Replaced our disposal a few months ago... replaced a major component of our A/C unit a few weeks ago... now we have to replace the water heater. JOY. MERRY CHRISTMAS! Santa's bringing a new water heater! Woot!
- Her Lindsay-ness
Phil's mom is going through this now. Every year she has to spend $15k to fix things. Houses are expensive. :(
- Dragon Goldmaple
That's so frustrating. I can relate. I have spent so much money on plumbers and bathroom repairs in the past 6 months and this morning, we discovered a link under the sink. Old houses are quaint and nice to look at, but there's always something to fix. There are times when I miss apartment living when you can just call the front office when something breaks.
- Trish R
Yeah, I was just thinking the other day I would probably rather have like an 80 year old house than an 8 year old one.
- Dragon Goldmaple
Maybe they just don't build houses very well over that side of the pond. My house is 105 years old and still in pretty good nick.
- Mark H
@Mark - you are probably right (about the building quality) but it's also not the house that's breaking down, just the "moving parts" of it, if you know what I mean. I'm sure your house doesn't have the same appliances it came with (if any) 105 years ago either. :)
- Her Lindsay-ness
Mark... there's some truth to that for sure. But there are plenty of 105 year old houses here that are standing strong as well. Since the 50's, the gradual comodification (made up word?) of housing has lead to building practices that leave a bit to be desired.
- SAM
The structures will stand a long time... but they have a ton of replaceable parts that will need to be switched out now.
- SAM
Our house was built in 1927 and we are only the 3rd owners. I have to say I think an old house is better. You just go on the assumption that EVERYTHING has to be replaced or repaired at some time and then your not surprised.
- suzanne
@Suzanne - this is our first house so everything is still a surprise!
- Her Lindsay-ness
Yeah, my house is 30 years old and we need to replace the rear deck and the furnace...Still beats renting though.
- Alex Scoble
any house old or new always needs something..............
- VAL D.
There are surprises and then there are surprises. Finding out some of your internal water lines are not pipe but old garden hose and an outlet is really an extension cord hardwired into the wall. That was a surprise. Still wondering how those got past the inspector.
- suzanne
:: counts her blessings :: I've had to do all of those repairs, but my house is 30 years old. Now I just have the plumber on speed dial.
- Miss Elle
"Here's something that you may not know about me: I used to be a fairy. For two years. It was my first job. I needed a job because I was a poor university student, but I didn't want to work at a supermarket (or anything along those lines). Spending most of my teen years in Zimbabwe meant that I had never had a job before, and I therefore had no qualifications nor experience. Quite the catch. Still, I needed gainful employment, and I stumbled across it quite by chance when I got off my bus at the wrong stop and discovered Once Were Angels, a fairy shop."
- Her Lindsay-ness
from Bookmarklet
Just bought this book at B&N. It actually has some ideas in it that I would consider giving people as gifts... Probably one of the first "recycling craft" books I've seen that had stuff I actually would want to have in my house in it.
- Her Lindsay-ness
from Bookmarklet
So I played with Twitter Lists a little today. It was fun putting all the people I follow into a nice little boxes. But not sure how much that will make Twitter more appealing to me. I guess it's kind of cool. I'd rather have conversations though.
I set up lists, but have yet to find time to populate them. Just not that excited about it.
- Eric @ CS Techcast
It's not very easy to do... At first I was visiting people's home pages to add them, then noticed I could view my followers list and add them there. But the flyout kept getting in my way... It was very clunky. I would rather be able to select a bunch of people or build a list with "auto complete" instead of browsing all my peeps and adding them to various lists.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Am with you all the way on this matter. If I wanted list I could always go back to reading RSS feeds. Also with RSS you know what authority the items have.
- Sean Kelly
Alright, I'm going to open up a can of worms here, so I'm sorry for the drama in advance... (Tina inspired drama meme)
Look, I've spoken to some of the leaders in the field and normal consumers so I have my finger in the pulse. The answer is: Yes
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
I would think you would want to cuddle with the item that you have a chance of escaping without being permanently injured. So I vote for ice chunks.
- Eric @ CS Techcast
What if they were dry-ice chunks?? That stuff'll freeze your skin right off! :)
- Her Lindsay-ness
OH no, I didn't think of that. Wow, back to square one.
- Eric @ CS Techcast
I'm voting ice chunks. After all, there's a polar bear swimming club but not a lava ebar swimming club.
- FFing Enigma (aka Tina)
LOL, Johnny for the best Scoble channeler of the evening.
- Ed Millard
+10 Johnny!! I can actually HOLD the ice chunks, so co-sign with that.
