After hearing the tales and drama surrounding the blogger formerly known as PittGirl from other bloggers, family members, clergy, etc. I have this to say: I don’t get it. She’s a popular blogger in Pittsburgh, she has a vendetta against pidgeons, and she always has something snarky to say about Pittsburgh’s mayor. From what I’ve read from and about her, that’s pretty much it. Apart from finding the pidgeon hatred disturbing, I have nothing against any of that. I’m not saying that PittGirl isn’t talented or likeable, just overrated. But hey, so is this blog, according to Google Analytics. I underestimated the attraction to blog posts about moka pots.

Now for something I stole, edited for people who still get offended by the f-word:

How f***ing dare anyone out there make fun of PittGirl after all she has been through.!

She lost her aunt, she went through a divorce. She had two f***ing kids.

Her husband turned out to be a user, a cheater, and now she’s going through a custody battle. All you people care about is….. readers and making money off of her.

SHE’S A HUMAN!  What you don’t realize is that PittGirl is making you all this money and all you do is write a bunch of crap about her.

She hasn’t performed on stage in years. Her song is called “give me more” for a reason because all you people want is MORE! MORE-MORE, MORE: MORE!.

LEAVE HER ALONE! You are lucky she even performed for you BASTARDS!
LEAVE PITTGIRL ALONE! Please.

Perez Hilton talked about professionalism and said if PittGirl was a professional she would’ve pulled it off no matter what.

Speaking of professionalism, when is it professional to publicly bash someone who is going through a hard time.

Leave PittGirl Alone Please…. !
Leave PittGirl alone!…right now!….I mean it.!

Anyone that has a problem with her you deal with me, because she is not well right now.

LEAVE HER ALONE!

Thank you, Chris Crocker, you strange individual.

So today the FedEx man came to drop off our two new phones, found that we were not home, left a note on the door, and went on his merry way. Luckily, I don’t drive all that much and thus didn’t mind the drive to Plum to pick up the package in the least.

The new phones in use are the Samsung SCH-I760 Smartphone and the LG enV2. Both phones come with QWERTY keypads, as well as the usual array of usual new cellphone goodies. So far, I’ve installed Evernote Portable, Twobile, and Traveling Blogger—a mobile blogging application that supports XML-RPC.

There will be more updates to come just as soon as I find some spare time & energy.

1. Sell “Get Rich Quick” Schemes.
2. Market “Get Rich Quick” schemes like a crazy internet marketer does.
3. Profit!

Artist: Trout Fishing In America
Album: Big Trouble - Buy

Sing Along!

A Sultan sat on his oriental mat, in his harem in downtown Persia, He took a sip of coffee, just a drip, and he said to his servant Kersia, “Ah, curse ya, curse ya, curse ya! That’s the worst cup of coffee in Persia!”

Cause… All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot, I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot. Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me! If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

“Ya got it? well join right in!”

In days of old when knights and men were bold, and whiskey was much cheaper, Burt Turpin rode to a coffee shop and showed his pistols to the keeper, He said, “Stand and deliver! Can’t you see that I’m all aquiver?”

Cause… All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot, I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot. Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me! If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

When Bonaparte found that he was in the cart and he lost that Waterloo fight, He gave his sword to Wellington, my Lord, and he said “Those British can’t half fight! Now you’ve had your Waterloo, sir, tell me what am I having with you, sir?”

Cause… All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot, I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot. Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me! If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

“Well, we didnt exactly expect you to sing along with that last part since it was in French. This is your last chance, however it is the people’s magazine version of this song, and it goes like this:”

Now King Solomon and his queen would carry on, so we heard in the ancient scandals, He bought her lots of silver coffee pots with diamond legs and handles, And said the Queen of Sheba, “I’d rather have any old tea-bag.”

Cause…everybody! All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot, I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot. Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me! If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

(speeds up here)

All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot, I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot. Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me! If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

All I want is a proper cup of coffee, made in a proper copper coffee pot, I may be off my dot, but I want a proper coffee in a proper copper pot. Iron coffee pots and tin coffee pots, they are no use to me! If I can’t have a proper cup of coffee in a proper copper coffee pot, I’ll have a cup of tea!

Dan Lyons, (aka the Fake Steve Jobs) talks at Google about being the fake Steve Jobs. Long video, but entirely worth it.

Via ProBlogger

Every Veteran’s day, since 2004, I give thanks that I no longer play in a marching band. Those parades always sucked even more than the Christmas parades.

The moka pot makes surprisingly good espresso, and I highly recommend for anyone looking for an economical way to get espresso. However, it is also good to get a milk frother with it.

