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Not everything is a teachable moment. There is not a lesson in everything. Sometimes, it is more important to just exist in the moment, being a part of the moment, changing the moment as it changes you.

We've become too hung up on everything having some lesson, some meaning, some discernible truth that we just have to filter out like prospectors panning for gold. Journalists ask "So what can we learn from this?" in interviews. Politicians build policy around "lessons learned". Books are built tearing down minute statistics into some nugget that we're supposed to learn.

All, in spite of doing. Being.

Sometimes, moments and events have no lesson. A parent dies. You win the lottery. You're hit by another car at an intersection. Your cancer goes into remission. These are the big moments in life. The important ones that sometimes lead to real change. And they may never yield a thing for you to learn from.

Instead, they're just a moment for you to live in. To be transformed in.

To be in.

This past election season we heard a lot about the differences between youth and experience and how experience should always trump youth, but during the election America chose youth and vitality over experience, and I was excited.

The Super Bowl again was, for me, a triumph of youth over experience. I know that the Steelers have been to the big game before but their quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger is younger than Warner, and this was only his second Super Bowl, as opposed to Kurt Warner's third. Also, Mike Tomlin, the Steeler's head coach is the youngest head coach to win the Super Bowl.

This was again, a time for youth to triumph over experience. And that's a good thing. I mean, maybe I'm getting to be a little too old to be this gleeful for this, but I think it's a good thing.

It really is a good thing.

Because I am going to be attending and presenting at BarCamp Harrisburg I have been putting a lot of thought into what my discussion topic should be, and I have three things that have been rattling around in my head for a while now. I am going to decide on one of them within the next week so I can begin to compile my materials.

Here are the things I've been thinking about:

• Incorporating social tools into existing business applications. - I want to be able to examine how you could change existing applications into something more collaborative and connected. I'm not crazy about this topic, but since I am a developer I do think about these types of things.


• Social Project Management - I think Project Management is one area that could use more social interaction, collaboration, better searching, more integration with different types of media, and it's something that I've been aching for. I want to put some thoughts together on how to make this happen.


• Running a Social Media Consulting Business - The other thing that's been really consuming my thoughts is how to run a consulting business that helps connect companies with social tools like Twitter, Facebook, and the like to be more responsive to customers and grow. I believe a lot of companies are afraid of these types of tools and they shouldn't be. I think there is a great opportunity for the right company to come forward and help others understand and join the social web. I would do this as a practice run for presenting to my own company. I don't want to hide that. I want to sell this idea to my company.

So those are my topics. I'm going to probably pick two of them and prepare them both.

I just found out through a Twitter contact that Harrisburg is going to be having their own BarCamp. BarCamp is not an all-day booze fest (though that does have its place in life) but is an unconference of sorts. It is a tech gathering where everyone who goes has to participate.

This is a moment of synchronicity for me because earlier this evening I was wondering what I was going to be blogging about in this space. I've already peeled away my personal postings to another blog to be able to concentrate this area on something more substantial, and that was certainly easier before the election, but since, I've felt topically adrift. I was not sure what I was going to be blogging about next, because there are many things that interest me, but where do I focus? Does the world really need another food blog? Do I have the time to devote to putting together a good music blog? And would anybody really care.

What I really needed was something that was going to dovetail nicely with my day-to-day activities in work and technology, especially because it'll be good to be able to capture and expand on my thoughts when I'm in that context.

Attending BarCamp Harrisburg gives me an excuse to pick a topic to present on and expand on it here. So the next couple of days I'm going to spend time thinking about what I want to discuss in January and build my presentation in this space.

I think it's fitting that I'll be working on a presentation for an "unconference" in this space and evolving my ideas here. Kind of anti-climactic for those who will be attending the actual BarCamp but oh well.

I don't think that this means I'll be completely ignoring politics or civil liberties and freedom as I have blogged about in the past. I'll just be looking for a new venue to do that in. When I've found a new home for that content I'll be sure to let you know.

I went on vacation last week and at the start of the vacation I got a horoscope that read "The next 30 days will be an adventure." That's always advantageous when you're on vacation, I guess, and so I was excited. And it's come true. In spades.

When I left for vacation I was considering a change in career. I've been kind of burned out on programming and computers in general, and then something cool happened that I can't share fully yet, but someone called me about an opportunity and just that brief contact rekindled a lot of feelings I hadn't had in a while. I wish I could share more, but I can't. Not yet anyway.

So while that was playing out, I had a blast in Ocean City. We went swimming, I rode the tilt-a-whirl with my kids and niece until I was certain I was going to hurl, ate myself silly, totally fell off my diet (and still lost weight! French Fries FTW!), and just had a wonderful time.

Came back, found out that that opportunity that rekindled my interest wasn't going to happen, and was sad, but still happy because I felt renewed.

I picked up with my diet and I lost even more weight, coming in below 300lbs for the first time in forever. I finally am at the point where I need to start shopping for more clothes.

Then I get a call and I'm offered the position of coach for my kids' soccer team and accept. I'm nervous as all get out and excited about the opportunity and can't wait, so I've been working on getting myself ready for that, and then yesterday I got a phone call.

The "someone" has a new opportunity and wants to talk to me.

It's only been 15 days and it's been a whirlwind already. I can't wait to see if it continues.

Life is great.

My wife and I have been talking about expenses and what we can cut and where to save money. As things are getting more expensive we're starting to worry more and more. Add to that the nature of the consulting business I'm in and how unpredictable it can be, it adds to a lot of worry for both of us.

I'm feeling very listless and restless today, anxious and unable to concentrate. I don't quite know where to turn for some sort of relief or answer, I just know that I'm overwhelmed today with my own internal burdens.

We're going on vacation in two weeks and I don't feel like I should, because I don't know that things will be in order when I get back, and I really hate that feeling. It's the hazy nature of the future that's biting at me today, a thousand nagging doubts buzzing around my head like gnats, and I've had enough.

And honestly, we're doing alright economically. We don't carry a big credit card debt, I only have one car payment, and our mortgage is manageable, but still, today, on an otherwise pretty summer day, I'm sitting in the near dark of my living room feeling like I should go get a second job.

It should be a bad day, or at least, I should feel more pissed off, but frankly I'm just mellow. Maybe it's just a function of getting older, or getting thinner...

At mid-day I was prepping dinner for tomorrow and when I dropped the pot roast in the pan hot olive oil shot out and burned me. I've got a raised red welt the size and shape of a duck's webbed foot on my left arm.

I took care of that and then this evening I jumped in the pool and forgot that I had my RAZR in my pocket. It's dead. I can try to take it apart and let it dry out, but I don't know if I'm going to have any luck. I have to wait until October before I can get a new phone as part of my plan or I can pay out of pocket.

