AliThinks

Yesterday, Today

Yesterday I did a little happy dance for Picture Fool Sally, as I like to call her. You see, Sally just...well...go read it yourself.

Today we went to Old Navy to exchange a pair of yoga pants I'd bought last week. I'd tried on an XL, and they seemed to fit, so I bought two pairs. Oops. They're too big, but I didn't realize it until I wore one of the pairs. I mean, during my workout I had to HOLD THE PANTS UP. (Then I washed and dried them, thinking that might help. It didn't. I still have to hold them up).

So we went to exchange the other pair. It's usually fatal when we go to Old Navy, and we didn't leave with just a smaller size of yoga pant, oh no.

Boo. Hiss.

So. I've been ruminating on this whole Bitacle thing all day. It's making me reexamine certain beliefs I hold. It's making me roll my eyes. It's making me tired.

Some people, like Amy Gahran, think that hunting sploggers is a waste of energy. The head lemur disagrees.

Today I looked at my "Bitacle blog" in IE. There were Google ads all over the place. I use Adblock in Firefox, so I hadn't seen them before. And this is what gets me. Bitacle is making money from my blog content.

Because I Am Obviously Obsessed With Poking Holes In My Body...

   

     Bigger is better. Click to enlarge.

...I got my tragus pierced today. Allan and Mike's sister Jo Ann did, too. She drove. She went first (so I saw her grimace), and I still worked up the nerve to do it. I was afraid it would hurt as bad as the nose piercing did. (It didn't.)

Stop Bitacle: Sticky Post

Please look carefully at the web address in the URL field of your browser. It should read http://www.alithinks.typepad.com/.

In case you see a web address containing the word ‘bitacle’ or ‘bitacle.org’, you’re not looking at the original page on which this text was posted. If this is the case, the text you are reading right now might be incorrect or out of date [and stolen, -ed.]. After I place a post on my weblog, I always try to keep published information up to date, or incorporate additional information, which I receive from readers.

You will never find this information on bitacle.org. Bitacle.org copies the content of weblogs without permission of the author, the holder of copyrights or the licensee. By visiting bitacle.org, you create income for the people who run bitacle.org, at the expense of me and other owners of a weblog, without permission and often without respecting copyrights and/or terms of use as in a license.

So please, next time you want to view my posts, do so by using the web address of my weblog, which is http://www.alithinks.typepad.com/.

Please make a bookmark of my weblog’s address, if you would like to visit it again. [Or subscribe to my RSS feed, -ed.] Thank you!

______________________________________________________

This post was suggested by the folks at Stop Bitacle.org. Since everything I publish ends up at Bitacle, this is a way to generate negative press for them. I'll leave this post on top for a few days. Actually, I don't know when I'll be blogging again, so it'll probably stay at the top of the page anyway.

Bitacle: Aggregator or Thief?

The other day I got a trackback notification from Typepad; it was for a site called Bitacle. I clicked the link in the notification, and got taken to a page that had my exact blog post, complete with a place to comment and everything. I looked around the page, and there were my archives! 

I asked Chris if he knew anything about it, and he said he'd received a similar trackback. He asked me to let him know if I found anything out.

An e-mail to Bitacle got no response.

At the bottom of the Bitacle homepage there's this sentence: "Bitacle is reader feeds by web." Yeah, okay. Whatever. So why do they reproduce my whole post? And leave space for comments? Granted, there's a link to my blog in their post, but why would anyone reading there bother to click through to AliThinks? There's no need! Everything is there; everything is archived! The page is (apparently) loaded with ads, but Adblock is doing its job; I can't see them.

There has been some discussion on other blogs about whether Bitacle is simply an aggregator or a splog, and whether the language barrier plays into the perception of it. (Bitacle is Spanish). My gut is telling me there's something fishy about it. I don't care if there's a disclaimer at the bottom of every blog post ("Articles are copyright their respective autors [sic]"). Or that their FAQ states:

What type of blogs are   inlcuded in the search?

