Category Archives: social media

FerretDance

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We old-timers of the intarwebs will recognize a resuscitated meme when we see one; oh yes, this is nothing more nor less than a reworking of that classic of the intertubes, the Hampsterdance. With a significantly more anorexic cast. Sound familiar?

Other examples, through time:

Sadly, none have ever approached the catchiness of the original tune and site: there’s just something about Adsense-laden sidebars that somehow limits the freedom of the ecstatic experience, once shortlisted for Song of the Millennium.

They look suspiciously like Meerkats. Better keep an eye on these buggers.

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Twits!

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Celebrity tweets, treated to dramatic reading. This one features Courtney Love, Tila Tequila, and Jessica Simpson.Verified accounts, all. Sounds like a party!

You just know those poor actors are going: for this, I went to COLLEGE!

in the name of Cthulhu and for the love of all that is holy has anyone seen this laptop cord????

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Technical difficulties; the story of my life. And bitching about them publicly seems to be the key to success in my life. They were supposed to have ended nearly a year ago, when I arranged to buy Eve, my fantastic new (lightly used, only driven on Sundays, albeit by a Vangroover singleton, not a little old lady) laptop, a Dell Inspiron. It has bells! It has whistles! It has the machine that goes PING!

It has a dead laptop cord.

And, of course, they are available for sale. For almost exactly half of what I paid for the computer in the first place.

I went to ReBoot, my favorite little DTES computer bits and bobs shop. They were very sweet and went through all their cords and turned up blank. I went to FreeGeek, which I dare not do by myself since they’ve probably read what I’ve said about them (repeatedly, over the last three years) and would off me if I walked in without escort, so I got an intimidatingly-tall escort and away we went to the retail shop of Freegeek, where we were told “You want a laptop cord? You’ll have to wait till So-and-So gets back. He’ll be back in a half an hour. Maybe.” No, here’s the box, you can look through it yourself. No you can leave the model here and we’ll see if we have it. Nada.

I believe the technical term for this is “par for the course.” I do believe they mean well. I do believe they have a wonderful mission. And I have never, not once, seen them deliver that mission to anyone on the Downtown Eastside, although I have frequently offered my ear to my friends who have to vent about their experiences therewith.

I support them, I really do, I just wish they didn’t routinely suck.

Anyhoodlewinklewhatever, we rooted around for far too long anyway and So-And-So never showed up and they didn’t have the cord in any of the boxes we could get our paws on, nor did they seem to have any index of anything they had. Or if they did, they weren’t telling.

Which brings us to YOU!

Knowing as many people in the tech scene as I do, I have reasonable faith that one or more of you has, in that inevitable pile of plastic-coated macrame under your desk, a cord exactly like this except for the fact that it, you know, works. It is, of course, unlike every other cord on the face of the planet (certainly different from all of mine, and who thought we’d ever see the day when I have an extensive collection of laptop cords, eh? and a fine lot of good it has done me).

And the netbook I’ve borrowed from my friend Cathy Browne is, of course, unable to upload the pictures of the laptop cord, so I’ve had to wait a week and a half until Roland had the brilliant idea to take the chip and upload the pix to Flickr from a computer that could do that, which is really something I should have thought of myself, except that experiencing the internet by essentially looking through a straw has a way of limiting one’s vision over time.

And now, to the sexiest centerfold you’ll ever see (assuming you’re a retro-tech perv who doesn’t get out much):

Back of the brick of the power cord

Back of the brick of the power cord

Super duper closeup action of laptop cord brick wooo, exciting!

Super duper closeup action of laptop cord brick wooo, exciting!

and this is what it looks like supine. Did you know that word, supine?

and this is what it looks like supine. Did you know that word, supine?

and another aspect:

the pointy bit Tab A which goes into Hole B in the computer

the pointy bit Tab A which goes into Hole B in the computer

Three the hard way, the bit that goes into the brick

Three the hard way, the bit that goes into the brick

And that’s all she wrote, except that there’s a reward for the first person to solve this problem for me. I dunno what, but it’ll be nice, I promise. And unusual, considering the source. I ain’t got nuthin usual. I’m all out of it.

Out to Lunch with Emme Rogers and Raul Pacheco

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Emme Rogers and Hummingbird604 at Elixir

Emme Rogers and Raul Pacheco at Elixir

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always enjoyed lunching with my imaginary friends. They never sass you, they’re not expensive to feed, and they always tell you that you look mahvelous, dahling. And so it was with great anticipation that arranged to take in the swanky jazz brunch at Elixir Bistro in the Opus Hotel with two of my best friends, only one of whom is imaginary.

