The return of The Zero Boss and the excellent "Blogging For Books"

A little respite after that last post. In my experience, whenever a post goes up that's heavy on emotional content it A) wrings me out and B) it doesn't get many comments. The dearth of comments after I posted my Noble stories appalled me; I'd put so much of me into those posts and they elicited very few comments. I felt crushed. However, several readers assured me that it's usually the heavy posts that get the fewest comments because it's difficult to say anything meaningful on posts like that. Lesson learned, I no longer take it personally when no one posts on something that exhausted me on a deep emotional level.

Dusting my many issues aside and drowning them in Fat Tire, I prefer to announce glad tidings and enjoy the beer. As many of you know, Jay "The Zero Boss" Allen took an extended sabbatical from his site (too long if you ask me). Jay will always have a special place in my heart because it was his mention of this blog that drove my traffic up from 2 readers a week (literally) to 2 readers a day (I may be exaggerating that a bit) but more than that, his writing has always been topical and passionate, sometimes chock full-o'-snark and always well-done.

While The Zero Boss was off focusing on his paid-blogging gig, navel gazing, and shooting neighborhood dogs with a pellet gun, his lovechild "Blogging For Books" was taken over by various other bloggers but, y'know, it wasn't just the same. The good news is that Jay is back and ass-kicking in his inimitable way and back to running "Blogging For Books".

You think my little mixmania! poke-and-puke is a nifty notion? Believe me, "Blogging For Books" was around well before mixmania! and is the grandaddy of the "get your ass over to another blog and read them" um, whatever those things are.

Anyway, this month's B4B has a "pick one" theme,

1. A disastrous work or personal project you sweared, Captain Ahab-style, to see to the end;
   
2. A relationship you wouldn’t let die, even though everybody else around you knew how bad it was;
   
3. An idea or philosophy you held for years, as friends and family prayed that you’d eventually regain your sanity.

and I encourage you to give it a shot. My own entry, kind of done as an afterthought, is my 'Goin' out west' post from a few days ago, which I think fits the first thematic choice but it was enough to just get into the fray and realize I need liposuction.

Welcome back Jay - the check's in the mail.
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VICTORY IS MINE!!!

Not the "Blogging For Books" thing (as an acquired taste, I've learned not to take rejection too seriously) but my ability to get my Firefox to block the damn popups it allows. Believe me, Firefox is a Lamboughini compared to Internet Explorer's Ford Fiesta but it always annoyed me that a few popups managed to get through (always from the Merriam-Webster site and lyrics sites) and some of the more pernicious popup companies could actually crash the browser because the damn popups were Flash-heavy idiocy.

No more. "Tribalfusion", "Mediaclick" and the rest of that scum have been blocked for good. Any of you Firefox users who are annoyed by the same asshattery, go get the Firefox Image Load Block List and then do this:

1. highlight/control-c the first item
   
2. go to tools/options/web features
   
3. make sure the 'load images' box is checked and click 'exceptions'
   
4. control-v in the 'address of website' field, click 'block', click 'ok' and click 'ok'
   
5. control-c the next item on the Firefox Image Load Block List and repeat until you finish the list.

You'll also want to manually add *.mediaclick.com, *.mediafastclick.com, media.liquidmedianetworks.com, a.tribalfusion.com, and b.casalemedia.com (I don't know how the 'a' and 'b' override the wildcard but somehow they do) since they're not on the list. Obviously you can add any fuckups popups that manage to slip through as they arise.

You can thank me in the comments :-D

More substance tomorrow, I promise.