- Helen Sventitsky
It’s all about your intentions online. Most intentions can be grouped into 3 categories: knowledge gathering, broadcasting and conversation. There are many services on the web that can potentially serve those intentions. It depends on your purpose as to whether or not a service brings you value.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Well said, Lindsay. Honestly, the only reason for Scoble to post about his dissatisfaction with FriendFeed is to get attention. Personally, what he likes & dislikes means nothing to me, since he's not a friend of mine or someone whose opinion means anything to me. Like you say, he has very specific things he wants from social sites. It's not what I want & it's not what most people I know want.
- josh neff, Fun Dip of FF
I know that part of Scoble's reaction is for attention, but I also can read between the lines that he is really disappointed because he knows that FriendFeed is probably the best tool out there but now it's no longer going to grow feature-wise so, as a bleeding edge adopter, he can't stick with it anymore....
- Her Lindsay-ness
...I think he's a little embarrassed that he was backing the "losing horse" for so long and basically had to "eat crow" with some of the people that he made enemies of on FriendFeed's behalf (though, personally, I think he was right about FriendFeed anyway). I think he's in a bit of despair like the rest of us at all the time and effort he put into participation here seeming to "go to...
more...
- Her Lindsay-ness
...I empathize with all of that, but a lot of us have moved on to acceptance and just want to continue our interactions here. And he's making it harder for us to do that by driving people away that could be more of a justification for keeping the service alive in the future just because of their numbers. And it's also demoralizing and depressing. I would like for him to show some respect for people he used to call friends here and knock off the abuse.
- Her Lindsay-ness
Not only does she put the 'is dead' conversation in an appropriate space, she also does a fine and thoughtful assessment of what tools can be used for what purpose. Thanks, Lindsay.
- Holly Rae, FFer
Scoble was right about FriendFeed being better. The problem is when you have companies like FB with lots of money to throw around, they can kill superior tech by writing a check. If you've been following TechCrunch lately they have articles on dubious ways FB and FB app developers get their money. Zuckerberg and early FB was apparently supported by shady casino ads. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009...
- Ed Millard
Ed, that post was so full of holes I could jump through them.
- Holden Page
When I grow up, I want to be as cool as Lindsay.
- Louis Gray
Holden, you mean my post or the one on techcrunch. Your post is even holier than mine :) If you meant mine, how so? I struggle getting points across in the 512 limit sometimes which means I'm hopeless on Twitter.
- Ed Millard
Holden, I would be interested in hearing specifically, maybe on another thread, other than the obvious it was apparently written by someone whose done it and profited. I'm a complete noob when it comes to sleazy social network spam though it is a fascinating study in human nature and how to exploit it. That article mostly added to my list of reasons I like FF and have no interest in FB.
- Ed Millard
Nice post, thanks. Heard and understood.
- Robert Scoble
scoble - why dont you just make a message board? invite all your tech friends, you'd be in heaven! sure, it's not as clever as say something like this, but you get what you want then..
- Terry O'Fee
Her Lindsay-ness: another stance users may adopt is to stick with friendfeed only until such time as something better comes along, regardless of whether it actually gets shut down or not
- Mike Chelen
@Mike, I would probably put those folks under reaction #2... that is typical of any user of a service. The one thing that you can't take with you to the new service, however, is your entire community. The people who make up your community on FriendFeed would most likely splinter into several other communities in the "new, better" services that come along. I don't see any better options...
more...
- Her Lindsay-ness
"*blush* Thanks, Micah! Glad you enjoyed it. I just wanted to say my peace on the whole "FF is dead" thing. It's kind of funny that the only time I seem to post to my blog anymore is when I'm really excited or pretty pissed off. HAH! I'd rather just spend time on FriendFeed where the conversation is."
- Her Lindsay-ness
"I get your point about Tweetups and don't deny that conversation and connections are possible on Twitter, just that they are a lot more difficult to participate in, IMO. You can barely complete a thought in 140 characters (or less if it's an @reply or DM). To have a conversation is slow, confusing and disconnected... It's a very masochistic way to try to build relationships with people. That doesn't stop people from trying and succeeding in a lot of circumstances. I would guess that a lot of the people who connect via Twitter actually build that relationship via other more accommodating tools like blog comments or email or they are forced to resort to physical meetups like Tweetups to get to know people better. I would imagine (in my inexperience) that most Tweetups are more like a convention where everyone is meeting everyone else, but when I've meet with my FriendFeed friends it's more like we're just old friends getting together."
- Her Lindsay-ness
How much were they selling them for there? I'm fascinated by what the prices of the ukes are all over the place. My friend got my daughter one in Hawaii, that was "more than $20". But they sell them here for like $7 - 10.
- Anika
Interesting... the two brown ones on the last two rows have 4 strings, but the rest do have 6, like you mentioned. I didn't know the difference!
