stuff is cool

After much reluctance I’ve gone ahead and somewhat embraced the blogosphere and Web2.0 and all the fancy internet jargon that’s being thrown around today. (As a side note, MySpace still sucks.) However, I found that once I started embracing it I became just inundated with “stuff” and had no real organized way of making any real sense of it. It used to be that there were only a handful of things I really checked with any regularity on the web: email, a few news sites, and a few message boards. However, with my own blog now and with several other cohorts and family members having blogs, I had to add that to the list. And once that was on the list, I might as well add blogs related to some of my interests (sports, programming, etc.) to the list as well. Oh, and they have a bunch of bookmarks online that they want to share as well. And so on, and so on, and so on…

Needless to say, what once was a short excursion I could repeat as needed (20-30 minutes to check all my email accounts, all the news sites, and all the message boards), now became an exercise in futility. Inevitably I’d “forget” to check one of the many things on my burgeoning list. In this day and age of information, that simply wouldn’t cut it, of course. So I was left with a problem: I liked all the stuff I would routinely check, but I simply didn’t have time to check it all and get anything productive done during the day.

Now, being the technologically savvy guy that I am (thanks to all the things on my list), I heard about Netvibes (and a few other similar sites like protopage and pageflakes) and decided to give it a try. I had tried protopage a few months before and was soured with how little actual content it gave me to help pull stuff together. It seemed mostly to just say “look what we can do with javascript, you can drag and drop stuff!”. However, now that writing a site that can do that is relative easy, that’s not as big of a selling point anymore and sites can no longer “get by on their good looks”, so to speak. Enter Netvibes. I actually was convinced to give it a shot by Brett, who wrote up a pretty interesting and fairly detailed comparison of Netvibes and Pageflakes here (for those who don’t want to read it, he is staying with Netvibes but thinks Pageflakes is promising). At first, it seems a bit daunting because there’s just so much stuff to put on there and all you start out with is a single blank page/tab. However, adding RSS feeds is pretty easy (and that’s what most of my stuff is), and setting up the email account checkers is fairly simple to do as well. The end result can be seen here.

The best part about it is I really only have to look at one place to see if I there is anything new in my World Of Stuff now, and that place is the “my stuff” tab on the top-left. Even when I’m browsing other stuff (or writing a post here), I can just look up and see if anything new has been posted at any of those places. So now I don’t even need to take the 20 minutes to check all the stuff I have, instead I just take 2 seconds to look up.

My friend Hans died on Monday. I wrote the following obit for the Chronicle.

HANS METCALF, beloved son, brother, friend, and partner, was taken into the arms of the Lord on Monday morning, September 18, 2006. He is survived by his mother and father, William J Metcalf & Jane E. Metcalf, brother, William J Metcalf Jr., grandmother, Anna Metcalf, and longtime girlfriend Emilie Sumera, as well as countless family, friends, and colleagues who loved him deeply. Hans was a gregarious, lively, and passionate friend with a great sense of humor and noble character. Born on January 2, 1980, in Baton Rouge, LA, Hans went on to earn a BS in Economics at LSU. With a glowing attitude and a winning smile, Hans charmed the hearts of everyone who met him. Through our warmest memories we will cherish Hans for all he was and all he did for us, and we will find strength in his lasting, laughing spirit. Please join the Metcalfs and Ms. Sumera for a visitation celebrating Hans’ life on Thursday evening, September 21, from 6-8 p.m. at Earthman Funeral Directors, 2420 Fannin St. Houston TX, 713.659.3000.

His bottle of Maredsous is still sitting on my kitchen counter from Friday night. I am not sure what to do with it. I don’t want to throw it away.

Sean Bean for Rodolplus Lestrange!

I heard Helena Bonham Catert is Bellatrix. My god I love the casting of Harry Potter movies.

Other eligible actors they could use:

Hugh Laurie
Richard E. Grant
John Hannah
Martin Freeman
Daniel Day Lewis
Liam Neeson
Hugh Grant

and

of course

Uncle Bill Nighy

Good guys, bad guys, I don’t care, just put them in the damn movie. I am anxiously awaiting more casting news- update me if I am behind!

There are three young gentlemen sleeping in my apartment tonight and not one of them is Danny. I miss Danny.

This weekend is going to be nuts with Udo here from Germany,

It’s kind of hard to have fun when you are grieving the loss of someone you love (my Aunt Mary died this week). But having Udo and Christopher and Marty here helps.

I miss Aunt Mary and I miss Danny.

God bless you, Aunt Mary. I love you.

Now I wanna know what the rest of your comment was! I didn’t even know you read this blog! This is the way better one compared to my crappy Xanga. Of course, we need to post here more often.

There are two Yorkie babies fighting on my bed. They can be very vicious.

Every Friday Amazon.com has a “one-day savings only!” sale on around 150 items or so. A lot of them get rehashed each week, but sometimes there are new ones, and there’s never a shortage of peculiar items on sale. Here are a few:

Make Your Own Opoly Board Game

I want to know who thought this would be a good idea? I mean, there’s already an “opoly” for everything in the world anyway, what else could one possibly use as a basis to make their own? Though, now that I think about it, Team Awesome could make Awesomeopoly or it’s evil twin Douchebagopoly. And seriously, doesn’t that box look like somebody photoshopped it?

Kenwood TT756SL 2-Slice Radio Toaster with FM Radio

Yo dawg, this makes the crunkest toast ever.

And lastly, here’s a trifecta of items:

Item 1, Item 2, Item 3

In the interest of keeping this a “family” blog, I won’t provide any commentary, just links and images. I didn’t know Amazon was in this sort of business.