I still feel like a big sack of crap—to the point that I came home from work early today because I was dizzy and didn’t want to drive home in traffic—but I got everything done that I needed to get done. I did get the nice ego boost of someone saying, “I felt like my left arm was gone without you here yesterday,” combined with a co-worker all-but-happily-tackling me when I walked past his door this morning. It’s nice to be wanted and to feel like you’re an integral part of an organization, to be sure.
[And yes, I say it organIzation, like I'm from Mississauga or something.]
That said, I have felt like doing not much of anything since getting home; after some sleep to knock down the pain/dizziness, I woke up sweaty—why the hell are we pushing 80F in the last week of November? Please explain—just in time for my next medication run. Woooo. The wick still annoys the hell out of me, but it’s getting better. Part of the issue right now is swelling [from irritation] in the area behind and under my ear, which I’m treating with heat. [I just looked it up on WebMD, and maybe I should be doing that with cold. Dammit. But it feels better.] I’ll stay awake until as close to midnight as I can, take the next round of drops, and crash. [I'm so in polyphasic sleep right now, heh.]
In other news, I’ve whittled my new-item backlog in NNW down to 3003. The reason that my migration is taking a long time is because I’m having to switch from FeedLounge’s superior tag-cloud-style filing system for feeds back to a tree-like structure. I will be very, very, very honest: not wanting to leave a tag-cloud system kept me on FL for the last … six-to-eight weeks. When I first found out that Alex was leaving FeedLounge—okay, actually before it was public, back when I was spending time talking to both Alex and Scott on the phone about it, agreeing with how both of them felt about the situation [probably much to their consternation, heh]—I made some preliminary looks to moving, and everything told me that I wanted to stay with what I’d been using.
But … well, at some point, the features of actually, oh, getting your feeds to actually aggregate trump everything else. Tonight, I found that one of my RMFO-Bloggers had 15 spammy comments that were just sitting there, all because FL hadn’t been aggregating his comment feed for me.
So anyway … the transition to a tag-style architecture to a tree is a slow one. Essentially, what I’ve done with every feed I’ve cleared so far is put it into a lowest-common-denominator group in NNW, which has typically been firstname_lastname. I will, at some point in the future, begin organically grouping these folks back into trees. [I've actually started with all the RMFO-Blogs feeds that I follow.] Essentially, I’ve gotten back to a flat structure, which I’ll then go back to treeing.
Good gracious, when are more people going to start supporting tag-style architectures? It may be a hard problem—I honestly don’t know—but it makes so, so, so much sense. Kottke.org’s remaindered links? I want those in “jason_kottke” and “linklog”, because sometimes I feel like perusing all the linklogs I follow, and sometimes, I want just Jason’s editorial voice. The same way with groups of my friends—I want Jonathan and Ashley in both “cabal” and “creekmores”, because sometimes I want to catch up with all my friends, and sometimes, I just want to know about what’s going on down the road from me. And best of all, I want my Bruins-related feeds from boston.com in “boston”, “bruins”, “hockey”, “nhl”, and “sports”, depending on what mood I’m in. [Why the bifurcation of "hockey" and "nhl"? Hell, I follow and eat/live/breathe college hockey, people.]
When one first encounters tag-style architectures, it seems a bit much, but so can treeing … you can get very, very specific with trees. Why do I prefer tag-style architectures? They slice horizontally and vertically.
So anyway, incoherent rambling over. I’m suck it up with going away from tag-style. I’m in mourning, but not enough to switch back. Right now, I’m fixing everything in NNW, essentially doing all my feed-reading at home [which is fine, because I'm busy at work], and then hoping to go to FeedDemon soon and have this setup all completely done so the OPML import into FD is a thing of simplicity when I’m ready for it.
I have a lovely ear infection [thankfully, external] in my left ear. Second one this fall. Frustrating, especially as I’m having to have a wick in my left ear canal, and that’s driving me up the wall. Up. The. Wall.
I started getting my Christmas music in this week as well as an order I’d done some time ago, so … awesome.
Sufjan Steven’s Songs for Christmas is something I’ve had part of in the past, but I’m now proud to own the whole thing. The complete packaging is just … delightful. The last product that I had this much fun unboxing was from Apple.
Achoo!: An Asthmatic Kitty Sampler, Vol. I came with the Sufjan stuff. It’ll get some listens.
David Grahame’s Supergenius is a disc I bought because Colter told me to do so.Last week was quite good to me:
Waterdeep’s Sink or Swim will end up being, I think, one of my favorite albums of the year. It came at a very busy time for me, but there’s a lot of stuff on here that I can tell I’m really going to like when I’ve given it time to soak into my head. Three-and-a-half stars … for now. 
21 Oct 2006 [Marysville, WA, USA] concert bootleg of Andrew Osenga. This is Andrew at his goofy, wonderful best. Three-and-a-half stars.Yeah, almost 13k new items in NNW. That’s just from the import of my OPML. The sad thing is this: I can’t just mark all as read, because some of those feeds weren’t getting updated in my old aggregator, so I need to spend a little time with each one to be sure that I haven’t missed anything. [In some feeds, it won't matter; others, stuff I monitor, yes, it matters greatly. Those monitoring feeds are probably a third of my feeds. :sigh:]
I’ll write more about why I, the first release honoree of FeedLounge, am leaving the FeedLounge service behind, but this post primarily notes that I’ve moved to a client-side-married-to-a-server solution: NewsGator’s offerings are my new feed-reading home.
Leave all the questions that I’m sure you’ll have in the comments. I’ll answer at-length soon. But in short, enough has proven to be enough.
Back home. Didn’t do any shooting with the camera, but I’ll do that later today. For now … a nap. That drive is just long enough to make me sleepy. Unfortunately, I’ll have to open up the windows in my room [it's almost 70F here today], because my roommate decided to run the heat way, way up while I was gone. In fact, when I got upstairs, it was 30C. Ummmm … hot.
