Monthly Archives: August 2007

A Thursday’s Maundering

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wherein Dawnne types for a while, trying to avoid the various synonyms for “incoherence” found in the various definitions of “maunder”….

note #1: the otherwhirled, currently located on the public WordPress site, is going to be moved to its own domain, hopefully within the week, and presumably without any untoward digital perturbations, so that i can avail myself of more space, since to do what i do over there, i need to be locally storing the images. while i have begun doing that, i have noticed the use of the storage space allotment of 50Mb rapidly increase over the past two weeks since i made the promise that i would start storing the images locally.

note #2: it appears, from comments in my “support ticket” with my ISP, that it is at least nominally possible that given the relatively low throughput on the otherwhirled (which, while increasing, is still not exactly on par with millions of hits…ever), that i will either not be charged or will only be minimally charged for the hosting. that being the case, and this blog being somewhat less than one percent of the bandwidth of the otherwhirled itself, i will also be moving this blog to its own domain. the nice thing there is, though, that i already own the domain, so moving it is literally no expense.

note #3: the otherwhirled, when moved, will live at otherwhirled.com, and perpetual dawnne will live at dawnne.com. and yes, i am aware that dawnne.com currently points to the business site. that was done long ago and quite intentionally.

note #4: indeed, i do still plan on following through with my intention to use perpetual dawnne not only to continue to document our experiences regarding the impending convergence of our family with The Elder and Unknown; random photographs of family, children, and kittens; but also to document my re-investigation of things which unfortunately fall within that grossly overgeneralized category of “metaphysical”.

a while back, when communicating with The Elder and Unknown, the Spouse-Unit accidentally gave The Elder and Unknown a link to this blog. while i have no idea how deeply The Elder and Unknown might have read all this, a short while thereafter, there were several clickthroughs into previous months’ postings. so, it is potentially possible that The Elder and Unknown is now aware that she is on my mind quite a bit, and that i truly hope for the best for her. i think i probably mentioned that in a previous post, so if i just repeated myself….well, go figure.

at any rate, October draws nearer, and more quickly than i had anticipated, though unsurprisingly so, given the number of games that #1 Son and i have on our schedules to referee. i don’t know what The Elder and Unknown will want to do, if anything, when she attains the legal age, and right, to contact us, but her cell-phone number is already actually stored in my own cell-phone, and has a special ring-tone. just in case. because i’m anal-retentive about some things. but more truly, because if she did happen to call, Murphy’s Law dictates that she would do so while i’m in the middle of something else, and i like to have a second or two of prior warning. i just hope she realizes that i am not quite the self-absorbed knucklehead that i was when she was born. sure, i blog, and sure, blogging is inherently egocentric in certain regards, but it’s not like blogging either here or “there” constitutes the totality of social awareness.

at least, i don’t think it does….

well, i’d better get back to work. Nikon has two cameras coming out that would be decent upgrades to ShadowMoon’s capabilities, and i’ll never get them if i don’t help get the bills paid.

my best to you and yours, and to all.

~d~

Search Engine Shenanigans IV

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Previous Search Engine Shenanigans:

I’m always amused by simple things. In this case, it’s the words being used to find this here little blog thingy. Forthwith:

As has become customary, I am dispensing with the searches on various spellings of Condoleezza Rice, nude or clothed, spelled properly or not. I truly worry about some of you. I am pleased to say, however, that of late, searches on our lovely Madame Secretary from Hell have been down-trending. Searches by photographer name are way up, however, which I always find interesting.

