I’ve only just discovered H-Net, a collection of mailing lists and websites about various subjects in the humanities. These looked like they might be interesting – to me, at least.

• H-Antisemitism
  
• H-DC – Washington DC History and Culture
  
• H-Disability – H-Net Network on History of Disability
  
• H-Frauen-L – Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe
  
• H-Holocaust – Holocaust Studies
  
• H-Judaic – Judaica, Jewish History
  
• H-Maryland Maryland History and Culture
  
• H-SAWH – Women and Gender in the U.S. South
  
• H-Turk – Turkish Studies
  
• H-Urban – Urban History
  

Okay, what is with the use of toilet seat covers? The people who use these things must be germ-phobic or have really delicate buttocks. Usually when I enter a public restroom, I check the toilet first. If it’s very dirty, I use another stall. If it’s just a little damp, I wipe it up – not that I understand how women manage to spray all over the place anyway, and then walk away without taking care of it. But before I plunk myself down, I tidy up a bit.


Even if I didn’t, though, my ass is not that thin-skinned. Butts are not entirely clean. They stay in your panties all the time, but that doesn’t mean they’re immaculate. They’re also easily washed. I’m not afraid of getting diseases from a toilet seat – if there were something on the seat that carried disease, I’d have wiped it up. So why do so many of the women on my floor feel compelled to use these things? Even worse, they leave them on the toilet seat or in the sanitary napkin dispenser. These things are lightweight, biodegradable, and are supposed to be flushed after use.


Good grief, people, quit worrying so much about your pert little bums. Sit on the toilet seat and be done with it. (Then again, if it hadn’t been for the existence of these things, Negative Space 6 would never have come to be.)

So a while back I convinced my office to let me use Eudora instead of Z-Mail. I downloaded the free version, which of course comes with ads. Usually they’re fairly unobtrusive – ads for Eudora itself, or other software – geeky things like that. Today I was surprised to see an ad for Paddlers.com, which was immediately followed by an ad for Feathercraft. How on earth did it know I’m into kayaking?! Even if I’d filled out one of those demographic profiles (which I probably did) I doubt it got more specific than “sports” or “water sports” – and it’s not like I’ve e-mailed anybody about paddling, either. (If I had and Eudora had picked up on it, that would presumably be a serious violation of privacy laws.) I just find it neat that the program actually picked out ads I genuinely wanted to see.

Morning squirrel count: 16



It’s surprising that we’ve been so busy all day, because our main customer service number has been down since early Tuesday evening. This morning managed to send out an e-mail to almost all of our customers – just under 300 because some didn’t have e-mail addresses available – and only received something like 30 bounced messages. Of course not everybody is getting the e-mail (some organizations have more than one person who schedules calls) so we are still having to soothe people who are mad that they’ve been getting a busy signal for so long. The problem turns out to be the equivalent of long-distance slamming: our customer service number used to be hosted by AT&T, but we switched it over to Cavalier when we got rid of all our AT&T circuits. Suddenly AT&T decided to yank it back – even though it’s our number and they shouldn’t be able to – and apparently it’s going to take a couple of days to resolve all this. It’s a mess.

Don’t let the bizarre mix of normal and italicized text scare you – Graphic Goo is a good site for all web graphics designers. The site bills itself as a newsletter, but in addition to articles and interviews it also offers tutorials and free downloads with each issue. It’s appropriate for designers of all skill levels, too.

The elevators in the Metro system are well-known for breaking down and screwing up on a regular basis. In the Post article published after the most recent incident, mention is made of another incident two weeks ago, wherein a man trapped in a dead elevator had to be attached to a harness and pulled through a roof hatch and the elevator shaft to safety. WMATA compensated him by adding $50 to his SmarTrip card. Right, sure, after a traumatic two-hour ordeal, riding Metro even more is just what I’d want to do!

I seem to be a few days late with this, but it looks like most of the Dykewriters have done it so I’ll participate too. (I’ve probably answered these questions in some of the other surveys and quizzes I’ve done, ah well.)

A – Animals/Pets: Four cats, ack
B – Best Friend: My girlfriend
C – Cohabitants: My girlfriend and the four cats (!)
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Here’s the Thursday Threesome, “Clue” edition.

Onesome. Miss Scarlett, what makes your face turn red?
I love getting compliments. When somebody says I’m pretty or sweet or nice or sexy, I giggle and blush.
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Today’s 2000days question – Do you know how to type, and if so, how fast?

Well, that seems like a kind of silly question to me. If I weren’t typing, how would I be responding? (I guess there’s always voice recognition.) But yes, I can touch-type, I’ve been doing it since I was a young kid. My mother bought the original version of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing years ago, and currently I type around 90-100wpm on a regular basis.