The mysterious sensatious computer

For the past several months every time I got up from my computer and walked away it would play the Windows sound "Device Disconnect," sometimes called the "XP Hardware Remove.wav." I found it disconcerting that the computer sensed my departure and that it considered me "hardware."

This didn't happen 100% of the time, but it happened a lot--maybe 80% of the time. So much so and over so long a period of time that coincidence is out of the question. This was both spooky and reassuring in an odd way, like my computer was actually tracking my presence. I never mentioned this to anyone, too many people already consider me crazy--this was just over the top.

But I'm posting about it today because I finally figured out the connection. Probably capacitance, but more simply put the sound was triggered by a static electricity charge--my body and my keyboard represented a different electromagnetic potential.

This was confirmed this morning when I noticed a tiny spark jump from my finger to the keyboard when I sat down, which triggered the sound.
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Bloggingheads.tv

Maybe cancelling DirecTV was the best thing that has happened to me. I've rediscovered Bloggingheads.tv and have decided that even with some annoying verbal quirks (y'know) the diavlogs have a higher signal to noise ratio than the shoutfests on Cable. And it's possible to just listen and do other tasks on the compter while the video is running.

And again I'm devoting more time to my Start Page. It is getting more traffic since I began tweaking it earlier this month so this is creating positive feedback for me and a happy endless loop. I'm still making it for myself though and there is still some cryptic anchor text. This does make it possible to cram more links onto one screen and once you've figured out my abbreviations the page gets ever more valuable.

Fake Websites

I've been finding a lot of parked domains registered to New Ventures Services, Corp. which may have a special relationship to Network Solutions and is an offshore corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands. Their ad server, at least on those I checked, is Yahoo.

I find this disturbing because the parked domain page is not trying to sell the domain but is strictly a vehicle for ads yet has the appearance of a real website. And that's only a problem because it makes the Internet a labyrinthine puzzle for newbies and children. Perhaps it does make my own straightforward directory presentation more valuable but I hate to be made more valuable because the internet itself is degraded.

Jeans, Casual, Lingerie, Sleepwear

This is why microblogging is not for me. I'll be spending the entire weekend updating these pages and won't have any time to twitter.

Twitter? That was quick

My investigation of microblogging is over and I won't be twittering. I don't particularly need to let anyone know what I'm doing since I'm always working on my web site. Except when I'm out buying stuff and that needs no reportage in real time. There are already too many shopping blogs.

So maybe I'll be left behind as the world twitters on, we can't all be on all the time. I think I can be happy here just adding stuff to my web site, how 1990's...

iList, social classifieds.

iList sends social classifieds across Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Pownce as reported by TechCrunch. That's great if you're a flea-market kind of person who is constantly selling and buying second-hand stuff. I once was, and it was fun. I have considered getting into the second-hand and liquidation business but rejected it finally as a part of my self-definition process over the last decade or so. I'm more of a wholesale person, I don't like retail. I do like Vintage Clothing and Vintage Jewelry though. Time consuming hobbies again.

Commerce over social networks intrigues me more than the social networks themselves do but just like eBay, I think the scammers and the crooks may have a field-day with this. My experience with eBay was unfortunate, if everyone had my experience there would be no eBay.

Streaming Social

I am going to spend a little time familiarizing myself with this new phenomenon. Yes, I know that in Internet time it isn't exactly new, but OTOH as someone who first sent an IM and first entered a chatroom in 1993 and spent a good part of the '90's in chatrooms and sending IMs I think I am capable of seeing Twitter, Friendfeed, Seesmic, and the other streams as more of the same, just better and faster. I have resisted this trend for the same reason that I abandoned chatrooms around the turn of the century. I began feeling that although chatrooms and IMs were very exciting and occasionally tuned me into things much sooner than I otherwise might have learned, they were also highly time consuming and sometimes obligated me to friends and strangers in ways that I would have preferred to avoid.

Now I don't want to begin psychoanalyzing myself and my social connections here on my blog, let's just say I'm not close enough to anyone using these services to make it worthwhile getting involved with them. But the phenomenon is getting big and while I don't want to make this my entire life the way IM's and chatrooms almost became, I don't want to be left behind not knowing what's going on either. So I'm going to research this some more and grab ahold of some of the vision that I left behind when I largely abandoned this type of communications eight years ago.

No, I don't think I'll begin Twittering and tweeting. Call me old fashioned if you like, I don't think I like that pace. I have complete control of my own life and answer to no one, and though some might find that lonely I call the open options empowering. I'm fine, just curious. :)

The Start Page

Once again I am working on the Start Page. I added some text at the bottom suggesting that others copy the source code and create their own version, building from scratch will always be better than using the one-size-fits-all templates given by the big portals. Yes, mine is just another template if you will, I know that and no I don't fancy myself another Google or Yahoo...

I'm going to be spending a lot more time on the Start Page and on the site in general because of DirecTV. They began billing me for things I hadn't ordered so I called to complain. Their automated voice-jail got me so frustrated and angry that instead of complaining and asking for a refund I just cancelled. I was very abrupt with the customer service rep and began by telling him that if he started into a sales pitch trying to persuade me not to cancel that I would scream obscenities at him until he got back to the cancellation process. I wouldn't be surprised if the tape of that call got played at their next sales meeting.

So all I'm left with is the free basic cable that comes with Comcast's broadband which is extremely basic. There are 22 channels, but half are Spanish language, three are shopping channels so all there is left are the local broadcast channels plus C-SPAN. I'll probably order a premium Comcast package eventually but until then I'll get a lot more done on the Andilinks site.

Britney Spears

Many years ago I made a series of pages on pop stars, there were about thirty. Britney was the first, and while the pages did get a lot of traffic they were a lot of work to maintain and this was cutting into the time I could devote to the rest of the site. So I removed those pages but about a year later I accidentally uploaded the Britney page. It began getting traffic again so I left it.

Now that Brit is back in the news in a good way (mostly) the page began getting traffic again so I revamped it.

I like Britney, I enjoy her work and I wish her well.

Green-eco-organic-vegan-etc

I've collected two or four pages of Green-Eco Apparel retailers and these will be on the site in a few days. They range from the mildly green, having just added a new line of organic fabrics, to the stridently vegan. I'm not trying to grade them, I'll just throw them all together.

I've also found that there are a huge number of green directories and I may add a page or two just for those. Either they all list nearly the same sites or I could expand the Green Apparel section to six pages. But I don't think these will draw much traffic so I'll settle for two and see how that goes. I just can't predict which pages Google will like but anything having to do with shoes or size seems to go over big. So maybe I'll expand shoes again soon.