Boing Boing Aftermath

Is it wrong to still be a little giddy about getting a submission on Boing Boing? I don't think so. I've gotten nothing but rejection from Slashdot, so I'll take my wins where I can.

As I write this, I'm still clinging to the front page, but one more post and I hit the archive. Surprisingly, there was a nonzero amount of traffic directed to my blog from Boing Boing. They get a TON of traffic, and they linked to my blog in my submission. Although I admit I don't think I've ever clicked through to a submitter's site, there are a fraction that apparently do.

Also interesting was the OS and browser anaysis from the traffic spike.

Back to obscurity....

Kwajalein

I guess it's time I explained what "Kwaj" means.

I had a pretty unique childhood. My parents are high school teachers. Pretty regular, right? Except they work for the Department of Defense, teaching on American military bases (they're civilians).

My dad is from upstate New York (Elmira). My mom is from Indianapolis. In 1970, they decided that they wanted to see the world and signed up to teach for the DoDDS system (now DoDEA). As luck would have it, they were both assigned to teach at Camp Zama, Japan. Long story short, my father met and courted my mother, and they were married in 1971.

In 1973, they took a new assignment at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. One thing led to another, and I was born in August 1974.


Fast forward to 1981. Ferdinand Marcos is the President of the Philippines, but all is not well. We lived in a village called Carmenville, right at the edge of a large sugar cane field (the coolest snack ever when you're a kid, BTW). Not infrequently, we would hear gunfire from the anti-Marcos rebels. A year earlier, close family friends had moved to the Marshall Islands. Fearing a destabilized government, my parents left the DoDDS system and moved to Kwajalein Island (map) in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. I was 7.

Kwajalein is located an equidistant 2,200 miles from Honolulu, Hawaii, Tokyo, Japan, and Sydney, Australia. If you clicked on the map link, you'll see that it's pretty much in the middle of nowhere. That's not to say that it wasn't an awesome place; I'm just pointing out that it's a six hour plane flight beyond Hawaii.

At the time, the Marshall Islands were a U.S. protectorate. They emerged from this status in 1986. Kwajalein Island is the largest land mass in Kwajalein Atoll, the largest atoll in the world, although there is some dispute in Wiki on this distinction. This "largest" island is three miles long and about 1/2-mile wide, netting a total land area of about one square mile. Yes, the runway kind of dominates the island.


I stayed on Kwaj (as the locals call it) until I graduated from high school (in a class of 26). My parents were there until 1997, when they moved to teach in Germany (at a DoDDS school).

What the heck do you do on a tiny island? For us kids, pretty much what you'd do in any other small town: ride our bikes, play soccer, go to the pool (or the beach), wish we were in a cooler city.... One of the best things I ended up doing was to get SCUBA certified when I was 12. I remember it being a really big deal that I was so young-- the instructor almost didn't take me. When I left Kwaj, I had in excess of 800 dives under my belt, everything from the 100+ WWI and WWII wrecks (ships, subs, and planes) to coralhead/reef/wall dives to fish/shell hunting dives. I've gone on a few dives since in Florida and Mexico, but it's not really worth the effort-- nothing compares to Kwajalein.

So there you have it: I'm a Kwaj Kid.

Over-the-top Police Blotter Write-Ups

I had a doctor appointment today, so I worked from home. From Noon to 5pm, some jackass' car alarm was going off every thirty minutes for at least five minutes each time. Thank god I finally figured out the key code to get the conference bridge to mute my phone. Nasty-windshield-note to follow....

But, while I was researching on the DPT web site to see if I could get him ticketed or towed (I cooled off and never called), I stumbled on to a hilarious section of the SFPD web site. They have a Community Newsletter page with the weekly police blotter and other info. I seriously think that one of them is an aspiring writer who's biding his time until he makes it big. Check out this blotter entry from Monday, May 16, 8:55am:

He had not run for very long before he realized the two cops were only pacing him. They could see something he could not. With each frantic step a sense of dread nagged at him. The more calm and calculating they were, the further behind he left his common sense, and his panic ratcheted up. As he ran, the black and white radio car glided silently along behind like a predatory whale.

Brilliant.

UPDATE: Wow! I submitted this to one of my favorite blogs, Boing Boing, and they published it! Thanks, Mark!

DeVotchKa: Must See

I randomly ended up seeing DeVotchKa at The Independent last Friday-- one of the most amazing shows I've seen in a while. I was so infatuated with them that I ended up getting all three of their CDs and have had them on repeat in iTunes, pretty much continuously, for the past four days. How it ends is my favorite of the three albums, and the professional music hack community seems to agree.

They're an eclectic mix of folk and modern rock that I find very appealing. Plus, the lead singer looks like Jeremy Piven and Colin Farrell's love child (but sings like Sting and Chris Isaak's love child). Maybe it was just the beers talking, though.

Falling Mannequin

Speaking of Boing Boing, they linked to this sometime recently. Without a doubt, it is the freakiest, coolest thing you will see all day. Try experimenting with your mouse too.

Post-a-Month

God, without the peer pressure of the lunch table, this blog is really getting dusty. It's kind of like Friendster-- I'm so into it for like two days, and then I forget about it for a month. I really like the idea of getting into a regular writing habit, and since my OPML list seeded everyone's RSS readers, I guess they're kinda forced to read it (you guys wouldn't delete it, would you?).

Speaking of on-again-off-again habits: music. I'm totally into mashups right now. I heard this kick-ass Biggie/Sinatra mashup by DJ Cappel on Thursday. I think Boing Boing got me there (an indispensable blog to add to your RSS reader, if it isn't already). I was so in love with it that I burned it and brought it to Lisa's house party and forced everyone there to listen to it. Or at least I think I did (damn you Zach!). It's such a tease: snippets of a bunch of tracks off the mashup CD. But it worked; I ordered a copy over the weekend. Sooooooo psyched for it to get here. Anyway, I'll report back on the CD once I get it-- in the meantime there are some other full-length mashups on his site: check it out!

BTW, Bond-a-Thon = very little chance I will leave the couch. Tested empirically this weekend.