CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-03-14 04:32:40 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

How dare Google take away a completely free service that never allowed them to make a single cent from me (not sure if Reader has ads for other people, but AdBlock means it doesn't for me).

In protest, I am going to continue not paying them for all the other completely free services that they let me use.

2012-05-16 22:14:01 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Lord of the Rings LEGO is finally available. Best LEGO ever. Can't wait for the inevitable new releases this fall when The Hobbit hits theaters.

2012-05-11 04:19:23 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Amazon pricing is interesting. I've been trying to get the most recently released Skylanders. They're usually only on Amazon at ludicrous markups from resellers. A friend texted to say that she just got a 3-pack for $20 (list price). I hit Amazon and the lowest price they have is $60ish from a reseller. Only minutes after she paid $20. Huh, I think. Half an hour later I hit refresh on the page and now I see the item for $20 as well. I buy one. I check the order page to confirm that they really did sell it to me for $20. They did. A few minutes later I hit refresh again, now the lowest price for the item is $69.

Wacky Amazon.

Try the link and see what price it shows you.

2012-05-11 00:47:19 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I just got around to seeing The People vs. George Lucas (it's on Netflix). Wonderful documentary. If you're any kind of Star Wars fan, you've got to see it.

2012-04-26 19:05:55 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Amber Dusick is always funny (at least if you're a parent, I suppose) but the last line of this post made me literally LOL: "You can easily remove permanent marker with alcohol. You have to drink a lot of it though."

2012-04-22 04:08:12 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Hooray for Italian heritage. The sun finally came out for real today (high of 70 which is super hot for Seattle). My sons and I didn't put on any sunscreen and we're a tiny bit pink. We'll be tan tomorrow. My Scandinavian-descended wife had SPF 30 or 50 almost everywhere and she's pinker than us where she did apply it and has the start of a burn where she missed (upper back, sadly).

2012-04-19 05:15:40 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Just noticed that a tiny little annoyance I had with G+ was fixed. Probably happened months ago and I never noticed. Hooray Google.

2012-04-19 04:50:34 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Exclusive pre-order bonuses which I want but that are attached to companies with terrible websites I never want to do business with really suck.

Having a website reject my address because I used lowercase letters is a bit odd for a major retailer.

2012-04-07 02:54:19 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

On vacation and my 5-year-old is watching TV in the hotel room. He keeps complaining that his brother isn't fast forwarding through commercials. On live TV. TiVo and DVDs and Netflix streaming video have ruined the boy.

Keep thinking that I need to find a vintage TV with knobs for channel, volume, and on/off and make my kids use that for a week.

2012-03-29 20:35:58 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Wanted to reply in a comment thread using a favorite quote. Googled it to get the exact wording. Find out it's one of those widely misattributed ones that nobody actually said. Boo.

2012-03-27 16:15:18 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I was going to say that 43 is a remarkably dull birthday. It's prime, but a boring one. I was already "early 40s" last year and IMO "mid 40s" isn't until next year. Then I did some Googling. 43 is the largest McNugget number! Yay?

2012-03-22 18:00:52 (10 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Curmudgeon alert.

I don't like MS Walk and MS Bike Ride fundraisers (and any other MS Athletic Activity fundraisers, if such things exist). Many people with MS have trouble walking and biking and some of them are severely limited in their ability to do either. I don't particularly appreciate having my disability rubbed in my face by the fundraising efforts. "Hey, give me money so I can go do something you can't." Awesome.

Have I missed all the Symphony Concerts for the Deaf and Painting Exhibits for the Blind?

2012-03-21 02:20:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Really nifty minimalist LEGO fictional characters.

2012-03-19 05:24:29 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I've long wondered if I should use G+ in a more bloggy (i.e. rambling on about personal crap) way and if so whether I should post about multiple sclerosis. It's odd, meet me in person and I am always happy to go on at length about my clinical history and symptoms and all that, generally to the point where I wonder if I am boring people. I really have little concern for my personal medical privacy at all (for all that I'm quite circumspect about my family's and never breathed a word about my patients back in the day).

