Goodbye ________, I hardly knew ya!

The topic of today's post is "farewells." And I will work in every topic remotely related to this subject as well as I can, to cut down on my list of Things to Blog About.

First off, do you remember a time in the distant past when I utterly failed to compile a list of songs with the sound of seagulls in them? Well, I finally found one to bring the list up to a robust two: It's called "Farewell," by Lemongrass.

Second, I shall say "Farewwwell," to the website naming convention that was served us wwwell (or not) over the past few decades. In case you somehow missed the gist of my belabored literary stylings, I am referring to the "WWW" that we commonly placed in front of our website names in the past. When public websites were still a new concept, I remember being appalled at the amount of oral gymnastics required to say those letters out loud. I toyed with trying to bring "tri-double-U" to the main stream, thus shaving 5 syllables off the phrase, but had to abandon the project because of my limited influence in the media. However, today, many newer websites are abandoning this tongue-twisting convention in favor of brevity (e.g. www.valsgalore.com would become simply valsgalore.com). The left-brained part of me says, "Yes!" to this sensible practice (after all, if your entire website faces the World Wide Web, there's no need for an extra subdomain). I have already given up typing the three W's when I type a domain name (my browser, or perhaps the website itself, usually fills it in anyway if needed), but I'm still not sure if I'm ready to give it up on my own website. You see, the right-brained part of me keels over at the loss of harmony when a balanced series of letters and dots suddenly loses its left wing. Howwwever, wwwhether you're an advocate of simplicity or symmetry, all factions agree that you do the Web a favor when you choose one or the other.

Lastly, tonight I bid adieu to my long-lived and much-loved headphones. I had been noticing, lately, the sound coming out of my laptop was absolutely atrocious—all tinny and muddled. I chalked that up to the laptop having a terrible sound card, since I'd had problems with sound quality since I received the machine. But today, I finally embarked on an experiment with multiple sets of headphones and learned that it was indeed my battered old favorite pair that was the culprit. So I will be tossing them in an electronics recycling bin near me soon, and beginning the arduous search for a new pair I actually like. I already have 3—a clip-on pair that's much too quiet and threatens to fall off every time I move my head, a folding travel set that sounds great but pinches my head after too long listening, and the decent pair I've dedicated for work (which is also too tight, but I managed to stretch it out some, and more stretching is in progress). There is also my phone headset, but that's also otherwise occupied, and besides, I'd rather not wear earbuds when I have the space for real 'phones. I have a feeling that finding an acceptable new pair is going to be a painful challenge.