sort of. somehow i missed the fact that last summer this humble site was mentioned in a “favorite sites” bit in fortune small business. and gosh golly, the columnist had some mighty kind words for the vast wasteland:

“Lastly, Snowdeal.org, with its dust-colored pages and philosophical approach to things like the digital music movement and biomedical news, preps me when it comes time to deal with Ivy League colleagues– so I can keep that conversation running.”

it still royally freaks me out whenever i see the site linked in something approximating a “real” publication.

i think i might be wheat intolerant and i don’t really want it to be true.

i’ve always binned food allergies and intolerances in roughly the same category as sick building syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome. i won’t deny your right to claim that you might suffer from these broadly defined and difficult to prove maladies, but i was quiet sure i’d never suffer from them and was always a little suspicious of people who claimed to fall victim to them. me thinks the previous statements require copious filling-in-the-blanks, but it’s late and i’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

in any case, i’ve been feeling “not entirely correct” for some time and became increasingly suspicious that the symptoms might, just might, be indicative of wheat intolerace. just to prove myself wrong, i decided to gradually cut out wheat from my diet. and dammit, i feel better. some very real, yet difficult to quantify, physical symptoms have subsided and i’m feeling like i might just want to go completely wheat free. i have no idea if i’m gluten intolerant or wheat intolerant or what – all i know is the less foods i eat that contain wheat, the better i feel.

i don’t think you realize how embarrasing this is for someone well versed in the the scientific method.

eppur si muove.

i know, i know. i arriving more than fashionably late to the netflix party. i never really thought it would be the thing for me, since i don’t even have a dvd player aside the from ibook. but despite my initial misgivings, it’s fascinating to see how it has subtly but quickly filled a need kris and i almost didn’t know we had.

typically, kris and i will hear about a movie, try and remember it, promptly forget about it and then wander aimlessly around the local video store trying to remember all the good movies we forgot about. inevitably we end up renting complete shite, because of our horrid memories and the whims of inventory management at the store.

but now, when we read a review or hear about a movie, we open up the laptop, which is always nearby thanks to the wonders of wireless, go to netflix, order the movie and then forget about it until it shows up in our mail slot.

you won’t get it until you do it.

nothing says spring like putting the

galaxie

on the road for the first time since fall. after a winter of
driving the oh-so-sensible jetta
tdi

station wagon, i almost forgot how much fun it is fire up the old
school badassedness that is a 1965
galaxie 500

.

i was surprised when it started, after judicious pumping of the gas
pedal [ aha! how many of you remember when you hand to pump the gas
pedal before starting a car? ]. i forgot to unhook the battery
before storing it for the winter and i was pleasantly surprised
when the i didn’t find the battery to be completely drained.

unfortunately i was foiled in my first fix-it project of the year.
the drivers side window won’t roll down anymore, which i thought
was a simple case of the crank being stripped. it didn’t take long
to determine that it wasn’t the crank and before i knew it i more
of the door disassembled than i planned and still couldn’t get at
the crank innards, which is hidden behind an acre of steel that
doesn’t want to budge. i’m fortunate to have the original shop
manual, but it only dedicates a paragraph to fixing the window
crank. i suspect i’m missing something blindingly obvious.

i rather enjoy getting greasy and finding an excuse to bang on
metal. perhaps i’ll have to start a new blog to chronicle the
trials and tribulations of restoring the galaxie to her original
glory.

i’m sure the neighbors will appreciate it if i put it up on blocks in the front yard.

i’m holding out for more evidence than idle speculation, but i’m sure conspiracy theorists everywhere are getting frothy over indications that SARS might be engineered in the lab:

“The virus, according to Academy of Medicine member Sergei Kolesnikov, is a cocktail of mumps and measles, whose mix could never appear in nature.

“We can only get that in a laboratory,” he told a conference in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, quoted by RIA Novosti news agency. ”

[ via ben hammersley ]

someone once said that there’s a time for runnin’ and there’s a time for drinkin’. i think a little grey goose is just the ticket for post run pain.

simon willison is using a “private personal wikki” for organization, which is something i’ve been contemplating for some time. i’ve been debating between moin moin and tavi and will probably go with tavi since it has mysql on the backside.

my life is littered with the remains of attempts at personal organization gone awry, but who knows. maybe the wikki way is the wright way.