And still, I'm not really upset. I don't know why. I'm just not. I'm actually kind of hoping the welt on my arm turns into some kind of gnarly scar I can show off.

"Yup, I got this one when I grabbed the tail pipe of that Harley the Pagan was driving to rescue the baby he was kidnapping. He was high on meth and thought I was the avenging angel of the Lord, but he still put up a hell of a fight before he gave that little girl back. He came away with some broken ribs and a broken nose. I only came away with this scar."

Yeah, good times.

I'm watching the NBA Finals and I've got to ask: Who in the hell picked James Taylor as the guy to sing the National Anthem? It's not that he flubbed it, but it was a goddamn lullaby! Was Mr. Rogers not available? Kenny Loggins still working on his next album of kids music?

They should have picked someone who would have ripped the roof off.

In one of the funnier stories I've read this week, two men got into an argument about a boot put on a van and ended up tasering each other. I think it's kind of nice when idiots get together and inflict pain on each other, just so long as the rest of us aren't affected.

I finally fixed my blog so that comments and publishing is working again. Of course I had to strip out all of the customization that I'd did, but I'd rather be having a dialogue with you. Actually posts to follow.

I've been away and not blogging for a while, but not because I hate you. In fact, I love you guys. But I've been on two projects that are both coming to a close soon, but they've consume all of my time. In fact, too much time, as my kids are prone to tell me every day. I like that I have more responsibility at work, and I'm happy with what I'm doing, but it doesn't leave a lot for blogging.

However, I have a plan. I've got a list of topics that I'm working on to start blogging. I want to get back out here and start writing about some of the things that are important to me. So, please accept my apologies for ignoring you and I hope you're willing to come back and read what I've got to read.

Thx.

One day, when I was a gawky fumbling young man of 15, I was riding in the backseat of a car with my good friend Jeff and other of his friends. Sadly I don't remember who it was, so I shall name him Leo...because I can dammit!

Leo's mom and dad picked us up at HersheyPark after a long day of burping, farting, rollercoasters, and staring at girls. I was physically tired, but I was mental electric, and "Walk on the Wild Side" came on the radio. Leo's dad turned the song up a little bit and looked at his wife sideways for a second. There was something between them and this song. I looked over at my friends. Jeff and Leo were talking, so I sat in silence, and listened to the song. And I heard it. The line: "She never lost her head, even when she was giving head".

Explicit visions danced in my head. My body suddenly ached. Was I the only one who heard that? When did that line sneak into the song? Was it always there?

My hand involuntarily whipped out and smacked Jeff across the chest, but he didn't pay any attention to me. He kept talking to Leo. I looked forward for a second and saw Leo's mom in the vanity mirror of her sun visor. She was suddenly prettier, and for a second, she and I looked at each other. A subtle smile darted across her face and vanished.

She knew I'd heard the line, and that I'd understood it. More importantly, she let me know she'd heard the line, and that she understood it. REALLY UNDERSTOOD IT And she wasn't freaked out by the notion. In my head she was going to go home that night and do it to her husband. Husbands and wives did that!

And as if to confirm it, she reached over and grabbed her husband's hand.

I don't remember the rest of the car ride home. Instead I basked in the glow of my new knowledge.

My step-dad got his hands on some old camping magazines, and flipping through them we found the following ad:

I don't know about you, but I'm interested in the Midget and the Duchess. I'd like to know how that one worked out.

Heather and I were watching an ABC news piece about the growing number of Jackass imitators that are posting clips of themselves getting hurt while trying bigger and dumber stunts. Albert Nerenberg, director of the movie 'Stupidity' about such phenomenon said it's going to get more and more dangerous and people are going to die doing these stunts.

I'm not really unhappy about this, because the way I figure it means my daughter's a lot less likely to marry one of these knucklehead's children. They're excusing themselves from the gene pool, and nothing could make me happier.

Sorry for the absence after my post about why I don't do drugs. I was trying to figure out how to upgrade to MT 4.0.

It was a disaster, and I finally had to just erase everything and reinstall. Luckily I'd saved all my old posts and backed up my DB for this occasion.

So I'm back bitches!

On that note, I'd like to ask you:
Don't you think they should have ice cream turds? Little chocolate turds, coffee turds, maybe hazelnut turds, and...ooo pistachio turds, for those days you drank too much grape juice. They could stick in some candy corn, other bits of candy "interest".

I foresee a burgeoning industry of poo-styled ice cream ahead.

I've never done drugs. I've never smoked a spliff, snorted a line, chased a dragon, huffed, whatever. It's not something I'm boastful about, it's all about personal choices. I believe that people should have the ability to bend and spindle their own consciousness as they see fit. I just didn't see the need.

I would get into debates about this in college. My friends who did drugs would say "Man when you do drugs you think about all sorts of crazy things like 'What if this was all a big lake?'" (actual quote). My response was always "Because I don't need drugs to think up things like that. They just occur to me naturally."

Case in point, the other day on CNN they were discussing knock-off purses, and John Roberts and Kiran Chetry were picking up the different styles, looking at the purses, stroking them, sniffing them, and a thought ran through my head:

"A purse is a giant fashion vagina".

A purse is a vagina women carry around with them to put their stuff in.

Yes, I really did think that.

And then...then..my mind started coming up with tangents for that thought:

• That would explain why men don't like holding purses. They don't want to be seen holding a fashion vagina


• Watch out! These vaginas DO have teeth.


• What does this say about women that have more than one purse? That they wish to have many vaginas? That they wish to spruce theirs up?


• What about the women who don't carry purses?


• Does that mean a wallet is a money cock and that's why men seek to make them as thick as possible? Isn't everything on a man a cock? His tie points at his cock, his jacket sweeps open at the waist like curtains at the theatre.


• When did I turn into Dr. Freud?

And on and on.

See, that's why I don't take drugs. My brain's on a freaky-deaky acid trip ALL the time.

Dear China,
Thanks for all of the swell products you've made through the last few years on the cheap. I don't want you to think we don't appreciate all you've done, but this year, we're going to have to stop buying anything Chinese-made.

Problems started early this year when we fed the family dog the food tainted with melamine. He died. My son was devastated most of all. So we broke down and bought him some new Thomas the Tank Engine toys to ease his heartache. Oops! He's in the hospital with serious lead poisoning. We're hoping he makes it.

Of course, he's in better spirits (when he's awake and lucid and not vomiting) because his sister's right next to him with intestinal problems from the magnets that broke off her Barbie dolls that she swallowed. The doctors mentioned that they might be able to put in a partially artificial intenstine from, where else?, China! We're dubious.

Especially since last week, on his way to the hospital to visit his grandchildren my father-in-laws truck wrecked because the tires on it were made in China and the tread separated.

