I have a new phone and a new phone number to go with it: 1 415 868 4629. So I updated the Larry Hosken Contact Info page and there was much rejoicing.

I also have a Hello Kitty bag to hold the phone, all rigged up on a belt clip. It does not look as cool as it sounds from the verbal description; and the verbal description is already pretty dorky. You have been warned.

I signed up for Twitter. Yes, you can now get updates about my status much more often than you want to. You can see my Twitter status if you visit this blog's front page; if you resourcefully follow the "follow me on Twitter" link, you'll find other ways to receive those updates. E.g., there is a feed.

Are you on Twitter? Let me know.

I'd considered signing up for Twitter before, but their About page mentioned something about giving them my gmail password, and I was all like "No way! I sit down the hall from a bunch of computer security experts. They scream every time you tell your password to a stranger. I just couldn't face those people." So I gave up.

But you can join Twitter without telling them your email password. It's just that then you're kinda on your own for figuring out which, if any, of your friends are already on Twitter. Thus, I ask: are you on Twitter? If so, let me know so I can subscri^W follow you.

I already know that Vanessa is on Twitter; it was her blog post today that prodded me to sign up. How about the rest of you? Yeah, I know, the intersection between my circle of friends and Social2.0 folks is narrow; but there are a few of you.

As a bleeding heart tree-hugging liberal dupe of the special interests, I give to many charitable organizations. Then they send me paper mail to let me know what they're doing and to encourage me to give them more money. Meanwhile, my apartment building has teeny-tiny mailboxes. My mailbox often fills up. Once my postal carrier fills my box with urgent bulletins notifying me that some children in far-off lands are still hungry, sometimes s/he notices that there's not enough room for unimportant mail like bills and invoices and so those get returned to sender. It was like a DDoS attack on my physical mailbox. For the last year or so, I've been letting these charitable appeals pile up--so I could count them. I guessed that there were probably just a few places filling up my mailbox with constant mailing.

And that's true. The following organizations, between them, sent me a little bit more than half of the charitable-org mail I received in the last year or so. I want to remember to not send them any more money until I move someplace with a bigger mailbox.

SPLaC List 2007

(I'm calling this list the SPLaC List in honor of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which I gave some money a few years ago and which responded with too much mail. I had a bigger mailbox then, but they still managed to fill it.)

• Americans United for Separation of Church and State
• Doctors Without Borders
• Environmental Defense
• FINCA International
• Friends of the San Francisco Public Library
• Greenpeace
• Friends of the Urban Forest
• Glide
• The Ocean Conservancy
• Pacific Crest Trail Association
• People for the American Way
• Planned Parenthood of North America
• Project Open Hand
• Save the Bay
• Sierra Club
• United Negro College Fund
• The Yosemite Fund

I'm not saying that these organizations aren't doing wonderful things. I'm just saying that I'm going to let someone else, someone with a bigger mailbox, support them.

I was planning to visit the Seattle area this autumn. MS Puzzlehunt 11 is happening around then. Any Microsofties reading this... any suggestions on how I might volunteer as slave labor for the folks running this thing? I'd be happy to sit on a hint-line phone, watch a clue site, and/or monitor the status of a juice refrigerator, whatever would be useful.

I'd be curious to know if they're interested. If they're not, I'll probably head up in November instead.

[Update: I have heard from them. After I posted a message on SeattleGC.com. Which is what I probably should have done in the first place.]

In other news, Hurrah for Team Bloodshot! Bravely determining whether Ravenchase's Great American Race is fun and/or awful. Upcoming weather reports predict temperatures in the 90s and thunderstorms. Oh dear. Hurrah?

If you send mail to this domain, I might discard it without looking at it. But I probably won't. For the last few weeks, I've been using a spam filter to... filter spam. I've been carefully looking over the results to make sure that stuff from real people didn't get filtered. But I'm going to stop looking carefully.

I was spending so much time looking over that filter that I was falling behind on answering my mail. That's no good.