Ranchero Software tech support eventually swooped in to the rescue, telling me that not only was my seemingly-expired copy of NetNewsWire merely exhibiting a bug, but that I was still entitled to an upgrade to version 3. Which is great! There aren't really any substantial improvements that I've found (other than actually working), but it gives me a useless-but-beautiful Growl notification when feeds are done refreshing, which I appreciate.

While I was adrift, RSS-wise, I tried signing up for the Vienna software development forum to see if I couldn't contribute my full text RSS algorithm to the project. Unfortunately, the registration form is broken — seems like they must not want patches all that badly.

I've been having a lucky streak when it comes to new music:

Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

It turns out that Joe Strummer faked his death. Thank goodness.

Stars – In Our Bedroom After The War

Every Stars song sort of sounds like it's being sung while staring passionately into someone's eyes as a mustachioed villain flourishes his cape in the wings and plots to destroy the Moulin Rouge. This may or may not be a problem.

Travison Morrison – All Y'All

The emerging consensus seems to be "almost as good as the Plan!" I'll take a dramatically iconoclastic approach and say that parts of it are just as good as the Plan, while others are not.

The Cribs – Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever

Where were you guys when I was driving to the beach?

The Polyphonic Spree – The Fragile Army

They have more than one song now, and you should give it a listen.

SPECIAL BONUS SINGLE TRACK ANALOGIZING:

Maritime – The Guns of Navarone

Robert Pollard, polished with granulated sugar to a gleaming smoothness.

ALSO: WOXY's 32kbps aacPlus stream really does sound amazingly good in comparison to their 64kbps MP3 stream. iTunes can't play it, but VLC can.

I gave Twitter a try back around SXSWi. I liked it, but it posed a couple of problems. First, I ended up getting so many SMSes that it made my phone significantly less useful. Second, the messages were typically from acquaintances on the west coast — nobody in DC used it.

But that's all changed. I finally installed Growl and Twitterific, which allow me to see my friends' updates in tasteful, unobtrusive windows in the upper right of my screen. "Ambient intimacy" is the phrase the Twitter people use, and it's just about right — I really do like knowing that al3x just had a sub-par bagel, or that Rich found an awesome new software tool. And Yglesias and Ezra have started using it with gusto, providing content relevant to my life in DC and encouraging me to respond in kind.

So I'm a Twitter born-again, I suppose, and have even gone so far as to install a badge in the sidebar, which is the web services equivalent of going steady. If any of this sounds intriguing, maybe you should give it a shot, too. Which is my long-winded way of saying: come entertain me, dammit.

How many people are familiar with the urban legend involving a family gone on vacation, a robbery, and a developed roll of film that reveals the burglar doing unpleasant things to the family's toothbrushes?

I thought this was part of our shared cultural heritage, but maybe I'm wrong.

It's only Wednesday, but it's already been kind of an intense week. You may have noticed me failing to respond quickly by email, help you migrate your hotmail contacts, or join you in watching movies in which David Bowie magically inconveniences teens. I apologize. There's a deadline looming, and consequently I'm wasting a lot less time on the internet and elsewhere than I'd like. But I can still dimly recall a time when my life wasn't solely devoted to building doomed UGC also-rans.

And part of that time was spent at Six Flags, as Emily and Michael already recounted. I really had no idea that a bona-fide amusement park was accessible by DC public transportation. The last time I went to the park it was still called "Wild World" and didn't have much in it except a single wooden coaster and a lot of bored birthday party attendees.

Things have improved since then. If the rollercoaster and hour-long medical drama industries are any indication, humans really enjoy the sensation of finding out that they're not going to die after all. In fact, the only sensation they seem to enjoy more is learning that somebody else is, or at least is about to have a very bad time (this is why there are more crime procedurals than hospital dramas). Under Dan Snyder's thoughtful/big-spending leadership, the park has recognized this first important truth and blossomed into a wonderland of not-quite-deadly steel contraptions.

Superman: Ride of Steel was probably the best coaster we went on, although the still-unridden Batman attraction seemed to break down with enough frequency that I think it must be particularly fun. The Tower of Doom was also pretty great: it just picks you up and drops you, cutting out the artifice and leaving riders strangely silent as they shuffle toward the exit.

The service left a little to be desired. It seemed like every employee had reported for orientation that morning — the atmosphere of the place can be summed up by the phrase, "Oh, that's what that button does!" This was mostly fine, though, as it meant that the employees were less beaten down by their awful summer jobs than one might expect. Tempers briefly flaired when it became apparent that each $25 cheese pizza ordered at the Papa John's counter was going to be meticulously made to order. Otherwise, all was well.

So I've got to give Six Flags a thumbs up. The lines were short, the beer was merely ballpark-priced and the waterpark had relatively few free-floating bandaids. Oh, and hey! I took some pictures: