Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

OK, phew. The tree is up, the family traditional Christmas-Eve dinner of Chinese food has been eaten. (Judging by the crowd outside Cheng Sho when we left, that’s a popular tradition here in Cambridge.)

OK, stockings full.

OK, making hard sauce. No sherry so we use cream and a little brandy. A vote for brown sugar turns into a vote for dark brown sugar because I don’t have light brown sugar. A vote for salted rather than unsalted butter means the result tastes a bit like popcorn. I’m not sure a normal family would accept the result as hard sauce, but a normal family also might not accept our background music choice of “Codfish Ball,” Bert and Ernie singing the L song.

Now the CD has ended. The kids drove home with their stockings–they’ll come back tomorrow at 9 to open “real” presents. I sit here blogging and resting my tired feet.

Isaiah’s promise sounds pretty good to me now: “They shall run, and not be weary. They shall walk, and not be faint.”

But I’d settle for “They shall blog, and not fall asleep at the keyboard….”

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Give somebody a blog–it’s the ultimate last-minute gift. You’re giving a gift of respect and encouragement, plus the offer of more of your time to help set things up. One size fits all. No shipping and handling. Your mileage may vary.

Biz Stone has been writing a series of creative help-pieces for new bloggers, and his latest is an excellent tutorial on setting up a “gift” blog.

Biz works for Google/Blogger (say that three times fast!), so his advice assumes you’ll be using their software. But you can use his advice, with minor modifications, to set up a new blog using your own favorite blogware.

I’m not sure I’d go the whole distance Biz suggests of creating a popup card with the Blogger logo–a red ribbon on the keyboard is enough marthastewart for me.

Despite these quibbles, “Biz Stone, Genius” was the obvious right pick for Feedster’s Christmas Eve “Blog of the Day.”

Help, I’m channeling too damn many Betsys! And now every one of them wants to write in my blog! (About time too–my blog has been neglected for a week.)

First of all, if you want the real spirit of this crazy, loving, season of fantasies about what a good job we’ll do for those we love *this* time, nobody ever says it better than Halley on most days, but she really “gets it” with her No More Santa.

In a sadder side of the year’s end, two of my favorite bloggers seem to be getting ready to fold up their URLs and fade away. Elaine and Niek, I wish you’d change your minds.

Elaine of Kalilily hasn’t blogged since December 1, when she quoted a hairdresser teaching women in Afghanistan:

If i was a reading teacher i would teach them to read. but i am a hairdresser so i teach them hair.

Meanwhile, Niek of Shutterclog has some other projects he plans to work on:

Like the invention of the wheel. Thank goodness I’m almost full circle with that one!

For a final word on both sides of this complex season–here is Steve Himmer (OnePotMeal) with the ultimate super best top card of the season.

Ho ho ho and warm wishes to all of us!

You know something you want is somewhere in RSS*–but how the heck do you find it?

The blogroll model picked up by aggregators is what I call “friend-centered.” You tell the aggregator who your friends are, and it tells you when somebody on your list posts.

The Feedster** model is what I call “topic-centered.” You search for a word or phrase that interests you, and Feedster returns any posts that include your topic–often posts made within the past few minutes.

Both models are useful. Most of us have friends as well as topics of interest! And a lot of people put the two models together by treating their Feedster topic-search as a friend and subscribing to its RSS feed in their aggregator.

Now, thanks to some very hard work by Scott Johnson, you can integrate friends-and-topics in a new way, using Feedster’s new web-based aggregator. (I did some beta-testing on “myFeedster” as it was developed, and I love it.)

The myFeedster aggregator lets you add blogs and newsfeeds to your subscription list directly from the results of a Feedster search. In other words, people who care about the same topics you do can get added easily to your list of friends.

IMO, Feedster just added a very important piece to the RSS-information-finding puzzle.

