I guess I pretty much did.  It was still an awesome party, and I had a tail.  Two wins in my column.

And this is how you can tell.  I spent five minutes doing this to make @loudnate laugh:

I asked him if I could be Elvis Costello when I grew up.  I'm guessing you can see who he'd want to be.

Then, I later realized we could both pull of these fine gentlemen as Hallowe'en costumes.  Nate apparently has one lined up already...but that's ok.  A girl can dream.

I think if our building ever caught fire, Nate would be the thing I grab first to make sure he makes it out.  That and my phone, but insurance can get me a new phone.  And he's awesome enough that I'd at least attempt to carry him down seven flights of stairs.*

*Who am I kidding here?  I'd probably drop him on accident half way and let him roll down the rest.

I love my work.

 

I don't know how, but it got even better.

AKA, this is why I'm dating Josh:

Josh sent this message to four friends of ours (two of whom are dating) and me.  This is what followed:

 

That was pretty funny on it's own, at least to me.  What happened next was the gem.

 

Josh's ending there was a little lame...but I'm having Chuck Norris's baby, as you can see.  Look forward to him round-housing his way out of my uterus in four and a half months (because Chuck Norris is so potent his kid only needs half as long).

There's a great blog called Contrariwise that posts pictures and descriptions of literary tattoos. It usually makes me think, or kind of nostalgic. Some of them creep me out a little (like the woman who got the ashes of her dead cat into the ink for a "so it goes" tattoo with a picture of said dead cat), but by and large it's a cool site with some great tattoos.

And then I saw this.

A librarian got that on her arm because of Twilight.  TWILIGHT WITH THE SPARKLY VAMPIRES AND THE OVERLY CONVELUTED YET UTTERLY CONVENIENT PLOT POINTS.  Sigh.

I can't wait to see how many current teen girls name their kids Edward and Bella in a few years.

There's already a post here that was inspired bi Io9...it's this one.  One of the chicks that writes over there (I don't care if you call me a sexist on that one, these two are mostly women that I would love to hang out with but her post here makes her a CHICK) and I honestly can't find the link to this post...but she put up that KILLER picture of the God of War II concept art and...said it was cool.  Didn't recognize what it was, and while I know she doesn't work for Kotaku, that just frustrated me...women like her are the reason that I get laughed at in comic book stores.

That being said, Annalee (of Io9, keep up) wrote a post today that apparenly proves that the 1908 Tunguska Explosion Was A Comet.

This makes me really sad.  Tunguska was one of those things that I would find the National Geographic issue on the shelves in the den at the house I grew up in and look through those photos over and over again...because they were just so WEIRD.  Nothing could explain it.  There were all these THEORIES but nothing was for sure.  And I loved it!  It was a mystery of such epic proportions that my sugar and asthma medication fueled imagination high would go almost ANYWHERE.  That was the best part.  And now...it could be gone.

 

 

Science RUINS things for me.  WHY WON'T YOU LET ME KEEP MY MYSTERIES, SCIENCE?  Why does science hate happiness?

Seriously. I just don't know. In case you didn't see "Zack Morris" on "Late Night" with "Jimmy Fallon," here it is.

I really don't know what to say here. Part of my (the YRMC part) is saying NONONONONONONO and plugging its ears and hiding in the back bottom part of the closet where you have those zoomba pants your mom made you when you saw AC Slater wearing them THE FIRST TIME HE WAS ON TV. And part of me knows this will be AWESOME.

James Marsters just let the world know that there will be a Dragonball Evolution sequel.  You know what makes this worse?  That Marsters isn't just ruining my anime-infused teen years any more, oh no.  He (or rather the producers of this HORRIFIC film) are no ruining all parts of my life.  I can no longer enjoy Billy Idol songs.  Thanks.

is the same guy as:

which has now ruined this for me:

Bonus points: if anyone can name the Buffy episode where Spike claims to have met and inspired Billy Idol, I will give you a cupcake.

 

So...this one's new.

I'll admit to having watched both Dragon Ball and it's sequel/sister series Dragon Ball Z when I was younger and Toonami on Cartoon Network didn't make me weep. And it was on in the afternoon so it couldn't play Cowboy BeBop because kids would OF COURSE start running around pretending they had cybernetic arms and knew jeet kun do. And yes, Toonami does make me weep big fat tears now when I do see it, which means when I crash at my parents' house and can't sleep late enough at night that it's kinda sad. Because I miss the days when Gundam (not Gundam Wing, but the ORIGINAL Gundam) and the Knights of the Zodiac were on EVERY DAY and I could watch Outlaw Star to my heart's content and do my French homework while eating something I knew I shouldn't have. And my thirteen-year-old self was happy.

