Anybody else notice that half the template seems to be missing?
Wasn't me...
Option B is the overwhelming favorite with ~6 votes. Write in candidate E had ~2 votes and loathsome option D finished third with a single vote.
Victor and Phin will spend the year in an unholy embrace at second place on the 2005 winner's board.
Speach! Speach!
(Updated below the fold)
11 people guessed the artist.
(Click here to see it in all its majesty.)
Only Pixy Misa got it right. That's right folks, this spectacular landscape was drawn by yours truly. The exceptionally sad part is that I wasn't attempting to draw like a kid. That's about the best artwork you should ever safely expect from me. My Mom is an artist and Bacon is showing definite signs of the same but this trait has definitely skipped a generation.
Pixy wins the whole ball of wax and takes a commanding lead in the early Points season.
I've put back the submit button on the individual archive pages. You'll no longer have to preview a comment before submitting.
You may all thank the great and powerful Pixy Misa, whose recent anti-spam activities have made this possible. Also, the automatic comment closer for old posts helped a lot.
A problem has been pointed out in the season finale post. Victor is in there twice. Once is way up at the top and the other is way down there at the bottom. If the two scores are combined it brings Victor up from 4th place into a tie for second place. What's up with this? Several theories abound:
- The Snooze Points™ database was hopelessly corrupted during a system crash caused by the world renown chess battle between the Munuviana servers and Big Blue.
- Commies, Islamic fundamentalists and/or PETA hacked the list and added another entry for Victor near the bottom (where it wouldn't be noticed for several days after posting) to sow discord in the hopes they can use this confusion to their unholy advantage.
- At some time during the year Jim screwed up the list. When he put in a new score for Victor he failed to combine it with Victor's existing points, creating instead a second entry.
- At some time during the year Jim screwed up the list. When he put in a new score for Victor he added the new tally but failed to remove the original score, thereby creating instead a second entry.
An in depth investigation shows that the world renown chess battle between the Munuviana servers and Big Blue never happened. Big Blue chickened out. Additionally it was found that neither commies, Islamic fundamentalists nor PETA have the mad hak3r skillz required to pierce Snoozecurity. We are left with only two viable theories and no way to determine which one is correct. Victor should be in either 2nd place or 4th place for the 2005 season and we have no deductive method of figuring out which.
So we'll vote on it! Yeah, voting. Nothing pisses off Commies, Islamic fundamentalists and PETArists like good old fashioned democracy. Cast your vote for one of the following:
A) Victor ties for 2nd place. Phin is cast off the legacy board among jeers and cheers. Phin vows revenge upon all things Pointy in general and Victor in particular.B) Victor ties for 2nd place. Phin stays on the legacy board which is increased to four spots this year in a sop to Phin.
C) Victor stays in 4th place. Victor vows revenge upon all things Pointy in general and every person who voted for this option in particular.
D) Victor stays in 4th place. Victor joins the legacy board which is increased to four spots this year in a sop to Victor.
Lacking an armed secret police force to drag citizens to the polls we'll bribe folks instead. One point for each civic minded voter. Chicago residents, per tradition, may vote multiple times*.
* Though only one will count. Hah!
It's been a long, productive, occassionally frightening year. Season leader dafyd was upset late in the game by a very determined Tiffani. One must wonder how the final tally might have been different if he were properly engaged in the last quote contest instead of doing such pedantic things as working. Priorities, Dafyd! Priorities!
It was a tight race for the runner up spots as well. phin narrowly edged out Victor for the #3 spot thanks to being one of only three people to get the final contest of the season (Paul's Sham/Share) correct. It just goes to show that goldfish are better pets than rats, though only marginally.
The three top finishers get pride of place on the leader board for the entirety of the 2006 season. First prize winner Tiffani gets a special mystery gift of humorous nature and dubious value.
Here are the final results of 2005:
(45) Tiffani
(42) dafyd
(40) phin
(39) Victor
(28) diamond dave
(23) Clancy
(19) Holly
(17) Rob
(16) Paul, shank
(15) Tommy
(12) Kenny, Helen, vw bug, Simon
(11) Jen
(10) Spirit Fingers, Frick, Denise, Jeff
(9) LeeAnn, pylorns, The Lovely Brat Wife
(7) Rob P, Garret, Boudicca
(6) Kathleen, MojoMark, Random Penseur
(5) Craig, Kev, DeAnna, Machelle, Mo Mo, Oorgo, Margi
(4) Jeremy, Harvey, Contagion, Stephen
(3) Matt, Victor, Timmer, Susie, Trey
(2) Mike the Marine, Ryan, Squire Trelane, Elyse, 8ZERO8, Wendy, Me
(1) Jeremy, Ilyka, knpepper, Daniel, Rudy, el Robbo, Tony, Tim Adamec, Rachel Ann
Points are awarded for the weird habits submitted to this post.
Winner (5 points): Jennifer
Sucking on giant cow udders.
Don't knock it 'til you've tried it.
First runner up (4 points, +1 for existing habit): diamond dave
Taking the pants off completely when doing the No. 2.
As some famous person once said "Would they be of silk still should these fetters chafe and bind". Last thing I need while sitting on the can is binding, I tell you what.
Second runner up (3 points): phin
Dressing up in Red Panties and parading around the office.
What's the normal color - blue?
Third runner up (2 points, +1 for existing habit): Victor
You have sex with your wife on a regular basis.
It's only "weird" if the barn fowl protests.
Honorable mention (1 point): Tiffani
Walking around with your shirt off.
I'm seldom without a shirt. Quite often I'm without pants but after the third time the ASPCA tried to "bag" me I made it a habit to always wear a shirt.
Victor here, announcing that several stealth points went unclaimed last year. Someone should tell you about them and it may as well be me because I offered them to y'all.
To be honest, the first point may or may not have qualified for stealth points. I sent Jim a note and he never replied, but I'll mention it here as a just-in-case. It was just last month, when my incredibly awesome caption won Jim's caption contest. In case you've forgotten, it was Fluffy the Hutt was not at *all* pleased when Han Solo had to dump the load of Triskelian Mice he was smuggling.
I'll get the obvious out of the way first: It was not the Star Wars references. Jim has stated that painfully obvious references, such as Monty Python, are not eligible for Snooze Points, and I suspect references to characters from Star Wars would qualify as painfully obvious. However, read it carefully...does anyone not remember Star Trek? Particularly hot alien babes? Particularly the blue-haired drill-Thrall hot alien babe Shana from The Gamesters of Triskelion? Anyway, "Triskelian Mice" got their name from this episode of Star Trek; I used "triskelian" because I needed an alien-sounding name.
(For the record, mice, rats, squirrels, rabbits, nor any other form of rodent figure in this episode not one bit.)
There was one other stealth point that could have been awarded. Since this was originally posted in October, you would have received one point for finding it, one point for finding it twenty-four hours after it was posted, and I would really have pressured Jim into awarding a third point if you had it right. See, when I told Jim about it, I was wrong.
Back in October, I titled a post His only crime was being born delicious! in reference to Phin smoking Jim's mascot. For some bizarre reason, I thought I got that phrase from a Simpson episode--the one with Pinchy the lobster--and that's what I told Jim.
A few weeks ago, that phrase was thrown in my face while I was re-watching one of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000, Manos: The Hands of Fate, when Crow T. Robot uttered that phrase during the invention exchange (The Chocolate Bunny Guillotine).
I would have accepted MST3K or Manos for that answer...after having the shock of reading it wake me up and get me to Google that phrase to make sure I was wrong.
So, there you go. Had Dafyd googled all of my post titles, he would have found that and ended up tied with Tiffani for Grand Snooze Points Champion of 2005. As it is, Tiffani stands highest on the podium, where she belongs.