2012-03-14 21:30:50 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I was about to comment on a post and quote the line about "hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue". Then I made the mistake of Googling the line to see if I had it right and I discovered it's originally in French so there's more than one "correct" translation and then I gave up.

To save anyone else the Googling: it's François de La Rochefoucauld and originally goes "L'hypocrisie est un hommage que le vice rend à la vertu." Hommage is the ambiguous word here, I guess (only 2 years of high school French, so I don't personally have a clue).

2012-03-14 21:21:31 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Wow, cool eBay bug. I went to change a saved search by typing in the slightly different search and clicking the "save search" button and then the "replace an existing search" link. It gave me a long drop down box of other people's saved searches (well, that and funny things people who saw the bug typed). I love finding stuff like this on giant commercial sites.

2012-03-13 02:19:06 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Argh. Clicked a thumb button on my mouse while composing a post. It's mapped to page back. There went the post.

Probably easier to just be more careful than try getting used to different button bindings.

2012-03-11 23:22:47 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Hmm, deleted some videos from the private folder that automatic photo upload dumps them in. My phone just uploaded them all again. Ugh. Guess I'll turn off automatic upload again.

2012-03-11 06:13:56 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

This is our incredibly well-trained and obedient cat licking the butter off a piece of bread when my wife briefly stepped away from the table. Said cat has batted at food on our forks before.

Just occurred to me that it's Caturday though I was already posting this before I realized that.

2012-03-11 06:08:19 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Not that I'm sure this is really a category anyone pays attention to, but Cliff Lede (http://www.cliffledevineyards.com/) has the best foils ever.

2012-03-11 06:08:18 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

2012-03-06 21:43:07 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

How odd. Someone I've circled reshared a post by someone else I've circled but added her own commentary that mentioned me by name. I got an email notifying me about it and I can click through to read the reshare in person #1's stream but it refuses to appear in my own stream.

Did Google turn off seeing reshared posts, even though there's a chunk of added content by way of the introductory paragraph? Perhaps I'm missing something.

2012-03-05 19:33:10 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

On the way to school this morning my 7-year-old complained that the various books he's been assigned to read haven't included any science fiction. Huge parenting win!

Will point him to the multiple shelves full of science fiction in my office when he gets home. Perhaps he's ready for some Heinlein juveniles.

2012-03-05 15:42:28 (4 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

It bothers me when people call something a "crisis" that has been going on for years, sometimes decades, gradually getting worse, but with no particular breakpoints of jumps in badness. Something can be terrible and need fixing without being a "crisis".

Hyperbole and exaggeration are the worst things ever!

2012-03-03 18:30:48 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Spelling error in a headline on the front page of the WSJ this morning. Embarrassing. I've been reading it for many years and pretty much the moment News Corp bought them editing standards went in the toilet. From never, ever seeing errors to spotting one almost every time I read the whole paper.

2012-03-01 04:58:11 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

I was just reminded of "Colossal Cave Adventure" though I knew it as ADVENT. There was a time when I could type in the first 20 or 30 commands on the way to a perfect score without even looking at the screen (and thanks to the acoustic coupler I often used to play from home there was a severe buffering of commands letting me type them all at once). Damn, I played that game a lot. Definitely the first computer game I was ever "hardcore" about. I was 10.

2012-02-28 17:56:49 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Yay, another stupid "G+ is dying" article. I like the complete failure to comprehend when averages are a bad thing to calculate -- 3 minutes per month per user? Really? Gee, maybe large numbers of people signed up and never use it and a smaller core use it a bunch. I can't see how an average does anything but obscure more than it reveals.

2012-02-28 06:17:13 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 6 +1s)

Sometimes I think of posting something relatively trivial but that for whatever reason I probably shouldn't share with the public in general. Then I start trying to decide which of my many circles I should share it with. Then I decide that it's too much effort and don't post at all.

I fail at social media.

2012-02-21 19:24:08 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

I just typed "weeknight" (meant to parse as week-night) and suddenly read it as "wee-knight" and now I can't stop seeing it that way. Not sure why wee knights never occurred to me before.

What other words have done that to you?

2012-02-19 19:36:15 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Nifty.

