Crawling out of the subprime-ordial slime. I haven't done an Everyman for over two weeks. I have to be in a positive frame-of-mind to Everyman, and as you can probably relate, it's been a rough two weeks with all of the financial turmoil going down. Zuning Friday's Marketplace podcast during my daughter's soccer game on Saturday morning helped me turn the corner. Marketplace reporters drove around the country on an Interactive Road Tour for two weeks talking with regular folks about the financial crisis. One of the takeaways from the interviews was a pervasive lack of panic, knowing that we've been here before and that this, too, will pass. I already knew that, but hearing it on a podcast helped revive Everyman Link Happiness.
Checking up on Rory. I haven't read Rory Blyth since 2006. In the heady days of early .NET blogging I was a faithful Rory reader. The guy's a brilliant writer, no question, but I had to finally hit the Unsubscribe button after he posted pics of giving tongue to his girlfriend on a mock bridge of the Star Trek Enterprise. For some reason I thought about Rory tonight and wondered if he was still writing, so I went to Neopoleon.com to find out. My curiosity was rewarded with a highly entertaining description of a recent visit to an Apple store, where a saleswoman refused to check if Rory's macbook purchase was on file so he could know the warranty status of a dead battery. It reminded me of Rob Howard's experience with the Apple Store and my own, where arrogance and an unwillingness to put the customer first was the play of the day. Apple Store issues aside, I'm very happy that young Rory Blyth is still writing.
We Fix WP! WordPress rocks. I probably shouldn't say that because I know absolutely nothing about WordPress. It does seem that everyone who uses WordPress loves it and every WordPress blog I've seen is beautiful. Even the logos for 3rd Party WordPress support firms are cool.
And I thought Siskel and Ebert were best buds. This is an amazing video of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert working through a 10 second promo of an upcoming show. Lots of nasty snipes between the two that stunned me, being a big fan of the show back in the 80's and 90's before we lost Gene to a brain tumor. (Gene was always my favorite.) It's 8 minutes and 24 seconds very well-spent. If you can't give the whole 8:24 go to the 5:43 mark and enjoy their rage on WASPs. The Everyman Quote of the Day is from Gene Siskel, "I already shot my wad on the Protestants."
Roku for queue management, and perhaps little else. The recent Netflix deal with Starz added a serious number of quality movies to the Roku instant viewing availability list. That happened about a week ago, and we added a bunch of them to the Burke Family Instant Queue. We haven't watched a single one of the new 2500 offerings, and we probably won't anytime soon. We seem to watch less and less TV. Sometimes I think my Roku Love is based solely on the pleasure I get from adding stuff to our Instant Queue. Not that I'll ever watch anything in the queue, but knowing that I can is satisfaction enough.
Rage against The Name. These lame-o Web 2.0 names drive me crazy, not as much as "Sarah Palin," but really, really crazy. I want to slap these biptoids senseless for building products with names like Thoof and Jiglu. Sorry, Lube Brains, but 1999 has come and gone. You got a sock puppet mascot, too? Grow up.