God Dammmit, Server Down

So I’m happy once again that I use a local blogging client (ecto) because my web server is down ‘n dead for some reason (D’oh! But that’s free web space, which is long on love but short on support because I don’t pay for it. Love you guys).

If you’re reading this it means we got apache going again. If you’re not reading this, why the hell am I talking to you?

So suddenly the last couple days, after weeks of being uninteresting, Orkut got to be fun again. Surprised the hell outta me. But the why is obvious.

I’d forgotten that orkut is about people. The site itself is dumb. Still my favorite of the social networking sites, but dumb.

The people are what it’s about. And the people are slowly bleeding away. I’ve tried a few games to amuse myself (Give all my communities to the dude, but he seems to think I’m playing a trick on him; start an orkut suicide cult, but I didn’t care enough to promote it, a little light friend collecting), but nothing really helps.

Then a few things happened. Doxy got more active, Ray came back, then Queue showed up.

And suddenly I’m scrapping at midnight. I’m scrapping at work when I should be working. I’m goofing around again. I’m starting a rumor that my mullet is coming back, my mullet that last saw daylight in the 80’s. ‘join my mullet army‘ is my slogan. Just stupid shit, but it’s funny to me.

It’s not gonna last. But it flashes back to life based on who’s there. That’s what makes it funny. It wasn’t about the jokes, it was about who was telling them. So it’ll wear thin as soon as we stop the scrap-back game, but I remember why I used to like it.

It’s about the people. That’s what social networking is all about.

It also makes me remember the people who are gone or inactive whom I miss. Gomi, Rifkin, Rachel, Paul, Marie, Elaine, Barb, a bunch of others. People who used to drive things but leave a big empty space when they go. Some come back, some are gone for good, but it’s a critical mass thing where you get enough of the right people back together, the game gets funny again for a few minutes.

I guess the bottom line is, orkut isn’t over. We could bring it back, if enough of us try. Should we try?

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In other news, I turned on TypeKey logins on all the blogs I host. I have to say I’m not impressed. The documentation is even worse than is typical for Six Apart, the flexibility isn’t what I’d like, and the TypeKey web site is really lame. But it’ll be interesting to see who actually signs in to leave comments and who doesn’t. Laura, an old cohort of mine from the distant past inspired me to do it; I nagged her about getting comments turned on, and she did, and struggled though getting MT-Blacklist going, and THEN she got TypeKey working; I might as well follow suit.

Let me know if you like, don’t like, or have trouble with TypeKey. You don’t have to sign in or have a TyepKey id to comment, so this is just an experiment.

Yeah, I know, I need to get back to writing about sex. I will. Promise.