'Bye, Mom.

The littlest house8-er

In case I haven't passed on the news to any of the house8 family, Becky and I have just had our first child, a little baby boy named Jack. He was born in the early morning on memorial day. There's pictures and more over at our baby blog, meetthefullers.com

Moving to Austin tomorrow

See ya there.

can I get a 'woo-woo'?

let's give it up for the newest member of the house8 community, Benjamin Rhys Falconer! He got here today - 10/08/06, at 10:37am, weighing in at a svelt 7 pounds, 8 ounces, at a massive 21 inches. This kid has "striker" written all over him. Congrats, Lisa and Andrew!

Holy Mother Of God

If you don't think that's cute, you have no soul.

Val and Jeff, I'm gonna chew on those ears sooo bad.

Continue reading "Holy Mother Of God" »

House 8 Upgrade Redesign

It's approximately 9,000 degrees outside, so it seemed as good a day as any to finally drag House 8 into the modern blogging age with an upgrade to MT 3.2. Just in time for MT 3.3 to come out!

Anyway, you probably won't notice a difference, brave posters, but changes are afoot...

Update: What can I say? I started something, and then decided to (almost) finish. Still some kinks to work out and functionality to add, but my main goal was "no longer brown." More info after the jump.

Continue reading "House 8 Upgrade Redesign" »

Goin to the Chapel (Bang! Bang!)

Congratulations to house8 groupies Kristin & Troy who will be married this weekend in Tejas. Guns must be checked at the door, except for Kristin's dad who may need to coax Troy through things.
The lovely couple will be honeymooning at Hooters.

But seriously... many years of happiness to T, K and Miss Kitty.

Rest in Peace

Karen's father Patrick Keenan, passed away this morning after a long illness. Keenan says (through Andrew) that he spent his final days surrounded by his family and friends, more than a fair share of corny jokes, and lots and lots of love.

*pssst*

Chris and Anne are getting married today. If you're in Central Park, say hi.

Rest in Peace, Chubby

I'm sorry to say that Val & Jeff's sharpei Chubby died this morning. Chubby was 12 and had some medical problems over the last year or two. I'll miss him, his wise old face, and him greeting me after long stretches out of town with a happy, wagging tail. He was a sweet dog.

Please pardon our service interuptions

Sorry about the service inturuption.

Here's an online article about the issue:

http://www.nbc5.com/news/4041464/detail.html

Here are some pictures I snapped standing in front of my house during and after the fire:

View image (during the fire)

View image (during the fire)

View image (during the fire)

View image (during the fire)

View image (after the fire, the collapsed house is already gone)

View image (after the fire, house across the alley)

The Spam is Out of Control

Just another heads up, kids. Comment and trackback spam is fucking out of control unbelievable. I deleted over a third of the comment table alone last night, all spam.

Changes are on the way.

MT-Blacklist

Just a little geek housekeeping FYI, folks. We've implemented the godsend MT-Blacklist, a suhweet little MT plugin that makes life difficult for the dickheads who comment-spam blogs with links to porn, drugs, etc., in an attempt to raise their Google PageRank.

So, if you happen to post a comment and get a message that says you can't because of questionable content, it just means you've somehow run afoul of our blacklist. Let us know, and we can tweak it to make the system smarter.

...the DJ cuts the iPod from side to side...

Gil and Jeff "No-Talent Ass Clown"^* Pazen will be DJing at the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. Tues. March 9th at 6pm. So come on down and drool over 23 inch cinema displays and G5 towers while listening to Gil and Paz, "Chicago favorites and Mac aficionados," er do their thang.

^* Yet another in a series of attempts to regain Pazen's spot on Google's image search.

House 8 Funds

Better late than never, I guess. Finally got around to hooking up the Amazon search box again on the Funds page*. If you're procrastinating your holiday shopping as I am, be a dear and help a server out. If you're doing any shopping through Amazon, think of House 8. It's really simple. Just search for your item using the House 8 form, and a percentage of that purchase goes towards our Associates account. This helps a bit toward paying off the Apple Loan. I swear it doesn't feed Chris' raging crack habit.

* Chris wanted to do some fancier MTAmazon plugin magic, but the XML parser or somesuch isn't working right and I haven't had a chance to look into it.

In unrelated Amazon news, these kinds of thoughts pop into your head (well, ok, mine) when you're a) bored, b) eating lunch alone, and c) a dork.

How much would it cost to buy one of every in-stock item at Amazon.com? And could you use their web services API to do it?