Remember this SnoozePoints™ post from back in June? It's the one where y'all told me what presents you'd like if I won the lottery. I've kept it open pending my buying an actual lottery ticket. I've come to the conclusion that if I haven't purchased a lottery ticket in five and a half months it is pretty unlikely that I'll buy one in the next two weeks. Therefore I say screw the lottery and award the points!
There are seven winners in this contest: two each in three categories (3 points for winner, 1 for the also ran runner up) and the overall best (6 points). Without further ado, here they are:
Category: Real Presents
Winner, RP with a puppy.
Runner up, Rachel Ann with books. Lots of books.
Category: Humorous Gifts
Winner, Phin with porn sheep, evil clown and casual wear.
Runner up, Jeff with a baby buffalo for companionship and sustenance.
Category: Alcohol Related
Winner, Margi with tickets to Atlanta and beer.
Runner up, Simon with beer company stock.
The overall, number one winner
This was a runaway (bouncing) victory. Tiffani, with a boob job.
Congratulations all! With the SnoozePoints™ season coming to a close we've got quite a bit of movement on the back stretch. I'm considering accepting bribes.
Just used this handy little utility to put up shank's email addy* in spamproofed format. It's over there on the sidebar in the "Authors" section now.
If you want to put your email address out there for people to use but hide it from spambots I strongly recommend running it through an encoder first. This one is the best that I've found.
* Everybody should send him a happy greeting.
Right now.
Really.
Copy me on it and I'll give you a Snooze Point**.
** Offer limited to one point per person. Void where prohibited by law. Odds of winning are approximately 1 to 1. Offer expires when shank threatens me with bodily harm.
Well, not quite exactly the same. Snooze Button Dreams is now a multi-author blog. Shank and Paul are joining up as SBDs co-hosts. Give them both a warm Snoozy welcome!
Yay!
Okay then, let's take care of the questions:
Q: Why the multi-author thing?
A: I've been toying with the idea for quite some time. In typical form I procrastinated for months before finally deciding I had to shit or get off the pot. I decided to shit.
Q: But why?
A: A bunch of reasons. First and foremost is you, my lovely reader. It is incredibly flattering that I get hundreds of hits a day even when I post once a week like I have been lately. You deserve better than a post a week. Second, I think it's the way of the future. The incredible plethora of blogs out there means that individual blogs are getting less and less attention. By teaming up with other authors who have similar tastes this blog will hit higher on the attentionometer. Third, I view having direct authoritative input into the blog as a good thing. More ideas, hopefully better ones, will help SBD grow into its maturity. And beyond!
Q: Why Paul?
A: We fit well together. We have a similar sense of humor, compatible writing styles, and work well together. In fact, we work well enough together to co-author shorts. Remember Protomonkey?
Q: Why shank?
A: Mostly the death threats. He knows where I live.
Q: No, really.
A: Pretty much the same as with Paul. I've known him for a long time from his comments around the neighborhood and from his own blogs. He cracks my shit up. He's also able to go from poop humor to delicate insight in a single post. You gotta love that.
Q: So is this really a multi-person blog or are you just letting them post here?
A: It's really a multi-person blog now. Majority rules and all that happy stuff.
Q: What about my points?!
A: Points continue. shank and Paul will be handing them out too, if they want.
Q: Are you tossing the Snooze Crew™?
A: Nope. The Snooze Crew™ is a highly valued part of the site. Only now, any of three will be able to tap their mad blog skillz when needed.
Q: Can I join up too?
A: Nope. Not right now anyway. We need to get through the transition period and get comfy with managing a group blog before we consider taking on any more owners. Paul and shank have been doing it for a while but it's new to me. No big bumps are expected but, as Confucious say: Man who live in glass house should dress in basement.
Q: What the hell does that mean?
A: Nothing really. I was just trying to end this on a humorous note.
Q: You failed miserably.
A: Yeah, I know.
A: Hey! Look over there! Something shiny!
It's time to shake things up a bit. I've got some plans for the Snooze that I'll be implementing shortly. Can anybody guess what they are? I'll toss some points to the first person to nail them.
UPDATE: Phin guessed the big change. SBD will shortly be a multiple author blog. Yay! 5 points for Phin!
There are a couple of smaller changes that will be occuring, generally in support of the resident additions. I'll give a point each for each of the small ones if anybody guesses them by...um...what's today? Wednesday...all day meeting again...okay, we'll make the deadline Thursday morning my time. Guess either the small, yet important, changes to the blog and/or the identities of the new SBD partners and you'll get points.
The end of the year is coming soon...get those points while you can!
I haven't been posting much. The rather massive project I previously mentioned (the one that went nuclear) is demanding seriously large chuncks of my free time. Enough chunks where I've fallen behind on my blogreading by about 300 posts and haven't put out anything worthwhile here since my promotion came through.
So let's make it official - I'm on blog hiatus until things calm down and I get some of my free time back. For those of you who are calendar oriented that will be Aug 23 at the earliest (as the presentation to senior management is Aug 22).
In the meantime, anybody who has author rights here (hello, Snooze Crew™) is encouraged to post. It's a shame to let this prime real estate lie fallow.
And I'll leave you with this little gem:
Burger: Girls don't have penises.Lovely Wife: That's true. What do they have instead?
Burger: Belly buttons!
...but I call it an opportunity to hand out some Snooze Points. I've made three changes at my own neglected blog, Publius & Co.. If you can tell me what the changes are, in the comments here at SBD, you will receive one Snooze Point for each change you point out.
Trey wants to move to our neighborhood. Being inclined to rationality he's realized that Wordpress is icky and that Munuvians kick it old school. Heading to mucountry is a no-brainer once you nail down those two facts.
Anywho...head on over to his nomination thread and chime in.
I last checked any of my blog stats, referrals, etc. I check the unique visitors for Zero Intelligence every 3 months or so in order to keep my BlogAds profile current but I have no reason to do anything similar for SBD. Every once in whenever I get an email from SiteMeter that says how many visitors I'm getting here but I can't remember the last time I bothered to open it. I haven't joined a carnival in forever.
I used to be a massive traffic whore and lived or died by my site stats. What's up here?
I'm not disaffected, I just don't care. I could be down to 50 visitors a day and it wouldn't bother me as long as they were the regular readers and friends I've made over the past year or two.
I'm in a happy place, blogwise, and that's pretty cool.
GreenZap, the alternative to PayPal, is set to launch on June 1. I think this is just too cool. I'm all about better capitalism through competition and until now PayPal was all alone in the ball park.
If you sign up for an account now you'll get a starting balance of $25. If you sign up through the link above I'll get a $5 signing bonus. There's no mention of if/when the $25 new account thing will go away but I expect it will shrink down to $5 or so at or around the launch. I'd much rather you get $25 than $5 so sign up now!
Welcome to the First Whenever Snooze Crew™ Awards. These awards recognize distinguished service in the line of duty with a Snooze Point (how come there's no ™ for Snooze Points?) for the best post in each category. Without further ado, here's the winners:
Best "Jokin Around" post goes to vw bug for this bit of Tasteless humor.
Best "News & Notes" article is awarded to Diamond Dave for You Have Been Chosen.
The best "Snooze Button Dreams" post was a steal by Phin with A memo from the boss
Post that should have been left in the "Deferred" category goes to Rob P for With my apologies.
Best "Match That Quote" post goes to Victor for Match that quote, special Snooze Crew edition!
Best True Stories post (even though nobody shared. you bastards.) is awarded to Denise for The Great Lengths One Will Go To.
And in the special non-category categories the winners are:
Diamond Dave for "Best Suck-up" post with his entry SBD's Greatest Hits (according to Jim's fans).