John Tyler, 10th President of the United States, had a daughter who out-lived FDR. FDR was the 32nd PotUS.
Too stuffed to post anything longer. Good times with family. Photos to follow tomorrow.
New music will soon grind to a halt for me, other than some bootlegs, probably; I need to get ready for the cantata at church, I have a passel of Christmas music to hit hard, and I also want to curtail purchases so that family and friends can make purchases off of my Amazon music wishlist as they see fit. [Subtle like a brick to the face.] So, here we go:
Waterdeep’s Sink or Swim is an album that John has been after me to buy for years. Finally did it, John. 21 Oct 2006 [Marysville, WA, USA] concert bootleg of Andrew Osenga. This features the fifth taper in the IndieRiver.net empire, which is a good thing. We need more tapers, though!Last week was just the one bootleg:
19 Sep 2006 [Nashville, TN, USA] concert bootleg of the Square Peg Alliance and special guest Don Chaffer. This gets three stars overall. Man, Don owned that night.Come about 1500 yesterday, I had the following conversation with my Houston-based boss:
Him: You worn out yet?
Me: [laughter] I hit that point last week, I think.
Him: You coming in tomorrow?
Me: Yeah.
Him: To do what?
Me: [ten seconds of lame excuses]
Him: Okay. Well, I’ll be off.
Me: Smart man.
We went on to talk other things, but the more I thought about it … couldn’t I clear decks in the two hours I had left in my day?
I could. I did. Of course, as soon as I left work, I headed straight to church, where we had choir for three hours. I got home, answered some email while Charlie Gibson told me what the latest news was as the dinner hour, and then pretty much went to bed.
Predictably, I’ve been wide-awake since 0400. I could sleep in a little today, maybe all the way to 0800, and my body’s all, “Let’s go! Up and at ‘em! Got dragons to slay!”
If I ever needed five days away from the office, it’s … right now.
Time to go back to the well yet again: An Equation of Motivation.
This year, I have a pretty high c—things have been going well, even if I’m tired and frustrated—but my h factor is pretty high. [Especially as I think about work pretty often during non-work hours.] I’m sure that f is pretty high, too, because, well, I haven’t seen the folks in a while. [See also: busy with work.]
What about you?
Some folks have this thing—Christmas celebrations shouldn’t start until Thanksgiving is over and done. Generally, I’m with those folks; I want to wait for Advent to begin, myself. This year, though, I’m breaking a few weeks early, with good reason: I have two great additions to my lineup of Christmas albums this year.
Snow Angels is the second of Over the Rhine’s Christmas albums; folks who pre-order get pre-release MP3s of eight of the twelve tracks, which is a wonderful thing to do for their fans. What I have, I love; I’ve wanted a new Christmas CD from them for a while, and … well, now I have one. Karin and Linford, this is beautiful and a fine addition to the oeuvre. You have, again, outdone yourselves. Sufjan Stevens’s Songs for Christmas is a project a long time in coming to CD: in the past, he’s simply put these out amongst friends and ask that they be distributed. The project has been mostly yearly, with 2004 being skipped. Now, Stevens is putting out the four previous years, plus a new set of recordings done this summer. Cost of all five EPs? $19. That doesn’t sell you? Stream the album and see what you think. I giddily got my shipping confirmation this morning; I hope to have it by the end of the week.These fine additions join what I already have:
The Darkest Night of the Year, the first OtR Christmas disc. You may not love OtR the way I do, but man … I love this album.
Behold the Lamb of God is a masterwork from my friend Andrew Peterson. I don’t know how to say it any other way than that.
Boyz II Men’s Christmas Interpretations is admittedly something I picked up on the cheap from BMG. But … it’s not bad. [Don't look at me like that. My friend Corey Knowles and I shared a love for Boyz II Men in high school, and when I listen to them, I think of him---a good friendship formed over good music and the performance thereof. It's one of the few positive experiences I have from my old HS, so hey.]What Christmas albums do you love?
All of the metro Huntsville area has a heavy heart tonight as our thoughts and prayers are with the victims of a school bus crash here in town. There are just no words for this tragedy, really. My heart grieves for the students involved, their families, and for Lee High as a whole. This will undoubtedly take some time for healing.
I hope that the good that comes of this tragedy is another opportunity to re-visit passenger restraints in school buses. I’m aware of the liability concerns that school districts and school bus manufacturers alike have for them, but I’m quite certain that a reasonable set of laws requiring their use and oversight can be made. Liability concerns pale in the face of the lost lives we’ve seen today.
May God grant peace upon all involved.
… there are four people in a meeting, you’re the only male, and it’s the women who bring up the Iron Bowl.
This actually happened to me this morning. The discussion of whether Alabama should fire their coach went on for about three minutes, and, grinning, I finally piped up and said, “I’d like to note that I’m the only male in the room, and we’ve been talking football for the last five minutes.” We all broke up in laughter.
[Have I mentioned lately that I really genuinely like almost everyone I work with? That is so, so true of everyone in that room this morning. Good people who are very good at what they do---mostly, keeping me out of trouble.]
That’s exactly where I would have placed myself if asked. I’m stunned, though, that it lists Alex as a B-lister. I fully expected to ride his coattails into all the cool bloggers’ parties! I’m crushed! 
![[caedmonscall.net]](http://rocksmyfaceoff.net/images/rmfo/ccneticon.jpg "The Official Fan Site for Caedmon’s Call.")
![[derekwebb.net]](http://rocksmyfaceoff.net/images/rmfo/dwneticon.jpg "The Official Fan Site for Derek Webb. (Last updated 07/03/2004 04:24)")
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