Anyway, that really was the last straw. We've decided that if our kids make it through okay and live to see another day, we'll give them good safe toys like air rifles.

Factor in the collapse of that bridge under construction and the fire at the tallest building in Shanghai, and we're pretty clear we can't trust a damn thing you make anymore.

All of that considered, best of luck to you and yours.

I'm sitting in my car right now working on the laptop and waiting for my wristband to pick up my copy of the last Harry Potter book. Yes it's 6am. No, there's no one else here, but I am, and I'm okay letting my freak flag fly this way.

Anyway, it's a gorgeous morning and I'm out in the fresh air.

I know I said I was waiting until Friday, and I was cutting off all ties to the internet so the book wouldn't be spoiled for me, but I couldn't resist. The temptation was too great. So I might as well jump on the bandwagon and present these spoilers. Be warned, there's some pretty intense stuff here, so don't look unless you really want to know....

I am going dark this weekend. I will not connect to the internet. I will not listen to the radio. I will not watch TV. I will turn off all forms of communication with the outside world and sequester myself in my house. Why?

Because on Friday night I pickup my copy of the final Harry Potter book and I dare not risk some spoiling motherf***er ruining the ending for me.

Oh you may laugh, but leaked copies of the book are already showing up on BitTorrent networks as we speak.

The last thing I need is for some tempting news story to roll across my RSS reader like

"Bill Gates and Steve Jobs photographed in South Beach holding hands; Office 2007 for Mac released early"

And I'm certainly not going to let some shitard on TV or the radio try to spoil the ending for me like Rosie O'Donnell did with "Fight Club". Sorry Andy, for bringing up your GF and all, but what she did was uncalled for.

So, email me all you want. Email me about a million bucks lying on the street free for the taking. Call me, text me, do whatever the hell you want. I won't respond. This weekend, I don't exist.

(And so help me God, if I so much as see a skywriter or airplane pulling a streamer near my house I will shoot it out of the sky, and I will unleash the dogs of war on anybody with a megaphone within a mile of my house, no questions asked.)

Owen: "I spy with my little eye something that is....yellow"
Me: "Is it your truck?"
Owen: "No"
Me: "Is it a banana?"
Owen: <giggling> "No"
Me: "Uhm, is it that flower over there?"
Owen: <laughing> "No Daddy! It's your teeth!"

The FBI announced this week that they believe Brian Douglas Wells was in on the bank robbery that eventually ended with him blowing up.

I can't say I'm totally surprised. The elements of the case were just so bizarre that it spoke of something cooked up over beers between friends:

"You know what would be a perfect crime?????"

Unfortunately for him, it wasn't the perfect crime.

I went and saw Harry Potter last night. My suspicions were confirmed. The critics were confused and walked into Die Hard 8 when they thought they were reviewing Harry Potter.

"Hrm, he sure has grown. Look, more of the same stuff. Oh well".

Harry Potter was awesome, and we loved it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to open the next door on my Harry Potter Advent Calendar.

When I drove into work this morning I listened to Kenneth Turan's review of "Order of the Phoenix", the new Harry Potter movie coming out. It seemed to me that he wasn't quite sure what movie he was reviewing because he says:

"It's a cog in a brisk, well-oiled machine, the fifth in a seven-film series, and it unfolds like a chapter in the world's longest-running serial."

Well...DUH! That's exactly what it is.

He goes on to complain:

"Phoenix may be thinned down from the series' longest book, but it can't shake an episodic feeling that makes it difficult to develop momentum. Though many of its elements are strong, it finally can't transcend being a way station in an epic journey — a journey whose cinematic conclusion is several years in the future."

I wrote it off as one bad review, and forgot about it, until I read this review.

" "Order of the Phoenix" sticks safely and at times monotonously to the Potter formula: Show a bit of Harry's drab summer among his heartless Muggle relations, branch off into a magical interlude, then land him back at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft, where the same old issues resurface — classmate rivalry, teacher trouble, and a slow build toward another showdown with Voldemort."

Riiiiiggghhhhttttt. Isn't that what the book is? Isn't that what the movie should portray? Perhaps they were expecting "Brokeback Hogwarts":

"The stunning visuals provide a backdrop to the sweeping love story between Hagrid and Harry. This "beauty and the beast" reimagining of Harry Potter has it all. Romance, passion, leather. This is the real magic we have been missing..."

This is not a fairy tale ripe for interpretation, or reinvention. The critics seem dismayed that the director hasn't taken any steps away from the book when that's what the fans are clamoring for.

The AP review goes on to comment:

"Familiarity is not quite breeding contempt for Harry and his friends and enemies. But it's starting to breed indifference"

Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Borders have all reported that more orders have been placed for the final Harry Potter book than any other in their history. Bookstores are staying open until 3am to sell the book to massive crowds. The movie's already selling out showings around the world. That doesn't sound like indifference to me.

I saw the headline "Smoking could kill 1 billion this century" and my first thought was "Well at least somebody's doing something about global overcrowding".

Yeah, I'll be the one handing out the pitchforks by the front door.

You'll have to forgive me, I worked 17 hours yesterday, getting only 3 hours of sleep total...so this is funnier to me than to you, and I know it already. But here goes anyway:

1. I'm listening to the Pixies right now. I heart the Pixies. Yes, I used heart. So sue me. It's true.

2. I've drank so much coffee today (see above about not sleeping) that my core temperature is above boiling. It's pure joe in my veins now, and if I get one more cup in, I think I'll go supernova.

3. It's Friday! And that alone is worth dancing for.

The disembarking from the Amtrak is an ascension into the living, if you could call a ride on a SEPTA train that. Up two flights of stairs from the train to SEPTA, and up two more flights of stairs to street level a stop later, it feels as if you are rising to some "other"-ness. The climbing into 30th Street Station can take my breath away when I remember to look up at the towering ceiling when I climb the stairs. It is a monument to movement and industry, celebrating the hard-working rushing through on their commute. It is the perfect protestant cathedral.

Sometimes I plug into my iPod and turn on Peter Gabriel while I join the streams of people:
"The time I like is the rush hour, 'cause I like the rush. The pushing of the people, I like it all so much. Such a nice emotion, do not know where it goes. I move with the movement, and...I have the touch"

Indeed, I do have the touch, but only because I tap into the electricity pulsing through the city. It charges me; it recharges me. My heart races and my mind crackles.

The following three terms are the three least-sexiest terms a man can use to describe a woman's behind:

3. Pooper
2. Dumper
1. Turd-cutter

I hearby declare that any man heard using such a term around me while be summarily dragged behind the building and shot, with no chance for appeal.

Thank you.