"Best Use of Non-sexual Imagery in a Sexual Context" goes to Phin for It's travel time. Alternately, this could have won for "Greatest failure of a trackback party in the history of the blogosphere".
Last, and most certainly least, is the "Best Post Poking Fun at Jim", which is awarded to Phin for A letter home from Jim.
Thank you and good night!
PS - The Snooze Crew™ roll of honor has been preserved in the sidebar blogroll. Yay!
Damn, what a mess! Rodent droppings under the blogroll, passed out gay midgets in the archive and I don't know what the hell that stain on the banner is. Sure tastes salty though...
The trip was a lot of fun, details to trickle out in the next couple of days. I've got over a hundred emails in the inbox and 450 posts in the newsreader. Expect my commenting to be light over the next couple of days.
Many thanks to the incomparable Snooze Crew™. I think my readership actually increased over the past week. Hmmm...I might have to do this again in the near future. I'll be handing out some bonus points for the best posts and hosts. Details, as they say, to follow.
In the meantime, any Crewmembers who awarded points please send me a tally and I'll update the list.
Poor Jim. He leaves for a week, gives us the keys to the castle, and all we can do is humiliate him on his own blog.
I think us regulars ought to honor Jim instead by sharing our favorite SBD posts. Posts that make us laugh, cry, think, scream, mutter "whadafuk", spooge, hurl, etc. Who knows, several of us may mention the same posts.
My favorite post went something like this, I think:
But only if you answer this question: WWJD?*
*What Would Jim Do, dudes.
Fortunately I do know when I'll be back again. That would be next Monday. If you're expecting any posts from me before then, or on that Monday, or even the following Tuesday you'll likely be even more disappointed than you normally are when I actually post something.
So until Wednesday next I leave you in the competent capable enthusiastic hands of the Snooze Crew™:
I promised in my application to guest host I wouldn't start a comment party unless bribed by Harvey. Well Harvey hasn't bribed me yet, so I figured I'd host a TrackBack party, since we need something to track back to I figured an image would be a great idea. Now the only thing to ponder is the image.
Given Jim's preference for all things bird & boob (i.e.: the blue footed boobie) related I thought it best to go with a combination of both. So without further delay I present to you, Jim's purple hooter:
A picture of Jim's purple hooter is below in the extended entry and should be work safe.
I'm not a man of wealth, nor of taste. Believe you me.
My name is Victor, and I'm helping trash Jim's blog while he's away. In the likely event you're not one of the six or so people who read my blog, you have no idea who I am, so by way of introduction, I'd like to post my answers to Jim's Guest Blogger Application. I confess I filled it out pretty much because I like to fill out forms, and less because I wanted to guest blog here. I mean, take a look at my blog--I hardly ever post there.
Well Jim isn't actually leaving until the 17th; but since he said we could start posting I figured what better way to send him off than with a picture?
So in the extended entry, Jim said to post pictures that may not be work safe in the extended entry portion, I've posted a picture of a hairy pecker. And it's even from Washington State, which is even more fitting since Jim's headed to Spokane.
* The picture should be work safe; it's not the hairy pecker you're thinking of pervo.
I'm very happy to announce that I have a cadre of experienced motivated writers set to amuse and entertain you during my upcoming hiatus. For those of you unfamiliar with military parlance a "cadre" is, in this case, a half dozen. Unless you're talking about a baker's dozen, in which case a cadre is approximately 0.46153846153846153846153846153846 dozen. This is in no way related to "The Dozens", an urban game of insults dealing primarily with your mother. Yes, YOUR mother. It doesn't matter who's playing The Dozens, they're all talking about your mother.
Without further ado, allow me to introduce you to the Snooze Crew™:
We begin with frequent commenter and occasional SnoozeBob poster Diamond Dave. Dave's a local and I fear his FartBlast so he's in.Next up is Phin. He's new to Munuviana but not to blogging. Any man who needs to actually point out that he could whoop Aquaman's ass needs all of the support he can get.
Victor's been a blogneighbor for eons. Victor likes rats and swimming in ladies underwear. I mean he likes rats swimming in ladies underwear. Victor himself seldom, if ever, engages in ladies underwear swimming. With rats.
Denise's hobbies include tormenting me in my comments and having sex. That's a winning combination if I ever saw one.
The coveted number five position (not to be confused with "The reverse wheelbarrow" which is also position #5 but in an entirely different context) goes to Rob. Rob isn't Rob from Xset but a completely different Rob. To avoid confusion, close one eye when you read Rob's name.
Rounding out the
half dozen0.46153846153846153846153846153846 dozensix is vw bug who I think is blogrelated to me through some sick twisted chromosonal chicanery of Harvey's. I'm not sure what the laws are regarding cohabitating with blogcousins but I'll be out of the place while she's here so I think it's legal. Especially in Virginia.
Snooze Crew™, I'll be sending each of you an email with account and login information where needed and restraining orders where appropriate. Probably not until Monday though as this weekend is supposed to be exceptionally fine weather and I need to suck up as much of that as possible before we go to Spokane.
One more thing - I forgot to mention this in the application post but these are paid positions. These motivated volunteers will all be earning some Snooze Points for their efforts.
Check this out! Snooze Button Dreams is a gay blog. No joke - I've been indexed by Spidergay.
Denis (the Spidergay webmaster) sent me a very nicely written form email to give me the good news. They hope that my "indexation will provide you with a greater number of GLBT Internet surfers". How sweet is that? I am now eagerly awaiting an influx of glibbet surfers.
And guess who didn't show up in a search of their directory? That's right. Snooze Button Dreams is more gay than Trey Givens.com. Boo ya! In your face, Trey!
They also include a handy one press link if I want a deindexation but forget that. Traffic is traffic.
Wednesday is starting out to be a pretty cool day.
UPDATE: Victor thinks it might have been this post that got me indexed. That would be ironic since I was first accused of hating gays due to that post.
In this post I posed the following question:
Once is luck,Twice is coincidence,
Three times is a charm,
What is four times?
The clues I gave to the correct answer were that it was work related, I came up with this in a business meeting and that the answer could be gleaned from my previous posts about work. The correct answer is "Four times is a process".
I was hired here as a QA Specialist and the vast bulk of my first months was spent designing and implementing processes for Development. For the last month I've been designing and implementing processes for Project Management as well as taking on my own Business Analysis and Project Management tasks. I came up with this little saying during a meeting on those processes to make a point that it isn't enough to say what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. We actually have to DO IT like that and we can't consider it a success process until it has been verified by actual repetitive successes.
If anybody has any experience with change management (getting people to do something differently than they have been) you probably have a fair idea of how difficult it can be to get people to "follow the plan". It's where the term "herding cats" comes from.
Anyway, there were some great guesses and points shall be awarded!
Third Place (1 point): vw bug Four times is... one partner too many.Second Place (3 points): Oorgo
Four times is... repetitious.First Place (5 points): shank
Four times is... the fine line between persistence and harrasment.
And a bonus point each for the folks who tried to find the business angle:
vw bug for ...only good for brainstorming.knpepper for ...a project plan complete with willing project sponsor;
a real budget with real money; and real target audiences.Wendy for ...a contract.
Helen for ...a promotion.
The aftereffects of SnoozeBob Day will last for months. Or weeks maybe. Days? Okay, the aftereffects pretty much fizzled away mere moments after SnoozeBob Day ended.
But the points remain!
Here are the points awarded for the many guest posts:
1 point for Most painfully honest post goes to Lovely Wife for "Have I?"2 points for Most blatant link whorage goes to Rob for "Do I still have time?"
