Saturday, June 14, 2003 This is a Test. It's like this: the files for this weblog are local; that is, kept on my home computer. To post, I have to use the software residing on my own computer, which then configures and uploads the formatted post to the server. Which is fine and dandy--if your computer can be connected to the Internet. My Radio files were on my (now-deceased) Apple iBook. I managed to salvage the files, but since my desktop computer does NOT have an internet connection (I used the iBook connected to the office network, that's how). I found workarounds, but they are major-league PITAs. So now I'm trying this out. I'm sending this by e-mail, using a Mail-to-Blog tool. If you're reading this, it worked ---- This is a Failure Okay, the first test worked. Unfortunately, it wiped out my posts for the month of May. Not that there was much deathless prose there, but I didn't back it up. Ergh. Now it turns out that the local computer with the Radio software and files has to be running and hooked up to the Internet for this thing to work. Which leads to the obvious question: What the hell is the point of this stupid Mail-to-blog tool? Christ, I've been beating my head against the wall to get Radio to work. Radio isn't a writer's tool, it's a geek's tool, for them who enjoy screwing around instead of working. It's like having to write using a pen that must be held in your teeth, like having to type on a typewriter keyboard that requires ballpeen hammers to move the keys, like having to dictate a memo in Pig Latin for the stenographer to understand you. Any so-called writer's tool that puts up this many barriers to the actual writing I have to call a crashing failure. I mean, jeeziz, I'm regretting coughing up the money for something that makes me jump through as many hoops as Radio does: being forced to use their special software slow rendering of pages always-on fast internet connection to actually be useful documentation that is confusing. pathetic, non-existent, and/or impossible-to-find user-unfriendly interface, and,of course, to be charged a fee to put up with this. What, pray tell, am I missing here? Why is putting up all of these ridiculous barriers to the actual purpose (you know, actual writing of stuff, not trying to get the freaking thing to work) worthwhile? 10:21:04 PM    Comment on this post! [] Catching Up While I Can Well, as long as I've got the damned Radio software thing working (let's see how long that will last), I might as well try to catch up a bit. 9:53:36 PM    Comment on this post! [] Go, Speed Racer! From a college classmate and fellow Berkeley expat, comes this message: Cal, I started a blog of my own. http://www.xanga.com/PopsRacer We can compete, masked racer. Maybe I should surrender now. 9:52:25 PM    Comment on this post! [] No More Peet's Back home in Berkeley, my favorite coffee, hands-down, was my hometown place, Peet's Coffee & Tea. Last year, much to my surprise, they opened a store in Tokyo, trying to go head-to-head with the likes of Starbuck's and Tully's. (I'd swear I'd already written about this, but looking back, it appears that all of my postings before December have vanished, so I can't check. Is the self-deleting archive another "feature" of Radio?) In any case, by last fall, Peet's Japan had opened 4 stores, and I was happily replenishing my stocks of Blend 101 and Major Dickason's Blend every couple of weeks. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Peet's caught on here. By last month, the numbers shrank down to one, in Roppongi-1-chome near the US Embassy. A co-worker who went by there then said that there was a notice in the window saying that they may be closing, and asking for their customers' support. It may have been too late then, according to the paragraph buried in a Bloomberg News story about Starbuck's I read in the next morning's International Herald-Tribune: Underscoring the increasing elusiveness of profits, a trendy U.S. [Starbuck's] rival, Peet's Coffee Tea Inc., said it was closing its last store in the country, a little over a year after it arrived. ---In Japan, Starbucks wakes up and smells the coffee (Tuesday, May 20, 2003) On Monday, June 2nd, I stopped by the last Peet's in Japan. There, I found workers scraping off the signs on the doors and windows. A notice informed me that Saturday, May 31st was their last day. Damn. 9:41:10 PM    Comment on this post! []