Getting out to see the world...

Or at least part of it.

I went to "downtown Pagosa Springs" today, while Drew was at the store, and paid a bunch of bills. As it turned out, I dropped into the Methodist Thrift Shop to wait out the phone company's lunch hour. The shop usually has some interesting items on sale, but not for techies. Back among the electronics, I found an old Apple monitor and an IBM XT.

I have never been to the phone company without having to wait at least five minutes for the lady behind the window to get off the phone. Today, at least, she was talking to a customer. I practiced Zack's relaxation exercises while I waited. I don't know if they worked.

Later, I stopped by my cellular supplier to pay my bill, but the sign on the door basically said "Out to lunch" there, too, so I'll have to go by again soon.

No such laid-back atmosphere at my shop, though. By the time the day ended, I was frazzled, to the point where I barely took the money out of the cash register, did the minimum record-keeping, threw all the valuables into the safe, and went home.

I napped briefly after a dinner of bratwurst and sauerkraut, topped off with a couple of Michael Shay's "Black and Tan" brews. (This beverage is not as good as Mississippi Mud, but it doesn't cost nearly as much.) I then spent about an hour watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but in Mandarin with English subtitles turned off. It's a different experience, let me tell you.

It reminded me of a time, long ago, when my friend Phil took me to New York's Chinatown. We spent much of a weekend ricocheting between dim-sum joints, movie houses that ran round-the-clock kung-fu movies, and places whose purpose still mystify me. For a long time, I privately thought that Phil had dragged me through a teleportation portal somewhere, and that we spent two days not in downtown Manhattan, but somewhere in Hong Kong.

Segue...

I missed the eMachines offered on eBay. Those auctions ended by the time I got around to checking them out again. Interestingly enough, the units went for about $130 each, which isn't too bad for 333-MHz units, methinks. Meanwhile, Drew found a Dutch auction offering a combination digital camera/MP3/video cam/voice recorder that ultimately went for just over $100.

Hmmm. There's an item of interest about LJ in the Russian e-press. Later...

Cheers...

LJ on Izvestia...

Maria Treshchanskaya, writing for Izvestia.ru, has written a piece about online journaling for the "Internet" section of the site. Her article prominently mentions LJ.

The author talks a lot about how journalers can manipulate their readers. She cites the example of one Kaycee Nicole, who published a journal on CollegeClub.com, where she spoke of her fight with leukemia; a fight she eventually lost. (It turns out though, that there was no such person... it was a hoax.)

Treshchanskaya's reaction to attempts to punish the perpetrator of the hoax, one Debbie Swenson, belies no sympathy for those duped. "People wanted a show where someone died, and they got one," writes Treshchanskaya, "and entertainment must be paid for."

She focuses a while on LJ participant pugacheva, who appears to be an impostor of the famous Russian popular singer Alla Pugacheva. So well does this LJer create a virtual personality for the singer that a couple of newsies even made inquiries about doing interviews. "But with whom?" muses Treshchanskaya.

The LJ 'friends' feature comes under the author's gaze, too. "People hang out on the Net, posting pointers to friends," writes Treshchanskaya. " You can click on each friend and then see their list of friends, and so on... Thus, in a couple of steps, your horizons expand geometrically."

She notes how at some point, you stop, because you reach a balance where you have made all the acquaintances you want to make and anyway, you don't want to add people to your friends list ad infinitum. Treshchanskaya professes that publishing her piece is a criminal act against LJ, because now hundreds of people will fling themselves at LJ, thus disrupting the balance of friendships here.

I guess Brad and company will just have to cope. <grin>

Cheers...