3 points for Best impersonation of one of Jim's posts goes to pylorns for "Movie Quotes Time"
1 point for Post exposing the truth about French culture goes to Rob for "Because I always do as Jim orders"
2 points for Funniest depressing post goes to shank for "While the Cat's Away..."
-1 point for Post causing Jim the most real pain goes to dafyd for "Annoying German Pop"
1 point for Best combination of high tech and reprodutive organs goes to Dave for "C'est l'Oorgo, oui!"
5 points for Post exposing the most mangina goes to diamond dave for "Always wanted to ask this..."
My thanks to all of the guest posters!
Update: Thanks for playing! SnoozeBob is back in his cage.
I'm off to Denver today so I've brought Snoozebob out to play!
Snoozebob comes around when I am especially lazy am so burdened by other committments that I can't attend to my normal bloggish duties and he throws the doors open for y'all to abuse the Snooze guest post. It's easy as pie. Just go here and log in with username and password "snoozebob".
The door will be open until tomorrow morning. You can post just about whatever you want as long as it isn't spammy or overtly francophilish. There are a couple of things to remember though:
- Don't do something so stupid that I or one of my proctors will have to ban your ass.
- Put your name in there so we know who wrote what. In the title is the best place, as a header or in closing work too.
- If you have a blog don't forget to
whore it out hereinclude a link. - For the category, please choose "SnoozeBob".
Enjoy!
(This post will stay at the top as long as open posting is enabled.)
POINTS: When I close guest posting I'll hand out some points based on which posts I thought were the funniest/most meaningful/bestest. It might be in categories or an overall list - not sure at the moment.
Number of posts in my aggregator after wiping out the ones from a couple blogs I'm probably going to drop because I just can't keep up with all of the blogs on my blogroll any more.
Maybe I'll move 'em out to an "On deck" blogroll.
(And no, if you are reading this I can just about guarantee that it's not your blog I'm talking about. Relax already.)
Going to UGA today, busy weekend, will be in Chicago Monday and Tuesday.
See y'all Wednesday.
Thought I forgot all about updating for this one, didn't you? Well, you were right. But fortunately Outlook didn't forget and successfully pestered me into doing it today.
The Points board is current for everything that's closed and there's still one contest post open for those looking to increase their totals.
[crickets chirping]
Yeah. Well, you see...um...
When the folks were down visiting I dug out a CD-ROM for them so they could install a perfectly legal copy of MS Office on their new computer. While searching for said CD-ROM I also came across my long lost CivIII and CivIII Play The World CDs*.
Sorry about that.
If you don't understand the connection between finding these CDs and the quietness of this blog ask Ilyka. She'll fill you in.
Anybody out there care to design a site? My friend Amy from work is about to start a weblog. She knows basic html but little CSS and no MT and could definitely use some help from the magnificent talent that runs around here.
Rob is my go-to guy because of his mad design skillz but I've got him tied up pretty well already with a redesign for Zero Intelligence.*
She's looking for a simple, attractive design. Here's the skinny on the site focus (from the post linked above):
Her site will serve as a resource collection for abused kids and parents who need help. The blog posts will be news items and editorial/Op-ed pieces related to the same topic. Overall, very similar to Zero Intelligence so take a look over there to see what she's aiming for.
So who's volunteering?
* Then again, Amy wouldn't mind waiting a little bit if necessary. So Rob, if you want to queue her up feel free to jump on this fantastic offer too! No, wait. It's not a fantastic offer. It's more work. Let me rephrase that:
So Rob, if you want to prove beyond a doubt how masochistic you are, feel free to jump right on this and queue her up!
Yeah, that's a bit more realistic. ;-)
The tombstone contest is complete. There were four entries and four finishers so everybody wins! Putting them in 'best' order was hard enough with just four. There's just something about grave markers that makes me smile. Must be my rampant morbidity.
Anywho, on to the results:
First place, with a prize of 5 points, goes to Jen. The beautifully morbid self reference put me in mind of the classic stones at Tombstone. She really stole the show with this one:
(Click for big size)
Second place, with a 3 point prize goes to Frick. Frick went rebel with this one, profaning the ease of the tombstone generator to photoshop a message for the cockroaches of the internet:
(Click for big size)
Third place, for 2 points, is VW with a line from my favorite Monty Python skit:
(Click for big size)
Fourth place, for an additional point, is Frick again. This one came in last because it has far too great a chance of actually happening in the real world:
(Click for big size)
Congrats, y'all! The point board will be updated around lunchtime.
Somehow I pooched a recent post and lost my liveblogging of the power outage at work. Uncharacteristically I don't have a notepad file for it because it was all short updates.
My misfortune is your good fortune!
Here's what you need to do:
In Internet Explorer go to File in the menu bar and select "Work Offline". Other browsers will be similar.Open the problem child post.
If you see a full and beautiful post with time marks on the individual entries you are looking at my lost baby. Copy the text and send it to me.
Those of you with newsreaders may also have the full post in your readers.
First person who retrieves the post gets 5 points!
This will only work if you happen to be one of the 30 or so people who saw the full post before I mangled it. Hopefully it still exists in one of your caches.
Update: dafyd wins! Yay!
Tiffani wins first prize for the Bumper Sticker contest. She was the only entrant but she was the obvious winner right off the bat. Probably why nobody else bothered to challenge her. After all, how can you improve upon perfection?
Five points for Tiffani!
Clancy has revealed his news. He's married and pregnant! Luckily, so is GF. The big winner of the Guess Clancy's News contest was me. Hah! I rule!
I'd like to thank the Academy, my agent and all of the people who didn't guess as well as I did.
My points are a bit reduced though as Helen, Kathleen and Holly each extorted a point from me. What can I say? I'm helpless against the power of estrorage*.
That clears the docket for points posts at the moment but we'll get some more up soon. I've got a Shamming/Sharing in the works and an excellent photo for a caption contest.
* I've proven to be quite the coward in this regard so threats upon my life will continue to be paid off with my personal points until they are depleted.
I found this over at LeeAnn's Cheesy Castle of Doom (TM). Ralex Whitlock (what sort of name is "Ralex" anyway?*) made a list of ten things that he thinks bloggers do wrong. A list of common failings, if you will. LeeAnn did a self-analysis against the list and, since I'm nothing if not a slave to rule number 1, I have too:
1. Only link to what we've already read and only say what we've already heard.
Nah. A goodly bit of my stuff is original and I don't go around parroting people via links.2. False modesty.
False modesty? Moi? Hehe. Hahaha. Mwah hah hah hah hah!!
Um...no.3. Clearing the archives.
Nope again. All of my tripe is out there for your enjoyment. Actually it would be a great benefit and increase usability quite a bit if bloggers (like me) cleaned out half of the garbage in their archives.
I got a very nice email from Tre at 21st Century Paladin. He complimented me on my site, told me he had blogrolled me and asked me to look at his site to see if I liked it and maybe put him on my own blogroll if I did. Happy to oblige Tre.
But this got me to thinking about my blogroll. How do sites get on my blogroll? Well, I'll tell you.
But first, allow me to present my excuses. I am a terrible template updater. It's not in my genes. I'm in software QA because I like to break programs. I am an inherent danger any time I open a template. I am a destroyer of bytes, not a creator. What I'm saying is I don't update my blogroll very often.
Excuse number two is that although the blogs I read are the ones on my blogroll I don't read blogs with my blogroll. I use a newsreader. If a site doesn't have a feed the chances that it will ever get to my blogroll are pretty slim to non-existent. Oh, I know that there are loads of excellent sites out there without RSS feeds. My heart bleeds a little bit every time I think of all of the great stuff I'm missing. However, real life has shown that I seldom, if ever, remembered to (or bothered to if I did remember) actually go read blogs outside of the ones in my newsreader.
