Photograph

The iPhone has an app(lication) out that I am loving – and for absolutely no good reason.

PhotoSwap is just like it sounds. I guess. It’s easy for me to say that now that I have been playing with it for a few days.

What it is, is basically a random, could be anonymous, social networking kind of app through pictures.

Here’s how it works: You use your iPhone to take a picture – of anything you damn well choose. You have the option to use the picture or retake it. When you hit ‘use’, it just sends it to g-d knows who – since you have no way of knowing where into the ether it goes. You then immediately get one in return from someone else.

I got this one from an unknown chick.  A iPhone pic of a reflection of her in her 1st generation iPod.  How very meta.

Random for sure. Anonymous – if they choose (or you choose).  However, I was getting some photos back that would say something like, “Stan/Straight/32”. Whatever, dude!

I’d get some photos coming back that had nothing written. Since I can’t see exactly my end result of what I was sending out, I was hoping it didn’t have some text attached. Beau told me via Twitter (thank you Twitter – you were finally useful) how to get text on them thar messages.

How I got this info from Beau was that he was seeing folks’ text that said ‘no gays’. G-d, ya frickin homophobes, give it up. No one is wanting you so badly from a random snapshot that they are hunting you down to do you! No one!

I decided not to do age, sex, location. I’m not looking to hook-up. No, I went one worse. I just put this blog URL on it. Maybe it will drive others to said blog.

As for location, after you hit the ‘info button’ (see that above pic again), you get a location button’….and it brings up a Goooooogle map.  Not an exact location, but a relatively close one, I’m assuming.

There is also a ‘reply button’, but I have not used that, nor has anyone to me.  That’s ok, I’m into it for the randomness.   Another random feature, one I don’t like; the camera does not keep the picture I took.  It doesn’t go to my photo album, it just gets sent and then goes away, like it never existed.  In a way, that’s kind of cool, but I can’t show you any of my handy-dandy work.

Naturally, the app is free.  I just can’t see paying for it.  But I’m cheap – we all know that.

Song by: Weezer

Weather Channel

If February and March ’09 teaches me anything, it will be to not be too hasty with posting my Site of the Month during the first week of the each month.  Some months I struggle to find one that is even palatable enough to throw up here.  And yes, you can all make the argument that none of them are, and you might be correct.

Shortly after posting my February one, I found the one for March…and had to hold on to it for another four weeks.   Ditto for March – except I had an additional two.  And now I decided I cannot wait until April or May to bring you one of them.  I just can’t.  I’m like a frickin’ kid at the holidays!

The internets have brought us Weather, WeatherBug and even NOAA for you hardcore atmospheric buffs and cumulus cloud fans.

FINALLY, they have come up with a site that I can relate to: The Fucking Weather.

A site where  you put in the zip code and it tells it like it is.   You do have to deal with an apostrophe situation, but if you can get past that, you are golden!

The site also gives you some helpful hints to deal with your weather situation, though they are in a much much smaller font.

….now you just have to wait two more weeks or so for my April Site of the Month, though I know I should hold out at least one week into said month to post it, less I forget the lessons of February and March.   Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Song by:  Sheryl Crow

Mr. Sandman

I have this friend, Sal. Honest.

He’s not like lame sitcom dialogue, in “I have this “friend”, way.” He’s an honest to g-d living, breathing, human being. He lives in Philly. So maybe he’s not “living”. For g-d’s sake, he lives in a town that has a National League team! ewww.

Anyhoo, we were talking the other night and he starts laughing. Like many of us do while on the phone, he was multi-tasking. With Sal, that means going on-line to look for…well…..some might call them ‘dates’. Most would call it, a ‘hook-up’ or ‘bootie call’ or something.

Let’s call it what it is;  he was cruising on-line.

I know which site he was on, but won’t reference it here. Let’s just say there are legitimate aspects to said site – not that finding tail isn’t a legitimate aspect. But they have articles and information about lots of things. But that’s not what Sal was looking for/at.

So why was he laughing? Because of this profile:

Visit me in upstate NY expenses paid-jerk me off with pliers, sandpaper, and steel wool, burn my dick, beat my balls, and ream my pee hole with an electric drill, send a private message!!

Allllllllllllllllrighty.

Actually, Sal had me laughing so hard reading it, I made him promise to copy the text and email it to me – which is why and how you have it right this very second.

At first I thought he was making it up, but really – who could do that? It fell off his tongue too easily to be fabricated on the spot. Our conversation deteriorated right into me asking him to ask the guy what grade of sandpaper would he require. Sal shot back with, Palm, Orbital or Belt? He actually sent the guy a message – to which the guy did not seem to get the question. Or the joke.

There were some things about fiberglass too – on our end. Well, we thought it was funny. Maybe it had just been a long day.

