Apple Foot

More Rojo Follies

As of July 27 at 10:13 AM EDT, I find that Rojo is available--minimally. At this point, you can only reach the Rojo corporate blog, where you'll find this entry, dated July 25 at 1:30PM:

"The Rojo service came offline yesterday due to a power outage in San Francisco that impacted our data center. We are working hard to bring the service back online, but don't have an ETA at this point."

That's the last official update from them on system status--an update nearly two days old, when we're now starting the fourth day of a complete service outage. They also didn't bother to tag it, so if you pull up the "System Updates" category, the last update listed is from September 2006.

They did, however, manage to post their weekly Zeitgeist (dated July 27, 6:00 AM) in which they mention in passing:

"This week's power failure in San Francisco's SoMa district took out several brand-name Web 2.0 sites, including Yelp, Craigslist, NetFlix, SixApart, Technorati, Second Life and, yes, Rojo."

Notice how they don't mention that Rojo's still down, although the other sites mentioned have all recovered. I'm glad I've got their summary of important events this week, since I can't read my feeds.

Service outages of any flavor are inevitable. Service outages of this duration deserve thorough explanations. Rojo has failed to communicate with users.

When they are back, I'll be logging in just long enough to get an OPML file of my subscriptions so I can take it to a different aggregator.

[UPDATE: At 5PM July 27, an explanation appears on the corporate blog (still the only part of Rojo you can reach).]

Aggregator Woes

Sometime last fall, I think, I got tired of some service problems Bloglines was having and switched to Rojo. This spring/summer, Rojo has had numerous outages or weirdnesses (you know, suddenly you've got several hundred unread posts in a feed that hasn't generated that many posts in its entire existence?) Last night I tried to login and got the infamous "Nooz: Coming Zoon" message (because apparently Rojo expects befuddled users who can't reach the service to know that Nooz is another product by Rojo). There was a big power outage in San Francisco yesterday afternoon/evening, though, and many services (for example, Six Apart's various blogging outlets) were down. Rojo, however, is still unavailable 24 hours later.

Anybody have an online aggregator they like? I've been considering Google Reader, even though that means when I read (job-related, of course) feeds at work, I've got to juggle Google accounts, since we have a webmaster account for the company.

Always Her Child

My mother sent me a package last week--brass candlesticks she got at a rummage sale. They were wrapped in what looked like blue washcloths. Enclosed note explains that these are machine-washable microfiber cleaning cloths. Last sentence of note: "Stick under cabinet with other cleaning products for the house."

Because, being 38 years old, I need to be told where to store these in my own home.

Amazons Attack! #4

I just logged into my various accounts for the first time since Friday night. I've been either reading Harry Potter, or recovering from reading Harry Potter. No spoilers here, but the last book is terrific.

And then there's my usual weekend reading.

There are comics that I buy even though they're awful. Some of them are so bad as to be enjoyable (Anita Blake). Some I buy largely out of habit--that's the only possible explanation for why I own the last couple years of "Uncanny X-Men". In the case of "Amazons Attack!" I keep buying the comic in the irrational hope that at some point this will all make sense.

A hope this wild is easily fed--you start seeing signs and portents everywhere. In this issue, I draw hope from the fact that Pfeifer admits that what we've seen so far is wildly out of character for the Amazons. He does this through Superman, whose speech starts with the words, "What's happening here?! What has happened to you [Amazons]?!?" Readers have been asking those questions for some months now. So, my wild, irrational hope is that now that the sheer wrongness of the premise has been acknowledged, it can be explained. I dare not hope for a credible explanation, however.

Question: in the last page, is Selina talking to Batman on multiple display monitors (when did Selina get those in her cozy little apartment, or the hotel she's hiding in now that the apartment's been exposed?) while wearing only a plain, white bra?

Amazons Attack! continues to be very difficult to read without all the crossovers--I've no idea what's going on with Grace Choi here.

Over in the Catwoman issue this week, meanwhile, in case we didn't understand who's really running the Justice League show, regardless of the chairmanship, when Batman hightails it for Gotham, TV news makes it clear that the metas' battlefield performance becomes "scattershot", without "any organization at all."

Gail Simone's farewell issue of "Birds of Prey" is mercifully free of Amazons attacking. What we have instead is the return of Zinda (who's not stuck in Siberia), Babs kicking ass, take-out Chinese, and an explanation for Misfit. In short, all the wonderful we've come to expect.

Oooh! Shiny!

If I haven't posted the last couple days, it's because I'm admiring my new PC. 19" flat panel. Pretty. (Although I am having a little trouble adjusting to the wide screen layout--it makes me feel like I just got a new eyeglass prescription.)  It came with a sub woofer; somehow I didn't realize this meant an extra piece of hardware. It's OK, particularly since it's my only working CD player, but it seems funny to have a big hunk of sub woofer and these little tiny speakers (although the speakers on my old computer had completely died, and Age of Empires II wasn't as much fun to play without audio cues).

