Constant Flux

I turn my back for two weeks, and all RHEL* breaks loose.

Google reader gave up trying to count all my unread feeds (”It’s greater than 1000!”), my blogs have turned into tumbleweed city, my Amatomu rankings are non-existent, and I’m suddenly a robot from the future.

I’m pretty sure the whole thing happened because I made fun of Vincent’s facial hair at 27Dinner. I recognized his style of grammar almost immediately.

For the fake record, I’m actually an Android. Google is going to build me in 2035, right after the technological singularity. I’m what they meant by “mobile platform”. And I repeat: I did not have Software EXchange relations with that fractal AI, Miss Sierpinski. My title is the Architectinator.

OK, so I’m a robot, but what is Tyler Reed’s excuse? Someone posts something obviously satirical on the social media equivalent of Hayibo, and he threatens them? Tyler doesn’t realize this, but the reputation he’s building is in fact negative. SaulK and Vincent get bonus points for fessing up though.

Concerning my feeds, I’ve decided to drop ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch. Their articles are too dense to discard quickly, and the signal-to-noise ratio is just too low. I’m still reading every local blog that I’m subscribed to though.

Google reader seriously needs some feed filter options. I’m looking for an alternative. Anybody know of a good open-source feed reader? Bonus points if it’s a web app that I can install on my exocortex.

That’s it for now. I’m going to have to leave the BlogCave until I can figure out a better way to balance work / life / studies / entertainment / new media.

* RedHat Enterprise Linux. I’ve been busy at my new job** trying to recompile PHP 5.0.4 for Apache 1.3 on RHEL ES 3.0. It took me a day or two to realize the hopelessness of the endevour. This was only after the resident Linux guru managed to make RHEL work with a CentOS package repository. Non-geek folks should realize that’s some serious Deep Magic.

** It’s a strange place. They make me wear button down shirts, and on “casual Fridays” I’m allowed to wear any shirt with a collar, which in practice means golf shirts. That is the least ironic situation I’ve encountered there.