I encountered poutine for the first time when I was up in Canadia last week. Want to hear about it? Check out my/our podcast: No Soap Radio. We’re up to episode #27, so if you’re not listening yet you’re missing out. Come on over and listen to me describe how poutine’s cheese curds should “squeak between your teeth.” Brrr….

Evaporation has ended.

Sigh…

It was one of the best journals out there, bar none. No matter how long or short he was writing, Steve could turn a phrase and hit a nerve like nobody else. The web will be a little duller now without his journal.

Fortunately, he has a new project on the horizon, so we have something new to look forward to. But I think I’ll always miss Evaporation a little bit.

Part of my job is to back up the Help Desk, so I get to see all the help email that come in. I’ve done tech support before, and if there’s one thing it teaches you, it’s that people are stupid. Witness the following email that just came in:

“We are getting kicked out of (your software) after about 20 minutes. Are you having others with the same problem?”

Our software is designed to log you out after 20 minutes of inactivity. It’s a security feature. It tells you it’s doing this. You get two pop-up messages warning you about it: one tells you you’re going to be logged out in 2 minutes if you don’t do something, then after you’ve been logged out another window pops up telling you that you’ve been logged out and why. So it’s not like there aren’t any clues to what’s happening.

But still, Genius up there wants to know if there’s a problem. Yes, in fact there is, and there’s a name for it. You’re experiencing a PEBCAK error: Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard. There’s also the ID-10-T error, which also applies. Pick one. Or both.

People are stupid.

I just read the book The Google Story, so I’ve got Google on the brain lately and I’ve been playing with all their toys. Here’s what Googlism thinks about Pie:

pie is on your plate
pie is an awesome site
pie is from mars
pie is an instant hi
pie is the stuff of legends
pie is an old favorite with a
pie is special 07/17/02
pie is a great way to use season’s last tomatoes
pie is speedy comfort food
pie is based on the fault/failure model
pie is way overdone
pie is gooood
pie is sliced
pie is the best pie?
pie is dan
pie is not a crime
pie is goooood
pie is proof
pie is worth one million hryvnyas?
pie is rich and nutty
pie is kosher
pie is numero uno
pie is the real thing
pie is left ever so humble
pie is the limit
pie is speccie
pie is good
pie is supposed to look like
pie is perfect with citrus at its peak
pie is sliced america’s growing concentration of wealth by edward n
pie is precision interface electronics
pie is brimmin’ with lemon flavor
pie is cherry by rex
pie is an instant hit
pie is the stuff of legends desserts at katie?s cafe are good enough to make a grown man cry
pie is the staff of life
pie is lean on fat
pie is an old favorite with a new twist the traditional thanksgiving meal
pie is missing
pie is hot and sweet
pie is completely baked
pie is special by the culinary institute
pie is a great way to use season’s last tomatoes thursday
pie is speedy comfort food thursday
pie is a winner
pie is sliced” the american prospect no
pie is a file renaming utility that extracts the camera information from the raw
pie is sliced>
pie is irrational
pie is about miss america
pie is a squar
pie is the best pie?
pie is shrinking
pie is good i am feeling so loved right now
pie is really made of
pie is worth one million hryvnyas?
pie is never free
pie is great
pie is truly a universal pleasure to be savored and enjoyed by people from all walks of life
pie is an unoffical off
pie is a dessert delicacy
pie is delicious warm
pie is chilled and served with fresh rasp
pie is out before disposing of properly eventually
pie is a rather straightforward technique
pie is the real thing by melissa castleman for the camera
pie is a berry worth winner
pie is a lattice
pie is a 10″ two crust pie made with iqf northern spy apples blended with a sugar
pie is a quality pan our heavy duty aluminum pie pans are commercial quality pans guaranteed to provide
pie is the bomb because
pie is a delightful lighthearted gross
pie is a dirty whore
pie is never pretty; the writer may have been referring to the wrinkles
pie is different things to different people
pie is usually reconstructed as having had three series of stop consonants
pie is baked
pie is connected to the following things
pie is connected to because
pie is approximately equal to 3
pie is intended for importing a list of scattered points
pie is an american classic by annette gooch with cherry pie commemorating his reputation for honesty and the “george washington pie” his
pie is as high as an elephant’s eye the pie is as high as an elephant’s eye $9
pie is lisa loeb’s best work to date
pie is done when the pie is bubbling around edges and it rises
pie is an expression
pie is a special place
pie is an outstanding restaurant
pie is certainly worth another look

