The Agrinautica

   As part of my continuing publicity for 30 in 30 III, I'm going to endeavour to give the first ever play by play of the highlights of 30 in 30 I & then II.
Days 1 - 3
   30 in 30 I opened up with eight participants on June 1st 2004, with two more jumping in the next day. These valiant bloggists, were stephenl, apoplecticfittz, lerani, shekb, incomple, jdryznar, feuders, mrkevincostner, fragglerocker84, and oystercracker.
   Day 1: mrkevincostner was actually first out of the blocks at 10:20am, followed by stephenl who at 12:56 posted the official call to action. apoplecticfittz began with a new version of his recent Frasky Awards; lerani started with an amusing story about a retarded lawyer that managed to exponentially exacerbate her own ethics violation; fragglerocker84 started out strong with a well composed entry apparently about people on her vollyball team (its very well done for its subject matter, but the subject isn't the most interesting to random bloggers); and feuders also vows for the course of 30 in 30 to drink no beer (except for a number of frequent exceptions), eat no fast food, and run five miles every day*. Additionally, jdryznar declares he's going to make 30 posts in 30 days about politics, while incomple also just posts half baked ravings against conservatives (at least for the first five I checked today).
   Day 2: Day two bring a lul in the lulz, possibly because they blew the good joke they'd been saving on Day 1 and haven't started coming up with things for 30 in 30 yet. Everyone posts, but not much stood out to me on this inspection. stephenl is already making a delirious phone post, vowing to "blog at any cost" despite a lack of internet access; and apoplecticfittz declares he's going to grow a Hitler / Rob Roy mustache (Lesson 1: even a simple entry can become quality 30 in 30 material if accompanied by a well-suited picture).
   Day 3: shekb declares the pulitzer prize "tapped out." I didn't think the entry was that funny but comments from other participants seem to laud it as blogging gold. lerani posted about Dennis Quaid & the Sharks, and how you can get him to touch your enemies. stephenl decides that “The fact is, girls can't keep their pants on when they encounter a guy who's big into anime,” which reminds me that I wanted to try to trick shid into participating in 30 in 30 III. Also, bloglarious as usual, apoplecticfittz posts a must-see entry about gummy bear porn - I swear its tasteful ::caugh::.


   And holy crap next time I'm biting off a smaller chunk of entries to summarize at once.

*I think this kind of highlights a thought I had the other day. 30 in 30 is like blog-lent; during lent one makes a commitment to give up a bad habit to become a better person, during 30 in 30 one makes a commitment to better blogging. There is the blogthodox observance wherein we try to update every day, but that doesn't rule out other activities within the same spirit. Though usually 30 in 30 entails much more updating than we're accustomed to, one participant last year took it as an exercise in updating ONLY once per day as opposed to her usual 5+ (and thank-god -- I hate it when people do that); and trembyle turned off comments, which at first seemed very against the spirit of 30 in 30, but it was explained that he was trying to prove to himself he wasn't just commentwhoring.
   Though Lent, unlike feuders vows above, actually resulted in more an better beer: since monks couldn't eat all day but were actually allowed to drink beer, they ended up founding many famous breweries and developing good thick black beer (which really, is the only beer worth drinking).

This is my 37th post in 30 days. 30 days ago seven brave (foolish) "megabloggers" took a solomn vow to write one entry every day during the month of June. These legendary bloggists were stephenl, shekb, apoplecticfittz, madchenfittz, incomple, tonyz, feuders. Thirty days later several had suffered gruesome death under the burden of 30 in 30, yet new livejournalists eagerly took their place! stephenl, shekb and tonyz had dropped out only to be replaced by emosnail and lerani.
   lerani in fact apparently made 40 posts in 30 days, beating even me. ::shakes fist::

   While everyone else will probably return to posting 4.3 times a month (though I notice incomple has posted again already), I'm not going as far away, as I will probably return to my previous 26.2 entries. If you are terribly inconsolable without me flooding your friends list and are particularly emphatic about wanting me to up my post levels again I MIGHT be persuaded to go up to 27.3 entries per month but I don't make any promises.

   I'd write a more researched best of 30 in 30 entry like Lerani's but I once again spent all evening in a fetal position on my bed and now have ten minutes to midnight. Do I get a prize for posting closest to the wire?