But that's besides the point. Dragon Ball Evolutionhit theaters on my birthday over a week ago (the 10th, for those of you who don't know...thanks for the cards). I haven't seen it yet, but judging by the cast and the fact that it is NOT A CARTOON I'm guessing it won't be as awesome tediously full of power-ups awesome as the cartoon was. Because there is NOTHING BETTER than watching a weird, 'roids-pumped dude scream that he's REACHING LEVEL GOOGLEPLEX and GONNA BE A SUPER SEIYAN SAYAJIN SAIYAN (again) and then his hair goes all blond and 'splodey and it's fun.

Yes, I know it's inane and kinda stupid, but the show is just fun. There's no reason to say otherwise, even if it were to protect my reputation. But this is just hilarious.

Thanks to I09

The French have held a funeral for Goku because us stupid Americans ruined it.

Seriously. I can't make this stuff up. Just look at the LOSS on those poor Frenchboy's faces. What can we do to make them feel better? Maybe we should start making YRMC trophies...whoever cries the most wins?

It's been a long day, and this just made it for me.

Thanks to Matthew Knell for the inspiration:

@MKNELL Oh cheeseits you're right. Awesome that my 2000th update was about speaking lawyer-speak...posterity here comes my posterior.

This is more funny if I don't fully explain it.

Jessica sent me an email with the subject line "My lil Caitlin" (at least she didn't put KiKi).

The included picture was this:

I don't know where she found it, nor do I want to.

My response: Thanks...so much.

Jessica: You don't want to be my Jimmy Olsen. :(

Me: He always DIES.  But sure, I'll be Jimmy Olsen.

Jessica: Good.

Me: I mean, seriously.  It always comes down to him and Lois Lane, and he's always the one that DIES.

Jessica: That's just because Lois puts out.

Me: Maybe if Jimmy just grabbed his ankles every once in a while, we'd all be better off.

 

My office is awesome.

(My response to Dennis of FourSquare, who commented on the last post)

Hi Dennis.  I love that you're "(totally stalking all the foursquare blog posts btw)." It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and the customer service person in me goes all soft and mushy.  Which, given my penchant for avoiding soft and mushy unless kittens or pandas are involved, is impressive.

You might be "super scrappy right now" but I love (LOVE) your site and the app and have no doubt that everything will be even better by June 1, and only continue to improve.  The fact that you personally have responded to all of my concerns (line by line, which is EXACTLY like our head developer at work and makes me all soft and mushy again) makes me even more of an evangelist for your site.  I'm pretty sure at this point you could make it so I can see my point total, copy and paste your responses to me in the "help" section of the site and I would be such a lover of FourSquare that you could still put a flaming bag of buffalo poo on my porch and curse my first born child to have peg legs and an eye patch and I would still tell everyone I know on Twitter that they HAVE to use FourSquare because it's JUST THAT AWESOME.  Also, a pirate baby would be pretty cool.  So thank you, Dennis, for making my day and having such a cool product that I was motivated enough to write about it.

And now for today's YRMC

From BoingBoing: Replica Monty Python hand grenade causes bomb scare

Seriously.  Somebody thought that the weapon brought out to blow up a frickin' bunny was an actual bomb.  It's made out of the same fabric as IceCapades outfits.  It says "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch" on it.  And someone actually thought that it was a genuine weapon.  IN LONDON. 

When I was a freshman in high school, when we started learning about the Dark Ages my teacher (Ms. Antonakos) played the very beginning of the movie, where the gits are beating their heads with boards, to show us the difference between flagellants and flatulence.

5 years later, I went to my geology class my sophomore year of college and watched a 280 pound man with a beard like a hippy and barely any hair on his head jump up and down and screech "CLEAVAGE" at the top of his lungs pointing at the magician Tim (John Cleese)...or rather, pointing at the cleavage in the rocks BEHIND Tim.  In the same world where Monty Python and the Holy Grail was used to teach me about the Dark Ages and rock cleavage, some silly man working on a fire hydrant in a major metropolitan area in the country that created most of the men in that damned movie saw a shiny vinyl toy and assumed it was a bomb.

