Subscribe to comments Jan 23, 2007
I just enabled Mark's Subscribe to Comments plugin, which puts a checkbox in the comment form, enabling you to opt-in to receive comments to the specified post via email. #technology
Reading spam Jan 23, 2007
I've had a few different email addresses over the past several years, and as a result of my anal retentiveness, I'm compelled to at least occasionally check each address in the off chance that someone from one of my former lives has emailed me and I have the desire to communicate with them.  If I think about it, this has happened approximately zero times in my lifetime, leading to the obvious question of why I continue doing it.  That question can't be answered, so I must continue doing it. 

With the advent of Gmail, all my email from every one of my former addresses can be forwarded and stored indefinitely, without the slightest fear of overfilling my storage space.  But each email addresses carries with it a certain amount of spam.  Emailing forwarding doesn't think about spam vs. not spam, so I get about 5 times the amount of spam I should be getting. 

Every once in a while, I look through my spam folder to see if anything got filtered that shouldn't have gotten filtered.  As I'm glancing at hundreds of emails, I usually start thinking about how futile my efforts are.  Would it really be so bad if I didn't get somebody's email?  When I find ones that accidentally got filtered, I usually conclude that life could've easily gone on as normal if I hadn't received that email.  Email is known to be a fairly unreliable method of communication, what with spam filters, unreliable and misunderstood computers, and restrictive corporate email policies.  So most email communication is conducted with the forethought of "If I really need to contact him, I'll just call him." 

But despite my conclusion that it's a complete waste of time, I still do it occasionally.  Anal retentiveness wins again. #technology
Too much Jan 23, 2007
Sometimes I just have too much on my plate, and it has the effect of making me completely unproductive.  Not unproductive like "I wish I could get more than 3 things done today", but more like "I wish I could get a single thing done today".  And it's not like I have any lofty goals or anything like that.  I just want to check out a few websites and do a few little meaningless things.  But because of the shear number and complication of those things, I end up doing nothing at all.  This is definitely a problem. 

Update (2007-01-23 3:08pm):  Maybe I am task-oriented.  All these things on my to-do list don't necessarily stress me out.  It's the fact that I'm not completing any of them.  It's not that I'm not trying.  I try something and get nowhere, so I move on to something else.  In the course of an entire day, I don't complete any single task; I merely chip away at a part of each one.  And it's sorta killing me. #psychology
Meatlifting Jan 23, 2007
According to Slate, "meat was the most shoplifted item in America's grocery stores in 2005".  Wow.  Recent changes in laws affecting where certain over-the-counter medicines can be kept has led to a decline in pill shoplifting and a subsequent increase (percentage-wise) in meatlifting.  This is the most fascinating new thing I've learned in a long time.  (via Kottke) #business