It’s a disease, and it gets worse over time. “Fried my soul” is the metaphor I was going for there. No denizen of teh internet is safe. Be careful or it’ll get you next!

In light of persistent problems lately with Twitter I decided to try out Jaiku, a similar SMS-compatible “micro-blogging” service. I love Twitter–it has allowed me to keep in touch with my doads in ways I never would have imagined–but lately the frequency of errors in their web interface has sent me looking for alternatives. Twitter’s service is free, true, but in this day and age if you can’t do something right, you better believe someone else is ready and waiting to take your place. In observance of this fundamental law of the universe, I will be investigating the competition, beginning with Jaiku and Pownce.

To be honest, the original purpose of this post was simply to to test out Jaiku’s embedded feeds feature, but you know me. Once I start spewing out seemingly-coherent-yet-meaningless bullshit I find it difficult to stop. So, I’d like to talk about another issue of some importance to me–the infamous “Bookmarks Toolbar” that is a standard feature on all modern web browsers.

I always disable my Bookmarks Toolbar. It’s a practice dating back to the era of 800×600 screen resolution, when I needed all the browser real estate I could get. Well, time went by and screens got bigger. but I’d already become accustomed to not having my browser cluttered with that ugly toolbar. My colleagues will often hail the virtues of the toolbar, and sometimes chastise me for shunning it. When I started using Firefox 3 a few days ago, I even thought I might give it another try, but I lasted all of 30 seconds before disabling it. It’s nice that FF allows you to do this, but what I really want is to eliminate the toolbar completely (it clutters up my bookmarks menu) but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be possible.

Sometimes words are not adequate for conveying one’s feelings on a particular subject. Therefore, please allow me to demonstrate my opinion in a more visual manner:

Lately I’ve been finding myself in an unusually pissed-off mood, struggling even to maintain the plastic, patronizing demeanor that normally comes so easily in social situations.

I figured the culprit was some combination of job dissatisfaction, inability to find the latest Star Wars figures, and frequent consumption of Bud Light. Then, as I was looking through my iChat status messages, it hit me–I’ve been having some persistant internet connection problems as well as problems with iChat itself disconnecting me. Given that I spend the majority of my free time on the internet, perhaps this is the cause of my malaise. I generally express my discontent via colorful status messages, and as you can see to the right, they are numerous and vulgar.

Phew! For a second there I thought I was going to have to give up the beers.

Some links worth sharing:

Original Unaltered Star WarsTrilogy on DVD
How Can I Put A Price On My Wife’s Head?
Unique Mega Man Artwork
MiniFonts (Thanks Voidious!)
Mikedude on MySpace
Mega Man X5 Cheats
Zero Wikipedia Entry
Wookieepedia
Ladytron

-Matt

Well I’m back on-line after more than two weeks without internet access (the problem was clerical, not technical; basically, Verizon screwed up.) Lack of internet access seems trivial compared to life’s larger problems, but it was a difficult experience, and it made me realize how much I take the ‘net for granted. I went through phases eerily similar to the “Stages of Grief”: denial, anger, depression and finally acceptance. At least it gave me a chance to play through some of the Mega Man X Collection, so I guess it wasn’t a total bust.

Anyway, it’s great to be back. See you around cyberspace!

-Matt :-)