* RSS (Really Simple Syndication) lets bloggers and newsfolk publish a “feed” to let readers know about updates when they happen. Readers find out that you said something new when (using a friend-centered or a topic-centered method) they’re checking the state of many feeds at once–not two weeks later, when they have leisure time for brower-surfing.

** Feedster is a web-based platform for collecting, searching, managing and delivering RSS content.

At least that’s how I describe it, though I’d probably better quote Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! Finance here–he invented my favorite-ever blog disclaimer: “In case it’s not already obvious, I don’t speak for my employer on my personal web site. Do you know anyone who does?”

Awesome, two of the funniest guys I know are appearing together for your metablogging delight–DRUM ROLL–I give you Frank Paynter interviewing David Weinberger!

Paynter and Weinberger, together at last! If I were religious, I’d hope for a heaven where all kinds of team-ups happen that we missed on earth:

• Shakespeare teams up with Mozart to create the world’s funniest and yet most meaningful opera.
• Brendan Fraser swings through the jungle with Vivien Leigh dressed as Scarlett tucked under one arm.
• Babe Ruth rounds the bases after a homer but gets tackled by William “Refrigerator” Perry.

None of the above will happen anytime soon, but Paynter meets Weinberger is a good substitute! Check out this free (as in I just stole it, so why should I charge you?) excerpt:

Frank: Whom would you rather be seated next to at a dinner party: Martin Heidegger, Howard Dean, or Woody Allen? And why? What would you want to talk about?

David: I’d rather sit next to Howard Dean because he may well be in a position to actually change the world. Also, he’s not a Nazi or a pedophile, which are pretty much my minimum requirements for dinner companions.

Be there or be square.

Great news! In case you just moved here from some distant planet, the great news is we captured Saddam Hussein.

I say, “Great news!!” So does my man Howard Dean.* So does most of the world.

But the Right-Wing is so very disappointed. Not about Saddam’s capture–they agree that’s great news.

The Right is mad because this blows their story that the anti-war Left was entirely
pro-Saddam, pro-Osama**, anti-American, and pro-terror.

Andrew Sullivan begs readers to send him left-wing responses matching right-wing beliefs that anti-war was pro-Saddam. Instapundit links to a slanted round-up of far-left blog reaction, supposedly representative of all non-Republicans. Just about the only Democrat whose reaction they like is Joe Lieberman who predictably, blasts Dean for loving Saddam.

Right-wingers, I’m sorry for you, but I’m happy for us, as in all us people who rejoice when some decent results come out of the blood and treasure spent in Iraq. Especially if this means we might get back to focusing on Osama’s international terror machine.

*What Dean said:

“This is a great day for the Iraqi people, the US, and the international community.

“Our troops are to be congratulated on carrying out this mission with the skill and dedication we have come to know of them.

“This development provides an enormous opportunity to set a new course and take the American label off the war. We must do everything possible to bring the UN, NATO, and other members of the international community back into this effort.

“Now that the dictator is captured, we must also accelerate the transition from occupation to full Iraqi sovereignty.”

** Osama Bin Ladin, whose pro-Islam anti-secular terrorist organization inspired the September 11 hijackers (among many, many other civilian murders.) Saddam Husseim was a totally different, from-a-different-country, mostly-secular although ugly-bearded Middle-East guy.

If you came here to watch me ding AccordionGuy aka Joey De Villa aka the guru of TuCows’ geek forum— wait for it.

First, a brief word on my non-sponsor, the group link blog called “del.icio.us.”

blogged it first

Haarlem and Utrecht.

lyrics, thanks to rojisan.

I was trying to remember the lyrics of “Found a Peanut.”

So I went online and found them–also the lyrics to such childhood classics as

• Peanut Sat on a Railroad Track,
• Do Your Ears Hang Low?
• Nobody Likes Me
• Three Bears in the Bed

Do not try this at home. You will waste hours and hours….

