Changing the language settings on a small electronic gadget to Korean “just to see what it might look like”. It looks like Korean. And unless you know what the Korean words for “Language Settings” are, it will continue to look like Korean for a while.

The Earth did not stand still.

I’m selling my car—trying to, at least—and had a guy come look at it yesterday morning. He called me because he couldn’t find my address, 3663. He told me he was at 3660, but then the next address was 3700. Really, dude? You know how to drive, but you never figured out that odd addresses aren’t on the same side of the street as even ones?

I just got the bill to renew my motorcycle insurance. My last bill was $140. This one is $97. Nothing about my coverage has changed, so I assume that the decrease is due solely to the fact that I’ve managed to not kill myself in the last year.

A new chum is accident-prone; Luna is that sort of place. They say if a new chum lives a year, he’ll live forever. But nobody sells him insurance first year.

–Robert Heinlen. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

At the top of Zappos.com, just underneath the search bar, is a list of their most popular searches.

The number one search term is “shoes”.

I do not like my mouth guard. It is a bulky rubber thing that is supposed to keep me from grinding my teeth slowly but relentlessly into powder during the night, but what it mostly does is prevent me from falling asleep. I keep it right next to my bed, so that I can put it in just right before I think I’m going to drift off. Usually I miss it, but sometimes I remember.

And I am instantly wide awake. Transfixed. That part of my brain that—when I was twelve—kept my tongue on a strict regimen of wiggling that loose tooth back and forth, over and over, even after the dull salty flavor of blood indicated that maybe maybe I should give it a rest, that part of my brain has lain dormant for years, just waiting for something this interesting to happen inside my mouth again. And so my tongue is over here along the underside of the guard, probing for weaknesses, and then it is running its way along the smooth part on one side, and then the other. Sometimes, it decides to block the air holes in the mouth guard, and the part of my brain that’s supposed to remember to breathe through my nose is otherwise engaged and chhckk hac cough cough, and eventually, after lying here for what seems like hours I take the damned thing out again and put it on the bedside table and I can finally get some sleep.

Then, in the morning, my jaw hurts.

I had thought that I was making some real inroads with the cat. Recently, she has taken to sleeping alongside me, about in line with my head and just far enough away that I can reach out my hand and rest it against her softly rhythmic side as I’m going to sleep, which is very comforting in a “real life stuffed bear” sort of a way, and is only slightly diminished by the times that—in the middle of the night—she starts doing that kneading motion that cats do to indicate that they really like you, except for this bit of skin right here, and I have that dream where I’m being tortured by some nefarious organization of hooded individuals who are plunging ornately bejeweled curved daggers into the back of my hand, between the finger tendons, until I finally awaken and there are actual curved daggers being driven into the back of my hand!

But last night I found her blanket, and put it back on the end of the bed, which is of course where she slept. She doesn’t love me any more. I mean, sure, she loves me a little, but this is her blanket we’re talking about. I can’t really compete. I don’t smell right.

Three day weekend: not long enough.

Woe.

Art imitates lesser-known art.

While I could never condone such action, I strongly believe that if a person or persons were to somehow acquire Sean Hannity (by force, perhaps), and to post video of his subsequent waterboarding, the charity dollars would just roll in.

The guys who did the closed-captioning for Wall-E must have had a blast. So far I’ve seen:

(WHIRRING)
(GRUNTING)
(EXCLAIMS CURIUSLY)
(CHATTERING)
(HUMMING)
(WALL-E WHISTLES)

And that was just in the first five minutes. So, lots of enthusiasm there. But the style guide leaves something to be desired. Four gerunds, then one odd one in the present tense. And, of course there’s the bizarre inclusion of “Wall-E” as the subject of the one.

Now:

(COCKROACH SQUEAKING HAPPILY)

I never knew what a cockroach sounded like when it was happy before. But it’s pretty cute. I don’t know why people complain about them so much. Maybe they’re not usually very happy.

About a year and a half ago, I closed my Facebook account. Not completely, because to actually close a Facebook account is a Hurculean task, I did the closest thing I could, which was to delete most of the information from it, and deactivate it. At the time, I was annoyed at Facebook for their continued pattern of abuse* of their subscribers privacy, which regularly went like this:

1. Without warning, roll out new potentially-invasive “feature”. Example: helpfully broadcasting users’ shopping activities on other websites.

2. Watch as internet storm clouds gather.
3. A few days later, apologize for misunderstanding. Had no idea that users wouldn’t want to be unwitting shills for corporate interests.
4. Add preferences to disable new “feature”, but default them to “on.”

Plus, I thought, Facebook is just another in the long line of social networking sites. Over a few years, I created profiles at Friendster, Orkut, and MySpace, and those had all pretty much died out. Facebook had recently added apps, and I could already see the MySpacification** occurring. I was getting a little tired of migrating from one to another with little apparent benefit. I already had email to talk to people, and I already had a weblog to publish my thoughts. So what did I need another parallel communications system for?

A few days ago, I realized the mistake I was making.

A few years ago on Slashdot, there was a story about how only old people use email in Korea. The slashdotters made much of this, and for months each story about a nascent technology was greeted with “In Korea, only old people use tech.” They were absolutely incredulous that an effective and open communications standard was being displaced by a combination of closed and corporate-sponsored networks. But I think they (and I) missed the point. The value of a network is in the people who are using it.

Yeah, I could just email people, but I don’t. People could just read my weblog, but they don’t***. So I re-upped. Also, I made a twitter account. You can follow me at @ianferrel.

* This pattern has not changed. I’ve just decided that I’m going to ignore it.
** Note to aspiring social network app-writers: If your natural response to seeing that someone has developed a Vampire application, and someone else has developed a Werewolf application, is to write a SuperNeonVamWolfWerePire application, you’re doing it wrong.
*** Present company excluded.