All the geeks are talking about Safari for Windows (Apple's web browser, available until this week only on Macs). I downloaded it the day it became available because I'm slowly becoming Mac Fanboy. They suck you in with that iPod and then the iPhone and it's only a matter of time before you're hanging out at their Genuis Bar sipping the Kool-Aid and sneering at the fools in the suits lugging around their Dell laptops...wait, where was I?

Oh right, the Safari Beta.

I'm not crazy about it. The benchmarks Apple put out say it's faster than IE, which I don't necessarily see. I've been trying it in a bunch of different formats and it seems to be middle-of-the-road on performance. Most things work like I'd expect, with probably the exception of the space bar not submitting buttons like it does in Firefox and IE. While that might not be a big deal for you and yours, I do a lot of my work with keyboard shortcuts and I'm wired to think of the space bar as submitting forms, so it frustrates me.

One thing that a lot of people have been talking about is the rendering of fonts. My experience is that you either love how Apple does fonts or you don't. There's no middle-ground, and Safari's the same way. The fonts in Safari on Windows looks close to how they do on a Mac, which I like. You might not. If you don't, that's okay too. Nobody's forcing this browser on you. Go use Opera or Firefox of IE. They're all fine browsers.

Other things I've noted. I tried to download a bunch of pictures from http://thefunniest.info yesterday and Safari told me that it had downloaded the pictures but I'll be damned if I can find them. Anywhere...

There's also some talk about how some security experts have found a series of zero-day bugs and exploits in Safari. Really folks, that's not a surprise. It is a public beta, after all. That means there's going to be bugs, like the pictures downloading, and security holes. Also, Mac's and Windows are different under the covers, it's not entirely surprising to to me that some security practices that should have been followed on Windows were not. I'm sure it will get fixed.

Another interesting thing I've noted is that some sites have turned off a bunch of JavaScript functionality (notably GMail) for the Safari browser which means some extra hoops to jump through. I'm honestly suprised by this, as Safari is the built-in browser on Macs and Apple's market share is growing. I don't know all of the specifics because I don't normally target the Safari browser when programming. Maybe Safari lags the other browsers in functionality. Speaking of which, I'd love to see if there is a difference between the Mac and Windows version as far as rendering is concerned. Could I use the Windows version to develop against and be certain that works on Safari for Windows will work the same on Macs? Can anyone point me to a breakdown?

Anyway. I don't know that Safari will become my browser all the time. Given no great increase in speed, or increase in functionality, I don't see a need to jump from Firefox. Maybe the next rev will deliver more, but I'm certainly going to keep playing with it.

I see a lot of the same TV shows my kids do, so I know what they're watching. I have some observations which are completely and utterly politically incorrect, but if I keep them to myself I will burst.

• Is Little Einsteins racist? It only has one black character AND they make him sit on the back on the rocket ship. Even worse, the only times I've ever seen them give him a leadership role: when they're in Africa! What? The black man's not good to have around until then?
• Max & Ruby's parents need to be hauled before a judge. These irresponsible jerks have left a toddler in the care of a 7-year-old girl who suffers to care for him while struggling to have her own normal childhood. Once in a while their grandmother shows up, but I think she's drunk most of the time.
• Also on the docket for a day in Family Court: Maisy's parents. Where the hell are they at? Maisy's made friends with a bunch of semi-vocal losers who pee in her sandbox, eat all her food, and take all her money.
• The Wiggles...5 men, one dog, no real women to speak of (puh-leeze, Dorothy does not count) Is it really Wiggles Island, or is it Fire Island?

I know there's been a lot of blogviating about Paris Hilton and how because she is rich and powerful she got out of prison, but I'd like to point out that it's because she's rich, powerful, and white. Lil' Kim was incarcerated in Philadelphia not long ago and did all of her time.

I realize that Kim's wealth and power does not approach that of the Hiltons, and Philadelphia is a very different place than LA (understatement of the year on my blog) but still. It's not just wealth that made the difference here.

The not so funny piece of all of this is that the sheriff in LA county is probably an elected position, like the majority of the US, and he's probably secured his single largest contributor for the next election, and by the time it occurs, most people will have forgotten Paris' temporary release, meaning the sheriff has played the justice system for his own future political gain, while truly innocent people continue to suffer in jail, while non-violent drug offenders busted for personal possession rot in jail, Lee Baca plays the emotions of one rich family for more campaign dollars.

I have an ant nest under the one corner of my garage which I've been doing battle with. A couple different chemicals haven't seemed to have made much difference, so at wit's end I looked up some organic remedies and saw someone mention turmeric.

I have a ton of stuff in the house because I cook Indian food, so I thought, why not give it try? Sure enough, ants hate the stuff. I sprinkled it around the entrance to the nest and within minutes there was a traffic jam of ants on both sides of the turmeric unable (or unwilling) to cross.

I'm not viewing this as a permanent solution, because I'm sure the ants will dig a new way out, but it was nice to torment them...the jerks.

My opinion of organ donation has always followed that of George Carlin:
I'm not doing it because when I get into an accident I don't want the paramedics viewing me as a collection of spare parts to be harvested.

But in the last few years, especially since I've gotten married to a diabetic and had kids, I've had a nagging notion that I need to become a donor. I've usually pushed away the idea because it hasn't been time to renew my license, I don't have the time, it's not that important, I can do it later, etc, etc

Then yesterday I heard a story on the BBC World Report about the Dutch show that will involve a terminally ill woman choosing someone on TV to give her kidney to. I was immediately appalled by the idea, and I cheered when the BBC reporter challenged the producer of the show about why they were doing this: (and I'm paraphrasing here)

"The man who founded this channel died at a young age waiting for a kidney and we wanted to raise awareness about the lack of donors".

"Well couldn't you just make a documentary about that story?"

"Oh no! No one would watch the documentary. At least this is getting people's attentions."

And he was right. It got my attention. It shoved the notion straight into the center of my head.

Then tonight I read the story on Sepia Mutiny about an Indian-American who is dying from leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. More attention to the need for donors.

Again, it's been pushed to the forefront of my head. Alright, alright, I thought. I'll make a note to check the box when it's time to renew my license.

Sorting through today's mail, the registration for my new driver's license has arrived.

So the time is now. Alright God, I got the message. Loud and clear! This weekend when I renew my license, I'm going to become an organ donor.

I checked my weight on the scale and I'd dropped 4 lbs this week!

I'd just like to say: I'M AWESOME!

The thought occurred to me: "Why do we say 'I lost 4 lbs'"?

I didn't lose the weight. I'm not looking around under the couch for those 4lbs. I'm not tacking up posters on telephone poles: "Have you seen this blubber??? $25 Reward"

No, I kicked the fat to the curb. I told it to take a hike. I worked the fat off.