  • assured way to find rockhopper ~ this links SES III, and i am pleased to announce that in a google search, the otherwhirled comes in at an unexpected third. not bad!
  • biguns ~ okay, i quit looking after the fifth page. let’s face it: if you’re on the Intertubes searching for “biguns” and you haven’t had your fill in five or more pages of search results, you seriously need to put down the Mountain Dew and exit your parents’ basement.
  • lovedoll laura soft ~ i thought that said “laura croft” for a minute there, and i was like “SCHWEEET”, but alas….again, however, i feel i should point out that if you’re on the Intertubes searching for “love dolls” and you haven’t had your fill in five or more pages of search results, please immediately shove as many cheetos as possible into every available orifice.
  • sailing takes me away ~ ah, my diabolical plan to hijack one legitimate web search seems to have worked. oooh….and actually, i hijacked three! w00t!
  • Theocratic Law ~ my curiosity petered out after the ninth page, but this obviously goes to my Blog Against Theocracy stuff.
  • diamondbacks logo ~ i’ve never posted one, so that’s kind of weird, but i did long ago snark on a Diamondbacks player, so i assume that’s what comes up for this one….somewhere after the tenth page of search results.
  • perverts are us ~ yeah, well…go figure. they must really be looking for Dr. von Monkerstein. him and those adopted actresses….
  • MANE, SEARCH ENGINES ~ surprisingly, i come up at the top of the second page on this one. better than i would have thought!
  • intelligence is relative ~ w00t! another third-place posting. i wonder if this searcher realizes that relatives are not necessarily intelligent, though?
  • lolcons ~ yeah, i know they annoy some people. they annoy me when overdone as well. that’s why i try not to overdo them. i place fourth here, unless you count the return for the wordpress lolcons tag, at which point i’m numero tres! again!
  • ginzo of tokyo knives ~ oi….vey. fourth? eesh.
  • Men who look crazy ~ Bing! Quit searching for yourself! you know where you are! (you too, Crow!) however, it should be noted that i am apparently number one among men who look crazy! w00-h00!!!
  • ya’ll politics. ~ that’s a good way to put it. third place!
  • ah m ~ i’ll happily take 5th place here behind Dependable Renegade.
  • dementia test, humor ~ i couldn’t find it. whatever.
  • the ironoclast ~ yes, yes our littlest chimperator certainly is! at least i’m on the first page with this one!
  • She was a good ship ~ yeah but could you row her? oddly, i’m numero uno here, too!
  • the other whirled ~ somebody (apparently two people or one person twice) loves me. i’m sure the extra space is just for flavor. naturally, i am number one here, too!

fun, fun, fun. thought i’d throw in the search rankings this time instead of cross-linking posts that i have to go delete all the ping-backs for. so, there you have it: a few things that bring people to the otherwhirled. i don’t know what brings you to the otherwhirled, but thanks for stopping by!

o, by the way, the new domain name has been secured. i would imagine that you can imagine what it’ll be. i’ll hopefully be moving off next week already!

Addictions be damned!

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addicted to blogging I got 81%, but cannot embed the code they provide on this public wordpress. call it reason #541.3 as to why i’ll be moving the otherwhirled to its own domain here in the next couple of months. you can click that image to take the quiz yourself and satisfy your own curiosity about the relative impact of your addictions.

speaking of which, if there are any web designers/wordpress template designers in the readership who are interested in previewing/commenting/suggesting on the design of my business site and this blog, be advised that as a business, i work almost exclusively by referrals, and i will make sure you get some. if you’d like to participate, hit me up in the comments or via my business contact form.

Sunday Morning Blogturbation

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Today’s previously-and-somewhat-randomly selected theme is snark, pure and simple. A few posts have been pre-dated for your snarky enjoyment, and I’ll hopefully be back early enough in the day to add a few more logs to the fire.

Smile. It makes people wonder why your hands are in your pockets.

~co~

Okay, so I yanked your chains.

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There ain’t nothing coming until early tomorrow morning, folks. Sorry, the impertinent ass in me got the better of me. ;-) Feel free to enjoy what’s here, though! I promise to be nicer tomorrow.

For what it’s worth, if none of this stuff is funny this weekend, even though it’s all my fault, don’t blame me. I jammed all of this out in about fifteen minutes on Friday afternoon. Sometime those off-the-top-of-my-head “funnies” don’t get very good mileage, I’m afraid. Oh well. I’m sure you all still love me.

That’s absolutely disgusting, Dr. von Monkerstein. I can’t believe you thought that!