As a great man once said "You silly English ka-nig-its.  I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries."  And then they added "Thanks for ruining my childhood" but that part had to get edited out for time.

 Also, who wants to have pirate babies with me?

I will admit to getting distracted and obsessed with things. Especially shiney things that are unexpected. So when my friend John told me about FourSquare, which premiered while we were in Austin for SxSW, I assumed I would love it for a little while and then move on with my life. But I'm still having fun with it.

That being said, there are some issues that I feel really need to get hashed out before I can promise that I can will continue to use it. A lot like when I was still using Blogger and other free (eventually all Google-owned) services to host and put out my blog, I find myself struggling with the question of what I can reasonably expect to get for no money and what I would like to get.

FourSquare is put out by some of the makers of Dodgeball, which was itself bought by Google, then shut down and the workers were free to start doing what they wanted again, for which I'm very grateful. FourSquare is the best parts of Brightkite, with some Yelp and Girl Scouts thrown in. By checking in at locations, you earn points, which earn you "badges" (the Girls Scout part) and the rank of "mayor" of your city. You can create to do lists in all 12 of the cities that the site and iPhone app support, as well as "I've done this" lists of tips about places you've gone before, including info about what's good at the location, what times it gets crowded, and so on. Every time you check in you can shout it to Twitter, as well as you friends that are use FourSquare. Over all, it's a lot of fun and it's pretty cool.

There are bugs and glitches, as one would expect, and some of them are bigger than others. For example, I can't find out anywhere on the site (or most places on the app) how many points I have. I know I've got over 30 for the week...but no idea the total. And my friend John (the same one that told me about the app) is one of the Mayors of Chicago...twice.

How does that happen? And how is it that I'm in the top 5 Chicagoans for the week, but I'm not one of the Mayors? I still don't know how many points I have total, and how many points away I am from getting my next badge. It's hard to stay motivated when I don't know where the end is.

Perhaps a bigger issue is that the points system is apparently kind of arbetrary and I can't find a real guide to it on the site.  With the caveat the Travel and Bender Bonuses are turned off between 8 am and 4 pm local time on Monday through Friday, here's the break-down:

+ Newbie Bonus: Checkin to a place you haven't been to before = +5
+ Travel Bonus: Hitting more than one place in a night = +1 (number of places)
+ Bender Bonus: Going out multiple nights in a row = +1 (number of nights)

But I got some points that I didn't understand (and can't look up again later).  And I didn't get some points I should have, according to their own scheme.  Besides which, does going out to lunch on a workday count any less than going out for drinks afterwards?  And if you are the one that added a venue to the site, you don't get any points.  But if you check in on the iPhone without creating the venue, you do get the points...what?  I don't even know if that's actually the way the system works or if it was just a bug in the system.

There's another issue that may be a larger one: FourSquare is by definition social.  You're supposed to be able to communicate with your friends by FourSquare alone, to be pinged when you show up at a place where people you know have already checked in (I honestly haven't seen this work, but I haven't looked for it to work, either).  I can search FourSquare for people I know on Twitter just by giving the site my twitter name, and I can search for them by name or phone number.  But not by city.  I would love, like you can on Twitter, Facebook, or even Yelp, to find people I don't know yet and see what they say about venues I haven't visited, maybe eventually meet.

Please make sure you understand that NONE of this is anything other than constructive criticism and wishlisting for the fine folks that make this really fun, excellent product.  I enjoy using it, try to find excuses to use it constantly.  I just really would like to be able to do all of the things I think the site is capable of.

But I work at a free website too (WeSeed, you know that already), and I know it's hard to balance the demands of users against what you can conceivably give.  Like with Blogger, it is a free service.  But it's also a free service that is built and operated by two people that clearly love the project and are motivated to make it the best it can be.  Any feedback I've submitted to them either through email or their GetSatisfaction.com have been dealt with quickly and professionally, like you would expect from a much larger and better funded operation.

I can't help but wonder how many of these small sites, run by passionate individuals, will be continuing to provide incredible service like this, though.  Twtapps, the makers of the Twtvite system used in my last post (PARTY INVITE), make some fun, useful stuff.  But the code for that widget is broken (clicking on Yes, No, or Maybe doesn't work, you have to use "See who's coming"), has been for a while, and they haven't gotten back to my feedback email.  This certainly does not mean that they never will, nor that the code will be broken forever, nor that I will stop using Twtvite.  But it is annoying, and it does make me look around to see what other options are out there. 

