It’s been a very, very, VERY wet spring and summer in New England. Far more rain and less sun than usual. Depressing? Naw, we’re hardy stock. But it reminded a friend/colleague of a joke which she sent out in her newsletter today. It goes:

A curious fellow died one day and found himself waiting in the long line of judgment. As he stood there he noticed that some souls were allowed to march right through the pearly gates into Heaven. Others, though, were led over to Satan who threw them into the burning pit.

But every so often, instead of hurling a poor soul into the fire, Satan would toss a soul off to one side into a small pile. After watching Satan do this several times, the fellow’s curiosity got the best of him.

So he strolled over and asked Satan what he was doing.

“Excuse me, Mr. Prince of Darkness,” he said. “I’m waiting in line for judgment, but I couldn’t help wondering, why are you tossing those people aside instead of flinging them into the Fires of Hell with the others?”

“Ah, those,” Satan said with a groan. “They’re all from New England…
They’re still too wet to burn.”

Thanks, Shelly!

Look, over to the right. No, down a little. That’s it.

Yes, campers, every day or so, a warm, fresh Gaping Void will appear in that spot in the sidebar. For those unfamiliar, Gaping Void is the business-card-size philosophical treatise/cartoon by Hugh MacLeod.

Hugh is probably best known for his wonderful treatise, “Ignore Everybody” — a bracing dip into the waters of self-expression and self-confidence. It begins:

“The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you… You don’t know if your idea is any good (until) the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is… Feelings scare us.”

That’s also why market research is so often short-sighted and futile. It misses a lot of great opportunities simply because the people they survey have never encountered an idea like yours before, and simply don’t know what to make of it.

So the moral of the story is… If  your idea feels right, go for it!

Zone Alarm has big news about Google:

Despite hearing a lot of hype about it, even from people I like and respect, I have been a huge Twitter skeptic. I perceived it as an enormous time-sink with little or no value, except maybe self-gratification. (No, not that kind!) That was until I finally took the time to actually visit the site yesterday. Wow, amazing people and ideas flying around there. Fun, too.

Now my problem is, how do I get any work done? Being a twit (hmm, that’s probably not the right term, is it?) is a lot more fun than actually working!

Shameless plug: Follow me at @tom_mckay

Clean up, fix up, paint up” used to be the springtime motto. After a long winter of laziness and neglect (or was that just me?) the air is warm, the sun is shining, and everyone feels energized to spiff things up.

For the past day or so, I put a scaffolding around this old blog and started making some long-needed repairs and and improvements. Have you noticed? Let’s see…

• I finally got around to putting rounded corners on the top image. Now it matches the graphic below it.
• A drop cap (i.e., an oversized first character) has been added to the first word in each post, thanks to a nifty plugin by Rodney Campbell (Remorhaz). Elegant, no? Like a magazine… (Update: Hey, it didn’t show up in this post!) (Update #2: Got it!)
• I changed the body font to Calibri and bumped up the size one click. I liked the font that came with the theme, but this one is much easier to read. And hey, this blog is all about your comfort!
• I finally got the Photo Dropper plug-in working. This is a terrific blogging tool that lets you to search for Creative Commons-licensed photos on Flickr by keyword, right from your Wordpress post page. Highly recommended!
• Technorati tags now grace the footer of this and all future posts, via Will Garcia’s plugin. (I installed and auditioned about five others before finding this one. Nice work, Will!)
• Finally, I added a Share this button so you can email my posts, or send them to any of the big social networking sites. Ahem. Of course, that’s assuming I ever write something worth sharing.

And that’s coming, too. Buckle your seat belt. I’ve got big plans for this old blog home!

Photo by… me!