It’s been awhile since I posted a real entry here, hasn’t it? And y’know what? I’m okay with that. Usually I start feeling guilty when I haven’t posted for awhile, I start feeling pressure to write something, to put up an entry. And I guess I am this time too, only this time it’s just to post about how I’m not posting.

But there may still be a few of you checking in to see if I talked about you post-Journalcon. So I’ll wrap that up like this: I met a lot of people that I liked, was exposed to a lot of journals I hadn’t read, I got to see people I haven’t seen in a long time, and I really don’t have anything bad to say about anyone. Yeah, even I’m disappointed at that. And I’m sorry to damn anyone else by omission, but for me the high point of the whole thing was meeting Xeney-Beth. I think she rocks. So there’s your J-con wrap-up.

As for the blog… Well, hmm… I’ll keep it going, certainly, but for right now I’m just not feeling the love for it. I’ll keep posting the View From Here series because I think it’s fun, but the writing of clever entries (or the non-clever ones that try too hard — or not hard enough) just isn’t there for me right now. And I’m okay with that. I’ll post ’em when they hit me, but I’m not going to worry about it when they don’t.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not retiring the Lunchroom. I’m just not thinking about it as much lately. Most of my creative Internets-type energy lately is going into my No Soap Radio podcast. That’s where you should go for your Chuck-fix. And as an added bonus, you’ll get a Beth-fix there, too.

And maybe that’s why the Lunchroom is taking a backseat to No Soap: because I’m doing it with Beth. As much as I love playing with new gadgetry and geeking out over new Internets technologies and listening to the sound of my own voice, I think it’s the talking with Beth that I enjoy most about doing the podcast. After ten years of marriage, we’ve gotten very comfortable with each other, to the point where we maybe take each other for granted a little, maybe spend time together by proximity but not necessarily by contact. But doing the podcast… We sit down and we talk. We spend time with each other. We make each other laugh. We’re together. I really enjoy that. It’s an unexpected bonus, but it makes doing the podcast far more fun and rewarding than the geekery of it all that I had in mind when I started.

I’m having fun talking with my wife. Who knew?

So come on over to No Soap Radio and check out this whole podcasting thing. Stick some Beth or Chuck in your ear and enjoy.

Finally, at 1:15 a.m., I can upload these pictures and write this View From Here entry.

Can I take a second to talk about what total shit the hotel’s wireless connection was in the lobby this afternoon? Yes, I think I can. Well, it sucked. I’d connect, fire up my Flickr uploader, tag all the pictures I was uploading, write notes for each one, click “upload” … and I’d be offline. Again and again and again. Cursing was involved. I think I scared a few journalizers in the vicinity. I eventually gave up. Now that the evening’s fesitivities are complete and I’m back in my room, now I succeed. Go me.

And how about those festivities? In one room of JournalCon there was much karaoke loudness and off-tune-ness and drinking and carousing and having of fun, and in the other room was me and several piles of poker chips. Alone. Because, you see, I was the “alternate activity” for those who don’t karaoke. But it all worked out. People came trickling over and I started teaching them how to play Hold ‘Em, and other people came to watch and then join in, and more people came over and … well, we had a full table and a lot of fun and I think maybe I got a few of the ladies hooked on Hold ‘Em.

And speaking of the ladies… At one point there was just me and seven women all playing poker together — Beth included — and I cracked a joke. “Hey, it’s just one guy and seven women playing poker. Who’s up for strip poker???”

