Project Insomnia

From the Mercury News comes word that those Prurient puppets are on their way to S.F. Best of Broadway:

Move over, Miss Piggy! 'Avenue Q' is coming to town. The quirky puppet musical kicks off its national tour in San Francisco in August as the final production in the 2006-2007 Best of Broadway season.
...
Tickets for the San Francisco run - Aug. 7-Sept. 2 at the Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market Street - go on sale in June.

We wanted to see this in Vegas but the show closed before we got the chance. We will definitely be seeing it while it's in town--anyone want to come along?

A little early for April Fools, but according to this press release, Best Buy has acquired independent DSL provider Speakeasy. Speakeasy CEO Bruce Chatterly writes in an email to subscribers:

This is a significant milestone for our company as our new relationship will help us realize our goals of becoming the No. 1 provider of voice and data solutions to small businesses. It is important to note that though Speakeasy will now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy, we will continue to operate as a standalone, independent operating division with headquarters in Seattle.

How long until Speakeasy's vaunted and highly professional support staff are replaced by the Geek Squad?

So last night on "Raines" (which we are quite enjoying, two weeks in), Raines acidly suggests one of his colleagues visit "www.whatingodsnameiswrongwithme.com". Of course I had to pause the episode and check SamSpade:

Registrant:
General Electric Company
Internet Registrations
3135 Easton Turnpike
Fairfield CT 06828-0001
US

Yes, it's registered to GE (parent of NBC) and it was registered on January 7th which I expect is around when this episode was filming. Too bad, because I was going to grab it if it wasn't already...

And how do I get rid of it? It appears in a growing number of Web pages and makes them completely unreadable.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned Gliffy, a Web service that lets you draw and diagram anything you can think of—think Visio in your Web browser. And it works in Opera and Firefox.

I've done up my home network map in Gliffy:


The "proposed" line at the bottom signifies adding another segment for a TV in the bedroom, if we decide to do that. The existing TV is in the guest room.

Note added 2008-02-18: An updated version of this post is here.

Labels: gliffy, network map

"Armando, this is how far you are from making the team this year."
(Photo courtesy MercuryNews.com)

==================================
Old SYI form retires in early May
==================================

This is a reminder that we will be retiring the old "Sell Your Item" (SYI)
form in early May. This is the form you see when you click on the "Sell"
tab at the top of the eBay home page or when you use "relist "or "sell
similar" to list an item.

Our records indicate that you are still using the old form.

We urge you to start using the new form right away. In early May the
version you're using will no longer be available.

To begin using the new form, just click on "Start selling with the new
version of the Sell Your Item form" at the beginning of the selling
process.

The new version makes it faster and easier to list your items. It also has
great new features such as more fonts and colors, built-in Help, and
reusable templates.

For more information, please read our Helpful Links about the new SYI form
at http://click3.ebay.com/3733479.68070.0.113505

Sincerely,

eBay Product Management Team

---------------------------------------

See, here's the problem: The new SYI form is a pain in the butt to use,
and doesn't work well in Opera. I'd been using the old form because it's
easy, just fill in the blanks. The new form wants to use overlays and
dynamic stuff and just generally make things much more complicated than
they need to be.

I'm hoping for a reprieve, or at least a way to access the old form even
after it's supposedly "retired".

As seen on Dirty Jobs... The storm drain vacuum truck.

Poetry on a plate: chocolate lava cake at Quattro restaurant at the new East Palo Alto Four Seasons hotel.

Linked from GMSV is a survey on web-strategist.com called "My Media Consumption Diet". Ok, I'll bite:

My Media Consumption Diet (most used at top, least used at bottom):

• Web: I'm online all day during the week, and get my news almost exclusively from RSS newsfeeds; I have over 110 subscribed in Opera's built-in reader. These aren't all strict news, though, I also use newsfeeds to keep up with friends' journals and blogs.


• Music: Home: ShoutCast or other Internet radio or XM channels on DirecTV. Car: XM radio, usually either 44 (Fred) or 81 (BPM). On long trips I'll sometimes listen to audiobooks on CD. Office: Shoutcast or other Internet radio, often KDFC in the morning and one or another SomaFM channels in the afternoon.


• Communication: I use my laptop exclusively (except at work, when I Remote Desktop into my laptop from the company laptop) for email and IM. I've successfully merged umpety-ump email addresses into three accounts, and I use Trillian to keep five or six IM accounts all in one client. When I don't have WiFi (rare and getting rarer) I can use PalmOS applications on my Treo 650 to check mail remotely or send and receive IMs.


• TV: DirecTV with TiVo. Never ever watch live TV. I watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann every weeknight, and have a very large list of TiVo Season Passes.


• Movies: We have a large collection of DVDs due in large part to the DVD section at Costco along with the bargain bins at Best Buy and Fry's. We don't go out to the movies very often, because it's expensive and getting to be less and less fun.


• Books: My book reading is divided pretty much equally between stuff for work--various computer languages or tools--and reading for pleasure. I've just finished James White's Sector General series.


• Magazines: I subscribe to Scientific American, 2600, MAKE and Newsweek. Half the time I don't get a chance to read Newsweek before the next issue arrives, and since I get almost all my news online (see above) I probably won't renew this when it expires.


• Newspapers: Through their RSS feeds and Web sites, I read most of the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News every day. I can't remember the last time I picked up a physical newspaper.