~co~

Saturday Morning Blogturbation.

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Alas and alack, I am actually not present at the moment! Hah! I have fooled you with my pre-dated posts!

Today shall be an all LOLcon day, because that’s the kind of mood I was in when I wrote this post sometime in the past. My apologies for the lameness. On the other hand, I didn’t really even have to tell you, but I did because I’m such a great guy. And also because if someone said something to me in the comments and I had failed to reply, I wanted you to know it ain’t personal.

So, enjoy the LOLcons during my absence. The “con” part of LOLcon has been extended to infer/include “convict” today, by the way, but only because it amused me to do so.

Oh yeah…Hah! You don’t know what I’ve pre-set the times of posts for. Guess you’ll have to keep coming back to see when today and tomorrow things will automatically post! Bwahahahaha!

I’ll see ya late Sunday.

~co~

Yeah, I know….

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My update rate sucks. Sorry. Last time I wrote, we were in the midst of our mini-vacation, and now school has already been going on over the past week, and we leave this afternoon for a wedding out in Minneapolis. Soccer got mostly rained out (or if not rained out, the fields were simply too wet to play on), which while inconvenient in one sense meant that we could make more TaeKwonDo than we had expected: definitely a good thing.

Our trip out to Galena was really quite nice, though necessarily short. The kids seemed to have a pretty good time, at least. I’ll have photographs up eventually.

Mom heard from The Elder and Unknown recently, with some photos even, which was nice. She sounds like she’s doing okay, though going through a period of indecision about college, no-college, moving out of the house, getting a car, and all that good stuff. I remember all that quite well myself, even though it was “so long ago”. I think she’ll survive, one way or the other.

I have a ton of games to referee this season—not as many as some of the younger guys who can be more available for games than me, of course, but more than usual. #1 Son is working higher-level games than before, now, too, and is excited about it. Unfortunately one of our wet-field cancellations was an upper-division game for him. I’m not certain if he was upset about not getting the experience the game would have provided or not getting the money. A healthy dosage of both, I would imagine.

#1 Son started school on Monday and #1 Daughter on Wednesday. Both are doing well. I’ll be helping out once a week in #1 Daughter’s class again, but not this week. They’re on a new five-day rotation schedule which is applied literally (it skips the holidays, in other words), so the days that #1 Daughter’s teacher wants me to help float practically from week to week. So, we’ll see what kind of help I can manage to be. #1 Son is already fitting in well at such a bigger school. Of course, it’s still too early to tell, but his attitude is certainly up. At least no one’s given him crap about being “the new guy” yet, and he’s a got a few friends scattered around the school from soccer, summer camps, and TaeKwonDo, so that helps.

The kittens are growing quickly and are a ton of fun. The older cats are even getting along with them a little bit. Sometimes. I’ve been too busy to take too many photos, although #1 Daughter and I did take a few the other day. I’ll try to get those up online as well. I keep wishing the big cats would play with the little ones, but they still seem to prefer acting like their territory has been invaded. They mostly ignore the kittens, and tend to simply turn away and stalk off when confronted, as opposed to the hissing and other posturing that was being done before. I suppose that’s an improvement, anyway. Because Jupiter especially is apparently too stupid not to take a swipe at either Pluto’s or Ginka’s tail as they walk by.

So there you go. Another boringly domestic update. More later.

I gots tagged! Me special!

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Great. I’ve been “tagged”. Now I feel like a brick wall covered in spray paint. Thanks a lot, Fairlane!

Fairlane, he of the perpetual Kool-Aid over at Jonestown, has bestowed upon me “The Partisan Reflections on Pissant Provocateurs Award”. Isn’t that lovely? I’m not certain, but that might have been one of the words directed at me in Spanish yesterday while I was refereeing a couple of matches in our local men’s league, either before or after I sent off a certain young man with severe self-control issues. So then I get home, fill out all the requisite paperwork on the game, check my email, check on the blog, and here’s Fairlane calling me a pissant. That’s okay, though. I figure it’s a pot-kettle kind of thing. ;-)

At any rate, intrigued by the endowment of my very first ever online award thingy, I investigated this long-winded award to figure out why I should be pleased to be called a pissant. It only took me a couple of links, at which point I discovered the source of this interesting little bit of linkology. Great. Now there’s probably someone else I should add to the blogroll.

