The Smarmy Carny

Clearly, I'm going to be learning some big lessons in time management over the next 23.5 hours. We are required to blog every 30 minutes. There it was, already 26 minutes into Blogathon, and I just realized that I better start writing another post!

Instead of hastily writing one of the posts about Make-A-Wish that I intend on writing, I am simply posting this to declare my inability to manage time. Of course, anyone who knows me knows this. My personal motto when walking into anywhere late (fashionably or otherwise) is: "If my God is timeless, why can't I be?"

Well, it's 9:30. Time to post this.

By the way, if you'd like to chat, head over to FreeNode IRC and chat in #blogathon. Get instructions here.

The Smarmy Carny is now running WordPress 2.0.2. As usual, the upgrade was painless and problem-free. The entire upgrade process took about an hour (including backups and other precautionary measures).

Visitors to the site saw disturbances for less than 15 minutes. Good times. If you visited during the maintenance period, I trust you saw the upgrade page and explanation. Sorry about that!

If you do happen to notice any issues or problems, feel free to comment on this post or use the Contact Form to let me know. (Ironically, I found that the contact form was not working while I was entering this post, but it was completely unrelated to the upgrade. The contact form should be working now.)

Thanks again, and keep coming back!

Here it is: Try out the Falling Sand Zen Garden.

The odd thing about this is that I looked at the game for about 30 seconds and realized what a lame, stupid game it was. After two minutes, however, I was hooked, and 30 minutes later, I had to pull myself away. I would have posted this earlier, but I got hooked and ended up playing on it for another 15 minutes.

Confused? You should be. Here are some hints to make things more interesting. Also, I find it most useful to start by drawing a wall along the bottom of the board so everything doesn't just fall out of the map.

• Cera = Ceramic
• Fire burns Oil (quickly)
• Water grows Plants
• Fire burns Cera (slowly)
• Water makes Namekuji grow
• Salt makes Namekuji shrink
• ??? pink stuff consists of pure evil

There you have it. Now you can go ahead and play to your heart's content.

Additionally, there's even a song specifically about this timewasting game. Tim DeBruine of Craic Wisely wrote "Falling Sand Song." Crazy fun.

This post has been re-posted at Random Fodder, Novac's personal blog.

I'm embarassed to say that I haven't seen any of the Oscar-nominated films in any of the major categories this year. Such is life with two small children and few babysitters.

The most major category that I have seen a nominated film in is for original screenplay: Match Point. If it hadn't been Woody Allen, I wouldn't have seen that, either.

The other categories in which I have seen films? Art direction, costume design, makeup, sound editing, sound mixing, and visual effects. I have seen every movie in the visual effects category, and two of the three were a couple of my least favorite movies of 2005.

King Kong was simply unbearable. If I find out that one of my friends is going to rent King Kong, I'm going to schedule a dentist appointment instead. Horrendous. And then there's War of the Worlds . . . popcorn movie from start to finish. This is a great movie for radio and also for movie special effects teams, but it just doesn't make for an exciting movie.

The nominated movies I have seen are Match Point, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, King Kong, War of the Worlds, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Star Wars: Episode III. I know, I know . . . not the highest quality selection of 2005, but when half your movies are intended for children under 8, what are you to do? Still, I was quite pleased with Charlie and the Chocoalte Factory and The Chronicles of Narnia. Match Point was good, except that we've already seen this Woody Allen story as just a portion of the superior Crimes and Misdemeanors. Star Wars III was my favorite SW prequel. Harry Potter, King Kong, and Tom Cruise can all just go away.

This post has been re-posted at Random Fodder, Novac's personal blog.

I received an e-mail from PayPal yesterday that was — get this — actually from PayPal!

The content of the e-mail had nothing to do with unauthorized access to my account, the need to update my login information, or the addition of a strange e-mail address. It was all boring stuff about the PayPal Money Market Fund.

The most interesting thing I noticed about this e-mail? Unlike every phishing e-mail, this one had no links . . . not even valid ones back to paypal.com.

Ahh, I remember it like it was yesterday . . . or at least, just like it was last year's yesterday tomorrow . . .

Looking back on my first post last year, I see that many of the things I said have changed. Back then, I didn't care to read anyone's blog, but now that I am a blog writer, I have become accustomed to reading other blogs. Of course, feed software makes this much less painless, too. In addition, I had anticipated that Firefox's LiveBookmarks were the place to be for reading RSS feeds, but that just isn't true. So many other programs rule the roost.

One thing hasn't changed is my apathy for my own blog. Nonetheless, I try to make my postings as interesting as possible. Maybe someday, I will be successful.

I was surprised about the number of hits I received on my blog, though. I assumed that I would receive a dozen or so hits a day at most, just like on my previous lame websites. Interestingly, the blogosphere brings with it much traffic. I suppose that regular fresh content makes plenty of difference as well, compared with my endlessly-static content on previous sites.

And, if you'd like to sing Happy Birthday, go ahead . . . or sing it "Weird Al" style!

Well, happy birthday to The Smarmy Carny. Good times.

On my way out of town to celebrate Christmas, I passed the Karate Barber Shop location (currently featured in the header image), only to find out that it is no more.

Unfortunately, it now seems to merely be a Dollar Store Barber Shop, which is not nearly as much fun.

What next? Signs saying "You may now block the box."?!?!?