So what happens to a prospective blog is I'll put it in the newsreader and follow it for a while. If it bores me or pisses me off I delete it. If it's still there when I update my blogroll it becomes one of the elite and gets put in the correct alphabetic order.
Tre, you're up there in the pending section right now. So far, so good.
Ilyka made the 5,000th* comment on Snooze Button Dreams. It was a Happy New Year wish too, so that makes it extra special.
Ilyka, you win a year's supply of air and all the toilet paper in your house. Congratulations!
* Not counting the 10 or 11 thousand spam comments that have been deleted.
So I joined BlogExplosion*. It's a nifty idea. You surf through blogs and accumulate points which are then spent to direct other surfers to your blog. You spend 30 seconds on a blog to get credit for viewing it.
One notable problem is that although surfing through the blogs takes a manual click there's nothing to stop people from keeping the surfing window open and just returning to it periodically to click to the next blog without ever giving a site even a cursory look. Oh, well. There are asses in every crowd, no sense crying about it.
The cool thing is that you might actually find a couple of blogs that you like. I've got a half dozen in the evaluation stage now. That's sweet.
Another sucky thing is that you get exposed to a whole lot of absolutely horrible blogs. True garbage, presented on a bed of skank with a side of rotten. After a short while surfing I've identified several instant elimination criteria. Any blog that pops up with any of these gets clicked off right away. Yeah, that means no credit for viewing but my browsing time is limited and I'm not about to look at a piece of crap for half a minute when there might be something worthwhile right around the corner.
So what are these items that ring the death knell for Jim's surfing? I'm glad you asked!
Black backgrounds with blue text. Or any dark background with any dark text. Any light background with light text too for that matter. If I have to highlight text in order to read it the site is dead to me. Ditto for obscuring background graphics.Yet another female blogger set up with a pink background. Sorry, it's just too trite and common. I'm sure there are many fine pink-backgrounded blogs out there but the vast majority of these are full of inane posts and whining about terrible fate and the vagaries of being misunderstood.
The first post is a health complaint. Or the title is something along the lines of "My life with incurable rectal stenosis" or "My battles with chronic depression". Don't get me wrong now, I'm a compassionate person - I've got compassion leaking out of every orifice. I'm very interested in the travails of my friends and acquaintances. From them it is sharing and support. From strangers it is just depressing. Think of it this way; if you were on the subway and you had the choice between talking with the depressed guy with facial ulcers or the well spoken and cheerful accountant you'd probably pick the accountant. Unless you had some sort of ulcer fetish of course.
The first post is hard-line partisan. Strident tones from the right, left or middle. I like reading political commentary and opinions from every side but I'm fed up with the temper tantrums. Instant site failure.
sk8r kr@p. If u t1pe l1ke dis ur s1te sukz.
Too much crap in the sidebars. For the love of all that is holy, don't have so much crap on your site that it can't possibly load in 30 seconds over a T1 line. Animations, massive graphics, a hundred link buttons, busted java scripts, clutter, geegaws and toys. A weather pixy with a tagboard will get me off of a site faster than Michael Moore downs a Krispy Kreme.
And that's about it. It just comes down to the essentials really: have a site that is easy to load and navigate and doesn't immediately turn me off with depressing or angry content. And yes, I know that on any given day my site would fail one or more of these criteria. That's okay though, I already have the best readers in the world.
* Sign up with BlogExplosion through this link and I'll get 'points' as your referrer. That would be cool and would put a big smile on my depressed ulcerated face.
Comments are going to be just a touch different now. In an effort to defeat the spambots I've implemented this solution (pointed out by Pylorns). You'll need to preview comments before you can post them now.
Hopefully this, along with the comment script hiding that Pixy has already done, will keep these sumbitches at bay until I can move to MT3.
I'm under a constant stream of crapspam bombardment. I started to go through entries one by one to turn commenting off but that is just this side of ridiculous seeing as I have a bonifide shitload of posts.
How the fuck can I turn all commenting off on an MT blog?
Protomonkey is reborn!
Protomonkey was my attempt to goad myself into writing more and better. Being the stubborn SOB that I am, I was unable to force myself to do so and the site languished. It has now risen like the monkey from the flames, changed into a new and stronger site.
What, you might ask me, is this wonderful new concept? Well, I say to you, it is now a group blog. It will be a collective home for any creative writing. Short stories, anecdotes, essays, you name it, it's welcome. For a more complete (and dare I say humorous) introduction see the FAQ.
Joining is simple. Just comment in the FAQ thread or send me an email and mention that you'd like to be a contributor. If you don't have my email address you can get it from the sidebar here or just contact your friendly neighborhood spammer. Apparently they've all got it.
So what are you waiting for? Get over there and look around. My short stories are posted over there and there's already a second protomonkey churning out goods for you.
Well my friends I'll be incommunicado until Thursday as I brave the bitter cold wastes of Chicago. Fortunately my hotel connects to our office building so at least I won't be freezing my nads off walking to work.
Whilst I'm gone avail yourselves of this space, so generously granted by yours truly, to toss out ribald bon mots, incessant chatterings and other nuggets of your literary genius. I'll be quite sad if there aren't at least a half dozen terrifically naughty jokes here when I get back.
Coming next week:
Rebirth of the ProtoMonkeyAnother caption contest
The political party startup
Possible anecdotes about the Chicago trip
The 2004 Weblog Awards polls are now open, featuring yours truly and quite a few of the folks in my sidebar. I pulled out all of the Munuvians who made the cut and posted that over at the central Munuviana blog.
The campaigning and politicking for votes promises to be fierce. You won't find that here, of course. As exemplified by our failed presidential campaign, I am an incredibly lazy politician with almost no skills whatsoever in successful campaigning.
So without further ado, here's who you should vote for. Voting for other people in these contests will make me sad. I could possibly enter a pouting state if things get bad enough. You can (and should!) vote once each day in each poll. The poll category lines link to the actual polls, the blog names link to the blogs. You're probably reading all of these regularly anyway but I've included the links just in case.
BEST ONLINE COMMUNITY
Munuviana
BEST AUSTRALIA OR NEW ZEALAND BLOG
Ambient Irony
BEST OF THE TOP 100 - 250 BLOGS***
Bad Example
Patriot Paradox
BEST OF THE TOP 500 - 1000 BLOGS*
Snooze Button Dreams - This is the most important one!
BEST OF THE TOP 1000 - 1750 BLOGS**
Everyday Stranger
Boudicca's Voice
BEST OF THE TOP 1750 - 2500 BLOGS
Ravings of a Corporate Mommy
BEST OF THE TOP 5000 - 6750 BLOGS
Ilyka Damen
* Jen would have been in this category if she made the cut. Since she didn't get in due to some administrative oversite, thus giving me some small chance of victory a guarantee of victory in the face of all other blogs, I'm pledging to share my award with her if when I win.
** Both of these lovely ladies fell into the same category. Voting for either of them will make me happy. You do want me to be happy, don't you?
*** Similar to the ladies, supporting either of these two gents is goodness incarnate. Yeah, I know that this third footnote is referenced first. It came on an edit, okay? Live with it.
RP inquired about Protomonkey a few days ago. There's been one post in the past 3 months and he was wondering when I might put up something new. I didn't answer right back because I really didn't have an answer.
The purpose behind Protomonkey was to separate my creative writing (tall tales, short stories, essays) from the rest of the stuff here at Snooze Button Dreams. I thought that if I set up a separate site with a goal of posting one item a week it would get me back into the habit of writing that type of work. Well, it didn't work very well.