I am currently unsure of the correct frother to get, given the variety of available products. Personally, I want one that is very similar to my espresso maker being that it must not require an outlet and it must be relatively portable. I’d like to take it camping. That’s right.

The cheapest item I found is available from Ikea, and can be found used for as little as $3. It takes 2 AA batteries. There are a bunch of these types of frothers around, and they’re pretty much all alike. Some come with metal stands. Woohoo!

 Next up are the glass and metal press-pitcher models, available for $9+ These work similar to french press coffee makers.

The last type of frother I’ll be covering is the stovetop steamer you see here on the left, available for $60+. The premise of this is really simple. You put water in it, put it on the stove, it makes steam, you put the tip of the wand into a cup of milk, you get hot foamy milk.

Tip: When choosing a milk, skim milk froths the quickest, but whole milk is the traditional choice among coffee aficionados.

All of these milk frothers can be had within your budget. With a combination of a $5 moka pot and a $3 frothers, you can rival the quality of a $300 espresso maker and far surpass the quality of any cheap-o steam-driven espresso machine. You’ll have rich and delicious espresso and moist, foamy milk, and a couple extra bucks to buy a coffee grinder with.

Today never ended. I met with clients, then went up to a house in Hermitage that DBF is helping a friend’s mother sell. The realtor hadn’t been to the house in 2 months, and neither had the people DBF hired to finish the painting or cut the grass. The windows to the house were still hanging open. In the words of Myron Cope, “What a debacle!”

After dealing with the absentee realtor, we went out with another of DBF’s friends, and DBFF’s daughter. I found a nice moka pot for $5. I’ll have details tomorrow on how they are at making stovetop espresso. I found a 1. liter carafe over at the Goodwill store for $1.50, a nifty iHome pillow for $3 off, and a tin of Bentley’s Jasmine white tea for $4 . Good fun is tasteless. Good tea is tasty.

DBF napped and I drove on the way home. For the record, I don’t like how VW golfs handle, and his is a diesel with a temperamental 5-speed manual transmission to boot. I only stalled it twice!

I’ve gotten into the habit of, while driving down crosstown boulevard, to take a careful look at the parkway ahead of me and, if I see three lanes of solid congestion, I take the boulevard of the allies home through Schenley Park. It’s 11 and I’m tired. The melatonin must be kicking in.

So I was just about to say that Vista isn’t all that bad, but something interesting happened. My PC froze up for about five minutes, the hard drive went crazy, and the half-finished blog entry I had started disappeared. So I figure that whatever is bad for me may as well be bad for a conglomerate’s PR: Windows Vista is no more reliable than Windows ME. I will retract that statement after Microsoft sends me a refund. Not a refund for the software license, a refund for the hours I spent using it, at a rate of $10/hr. Anybody want to get in on this and go class-action style?

Actually, both my laptop and my PC crashed. The desktop crashed twice… in the past half hour. The problem is that I have to choose between Linux - software that was put together by a bunch of unpaid professionals, Windows - software that was apparently put together by paid amateurs, and Mac OS 10 - software that does exactly what Steve Jobs says it will. There really isn’t a win anywhere in there.

NaBloPoMo - So, being more behind than usual on my cyberculture news, I forgot that NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo started. Also, I think we need a new word for acronyms that occur in camel case like the aforementioned events, NaDruWriMi, EvDO, etc. I think we should call these camel-case acronyms Acrocamels!

Lastly, Blogfest 12 was a hit. I met a lot of fabulous people, and will have to dedicate some time tomorrow to stalking them.

Sprint has made some headway since the Sprint/Nextel merger. This streaming service with Pandora is a good example:

How it works

To start you off, Pandora is a great free audio service that learns about your audio tastes as you listen to music then rate and bookmark said music. Simply go to the website, type your favorite artist in the text box they give you, and Pandora collects a list of similar songs and plays them back at you. If you don’t like a song, give it a thumbs down and you’ll never hear it again. If you love a song, give it a thumbs up; you’ll get more.

For $3/month, you can now get your Pandora goodness through your phone–and use it as an mp3 player with the world’s largest library.

How Much It Costs

Like I said–the service is $3/month. This is…

• $3/month less than Yahoo! Unlimited
• $10/month less than Sirius
• at least $7/month cheaper than XM (that’s if you buy 3 years at a time)
• $7/month cheaper than Napster (basic, not unlimited).

…and basically a good buy provided Sprint and Pandora stay in business.

Conclusion

I hope the GPhone gets something like this!