the snark stripper

I thought of this great killer app idea last night as I was falling asleep which doesn’t seem quite so great 24 hours later, but I’ll share anyway. So, we all have those people in our lives who we have to email, even though we know we’ll more likely than not get a snarky comment or some response that will just make our day a little less bright. But for whatever reason (usually having to do with family or employment), we can’t get out of sending that email. Take for example someone I don’t work for directly (or at all, actually), but occasionally have to email at work. I know that said person is going to go over my message in microscopic detail, looking for any way he can possibly take offense. (he does this with everyone, btw- at least I’m not being singled out). I had to email him the other day with a question, and sure enough, I got a two line response, one line answering my question and the other an unnecessary snark. I knew this was going to happen, and yet I had to open that email.

Wouldn’t it be great if there were some sort of online translator/mediator that you could feed suspect emails into and get a summary of the gist of the email with the snark removed? It could look for key facts, instructions, etc, and pull them out for a list of action items at the end of the message. So, for example, let’s say an email from a recent ex shows up in your inbox. Just feed it into the translator, and out pops:

Summary: Billy is very upset that you dumped him, and has expressed his displeasure over the course of four somewhat redundant paragraphs. No new information is presented.

Action: none recommended. Email can safely be deleted.

Or in my work situation:

Summary: Recipient cannot provide the information you need at the moment, but will get it to you by the end of the month.

Action: Wait until the end of the month.

See, that’s all I needed to know! The snark added nothing! In fact, that’s what I’ll call this- the Snark-stripper. With an upgrade that detects passive aggression (which would be a lot harder to pull off, I would think- I mean, I’m assuming this is some sort of program doing this and not a human rewriting emails). I’ll get right on this- feel free to send me offensive emails you have received so I can start gathering data.

oh great, just great

I was telling this guy at work about the scrabulous game I’ve been playing with a friend (she’s played what seems to me (granted this is my first game) to be a very good game both offensively and defensively, but I unexpectedly pulled ahead in one of my final moves. I think she’s ahead right now, but it’s gonna be close. I need to figure out how to most effectively wield the power of my final “N” tile, which I guess means cozying up to a non-E vowel somewhere. Stay tuned!). Anyway, workguy was like “I’ll friend you and we can play”, to which I responded, “Sure, I’m on there as Nam.. oh crap”. I didn’t actually say oh crap, of course, but I realized immediately that the 3rd line of defense had been breached. I’m out at work! First line of business, remove the “Take this job and shove it” song dedication. Other than that I think I’m safe, but then I’ve really only been using facebook extensively for the past few days, when my complaining about it on this blog resulted in my friends list doubling in size.

I know it’s somewhat Lamey McLame to use a fake name on facebook, but I can’t imagine why I would ever want to have a public space under my real name. I referred to work as the “3rd line of defense”, the first two being family, and people I’ve intentionally lost touch with. (damn it, it takes work to lose touch with some people!). It’s not that my life is all that scandalous or even interesting, I just feel that with every group that is potentially part of the audience, I become even more limited as to what I’m comfortable sharing. And not just the bad stuff- for example, yesterday I was thinking of updating my status to “loves her boss”, which is entirely true (and I’m not just saying that because I’m eeps! blogging from work at the moment). But now I’ll just look like a giant suck-up if I write something like that.

And yeah, I know you can make your profile only viewable to friends, but what do you do when you get a friend request from a member of the above three groups? Ignore them? Or someone from high school- egads!- high school! That would be- what are we up to now?- the 4th line of defense, I guess. Oh, and people from old jobs - 5th line! And exes! 6th line! Oh Web 2.0, I think you are maybe not for me..

I brought up these privacy concerns with someone I work with a while back, and he a) said it was a generational hang-up that would probably disappear over time, and b) said that the key question is “Just how important do you think you are?”, to which I say a) ouch-thanks, and b) ouch?

I is no longer!

One of the things that annoys me about facebook is that they seem to just arbitrarily remove old stuff. Like, at some point I used that iLike thing to say that I was going to a concert, but then after the show was over- poof, my notice was gone. Like it never even happened. What if I want people to know that I WENT to the show? Why does facebook favor the future over the past?

And then, a while ago I updated my status to “is”, which I thought was very zen and would, barring an unforeseen tragedy, always be true. But I just noticed that my status line now reads “What are you doing right now?” Well, damn it, I still is!! Facebook, who do you think you are, messing with my status? It’s my page, leave me alone!

Of course, maybe I just don’t understand how to use facebook, in which case feel free to let me know I’m an idiot. I find facebook frustrating to navigate, but I have this weird issue where the more user friendly an interface is, the harder it is for me to figure it out. So, for example, I’m embarrassed to admit that navigating iTunes is like bashing my head against the wall, yet I have no problem using, say, emacs. I have no idea what this says about me, but there you go.

thanks, but no thanks: deux

I’m all for embracing all life has to offer, but there is no way I would jump in the “Devil’s Pool” above Victoria Falls. No Way.

http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/devilspool.asp

I don’t care that people are tossing their kids(!) in there. I really don’t think I could do this. Just looking at the pictures makes me ill. The videos at the bottom of the page are worth watching, especially the first (29 sec) one. (note for those at work- you don’t need the sound on)

thanks, but no thanks

 I ended up fixated on this ad a while back, despite the annoying animation, because I couldn’t believe they were saying what I finally figured out they were saying. So here’s a quick test, to see if I’m crazy:

1. Which person would you rather be? 

2. Which person would you rather hang out with?

3. Is success really determined by living arrangements and cost and frequency of haircuts? 

4. Does that even look like a $65 haircut?

5. Is anyone else disturbed by a school that turns fun, funky, albeit lopsided people into frightening Stepford-bots?

I’m back with the macrobloggers

I gave tumblr a shot for the last month or so, but I just don’t seem to be a microblogger. Tumblr is set up for people to post multiple posts per day from their home, office, coffee shop, or on-the-go with whatever handheld device they happen to own. In my case, there are three problems with this:

1) Show of hands for anyone who wants to hear from me multiple times per day. Anyone? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

2) Although I can get away with blogging while at work, it’s really a bad idea.

