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We were trying to think of the most famous Todd.  The best I could come up with was Big Head Todd of Big Head Todd and the Monsters.  K had never heard of them.  She thought of Todd Palin.  I wasn’t sure which member of the Palin family was Todd.  (And I really hope that in five years when I re-read this I’ll be baffled at who Todd Palin even could have been, but sadly I don’t think this will be the case.)  She also thought of Todd Rundgren.

Point is, there is definitely a vacuum for Most Famous Todd.

Similarly, a while back, whilst listening to some Moody Blues, I declared that Justin Heyward must be the most famous musical Justin, since I could think of no challengers.  A bit later K remembered Justin Timberlake.  I never ever would have thought of him, which gives you some sense of where my head is at with regard to modern pop music.

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I’m also changing feed readers.  I give up on Bloglines.

Listen, I really really wanted to like Bloglines and used it for years.  Today was the last straw: I realized it was not picking up this very blog.  That seems inexcusable.  This is a very basic wordpress blog.  WordPress is only the world’s most complete and widely-used blogging software.  What more do you need from me, Bloglines?  I have endorsed you.  I have supported you.  I have told classrooms full of open minded college students to start using Bloglines.  No more.

The problems:

  • Constantly dropping feeds.  I notice a blog hasn’t updated in weeks.  I check the site.  They’ve updated, all right.  Bloglines just didn’t bother to let me know.  This is the basic duty of a feed reader, right?
  • Frequent unresponsiveness.  I click a feed, I wait and wait, and then it’s done loading with nothing to show for it.  Sometimes when I re-click, I see items.  Sometimes, they’re gone.  Thanks, Bloglines!
  • Bizarre errors.  I always get the thing where I log in and every one of my feeds has 9,999 “new” items.
  • Can’t see LiveJournal feeds.  (Well, who can blame them?  And anyway, I want to follow like maybe two feeds in there.  But still.  No excuse.)
  • Utter lack of technical support.  I wrote them probably a dozen times to ask about the problems.  Never got a single response.

Honestly, I would’ve bailed on Bloglines a long time ago except that I didn’t want to adopt Google Reader and rely on Google for yet another vital web service.  But Google Reader has shown me none of these problems.  (Yet.)  I’m open to other feed readers, totally.

End: complaining about a free web service that has largely benefited me for several years.

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The number two thing you have to do new you get a house is sign a whole lot of stuff you only mostly understand.  (The number one thing you have to do is be willing to get into staggering debt.)  And you sign knowing that every word in every paragraph was written to protect someone other than you for an event that possibly no one can control.

For example, our homeowner’s insurance policy makes a point to define “three volcanic eruptions taking place in a 24-hour period as a single volcanic eruption event.”  I take this to mean that if my house is damaged by three volcanic eruptions in a single day, I can only file one claim.  Lest I take unfair advantage of the system.  Let me emphasize that the insurance company has gone out of their way to include this information in their policy. So, if my house is melted by lava, I need to hope that the next eruption takes at least a day to hit.  Am I to understand that they’ve been burned in the past by clients hitting them up for damages from three separate volcanic eruptions?  And this happened so often they needed to include the clause in all future policies?  Suddenly I am more frightened that I ought to be of both my insurance company and the Earth’s volatile magma chambers.

I’m sure there are some other wonderful things in this policy.  I’ll post more later.

Now I’m looking at the waiver I need to sign for the flooring contractors before they can work on refinishing the floors.  I have to initial a statement that “Wood is a product of nature and therefore may have some natural imperfections.”  Luckily for them I am willing to stipulate natural phenomena.

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Sometimes internet memes are enjoyable, but for some reason on Facebook I find them very irritating.  One recent exception is that people were changing their profile picture to a celebrity doppelganger.  I normally feel like I have no celebrity doppelgangers.  The closest I can find is Matti Vanhanen, the Prime Minister of Finland.  This is him:

Matti Vanhanen

By reference, me:

I dunno. I guess so. Except he’s 20 years older.  And the leader of a notable European nation.  I am not, as yet.