Every day, I spend at least part of the day working with feedback from our users at WeSeed.  I love that part of my job more than almost anything, mostly because it's always a pleasant surprise to see how people are using the site in new and different ways than we ever expected.  And it is the responsibility of any team that gets this kind of feedback to address it, either by redesigning the site to better suit the needs of those users or by clarifying their site's intended purpose to attract users that will use it the way it was "designed to be used" (I don't feel comfortable typing that without the bunny ears around it).

But how far do companies that provide free services have to go?  How accountable can we hold them?

Not even I know the answer to that one.

(Also, sign up for FourSquare and look for me, Caitlin Rosberg.  I want to be your friend!)

So, as of this very moment, not only is the favicon for YRMC.com working (look at the little picture to the left of the URL, even if it is very small) BUT we can also now be made into a web clip...which means you can have a bookmark that will take you to YRMC.com sitting on any home screen on your iPhone.  AND I DID IT ALL BY MY LONESOME, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.  So if you were to actually look at either of these images, this is what you would see:

  My sidekick, Little Bats.  He is suspicious, but he likes you.  I hope.  He is the Bat-Mite to my Bruce Wayne.  Well, maybe more like early Bat-Girl, before she got all damaged and had to live in a wheelchair and had all those issues with the first Robin because they couldn't get it on like they wanted to (especially because they both had so many daddy issues). But she was annoying, even then, and I'm not sure I want a bombshell redhead with a motorcycle showing me up on my own website. Particularly a fictional one.

So there you have it. The 15 minutes of work I've managed to get done on the site today. Even if Safari did keep spazzing and the Wysiwyg editor UI did keep crapping out on me. I GOT IT DONE. More later.

Todays You Ruined My Childhood (see what I did there?) didn't actually ruin my childhood.  The first time I saw erotica of James "Logan" (aka Wolverine) Howlett and Remy (aka Gambit [really did they have to spell his name Remy?]) LeBeau alternately ruined and rocked my childhood.  But this was just too much.  And I know other people have posted this, but I wanted to share:

Image via Gizmodo's Wrongmodo

Seriously.  This actually exists.  And it is awesome for existing.  Though I think it makes a better bachelor/bachelorette party gag gift than children's toys.  Imagine the geeky fun that could ensue.

So, as many of you probably have already heard, my freind @brandonzeman (aka @chicagotweetups) and I will be attending most of SXSWi this coming weekend.  You will probably say "And why, Caitlin, does this matter to me?"  And I would say in response "Shut up, do you not understand that I am going SXSW?!?! Have you been living under a ROCK?"  Then I would walk around for a few minutes, sit back down and apologize to you, buy you a cup of coffee to make up for my bad behavior, and smile REALLY sweetly.  And then I would say "Because, my dear, sweet reader whom I love and would bail out of jail, this marks the beginning of a new era here at YRMC.  I will be working harder to update more frequently, and I will be living up to the YRMC name, starting with giving you, my wonderful, incredibly sexy reader, more of my sense of humor, as well as things that ruin my childhood.  Like this:"

 

'NeverEnding Story' gets new beginning

 

REALLY?  REALLY WORLD?  This is what you're going to spend MILLIONS of dollars on?  Dollars that you earned from me when I paid to go see the Dark Knight in theatres like 45 times?  Why would you do this to me?  Are you really that hard up to make money that you think you can get nostalgic saps like me and small children to go see a NEW Neverending Story?  Because it will somehow be better than the original?  Not only are your ruining MY childhood now...not even just the childhoods of people my age.  But you could also be ruining the childhoods of actual children, who will never know the joy that is the original.  Sigh.

And then I would smile at you, hand you a tissue so you could cry with me over the death of something so beautiful as a brilliant eighties film.  I would whisper quietly "Well, at least I hope that's what will happen, but don't hold me to anything because I clearly suck at this updating thing," and run quickly away while you were distracted so you have no chance to yell at me.

 

P.S. I will punch someone in the FACE if they kill that damned horse again.  I don't think I cry harder at anything than those three minutes of movie magic.

If you don't get at least a little teary-eyed, I will wonder how it is that we are friends.