So, naturally I knew this would end up here eventually, but I shared it with my trusted email group beforehand. It ran the gamut of comments actually. Jon had the best worst ones – ones I am not willing to share here. Let’s say he gave me the same initial reaction I had when Sal read me the posting: to cross my legs and cover my genitalia.

If my sex life is vanilla, so be it. I don’t need a Brillo pad or a Dewalt power drill to spice things up. Why anyone would wanted to do that to their schwing-schwong is beyond me.

Dity of course, cursed us for our conversation. Not because of the graphic nature, but because Gooooogle started sending her ads that said www.aaabrasives.com/catalog . If you haven’t noticed, Yahoo, Google and the likes will tailor their ads to what you’re writing or reading. It is so 1984.

Anyway, back to Sal’s potential suitor:

On one hand the ad is completely sick and twisted. But on the other, it is an all expense paid trip!

Song by: Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton & Emmylou Harris

Rodeo

Believe it or not this has nothing to do with ropin’, ridin’, and whatever else one might do at a rodeo, save staring at cowboys in chaps.

But no, this has nothing to do with that either.

My sister (or one of them, I should say), is selling their Isuzu Rodeo via Craigslist. A side note: 12 years or so ago I had one of those trucks too – and it was one of the best vehicles I ever owned. I should have kept it.

Neither here nor there though. This is one of the responses she got back from her ad. You actually have to click on the image for it to embiggens. I don’t think you can read it otherwise.

Names & email addresses have been changed to protect the innocent…..or the weird.

I got the email from her right before having lunch with Becky and Andrew on Saturday. I passed the iPhone around the table and we laughed and laughed.

My response back to my sister was:  hold out for a 12-gauge.

Song by: Garth Brooks

Connection

Because blogging and twittering are apparently not enough, now it seems I have to belong to Facebook.

Becky has been getting me to joining for months and I’ve been resisting.  Then Jon joined.  Then Morty.  Then George.  Then Dity.  And as I’ve said before, I’m nothing if not a follower.

I joked that it would take me one step closer to being on NBC’s “To Catch a Predator”, because don’t most of these pervs find each other through here and MySpace?  (wait, I just think I called myself a perv.)

FB is like Twitter or LinkedIn, in so much that, I am not sure what I’m supposed to do with it.  Or what it’s supposed to do with me.

I think it just comes down to that phrase:  the one that dies with the most toys wins. Only the toys here are – how many friends/connections/followers/colleagues you have attached to whichever account.

If that is the case – I lose.

According to CNN, the average Facebook user has 120 “friends”.  120????  Man, I am bringing down the median, as I only have 19.  But I’m not average – clearly.

Of course, I love the article headline:  can it survive?   Whoo-Hooo…..I love jumping on a potentially dying bandwagon.  I’m always behind the curve.  Bother.

I certainly do not find the website that intuitive to use, and while the iPhone applications has much more limitations on what you can and can’t do, it is actually easier to maneuver through.  Go figure.

So far I invited certain friends, some of who have responded.  Some have not.  And some people from the past have found me.  And I’m talking from 15-25 years ago.  WTF?

Actually, two of them are kind of welcome and it has been interesting exchanging emails with them.  But in the greater scheme of things, I think this application has a shelf-life for me.

19 friends.  My g-d.  Facebook proves that life is nothing but an extension of high school – and once again, I’m not sitting at the popular kid’s table.   Not only that, a few years back I blogged that maybe I’d get 22 people to attend my funeral whenever it happens.

I think I aimed high – like by three people.

Song by: Elastica

The Swing of Things

Andrew has invited me to join Twitter. Don’t ask me why – but I did.

That last sentence has nothing to do with Andrew, but I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do with it. I’m not sure exactly what anyone is supposed to do with it. It’s like live blogging with x amount of characters or less for immediate reading. But that x amount of characters is like 140.

You’ve seen my posts. I can’t keep them to 140 words, let alone characters.

The only thing I knew of it, was a U.S. student was taken into custody in Egypt and his “captors” forgot to confiscate his phone. He Twitter’d (is this now a verb?) a few hundred folks and they did basically a phone tree to others who helped free him and eventually his translator.

I don’t expect that I will be in that situation anytime soon. And by ‘anytime soon’, I mean ever. So now what do I do with it?

Out of my hundred or so email contacts, two (count ’em TWO) are on Twitter. Andrew, and his wife, Rebecca (whom you all know and love). From my BlobbysBlog account, I snagged an entire three more contacts. Hardly enough for anyone to rally to get me out of captivity. …but they can probably alert me to the next Annie Lennox cd release! Handy.

And to add insult to injury, I can’t even use “Blobby” as my name. It’s taken!!! The nerve.

Armed with no other clever names or ideas, I actually had to resort to using my real one! I’m not sure how down I am with that.

