Internet goes to the dogs
Calling all canines -- Dogster.com is the online spot for Spot

Cubby from New Jersey has a passion for peanut butter. Dedeaux from Baton Rouge likes to suck his brother's ear. Spike from the East Bay just wants to kiss pretty girls.

Two months after a group of self-described computer and canine geeks in San Francisco launched a social networking site for dogs, thousands of furry ones have their own Web page, complete with mug shots, personal stories and listings of likes and pet peeves.

The online site, called Dogster.com, went live Jan. 12 (2004) with fewer than 100 dogs. As of Friday (February 27, 2004), there were more than 8,000 dogs posted on the site. Hundreds of new pooches from around the globe are added daily. There are dogs from far-flung countries including Malaysia, Afghanistan, New Zealand and Croatia.

Current dogster stats show 66457 registered pooches.

Advertising on Dogster

Dogster and Catster are fun sites with a serious mission to celebrate fluffy love. Dogster is serving over 6 million pages a month on average and Catster is serving over 3 million pages a month.

A few details I left out of the first dance saga,[inlink]twisted,106[/inlink] if you can believe it.

It was the morning of the wedding (scheduled for 4PM) and my sister was still searching for the right song. My bro-in-law had pitched many outstanding selections, but none of them struck home with her.

Cue the fatal moment when I off-handedly recall the time my sister, at the impressionable age of 14 or so, announced she wanted "Evergreen" to be her first dance song. Even as my mind was accessing another memory of her saying the same thing about "Endless Love" but before I could formulate the words, my sister declared "Evergreen" would be a good choice, my brother-in-law agreed, and the deal was done.

I want to go on record as saying I have a deep and abiding appreciation for Ms. Streisand (although those fingernails scare me), but given the two theoretical options, I probably would have gone with Lionel Richie on that particular occasion. I don't know what my sister would have done, and that's what haunts me.

My brother's first dance selection was even more down to the wire. They were still deliberating between U2's "All I Want Is You" (my brother's choice) and Jimmy Buffet's version of "Brown-Eyed Girl" (my sis-in-law's choice) when the rehearsal dinner video soundtrack (which also included Vince Guaraldi, the Smiths and others - I was NOT launching a subliminal campaign for my song suggestion) interjected the third option. Actually it came down to Alisha wanting the video song and Erik refusing to concede the decision. Alisha left it up to him, with her vote definitively cast for Phil Collins.

The wedding day arrives and besides doing whatever it is guys do before a 6PM wedding, my brother makes a big show of trying to find someone with a CDRW and internet access from the hotel so he can mysteriously download something. At the wedding reception he gives the CD to the DJ and won't say what's on it. Good thing the darn thing worked.

As my brother said later that evening, I had "picked out Christina's first dance song" (I did NOT pick it out! I only reminded her of something she said 13 years earlier!) and they were still together after 10 years. So he decided to go with "my" song.

Gosh darn it that's too much pressure! I'll check back with you here in 10 years and let you know how they're doing.

(Ok, I have my own freakin' estrip site. Why am I still posting over here? Back to my own time zone. Come visit!)

(12-13) 08:57 PST SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --
Oracle snaps up PeopleSoft for $10.3 billionhttp://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/a/2004/12/13/financial0917EST0493.DTL

Ending 18 months of bad blood, Oracle Corp. raised its takeover bid for bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. by 10 percent to seal a $10.3 billion deal that will create the world's second largest maker of business applications software.

Well, at least now I may not have to fill in those 19 pages of paperwork. [inlink]twisted,98[/inlink]

Update 1:55PM PST - Just got the phone call. Back to the job postings.

From the SF Chronicle's Pink section today:

NAUGHTY SANTA'S BLACK MARKET

This most irreverent crafts fair of the season has established a two-hour "family period" that is stroller- and young adult-friendly (4-6 p.m.). Along with more than 60 Bay Area artisans selling offbeat handmade gifts (porn decoupage, anyone?), the Black Marketeers are also promising a dozen Santas on stilts and other entertainments. $6 admission. 4 p.m.-midnight at SomArts Gallery, 934 Brannan St., San Francisco; (415) 695-9100, www.naughtysantas.org.

Anybody need me to pick up a little something for that certain someone?

(Reprinted with permission from estrip:west )

It's funny how the mind works. I was recently reminded how I played a part in determining the "first dance" song when my youngest brother got married a year and a half ago. Now, I would never presume influence like that on such a personal decision. In fact, the thought terrifies me. Maybe it's because through another fluke of happenstance, I'm almost certainly responsible for the first dance song my sister used at her wedding. (I don't want to go into it right now. I know there are Barbra Streisand fans in the audience - let's just leave it at that.) Anyway, if you TELL me, at the tender age of 14, what you want your first dance song to be, you have to EXPECT me to remember that 13 years later.

So anyway, being a bit gun-shy on the subject, I found myself in a dilemma 6 months before my brother's wedding when I was shopping at IKEA (I swear this is a true story) and a song I'd never heard before comes over the store sound system. I'm really not paying much if any attention to what's playing, but like that feeling of inevitability when you feel yourself surrendering to sleep, this song tacitly penetrated my consciousness until I was standing stock still wondering what IS this song? and trying to memorize key lyrics so I could look it up when I got home. At the same time thinking, oh crap! This would be the perfect first dance song for Erik and Alisha.

Well, I knew I had to look it up, but I held firm on not intervening in the decision process for a long time. The song was from the soundtrack for the animated version of Tarzan, and I had visions of it being about Tarzan's eternal love for Cheetah, or some other innuendo fatal to my relationship with my future sister-in-law if my brother did use it at my suggestion and they later watched the movie, which I had never seen.

Anyway, I did eventually propose the song to them as nonchalantly as possible, posting the MP3 on the family website for them to preview. To my relief, they thanked me but said they had a short list of songs already under consideration. In true contrarian form, I almost immediately started thinking they were making a big mistake dismissing this song so quickly. But my fear of inadvertantly impacting any portion of their wedded life negatively far outweighed any ego I may have had about it.

Fast forward to a month before the wedding. Somehow I end up in charge of producing a multimedia presentation for the rehearsal dinner. Two weeks, 130+ scans, inestimable miles of video footage watched and imported, one 120G firewire drive purchased, one bum digital video camera and another begged/borrowed one later, my 23 minute epic was done. The grand finale cut to the song in question.

Suffice to say, after seeing the video for the first time in the intimate company of their closest friends and family on the eve of their wedding, my sister-in-law decided that's the song they should use for their first dance. I don't think my brother will ever forgive me. ;-)

Phil Collins - You'll Be In My Heart from the Tarzan soundtrack.

p.s. - I'll have to save my Peter Gabriel vs. Phil Collins story for another post, since this one is already way too freakin' long. Or just read my Cure vs. the Smiths[inlink]twisted,90[/inlink]post. Ok, that's not really the same (in my book) but you get the idea.