Monthly Archives: June 2009

Ping Google Reader

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 19, 2009 – 11:33 am
Filed under administrative
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If you’re like me, you obsess over the fact that Google Reader doesn’t update itself often enough to include your newest blog entries the moment you write them. I scoured the Innanet to find a solution but couldn’t see anything official. Here’s a great workaround, though:

1) If you’re using FeedBurner FeedFlares for things like displaying a link to comment on your feed (which you should be, OMG), you’ll want to make sure it’s aware of your latest post by pinging FeedBurner.

If you’re not using Feedburner (fool!), skip to step 3.

2) Give it anywhere between 10 seconds and 30 minutes, because pinging Feedburner only works about half of the time.

3) Bring your feed up on Google Reader and click the Refresh button right above your text.

Voila! Your feed will be updated for all to see, and you can go back to being obsessive-compulsive about something else.

It’s Best to Claim Your Bodily Functions

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 18, 2009 – 1:10 pm
Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
Tagged as , , ,

Nearly every single restaurant in NYC delivers for free, which means that on Saturdays and Sundays, Dr. Boyfriend and I pretty much refuse to leave his apartment and secretly have disdain for friends who attempt to coax us out. So last weekend, we were heading downstairs to pick up our delivered Thai food in his building’s lobby when the elevator stopped at a lower floor. Just as the doors opened, the young Asian man waiting outside let out a very audible burp.

He didn’t excuse himself or anything, so I said, “We heard that!” Because, you know, it’s not like I could pretend it didn’t happen. He just continued to stare at the door and didn’t acknowledge me in any way.

When he rushed out at the ground floor, Kamran held me back for a moment and asked me incredulously, “How could you embarrass me like that?!” I was shocked. Embarrass him? He wasn’t the one to hardcore burp and then just casually slip into the elevator like the reeking fumes of his body gas weren’t surrounding us all.

I thought that acknowledging the burp would actually lighten the mood. When someone calls you out on something, it gives you a chance to turn the joke back around on yourself, right? And it’s not like we caught him raping a cat or something here. It was a burp!

So who’s right here–Kamran or me?

For Your Enjoyment

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 17, 2009 – 10:38 am
Filed under administrative
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Here are my two favourite things in the world right now:

1) My latest Examiner article, which begins:

In my experience, there are two kinds of subway riders: everyone else and me. Everyone else does this cute little thing–since they somehow believe it more important for them to get to work than it is for me–where they squeeze into the only available square inch of space in front of me on the subway platform–neverminding the fact that there’s a good chance the train is going to swipe off their ties and/or faces–just to be at the front of the jumble of waiting people. Instead of standing off to the sides of the doors to keep traffic flowing, they wiggle into the space clearly marked on the floor as the area to keep clear for exiting passengers. They insist on being first into the car, even if they’re getting off at the next stop and will therefore have to push past everyone they ran on ahead of in order to exit.

Now go read the rest and earn me my penny.

2) This LiveJournal entry by topsyturvytown, which made me laugh so much that I insisted she unlock it so non-LJ people could enjoy it as heartily. If you don’t find yourself linking several of the pictures to your friends, I don’t understand how we could know each other.

Big Apple Barbecue 2009

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 16, 2009 – 10:35 am
Filed under administrative
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Hey, whoa, I actually just posted on donuts4dinner.com.

It’s the tale of my trip to the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party this weekend and includes some super-sexy mid-eat photos. Mmmmmm.

More Lost and Lonely Leftovers

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 15, 2009 – 11:08 am
Filed under administrative, restaurant ramblings
Tagged as , ,

Yesterday, Dr. Boyfriend and I were walking around 2nd Ave. between 23rd and 34th Streets, delighting ourselves with the culinary wonders of the weekend street fair (warning: jankiest website ever), when we spotted a pickle vendor. Neither of us have sampled many of New York’s pickle offerings other than the full sour and the half-sour, so I suggested we try something new, but as we approached the tent, we were dismayed to see that they were only being sold by the pint.

We passed by pickleless then but found ourselves standing outside a bakery stationed directly behind the vendor later just as one of the sellers lobbed off the bottom half of a pickle and attempted to land the top half in a trashcan. He didn’t watch to make sure it actually landed in the garbage, though, so Kamran and I were the only ones to see it bounce off the rim and roll onto the sidewalk at our feet.

And thus, an addition to my abandoned food page was born.