All blogs that has a feed. This it can be RSS or Atom.

What happens if I don’t wish to appear in the list?

If you doesn’t publish feed, it won’t be   included in the blog’s search. Nevertheless, if you previously has   published feed of the site that was indexed, the old entrances will remain in   the index, although the new ones aren’t added.

Sorry, but Bloglines and Technorati and whatnot are not republishing my entire content!

Stop Bitacle.org is a blog dedicated to creating "negative momentum" against Bitacle.  The folks behind it are outraged, and I am, too.

UPDATE: Allan Jenkins has a spot-on synopsis of what's going on.

8 O'Clock On A Friday Night

And, wow, I'm tired.

There's a free Of Montreal concert on the UK campus RIGHT NOW, but we are here at home. It's rainy out there. Dark, too. Perfect for curling up in bed with a book.

...

Does this mean I'm getting old?

Asleep

   

    Click image to see it better.

For The Friday Ark at Modulator.

Setting The Record Straight

A few of my cherished Constant Readers mentioned Counting Crows in reference to the cat's name.

Um, how to be diplomatic about this?

Let me put it to you gently: we are not fans of Counting Crows. Adam Duritz's voice makes my skin crawl, so their song Mr. Jones — thanks for the link, cmhl — is not even on my radar. (Maybe that wasn't very diplomatic. You know, the skin crawling thing).

No, Mr. Jones-the-cat got his name from a different source.

Introducing...

...Mr. Jones.

5:15

Phone calls at this hour of the blessed morning never bode well, they say.

My cell phone rang, and I let it ring until it stopped. Of course, I was awake, thinking of all the bad things that could have happened. So I got up and checked -- there was voicemail from my ex-husband.

I listened. "Call me back as soon as possible."

I called back. Someone made an offer on our house, he needed to make a counteroffer, and wanted to know if I agreed with the price he'd decided on.

"Can it wait, like, three hours?"

"Not really."

I really need to turn off my cell phone before I go to bed.

Humor Me, Please

In the past I have ranted about people and their poor grammar. It used to get me incensed.

Friends, I have mellowed. Seeing it's as a possessive now just makes me give a half-hearted eyeroll. What about your for you're and here for hear and there for they're? I barely blink an eye; I chalk it up to the need for speed and a general carelessness. (Not that that makes it okay, of course.)

I will admit that misspelled ad copy sometimes shocks me. I'm tempted to write a letter to the Geek Squad about this one. 

No, what burns me now is self-proclaimed "writers" who don't know the basics of grammar. Here's an example I've written, because I'm not in the mood to point fingers at specific individuals:

Mom gave the gift to my sister and I.

Um, no. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go; do not collect $200.

My sentence is an example of overcorrection. Our moms nagged us to say "and I," not "and me," so we use it all the time. Well, sometimes "and me" is the right thing! Take out my sister and and you have Mom gave the gift to I. Nobody says that, because it's wrong. This applies to sentences with other personal pronouns, of course. She or her, he or him, we or us, they or them.

I think the other grammar gripe-slash-lesson will have to wait for another blog entry. I need more coffee. Can you guess what else bothers me about "writers"? What annoys you?

My Hair Has Never Been This Dark

   

     It might look better, bigger. Click to enlarge.

So, Like, I Got A Job

On Monday I was working out at my usual place. I think it was during the lat pull (or was it the glutes machine?) that I saw the owner of the gym walking around with a completed job application in her hand. She looked at me and said "Hi! How are you?" I seized the moment.

"Fine, thanks. Did you just hire someone?"

"Yes, we hired two people for this gym, but I still need someone for the other one on X Road. So if you know anyone..."

I wiggled my fingers at her.

One Of The 130+ Photos I Had Waiting For Me

See my previous post if you don't understand the title.

How About...

...the fact that I have close to 150 photos in my camera that I haven't even looked at? Oy, it is going to feel like a chore when I do look at them -- because before I can post any on Flickr, I have to process them and convert them to JPEG.

