Recently, I’ve been getting a lot of “adds” on Digg. I’m pretty active on there, I guess, so a couple, I understand. Whenever another digg user friends (only the web could turn that into a verb) me, I receive an email. It looks like:

Hey there! Stonehenge360 is your latest fan. He became your fan because he likes what you are up to on Digg and wants to see what you think is interesting. You can either leave him as a fan or add him to your own list of friends. Check out his profile here:

http://digg.com/users/Stonehenge360

Cheers,

The Digg Team

Control what emails you receive from Digg here:
http://digg.com/settings/email

So, then I go look at Stonehenge360’s Recent Activity on Digg, and I see:

Stonehenge360 has added Steven Schlottman, Erin, J, pkulak, Vote #1 Moojj, digitalgopher, dadof2, Mr. Baby Man, JoeyC, Spencer, Mihr, Gazerock, xoogie, Curtisnot, Vonkhan, phillip torrone, Chris Gray, Daniel Šimko, PAWEL FLAGA, Edward Alexander, johnlandes, Ralph, Steven Safak, Lord_Mizaru, Dane Kenney, zovi, hugesaks, bluedragoon, Ankush Dhiman, Phil, glass junky, Frank, you, Dennis, lese, bunny607, Leo Laporte, Aviar, Wayne, Rich Tannehill, Prakash, dabneyd, Jesse Jones, Dan Huard, Ralphy, Nathan, bambinette, Josh, Joe, selphishnerd, Celsius032, tyrstephen, Amar, Furious.Styles, purrp, diskazz, will4042, TrainingName, UCBearcats, Tyson H. , Carson, james estrada, Chelsea, johnsmith118, powersaber89, Ian Mansfield (a guy!), Chris Taran, Zaibatsu, Ken, UnlivedPhalanx, Noah, Rick Schmidt, Mike Z, tljff9, Alex H., Sarah Lane, Joe Biden, ricktoid, mike, Wil Wheaton, Roberto Villarreal, typ44q, P9, Diggnation, sahaskatta, boober86, hammydude, dpk87, justinvt, quokkapox, Flabbadabba, Troy E, DanThePainter, Christopher, iching, Miguel Lopez, verge, Bwack and CLIFF W. to his network.

I refer back to the mail that said he “became [my] fan because he likes what [I am] up to on Digg”.

Really? I think you, Digg, should stop guessing at his motives for adding me. I don’t think he knows me at all and I don’t think it’s very nice of you to play with my emotions like that.

PS: Stonehenge360 is just the most recent example of this. I’ve gotten a bunch of mass adds recently. I don’t get the point of having a huge number of ‘friends’ on Digg that you don’t actually know. It waters down the effectiveness of the Digg features. In other words, who cares what my friends are digging, if I don’t even know their tastes?

As most people know, a computer can run certain tasks in the background. These are jobs that it’s doing behind the scenes and typically hidden from the user, sometimes at the user’s request. Most people’s brains work like this too, to some degree. I know hardcore coders who are constantly thinking about whatever problem they are trying to solve and will, in the middle of lunch, have a “eureka” moment. Hell, I’ve done the same and I’m just a Perl hack (at best).

However, my mind is cluttered with much less important background tasks. For example, the other day I was chatting with a friend and he was having a particularly dreadful day. “Shoot me,” he requested. I responded that I was all done with killing for the day and he needed to ask again tomorrow, or some such. So, he said, “I didn’t say you had to kill me.” My retort was so unfunny that I don’t even recall what it was. However, unbeknownst to me, a background process started running.

This morning, I’m in the shower and an epiphany strikes me. The proper response would have been, “What? And waste a bullet?” Now, I don’t claim that it’s comedic genius, but it is better than whatever the other line was.

Why the hell was my brain still working on that? It’s not like I can ping the guy two days later and deliver the re-written punch line. Hell, it’s not even that funny: just a minor improvement.

I need some sort of Activity Monitor or task manager for my brain. Or maybe just a command line…

ps -ax  | grep -i "stupid joke" | awk '{print "kill "$1""}' | zsh

(I realize the flaws with the above line, it’s a joke. Lighten up.)

So, we’re both feeling like crap. My lungs are bugging me from weeks with bronchitis and she has a massive headache. So, this is the exchange:

GF: “I need to put my head in a vice.”
ME: “I don’t have a vice big enough.”
GF: “Are you saying I have a fat head?”
ME: “No… I’m saying I don’t have a fat vice.”

If you don’t hear from me after a while, this might be why.

At least she laughed…