ATTN House 8'ers

It's been a week now since Andrew and I ported the site to Movable Type, so what do you think? Like? Dislike? Things have been a bit quiet lately. Are people having problems with the new posting tools or is everyone just busy?

House 8 Public Service Announcement

In reply to this post:

U.S. District Judge Edward W. Nottingham in Denver ruled that the telemarketing "do not call list" violated free speech. I'd like to call him at home, when he is sitting down to dinner, and tell him that I disagree. it's unfortunate that google can't give me his home phone number.

Contributor: type55
When: 12:20 am on 26 Sep 2003

We don't have his home phone, but we can give you this:

Hon. Edward W. Nottingham, Jr. U.S.
District Judge U.S. District
Court District of Colorado
U.S. Courthouse 1929 Stout St., Room C-224
Denver, CO 80294
Phone: 303.844.5018
Fax: 303.335.2155
E-mail: nottingham_chambers@cod.uscourt.gov

Feel free to contact the good judge, oh, 50 or 60,000 times.

That is all.

D'oh!

Apparently the house8.net domain has been expired since August 10th. Whoops. Our social schedules are clearly at fault for this oversight. The domain has been renewed and things should clear up soon.

- MGMT

Like sweet-talkin' a Vegas limo driver

Ms. Winnie Dunbar has schmoozed her way into the hippest club on the Web. Winnie is our insider at the behemoth that is AOL Time Warner. She's also good for the random inappropriate sexual factoid from time to time. Perfect for those uncomfortable silences at family get-togethers!

Welcome, Winster!

I will be going to Grad School at...

(drum roll)

Harvard! Found out Monday night - St Patty's day will never be the same. See! they do let broke, unemployed people with no connections in!
Off to Boston April 4th to kick the tires...

Thanks to everyone for my enrollment at Drop Your Pants U too. I'm cramming for my liquor exam as we speak.

Cheese-eating surrender monkeys: New and improved

Thanks to Q's selfless service to House 8, I am proud to announce the addition of auditory enhancement to category 1029, aka "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys". Q, if we had a House 8 medal of some sort, you'd get one.

Chris offers:

Quentin has vindicated himself for crashing the server. Take him off of double secret probation.

UPDATE: Q has been officially promoted to the office of Deputy Commander Helper Monkey. Congratulations! The kids will be so proud.

The full story:
The term originates from an episode in 1995, and was spoken neither by Homer nor Bart, but by Groundskeeper Willy:

A little later, Bart puts his hand up.
Bart: Mrs. Krabappel, I'm done failing the test. Can I _please_ go to the nurse?
Edna: Gosh, Bart, maybe you really are in pain.
Well...it would be cruel not to let you go.
[files her nails, hums the national anthem]
[hums part of "Stars and Stripes Forever"]
Heh heh heh, _now_ you may go.
Bart: [walking into nurse's room] Lunch Lady Doris? Why are you here?
Doris: Budget cuts. They've even got Groundskeeper Willy teaching French.
Willy: "Bonjourrr", you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!

HEMORRHOIDOGRAM!

It's one from the archives, kiddies. Back in business. The Tellme stuff still works, too! Now, what was that about idle hands again?

Conspiracy!

In doing a little category housecleaning, somehow the Nelson Muntz category was changed to No Category. Quel Scandal! Things are all better now. Also, you may or may not notice that there are no longer any parent categories. Parent categories are so last season.

UPDATE: Weblog categories have been re-organized, and the most popular categories are now displayed.

More changes. (We fear it.) The nav. has been changed slightly. A few things go away, and a new addition, funds. Funds is our shameless ploy to help defray the cost of the House 8 server, which was purchased with an Apple loan. So, if you've got any Amazon shoppin' to do, be a dear and do it through us. We're really nice folks, we swear.

Andrew's Secret House8 Sites

The one he's building for Tim.

Il Postino joins the fray

Please welcome the newest member of our dysfunctional little House 8 family. Tim Sheridan lends his frightening mental powers to the House 8 Weblog. Do us proud, Tim.

I'mageek

The worst .sigs on /. prompted me to check:

House 8 Network uptime: 1:36PM up 158 days, 13:49, 2 users, load averages: 0.17, 0.02, 0.01

Thanks Gil! Thanks Apple!

via Camworld

Hooray!

Last night on my 32nd birthday I asked the lovely Becky to marry me and she said yes! I couldn't be happier. This one goes out for you Becky. I love you!

Holy Shit! Pagination!

