Booleanings

I've always thought, wow, what a great way to get some work done. Good coffee, free wi-fi. What's not to like? So, I gave it a try tonight.

I'm here to report that I don't think this is going to work for me. Besides those dang students taking up all the space in Zoka while they nurse one cup of coffee for six hours (not that I wouldn't have done the same thing as an undergrad), I experienced a whole range of problems that pretty much show me why this isn't the place to get any work done (notice I said work. It's still works as a place to play with your computer and look at people).

Here's how it went:
So, I arrive around dinner time. The place isn't too full, so I buy an always fantastic Zoka Americano and sit down with my lappy by the fancy new fireplace. I buy a pound of coffee and three or so drinks here every week, so I'm not going to feel very guilty if I make my Americano last (sorry for the double standard, undergrads). Boy the new space sure is pretty. And hot. That fireplace cranks out the heat. Hot heat. Really hot. So I shuffle down a couple tables and plan to start getting productive.

"Oh, what's that you say, you want me to move my power adapter so you can plug in, too? Sure...I can do that (shuffle, shuffle)." OK, where was I, oh yeah, getting productive.

I begin my reading and can't help but overhear a conversation from a TA who was saying the prof she works for doesn't actually grade anything. He just writes on the papers and then later on comes up with grades all at once. ... nope, I didn't catch the name, but it sounds like a system I could love.

OK, now I'm really going to get going. Five minutes under my belt. Great. This is going well. Uh, where did that huge group of older people come from. Fancier than they typical student crowd, and dressed like they going out for something....hmmmm....wait, they are moving the furniture. Oh, my God, it's, it's, LIVE MUSIC. Ahhhhhhrrrgh!

OK, that's OK, it's just a couple acoustic guitars, I can handle this. Just focus...they'll probably be mellow.

Uh, no, they aren't. I didn't know two acoustic guitars could be so loud. At least their crowd of friends are enjoying themselves. Of course, they probably don't have to study this weekend. I also can't help but note that only about half of them have purchased coffee or food. I wonder if Jeff knows these guys are just as cheap as the students? Probably going out for dinner and drinks after the show (this isn't 90s. A guy's gotta save his cash, right?). To top it all off, they get the fireplace turned down so it doesn't burn their tushies.

Sigh...time to go.

Just to be clear, I'm not complaining about live music in general (though this song about hating earwig seems a little over-reaching in the I'm-a-nutty-artist department). The loud, energetic, mostly adequate music just didn't fit with my plans for the evening.

I'm guessing I'll give UZ a try another night, but tomorrow, the library! Wi-fi, books, even coffee. And, as far as I know, no live music. What's not to like?

-boo-out.

...or how to place a stat counter tool on my page. I just assumed this was part of Blogger, but it's not. I mean, I how am I to supposed to know place in the barfosphere if I have no idea how many people are coming by for a visit? Onward to the web to help me figure this out.

Completely opposite my personality type, I just used the first counter one with positive comments that grabbed me via google and threw it on there. It's even more weird because I've always thought the graphic for the Site Meter counter is about as fugly as humanly possible. But, if you can believe it, I'm going to live with the Rubiks Cube meets diversity flag counter and move on with my life. Mostly, because I'm cheap. The only other acceptable option is invisible and well, my dead grandfather would just fall over dead if he knew I paid for something invisible when something visible was free!

Good choice, I think. The kind folks at SM have a special page to make it really easy to add their counter to a Blogger blog, however, I never take the easy way (not that this is hard). I'm just a little leery or sites that ask me to tell them my ID and password for another site -- espccially from a non-https page.

So, I went long form. It's not that difficult. You just do the old cut-and-paste from the sample code they give you (javascript and vanilla html, your choice) and then paste it into your blogger template. Their suggestion is to put it in right before the closing body tag , but in my template, that would have plopped it in kind of a weird no-person's land hovering between the last of the body text and the right nav. So, I stuck it in over in the archives section at the bottom. Hopefully out of the way enough that people don't freak out or anything.

BTW, they don't tell you this either, but the supposedly feature-rich javascript version works fine with Blogger. If anyone knows why I shouldn't be using Site Meter give me a yell. I hear there are issues ($?, scalability?) if you get over 9k page views a month, but I'm about 8998 short of that.

Ok? Boo-out.

Heard in class the other day... "like waaaaay in the future, when cars and trucks are running on information."

Now wouldn't that be a use for all these blogs? And just think of all that tired old ascii crap sitting over on usenet. It makes the head spin.

Seriously, you can get all worked up if you take this too far. So, stop right there you closet-Matrix fans. It was just an expression, Ok? (and a good one at that.)

I'm thinking this as a good a time as any to start this. I'm pretty sure I have stuff the world needs to know. So, look out.

No, really. Big stuff is going to happen. I mean, gosh, I have plans. I have ideas. I, uh, just a minute... I dropped my cell phone behind the couch and it's ringing and ... and I, ...oh, crap...