Crickets. Chirping. And then an uncomfortable moment when I thought maybe one or two of them were going to throw something at me. That joke, it did not go over well. Man, talk about your tough rooms. Also, we didn’t play strip poker.

And should we talk about Beth giving poker advice to my opponents and they handed me my ass and took me down to the felt? Three times? No, let’s not.

But you’re here for the View From Here, aren’t you? Well, here you go, then, the View from San Diego:

And the Room In Here:

Greetings from San Diego, site of this year’s JournalCon. Beth is here with me and we’re staying at the “fabulous” Westin Horton Plaza with a “fabulous” view of the Morgan Stanley office across the street at 1st and E Streets. Stand by tomorrow for a “View From Here” picture when there’s enough daylight for a decent shot.

So, yeah. JournalCon. First the snark, then the nice, shall we?

Organizationally, this thing is some kind of fucked up. Being handed my registration packet when I arrived gave me my first opportunity to learn what panels are being offered. They’ve had a website up for months teasing what the panels might be, but never actually got around to telling us. We participants are learning by reading the program, which surely must have been printed far enough in advance to have allowed posting the information contained therein to the web. But it’s a small quibble. But not so small that I don’t mention it, apparently.

And the opening night festivities… There was a JournalCon dinner at 6:00 p.m. that we missed because we didn’t get in until 7:00. But that’s on us, so it’s cool. But then the gang decided to adjourn to a nearby bar for drinks and merriment. That’s cool too. But there’s a perfectly good sports bar adjoining the hotel that we all passed on our way out to walk three or four blocks into the heart of the gaslight district to a bar that charged a $5 cover and was so fucking loud that I challenge anyone to have any kind of meaningful conversation inside without resorting to sign language. But again: a quibble. Just because I’m a lazy, half-deaf, cheap-ass bastard doesn’t mean everyone else has to be.

And then there’s this internet connection here in the room that is Pissing. Me. Off. First, it’s trying to charge me for another connection when I’m logging on with my laptop after Beth signed up for it on hers. Then the friggin’ ethernet cord wants to drop my connection unless I manipulate my laptop in such a way that it’s perched on the edge of the desk and I’m doing a naked handstand with Beth’s panties on my head and holding the cord straight with my toes. And finally, every freakin’ site on the mother-freakin’ internet comes smoking down the pipe here like greased lightning except my site, which crawls like Michael Jackson’s new boyfriend. Fuckingpieceofshit.

But let’s focus on the positive, shall we? We’re having fun. Against our natures, even. We both came here suffused with ennui about the whole thing, very neutral about coming and in fact leaning toward staying home. We were going to hate everyone and be bored and it was going to suck and etc. Instead, we’re liking everyone and having fun and having a good time and etc. Go figure.

But my biggest annoyance of the night has been Beth. No, not my Beth, another one, Xeney Beth. Way back when in the dawn of time, when dinosaurs walked the earth and we old-timers did a thing we called “journaling” — which was where we wrote personal-type essays longer than 26 words like the kids do today and call it “blogging” — there were two journals that caught my eye and attention and got me hooked and started me down the road to what you’re reading today. One was a journal whose title claimed that there is no one who has any knowledge on any subject (and how’s that for coy?), written by a woman who turned out to be a dilettante of epic proportions and a snooty bitch to boot, and the other was “Dear Jackie Robinson,” written by this other Beth.

Well. Dear Jackie Robinson totally sucked me in and was one of the best, most personal things I had ever read on the web — and remains so today. And the Beth behind it became very popular in the journaling world, and rightly so. But she wore her heart on her online sleeve and so attracted a lot of nut jobs and flack from said nut jobs and reacted by taking her site on and offline with an almost yo-yo-like frequency and getting into online fights with them. And I eventally stopped reading her because of the drama and the perceived mood swings and I started thinking of her as a Drama Queen and started to kind of not like her. Because I’m open-minded like that.

