Yikes! Did I miss a “List on the 3s?”

“List on the 3s” is my own personal meme. It involves me writing a list of some sort and posting it on a date which has a “3” in it. For example, August 30. Which has a “3” in it.  But as you may have discovered, I completely neglected my duties yesterday in posting my list. Which is bad. Very bad. But I have a good reason for postponing this list until today.

In fact, I have 8 of them.

Top 8 Reasons Shiny Neglected to Post a “List on the 3s” on August 30

8. I’m still mourning the split between Michael Bolton and Nicolette Sheridan, who were engaged after being together for 16 years. It’s a tough time for me when any long-term relationship ends.  But this one hit me extra-hard: You see, when they had started dating, it was one of those situations where when you saw them walking down the street, hand in hand, from the back — you couldn’t tell who was who.  Yes, they both graced us with their silky, long flowing blonde locks. And now? Well, people drift, I guess. Painful for all…

7.  I’m a total tool and I forgot. This is likely the most plausible reason there is. It’s a holiday weekend! (I mean, even though I’m working on Monday.) And I haven’t posted a real list from my computer for 17 days. These things happen…

6. I was too busy trying unsuccessfully to come up with an original list of “Little Known Facts about Gov. Sarah Palin.” If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll see that I came up with two of them on my own. They were rather funny, actually. Alas, there were only two of them. And two doesn’t make a “List on the 3s.”  Perhaps if I were to have a featured called “Silly, short paragraph on the 3s” it would have flown.

And if you don’t follow me on Twitter — why the heck not? You should. Really. I’m very entertaining apparently.

5.  I’ve been busy praying for “rain of biblical proportions” — so severe that it will disrupt the Republican Convention and prevent McCain from speaking. Never underestimate the power of prayer! But wait, you might be saying — isn’t that quite mean-spirited to do?  My answer: If it’s God’s will, then let it be so.

EDIT: My apologies. It wasn’t actually me praying for rain — it was actually Stuart Shepherd, director of digital media for Dr. James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” Ministry asking people to pray for this type of “torrential rain.” Oh — and he was looking for it to occur right when Obama was to speak in Denver last week, not McCain.   All I know is this: Hurricane Gustav has already caused quite a bit of damage in the West Indies, and it’s headed towards Gulfline coast. I really hope that the storm subsides significantly at sea to prevent more damage.

Speaking of which — this past week’s monsoon and flooding in Bihar, India has killed hundreds of people and destroyed 250,000 homes — showing not only the power that nature has, but also what occurs when, like in New Orleans, the strength of retaining walls and embankment systems are not built to acceptable standards.  Please think of those here and around the globe who require assistance during this time…

4.  I’ve been spending a lot of time transferring items from an old laptop running Windows XP to a new one running Windows Vista. This serves as an update for some of you, I guess: my wife socKs’s laptop computer was getting quite old — it’s nearing it’s fifth birthday in the next two months. And although it still runs most of the time, the (second) motherboard has started to get a bit wonky.  The power cord doesn’t make a connection unless you jiggle it thoroughly. And the thing is loud. And hot! I mean, even the loud fan inside the computer blows out more unbearably hot air than Bill O’Reilly. Oh — and the thing just shuts down unexpectedly every so often. Thus — time for a new computer.

We went with a Dell XPS series. They had some wonderful reviews, and we were able to get a good deal. It comes with Windows Vista, however — and I decided to give that a try rather than spending money to downgrade it to XP. So far it’s working quite well. It’s quiet and cool.  The screen is nice and big. The challenges have been navigating the Windows Vista structure which is different from Windows XP (which I was able to do successfully) and getting iTunes to work identically on the new machine (meaning having her iPhone be able to sync up with it without losing anything), which we’re still working on. But still — that’s taken up quite a lot of time. But it’s all nice and shiny and stuff!

3. I was trying to figure out a way to get a specific random YouTube video into my next post, and I couldn’t figure out a way to offhandedly mention it. My mind works in such bizarre ways at times, where I find something so witty or so funny that I need some kind of build up to it for it to actually be taken as anything but a random, out-of-place thought.  And when something occurred at work which prompted my co-worker to pull up a certain YouTube video, I knew I had to have the proper context in a blog entry.

I still haven’t found that context yet. And it’s been taxing me so much that I’ve been blocked from writing any further blog entries until it comes to me. But I will prevail.   I think I’m on a brainstorming roll now — and when I start moving in this train of thought, they won’t be nothing that’s going to break my stride. Nobody’s going to slow me down.

I’ve got to keep on moving…

Direct YouTube Link

2. Last night I almost fell asleep during the second of two episodes of The Middleman. This may seem a bit trivial to some of you who may have some questions: (a) why would this impede me from blogging? (b) why couldn’t I have just blogged during the show? (c) why was it so important that I catch up on this show? and, of course (d) What the hell is The Middleman?

Let’s start with (d): The Middleman is a television series which began this summer on ABC Family.  Don’t let the network fool you — this is a funny, racy show which appears at 10:00pm ET and PT / 9:00 CT and MT.  It has some elements of X-Files, Men in Black, Alias and… well, pretty much any other show there is. The subtle nods to other television shows and movies is also pretty awesome — in a very Spaced sort of way. Seriously — it’s worth a viewing or two or thirteen.

And even through this — I started dozing off at the end of the second episode we watched — which was actually a great one which featured Kevin Sorbo as a crimefighter who was cryogenically frozen in the 60s and revived in the present. (Remind you of anything?)  I still loved the episode, though, but simply couldn’t muster enough strength afterwards to blog.

1. I had just finished a new meme: The “Shiny’s Vacation Week Without Blogging 2008.” Of course you’ll see a blog entry from last Sunday, the 24th. But that was really just a placeholder saying that I had blogged elsewhere instead, so it didn’t count. It was a tough decision to make — should I keep with the new meme? Or go with the old if they conflict?  And I decided to forgo the list yesterday so that I could keep the new meme intact. You’re welcome.

I’ll post another list today since, after all, it’s the 31st…