But back to the pissant thing (which for some odd reason doesn’t spell-check in Firefox), I note from the source:

Let’s get the terminology straight. We are not using the Merriam Webster definition of a pissant. We are instead using the Urban Dictionary’s second definition:

Pissant – Little person blog with big attitude.

Which I think, pretty much covers the entire blogosphere. Recipients should also feel free to substitute, at their discretion, definition 3:

Pissant – Any person who is incapable of consuming as much alcohol as you can. Generally someone who has arrogantly been boasting about how much alcohol they can consume but then falls far short of the trumped up expectations.

Now, I’m completely fine with definition 3 there. When I was very young, my adoptive sister got very frustrated with having to baby-sit a hyperactive adoptive sibling, and she and her boyfriend at the time force-fed me a LOT of Coke and Wild Turkey, which resulted in a multi-day hospitalization with severe alcohol poisoning. (I still think of the bitch quite fondly, really!) So nowadays, I’m fond of telling my friends I can down an entire case of [insert presumably popular beer of choice]. I just don’t tell them it’ll take me a couple of weeks.

Oh, yeah, I was talking about this award thingy.

The Partisan Pissant Provocateur Blog Award

Anyway, Fairlane has bestowed upon me this award, and now I have to take valuable time away from my client services (okay, i’m actually running some PhotoShop batches on another computer right now) in order to bestow it upon five other unsuspecting bloggers whom I may or may not have taken the time to blogroll yet. According to the Central Insanity, (dammit, someone else I haven’t blogrolled yet!) here is what makes a Pissant Provocateur worthy of the Award:

1. The award recipients are pissants – i.e., they’re not the biggest bloggers in the ‘sphere, they’re not Kos or Hewitt, but their attitudes and proficiencies more than make up for their rankings.

2. They are provocateurs – i.e., they provoke other people into thinking about and responding to subjects they might not otherwise think about and respond to.

3. By virtue of the first two traits, they advance the intrinsic value of a government that is closely, evenly divided between partisans, so no one party has outright control of the outcomes, recognizing that (a) divided government honors the check-and-balance intent of the founding fathers; and (b) divided government tends to work better; reference the Reagan and Clinton years versus the Carter and Bush #43 years.

Like Fairlane, I’m not real sold on the “Reagan and Clinton years” thing, but what do I really care? I gots me an award because I’m specials!

Okay, so for those of you I’m about to tag with this incredibly auspicious award, here are TEH RULZ for your viewing enjoyment:

The Rules of the Partisan Pissant Provocateur Award:

1. Copy and link to this post (meaning these rules and the Award icon).
2. Reflect on five bloggers who cause you to gnash your teeth when reading their posts, but who you nevertheless feel compelled to return to and read time and again. Write a short sincere (or not) paragraph about each one.
3. Make sure you link this post so others can read it and the rules.
4. Go leave your chosen bloggers a comment and let them know they’ve been given the award.
5. Put the award icon on your site.
6. Did I mention you should link this post?

This award should make you reflect on five bloggers who have motivated you to unleash fire breathing partisan posts of your own. Carefully crafted logical arguments and good writing are a bonus but don’t overlook particularly sharp satire, biting snark, or a high octane flamer. Try to keep the quality high, but in a pinch, feel free to substitute your basic journeyman partisan hack.

I’m not certain, but I get the impression that DWSUWF was really just jonesin’ for some linkage, so I hope I’ve satisfied!

Now, on to those whom I think deserve the award!

