From the monthly archives:

December 2003

Christmas Letters

by James McNally on December 22, 2003

in Personal

Now, before I get started, I need to apologize in advance to my friends. I mean you no disrespect. Try to see the humour!

Among a certain crowd of my friends, a new “tradition” has taken hold. It’s the annual Christmas letter. Tucked into the Christmas card is a photocopied letter, usually on cheerful stationery covered with snowflakes or snowmen or holly or Christmas lights. Since it’s from the whole family, the letter is usually narrated in the third person, which makes it sound weird. I mean, who’s narrating this thing? And since this is sent to everyone from family to close friends to acquaintances, there isn’t much detail. There are usually three themes: property, employment, and offspring. So here’s one from Brooke and me:

Dear Friends,

Peace and joy to you at this blessed time of year. We’ve had a very exciting 2003, with lots of crazy stuff happening all the time. However, we can only talk about some of it. Just like you, we had good times and bad times, and a lot of kind of boring times, too. We got a little older, hopefully a little wiser, and a little further down the road trying to figure out life, the universe, and everything.

Brooke:

  1. wanted us to buy a house but also wanted to travel, so we decided not to buy a house. Not that we could have, anyway…
  2. continues her job at a fabulous FASHION magazine (which shall remain nameless), though still not a convinced fashionista.
  3. still dislikes OPK™(other people’s kids) and therefore remains ambivalent about having any of her own.

James, meanwhile:

  1. remains blissfully ignorant about mortgages and property taxes and how to fix stuff. For a while, there, it was close, though…
  2. wanted to quit his job in February, but lost it in March. In July, he found a much better one, though he makes about 58% of the money he did before.
  3. still has that gleam in his eye, though it’s likely to remain there.

Oh yeah, did we mention that the two of us:

  1. still don’t own a car, and have no plans to buy one.
  2. went to Poland for two weeks in July with our church to teach ESL.
  3. argue sometimes but are still very much in love.

Well, that was our year. We didn’t buy a dog, either. Merry Christmas!

Love, James and Brooke

P.S. That stuff you might have heard about us sacrificing a goat was totally untrue. We’re not even allowed to barbecue in our apartment building.

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Music From The Garage (Sales)

by James McNally on December 17, 2003

in Funny Links

365 Days is a project featuring a new piece of “outsider” music every day. From the strange to the wonderful, there’s just too much gold here to pass up. Unfortunately, the MP3s will be taken down at the end of the month, so clickity-click and giddy-up about it. (via robotjohnny)

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Desert Island Blogs, from 2001

by James McNally on December 9, 2003

in Blogging

I was reading some of my old Metafilter comments today and came across this thread, discussing our favourite blogs from February 2001. How many of these are still in existence, and of those, how many are still interesting?

What’s your opinion on the state of blogging as we approach 2004?

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Were You, Like, Scared?

by James McNally on December 9, 2003

in News

I’ve never liked Anderson Cooper (sorry, Brad). The squinty CNN anchor thinks he’s hip and oh-so-clever. But this interview with 13-year old surfer Bethany Hamilton, who survived a shark attack, is just inane. I can’t figure out who says “like” more.

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Postfix Enabler

by James McNally on December 8, 2003

in Macintosh

Postfix Enabler is a great little app that activates Panther’s built-in mail server. I was reading about this on Meg’s blog at just the right time. I work in consumer marketing for a wine importing agency, and a big part of my job is designing, writing and sending out email newsletters to our customers. Lately, a few ISPs (AOL and Cogeco) have been bouncing all our emails, claiming that our ISP is on a blacklist of spammers or at least of ISPs who allow open relaying (which assists spammers). This has devolved into a nasty political fight among ISPs which calls to tech support have been unable to solve. It’s been immensely frustrating to me since our list is an opt-in list and our messages are definitely not spam.

With this handy little program, I can use my local Mac as an SMTP server, allowing us to bypass our ISP completely. I’m a big hero in the office now!

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