I don't even like the whole idea of calling it weight loss, as if it's some sort of bad thing for me to get thinner, because it's not, clearly. Certainly there are people like Posh Spice, Amy Winehouse, etc that are just way too thin, and if they did drop a few more pounds, we could call that a loss...well I guess if Posh just kept dropping till she vanished, it could be a good thing...but I digress.

I don't want to call it weight loss any more. But I don't like any of the alternatives either:

• Getting healthy


• Slimming down


• Toning my figure

Those all sound like I should be sharing triscuits on the back veranda with the Golden Girls and Richard Simmons.

There are others I don't like either:

• Body sculpting


• Bulking up

Too meathead-ish.

I'm afraid that if I start using those terms, I'll end up with Tony Little and selling juicers on TNT at 3am.

I want a more manly and modern term for what I'm doing:

• Thinning up
• Spartanizing
• Fat Destroying
• Body Refactoring

Yeah, I don't know.

All I know is that this week, I parted ways with 4 more lbs of fat, and I feel great.

I went to Giant with my wife this evening to pick up a few groceries for tomorrow, and while walking down the omnibus DVDs, VHS', magazine, books, office supplies, school supplies, cards, and toys aisle I noticed a few movies that looked...familiar:

I know Disney doesn't own the rights to the stories there were based on, and people have the right to build new derivative works off of these legends, or tell their own version of the legend, but it really is the cover of the Alladin that seals the deal for me when it comes to whom they're...deriving from.

Funny enough, these are as much to buy as the movies they're imitating. I'm going to go back this weekend and snap some better pictures and photograph the backs as well.

My wife and I have been looking for a new car to replace the little green Nissan I've been driving. Please don't let my Nissan read this, by the way, she's a very good car, but she's getting raspy. It's like riding on the back of Joan Rivers "OY this ROAD. And do you see the paint job on that Hyundai? Honey, that color went out of style in the Nixon Administration".

We'd been looking at the smaller sedans, light on the price, just something simple to get me to work, with AC, a decent stereo, and not much else.

But when we stopped by the local Toyota dealership we saw they had two Priuses...Priuii? I'd always wanted to drive one and here was my chance.

The salesman got the key fob and got us in and started going through his spiel. It was an epiphany. It felt immediately right. It was the car I'd always wanted to drive. It was the car I was meant to be in. I like fast cars, I like performance, I enjoy ripping down a winding road in a finely tuned machine, but this felt...more correct.

I liked the fact that it saved gas. We were getting 50 miles to the gallon on the highway. I liked the idea that I was going to be saving money on gas while driving. I liked the idea that I would be doing less harm to the environment and keeping the Earth a little tidier for my children. I liked all of the electronics in the car, and the little features in the car. It was fun, and I was hooked.

So we're going to get a Prius. It's not something we're going to buy in the next few days, but this fall, we'll get a Prius.

Two bad incidents in one night:

1. My wife and I are planning on taking the kids to DisneyWorld this fall. We scheduled a flight on US Airways and carefully picked seat assignments so each of my children would have a window seat and would be boxed in by ourselves and grandparents, who are going with us. When we submitted our order, the computer just changed all of our seating arrangements around, so first we were scattered across the plan, and then so we were sitting in a row all the way across the plane.

   We called and finally spoke to a customer service rep and got the situation rectified, or so we thought. My wife checked today, and our seating arrangements had been changed AGAIN! Worse yet, the seats we had so carefully chosen were given to other people. WHAT THE HELL?

   I called and spoke with someone and they tried to help me as best as possible, but apparently they can bump us at will, but not these other people.
   



2. 
   I bought a Dell last year for work when I started my new job. All was good. In the last 3 months, the laptop's fallen apart. The left control key fell off and won't stay back on. The battery keeps complaining that it can't charge anymore, so I get maybe 30 minutes of battery life when sitting idle, the volume controls on the front of the laptop act erratically, and NOW...my fucking power brick is broken. I don't know if a fuse blew, or what, but I can't charge my damn laptop, and I have no batter power. Awesome.

   AWESOME.

   And I discovered this a minute after the Dell customer service line closed. So I have to wait until tomorrow to call them.

   The next computer I'm getting will NOT be a Dell.
   

UPDATE:I've been on the phone with Dell and my warranty's already expired, so I'm having to jump through hoops to get some assistance, but everyone's been really nice. I will say that I've been speaking Hindi to get some additional help and that seems to have worked so far, but I'm certainly not out of the woods yet. Here's hoping Dell's feeling charitable.

As for US Airways, I still have to call and speak with a manager and complain. Unfortunately I have a harder time understanding their customer service reps. As you can see from above, I don't have an issue with dealing with people from India, and I work with desi all the time, so it's not that fact that the call center is overseas that I'm frustrated with, just the quality of the people on the phone. Dell clearly works hard at getting their reps to speak English clearly (though with an Australian accent) but I can't place the accent of the people from US Airways, understand it clearly, and worst of all: they're so quiet on the phone.

UPDATE 2:
Dell finally called me back and their offer was: you pay us $19 and we'll tell you your shit is broken, and then we'll offer to let you buy new components from us.

I declined the offer. I told them I was going to buy a laptop from someone else, and be done with this one. But to no avail. They said the $19 was a discounted price already, but I figure if it's been broken this quickly after taking possession of it, they'd help me out further. Nope.

Kudos to their customer service people though. They are very nice and professional.

FINAL UPDATE:
I got in touch with a very nice lady at US Airways. She explained that their computer system will just move people around at random whenever they:

1. Change the schedule


2. Change the plane you're on

But they don't have to tell you when either happens, so you could reserve a flight and pick your seats and then show up at the airport and find out that your time has changed AND your seats have been moved. Tough luck for you pal.

I don't understand that policy, but that's what they have.

The rep at the corporate office did make a note on my account that we should be called if this happens again, so that makes me feel better, but still, now I'm paranoid about our seating arrangements.

I've been listening to "Explosions in the Sky" this afternoon. Like two other bands I listen to: "Sigur Ros" and "Godspeed you! Black Emperor", there's not a good succinct way to describe the bad. They're a rock instrumental band, and their songs are typically over 7 minutes long, but they're not a progressive rock band. They're noisy, they're jangly, they're melodic and dynamic...

When I listen I do hear the Texas countryside, big skies, predawn hours, helpless longing, and uncrushable hope. I hear driving in your car towards a complete and unavoidable but unknowable fate, driving 6 hours to meet a girl you've only ever talked to online, and know almost nothing about, headed towards what will either be the greatest story of your life or the most crushing defeat you've faced so far in your life. You don't know which it will be, but you do know you're only one hour out and there's no turning back now, so you speed up, pushing further and faster into the darkness, hopelessly optimistic and filled with dread.

That's listening to "Explosions in the Sky".