Turns out that type of work either comes or it doesn't. I'm an abysmally poor 'on demand' type of writer. When the muse is with me the stuff pours out. When the fickle bitch smacks her ass on the way out the door I end up staring at a blinking cursor.
In my mind Protomonkey had failed. In fact when I posted that recent short story it went here without even a thought of putting it on the 'classy' blog. Can I force it to work? No, I don't really think so. I'm just not a performance writer. I'm not dogging myself here, I'm just acknowledging that my writing style isn't conducive to a regularly scheduled metered output.
If I just post the Protomonkey-type stuff when it happens to get written that site will never attract a following. People just don't follow a site that is scantily and infrequently updated. It would be a waste of effort to put my gems in a location where few if any people will read them.
So Protomonkey is doomed? Maybe not. I'm not the only blogger out there who writes the occasional story. Protomonkey could succeed as a team blog, if it had a decent amount of support. So here's my idea:
1) Protomonkey becomes a group blog.
2) Posts can be short stories, tall tales, creative works, etc. or links to the same type of post on other blogs.
3) Members can therefore post their own stuff or link to their own stuff or that of the people who they read.
4) Membership would be figuratively unlimited. In the event that it gets too big and unwieldy we can deal with such happy fate at a later date.
Thoughts? Comments? Anybody care for a mint?
Clancy sent me a note about a poll in yesterday's print edition of USA Today:
USA Today, print edition (I couldn't find it online, but I only looked for a few minutes) in the Life section - they have a mini-poll. Anyway, the results of the mini-poll say that 60% of the respondents don't hit the snooze button and thus have no idea what your blog is about...
I'm ever the optimist though. To me that says that 40% of respondents owe me fealty as well as numerous presents.
Of course a realist would just say that 100% of the respondents wasted several seconds of their life answering a meaningless poll but we'll ignore the realists but they'd no doubt have a similar comment about the people reading this post.
By the way, Clancy, your blog is looking as empty as Bill Clinton's bag of morals. 60% of your readers want some more stuff from GF. The other 40% are too busy taking polls to notice. ;-)
I've been seriously remiss with my blogroll lately. One of the things about using an RSS reader is that I don't use my own blogroll as a surfing point any longer. I add and subtract blogs in the reader, think "hey, I should update my blogroll" and then get distracted by something shiny.
I've finally taken a couple of minutes to make the blogroll actually match the blogs that I read. The list is a lot shorter than it used to be. The reasons why I trimmed blogs out are varied. Some had closed shop. Some had moved or modified and are there under their new guises. Some had changed considerably since I first started reading them and they just didn't peak my interest any longer. Some were just too profligate and I simply didn't have the time to invest in reading them any longer.
The saddest ones by far were the ones that were warped out of the zone of readability by politics. Blogs that I had picked up because they were informative and pointed became echo chambers of partisan rhetoric. Very, very harsh rhetoric. At a certain point I just couldn't read any more about how Bushitler is jackbooting all over the world or that Kerry was Sonny Bono reincarnate (only not as good looking and unable to carry a tune in a bucket with a Ziploc lid). I still followed those blogs for some time, judging by post titles whether I'd read the individual entries or not. Eventually it got to the point where I wasn't reading any of the posts so I removed the blogs from my aggregator.
Now my blogroll matches my actual blog reading and the horrible rent in space-time caused by that disparity is healing itself. When you don't get sucked into a parallel dimension tonight you can all thank me.
(I just realized that getting "sucked into a parallel dimension" could also be taken as a sexual metaphor, in which case it would be a very good thing and I hope it happens to you tonight.)
I haven't gone the way of the dodo, just very time challenged at the moment.
I've put up a new post at Protomonkey. Enjoy!
UPDATE:SnoozeBob day is over, y'all. Thanks for all who played along. I'll hand out points tomorrow for those deserving.
Y'all remember Snoozebob, right?
Snoozebob comes around when I am especially lazy am so burdened by other committments that I can't attend to my normal bloggish duties and he throws the doors open for y'all to abuse the snooze guest post. It's easy as pie. Just go here and log in with username and password "snoozebob".
The door will be open until tomorrow morning. You can post just about whatever you want as long as it isn't spammy or overtly francophilish. There are a couple of things to remember though:
- Don't do something so stupid that I or one of my proctors will have to ban your ass.
- Put your name in there so we know who wrote what. In the title is the best place, as a header or in closing work too.
- If you have a blog don't forget to
whore it out hereinclude a link. - For the category, please choose "SnoozeBob".
Enjoy!
(This post will stay at the top as long as open posting is enabled.)
POINTS: When I close guest posting I'll hand out some points based on which posts I thought were the funniest/most meaningful/bestest. It might be in categories or an overall list - not sure at the moment.
Remember this picture?
(Click for biggie size)
Even though I'm most of a week late, winners have indeed been selected. Look on the bright side; when I'm late with one of these it gives more people a chance to participate!
First place (5 points): The social worker approached the shirtless boy. "Just take one more step, pretty boy..."
Simon
Second place (3 points): There was so much pee in the kiddies pool that even the water pistol turned yellow.
Spirit Fingers
Third place (1 point): "This is my rifle, this is my gun..."
diamond dave
Okay, so I'm pretty loose on my definition for "caption". It comes down to what tickles my funny bone.
And they say them about me! A few days ago I asked readers to come up with quotes for me and/or my blog. The winners are:
1st Place (5 points): Your blog is like whoa. I could eat it with a spoon. -Spirit Fingers
2nd Place (3 points): Jim makes me want to hit the snoozebutton a few times a day. -Tiffani
3rd Place (1 point): Blogger I'd most like to see naked. -Emma
Honorable Mention: Ha...I have never said one nice word about you...terrible, even more terrible than I usually am... -Ilyka
Those and a couple others are now up on the sidebar under the new "People love this place" section. The "Best Of" has been moved into this section as well.
Enjoy!
The latest entry at Protomonkey.
There's a new entry at Protomonkey and damn is it good. It involves partial nudity and severe pain!
Special points bonus: Name the source for the title of the Protomonkey post and get 2 points. Answers in this post please - Protomonkey itself is a points free zone. Don't forget - no searching for the answer. Thanks!
If you want to be advised whenever a points offer goes up send me an email. I had to take the subscription form off of the sidebar because some jackass was putting in fake email addressess.
Why not? I'm going to put up a sidebar portion with things people have said about me and/or my blog(s). Here are some examples:
A new high point in the politics of victimization. Or is that low point? Well, it's a point, anyway.
-Instapundit
OH MY GOD. That site is yours? You are fucking AMAZING!
-Everyday Stranger
I love it!! Your style is fantastic and you're very funny
-Rachel Lucas
I'm handing the "king twisted" crown to you.
-Harvey Olson
You may as well change the name snoozebuttondreams.com to glennreynoldsismybitch.com because he's that good.
-Jen
So dig out those cool pithy things you wrote about me the first time you (in trembling amazement at my wit and insight) linked to Snooze Button Dreams (or one of my other blogs) or make up something completely new. Originality is cool, so is creativity.
Whatever quotes get used will be linked so you get a little bonus there. I'll also get the 2004-2005 Points season cranked up by throwing out a couple handfuls of points for the good ones.
Awards are way, way down at the bottom of the extended entry of the post. Sort of like the way they save Best Picture for last.
The last points awarded were for comments on this post and the pictures therein. The most definitive (and frightening) picture bears reposting:
The winning entries
1st place (5 points): Helen with "Social services intervened when it was revealed a local couple made their children fight to the death, all for the prize of just being able to wear a shirt."
2nd place (3 points): Emma with "Whatever doesn't kill them before they are ten will be a fine personality trait when they are 30."