3) I’m not an update-on-the-run person. I don’t own anything to update with, nor do I want to. One of the bonuses of being away from home and office is that I’m NOT online.

Now that I’ve come to terms with being a macroblogger, it makes sense to move to a blogging platform with more functionality. So I set up this wordpress blog, imported some of my favorite posts from my old livejournal with 3 readers, and imported my tumblr posts (which took a decent chunk of time, and I still lost all the comments :-(  And then, for the heck of it, I set up my wp blog to feed to my tumblr. I ended up letting the lj go, but with some sadness, because their comment system leads to much better conversations, I think. In fact, I’ve had some awesome conversations on lj. Anyway, I could go on about what I see as the pros and cons of each platform, but I’ll leave it there. Ciao!

but how is he at Halo?

presented without comment..

The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the death sentence of a man convicted of murder after concluding that he was mentally retarded.
The court decided 7 to 0 to reverse a lower court ruling that the man, Clifton White, 35, formerly of Akron, was not mentally retarded despite the testimony of psychologists hired by the state and the defense team who said that their diagnosis of mental retardation was “not a close call.”

[…]

The lower court had ruled that Mr. White was not mentally retarded based partly on the testimony of Heather Kawczk, who said he worked, rented an apartment, bought a truck and helped her when she bought a car.

Ms. Kawczk said Mr. White could cook, drive, and play the video game “Mortal Kombat” well enough to win half the time.

The Supreme Court cited expert testimony in determining that such abilities did not rule out retardation.

if I miss REM, this will be why

1. This is the Ticketmaster security code I was faced with this morning when REM tickets went on sale. I think they were getting back at me for posting those other codes. Any guesses?

2. Can someone please explain to me why, for a show that doesn’t sell out, if you wait hours or even weeks after tickets go on sale you can get better “best available” tickets than you would have gotten at the moment they go on sale? I am already finding better seats for REM this afternoon than I found when tickets went on sale this morning. Ticketmaster, you are lame.

hoo boy, can’t wait..

Yahoo launches site focused on women

I hate stuff like this. See, to the best of my knowledge I am in fact a woman, and yet it’s a sure bet that anything targeted to women is going to have zero appeal for me and many of my female friends. Case in point, Yahoo is going to launch “Shine”, “a site for women between ages 25 and 54.” After admitting that this is all about targeting advertising to this group, Yahoo pretends they have a nobler mission..

“These women were sort of caretakers for everybody in their lives,” she said. “They didn’t feel like there was a place that was looking at the whole them — as a parent, as a spouse, as a daughter. They were looking for one place that gave them everything.”

Everything? So this site is going to have world news? In-depth political analysis? Science and technology? Well, not exactly:

With Shine, Yahoo plans to expand its offerings in parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology.

Sigh. So in other words, the usual lineup for anything prefaced by the word “Women’s”. Now, I have nothing against many of these things in isolation, but why is it that “Women’s” issues/magazines/websites/etc always focus exclusively on these and only these topics? Sadly, I think the answer has nothing to do with the oppression of the patriarchy or whatnot, but rather has to do with the fact that on the average, this is what most women are interested in. Women probably still do most of the grocery shopping, and if they tended to buy the Economist or Atlantic Monthly or even something like Wired as impulse buys, then those magazines would be next to the checkout instead of Cosmo, Good Housekeeping, and People. But they aren’t.

Thing is, I spent last Saturday evening hanging out with five people I’m reasonably certain are women, and I don’t think we talked about any of the above topics. I don’t remember everything we discussed, but I know politics was huge, and other topics included mice, blogging, batshit insane neighbors, and how to immobilize an ostrich. I ask you, when will Yahoo make a website for women like us??

hey, I remember those guys..

REM was my favorite band and soundtrack for my life for many years. If bands were significant others (if only!), REM would be my long term relationship. But as often happens with LTRs, things got a little stale as the years went on. We tried to stick together for old time’s sake, but the magic was gone, and finally REM and I parted amicably. For the past few years I’ve been seeing other bands, and I’ve gotten pretty serious with one in particular. I’ve moved on, but REM, I’ll never forget you and the times we shared.

Oh god. Anyway, with REM reappearing on the scene with a new album (April 1?) and tour (June 13!), it hit me that it really does seem like a lifetime since I’ve thought about them. Their new album is supposed to be a “return to form”, whatever that means. My hopes aren’t high since they’ve said that about the last 3, but I’m looking forward to it anyway.

From one of the last times I saw them in concert:

Me (standing in line for hot chocolate): “Why is the line for hot chocolate way longer than the beer line at a rock concert?”

Woman behind me in line: “Because we’re old!”