Pat Rice

Misanthrope. Curmudgeon. Recluse. Generally irritating.
Fri Jul 3

Life cycle of a swimming pool

  • Memorial Day weekend: buy inflatable plastic swimming pool, $20 from Wal-Mart;
  • Set up in back yard;
  • Kids play in pool, once;
  • Pool fills with dead bugs, dirt, slime, etc.;
  • Empty pool, scrub, refill;
  • Kids play in pool, once;
  • Pool fills with dead bugs, dirt, slime, etc.;
  • Empty pool, throw in corner to deal with later;
  • Ignore pool until September;
  • Throw pool away;
  • Wait until June, start all over again.
Tue Jun 30

Weary

I’ve been staying up too late, getting up too early, and not sleeping very well in between.

I don’t suppose the family schedule will settle down again until Jake’s back in school. That’s only three weeks away. (Summer vacation is shorter than it was when I was eight years old.)

Mon Jun 29

Dilemma

I’ve had a LibraryThing membership for several years now. (Since September 29, 2005, according to my profile there.) I even paid $25 for a lifetime membership.

But I don’t use LibraryThing any more: I switched to GoodReads in January. LibraryThing struck me as a bit kludgy, and bit hacky (in a bad way); it offered no way to keep track of my reading.

GoodReads is well-designed, visually appealing, easy to use; and it keeps a very nice log of books I’ve read.

I really should delete my LibraryThing account. But, unlike most of the accounts I’ve purged in the last few days, I paid for this one - deleting it is like throwing away $25.

Neglecting my LibraryThing account is also like throwing away $25. What to do, what to do….

Thu Jun 25

What year is it?

One mildly annoying thing about Tumblr: the post timestamps don’t include the year. I’m sure the year is in the database, somewhere, but it never shows up on the web page.

So when I look at older posts, it’s never quite clear how old they are.

Fri Jun 19

On a rainy Friday night...

…I waste time on the computer, visiting web sites like tumblr. I’ve had an account here for a long time. (How long? I’m too lazy to look it up. Eighteen months, at least.)

I must think about where to keep my online blather. At present, it’s in Movable Type, and Twitter. And Plurk. And a little bit is even here on Tumblr.

That’s too many places.

I’m probably stuck with Movable Type, since that’s the one everybody knows about. But I haven’t given up on the others yet.

Sat Jun 6

Tumblarity

Plurk has karma, Tumblr has tumblarity. My tumblarity is…zero. I am completely atumblrous. If that’s a word.
Tue Apr 21

Hm...nice API there, tumblr

I was thinking that I didn’t want to write anything on tumblr unless there’s a way I can get it back out again. But I couldn’t find any export function in the dashboard.

Silly tumblr, thought I. Data can check in, but it can’t check out.

But they have an API. I can write my own export function.

Hello?

It’s been six months since my last post. Poor tumblr, so neglected. Perhaps that will change. (Or not. Laziness & inertia are two of my many character flaws.)
Thu Jul 17

Blah blah blah

Here I am, saying nothing in Tumblr. Next I’ll be saying nothing in Twitter: alphabetical order, y’know….
Sun Jul 13

Spin

Sometimes, with all the nine-and-ninety online accounts I have, I feel like one of those circus performers who spin plates on sticks: always running back & forth, spinning up this or that site before my account expires.