Blastoff Soundoff
So did you hear that we may not be able to play with model rockets anymore? Yeah, seems kind of silly. Of course, there are several voices out there who think that allowing just about anyone, children included, to walk into the local toy store and purchase explosives without regulation is the part that's silly. But all you really need is a library card and a well-stocked hardware store... I should stop right there.

If you are a vertically inclined individual who happens to live in an area that's basking in super nice weather right now (San Francisco anyone?), why not explore the delights of water-propelled hobby craft?

Memories of Mister Rogers
As the radio woke me this morning with the sad news of the passing of Mister Rogers, my sleep-rotted brain instantly flashed on one of my all-time favorite memories of the man who could talk to trolleys and make puppets come to life with a simple, "meowmeowmeow, King Friday." One Sunday morning, years in the past now, I was absently chewing my Golden Grahams and clicking through the channels of the television when, just for one sparkling second, the screen filled with the puff of a dandelion and then I heard the soothing, almost medicating voice of Mister Rogers saying, with the awed reverence that other people reserve for gods or movie stars, two magical words: "Sooooo fuzzzzy."

That fond memory of channel surfing and finding sudden, unexpected gold sparked another dim recollection: Dude, do you remember URouLette, the random page generating site? Ha, those were the days.

Good bye, Neighbor Rogers. You made a difference.

Welcome to Utopia
Last night, I attended (this is Mike speaking) an orientation session for City CarShare, an organization that works like a big carpool. You reserve a car when you need one by going to their site and fondling a Web form. You then pick it up from the carshare lot, drive it around, and bring it back. You only pay based on how much you drive the car, so it's perfect for those of us who only need a car once a week or less. No payments, no insurance, no gas (City CarShare even pays for gas if you can believe it!), and no parking hassles. It's a great service for a city like San Francisco, which is so over-populated it's at the choking point. Anyway, I met lots of friendly people last night, all of them Web savvy and well-dressed. We were all excited to be contributing to a large scale non-profit experiment in Utopian ideals and still retain the ability to listen to our own music while doing it.

When I arrived at home, I sorted my mail. I stacked the bills I'll be paying online. I sifted through the grocery store flyers to find a $5-off coupon for my online grocery delivery service. I also found a coupon for my online bookstore. I realized how entirely Web-centric my world has become. I pay my bills online, and I do the bulk of my shopping online. I work on the Web. I communicate with over half of the people I know via email or instant messenger. Now, even the car I drive is connected to a website.

It's kind of silly, but I realized that this is exactly the kind of life that was promised to me five years ago by the big thinkers in the Net world. Back then I thought, "Yeah right, it'll never happen." And here I am, typing a little story about it in a weblog within a Web browser at my Web job. I think I'll go for a walk.

Just Add Water
OMG, they're tearing out the hot tub over on Naked Hot Tub Guy's roof, right across from the windows of Webmonkey HQ! And what's Naked Hot Tub Guy without his hot tub? Mathematically speaking (Naked Hot Tub Guy - Hot Tub = Naked Guy), the removal of the hot tub should still leave us with a naked guy (of our very own), but we know better. Like a fish, Naked Guy is high and dry without a water supply, which means the precious glimpses and flashes of him we've come to rely upon to cheer our days are no more. In tuff times like these, it's the little things that give the most comfort. We know that we can never replace Naked Hot Tub Guy, but the wounds might sting less if someone smart and beautiful gave us our own miniature guide horse. Hello?

eight...nine...nine-and-a-half, nine-and-three-quarters...
Looks like, as someone on the message board hinted, Salon isn't down for the count just yet. Introducing David Talbot's "Raise Limbaugh's blood pressure! Keep Salon in business" last ditch-digging effort.

Come on, people! Content-driven sites are an endangered species these days, especially since no one's found a way to breed them successfully in captivity. So even if you don't read Salon every day, you should still subscribe. It's only thirty bucks, i.e., five cents a day, which is, like, almost nothing ... in fact, we hear the nickle is the new penny.

Zing!
In the time-honored blog tradition of linking to a blog merely because it links to us, we say: "Ouch."

In other news, Mike and Evany are both grotesquely sick and spent the bulk of their weekends tucked in their jammies (the footie kind with the race car print for Mike, Evany: nothing but sushi) watching entirely too much television (probably making us all the sicker). Evany actually watched The Rookie cover to cover, top to way, way below bottom, that's how bad things got.

As of this gloomy Monday afternoon, we're officially on the mend, but you should still totally light a candle for us.

blog oglers, every one of us
One of the beauties of the Internet is that it lets people reinvent themselves. So, say, a braided, Webby-winning, burning-manboy loses the fuzzy pink suit, trims his goldie locks, and transforms himself from a cockybastard into a life student overnight. And one of the even more beautiful beauties of the internet: such a metamorphosis can actually cause an uproar.

Clickety-Clack
Reporting back from a long weekend here at Webmonkey HQ! Evany was busy playing "spin-the-bottle" and cleaning out her apartment's linen closet. Mike took a jaunt down to Las Vegas, managed to not lose his shirt, and returned home in one piece. Did anyone attend any peace marches? Chinese New Year parades?

It's a sad day in the Web publishing world when one learns of Salon's imminent demise. Apparently, they can't even pay their rent! We'd like to do our part to boost the economy and offer up the thousand-or-so square feet in the corner of the Webmonkey office to the fellow typer-types over at Salon. If y'all need a place to crash, come on over. You'll have to compete with about six years worth of Webmonkey memorabilia, but at least we've got some fancy exposed brick...

OH! And big blogging news today. Google has purchased Pyra, the company that makes the Blogger software and runs Blogger.com. We had a somewhat difficult time wrapping our heads around that one, but we're still anxious to see what interesting developments the partnership will bring. Time shall tell.

New article up, fun with Spam
We've got another classy article by Paul up on the site. This one is about spam, and it deals with setting up filters and other tweaks on your mail server. Even if you're not running a mail server, it's still interesting to see how everything works behind the scenes in the spam-eradication world. Well, I certainly learned a lot by reading the version that Evany sent me to proof-read.

If you're on a PC (and using Outlook), there's a great Spam-killing tool that uses the distributed database model. It's called Cloudmark SpamNet, and I've seen fantastic results in the five months or so that I've been using it. Not only that, but the blocking capabilities get better every day as more people sign on. And it's free! You know it.

We're pumping a little Tom Waits in the quad today. Nothing better than Tom to kill those rainy-day moods... or maybe enhance them? A man of many talents indeed.

Great beginnings!
So here it is, folks. The all-new, fresh-smelling Webmonkey blog. Bringing you the one-two punch of monkey content on the informal, stream of consciousness tip that you know and love.

We've decided that this here page will be the place to go when you want to find all of those interesting daily developments in the Web world, links to oddball sites, pictures of us horsing around, and basically anything that we want you to know about that we're too scared to put on the actual frontdoor of Webmonkey.

To start (in a rather boring and self-serving way), have you seen the Tripod Blog Builder? It's what we've used to create this page, and it's easier to get started than you can possibly imagine. Well, don't take our word for it, just go and try it out yourself.

Until later!