3rd place (1 points): Simon with "No children were harmed in the production of this story."
Emma gets honorable mention and a bonus point for offering to babysit the spawn my kids. Victor gets a point for his excellent impersonation of a French politician.
There's a new item up at Protomonkey. Enjoy!
Feel free to subscribe to the notify list over there (in the sidebar). I'll announce the next couple of entries here but after a few weeks it'll be on its own.
There were a lot of excellent captions submitted. The first place entry gets 5 Snooze Points, the second place one gets 3 and the third gets 1. There were also a lot of crappy entries but don't worry - I won't take any points away.
Winner
"Amazing new ironing board allows women to simultaneously iron, rub pussy." - Rube
Second Place
"Ever the thrifty spender, Jim has discovered a new way to get LW that black fur shoal she always wanted. The neighbor will never miss the cat anyway." - Clancy
Third Place
"Ironing bored." - Tiffani
Won't be here today. Sorry, y'all. Just too busy today with all the clean-up from yesterday and then the relaxing and stuff. Bear has requested chicken wings for his B-day dinner so we'll be doing those tonight.
The party was a smash, thanks mostly to Trey. Everybody else took off at around 4:30 pm but Trey stayed and we had some lovely conversation to the setting of the sun. Not only did Trey charm Lovely Wife and I, he was also adopted by Bacon. (Click for mondo size.)
I think Bacon had just stuffed a handful of Nerds in his mouth. Either that or he's turning into a weasel.
So anyway, big news tomorrow with more party pictures and maybe some house pictures too.
My little blog is a year old now. Celebrate and rejoice!
Many of you weren't expecting this post until tomorrow since the oldest archive post here is from July 25 of last year. Fooled you! (And me.) Seems the first two posts from the Blogger incarnation of this weblog were lost in the move. The actual first Snooze Button Dream post was Thoughts on snooze buttons, posted July 24, 2003. Thusly a blog was born. (I've reproduced that post in the extended entry here, just in case Blogger is still going psycho on my archives.)
As it is Saturday this is about all you will get from me but expect big news tomorrow.
Update: This post will be up top until Friday morning. Theoretically unlimited points are available. (Points are realistically limited by physical laws.)
I recently implemented a tweak shared by The Bartender to put a Best Of list in my sidebar (it's under "Linkage"). This is neat as it handles things dynamically whenever I put a post into the "Best Of" category.
My problem is that for the past 6 months or so I hadn't updated any of my best link categories so my "Best Of" has a whole lot of best posts that aren't in there. What I'm looking for are what posts y'all think are good enough to be considered some of the best things I've written. I'm looking more for the anecdote style (story, humorous semi-fiction, kids, etc) posts.
Nominate a post that you think is worthy. If I agree and put it in the Best Of category, you get a point. Just one at a time and first come, first served please. That way it'll be a bit more fair for the out of country readers. As soon as I reply with a yay/nay on your submission you can nominate another one.
I've also got some on the Best Of that probably shouldn't be there. Instead of nominating one to go into the category you can nominate one to come out of it and that'll be for points too.
Even more points: One point each for artist and debut album for the song that inspired the title to this post. No searching, y'all!
...I'd put my money on one of these readers to win the very long running points contest:
Mike the Marine, 34 points
Rob, 34 points
Tiffani, 33 points
Simon, 32 points
What was my first blog called? 5 points for the first person with the correct answer (and no searching). A handful of bonus points also available for especially vulgar humorous guesses.
UPDATE
Um...no. Nobody got it yet and I think I see why. Back a few months ago if you Googled "Jim Peacock's first blog" it was in the top 10. That doesn't work any more. In fact, if I didn't know where this thing was I don't think I could find it now either. I'm raising the reward to 10 points and opening it up to searching however you want.
Just a note - we're looking for the name of the blog, not the URL. As an example, this blog is Snooze Button Dreams, not www.snoozebuttondreams.com.
Finally, there are a handful of folks that get a point each for answers that made me smile:
DeAnna: Snooze Button Queens (Not that there's anything wrong with that)Jen: An Udder Blog (References to my cow sucking picture get extra points for the nostalgia factor)
Jen (again): glennreynoldsismybitch.blogspot.com (Oh-freakin-yeah, baby)
Claire: spamload.blogspot.com ("Spamload" would be an excellent name for a heavy metal group)
I'll still hand out points for these types. Hey, we can use all the humor we can get, right?
There are a bunch of new faces in the ol' blogroll. Some are shiny new and others are long overdue. I've been terribly lax about updating this thing. As recompense for my near-malicious negligence these newcomers get a special introduction here instead of the normal stealthy addition I typically use.
Bloviating Inanities - Sorry, Bill. This link should have been up there many moons ago. It got missed somehow (probably my subconcious at work).
It's All About De - DeAnna was one of my first readers and one of the first blogs on my blogroll. Somehow she got dropped (I think it was when we moved her to Munuviana). That's not really important right now. What's important is she just had a terrible loss. Would y'all take a minute to drop by her place and offer condolences? Thanks, I appreciate it.
Memeblog - Stay tuned for all of your meme needs. Hurry please, it's getting a bit weak from lack of participation.
New Blog Showcase - Now this one is going strong! This blog lets new bloggers showcase a bit of their best for the enjoyment of all.
Precinct 333 - Writen by Texas Teacher, a long-time commenter at my serious blog ZeroIntelligence.net. Well written and topical, poli/educational for the most part.
Random Penseés - Found from tracking back comments or maybe from the New Blog Showcase. Fantastic mad writing skillz. Talk about erudite - if I could write half as well...
Where the Dolphins Play - Found this one through Texas Teacher's blog. Hey, if a liberal writer can get on Precinct 333's blogroll that's good enough for me. Who am I kidding? Of course that's not enough for me. But after reading this for a couple weeks the Dolphin definitely passes the SBD Blogroll Getin On Challenge.
Willow Tree - I tracked back Rachel Ann from comments and then promptly forgot about her (gimme a break, I been distracted lately!). She politely reminded me and even went so far as to turn on her syndication feed just for me. You just can't beat service like that!
The default submission email address for the Bestofme Symphony (bestofme@jpeacock.net) has been shut down. If you mail to it you'll get an auto reply saying that submissions can't be taken at that address anymore. Basically it's been getting to an unhandleable (is that a real word?) spam load (that sounds vaguely dirty, doesn't it? "spam load". i like it). It started getting viruses. Today it started receiving regular targeted attacks from an email server somewhere out there. It was past time to put that old submission address out of its misery.
From this point forward the submissions for a particular week will go to the email address that the host specifies. For this week they should go to gcruse at netscape dot com. The submission address will be sent out in the Bestofme Reminder mailings. I recommend that you join the list if you haven't already so you won't miss where to send your submissions.
Now for the really big announcement:
The Bestofme Symphony is Moving
This is unrelated to the item above. I've been too busy to give the Symphony the attention it deserves. I've neglected to get reminder emails out several times, most notably the past two weeks in a row. I've just got too much going on at the moment.
Fortunately for the Symphony (and all y'all) Gary Cruse has agreed to take custody. Y'all know Gary from his blog The Owner's Manual and from the many Symphonies that he has hosted. In fact, I think he's posted more than I have at this point.
I'll be cleaning up Symphony posts here to point over to Gary's place. Please help me to spread the word about the move as well as the new submission method.
Due to the special holiday schedule (i.e. because your dumbass Symphony coordinator neglected yet again to put the reminder up) the Bestofme Symphony will be posted tomorrow instead of today.
Take advantage of this extra day to send in those submissions. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Tomorrow's edition at WetWired.
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.
Get your submissions in for the next Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at The Smallest Minority.
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.
