It's not like me, but the siren song of the link roundup cannot be denied. Apologies to everyone I'm ripping off:

• The first thing I've heard about Google that genuinely worries me. Solution here.


• The second-best CafePress shirt I've seen.


• The third awesome crochet thing I've learned about (#1: multidimensional crochet branes, #2: Valerie talking about stabbing people last Tuesday).


• Four: the bullet entry where I abandon this stupid numbering scheme. But check it out: $560, well-reviewed 30" LCD HDTV, Microcenter (B&M only). Who am I to resist? So much for the new austerity.


• Verizon FiOS service blocks more ports than regular DSL. This is done to keep you from running a webserver on your home connection — the link is fast enough that you could get away with it for small sites, and Verizon doesn't want to supply that much bandwidth unless you're paying for business-class service. Fair enough, but it puts a damper on my hopes of fiber service — I like to run SSH over 443, since it provides a nice mixture of accessibility-from-behind-firewalls and not-getting-attacked-by-chinese-hackers-every-night. Dreams, shattered, etc. Sigh.

Last night's Hold Steady show: good! Also, blog-heavy — it was fun hanging out with the Pygmalii, Leafblower and DCeiver*. The actual show was very good, if not quite the religious experience I'd been hoping for. But if you wish that Springsteen was actually relevant for your generation (and you should — I'm looking at you, Capps), you probably ought to check out a HS tour date.

UPDATE: You'd better go read Jason's review at DCist. Dude is good.

UPDATE 2: * and Drew! Shit. Sorry about that, man. Without a pre-show gmail correspondence to prime me for it, my beer-soaked neurons simply aren't up to the task of composing an accurate roll call. Also, I'm a jerk.