2012-02-17 18:20:12 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

It still annoys me when people use "quantum leap" to mean something large rather than something spooky but generally microscopic in distance. Yes, that ship has sailed, the horse has left the barn, etc. etc. with regard to people getting it wrong but I can't help it.

2012-02-15 21:16:36 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Hah. I finally have the new G+ look on this machine. My gaming machine right next to this one that I rarely surf on got it weeks ago. Interesting algorithms they've got there.

2012-02-15 19:32:07 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

This is one of the coolest things ever.

2012-02-15 19:21:48 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

My five-year-old was asked to draw a picture of how he imagined himself when he's 100 (today is their 100th day of school, thus the 100 theme) and to describe his picture. I just had to transcribe what he said:

"Hi, my name is Duncan. When I'm 100 I'm going to have a mustache and a scar because a car crashed into my forehead. And I'm going to have white hair and I'm going to live in the same house I live in on Mercer Island and I'm going to spend time fighting aliens on different planets."

I'm glad he has goals even if he doesn't plan on moving out.

2012-02-14 17:21:50 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Spent the morning playing Heroscape with my boys before taking them to school. It was their idea (and their idea getting it out of my closet over the weekend).

2012-02-14 06:21:45 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Wonderful article about CRPGs and their lack of any actual RP. Old article but I just discovered it and it's all still true anyway.

2012-02-08 06:36:11 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

The hard drive in my wife's netbook died the other day. I put a new hard drive in this evening. I just put the dead drive in my closet on top of the stack of dead hard drives sitting there. It's the eighth dead drive in the pile.

I think I have a problem.

2012-02-05 02:40:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

I'm so proud. My seven-year-old found a UI glitch in the Roku golf game that allows you to play courses and use special balls that you haven't unlocked yet.

2012-02-03 18:59:08 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Google Calendar is dumb. It now thinks my "change furnace filter" reminder is an event and wants to know if I want to RSVP (to my own event) and if I want to add guests. To my filter changing. Gee, maybe not everything in a calendar is an "event". Silly change.

2012-01-29 07:15:29 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

It occurred to me the other day that Star Wars episode 3 is the Jedi Ragnarok. Someone must have pointed this out before but my Google Fu isn't up to finding it.

Maybe I'll elaborate later (but isn't it obvious?).

2012-01-20 02:29:23 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Audible.com is really sleazy. I just had to click through 3 or 4 pages to cancel my account before it would actually let me -- and that was after it initially refused to let me cancel without calling them on the phone. I had to back up a few pages and pick a different option to cancel at all. This is after they erroneously charged me despite having (I thought) canceled back in December.

They're an "Amazon company" but I really expect better from Amazon.

2012-01-02 16:49:46 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Odd little G+ bug (when using Chrome): I can't select text to copy when I'm in the midst of typing in a comment box. The text selects but the selection highlight vanishes as soon as I release the mouse button. If I clear all my typing from the comment box it works.

2011-12-31 07:50:15 (3 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

I'm at best distantly related and I only heard about them today, but it's neat to discover a vineyard and winery with my name on it.

2011-12-23 21:18:27 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Over seven years of parenting before our first ER visit! Older son was chasing younger son and younger son banged his forehead on the edge of a counter. Pretty minor as these things go but looks just big enough to need a couple stitches.

This totally beats spending the afternoon watching Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked with them. :/

2011-12-21 19:42:02 (5 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

I just noticed that you can +1 your own comments.

2011-12-16 15:56:45 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

This is the greatest news in the history of great news.

My sons just pointed out that if this means LotR LEGO console games from TT that it'll be even greater news.

2011-12-15 23:32:30 (20 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Fascinating article about the new Lego theme aimed at girls.

2011-12-12 18:19:17 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Is there any point in resharing a Tom Anderson post? He linked a neat article but is there anyone on Google+ not reading him? :)

EDIT: I guess I should drop the actual link in here.

2011-12-12 06:21:28 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Neat rant.

2011-12-12 03:28:30 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Netflix decided to randomly jumble my very long instant viewing queue. I'd previously spent time sorting it to keep some sort of order to it (would it kill them to add folders?). I just added a couple new things and they were inserted randomly into the list (not alphabetically or anything logical that I could tell). Sigh.