For the last three days, I've been installing one program at a time, then spending hours customizing the settings and generally admiring the way it runs on a dual core processor. Tonight I'm playing with Mozilla Thunderbird (which I haven't used elsewhere, and haven't decided whether I like it).

Of course, I still have dial up, which I may soon lose my tolerance for. And I still have to figure out how to get my data from the old Windows 98 box to the new box. Via dial up transfer, perhaps? My new flash drive (also a fun toy) doesn't work with 98SE, packaging claims to the contrary.

Plus, the left hand shift key on the old computer was dying. That was the last straw, really.

Electric Christmas

Tomorrow, FedEx is supposed to deliver my new computer. This is a pain, because when I got the delivery notice Friday I had to tell my boss I'd need to stay home Monday. I have to call in to a 10AM meeting, and I don't know what time the FedEx guy gets to our neighborhood, so I'm not sure if I'll make it in at all tomorrow.

On the other hand, it's like Christmas. I'm sure I won't sleep a wink, and I've got more energy than I've had in quite some time.

It's got a 19" flat panel. That's bigger than my TV.

The PC it's replacing is running Windows 98SE, so you can just imagine how excited I am about something made in the current millennium. Eeeeeeee! I'm going to have speakers again! I'll have an actual power button (current model's power button broke off a few years ago, so I use a pencil to power it up).

It's a shame I can't take a few days off just to load software and admire it.

Seething Rage

I can't decide whether it's because I missed a dose of my anti-anxiety medication, or because it's perfectly reasonable of me to still be grinding my teeth nine hours after a conference call. Three people on the other end of the line basically agreed that the severely broken process under discussion made perfect sense, and that it's just ridiculous that our software isn't configured to handle this. Now I've got to go to the vendor and try to explain to them that despite the fact that what we're doing is stupid, we really think they should amend the program to accomodate it. I'm also completely ape shit over the fact that my boss (who was on the call) got pissy with me because she "asked that question two minutes ago", and I didn't answer it then because (a) I was stunned by the question, which showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the software, and (b) she kept talking before I could answer.

I've been to my lesson and then spent four hours distracting myself by reading my feed subscriptions, and I'm still mad as hell.

ETA, Wed AM: All better now.

Trash and Treasure

At the office, we have been asked to save trash for a program coming in the fall. The kids will be making fashion (accessories, etc.) out of trash. "Trash" is a pretty broad term, of course, so the staff person in charge of the program specified some items that might be particularly useful (fabric scraps, egg cartons). I suggested bottle caps, and was told that was a good idea, so long as these were not from alcoholic beverages (I guess we don't want to give the kids craft materials that say "Bud Light" on them).

I'd really like to see what kind of clothing kids can make from the two most common items littering the city's sidewalks and gutters: cigarette butts and losing scratch tickets. Unfortunately, I'm sure these 'adults only' items are banned, along with nip bottles.

Not Just a Cigar

I sat down in Dunkin' Donuts today to read my comics. I got to page 4 of "Y: The Last Man" and decided not to read that one in such a public place, since for several pages Yorick and Beth are naked and in the middle of sex. I don't want some kid to come in for a Munchkin and accidentally get an eyeful.

I am nearly as embarassed by an ad campaign that's been running in the comics for the last several weeks. The series, shilling Ball Park hot dogs, has up to this point consisted of photos of an average young man with a third (very muscular, manly) arm protruding from his abdomen, clutching a hot dog in a bun. The copy reads, "Hunger gets what hunger wants." The MySpace page has 4300 friends.

This week in "Countdown" and (to my horror) "Black Canary", I find there's an eight page insert on the theme, featuring art by Mad Magazine artists. One series of short cartoons in which shlubs are shown taking advantage of their third arms makes the message most explicit in the top two cartoons. In the first, the third arm emerges from the abdomen and pries open a sleeping man's eye to make him aware of a curvy woman walking by. In the second, two men arm wrestle heatedly using their third arms.

So basically, we have a series of ads showing some guy pulling on his wiener.

Blog in review

Today's the two year anniversary of the AppleFoot blog. Wow--I've made 96 posts in two years. Slow down, Speedy! Pretty soon, I'll have a Technorati rank above the 3.5 million mark if I don't watch out!

As is true elsewhere in my life, I read a whole lot more than I write. I do read quite a few blogs, although nowhere near the 200-500 subscriptions I've recently seen others admit to. I have no idea how they do that.

Unsurprising to me is that I've made more posts to AppleFoot under the "flotsam" category than any other. "Flotsam" means, "I couldn't organize this into a real category, because it's just so lame."

Maybe I should repaint the place. Or maybe I should just write a little more regularly.