Work Group Laboring at the SF Food Bank

Tonight we had our second group volunteer experience at the SF Food Bank. Kim did the arranging and I think we ended up with about 12 people, made up of ITSers, ABS folks plus friends, and even a pal from all the way over in Law. A good group of people. We worked hard, along with all the other volunteers, and managed to bag 3,000 pounds of oats. Each bag we filled is good for 10 meals. That's a lot of bags of oats for less then two hours of work.

When I got home, tired but not, there were three postcards from the Woodens! I love getting postcards! I don't have many from the mid-west, and these are fun ones. I especially dig the Nebraska map. Or maybe I dig the playing prairie dogs more!

Oysters at the Ferry Building

The Slacker had an appointment in the city on President's Day and we decided to meet up for dinner down at Hog Island Oysters in the SF Ferry Building. I went a little early so I could wander around a bit. I don't get down there often, but I do like the place. It just gets too crowded.

Enjoy the pics!

Bellhops Posterous Archive

I'm not exactly sure how to handle my archived postings from Posterous. I want to make them accessible to searches but since they aren't in the blog itself, then I suppose the best way is to tag this message and hope we can find what we are looking for when we want it. In case you are feeling nostalgic, I've archived them at snarfff.com. The direct url to the index is http://snarfff.com/posterous_archive/.

There are a lot of posts from when Bellhops was on Posterous and I make myself giggle when re-reading. My dad doesn't understand the whole blogging thing. To him it seems very ego-centric and self-absorbed. "Who cares?" he would say to me. To a point he's right. I do, at times, feel pretty self-centered to think anyone would want to read my stuff. Most of it's not very serious and even though I occasionally rant, most of my stuff is just downright silly or, yes, involves cats.

In the end, though, I enjoy my blog. I enjoy writing my posts. I enjoy figuring out what pictures to include. I enjoy when my friends comment on something. And if some random person out there happens to come across something I posted and happens to enjoy it, then all the better. I know I come across people's blogs randomly and I get a kick out of reading what they've posted. It's like a little window into the life of a stranger, which appeals to my voyeuristic personality.

And another just because.

Spoiled by Posterous Mobile Posting

I have been checking out blog service options and checked out Squarespace. I spent a lot of time messing with a test account and even though I wasn't digging the template options I figured I might be able to deal with them. Paying $8 a month seems steep to just blog, but if you want features I guess you've got to pay. They have a very nice image interface that I thought would be a good alternative to the functionality I've come to love in Posterous. When I downloaded and started testing the iPad app, however, I discovered there isn't any similar capabilities for posting via that tool. In fact, as far as I can tell, all pictures get inserted at the start of the post; there is no way to control where the images go in the body of the posting. Same with emailing a post as the images are attached to the email rather then embedded in the content of the message.

Well, gee, that's not really any different then the functionality offered here in Blogger.

I still have to see if Squarespace web interface works on the iPad. If it does, then maybe there is hope.

For now, sadness.

But Keiko takes away the pain.

Back at Blogspot?

Looks like Posterous is shutting down. I'm not surprised - I expected as much when they were acquired by Twitter - but I'm disappointed as I found it to be the easiest site to post to when on the road. I also really like how easily it handles images. I know this is the nature of the net, but change can be a pain in the ass, especially when you are nice and comfy.

I'm checking out other blogging options, but what I really want is an easy service that doesn't require any fuss and which I can easily update from my iPad or iPhone. If anyone has a recommendation, please let me know. In the meantime, I'll move back here. Not sure yet what I'll do with my Posterous posts. Don't know if there is a way to migrate that content into Blogger, but I'm guessing not. I hope I'm underestimating Blogger.

And, well, just because...