Dear Readers, I'm addressing this to a single person. As background: I spoke about a website last week, and how it was attacking people I considered friends. It has continued and expanded its rampage. It attacked me, amongst others, and has now driven several blogs to shut down altogether. I've also had some people email me and tell me that they'd have loved to comment in my favor on my blog but don't dare because they don't want to get dragged into the mess. I've tried addressing the author of the blog directly to no avail. He continues to cravenly attack people from behind the internet, guarding his anonymity while stripping it from other people. He hides his identity while constructing vile assertions about other people, people he doesn't even really now.

I will say upfront that I'm pretty sure I don't know who you are. I don't know how that matters, because know you or not, I confess that I don't understand what motivation drives someone to spit on others so much that they stop contributing to the internet. I'd love to draw a comparison between you and Fred Phelps and say "See, you're just like him." But I can't do that. Phelps is working off his deluded readings of the Bible. He thinks he's got God on his side. Not you.

You seem to have unsatiable need to tear people apart. You seem to be mining some deep vein of hate and mistrust that leads you to piss on everything other people create, no matter how valuable it might be. You say you're merely exercising your right to free speech. You say that's not terrorizing people...but as people walk away from their blogs, and are afraid to speak out, it's clear that that's exactly what you've done.

You may not have liked what they contributed, but the internet's such a vast and wonderful place that you don't ever have to read the people who anger you. You especially don't have to attack them until they go away.

Yes, Sepia Mutiny has banned people, and yes, they, like a lot of other websites I might add, have gotten comments about Islam being an evil religion. But then, it is their website, and if they want to have a policy that includes them banning people, or tolerating comments about you think are wrong, that's their choice. It really is "their house". If that angers you, then don't go there. Don't visit. But don't be some unremittingly negative voice on the internet that only serves to tear people down. If the very thing that angered you was the the fact that they would take away from some people the ability to speak then why are you working to level the same injustice on them?

None of us profit by silencing the voices of the people we disagree with. Nobody wins when people are afraid to speak.

But I think you're still too angry to understand that. So what outcome do you seek? Did you even consider the larger ramnifications of your actions? Or did you plunge headlong into this child-like behavior because you felt like you'd been wronged one too many times and "you'd shown them"? Well, you've shown them. The blogs are shutting down, and the people that you hate have gone away. You got what you wanted. You hurt them, scared them, and angered them. You've beaten up on decent people until they've gone away. When I first wrote about this, I drew a parallel to the Kathy Sierra case and you laughed at me. You said it was a conflation. Well, here we are and Anna, and others have stopped blogging, just as Kathy Sierra did. Still a conflation? I don't think so.

Of course you will point out that all you are doing is engaging in some good-natured fun, a little bit of parody of some public figures. What you're not seeing is that your idea of "fun" is ruining people's lives. That's not fun, or humorous. It's bullying. And just because the bully thinks it's funny, doesn't make it so.

And I know you're not going to agree with any of this, and you'll attack me for this. You'll say that we all exposed ourselves to the potential of ridicule, or that we deserved it through some 'logic' you've constructed. That's your choice. You will believe whatever you choose to believe. I, however, stand by this letter and what I've said.

And I ask that you humor me two more questions:

Do you feel better? I bet you don't. I bet that all of this vitriol you've spilled has not had the effect you wanted.

And so, now what?

I've been reading "Sepia Mutiny" for a while. It's one of my favorite blogs, and I've developed an online friendship with the founder of the blog, Anna. She's a great writer, a sweet human being, and I cherish the web empire she's created.

This morning she pointed out a blog that had been created dedicated entirely to attacking her, and her friends. I vehemently support the First Amendment, and the rights of all people to say the most offensive things on Earth. When trolls drive by my website spraying their hate, I let it stand, that is how firm I believe in the right of people to speak freely.

So I was saddened for a long time by the case of Kathy Sierra. She is an author and prominent technology blogger who woke up one morning to find that some one/people had created a blog filled with sexual menace and a few death threats. It was harrowing enough that she canceled speaking engagements and withdrew into her house.

Threatening rape and death against a person is clearly not protected speech, and I continue to hope that the perpetrators get punished.

All of this brings me back to Anna.

I still support the troll's right to speak however he or she wishes to speak, but I wrestle with this question:

Are we near a point where this action is going to cross into something more dangerous?

The amount of hate, anger, and pathology that is required to go through this effort is fairly large. large enough that I worry it's going to spill over into some other actions that will physically threaten, if not Anna, then certainly others around the mysterious blogger.

Is there a time when trolling crosses the line? Clearly, that line was crossed by those attacking Kathy Sierra. What about those attacking Anna, and the others Sepia Mutiny? I don't know. I don't know if they've gone too far. On a purely legal standing, I don't think I could say they have. On a personal level, I absolutely believe they have, and my inability to reconcile the two only compounds my worry.

I want to point to the shootings at VA Tech and say "See, no one spotted the warning signs and they were CLEARLY THERE! And here we are again!" But then, I'm probably being alarmist.

So when does trolling cross the line? Can the use of free speech done by trolls fall into a similar category of unprotected speech, like libel and slander? And where do we draw that line?

[UPDATE]
Since I started this piece on Friday, the mysterious blogger has added two new entries exposing the real identity of one of the other Sepia Mutiny bloggers, and have revealed further personal details about Anna. This has only served to multiply my worry.

"We can discover the wonders of nature rolling in the rushed down by the riverside..."
Sugar Magnolia - The Grateful Dead

When I woke up the sheer beauty of the morning made my breath catch in my throat. It was like I'd never seen shafts of light streaming through a window before.

On the drive to work I was a half-way through my first cup of coffee and I'd already had a soda when my horoscope showed up on my cellphone. "STAY AWAY FROM CAFFEINE TODAY!" read the first line. "Oh shit, am I going to die? I'm going to die! The caffeine will make my swelling heart burst in my chest!" I read the next line."You'll have a hard enough time sitting still as it is". Oh...WELL DUH!

"Oh what a beautiful morning. Oh what a beautiful day. I've got a wonderful feelin' everything's going my way"
Beautiful Day - OKLAHOMA! Original Cast Recording

I parked and walked down the long hill from the parking lot to my office singing "Beautiful Day" from Oklahoma! I have a passable baritone singing voice, but I rarely choose to employ it, mainly because I haven't had much formal training, and I get embarrassed. I keep promising myself I'll get some real training one of these days. Maybe this is the year. Then I can indulge in my love of show tunes and the Rat Pack in public more often.

"Just follow the seasons and find the time. Reach for the bright side!"
Light & Day / Reach for the Sun - The Polyphonic Spree

I took a stroll around the office this afternoon at lunch. I felt deliciously baked by the sun. It was lovingly licking everything around me. The ravine behind the office was painted in yellow flowers.

