jr conlin's ink stained banana

Ok, so after 20 years and close to 6,000 miles, my wife's bed died last night.

Well, not the mattress, that's only a few years old. The box spring is only a year or two older. No, i'm talking the frame, which, at about Grrflprmmrmmbl O'Clock lost it's battle with gravity for the second time. (Yes, i need to lose a few pounds, but no, not that many.)

The funny things is that it was one of those four poster jobbies that were apparently all the rage in Virginia beach in the early 80's, and while it saw us through some rough times and some rather good times (no, that's not what broke it either), i'm actually not terribly sad to see it go. In fact, i'm kind of looking forward to this weekend when i get to introduce it to a vast assortment of destructive items i'll be using to fit it into a 20 Gallon curbside dustbin.

It was a bit disconcerting to go from human to Minbari sleeping habits in the wee hours of the morning, but aside from some persistent dreams of sliding down hills and rapid deceleration, but i do look forward to bustin' up me some bed frame.

Hey, 20 years for this isn't great, but it's not bad either. It's beyond repair or reclamation because it was cheaply built to begin with. So yeah, it's landfill.

Having seen this come up a few times, i'd like to spend some time defining a bunch of arbitrary measurements:

starting from the singular:

1. one
2. couple
3. few
4. some
5. handful
6. bunch
7. group
8. several
9. lot
10. mess
11. pile
12. ton
13. metric ton
14. crapload
15. assload
16. sh!tload
17. f#ckload*

Note, the -load suffixed groupings can be magnified by factors of ten by using the following prefixes:

1. holy
2. mother
3. gi-normous
4. f#cking*

Note that these prefixes can be applied in a non repetitive manner to further emphasize the magnitude of the grouping. (* at this level, any appropriate swear based conjunctive is equally valid and may be assumed to be "a surprisingly large amount.")

Allow me to provide some examples with translations:

We hope that this has aided your sense of abstract and arbitrary measurement.

Last night, (after helping strip the bloatware off my sister-in-laws computer and getting her WEP key), i read an article from Richard McManus about getting some of the yahoo! firehose. In said article, he raises an interesting point.

One of the things he noted was that traffic he got from buzz, left comments on his blog. He noted that experience was different from other aggregators (digg, reddit, slashdot, etc.) because those other services grow comments on those sites. It's an interesting quandary, really. Quite often, a page submitted to a big aggregation site doesn't have the ability to harbor discussion so frequent users simply leave comments on the aggregation site. (one also supposes that large aggregation sites probably want to encourage that behavior since they can monetize those comment sites). For blogs, however, a valuable part of the general discussion is missing.

This is something that Jeremy once noted about Friendfeed, since one can comment there but there's no way to enjoin that discussion with comments from the blog. It's as if there's groups of folks at conference gathered together like a cocktail party rather than a forum. Sure, there's some benefit from that sort of interaction, but ultimately, there's also a failure for information to be fully shared.

What complicates matters even more is that often these aggregation sites don't notify a given site the fact that there's aggregation occurring for it. (Or that there are multiple aggregations occurring as various folks add the site to their stream. For example, if Jeremy and i both add this post to our respective FriendFeeds, people on that service can comment to Jeremy's link or my link but can be blissfully unaware that both of us have links.)

It just seems to me that there's a failure in the way that these services operate. There should be some sort of open way for these services to notify the origin site of links, as well as some way to collate the individual links into potentially centralized discussions. Sure, there's a rich venue for abuse as spammers either link to everything or create their own "aggregation" sites they load with ads, but hell, they do that now. i'd just whitelist the sort of trackback links that i display to be sets of known, trusted services, possibly even double layered to be known, trusted individuals using those services. (e.g. filter through FOAF via MyBlogLog or something to establish levels of trusted relationships.)

This is totally do-able.

Now, to figure out how to get another 8 hours squeezed into my 32 hour day so i can build something like that.

When first conceived as a promotional item (by nazis, but let's ignore that part for now), the Olympic Torch relay was supposed to be one thing. The flame, ignited at the summit of Mount Olympus by the sun's rays, and carried in succession to light the ceremonial flame at the start of the games, thus tying oppressive Soviet regimes and Randy Newman back to the classical gods.

Over the years as the games grew in popularity and the airline industry grew less happy about having an open flame in row 16, seat e, certain "consessions" were made to allow for a traveling light in order to reignite the torch during these periods.

This morning, i just read that they lit the torch at the summit of Mt. Everest.

Seriously.

Right, so what, exactly separates this thing from a really expensive bic lighter again?

Every day, i'm starting to dread four o'clock.

You see, at five o'clock, my wife calls me so we can head home (we car pool, partly to save the planet, but mostly so that way i can speed down the HOV lane laughing at the idiot in the Lamborghini stuck behind a Ford Fiesta). Those deep in valley culture who wish to deride me for leaving at five and are jealous that i have a life that doesn't involve cubical walls or dining on pop-tarts at 3AM instead of sticking out and getting the job done at work should be reminded that i have network access from home and unlike my cubical, i can play my home stereo as loud as i damn well please.

i look forward to the driving home, the laughing at slow moving people in expensive Italian penile enhancements, the eating of non-poptarts and other joys that come only from having a balanced work life. Of course, Murphy, realizing my penchant for such things, always sees fit to remind me who is in charge.

Inevitably, come the mid afternoon, something explodes. Well, something if i'm lucky. Quite often, it's more like "somethings" in multiple levels of combustion often reserved for expensive slow-motion reels for summer blockbuster releases. The sort of things where you fully expect to meet St. Peter by waving as you pass by, inverted, on-fire, and possibly leaving a smoking trail of once recognizable electronic bits. This, of course, culminates with the arrival of the blessed hour of departure denoted by the pleasant ring of my cellphone accenting the dulcimer tones of panic one reserves for being struck by an asteroid covered in dinosaurs armed with thermonuclear lasers.

Quite possibly on fire.

Both you, and the asteroid.

Hi JR.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!*rarr*bzzap*

i'm down in visitor parking.

AAAAAAH! FIRE!*bzzap*bzzap*OHGODHE'SGOTALASER

*sigh* Ok, well come down when you're ready

Ok, give me ten minutes or so. Love you.

Love you.

*rar*AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!*bzzap*

Does make one appreciate what Sam and Ralph used to go through.