I'm in ur cargo hold, sniffin ur luggage
... expects the spanish inquisition
I was doing fine with the lengthy wait for my standby replacement flight until the two crying infants at this gave started the dueling banjos thing with their wails. :/
... in the hallway outside my door, actually.
"Hey, is Facebook the kind of place where I'm going to feel like, like, a lower grade because I'm not in school?"
(With apologies to the original, inimitable Overheard in New York.)
So, I always like to be devil's advocate, so every time someone says "MySpace sucks!" I ask if they use it. In my social circle, the answer is usually "hell, no!".
But here's the thing. I got a nice comment on a picture from someone I haven't really talked to since high school. So I figured I'd try to reply. I can't reply in context on the photo's comments. I can't go into my messages list and reply there. I even went into what MySpace calls "mail", which is actually their proprietary private internal messaging system, and I genuinely cannot find a way to compose a message.
They have a non-email "mail" system with an Inbox and a Sent box, but no way to write messages.
And then, like all web communities, they reveal their weaknesses through their help system. I looked at the FAQ to try to figure out how to write a message. Here are the categories of answers:
- I'm a band, and want to promote myself. (Yes, that's the first section.) Includes a section saying "What's a copyright?"
- My group is dysfunctional, because that's what MySpace encourages. (How do I block people? What do I do about people pretending to be a teacher?)
- We're press, and we want to talk about shitty things that happen on MySpace.
- I'm a parent -- how do I get my kid the hell off of MySpace?
- My profile is ugly, but not the ugly I prefer -- what to do?
- Two dozen questions about members abusing other members.
- Your site is broken. Again.
- I forgot my password.
So, the main help page has nothing about actually using the communications features of the site. Seriously. None. The sidebar of top questions? Is it really free? And then there's a question that seems like it's saying "what do I do about funky formatting on my profile?" but the answer is actually "this means your profile was hacked by someone who guessed your password". That's one of their top five questions.
Guess what MySpace? Ha ha fuck you.
When you go out to eat, how do you pick where to go?
Submitted by Kristine.
I ask Serious Eats! :)
This is how pronet rolls.
Since we haven't seen the movie yet, I figured I'd finally get around to reading The Namesake. I had been delaying it for a long time because I was a little intimidated by what I'd heard about the story, and because it's been about a decade since I've read any fiction at all. (Seriously!)
Unsurprisingly, I loved the book (to an approximation, this is my story too) so hopefully i will get a few minutes to write up a proper review later. Until then, go get a copy or borrow your friends' and read it yourself.
Ways that visiting my parents' house for the weekend is like visiting the Googleplex:
- It's pet-friendly
- It seems like everybody but me has an advanced degree, though the PhDs are very friendly and unassuming
- Inexplicably, there are really fancy digital bidets on all the toilets, even though they're not Japanese
- The food is awesome, abundant, and free
- They really seem to love technology, even if it's not entirely practical
- Sometimes it feels like you're visiting a cult
- They kinda get blogs, but it seems like some of the people in charge are just being nice most of the time, and feigning interest
- It's way too far from San Francisco to actually be convenient for people living there
- Everybody uses Gmail