So not to feel like an old fuddy-duddy (yes, I know I already am), blogging delayed aging by a few years. Twitter has taken me back a few more. Now Becky wants me to join FaceBook. That should put me at the ripe old age of 13 or as a prime candidate to be on NBC’s To Catch a Predator.

Song by: a-ha (yes, you read that correctly!)

Hunger Strike

One of my sisters sent me this a while back and I have done nothing with it. But since today is a travel day for me and I didn’t really put in too much thought for a post, I figured it was better than nothing – and definitely better than say, my insights to Britney Spears (which are probably more on the mark that asshole Dr. Phil).

Anyway – I don’t really know how Free Rice works. It is just like I don’t know how a soda can tab will buy someone a minute of dialysis or how a yogurt lid will help breast cancer patients.

I suppose I could read the ‘about’ tab – but I’m a guy, and we just do not do these sorts of things. That would be like reading a map, a car manual or instructions to electronic anything. It is just not done! I am not about to break ranks now!

But if obtaining grains of rice for U.N. to end world hunger is tied to word game – and I’m all about that.

I could lie and say it was about my underlying goal to help others. You could say it was a way to educate myself on my vocabulary skills. More than likely it is really a competition on how well I can do. But to be fair – it is a competition with myself….as unhealthy as that probably is and sounds.

Song by: Pearl Jam

Sad Mac – Sad Blobby

As anticipated, the G4 can be fixed – but at a cost. Not a monetary one.

Due to my lack of back-up, I’m going to lose everything on my hard-drive. Some music. Many of the pictures I’ve taken over the last three years. Achieved blog photos too. And then just some (but not much) work data.

I knew going in that this was the probability. It wasn’t any easier to take when hearing the actual words. I was actually kind of sick about it all.

But the pisser of the entire thing was – as I’ve said before – their ‘tude. The hard-drive will be replaced within the week (hopefully), but when asked to get the old hard-drive back, the answer was a resounding ‘no’.

WTF???

It is fried – to them and probably to me. But giving it back is ‘against store policy’. Fuck that! When I asked why (about 4 times), I just kept getting that same response.

Ok – I get that they are replacing it and I am not paying for the new one (well, kind of I am – with my $300 extended warranty), but if the issue was them giving me a new hard-drive, had they offered to sell it to me at a reasonable price, I would have bought it back to see what I could recover from it.

It is just bad fucking customer service in my book. …and here is the true secret to customer service – everything can be done…just factor in time and/or money. Apple was so inflexible, I think they are the ones making me more upset than losing my files.

I think I’m done talking about this – at least until I get the laptop back.

Sad Mac – Still

I know you’re all just dying for an update on my Mac.

I got nothing. NOTHING I tellz ya.

The good news is my warranty is good through November, so it is covered to be fixed. Assuming they can fix it. Apple has been booked solid, but I finally got an appointment tomorrow at 8pm! All they’re going to do is say, try the boot up disk (tried it!).

Then they’ll just take it and ship it to Apple. It will go away from weeks and return working – with everything I had stored on there wiped out. Mark my words.

Posts have been more frequent than I would have imagined without the Mac, but I haven’t seemed to have time to formulate to much – and for that I apologize. And I have a bunch of travel coming up: Houston, Kansas City, Phoenix and of course, DC. Mostly in that order.

It will all be work, but I’m sure I can scrounge up some stories along the way. If nothing else, I know I can pull back a Houston story or two from a dozen years or so ago – which was the last time I was there.

On the up side – there is no reason for me to upgrade my Nano when I have no means to load music into it at this point. At least I’ll get out of the Apple store without spending a dime. ….unless I need a new Macbook.

An Apple a Day

Just because I’m having massive massive troubles with my Powerbook G4 does not make me any less of an Apple fan. ….Blobby said as he typed on a Windows based, XP driven unit. cough cough gag

I don’t need one, but aren’t the new iPods cool? My three year old Nano works just fine. No video or anything, but if I had video, that means I’d have to download and pay for them. And then they get stored on a computer that I can no longer access.

It is a good thing that 98.4% of my music is stored on a server – so I’m not really losing too much. I have a few dozen songs that MAY have come from outside sources that are not my own compact disks. Ruckiry (not Jon’s boss), they are on my Nano now, so I don’t even think I lost those.

Denton will tell you I didn’t back-up often enough and how this is just like that Sex and the City episode where Sarah Jessica Parker loses her entire stockpile of articles. …and yes, it’s just like that, but I’m not that big of a skank. (Shut up – each and every one of you!)

I have not lost complete hope on getting some of that stuff back. I’m only about 65% sure I’ll get the Mac back to working order…..but at what price…..literally?

The Genius Bar had no openings for me the other day. And the new iPods hit the stores this weekend. Do I really want to even attempt to venture in there to get service? But how long can I hold out?

….and how long can I keep going in there without walking out with a new Nano or iTouch?

On a side note: who did Nelly Farturdo have to blow to get on almost every screen for the ad campaign?