(this is) durkin.org

Granted, the window is about 200 yards from me, but still: Woman Shot During Carjacking In Office Park. Interesting to note that when I heard about this from a co-worker, she said the woman had been shot nine times and by one person.

I love the Internet. Really, I do. It can change lives.

Today, for instance, the Internet changed my life. You see, my wife and I were to have a date with some friends a few weeks ago; we were all going to dinner and a concert together. It was the Wilco show in Birmingham, Alabama, at the Alabama Theatre. I will spare you the details surrounding our level of excitement and anticipation; this being a favorite band, a favorite venue, and a first time to see the band live all at once, and with good friends who also enjoy the aforementioned to boot! We were all set. Ready to go. On point, if you will.

Then our babysitter called in drunk.

True story. She called and had had too much to drink that day, so we told her not to come over. She remembers nothing of this conversation.

So we did not go. We missed the show; a show that was, according to Chad, tremendous.

But now, through the power of the Internet, and the dedication of a certain blogger in Decatur, we can have it all back.

Now, the unfortunate part is that, due to circumstances beyond my control, I can’t get to viachicago.org from work to access this great gift, so I am hoping that someone will help out with that. But in any case, today is made sweeter by the renewed discovery that people are often inclined to share, and once again the Internet proves it is good for more than porn.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

OK - I think I have mentioned this before once or twice, but I can’t stand the tendancy of local news outlets to pound on the local angle for the big stories. You know, something happens in France, or Iraq, or something like that, and the local news digs until they find a person who has been there, or has an a cousin who once knew the best friend of one of the people who may have been involved, or some crap like that. Now, there is a certain amount of newsworthiness to this sort of thing, but it seems like our locals here take it to the extreme - there are days and days and days worth of spots about local people who once saw a picture of the place that was bombed and thought it was pretty. Or whatever.

But here I go doing the same damn thing… I was reading about the shootings in the Atlanta courthouse, and realized that he lives in the same area of town as my inlaws. I found myself halfway through a nonsenseical post desgined soley to state that I have some remote connection with this story.

Pathetic, I know.

Even worse is how I structure this as a minirant against people who do this, confesss that I was about to do it without actually doing it (thereby not being one of those people), but totally doing it, too. My site!

After so long with MT, this new stuff is confusing: I don’t know much about the hows and whys of the back-end, so am stuck with the standard design now. Hopefully, some time in the WP Support forums will help.

Also trying to figure out exactly how I admin subdomains… Those don’t seem to be working quite the way I want them to, but again - online help is there if I care to look.

Now, I am all for Internet security, safety and protecting one’s data from the harmful and hurtful gaze of others. But this corporate firewall business is really starting to get me down.

I was fine with it when they took away access to Hotmail and Yahoo!Mail. Then they killed my access to Charter’s Webmail, but no worries, I could still access webmail directly through my site. Then the bastards went and got smart on my, killing access to any URL with the term “mail” in it. Even Gmail.

Dude. All I want is a little mail. A little mail all to myself, unobserved by the corporate eye, personal, as private as is possible. But, no.

So, I adjusted. What else could I do? It makes sense - they need to protect us all from those within our ranks who might deploy viruses into our carefully protected domain - and that would not be good for anyone. So, I’m ok with it.

Now I find that I cannot access web sites that have anything to do with Geocities. Probably a good reason for that, too, but it is seriously cramping my day. Our adult league soccer schedule has been posted to this site, and I’ll have to wait until I get home to find out the info.

Hey - now I can’t get to Flickr, either! Oye.

Max was kind enough to help us publize our news. Dobbs was born February 21, 2005. Mother, baby (and big brother and father) are all doing well.

Chad pointed out that there is no content on this site, so this little post is designed to fix that.

All better now?