On the other hand, I don't even remember what's on the memory card. My attention span is really short, ya know. So I could view at it as a treat to see what images are hidden in there.

What do you think? Chore or treat?

It Was Fun While It Lasted

What, you ask?

This. A month later, this happened. The rest of the stuff? I haven't documented. Not long after I started wearing a nose bone, the inside of my nostril got inflamed. I put the nose screw I got in Brussels back in, and wore that until about two weeks ago.

In Philadelphia, I bought some other nose screws, smaller ones than what I'd been wearing. When I tried to get one of them in, I couldn't. I couldn't even get the Brussels screw back in. So in order to keep the piercing open, I stuck the nose bone in. I thought I'd wait a few days, then try again.

Yesterday I woke up to an inflamed, infected nostril. The nose bone was being pushed out. I had to put a screw in there. And when I tried, when Allan tried, it just wasn't happening. The hole had closed up on the inside.

So I decided to let it go. Maybe I'll get my nose pierced again sometime. Or probably not — I'll likely get another hole in my ear, or another tattoo — because, really, I like picking my nose too much. And piercings just get in the way of that.

Because I Just Need To Think About Other Things

I put baked tofu, the Sesame Peanut Thai version, in my salad at lunch. It was pretty good.

This morning I had new lenses put into my glasses. Hallelujah, I can see! (I quit wearing the old frames after three days, because I'm So Vain; you have to click that link to see what I am talking about.)

In about 15 minutes, I'm going to interview a ghost hunter. 

The cat has a very girly meow.

Thatisall.

Nous Étions Tous Des New-Yorkais

My husband and I were running errands that afternoon; neither of us had had to work. We stopped so that J could get cigarettes. While he was in the bureau de tabac, I turned on the radio.

It was just before 3 p.m., and the news was so fresh that no one knew what was happening. I thought "How could a pilot fuck up that badly?"

Instead of continuing our errands, we went home and turned on the TV. And saw the second plane hit, saw the towers fall, saw the plane in the Pentagon. God, I felt so sick. J offered to pick up the kids from school without me, but I said "No, I want to go."

None of the other parents had heard, it seemed. I was screaming inside, "Don't you know what has happened to me, to us?"

The rest of the day is a blur. I do remember visiting a neighbor that I barely knew to see if they captured CNN with their satellite dish. She ran her hand up and down my back and said "Ma pauvre." They didn't have CNN, so I walked home.

The next day, I was interviewed by France 3 Atlantique. The only thing I remember saying is "Ce ne sera jamais pareil."

Things will never be the same. And they aren't, and never will be.

One more thing: so many people I didn't know expressed their sympathy to me that week. The French really felt the impact. They really did.

Ce chat n'a toujours pas de nom

Thank you for all the suggestions on what to name NoName. We're at the point where we hope he'll just tell us his name. Allan has been calling him Rufus, and I just call him all sorts of vomitously cute things.

NoName went to the vet yesterday for a free wellness exam. He's not very well; he has a parasite and an ear infection. We took him to the same vet who was holding him for the Humane Society, and I don't know why they didn't check for all this crap when he was there. Probably so that they could charge his new owners (us!) for the lab work and medecine. [insert eyeroll]

Kitty is affectionate and sweet and meow-y, but on his own terms. Sometimes he's skittish. So although he has settled in, it'll take time before he is really assimilated into the borg.

Old And Tired

A good writer looks for a fresh way to say things. A hack uses clichés. I just reread my last entry, and it's full of clichés.

Granted, I wrote it on the fly, with just a cursory glance at it for typos. Heh heh.

But really, it bugs me. And because I am a perfectionist, I will let it continue to bother me. Or I could just consider it a call to be vigilant about what I put out there. Even a quick blog entry deserves attention!

Now, how many of you have noticed my excessive use of contractions and adverbs as the first word in a sentence?