Thanks ever so much to those who phoned, left comments in their LJ, left comments in my LJ, recorded themselves singing and e-mailed an MP3 to me or sent a celebratory program for my birthday. (The Ia[i]ns were particularly well-represented.) You're terribly kind. It was a really lovely day; it's particularly wonderful to speak to people who I haven't spoken to for years, or haven't even spoken to at all before. I don't know why more people don't do this; it's a tremendous way of getting lots of little pleasant surprises. It's certainly not a gimmick that I want to restrict to myself.
Sometimes I feel it's a bit demanding to get people to phone me on their money, despite my efforts to be able to pay for the calls; I guess that people will put themselves out for you a bit on their birthday. (Compare with
Tomorrow sees the intermittent-but-recently-annual Herald Hunt (pre-1998, Tropic Hunt) in Miami, an afternoon-long complicated puzzle hunt game, partly written by Dave Barry. (Wonder if there are clues on his blog?) Best of luck to
I got rather a chuckle from an article about the ten geekiest hobbies. This inspires a poll:
Just how many of the ten geekiest hobbies have I taken part in over the last ten years?
Bonus geek points for using the seldom-seen scale poll type, I feel, not least because it takes up less vertical space on your Friends page. If any of you have to look at my userinfo page, you're taking this too seriously.
However, the real question is: what has that done to the graph?
It's a generalisation, but not one without merit, to suggest that my Friends list is made up of ladies who are cool and geeky and gentlemen who are cool because they are geeky. I was amused that when I posted last year's version (to which this year's version includes a correction) the ladies knew what it was about straight away and the men generally didn't have a clue. Accordingly, if you've worked out what the line graphs, keep the truth a smug secret and speculate (if you care) about the nature of the last blip down.