!)It’s a great record, and I don’t even like that kind of
music, generally speaking.So,
nothing to bitch about there…
But I think Wilco should be higher on the list, and Springsteen should
be lower.I can’t
stomach the pretentiousness of Radiohead, so I don’t know anything
about it.I do know,
however, that their continued presence irritates me.
Beyond that, I don’t have anything to offer.I own seven of the Top Twenty, and keep meaning to buy Spoon and
Arcade Fire.And I
wouldn’t mind picking up that Alison Krauss/Rubber Plant CD, either.
Any opinions on this year’s poll?Did they botch it?What
are your thoughts?And if
you want to get extra-ambitious, what are your favorite CDs of 2007?Use the comments link below, if you’ve got anything on this
one.
--And I’ll leave you
now with a Question of the Day, as suggested by our good friend Buck.
A few days ago he sent me a link to a story at some questionable
sky-is-falling site
called Yahoo Green.It’s
about a proposed “doomsday vault,” aimed at providing
mankind with a Noah's Arkof food in the event of global catastrophe.You can read all about it here.
Buck wanted to know what we might stock in a Surf Report doomsday
vault, and suggested the following:
At least a lifetime
supply of Subway Club sandwiches, a stockyard of pulled pork bbq, six
tons of Archway cookies (oatmeal raisin please), an ocean of Yuengling
lager, ...you get the idea. Who the fuck wants to save seeds to grow
shit? Please---animals on the hoof ready for slaughter will be just
fine, along with a supply of charcoal to prepare…
So, what do you think should
be there?What would we
Surf Reporters require to live comfortably, once the planet starts
shutting down?Let’s get
the list together, my friends.You
know, just in case.
