preraphaelitepunk.com

All right, I’ve had it with TagCloud. It’s a cool idea, but the dratted thing hasn’t updated in about a month, which makes it simply a waste of screen space. Their Web site offers no guidance.

Yes, I know it’s still in beta, and I shouldn’t expect perfection. I don’t think an update even just once a week is too much to ask, even from a beta product.

It’s going. Which is sad, because I was just getting around to customizing the CSS file to get rid of the ugly orange words.

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In other news, the annual office holiday party was Friday. I’ve ducked out of these the last couple of years, but this year I actually checked about the availability of vegan food and, when modifications were made, felt rather obligated to go. The festivities were, as expected, enjoyed by those who like that sort of thing and excoriated by those who feel that Xmas carols are bad enough without being rewritten to reflect office goings-on and sung at a captive audience. Happily, I shared a table with Sarah, Greg, Fred, and Tricia, and we were able to entertain ourselves by snarking about the carols and the door prizes* and the game that no one had bothered to explain to us but appeared to involve the little name tags forcibly stuck to our backs.

Although I mock, there were some aspects of the party that I felt were really good ideas. I thought the cookies made for employees by the VP’s wife were a very sweet (if you’ll excuse the expression) touch. Not vegan, of course, but I wouldn’t expect that, and I appreciated the thought.

On a more materialistic level, they also distributed $50 gift cards and let us have the rest of the afternoon off. (The “Go home, everybody” announcement actually got a louder cheer than the money did.) Extremely thoughtful touches, and ones that I think will make a bigger difference in morale than all the festive office-themed filking in the world.

Good for them.

(Of course, now they’ve set a precedent, and if they choose not to provide gift cards or time off next year, then they’ll mightily annoy a good chunk of the staff. Hmm.)

And, on a final note, I came home Friday to find that my order from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab had arrived!

As always, they sent along some samples with the two full-sized bottles I’d ordered. So far, I’ve only tried Tezcatlipoca (”Deep cocoa laced with patchouli, leather armor, ritual incense, and a touch of Xochiquetzal’s flowers”), which I loved — very warm and long-lasting.

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*Although some of the prizes were not bad, actually. I won a coffeemaker that brews directly into two travel mugs. Technically it’s useless to me because (a) there’s only one of me and (b) I really like my existing coffeemaker, which uses a gold cone filter instead of a basket filter, but it’s actually not a bad present.