And I'll be there, posting... STUFF

[annathepiper]

+0: Had my followup appointment with my doctor this morning, finally. She was pleased to hear that the Trazodone has been doing its job, though at this point we're somewhat bemused as to what caused the insomnia since my thyroid levels are normal. But anyway, she renewed my prescription for the Trazodone, and instructed me to start tapering off on its usage a month from now. So that's that.

-1: Any AIM users on my friends list who haven't already heard about this, y'all might want to go read this post by xpioti. Looks like AOL's trying to get really annoyingly possessive about everything that gets transmitted over its service. Ugh.

+/-2: I've started trying to re-read Dragon and Phoenix by Joanne Bertin, her sequel to The Last Dragonlord. I'd started trying to read Dragon and Phoenix some time ago, and had gotten annoyed at the behavior of the various cast members, but since I'm always twitchy about leaving a book unread, I'm giving it another shot. Maybe it'll read better this time around.

+3: Friday night, in brief: spazzkat came over, we watched episode 3 of Lost, episode 10 of BSG on the Skiffy channel, and part of a special about the 100 scariest horror movie moments ever. All were highly enjoyable. I'll have another BSG post coming soon!

+/-4: Saturday, in brief: There's an ex-renter of ours named Danny, who solarbird periodically bumps into as she goes down to work on MurkSouth. Danny came up to have lunch with us at Lake Forest Park on Saturday afternoon, which was pleasant, and then we walked back to MurkNorth via the Burke-Gilman Trail. (I mention this as we had two different bikers go past us and call out annoyed comments about us taking up the whole trail as we were walking--as opposed to just calling out the usual warning of "on your left" and giving us the chance to move over. Half of me understands the trail etiquette, sure, and we did move over for the bikers that called out a warning that they were coming up behind us. But half of me is still perturbed that those two bikers chose to be snarky about it.) After that, Paul came over again, and we watched episode 4 of Lost and had homemade pizza. We also wound up watching The Omen, which was broadcasting on live TV, and for which I'd gotten into the mood after the previous night's jaunt through horror movie land. There are a couple of genuinely creepy moments in that flick, but on the whole, rather cheesy and dated.

Aside from that, I did a bit of coding for the TM site to start getting the pages up the staff needs to maintain it after I'm gone.

+5: Sunday, in brief: Mostly, yesterday was about the playing with the iPod and slowly poking away at Chapter 11.

Miles on the journey: 40.7
Miles to Rivendell: 417.3

Comments

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

It's not just AOL. It's AIM, too. Lots of people have an AIM account but aren't AOL customers.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, as Flashfire mentioned, it's just as much the instant messaging service AIM as it is the Internet service of AOL. Why would people use AIM? Simple: to talk to friends who have AIM accounts. That's the ONLY reason I have one myself.

Though I'm going to be looking into deleting my AIM account, I think.

[kieri.livejournal.com]

You need to use the AIM servers if you want to talk to less technically-minded people who still have AIM accounts, really. My younger sibs use AIM because it's easy, free and the clients come pre-installed.

I use the Trillian client to connect to ICQ, MSN, AIM, Yahoo...And probably IRC if I start paying attention to this ARG that's gearing up to run.

But yes -- if you can get people talking to you on Jabber or whatnot, it's probably better than using AIM. But contact lists tend to be hard to switch over to a new system, since you have to convince everyone on your list to switch to the same system or quit talking to them. :) It's tough.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, if you're already on AOL, then using their IM client is the least amount of effort required--and let's face it, people more often than not take the path of least effort required.

[annathepiper]

AIM, as a general FYI, is also free. I haven't paid one red cent for my AIM account--I was able to sign up for free when I got (an earlier copy of) AIM back some time ago when I installed Netscape.

[seimaisin.livejournal.com]

Wow, that AIM thing is scary. Will be avoiding my AIM account from now on, methinks. Even if they are backpedaling and saying "hey, we only meant public posts" (whatever that means), the wording still leaves it open to doing whatever the hell they want. No, thank you.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I've got an AIM account myself, but this has made me quite leery. I'm not sure yet whether I'll care to delete the account or not; I don't use it very often at all, and when I do, I don't do more than have just general conversations. Any content I actually care about I certainly don't send over IM in general, regardless of what system I'm using.

[firni.livejournal.com]

AOL's response is... a delight.

http://www.betanews.com/article/AOL_Responds_to_AIM_Privacy_Concerns/1110814631

[solarbird]

Yeah, I love the part where they don't take back the part about owning your stuff forever.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Well, they ARE TimeWarnerAOLWhoHaveTheyPurchasedRecently.

AKA one of the nine billion names of THE DEVIL.

[annathepiper]

That's quite the corporate 'fuck off' there, isn't it?

[firni.livejournal.com]

I expect nothing less from those cocks.

[mamishka.livejournal.com]

But half of me is still perturbed that those two bikers chose to be snarky about it

I suspect it's two-fold. I bet it gets really tiresome after awhile to have to constantly say, "coming through" in one way or the other. I also suspect that many bikers feel frustrated because they just can't win. They can't readily move on roads, due to cars, but pedestrians get sidewalks. Then, when a "bike" trail is made they have to share it with pedestrians. I can see how that could be for some people really annoying when pedestrians walk abreast rather than in lines.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I get that. But still... the part that really bugged me was that the first biker wasn't just snarky with one comment, she threw several over at us even as she pedalled away. A simple "hey, please don't take up the trail" would have sufficed, you know? :/