But I met Beth in person tonight. And, damn it, I really like her. I mean, like, viscerally like her. A lot. That personality that sucked me in with Dear Jackie Robinson was right there in person and it sucked me right back in again. I didn’t get to talk to her for very long, but the few minutes we did talk erased all the conclusions I had drawn and impressions I had formed and made her and all her perceived foibles real as a person to me. And I just really like her as a person. And that annoys me, because I don’t like to be wrong. And I’m admitting it here and making such a thing about it because I kind of feel like I owe her this honesty.

So Beth, if you’re reading this, you’re okay in my book. And I hope I’m okay in yours.

I know you’re all avidly listening to the No Soap Radio podcast and I know you’re on the edge of your seats waiting for us to release the next episode. Thing is, we haven’t recorded it yet. But we’re going to get right on that — tonight, maybe, or maybe Friday. Definitely by this weekend. But maybe tonight. Maybe.

But we need your help. I want to include listener voicemails in the podcast and for that to happen we need to actually receive a few. We do have one at this point, from the eloquent El Guapo, but we need more. We need yours. So do me a favor and call the Soap line right now at (206) 339-SOAP (7627) and leave us a message.

I know, I know: you’re asking yourself right now, “But Chuck, what should I say in my message?” Well, obviously you could tell us how fabulous we are, that’s a given. But if you need more than that, try leaving a question for the Magic Date Ball. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a dating question (Personally, my dating advice is always “Dump her!”), it just has to be a yes or no question. Or maybe you could anonymously reveal a secret about yourself. Or confess to a murder. Or… Well, hell, I don’t know, it’s your message. But just call us, okay? We’ll stick your message in the podcast and make you a stah, baby, a stah.

(206) 339-SOAP. Give us a call.

First we did journals: Stitches in Time and chuck’stake.
Then we did blogs: Diary of a SubUrban Housewife and the pie-filled lunchroom you’re currently enjoying.
Now we’ve gone podcast with No Soap Radio.

Would there be any content on the internets without us??? I think not.

Anyway, check it out. You can subscribe to the feed here, or you can find us in iTunes.

Woo.

A few entries back I talked about how I am the Computer God for my family. I am, however, a god who gets no respect.

I should preface this by saying that what I’m about to bitch about doesn’t just happen with my family. But it happened with my family this time. Hence the bitching.

Listen up, computer neophytes. When I bestow my blessed wisdom upon you, what the fuck are you thinking when you question me? When you decide you’re smarter than me? When you try to second guess me? Are you out of your tiny little pea-brained minds???

Time and time again, it happens: Someone needs help installing something or moving something or copying something or de-oopsing something or doing some dirt-basic bit of computer usage that is light years beyond their personal capabilities. And they call me for help — but never just when the problem happens, when they’re at their computer, with the error on the screen. No, they have to wait until 10:30 at night, when they’re in the car on the way to a I Don’t Know What The Fuck To Do meeting or something and they simply don’t have time to talk right now but could I tell them how to fix it in 30 seconds while they’re only half paying attention and trying to change lanes while looking for a CD in the back seat? And I do tell them in 30 seconds or less how to fix it, and they hang up, and then they call me 10 days later with the problem still unaddressed but wondering if maybe this other brill-fucking-iant idea they came up with all by themselves to fix it a different way (that won’t even come close to working and will in fact fuck things up even worse) will work.

Because, you know, maybe I — the guy they call every time they’re having computer trouble, the guy who always fixes their messes, the guy who talks them through whatever the issue is when they call when I’m having dinner, the guy they acknowledge as being the family Computer God — maybe I lost my fucking mind and went stupid and they know better than me after all. And they’re running their I-know-better-than-you idea by me, the guy they know better than, to see if they really do know better than me!!!

Un-fucking-believable. I help them and they turn around and question me. The fools are tugging on Superman’s cape. They know not what they do. Pearls before swine. Etcetera.

Sometimes I just want to smite them.