Fireworks

When I could feel the compression from the boom of the fireworks at Shoreline, it dawned on me that my upstairs balcony faces Shoreline, and maybe I could see the fireworks from there. So I took my dinner up there and sure enough, I was able to catch the whole show. It was pretty good, but the grand finale was not as impressive as it has been in the past.

As soon as the Shoreline show was over, some neighbors (maybe across the street, maybe a block away) shot off some expensive rockets, and from about 10:30 till midnight there were a lot of firecrackers, cherry bombs and pinwheels being set off between the buildings of Crittenden Middle School next door. There had been a police car their earlier, but it left just when it should have arrived.

What do Scooter and Paris have in Common?

Neither of them can finish a sentence.

Userpics

Stalker that I am, my usual LJ modus operandi (or for singular should it be operandus?) is when I see a reply which peeks my interest from someone with whom I am not yet familiar, I follow that person's username to his/her journal, do some reading, and also look at his/her userpics for clues.

Lately I am seeing a preponderance of user icons which are not pictures of the owner of the journal, or any pet, car, or other personally identifiable device. This both worries me and makes me slap myself upside the head. Often there are no photos of the person at all.

In the early days of the Internet, there were no images, and fat, bald, toothless old farts like I've become looked just as purty as Miss Teen Oregon, and Miss Teen Oregon was accepted as the rocket scientist she was if her writings justified it.

The first real friend I had in the BBS world turned out to be a short chubby Chinese-American boy of 14 who wore pop-bottle glasses and was legally deaf. I only met him by chance - online I knew him as the developer who sold me my first BBS software, I had no idea (nor did I care) what he looked like, how old he was, whether he was a he or she or undecided, whether he had the full complement of limbs, or whatever. But now that photos are not only available but a routine part of the posting, for some reason I want to see an image of the poster, at least from time to time.

And I really shouldn't.

Skype Foo

A couple of folks have recently tracked me down on Skype and I've denied their requests to add me as a contact. This is for your own good (he says, hiding the wasabi-flavored castor oil). Here's why:

For reasons too stupid to go into here, I always set skype to launch with Windows. Most of the time, I am not at the computer.
If I'm at work, I can't chat verbally, and if I'm not at work I usually do not have the headphones hooked up

So you see, I'm not trying to offend anyone, just trying to save you from needless frustration.