Inspired? Bored? Alien abduction? Who knows. The end result is the same. In case any one cares, the blog now has pagination for member and category posts.

"What the fuck does that mean, Andrew?"

Well, if for some reason you would want to read all of Johnny JPEG's (er, Monorail?) posts, like from the beginning of all time, they won't all load on the same goddamned screen anymore. Now, they are nicely displayed 20 entries at a time. Cripes, technology is cool!

It ain't exactly perfect, though, so don't go tryin' to get all uppity an' shit.

Don't you love me anymore?

The one year anniversary of the house 8 weblog just flew past, and no one even noticed. No presents, no Blue Mountain cards, nothing. The weblog is going to go sit in a corner and rock slowly...

Some armchair analysis:
The first post involves "Girls Gobbling Goo." The one year anniversary post involves Jocelyn Elders. I don't know which is nastier.

Bizarre, disturbing, and stupid (with politics a close 4th) are the top categories for posts. What, exactly, does this say about us as a group? I'm also somewhat disappointed that we've only had 4 clowns entries in over a year (and one is a fake). C'mon, people!

Server dooon! We (will) have a server dooon!

Just echoing what Chris said...

House 8 will be unavailable sometime tomorrow, and probably back up sometime on Friday. If I were any more specific than that, I'd have to kill you.

(Update: Just kidding. The server will probably be down briefly sometime Thursday or Friday. No biggie. You probably won't even notice. You heartless bastards.)

CORRECTED: Airline Says In-Flight Toilet Ordeal Story False

House8 has determined the airline toilet story is false.

"We regret that we presented the story as true," the SAS spokeswoman said

Testing, 1, 2, 3

Is this thing on?

Sort-Tastic!

Another minor update to the weblog code I've been meaning to get to for ages. It's not quite done, but it will be tomorrow or the next day. Okay, by this weekend, I promise.

By using the super-turbo-extra-joy-joy-fun weblog module over there in the right hand column, you can now browse the weblog archives using a more powerful sorting tool. (Say "powerful" like the Oxi Clean Guy does; grit your teeth and try to spit at the same time. But I digress...)

So anyway, the sort is now cumulative. So, if you're looking for all the entries in a certain category in a certain month, you can do that. Soon, you'll be able to further narrow it down by a House 8 member dropdown over there as well. It's actually not that hard to add, I'm just tired.

(Okay, so the backend code is there, just no dropdown. Here, I'll prove it. QTip's September Disturbing entries.)

Ask and you shall receive

The weblog is now searchable. Just use the handy-dandy search module in the right-hand column (that oh so conveniently defaults to the weblog when you're at the weblog. Ah, technology...)

Nothing too fancy, basically just a brute force keyword search on titles, urls, and descriptions.

Next up...pagination?

No promises

but we've hopefully implemented some measures to ward off events like the data corruption that occurred last week.

Now that slave to the groove and mors.ante.servitium have re-launched, I suppose that means we need to circle back around to House 8, huh?

So, humble member-folk, if you've got ideas, feedback, criticism, beefs or a bone to pick, either drop us a line, respond to this post, or turn around and slap us in the head.

We've got a couple of tricks up our sleeves yet, but we also wouldn't mind a good push in the right direction.

Be good, now.

Alright all you whiners. If you're a bonafide, logged in member, you can include HTML in a comment.

The ability to edit your comments is coming, so keep yer britches on, ya hear?

UPDATE: Well, you'll have plenty of opportunity to practice with the new comments capabilities. Despite efforts to combat just such an event, somehow the comments db table has been corrupted, except for, oddly enough, 20-some entries.

If I were getting paid to do this, I'd keep continue my futile efforts to recover the data. But I'm not. So suck it up and deal, a'ight?

Dear Kind Sir

Let it be publicly known that john_q_public is now johnny_monorail. Let it also be known that he will never be anything else.

Thank you,
The Management.

It's gonna be a bit quiet this week.

Most of House 8 is currently drunk in Vegas. Things should pick up later in the week.

A moment of silence for webnap on house 8

Well, Andrew went and did it. He tossed out the house 8 wepnap files today. Why it seems like only yesterday I was downloading music... Wait a minute! That was yesterday. I'll forgive you Andrew... eventually. But I smell a hemorhiod-o-gram with your name on it.

Visit the broken link above and pay your respects.

Take Control. Set Your Preferences.

Alright, so there's not much to set yet, but we'll get there. At least it ain't grey anymore, alright?

Pinch me.

Are we really opening this bad boy up to the outside world?