very simple

Not that I have anything to post here yet, but I thought it made sense to not pile everything I blog from living in Milan into the “travel” category.

I was starting to formulate a list of things to clean up around here over the long weekend. First, to update and reorganize the favorites list (maybe even with sub categories) – I haven’t updated in a while and I realize there are a whole bunch of sites that I read regularly that aren’t on there. Second, I’m going to try something different for the booklist. Copying a bit from 50books, rather than a list of the books that I currently plan to read (half of which I still haven’t gotten around to), I’m going to keep a running tally of the books I’ve finished during 2006. We’ll see how many I actually read throughout the year.

I was contemplating doing something with the layout, but I still like it, even after a few years (I should wait until iblog2 comes out before such a major overhaul). I may remove the (theoretically) money-generating links like the Amazon tip jar, both because they’re not particularly productive and this has never been intended to be a money-generating enterprise.

That’s all for now, but if anyone has any suggestions, I’m all for hearing them!

With the arrival of my new iMac this summer, I was finally able to truly test out Tiger (you’ll recall that my attempts to install Tiger were what "exposed" the meltdown-errific problems with my old iMac). One of the things that I was seriously excited about was the integrated rss-feed reader in Safari. Well, a few months in, and I have to say…

I’m switching back to NewsFire. I tried a bunch of different newsreaders before Safari came out (and paid for a few), and I liked the elegant simplicity of NewsFire the best – the least cluttered screen, the resorted feeds based on what was most recent, it was just…nice. But I thought a feedreader /inside/ Safari would be even better.

Instead, I find that I’m constantly having to mouse all over the place in order to open new feeds, and I hate the "View all RSS Articles", which, if you read as many feeds as I do, means that you’re scrolling through a single page with 5-600 new snippets every day. So I open different feeds in tabs. and then have to scroll through. and wait for shit to load. and god forbid Safari crashes (and it does), everything that was "open", even in tabs I hadn’t viewed yet, gets marked as read.

Or even better, the feeds stop updating, so I have to restart Safari, at which point it defaults to everything being unread. Which is just great. And the inability to import opml files? come on. I just know I’m going to have to spend two days exporting the damn feeds back into Newsfire, since I’ve added and deleted so much crap.

So Safari as a newsreader still has some kinks. I still like it as a browser for the most part – although I have to switch to Firefox of IE in order to shop at the Gap or Old Navy or log into the citrix server for my office. which is, to say the least, annoying.

I’ve been somewhat lackadaisical with the updating. Truth is, I haven’t had much to write about this week. Plus, I’ve been free-form writing for a presentation at work, and that seems to be sapping my creative energy (and let me tell you, it takes a lot of energy to be "creative" when writing about SEC communications reform proposals).

My brother is in town this week – a brief pit stop between a month of volunteer work in Nicaragua and touring around India and Nepal for the summer. But he found out on Monday that he’s been invited to the Peace Corps, so that’s awesome. Starting in September, he’ll be spending two years in Micronesia and/or Palau. Which is even more awesome. It’s kind of funny – when we were younger, I was always the crazy idealist, but he’s the one following through. I’m just really proud of him.

really really late edition…

• People are freaking out about the crazy weather in the midwest, but I distinctly remember that it snowed well into May back when I was in college in Buffalo. Why do I remember this? Because I had to warn my parents before they drove up for my mid-May graduation that they needed to bring snow-appropriate clothing. (Mon Apr 25 2005 3:56 PM)
• I’ve got less than 48 hours to go until my closing, so can someone explain to me why I felt compelled to read this horrible article about closing disasters? (Mon Apr 25 2005 3:17 PM)
• Man. Posting a ranty rant on my blog just seems so lame compared to one woman’s actions after a bad haircut (Fri Apr 22 2005 4:10 PM)
• So I started reading GwenWorld recently, and she seriously rocks. (Thu Apr 21 2005 3:26 PM)
• My apologies for the lack of updates. Between the beautiful weather and my apartment-buying/renovating fixation, I’ve spent quite a bit less time on the internet than I normally do. (Mon Apr 18 2005 2:08 PM)

Since it appears that my obsessive tendencies have transferred from politics to real estate, I thought I’d start a new category to commemorate. I close next Wednesday morning on my new place (a day earlier than originally scheduled!), and I’ll be spending about 3 months renovating (including ripping out the entire kitchen – fun!). Thankfully, my dad has been in a constant state of house, apartment and office renovation for the past two plus years, so, aside from being ready to rip all of his hair out, he’ll be pretty darn helpful with the corralling of contractors and such. Plus, he did go to design school, so he’s pretty good at telling me when my color schemes are going to look like crap.

I’ve made mention of the apartment buying in some other posts, but it’s usually an afterthought to writing about something else. Now I can completely fixate on it for your reading pleasure (or, more likely, exasperation). I’ll be moving over some earlier posts, including the construction related stuff from last year (and I do plan on posting some more pictures – there are walls now!), as well as some of the other, more tangential, real estate stuff that I’ve written about in the past.

random thoughts….

A whole week without blogging, even though I had access to a computer? Crazy.

I got back to New York on Tuesday night, after spending a few days in Vail with my brother. My attempt at skiing was futile, as a swollen ankle from falling down some stairs in Spokane (I know, nice move, and at a client’s house too!), combined with swollen feet from flying generally, made the rental boots feel like tourniquets on my feet and after half a run I was seconds away from taking them off and walking down the mountain in my socks. So I went window shopping instead (hey, it’s almost like a sport!).

Wednesday night, I went to a Jayhawks concert with some folks from work, and the rest of the time I’ve been dealing with apartment-buying stuff – meeting with mortgage brokers and lawyers and stuff. Hopefully I’ll be a condo owner within the next two months (I don’t want to talk about it too much, because I might jinx it). Back to work on monday, after catching up on the news and stuff…

Anyway, just wanted to check in an let y’all know I hadn’t disappeared permanently. Work should calm down a tiny bit after I get back (February is always the craziest month around there) and I’ll be a bit more human…

This is fun: open up iTunes, hit shuffle, and list the top ten songs that appear:

Does anyone want anything to happen in the near future? Because apparently if I write about something, it appears in the news the next day.

Maybe I should start writing stories about winning the lottery.