- Her Lindsay-ness
There's nothing there that gives me a sense of scale so I can't be sure. They could be 3/4 model guitars which is the size most kids are started on. There are some Mexican and Latin American folk instruments that look like small guitars and I don't know enough about them to know whether that's what these are or not. But I can definitively say they aren't ukes. :) But the pic is really neat.
- Spidra Webster
They were really small... about the size of ukuleles I've seen before (like the one that Josh used in various videos). If they are child sized guitars then they're for little kids... like 5-6 year olds maybe...
- Her Lindsay-ness
Maybe just intended to be wall decorations?
- Internet's Tad
Sounds like they're too small to be 3/4s. May be toy guitars for kids. Given that it's a state fair, that's likely. Even semi-serious instruments would cost too much to be able to move many at a fair.
- Spidra Webster
"Thanks for stopping by and dropping off that gem of insight, youdontmind. I never implied that I coined the term, but simply that it was what I happen to use to refer to the phenotype implementation of the genotype of my thumb. Whether or not some official body that oversees "genetics" also refers to it that way is inconsequential in the context of my post. Also whether or not the aforementioned body began doing so before or after my birth. You are also incorrect in the statement that I do not call it that, because, obviously, I do. But thanks for playing! Hope spewing that unsolicited venom made you feel a little better about yourself. Hugs and kisses."
- Her Lindsay-ness
Sometimes you have to wonder what inspires people to just randomly drop by your blog and call you an idiot...
- Her Lindsay-ness
Also, who's the idiot in the scenario when you troll my blog but leave me your email address in the comment meta info?
- Her Lindsay-ness
"Create entire apps using JavaScript and Ajax Use the same ubiquitous set of languages you find in the Web browser, on the server to build full apps or presentation tiers faster and more easily." Use jQuery on the server side, yo!
- Her Lindsay-ness
from Bookmarklet
OH GOD NO. I use JavaScript more than I ever wanted to already, and that's just doing client-side stuff. I use it any more and my brain will explode.
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
LOL! But you wouldn't have to "switch" back and forth that way, Chris... It's all one happy language.
- Her Lindsay-ness
I'd much rather be able to do my server-side scripting in C#, or maybe Perl. (Seriously, Perl in the browser, how awesome would that be? :)
- Chris, Taskerrific Guy
C# looks more and more like Javascript with every release anyway... we've got chaining and stuff now... It's much easier to flip back and forth for me with C# than other options.
- Her Lindsay-ness
had a lot of fighting to get in working with WAMP and failed :( Looks promising but needs some better documentation and the forums are locked so no help available either :( I really want this to work, I am currently using phpQuery to do stuff clientside (along with my PHP based CMS) and would love to switch to JS and jQuery.
- Dave Pook
@Chrismonster - I know that poll question wasn't intended for me, but LOL! Yeah, I think it would affect our relationship!
"I was terrified of the water when I was a kid... I remember taking swimming lessons and not wanting to go under water. We did "ring around the rosie" every class but I'd never go down. Then one time the instructor made sure she was next to me when we did it and kicked my feet out from under me and I went under. I was SO MAD and betrayed. But it wasn't long after that that I finally took to it. I went on to taking lessons up to the point where the next step was lifeguarding (I was too young or I would have done that). I was also on the swim team (pretty successfully) and doing backflips off the high dive board. It is amazing how that "switch" just turns on. I bet Ilia will amaze you with all the stuff she does in the pool!!"
- Her Lindsay-ness
She keeps asking to go back to swim class. I'd love to, but the time of day kills me. The idea of leaving the pool with soaking wet hair at 7pm in the winter...TURN OFF.
- Anika
I am trying some of this stuff right now. OMG it is tart! Very very thick... like room temperature butter... almost the opposite extreme from kefir.
- Her Lindsay-ness
from Bookmarklet
It'll be a good snack at work... 16g of protein in this cup... and only 10g of sugar. 120 calories... filling but not calorie loaded. Not to mention it's taking me like 20 minutes just to eat one cup because it's so dang thick and tart!
- Her Lindsay-ness
I'd eat it more often if it didn't cost so much. Fat-wise, it's perfect! And I like the tart taste. I tried blueberry, too.
- Kamilah Gill
They had a sale on it when I was grocery shopping tonight that convinced me to try it out... I keep doing the *jazz hand pucker face* though at how tart it is...
- Her Lindsay-ness
I snack on plain Dannon and love sharp cheese, so tartness doesn't faze me. I like it when stuff is so tart that my ears start to tingle inside. Have you felt that before?
- Kamilah Gill
Fill in the blanks: _______________ is Dead! Long live ______________!