I found a new job using CronyJobs. I’ll be the head of the new agency which manages the FDA, FDIC, FEMA, FBI, FAA, FCC, FEC, FASAB, FDLP, FTC, and FERC.

Thanks to Seth, Third Son of Albert I now have a name for the new hamster: Debbie.

S3SoA: margaret beau and jessica call hamsters
S3SoA: “debbies”

Blogging friend Zeke got the ball rolling and cracked the whip on the whole “SantaBlogger” idea. Steve from Stupid Church People drew my name and recommended a cool cage for my new hamster.

However, I’d bought her a new cage when I got her, so in the vein/spirit of his gift (and overlooking the whole “I’m an unorganized/undisciplined slob” angle of his post [which is not untrue]), I bought the new hamster some cool stuff:

I bought her a CritterTrail Expansion Kit, a heavy food dish, some treats, and some bed fluff.

Hamsters need a heavy food dish, otherwise they’ll tip it over and spill crap everywhere and that bed fluff… well, you’d think it was the same as crack to hamsters.

The cage I got is supposed to rotate, but during assembly I managed to bend it out of shape or screw up somehow, so it won’t turn. This left me with a hamster in need of a wheel on which to run…

…so the accessories pack worked quite nicely for that. Look at that happy hamster!

If you’d like to see a crappy video of my hamster running around in her wheel, click that there link (and hopefully this doesn’t get picked up as a “video blog” or vBlog or whatever the hell they’re called these days).

There are others like unto myself.

My new hamster, who I’m still trying to think of a name for.

Elsbeth has moved on to the great hamster wheel in the sky.

peacocks in the video rain

you can tell a cable from a tourniquet
when 10,000 12-year-olds mouth along
tiny broken operatic sounds dissolved
a loss that could not be found
I know your mother
I watched her watching you
sequined 8-year-old cowboy
she knew exactly what to do

This song has been officially “stuck in my head” for three days now… mostly the chorus and the “sequined 8-year-old cowboy” line.

I’ve got a Golden Ticket to create a blog on WordPress.com! Woot!

As life is wont to do, however, I’ve been given something great that I don’t really have a use for. My current hosting provider gives me all I need to install and use the very outstanding WordPress to do whatever blogging voodoo I wish to do… so…

I’d like to offer it to you if you have a use for it. If you don’t currently have a blog, or if you’d like to move off of Blogger.com or LiveJournal, well… I’d love to share, please ask. It expires in a week, so ask now!

Words fail me when I attempt to articulate my absolute jealous hatred of this 8-year-old kid. Damn him, damn him.

Today’s addition: Reverend.

You may now refer to me as Reverend Dan Tripp; The One True Reverend Dan Tripp; or if you’re into that whole brevity thing: Dan. I think it makes the most sense when put immediately before my first name. “Reverend The One True Dan Tripp” just doesn’t grab me. What are your thoughts on this?

I finally migrated my blog to WordPress, which I like a fair bit better than the software I was using before. It appears that WordPress is much better at dealing with comment spam, which was becoming quite the headache. While I really like Wordpress, I’m finding that the mechanism it uses to change categories (the import script imported everything into a “general” category since the previous blogging software didn’t support categories) is a bit tedious. So far, I’ve managed to categorize less than 20% of my blog. However, I’ll keep at it and once that’s done, it’s done.

There are a number of dead links and things I’ll need to tweak/fix, but WordPress is a great piece of software and I’m glad I’ve switched. The reality is that it’ll be easier to blog and get stuff up/out, so you may be hearing a bit more from me.

If you’re subscribed using one a Feedburner feed, you need to change nothing to receive my screeds and dispatches. If you’re using the old feed (the one that ends with “index.rdf”), then you probably aren’t seeing this in your aggregator… because you’ll want to use trippodd.com/?feed=rss2 instead.

I’ve had a fair number of things going on… there’s bubbling beneath the surface, though a majority of the things I’ve been up to are either not worth blogging about or not ready to share. I thought I’d send a shout out though, to let you know I’m still alive and kicking.

Do you love me?

No, I’m serious about this… do you?

If you do, then you’ll give me the money I need to go to Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp.

See, I knew I didn’t mean that much to you… (goes back into his shell).

No more stent, and I’m quite pleased about that. I was literally asked if I’d like to “keep it as a souvenir,” and y’all should be quite thankful that I said no, otherwise you’d be looking at a picture of it right now. I’m pretty damn happy to be rid of it.

This is a Public Service Announcement: Don’t Drink and FTP (or SCP)

I’d created a simple redirect script to use for a web domain that is currently a placeholder, and needed to upload it to the appropriate folder on my web server to make it work. Well, I did… but since I was a wee bit inebriated when I did it, I also managed to replace my main site’s index page with the redirect as well. Let this serve as a reminder that it’s unwise to Drink and FTP (or SCP).

I finally bought a serigraphy (screen printing) kit… and will be doing some prints on fabric soon*. This is kinda exciting to me… I’ve wanted to make my own t-shirts and stuff for quite a while, but have never just gotten around to it. Well, this is a good start.

I’ve been using the word “smorgasbord” frequently as of late. I’m not exactly sure why.

The recent usage of the word has evoked the following memory:

When I was a kid my grandmother used to come visit us regularly. She’d drive her white Volvo almost two hours, and would sometimes even pick me up from Ms. Whitehurst’s house. One of the places we used to go to eat when she visited was an all-you-can-eat restaurant called Sir George’s Smorgasbord.

It’s just a kind of random memory, but it’s kinda cool because I really dug my grandmother. She was an impressive human being… despite the truck-sized faults. Obviously the reason I loved her so was that we were very alike… though I’ve never been as impressive and I like to label my truck-sized faults “personality.”

This bit of wonderment is in front of the Church of God in a little town called Zillah. The church definitely needs to rename itself… to “The Church of God: Zillah.”

I just have to know if it’s anywhere near a town called “Moz.”

(Photo by Nathan Hull.)

Gene Scott has moved on. I remember watching him, fascinated that he was so open and blatant with his calls to get listeners on the phone to send him money to buy new horses. He’s the only televangelist who regularly swore on his show, and his audicty was inspiring.

In stark contrast to a statement that I read recently about podcasting not being a prime source for news, I learned of the passing of Gene Scott through OpenPodcast.com, in this very well produced podcast.

Hunter S. Thompson is gone.

Until I wrap my head around what I’ll need to do to add support for enclosures to the RSS feed tool I’m using, I’m going to use FeedBurner, which automatically detects a posted .mp3 and creates the appropriate bit of XML that a podcasting client like Doppler users. After switching to FeedBurner, Doppler picked up two of my podcasts without me having to modify anything. Apparently FeedBurner doesn’t currently support multiple podcasts in one post, but the obvious solution is to not post ‘em that way.

So, I guess that makes my podcast an “official” podcast… whatever that means.

If you’ve subscribed to my old RSS feed, you don’t need to update your aggregator. It’ll still be updated with new content, but it won’t work with a podcasting client (in terms of discovering and downloading the shows).

I’m going to go get some coffee and hang out at Barefoot for a while, then come home and do a quick podcast and take a nap.