She was kind enough to find me a new one, so enjoy.

Briefly – WordPress has a gigantic attack surface.  It’s far and away the most popular web application as far as installed instances, and although the developers do a fairly good job with security, the sheer popularity means that as soon as new exploits are discovered, blogs get compromised almost immediately.

It’s not that WordPress isn’t good software – I think it is – but that running it yourself means having to constantly stay on top of security issues.  What if I go on vacation for 5 days and don’t have computer access?  Am I going to get hacked?  More importantly, are the other applications also running on my server – including Journey, which is a commercial software offering – going to get hacked?

It’s just plain not worth it.  Let someone else host my blog.

So I’ve done something I’ve been thinking about for awhile: I’ve moved this blog off my own servers and onto WordPress.com.  For anyone currently hosting your own WordPress installation, I highly encourage you to seriously consider it too.  It’s easy to do, it migrates all your comments, and it’s free-to-extremely-cheap.

Unfortunately, they don’t let you use just any WordPress theme, so I’ve set up a new one from their (fairly good) library.  I actually think this one is an improvement on my old theme.

Anyway, enjoy, and please do let me know if you see any issues with the new blog.

That means I, like so many other people right now, am in need of a job.  So, if you know of anything that you think I might be a good fit for, won’t you please have a look at the following link:

• My updated resume

(I was wondering whether to mention the telephone sanitizer job from 2004 on it… ultimately I decided not to, but feel free to mention it to anyone who you think might be amused.  It’s certainly not a big secret. )

Read on for more details from this past Sunday’s Intercon Concom meeting.

Concom Minutes
2 November 2008

• Hotel Liason
  • Is not here, no report.
    
• Bid Chair
  • We have lots of games and little space left.
  • Intercon Zi
    • Bid came in after 1st deadline (although Julia had plugged it much earlier than that)
    • Space/timing is a big issue, most things are already full
    • Anna is negotiating with Janet, we will try to do the best we can
      
  • We have an unprecedentedly full schedule.  Should we close bids?
    • We essentially only want games for Saturday at this point, and don’t have a lot of space left
    • Anna is going to give Barry new static text for the bid page explaining the current situation
  • Anna gave Barry UI feedback about bid and scheduling pages
    

• Information
  • Tim is going to send out another round of advertising tonight
    
  • Schedule is now open for viewing
  • Tim no longer lives in New Hampshire and is tired of receiving Sununu-related phone calls
  • Send out the IMA economic incentive package
    • We are going to get the Benjamins from Gordon
• Con Suite
  • Followup: Con Suite track is now on schedule
    • Con Suite thinks it is good!
      
  • Followup: Did call for volunteers go out?
    • Not yet
    • Renee is going to get Teem a blurb begging for assistance
      
  • Followup: Is con suite email address now going to both Kerri and Renee?
    • Yes!
  • There will be matzo ball soup on the menu
    • (Anna: “Will they be sinkers or floaters?”  Kerri: “They’re gonna be dense.”)
  • Barry’s Costco membership could be useful on Thursday night before the con
    
• GM Coordinator
  • GMs are surprisingly uncomplainy
    • (Anna: “give it time…”)
  • Furniture requests: not yet
    • Josh will email Alex to find out when
  • Josh to remind GMs to make sure they’re all signed up before games open
    
• Treasurer
  • One outstanding refund to issue – Thorin Tabor is now comped for Elanthia
  • I balance: $3274.98
  • NEIL balance: $5460.60
  • State paperwork going out soon
• Ops
  • Followup: Andrew’s schedule of events in-convention?
    • Coordinating with con-suite, schedule is in progress
    • Won’t really have the schedule until we can see who signs up for Ops when
      
  • Followup: Minion?
    • Still need one of thems
    • Sheena will ask around
    • Anna’s friend Heather may want to volunteer for either Ops or Con Suite
  • Andrew is going to order the pencils
    
• Pubs / Art
  • Not here, no report
  • There is a new flyer
    

In honor of the Connecticut Supreme Court’s excellent decision to allow same-sex marriage, I present my favorite song about Connecticut.  (WARNING NSFW – but it’s only the audio, so you can get away with watching this if you have headphones.)

YouTube – Connecticut’s for F*cking.

Ignore dumb video, enjoy awesome song.

In compiling this track listing, I started by simply choosing what I thought were their best songs.  I then cut it down to just under 74 minutes (which is the amount you can fit on a standard CD) with an eye towards producing an album you could listen to as a whole, which would flow nicely.

Here’s my list:

1. International, from free*
2. Stress, from noplace like nowhere
3. Cheat to Lose, from Don’t Get Smart
4. Desperate Times, from More Songs About Me
5. Prince Charming, from noplace like nowhere
6. Math Prof Rock Star, from They’re Everywhere!
7. Everything Must Go, from free*
8. Smells Like Big Chinos (Live), from Y2K Hooray!
9. Boston Band, from noplace like nowhere
10. The Ballad of Barry Allen, from They’re Everywhere!
11. Pascagoula Pawn and Gun, from free*
12. How It Happens, from Support the Truth
13. Award Show, from free*
14. Vandals, from More Songs About Me
15. Depravity, from free*
16. Utopia, from free*
17. She’s Dead, from noplace like nowhere
18. Meanies (Live), from Titanic
19. Hidden track: She’s Dead (Reprise), from noplace like nowhere

Observations: One could feasibly see these selections as reflecting back on the albums they’re from.  Let’s do the math:

I think these numbers don’t really reflect how I actually would rate the albums, though.  They seem to suggest that my favorite two albums are free* and noplace like nowhere, with free* far outstripping everything else.  But I’d suspect that there’s two factors going on here: free* is the New Thing, which led me to unconsciously favor it, and free* has a pretty wide variety of songs on it compared to some of the other albums, which my selection criteria tended to favor.

I actually think that They’re Everywhere! is a much better album than these numbers suggest, but it’s greater than the sum of its parts – individual songs on it don’t stick out much, but the album still works very well.  The relative rankings of noplace like nowhere and Don’t Get Smart are absolutely correct, though – noplace is a much better album.

The EPs are kind of in their own categories – the percentages are all wacky because of the low track count.  They’re also hard to compare, because Y2K Hooray! is mostly humorous songs, and Support the Truth is all serious political ones.

Then there’s Titanic, which actually has a lot of really good material on it, but unfortunately, a lot of it is spoken word/poetry stuff that I didn’t want to put into a “best of” compilation.

So, Jim, how about it?  When can we expect to see The Best of Jim’s Big Ego?

While true, this message is somewhat less than informative. Today I decided it’s been up there for damn long enough, and finally replaced it with this somewhat-pretentious page:

It’s also not incredibly informative, but it at least gives you a better idea of what you’re looking at. What do y’all think?

Oh, and Something*Positive fans may be interested to know that Randy Milholland will be coming to Intercon H! Woohoo!

• If someone used to be older than someone else:
• …they probably still are.