T&G

My ex-boss at Microsoft, Ramez Naam, wrote a book, More Than Human, that was just wrote well-reviewed by Gizmodo and reviewed positively by notables such as Steven Johnson, George Dyson and even Scientific American. Congratulations Mez!

Interestingly, and I had forgotten about this til just this second, it was at one of Mez’s parties in 1998 that Gay and I had our first kiss. And our relationship started right after that. Oh, the memories….

Answers.com now shows Recipezaar info on their site, using our web services API. For example, search for something food-related like “appetizers” or “desserts” and you’ll see Recipezaar recipes, including the descriptions.

A Norwegian fish newspaper, Fiskaren, published an article on Recipezaar, apparently because of our cod recipes (not because I’m half-Norwegian). It’s in Norwegian, of course, so we don’t know what it says. Can anyone read Norwegian and translate the gist of it? Let us know and we’ll send you the article (it’s a PDF).

As I was riding up our road to the house on my morning bike ride, the FedEx truck came up behind me and followed me to the house and delivered my new Powerbook! It turns out that it was set for a Saturday Delivery so I could have had it two days ago, but FedEx doesn’t do Saturday deliveries on Vashon. (Damn you, Vashon!)

Whenever a member of the site flies off the handle in the forums, we have to restrict their access to posting in the forums. It shouldn’t be a surprise that people like this then get angry and lash out — they continue the behavior that got them where they are in the first place. And they always fall back to the “censorship” cry or, worse, they puff out their chest and declare themselves “not politically-correct” as if acting like jerk is somehow noble. These people always personalize everything and try to pick a fight with us and talk about how terrible we are as people. I guess that sounds more sane than saying “that company is out to get me!”.

A review of Recipezaar from Bill J. Lau, in Waynsesville, Ohio on Alexa criticizes us and the site. Who’s Bill J. Lau from Waynesville, Ohio? We don’t know him, but coincidentally, we do know of a female member with the same last name who also lives in in Waynesville, Ohio who recently violated our Terms of Service and had their account deactivated.

Update: The Recipezaar member emailed us claiming that they are not Bill Lau and minutes later, poof, the wish list of Bill Lau is deleted. The Amazon wish list is how the true identity of “Iron Arrow” (the reviewer) was revealed. Now, all you can see is that Iron Arrow’s “nick name” is “blau1011″.

But what’s most disturbing is that this person who claims to be friends with people on our site and who has requested no less than three times to be allowed back into the forums, has this to say about their “friends” and the site they beg us to return to:

I will admit there is a community there- but from what I have witnessed of it, the members are very shallow, hypocritical, and will attack other members who give them low reviews and the like, while signing a lengthy post promising to be accepting of “honest reviews”.

Note the irony that this person wants “honest reviews” on Recipezaar, but they post a review of Recipezaar dishonestly, i.e., this is the second review (stuffing the ballot box?) they’ve posted under a different pseudonym just to bash us. And this person wonders why we don’t want them back in the forums! It sure seems likely that, since the anger persists after weeks have gone by, that this person is just itching to lash out on our site. Our detractors bemoan the fact that we treat adults like children by giving “time outs” — we do it because adults sometimes act like children.

People will never know how hard we work to keep the community on the site a peaceful, enjoyable place, and that’s a good thing.