Have you ever typed your name into a search engine? I have a relatively unusual last name, at least outside of French-speaking countries, so most of the results for my name are actually me. That’s kind of nice. Then, earlier this evening, a friend told me, “you aren’t that hard to find on teh intrawebs”. That got me thinking – I wonder what else is out there? For the first time, I googled my usual screenname, thetejon, which I’ve used for most everything ever since I had my first AOL account. The results are pretty impressive. Some of the most interesting: Wedding Toasts for the Groom – a blog post that used a picture of me giving a toast at the wedding of one good friend to another. 2006 October PUNK Blogs & News @ PROPUNK.COM! – I suspect this site runs scripts to scrape content tagged with “punk” from wherever it can find it and hopes to generate ad revenue. The picture they got is actually of my cat. большое спасибо мите за лицензионный balance 005 – a LiveJournal entry linking to one of my photos from Costa Rica. The entry is not in a language I’m familiar with. Perhaps you are. So, there you go. Think about that next time you do something stupid on the internet. Google doesn’t forget.
Author: Jon
Forget playing, this mouse is having Five Guys
The wife having dinner with a coworker down on U Street is a perfect reason to venture over to everyone’s favorite greasy bag of french fries, Five Guys. I’m not sure how Columbia Heights survived without them. Of course, Five Guys isn’t really helping my waistline. And the months of relative inactivity since I stopped running due to the bunion help even less. But soon that will be no more! I wore shoes yesterday, and today my flip-flops were nearly comfortable. I’ll give shoes another try tomorrow as I actually have to go into the office. And that means I can get back to running soon. I have a 10K in six weeks that I’m woefully unprepared for, so that should help a lot. It would certainly be embarrassing if it turned out that I’ve gained more weight than the wife in the last nine months.
Is this even legal?
I don’t really know much about the law surrounding this, so I have assume that the LPGA is within its legal rights to require all members to speak English. I mean, they have lawyers, and I imagine the lawyers approved this. But it sure doesn’t sound that cool.
“The economy is bad, and we are losing sponsors,” [golfer Seon-Hwa Lee] said, according to the report. “Everybody understands.”
I can understand the LPGA’s motivation. They are in the business of selling women’s golf, and if their players can’t communicate in the target market, it makes their job more difficult. I get that. But surely there’s a way to increase the marketing appeal of the sport that’s a little more tolerant. It would be interesting to see a once-in-a-lifetime golfer come through who doesn’t speak English and refuses to learn. I bet the LPGA would back down before alienating a potential superstar.
Experimental new stuff from Mozilla
Remember when Internet Explorer was pretty much the only browser out there? Yeah, me neither. IE has always sucked, and IE7, touted as competing with the newer browsers, is really just playing catch-up. And not actually ever catching up. Over at the Mozilla Labs Blog, they have a little video about experimental browser changes for Firefox. The idea is to anticipate your actions in the browser and offer no-cost assistance. That is, when I open a new tab, if my browser could offer me options, like a search bar, instead of a blank page, there is no cost to me, and it may streamline my browsing experience. Anyway, it’s a cool video, and it demonstrates one more time how far Microsoft has fallen in terms of innovation.
Get over yourself, CNN
Would someone please remind CNN again that they report the news, they are not news themselves. This convention is about Barack Obama and the future of our country, not Wolf Blitzer and additional information at CNN.com. Anyway. Kind of cool that they’ve been embedding the commercials inside the border showing the schedule and whatnot, so you can always see the dumb factoids that CNN thinks you should be aware of. We’ll be seeing more of this in the future.
Is everyone holding their breath for Obama?
What is going on with the news today? I don’t usually read mainstream news sources, figuring that if it’s important, either someone’s blog will mention it, the wife will mention it, or my office-mate will read about it in the Express. But today, my RSS feed was so devoid of anything interesting that I went to the Washington Post website to see if anything interesting had happened. Almost the entire front page is dedicated to whatever Obama is going to do tonight, and I just can’t get myself to care. I made up my mind long ago that I was voting for him. And at this point, he would pretty much have to tear off his face and reveal himself as a chupacabra or space alien or something to get me to change my mind.
Actually, I would vote for either of those ahead of McCain so long as they promised to try and undo some of the damage to the country that Bush and Co. have done. And listening to the news anchors talk about President Chupacabra would be fun, too. I think I also can’t get interested because I just can’t (or maybe won’t) imagine how McCain could possibly win. I may be naive. Considering the lukewarm response to his “I forget how many houses I own” remark, coming during the lowest point in the real estate market in my adult lifetime, it’s a strong possibility. Anyway, I suppose we’ll watch some of whatever is going on tonight. Maybe it will even be interesting. And maybe tomorrow the news will be back to normal.
Your job is more interesting than mine
I can’t be the only one who constantly finds that most other jobs seem more interesting than mine. It doesn’t help that I’m going through a frustrating time at work where we’re understaffed as we’re expanding, so I get to deal with a ton of customers who aren’t that happy with us because we’re pushing back deadlines. And I generally like my job. I’m paid very well relative to how hard I have to work, the company treats me like a person, and I like my coworkers. But there are so many other jobs that sound cooler. For example, I’ve recently rolled over an old 401K into a new IRA, which means I can do a little playing in the market. So I’ve been reading market articles here and there, and I read about a “planned coup” at Lehman Brothers, and a lowball offer for a competitor by Precision Drilling Trust. These things sound exciting! And then you have the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac disaster, and the general unrest in the financial industry, plus releasing earnings statements . . . All I have here are annual budget submissions. It pales in comparison. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to be a day trader or a fund manager or anything like that. That sounds distinctly like work. What I’d really like is for someone to pay me for offering uninformed insight on the market. That would be pretty cool.
You probably just helped her book sales
A hub of Central American culture
In the Post today, via my mom, there are improvements coming to the strip of 14th Street north of Park. For some of you, that may just be “the area around the Red Derby”. But keep an eye out for some new stuff.
[the Mid-14th Street Business Association], in conjunction with a District-based nonprofit organization, the Latino Economic Development Corp., has begun an effort to add fresh layers of paint and new signs to many of the businesses. The business association also plans to launch seminars catered to the shop owners starting in September. Rosemarie Salguero, executive director of the association, said one of the goals is to brand the area as a hub of Central American culture.
If I’m lucky, maybe a Costa Rican restaurant will open up and serve some nice casados and gallo pinto.
I’m wearing a left shoe!
It will be six weeks on Wednesday since I had my foot surgery, and today I wore two shoes to work. For many of you, that may not seem like a big deal. You probably wear two shoes to work every day. But try only wearing one for a while. Better yet, try only wearing one because your foot is so swollen that it won’t fit into the shoe. Then you’ll see. So the foot is a little uncomfortable in the shoe, but not terrible. And I brought the boot, just in case. But I’m hoping to make it through the day with my shoe on.