Can you tell which one just by looking?

Yes, right there in the heart of deepest, darkest Yaletown, Raul Pacheco and I entertained one of Vangroover’s most popular imaginary friends, Emme Rogers, everyone’s favorite poster girl for post-tomboy twentysomething singletonhoodnikism. As imaginary people go (they go anywhere they want; how could you stop them, eh? Answer me that!) Emme manifests a little more manifestly than most, as you can see from the photograph above. She manifested right on time (I, of course, was late, for entrance-making purposes and also because, well, I’m always late; hey, I was born a month late, so I figure I’m 29 days early for everything) and settled into a cozy banquette seat in the smaller, plusher room away from the main bistro floor. Sort of a posh, padded snuffbox of a room: there was velvet. There may have been ormolu. But I don’t actually know what ormolu is, so I can’t say for sure (isn’t it an endangered species?).

After a brief discussion of why everyone in the neighborhood seems to dress for cocktails when it’s still breakfast time (Pucci halters and hotpants?), we scan the menu interestedly. The coffee manifests immediately, always the sign of a quality brunch establishment to my mind, and it is, by the way, excellent. We ordered, and it was not long before I heard my favorite words.

Not, “Johnny Depp would like your number.”

No: “The chef would like to send you something special.” Why yes, YES, the chef may indeed send over a platter of amuse gueles: fried bread with vanilla-infused maple syrup, wild berries and creme fraiche, and spiced hot chocolate (one of my very favoritest things, which you can rarely get in this too-WASPY city), and all excellent.

Then the gossip is served, cold. I ask about a typical week in Emme’s life. She replies that there is typically nothing the same from one week to another in the life of an imaginary girl-about-town. Summer has been dead quiet for, as everyone knows, Vancouver shuts down in the summer; everyone is either at their cabin in the Gulf Islands/up at Whistler or pretending to be at their cabin in the Gulf Islands/up at Whistler. Emme’s looking forward to the Fall, when the parties start up again and the “duelling vacation game” stops.

“I do love the big, fancy parties,” she says, “but I can’t completely relax at those. It’s when I’m in someone’s back yard or at a great party standing at the sink, washing dishes and just chatting, that I can really relax.”

“In fact, I really enjoy downtimes with my nieces and I’m taking them out for a fancy tea. We’ll wear boas and tiaras. Oh yeah, the whole nine yards! That’s actually my big event for the season, the one I’m looking forward to most.”

Awwww. I don’t have the heart to tell her Debrett’s says you can’t wear a tiara unless you’re married. Why do I even know these things?

Brunch arrives, and is delicious. I’m a sucker for salade Nicoise, and I’ve never seen or consumed a better one than the one at Elixir. Behold:

Elixir Salad Nicoise

Elixir Salad Nicoise

Part II Coming Soon

Sunday Night’s Alright for Fighting

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What the hell, there’s nothing else to do.

If nothing else, you can see the value Twitter adds to the world of flamewarring: instead of hitting Refresh, Refresh, Refresh and waiting to see if your opponent has updated his blog/left another comment on yours, Twitter now enables people to make asses of themselves in realtime!

It all started…with this innocuous little post:

So far, so what? you’re probably thinking. Well, nothing. It’s just a link to some video of a fluffy white doggy trying to stay upright on a slidey plastic surface with four doggie shoes on.

And it ended like this:

And in between, now sadly deleted on MM’s part in the Slow Sunday Night on Twitter version of the missing 15 minutes from the Watergate Tapes, there was this:

@MortgageMark I wouldn’t either. That’s just cruel; saddle shoes are SO last year!

@raincoaster mellow out my friend

@MortgageMark I work for Shoeblogs LLC. I take these things seriously!

@raincoaster Listen, my son’s girlfriend bought them as a gift. We tried them on once. Don’t really care what blog you work for, suck it up

@MortgageMark “Suck it up?” Great people skillz, dude. I was JOKING. Chill thyself!

@raincoaster “dude” I guess my people skills aren’t that great. Just kidding, they’re fantastic ; )

and, after the above was deleted, this from me:

@MortgageMark If you trust your people skills, why don’t you apologize instead of just deleting those tweets?

Some things go without saying, you know what I’m sayin’?

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