My blogger code is B4d++t+ks-u--fi--ox-elc-. Get your own here.
(Hat tip to Rob)
Do a Google search for 'Jim Peacock' and my sites come up as #1 and #2! Woo hoo!!
Finally knocked that damned insurance salesman down a few pegs.
A half of a year already? Yup. Monday will bring the 27th edition of the Bestofme Symphony. That means we'll have crossed the half year mark for this best of the best post compilation meme. The Symphony will return to the nest for this special edition.
Help me to make this demi-annual edition a smashing success. Send your submissions in to bestofme@jpeacock.net. The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old.
Take a look at your blogroll. Does a favorite site of yours have a veteran post that's crying to be included in a Symphony? Now's the time to submit it.
Got a blog? Spread the word - let folks know that the Bestofme Symphony is going to be celebrating it's demi-anniversary on Monday and their submissions will help to make the party a smashing success.
Thanks for supporting the Bestofme Symphony! It rocks because you do.
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
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Get your submissions in for the next Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at Book of Life.
Please note that the autoresponse you are used to receiving may not be working. The emails themselves are getting through, it’s just not sending out the confirmations.
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.
A post over at A Small Victory (It's about an article in the New York Times that basically equates bloggers with underarm dandruff. Michele rips it apart really nicely - you should read it.) prompted me to do a comparison check on my Sitemeter Recorded vs. Actual visitors. For ZeroIntelligence.net I came up with these:
Visits* recorded by Sitemeter: 66,411
Actual visits** from log analysis: 136,362
* Site Meter defines a visit as a series of page views by one person with no more than 30 minutes in between page views.
** A visitor is counted only when bringing up more than one page and taking no longer than 30 minutes between individual pages.
So Sitemeter is trying to count more sessions as visits (criteria of one page view versus a criteria of two or more page views) but is actually ending up with less than half (49%) of the actual visits.
Does anybody else out there have actual numbers they can compare to see what percentage of their visits are getting recorded by Sitemeter?
Yet another anonymous comment troll has been corrected. It's the one with today's date, obviously.
This is pretty fun actually. Usually when I edit things I have to be serious.
If you leave me an insulting comment and don't have the balls to post your real email address, obviously I'm going to edit it to amuse myself.Obviously.
Get your submissions in for the next Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at WOLves.
Please note that the autoresponse you are used to receiving isn’t working. The emails themselves are getting through, it’s just not sending out the confirmations.
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.
drew at logic2@hotmail.com (though that's probably a fake address) is the latest person to sign my guest map. He's a Brit but is for some ungodly reason living in France. After reading the comment that he left I wonder if that is such a coincidence. Here's what drew (that's the french spelling, using no capitals - less chance of giving offense using only lower case letters you know) said:
Jim is so clever that he has invented a new word to replace "causation" - "causality"! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL ps get a clue moron.
If I'm reading this correctly drew is upset because I used the word "causality". He apparently doesn't know that it is a real word so he is trying to make fun of me for using it. He even gives me credit for creating the word itself! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
ps get a dictionary fucknob.
Get your submissions in for the next Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at Blown Fuse.
Please note that the autoresponse you are used to receiving isn’t working. The emails themselves are getting through, it’s just not sending out the confirmations.
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.
Every once in a while I'll get curious about what people who find this site were looking for. I'll put on my rubber gloves and my thickest apron and check in the referral logs. Here, for your amusement, are some of the most recent search phrases that have brought people to Snooze Button Dreams. As always, my smarmy comments follow.
do you bite your thumb
No. And I stopped sucking on it months ago.
there's a party in my pants
Am I invited?
rape stories written by authors
I think that if it's written it sort of has to be by an author. Can you have a rape story written by a non-author?
You jerk off for two days and make your readers work the site for you and then on the day everybody is expecting you back (perhaps with some sort of entertaining anecdote from two days of corporate scholastics?) you play the bastiche again and go AWOL. What gives?
I received the email above (in slightly altered form) and would like to take this time to say "bite me" "sorry y'all". I took the day off yesterday to attend Bear's graduation from Pre-K and had an awesome family day. I didn't take time on the PC to do anything except scan emails and the news aggregator occasionally. I'm back now so keep your panties on. (Or don't. I'm good either way.)
All has been settled. Copious points have been handed out and freebie codes sent to Rob and Simon.
This was pretty neat but I think that next time it'll be just a day long. With two days in a row the second day didn't seem to get much attention. Also, I'll see about getting the word out ahead of time so people will know what's coming up.
What do y'all think? Better than crappy post day? Worse? Would you rather have a pencil shoved in your ear than read just about anything on this site? You tell me. I want to know.
Final Update: SnoozeBob is back in his cage. The winner of the advertising at ZeroIntelligence.Net is Simon. Yay, Simon!
Thanks to all who participated and special thanks to Rob for heavily promoting the open Snooze event. Hell, Rob gets ZI advertising too. I'm feeling spunky.
Particulars will get sent out tomorrow once I set up the code thingy at Blogads.
Thanks, y'all!
I'm in class today and tomorrow. I'll be wandering by the computer through the day but definitely won't have time to work up any decent posts. Instead of having a Crappy Post Day two weeks in a row I figured I'd ape some of the more successful bloggers and have an open microphone day.
There are only a couple of rules that you need to follow:
- Make sure to use a title on the post and put your name in parenthesis at the end. Example: What I learned in class today (Jim Peacock)
- Use the "SnoozeBob" category. That's going to be the general category for guest posters. Nothing like simple and easy to understand category titles to help folks navigate the site, eh?
- Don't do anything that will get your ass permanently banned. There are no hard and fast rules for this because a goodly portion of my readership are clever and evil and if I made up rules or guidelines they would take a savage delight in finding loopholes through them. Just don't do anything remarkably and intentionally stupid or malicious and you'll be just fine.
If you're a blogger, don't forget to include a link to your own blog. Never pass up the opportunity for free advertising!
Here's the particulars:
Login URL
Account: SnoozeBob
Password: password
All y'all that already have accounts that can post here, feel free to use them or post using the SnoozeBob account. It's all good.
BEGIN!
PS - In case you've forgotten what he looks like, here's Snoozebob!
PSS - Munuvians will need to log out as themselves in order to login as SnoozeBob. It's that "logout" button at the top of the MT interface.
Get your submissions in for the next Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at the all new and completely redesigned ultra spiffy MuNu. (Hey, Pixy - how's that redesign going?)
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.
It's Crappy Post Day (tm)! For those of you who have joined us since the last Crappy Post Day (tm) and for those regulars who have managed to blank Crappy Post Day (tm) from your minds, allow me to give a brief explanation.
Crappy Post Day (tm) is what happens when I am too busy to write anything for myself but the gut wrenching pangs of guilt force me to attend to my bloggerly duties regardless. What you get on Crappy Post Day (tm) are links to other peoples' stuff (said stuff being way better than things you'll find at The Snooze on this fateful day) and things that people send me or I pick up on my wanderings. Oh yes, I'm still wandering. No time to write something amusing for y'all but plenty of time to aimlessly trek through the drek (that rhymes!) that is our beloved blogosphere. Does that make me a bad person? I doubt it. Next to signing up everybody on my notify list to the Al Franken fan club, that hardly registers.
And after I've got that I'll be commanding you to send in an entry for the next Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at Dramaqueen.
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.
It's time to get those submission in for the Bestofme Symphony. Send them to bestofme@jpeacock.net and they'll be in Monday's edition at The Owners Manual.
The only requirements are that you think the post is good and that it be at least 2 months old. It doesn't even have to be from your own blog. It just can't get any simpler!
The basics of the Bestofme Symphony.
Want to host a Symphony?
Get reminder emails.