Blog-Day Random Thoughts

Happy blogday to me...

Two years. I've managed to post something every day for two years. Quite an accomplishment for someone like me. I suspect I won't continue the streak, but it's a nice little thing to be proudish of for the moment, when there aren't many other things in my life to celebrate.

One year ago: The Marysville strike had just ended, and my husband was about to embark on a bitter year in the worst school district to teach in of the state. We were hopeful of a strong year despite the problems. The district made certain that was impossible through various petty nastiness and stupidity. In the end, Marysville gave us nothing but pain, and we haven't recovered from it yet.

Two years ago: I was looking forward to the first issue of the new Aquaman series, and posted my first image on my blog. Not to mention three whole entries. I also decided that day to never post more than three blog entries a day because I saw the potential of me spending all my time blogging. The limitation hasn't helped all that much, actually. I also blogged about a white off-duty police officer who killed a black man blocking his driveway when the man pulled a gun on him. The case was declared self-defense, which is exactly what all the evidence pointed to at the time. As I wrote: "I find it a lot easier to believe a sober cop who in over 20 years on a police force had never once fired his gun at a person, over a convicted felon with a history of shooting people he disagreed with who happened to be both drunk and high at the time of the shooting, not to mention illegally parked and carrying a stolen gun." The clamor about the shooting in Seattle didn't die down for quite awhile, and some people still think the cop was at fault, simply because the cop is white.

Wow. This is a terribly depressing look back, isn't it? Blame it on the sick. Until I recover from whatever this thing is I've got, my outlook will no doubt match the Seattle weather.

The King County Library System has switched to a new computer system, and they are still working out all the bugs. One of the more annoying aspects of the system is that the new login screen is not noticed by Firefox's Password Manager, which means I have to type in the very long library card number every single time I want to log into the system from home. This is EXTREMELY annoying, and if anyone knows how I can add an entry to the Password Manager of Firefox, please let me know. I don't think I can memorize my library card number... and I don't really want to.

Another annoyance with the new system is that I used to have a neat tool that let me go from any product page in Amazon.com to the item in the KCLS database, if the database had the book. This made it really easy to jump from items on my wantlist to checking them out from the library before spending money. Now I need to hunt down the thing that made the bookmark tool and see if the new system can have the same thing. (Update: here it is, now can I figure out what vendor KCLS is using?) (Double update - TangognaT figured it out for me, so now I can go to an Amazon.com page, click this link on my toolbar, and get the book's page at the library, if they have it. The link won't work unless it's been dragged to a toolbar and you're on a page that lists an ISBN number when you click on it. It's a very nice little tool.)

Thank you to my Blogmamma Elayne for mentioning my blogiversary.

Modulator also mentioned my blogaversary (how do you spell it, anyway?). In addition he's got that cool Friday Ark thing going. Go check it out.

More Near Mint Niftyness. Go check out his linkblogging.

Yes, hubby-Eric has heard about the Oz miniseries called Tin Man that's in development. It's not very Ozzy, but it sounds slightly interesting.

DeCloah dreams of waffles (it's amusing, go read).

Everyone else has already blogged about it, but go read the Neal Stephenson Interview on Slashdot. Very, very funny.

Virginia Hey is blogging. There are some fun bits to be read there. Go visit.

A man in Japan stabbed a librarian who told him to quiet down. Via Bookslut.

Italy is showing off the new Olympic Mascots. Fark is... um... Farking them (warning some images are disturbing... almost as disturbing as the originals). My favorite is the Shatner one, followed by the South Park one. Via Various and Sundry.

I think I would write more, but my brain is beginning to fizzle out and die, and I need to eat something or this illness is going to start eating me from the inside out instead. One last item of interest. This sign is in Kenmore along 522. You'll see it as you enter Kenmore driving West toward Bothell. I didn't alter the image at all except to crop and resize. I hope this is an omen of things to come for us...