But, if you do–Mudcat Cafe collects not only kid
lyrics like “Dunderbeck” and “Sweet Violets” but a wide range of both
older and newer stuff–from “The Agincourt Carole” to “Friend of the
Fetus.”

December 11 is my birthday–hello, my fellow-fans of Joi Ito!

Giving you the full benefit of my (tomorrow) 57 years, let me give you more. Instead of telling you about life before television, seatbelts, and credit cards, let me take you back further–into the stories of three women from my childhood.

Aunt Jean, Aunt Harriet, and Aunt Martha weren’t really my aunts. They were single “career women” who formed a household. When the French-Canadian cook in that household suddenly found herself with an orphaned niece–a pretty ringleted baby, and I’m talking about an orphaning that happened back in 1918–these intrepid ladies adopted the little girl. (That was my mom, which is why they were my “aunts” too.)

Aunt Jean, Aunt Martha, and Aunt Harriet didn’t stay home to take care of their brand-new child. Heavens no! They were modern women of 1918! They earned money that supported a household that nurtured all of them, including the child. This worked out incredibly well for all of them.

“Aunt Jean” (Elizabeth Jordan) was my godmother–newspaperwoman, editor, author, general entrepreneur. She covered the Lizzie Borden trial, published Mark Twain, and dragged Henry James into her multi-author novel (pretty dreadful!)

“Aunt Harriet” (Mt. Holyoke, then Columbia) was a student and later a colleague of Melvil Dewey. “Aunt Martha” was the baby of the group–born in 1865. She went to Smith, then to Cooper Union, and did art and “interiors” all over Manhattan. (They were turquoise blue and a peachy sunset orange, to judge by the many art objects she left behind.)

When I was little, Aunt Martha and Aunt Harriet were still a big part of my life. They read me stories, took me for walks, introduced me to all their friends. For many blocks around the house they lived in, I knew I could knock on anybody’s door to find a friendly face and somebody to give me cookies.

Aunt Martha and Aunt Harriet would have loved email. Every morning they “answered letters” for hours. I remember their shocked complaint when the price of a postage stamp rose from 3 cents up to 4 cents.

I could tell you more–someday maybe I will! My point here is not that I knew and loved people born in the nineteenth-century.

My point is that the people in your own life may someday be loving memories from long ago. And–in honor of Betsy’s birthday, December 11–think about that.

I’m wishing a happy my-birthday to you, and to all the people you love.

If you want a job, there are two kinds of people to hire you.

Alpha people. And everybody else.

Alphas are company owners, entrepreneurs–people who really care how the story comes out. Alphas work hard to hire somebody great. Alphas care about what you can do, how smart you are, and how hard you work. If you can get hired by Alphas–you lucky dog!

Most job offers, alas, are made by Betas. (I’m being polite here–hot-tempered folks might call them “Human Resources.”) Betas have one, only one, question in their minds:

Could I maybe get in trouble by hiring this person?

Betas look for “the obvious candidate.” But that’s only secondary to the main thing they’re looking for–to avoid the “don’t-hire” candidate who could get them fired.

If you don’t have a job but hope to land one–don’t blog yourself into oblivion with the Betas:

• Don’t blog your drinking habits, pet peeves, relationship issues, etc. in a personal blog that’s on the first page of Google when Mr/Ms Beta types in your name.
• Don’t blog your drinking habits, pet peeves, relationship issues, etc. in a personal blog that’s linked to from a site on the first page of Google when Mr/Ms Beta types in your name.
• Hey–limit yourself to corporate/geeky stuff on any page linked to from Google results for your name.

In a just universe, everybody would hire like Alphas. In the *current* Bush recession–hey, have some compassion for Betas scared for their jobs!

If you’re smart enough that an Alpha should hire you–take only a tiny step more. Be smart enough not to scare away the Betas.

One of my favorite jokes, hope it cheers you up after reading this post:

There are two kinds of people in the world, they say.
Those who think there are two kinds of people–and those who don’t.