   In summary, this is a crappy finale as compared to everyone elses, but I'd like to feebly defend myself with a quote nearly every other member of 30 in 30 used today: "I HATE YOU ALL AND HOPE YOU DIE"

   Goodnight everyone, you'll be seeing a lot less of me on your friends list.

   I'm going to need to post five entries (including this one) in the next 29 hours in order to finish on time, so expect lots of random entries. But the good news is that once that is over I'm certainly going to go back to 26 entries per month and once again will (almost) never update more than once a day. I think before this month I'd probably made multiple entries in a day (not including entries at 12:30am and then 11 hours later) probably three times in the year and a half this journal has existed.
   But am I really even behind in the 30 entries in 30 days thing? Though I only started half-way through, on the 16th, this is actually my 33rd entry since everyone else began on the 1st. So hopefully by tomorrow I will have posted 37 entries in 30 days. Madness. I'm sure all your reactions to this are best summed up by apoplecticfittz at the end of his "Ode to 30 Blogs in 30 Days" when he says "I HATE THIS MONTH AND WISH I WERE DEAD"

   But why am I writing like I'm concluding this misconcieved adventure? I'm far from done! I'm probably going to say a lot of the above tomorrow so pretend its new to you at that time.

   Also, the photobucket server my account is on is down so you'll all be spared further pictures for now.


Top Ten Ways To Know You Livejournal Too Much an Emosnail original top ten list

10. You remember the names of people you meet, for the sole purpose of referring to them later in your lj.
09. Livejournal is your primary method of communication with your friends andt he world.
08. People in real life frequently refer to you by your lj name
07. You meet strangers who know what you did last Tuesday, and have their own opinions about it.
06. Your girlfriend accuses you of loving livejournal more than her
05. You develop intricate theories about livejournaling
04. During events you find yourself thinking "I can't wait to write about this!"
03. During events you plot HOW you're going to write about them later.
02. Writing in livejournal actually takes the place of going out and doing things.
01. You find yourself obligated to make an unreasonable amount of posts because in a moment of weakness yourself and other wayward livejournalers vowed to do so.


Related
   Year Ago Today: COHO Burritos

   Theres a "meme" floating around that tells one what lj "cliques" they're in; basically which groups on their friends list all have eachother listed as friends. The idea is interesting, but its written rather badly in certain ways.
   Most suprisingly, instead of using the familiar [lj user=emosnail] type coding, it uses the much longer route of linking to the images livejournal uses for the same purpose and linking to the info page and livejournal.

   The most critical problem in the function of the meme is that if in a large group of people two happen not to link to eachother as friends, it creates two completely seperate "cliques." For example here is what it tells me:

I am a member of 3 cliques of size 7

• emosnail, basicallyasap, slosha, nessabfly, badbree, ilivewith8boobs, colleeniebeenie


• emosnail, basicallyasap, nessabfly, badbree, ilivewith8boobs, colleeniebeenie, pavelthegeek


• emosnail, citizene, simplistic_me, suziej, jegskaltisse, sandwiches, soccermomxcore

Find the largest clique containing:

(Enter your livejournal username here).

   What this actually means is that I'm part of a group consisting of emosnail, basicallyasap, nessabfly, badbree, ilivewith8boobs, and colleeniebeenie, with pavelthegeek, and slosha as slightly less connected members (they're only not connected to eachother actually)(this is basically the group of people I've met through Kristy). I am also apparently a part of a group of UC Davis hardcore kids consisting of emosnail, citizene, simplistic_me, suziej, jegskaltisse, sandwiches, and soccermomxcore.
   I'd imagine I'm part of other smaller interconnected groups, but the thing only displays these three. If anyone knows of a similar meme that does all this better I'd be interested in hearing about it.


Picture of the Day

View down Preciados towards El Cortijo (my street)
Mission Viejo, CA
© Kris Fricke 2004


Related
   Year Ago Today: Taco Loco, Buchadolores, & Christy

   Livejournalists prepare yourselves, for I have been unleashed upon the world with a digital camera!! Yes, thats right, its been three years since I last scanned a photograph of mine but the photographic winter is finally over!

   Today I took 63 photographs, completed three photo-essays, worked on part of another, and took several brilliant pictures which will change your life.
   The camera is not mine however, but the family digital camera, but hopefully by the end of this summer I'll have one of my own and never again shall the photographic winter set in.

   You see, my paternal grandfather has been a career photographer for Kodak, my dad collects cameras, my maternal grandfather builds lenses for NASA, my older brother even sometimes thinks he might be a decent photographer, photography runs in my veins.


