A Bloglines Diet

I’m certainly not the biggest Bloglines subscriber - from what I’ve read, some users have over 1000 feeds on their blogrolls. My blogroll numbered at a slightly more modest 244. Until today, when I decided to put it on a diet. Now there are only 198 feeds on my blogroll. I’ve removed redundant news sources, eliminated blogs that are rarely updated, axed blogs whose posts I simply didn’t like reading, and consolidated blogs where an aggregated source was available (e.g. Planet Mozilla or Planet Movable Type).

I’m still working on cutting some of the fat. There are blogs that I’ve kept around ‘just in case’ something interesting pops up… but I’ll probably let them go. One thing I’m trying to convince myself of is that I simply don’t need to be the first person to hear about news… I’m going to try to be happy just reading news from a second or third tier reporting site, rather than subscribing to all of the ‘important’ first tier bloggers. So here’s to a slimmer blogroll, less compulsive blogroll checking, and more free time.

Grilling, Take Two

I am pleased to report that Grilling, Take Two was successful. This time, we used a new batch of real wood chips instead of charcoal, and used lighter fluid to get the fire started. The fire burned nice and hot, and we were able to get our burgers grilled to perfection. The weather was nice enough that we were able to sit outside and have a backyard picnic. Tonight’s menu:

Cheeseburgers (1/4 pound of 85% lean ground beef each, mixed with Worcestershire* sauce, garlic powder, salt, pepper, celery salt, and just a hint of sugar! Grilled and topped with jack cheese, ketchup, and tomatoes.) Baked beans Dill pickles Ruffled potato chips

And to top it all off…

S’MORES!

With temperatures pushing 70F, it was a very nice dinner.

• A benefit of spending time in Massachusetts is that it’s not too hard to spell Worcestershire.