Whew, it's been such a wonderful day already...I can't wait to see what the afternoon delivers.

I've been focusing on working out at night (prime blogging hours) and losing weight. I'm enjoying the hell out of exercising. I've got soreness across my shoulders and arms and down my back from weight-lifting and core strengthening.

It's a pleasure to feel the ripple of the muscles under my skin and the tightness in my body. It's the sense of my body changing into what I want it to be.

I love it. I'm happy.

I also have my free time back now because I'm only working on one project at work, which means I have time for my family again, and that inflates my heart like nothing else. There is no greater tonic for me than time with my family.

My heart does ache for the tragedy in Virginia Tech. It is terrible for the loss of life, terrible for the loss of innocence, and I am saddened by the endless questioning this will cause, and the almost puerile voyeuristic media blitz. I don't begrudge the media for focusing on this horrific act, but I almost get more sick watching the media fetishizing the story than I do from the actual loss.

But maybe that's how we grieve in America, but endlessly gazing at the source of our grief...

Anyway...hell, I didn't mean to end on a down-note, given how good things are for me personally, but this is what's been on my mind.

Dear American Girl Company,
I wanted to let you know that I recently read a story about a truly horrible experience a little girl had at your New York City doll salon.

I'm the father of a little girl, and I've been waiting to get an American Girl for her, but having now read this story, and seeing the type of people you hire and the policies you endorse, I will not be buying my daughter one of your dolls. I will further be telling EVERYONE I know about this experience.

One of your employees broke a little girl's heart and invalidated every good feeling she had about herself. This employee crushed this young woman's self-esteem, and it's absolutely deplorable.

There are not words strong enough for me to express my outrage, and it was not even my daughter.

I hope you act quickly to rectify this matter and take care of that little girl.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Maurice Reeves

http://oneofthosehorriblemoms.blogspot.com/2007/03/fake-out.html
http://consumerist.com/consumer/american-girl/american-girl-place-mocks-6-year+old-for-having-a-doll-from-target-refuses-to-style-the-dolls-hair-246666.php

I am eddied and buoyed on a sea of suffering. Friends losing parents, medical emergencies, people losing jobs, other's marriages in turmoil; dissolving and somehow I am floating above this pain and anguish.

I look around me at all of this horror and wonder 'Are we next?" I see the lives snapping and hearts breaking and I think "Will I continue to be lucky enough to not know this?"

Yes, Heather and I have walked through some very dark times: the seizures, me losing my job twice, two high-risk pregnancies, a teeming crowd of other snarling wolves knocking down our door, threatening to drag us into the shade.

Maybe it's because we've already been broken, sat dejectedly on Christmas morning with no money to buy anything and no prospect, to sit in the hospital weeping so many times that we're insulated now.

And still I think it's folly to believe that we've somehow banked good karma and can avoid the next big disaster.

But right now I look around me at all of the people, my people, pierced by the sharp teeth of life and think "This too will pass". What cold comfort that must be...but it's true. So maybe instead of saying that, I can hold them, each one of them and say "I'm sorry this has happened. I'm sorry you're hurt. I'm sorry you are suffering. You probably don't feel it right now, but you are stronger than this moment's anguish. And I love you."

The last few weeks I've noticed that I'm not enjoying eating meat as much as I used to. I was the guy who would saddle up to the trough and order a giant plate of the brontosaurus ribs, with an extra plate of bacon and some cheese sauce to dip it in...but I don't know. Not anymore.

It might be that my tastes are changing as I'm getting older, perhaps it's because I'm eating more Indian and Chinese food; I'm sampling through better vegetarian dishes; my cooking skills are getting better; there's more variety to choose from. All of the above are true, and right now I think I could do without meat for at least two meals a day.

This isn't to say that if someone wanted to invite me to Ruth's Chris Steak House or to go get wings, I'd demure. It also doesn't mean that I'm going to go completely vegetarian, or worse, vegan. It also doesn't mean I'm going to try and force my opinion on others. At this point all it means is I'm not looking around the table for 3 different kinds of meat and the hot bacon dressing for my salad.

I need to stop reading Men's Health and GQ. I've just spent the last 10 minutes debating whether or not I should tuck in a flannel shirt I am...I might...wear out of the house. I even started searching online for the answer, but that was no help.

I think the best thing I can do is stop reading those magazines and stop worrying...

Tomorrow I go to one of my clients and hand over the software to them.

I am excited to be able to deploy software and transition into a new role, a role which will give me my nights and weekends back. I am so ready to have my own life back, and I am sure my client is too.

I've really enjoyed working on this project and working with my client but I'm ready for a break. I'm ready for some rest. I'm ready to start writing again.

I have plush butts on the brain. Check out my callipygian iPod mix:

Spinal Tap - Big Bottom
Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls
Sir-Mix-A-Lot - Baby Got Back
Harry Belafonte - Jump In The Line (what? you don't believe this belongs in a mix about nice butts? ahem...When she wind up she bottom she go like a rocket What a lucious lyric.
K.C. and the Sunshine Band - Shake Your Booty

I've been watching other cars out on my travels because we're coming to a point where I need to get a new car. The Nissan I'm driving around in is beat up and tired to say the least. Sure, it's a Nissan and could last us another 60,000 miles, but I don't know that I want to be driving it every day putting those kinds of miles on it.

Unfortunately, I'm not finding very many cars that excite me. I don't mean excite like "I want to put them in my pants" excitement, though that would be cool, but just something that would make me want to drive one. My friends have some great cars, like the new Corolla, the new Element, and so on, and I really do like the Element, but I'd say 96% of the cars I'm looking at are just plain boring.

I keep seeing Mini Coopers, which come closest to being the car I really want to get behind the wheel of.

I guess I should preface all of the above by saying that I have a certain price range, so certain levels of luxury and performance are already out...but even the BMWs and Mercedes are kind of *yawn* pedestrian these days.

Where in the hell are the cool and exciting cars?

When I'm procrastinating and avoiding trying to write I'll spend time on Flickr searching for strange photos. But I have to say that my friend Ranzino's always has awesome pictures. He's in "public relations", whatever that means. I think it means he's a greeter at Wal-Mart. That's public relations, right? Anyway, whatever it is he's doing these days, I think he should focus on the photography and make a living at it.

You should probably start here with his favorites and then work through the rest.

I've returned to work after my 11 days off and already I'm ready for a vacation. I'd love to be able to take off a week every two months or so, or save them up and take the last half of November and all of December off.

The best work schedule I ever had had me working 3 12-hour days Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and 4 hours on Wednesday, giving me almost all of Wednesday, and the rest of the week off.

On the political side, I've been paying attention to the news and following what's going on but I'm not in a mood (at least, right now) where I want to discuss it. There's lots of material I could riff on, but..not right now.