Picture of the Day - A Preview of Coming Attractions

Viejo Liquor
Mission Viejo, CA
© Kris Fricke 2004

Shid
   Also to tide you over until I get the pictures posted, we've got some polls for you, but to save time we've brilliantly combined them in a way which we've determined will in no way bias the results, and so we give you a single highly objective poll of ultimate truthfulness:

[Poll #313742]
   If you selected the first option, arrangements can be made at shid and should be made as soon as possible.


Related
   Year Ago Today: The Life of Kris - some general notes

   In order to finish on schedule with the 30 in 30 thing I will need to make a post every 9.5 hours. I don't know how I got so far behind.

   Anyway, continuing my scientific investigation of the blogosphere, I've done a study of 20 livejournals on my friends list¹, based on numbers of entries, comments and other quantifiable information. The results are as follows:


( The Study )

   Also determined that this journal is currently averaging 26.2 entries per month.
   Next I think I'll look at a number of randomly selected livejournals. These ones were selected to take livejournals I hypothesized were good examples of a megablog or underblog, and as such are far from a random sampling of livejournals.
   Also I didn't use anyone who didn't have "friends-of" displayed in their userinfo. This prevented me from using several livejournals I was interested in looking at.


Related
   Interesting Livejournal of the Day: giantlaser in Iraq


¹actually 10% of them aren't on my friends list
²Yes I am aware that proper ratios should not have numbers less than one. For simplicity's sake however I decided not to convert numbers like 0.3 and 0.6 to 3:1 and 5:3.

   Today we here at Emosnail have decided to interview Kris Fricke, often mistaken as the author of this livejournal. Read on as we explore the very nature of this livejournal and its associated insanity.


( schizophrenia? )

   A brief explanation: I wrote this in fall 2002 as UC Davis moved into "Division 1" of intercollegiate athletics. It appeared in the last issue of the Chosen Echidna, but I don't believe I've posted it in this livejournal yet.

   "UC Davis continues its winning streak by defeating Saddleback Community College 205-0." This and many similar headlines could be appearing on newspapers near you if UC Davis successfully moves down to Division Three athletics.
   Athletics officials explain that the fundamental benefit is name recognition. The large number of community colleges and other institutions with feeble D3 athletics programs would give us a much larger array of schools to compete with. This in turn would increase our name recognition and reputation over a much larger area. It would also have a great impact on increasing the number of applicants to UC Davis, as community college students are much more likely to subsequently attend Davis than say, San Diego State students. "Why would we want to compete against a D2 or D1 school anyway? They clearly won't be inspired to transfer to UC Davis from such an experience. Heck, we might even be defeated and bring shame upon our descendants for generations to come," explains one athletics official. "We shouldn't chance it, we should compete against Division Three schools where we know we can win and inspire our competitors with fear and inadequacy."    Initially the change to Division Three was to be paid for by the Administration, as has been done at other schools, but an overeager ASUCD senator apparently took the initiative in offering to have the students pay. "Yea, we were going to pay for it all, but one of the ASUCD senators took it upon himself to campaign for students to fund it, and we sure as heck weren't about to stop him," concedes an administration representative "no, we're not really sure why he's doing this. It crossed our minds that he may be trying really, really hard to suck up to us, but we're more of the opinion that he's just permanently delirious."
   If approved, the D3 initiative will bring along with it several buildings which have absolutely no relation to D3, and several ASUCD senate candidates who intend to ride the wave of support for it into office. Political science majors will all attest however that these kind of unrelated connections are to be expected in any healthy political environment. "Its like those sucker fish, echeneididae, that attach to whales and sharks; they are completely expected and normal." At a cost of $1,372.98 per student per year, in addition to the various chosen echeneididae¹, the costs will overwhelmingly be used for giving full scholarships to jocks. Much like the aforementioned sucker-fish, this also apparently is in keeping with natural laws of the universe, as the athletics official explained: "these students are unfairly discriminated against because the skills they happen to have don't correspond to uses in the real world, therefore it is only right, fitting and ethical that we offset this terrible situation by having other students pay more so that the athletes don't have to pay."
   As the official summarized, "We need to stop slogging around with equal schools we have nothing to gain from competing against, and completely throw out this idea of competing against superior schools, let us bring ourselves glory: its time; think D3."

¹"the Chosen Echeneididae" was the title of a previous issue of the Chosen Echidna.