Oldbie.org

We were on the futon, watching "House" last Thursday, when our cat, Jolie, sprinted into the office. Natania noticed that she was chasing something largish, or rather something larger than her usual fare: mosquito hawks, beetles, etc. I believe my wife's exact question was, "Is she chasing a mouse?!" Interrobang added for emphasis.

Jolie was, in fact, chasing a mouse (‽), and because she's fairly inept at anything that doesn't include lounging around all day doing nothing, or whining for food, she let the mouse go. It darted off, under the desk, to hide beneath the heater coil. Not much we could do.

Then, a couple of days later, we finish up with a movie in the living room, and Natania spots Jolie prancing around the house, haughtier than usual. She's caught that mouse, damn it, and she wants us to notice.

We do, and in the ensuing excitement, Jolie drops the mouse yet again. It goes under the couch. We're wondering if our dumb cat will ever be able to put this poor, frightened rodent out of its misery.

Long story short, we lift the couch and the little bugger scampers off into the kitchen. I think Jolie damaged his leg, because he's not very fast. I grab a glass dessert bowl and an old watercolor sitting around and trap him. Slide the watercolor under the bowl, and lift him up to show Jolie how much more catlike I am than she. Then out goes our little friend, into the front yard where, no doubt, he'll somehow find his way back into the house. Or get eaten by a hawk due to his leg.

Domestic life is bliss.

Oh, we bought a camera yesterday. My conscious brain knows that it was a good investment, but there's this little sliver of grey matter deep inside my amygdala, I think, that quivers and secretes pure unadulterated guilt whenever I make a purchase of over $40. My excitement over the new toy barely overshadowed the queasiness I felt when the guy swiped my bank card in his little machine and my account was assaulted by a $900 debit. Along with the buzzing of the flies in my wallet, I could hear my checkbook whimpering: "You did this to me... for a camera?!"

I love the interrobang.

Posted by Michael Harrison at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

... And I love Google Reader.

So, last Friday I posted about some issues I was having with Google Reader not displaying my reading list properly. Four hours after my post, Chris Wetherell from the Google Reader team somehow finds my entry and gives me some feedback. He wants to make a "house call," and offers to help make things right within Reader.

Over the next few days, we correspond back and forth via the comments section of that entry. I sit down at work and initiate the morning ritual: coffee, email, and feeds. Dare I try it?

I do, and all is well with the world. No longer with the pink box of annoyance, my Google Reader slings out my daily dose of content. Many heartfelt thanks to Chris for his assistance this weekend. Never let it be said that Googlers aren't willing to go the extra mile when it comes to their projects.

Posted by Michael Harrison at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday at work, I was playing around with my Google Reader to ensure that an RSS feed for a client's blog would work properly, and I somehow succeeded in completely borking my news reader of choice.

Observe as I attempt to read through my feeds:

First I try to view new items in my list. Lovely. An error message reading: "Sorry, an unexpected condition has occurred which is preventing Google Reader from fulfilling the request."

Let's see if I can pinpoint the problem and just remove the faulty RSS feeds. Here are the feeds I added at work yesterday. Sure enough, it looks like they weren't valid. I've got "(title unknown)" for the subscription names, and what looks like incorrect URLs for the feed paths. Well, let's just click "Unsubscribe"...

Yep. I'm sure that I want to get back to reading my countless RSS feeds all together instead of one-by-one by source (which, if you think about it, is more or less the same as browsing to the website itself...)

I'm waiting with bated breath.

Huh. That looks familiar.

So, apparently I can't remove these badly formatted feeds from my list, and until I do, it appears that the Google Reader home is completely fubar.

Bloglines is looking more and more attractive. I'm a little too mobile to rely on built-in Firefox or Safari options, and I'm a fan of multitasking programs (i.e., not IE... I want my web browser to handle all web content, and I want it accessible at work, at home, in the airport, in the Town Commons while I sip an iced coffee and watch the hula-hoopers, etc.). The idea of a separate utility for reading aggregated web content always seemed a bit of a cop-out, and since more and more of my life is getting 0wnz0red by GOOG (plus it's nice having it easily accessible from my homepage), I went with the Reader. Now I'm starting to wonder if the honeymoon period might be over.

Anyone else have a good web-based news aggregator they'd like to recommend?

Posted by Michael Harrison at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)