  1. Iron Skunk (formerly ~have skunk~): I’ve been a daily reader of this blog even when he hasn’t posted. A wonderful wit and sharp, effective criticism of things that most definitely deserve to be criticized.
  2. A Progressive on the Prairie: Tim, I hope you won’t be offended by this, coming from the realm of snarkery and willful asininity that it does. Tim runs a great blog with extremely insightful perspectives on the world we live in and life in general, as well as very sharp book reviews to which I always refer before purchasing or even checking them out from the library.
  3. SD Watch: Todd Epp, a fellow soccer-geek, runs a marvelous blog, which despite his Democratic leanings gives more than a fair shake to our typically overwrought conservative counterparts. If ever there was a worthy pissant (definition 2), it is Todd.
  4. Sorghum Crow’s General Store: Crow’s place is one of my favorite blogs to visit, and he is a frequent commentor here. My admiration and appreciation of his online work knows no bounds.
  5. Mock, Paper, Scissors: Last but absolutely not least, Tengrain is one of my inspirations and favorite snarkerizers to read. He also produces the most posts of any blog that I read, and his wit bespeaks an insight that is frankly incomparable.

So, heave-ho and have-to, my friends. Thank you, Fairlane!

New Additions to the Blogroll

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Having been duly admonished via email by a couple of friends, and thanks to suddenly realizing there was at least one unrequited link to the otherwhirled out there, I decided to update my blogroll this morning. I will probably be adding some more throughout the week, especially to the “Inspirations” category, but I needed to stop for now before I become entirely irresponsible on what is already a shortened day because it’s my son’s first day of school, and I’m the official chauffeur.

(So, yes, for those of you that have been wondering, I do fall into the category of “stay-at-home dad”. However, I manage to also run a relatively successful business from home, and I don’t do windows. Unless I’m told to….Anyway, shut up.)

Added this morning to “Inspirations”:

And to the “Opinions” category:

Read and enjoy. And Jess: thanks for the link, and I’m very sorry I missed it before today!

Regarding My First Blogging Milestone

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Sometime today, August 17, or tomorrow, the number of total visitors to this blog should reach the 10,000 mark. I mention it now, because my next three days are going to be rather hectic (as if my days are not hectic already!), and since my daily hits seem to jump around substantially, that milestone may actually be reached anytime between noon Friday and midnight Sunday.

It’s probably more information than you care about, but as you can see from my daily hits chart for the past 30 days, hits have been anything but consistent: in fact, they’ve been about as consistent as “teh funny” in my posts. As you can also see, there is a mysterious “W” in the middle of the chart. I was commenting to the Eldest Other-child the other day that the only thing I find displeasing about the way I blog is that I so often must look upon the dumbfounded countenance of our “Fearless Leader”, but even worse: I am cursed with his presence on the blog stats page as well.

My karma, as I may or may not have noted previously, stinks.

30 days of hits in the otherwhirled

Yeah, that’s not exactly the prettiest thing in the world, is it. But I guess it’d demonstrative of my male-ness. I have good days, and I have not-so-good days, and the good days are typically few and far between.

At any rate, in return for your continued visitation here, I will pledge to do one thing: From now on, I’ll start embedding the images here in WordPress or from my own servers (and there is still the possibility that I will move this to my own server as well) so that the images quit disappearing after the news photo sites I currently reference them from remove them to reduce their own storage overhead. I will also try to dredge up the missing photos from some of the more entertaining posts of the past and get them replaced, but I can’t really see myself doing that for each and every old post, sorry. As much as I enjoy the snarkery, I do have a life, and all….

Please accept my humble thanks for your continued patronage, and yes that’s even extended to those of you who are simply looking for nude photos of Condoleezza Rice. As well, my sincere gratitude to my guest-bloggers Tengrain and Dr. Monkey von Monkerstein. I suppose, theoretically, that I could have done it without you, but it certainly wouldn’t have been as much fun. And I get a secret satisfaction knowing that two of the top ten posts here on the otherwhirled are Tengrain’s. So, actually, I guess I couldn’t have done it without you, after all!

Being the benevolent commander that I am, I’m interested in your opinion about the contents of my posts. Do you feel I should stick to political things, or do you find my current practice of open-ended snarkery more fun? Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments below. Thanks again, everyone!