this is stevenf.com

Today you may notice a change to the layout of my blog. I got rid of the sidebar entirely and just went with one strip o’ content down the middle. Why? I don’t know. Don’t ask me these questions.

All the static page stuff that was in that sidebar, including links to my side projects and assorted notes (like when I was trying to debug Back To My Mac) can now be found in the “wiki” section, which you’ll find a link to at the very top of the page.

But the more interesting part is how I’m maintaining that wiki.

It’s a sync’ed VoodooPad document that I “web export” into a Dropbox-managed folder. Dropbox is also running on the web server (conveniently an Xserve), and I symlinked from my htdocs to the Dropbox sub-folder where the VoodooPad export lives.

So, I can export from VP, and the site updates a few seconds later.

A bit of an experiment, and I can’t promise it’ll last more than 3 days (like anything else around here), but now that it’s set up, it seems pretty sturdy. Just thought I’d throw that one out there in case it tickled anyone else’s fancy.

The bakery is one of the only places open in the food court early, so I order a banana muffin and tea. The young lady working the counter is very courteous and friendly, and not the usual bitter troglodyte you expect to get in this sort of transaction. It’s so surprising in fact, it catches me a bit off-guard.

“How’s your day going so far?” she asks. It’s scripted patter, but there’s at least a veneer of genuine interest.

“Pretty good,” which is my scripted two word answer for “well, there are a lot of things in my life I’d like to accomplish but haven’t yet, but I’m here in America and I can order tea and muffins of my own free will, so it’s not all bad.

As we are transacting, a young man with dark hair, a severe expression, and a black hoodie adorned with patches and spikes shows up for work at the bakery. He wears a little metaphorical storm cloud like you would wear a necklace or hat.

“What is this?” he asks the nice lady, gesturing down the hall.

“Oh, it’s for the Apple Store. The new iPhones come out today.”

“All these people… are here for iPhones?”

“Yeah. Some of them got here at 6 AM!”

A brief pause.

“Disgusting.” He disappears through the kitchen doors.

“Ha ha!” says the nice lady with a horrified expression, as her perfect customer service experience zeppelin goes all Hindenburg with that one word, then turning back to me, “You’re not in the line, right?”

“No.”

I tell her this lie because she has been nice to me and I don’t want her to feel bad about that bit of unpleasantness. And to be honest, I do feel maybe a teensy bit disgusted with myself. I mean, it’s not going to stop me or anything, but you can’t deny that when you are on the outside, buying muffins, looking in, the spectacle has a certain ugliness to it.

“Have a nice day!”

And so I did.