Lex Friedman Presents The Lex Files » 2003

My brush with destiny

January 30, 2003 on 3:32 pm | In Good Stories, Lauren, Things of Amusement to Me, Work

That title is deceiving. Less so, if you replace “My” with My fiancee’s, and “destiny” witih Lex’s toothbrush.

It happened yesterday.

We share an electric toothbrush (with two brush heads). Lauren had left for work, and I had finished my shower, which those of you familiar with my morning ritual knows means it was hair-stylin’ and teeth-brushin’ time. I noticed my toothbrush head (the orangey-pink one) was the one on the toothbrush, even though Lauren should have brushed more recently than I.

Either she was walking around with stinky teeth, or she was walking around with Lex Breath, and contrary to popular opinion, there’s a difference.

A call to Lauren’s cell phone @ school confirmed that she had brushed with my brush-head, and hadn’t been super-extra-polite and placed my brush-head on for me. We decided a through mouthwash rinse of the brush would be enough.

Now, I wasn’t gonna put my doubly-used toothbrush in the Listerine bottle from which I drink directly. So I got a juice glass. Ten minutes later, I put Listerine in a juice glass and ran the electric toothbrush with the head immersed.

Why did it take 10 minutes? Must you know everything? Okay, so after getting the first juice glass, I immediately threw it across the kitchen — because my hands were wet from the shower. Of course, with broken glass all over, there was some cleanin’ to do, but towel-wrapped Lex had neither shoes on his feet nor glasses on his eyes, so he wasn’t entirely sure where the glass was, or how to avoid it while fetching the DustBuster.

Things worked out. I now have eight toes.

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May 30th, 2002

January 29th, 2003

January 29, 2003 on 2:22 am | In News

If Cheney had stood up to applaud enthusiastically one more time tonight, he would have had a heart attack.

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January 28th, 2003

January 28, 2003 on 4:30 am | In Television

Coagulated blood paste for tomato sauce. Live worms. Fish eyes. Rotten cheese. Cow bile-based crust.

Fear Factor Pizza is so gross that you can’t even look at the screen.

Hence, you blog about it while averting your eyes.

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January 27th, 2003

January 27, 2003 on 7:17 am | In Football

I, for one, am flabbergasted that the Eagles didn’t win.

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Soup or Bowl?

January 26, 2003 on 5:45 pm | In Football, Movies

I suppose I’ll deign to watch the SuperBowl today. Not that anyone good is playing. And I have a feeling that a lot of ads will be mildly subpar. I, for one, don’t care about movie previews for T3, The Matrix, or Other Random Crapola Movies where the writing is given second billing to the special effects.

Now, in a movie like Jurassic Park or Shrek, the special effects can feel free to upstage the writing. But in The Matrix? No. Note that this is only because The Matrix, contrary to popular (read: brainwashed) opinion, is actually not a good movie. Trust me on this.

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Test Entry for Tomorrow

January 25, 2003 on 12:13 am | In The Lex Files

This is a test entry for tomorrow.

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December 12th, 2001

From the Grab blog: This is not an entry on my Grab Blog.

January 24th, 2003

January 24, 2003 on 6:35 pm | In Food, Things of Amusement to Me

Why don’t they miniaturize meats and put them in doughy blankets more often?

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Non-Test Entry For Today

January 24, 2003 on 4:16 pm | In The Lex Files

I figured since there was a test entry from yesterday for tomorrow (ie, today), I should at leat have a corresponding non-test entry from today (ie, the day before tomorrow) for today (ie, the day after yesterday).

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June 29th, 2002

RSS

January 23, 2003 on 6:19 am | In Modern Technology, The Lex Files

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

It’s the future of the Internet, and comparatively few Internet surfers know what the hell it is or how it will affect them.

It’ll be a good thing, so don’t worry.

Here’s the idea: Lots of webpages are like this one (only perhaps more useful). Meaning, many web pages these days are easily updatable by their maintainers, and thus are indeed often updated. Serialized content is very popular, and in some cases quite useful. (Mac users, for example, can find excitement in the serialized content here, here, and here.)

Seralized content all has a similar format. Most serialized pages contain many of the following: dates/timestamps, subjects, links, the actual entry du jour, the author, etc.

Since there are so many serialized pages with such similar content schemes, people started thinking that, hey, maybe there’s another way to think about this stuff. Instead of visiting all these blogs that are out there, why not take all the easily-classifiable serialized data each generates and let me parse it my own way?

I like to see all my pages in black and white. I like to see all my blogs in a single browser window. I like to see all my blogs in third-party dedicated software for the task. Whatever my preference, I should be able to view serialized content that way — since the formats are so similar.

RSS feeds take the content that you’re displaying your way, so that anyone/everyone else can display it their way, if they prefer.

It doesn’t sound exciting, but that’s because you don’t know you need it until you take advantage of it.

Which leads me to one more point on this technical topic. Part of the reason people love using RSS feeds (and believe me, they do) is because you don’t have to check yoru favorite pages all the time for updates. You just use your RSS aggregator to check for updates automatically, and you know when there’s unread content.

Now, the Mac has a new web browser out called Safari, and it’s caused quite a stir in recent days. (It’s good. It’s fast. It’s not finished yet.) People bemoan the lack of certain features, like full CSS support (important), tabs (popular enough that it should become an option), and a Save button in the Preferences section.

But Safari’s lacking one non-standard feature that I think it needs. OmniWeb’s bookmark management. Yes, Safari has top-notch bookmark management tools… but I still give the edge to OmniWeb. It can check ALL the webpages I tell it to for updates automatically, much cleaner and more effeciently than subscriptions in IE.

With OmniWeb, RSS feeds are less important. I find out when my favorite, non-RSS-feeding sites are updated.

End technical post. We’ll return to humor next time, kids.

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Web sights

January 23, 2003 on 4:38 am | In Modern Technology

I love web sites. Well, no.

I hate a lot of websites. Particularly ugly/unuseful/broken/poorly designed/ineffective/non-intuitive websites.

But I like making websites. Good ones.

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