Because now I'm going to go lay down and do a crossword puzzle.

I stood out on my front porch this evening, smoking a Montecristo cigar and listening to the fast-falling drizzle. I'd been at a friend's party earlier playing nickel poker. They were setting up a diesel air-horn from a train to set off in his apartment complex at midnight. I couldn't stay at the party but I knew that I'd be able to hear it from home. So I stood and waited.

Some of my neighbors partied, the elderly couple next door sending their friends home at 11.30 while the teenagers at the end of the cul-de-sac running around and screaming.

The cigar burned unevenly and I had to keep re-lighting it. A solitary figure down the street walked his dog in the rain, and I could already hear sirens screaming in the distance. Five minutes before midnight the fireworks started; dull thumping and sharp crackles pierced the night air. My tongue prickled and swelled from the smoke, and I was feeling a bit light-headed.

Suddenly the fire sirens blared, and the thumps became a rolling cacophonous thunder. At the stroke of midnight an air-horn blared across the valley, several short blasts before a single massive bleat.

I laughed for several more minutes as the cigar died down and I went in to have a glass of cognac to finish off the night.

2006 was a good year for me, for us. I hope that 2007 is at least as good if not better. And I hope the same for you.

Happy New Year!

Been spending some time listening to new music over my vacation, and stumbled into a treasure trove of Nerdcore. I'm totally smitten with MC Router and MC Plus +.

There's an awesome amount of free music to be had out there, like at Rhyme Torrents or Drown Radio (site of nerdcore artist Doctor Popular), or nerdcorehiphop.org.

Who'd have thought that the worlds of Computer Science and Gangsta Rap would merge so awesomely.

"Hey you got your algorithm in my bling!"
"Hey you got your bling in my algorithm!"

Oh what sweet white nerdy tastiness.

But I was able to walk around my street in shorts and bare feet this morning while walking the dog and I have the spring onions and daffodils sprouting in the backyard.

There's no end in sight for the unseasonably warm weather either.

I've always liked winter, the eye-watering snap of the cold air, the crunch of the ground under my feet when I walk across it, even the way the dry air makes my lungs slightly ache during a deep freeze. I stand still and quiet out in the swirling snowstorm to surround myself with the hushed brightness, a soft blanket of diamonds falling from the sky, sledding down the big hills on our giant yellow plastic disc, falling into the deep banks and getting buried by my kids.

Winter is a good excuse to build a roaring fire and make Irish coffee to sip while sitting snug under a blanket and read a book. It feels like a waste to build a fire when it's 40 degrees outside.

People keep telling me that I lucky there's no snow and I should be grateful for the warm weather. If I wanted warm weather I would move South and live in Georgia or Florida. I want my kids to know snow, to live in it, chase it, to really feel the changing of the seasons in their bones; a primal clock that teaches them about the passage of time.

This weather we have now does nothing but frustrate me.

So I'm on vacation right now, for the next week. I actually took vacation from Friday of last week but I've been too busy (on my vacation) to even get in front of my computer. Go figure...

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and I will try to get back here with more news and posts in the next day or two.

A journalist for the New Republic wrote an article critical of Michael Crichton not long ago, so instead of responding like an adult Crichton wrote the journalist into his latest book as the raper of infant boys.

Thanks heavens Michael Crowley, the journalist in question, had a good sense of humor about the whole thing.

Good going Crichton. Instead of making a cogent rebuttal that stimulated thought you've shown yourself to be a giant ass and a giant cock all at the same time.

You ever wonder if Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemima hooked up in college?

Ever ready to promote efficiency at work our bosses at the client's location gave us this to save on trips away from coding. Just mind which way you pull the handle:

I've been reading Reddit for a while and every day there seems to be a new story about some article from Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris.

This rising militant atheism is getting annoying. I'll admit up front that I'm a Christian and I believe in Jesus, but I don't believe it's my calling to bludgeon others into accepting my faith. I am upset by religious bigots of all creed, especially people like Fred Phelps, Jimmy Swaggart, our President, and so on.

And I'm certainly in favor of exposing people in authority attempting to use their power to force their faith on people. I decried the attempts by the Kansas Board of Education to redefine science to allow for creationism. I cheered when the judge here in Harrisburg struck down the Dover School Board's order to teach creationism and I cheered louder when the members of the school board were voted out of office for trying to force creationism on students...but please...stop with the obnoxious atheism.

If people are assholes for trying to force their religion on others, they're still assholes when they're trying to force their denial of God on people. Or when they mock people for believing. As you may have heard, James Kim was found dead in the snow a mile from his family after attempting to go for help when they got stuck. The outpouring of grief for him was amazing. A lot of people offered prayer. This dickhead offered mockery of people's prayer. The author stated:

I guess the imaginary god people keep "praying" to didn't care enough to save Mr. Kim's life.

That's despicable. RealityBased, whomever you are, you're no better than the people you suppose yourself better than because you're an atheist.

Please, everyone, stop the damn bickering and preaching.

And can I just say for a moment that I am amused by the irony that many people who cling so desperately to their atheism reached via logical fallacy believing that it somehow makes them better than others hold atheism as their faith. We all have our creeds, be them Christian, Buddhist, or Atheist.

For as long as I've known my wife I've known her to be a maker of words. Neologism and portmanteau fly freely. Usually I'll find the words my wife says end up on the Merriam-Webster list of "Top Ten Favorite Words Not In The Dictionary", for example, slickery, smushables, confuzzled, fahoodled and so on.

It's apparent to me now that my son has inherited his mother's ability to bend the language into whatever shape he desires. He recently coined the term:

firerhea - I don't think I need to explain this condition, because we've all had it at least once.

nose meat - This afternoon my wife was cleaning out the cavernous warehouse for snot that is my son's nose. When she pulled out an impressively large block of snot, Owen giggled and said "That's nose meat!" So there you have it. Fresh from my son's nose to your family's dinner table, only the freshest nose meat!

I love acoustic guitar music, so this really caught my eye:

The guy's name is Erik Mongrain and you can find his MySpace page here and his regular webpage here.

This is one of those videos that I just watch over and over again.

I spent the long-weekend doing home repairs and upgrades. My mom and step-dad helped greatly, as did my brother-in-law. We laid down new laminate in the playroom, removed the old nasty front door and put in a new pre-hung door.

I'm sore and tired, but I feel good. It's nice, working in the field I do, to get to work with my hands and do some physical work once in a while.

The floor and door look good. Now I just need someone to work on my shoulders.

My apologies for being inactive on my blog for the last few weeks. We've had a big project at work that's consumed all of my head and time, but the major deliverable is done, and I can return to actually blogging now.

I've got a backlog of stuff that I want to talk about now, so I'll be posting a bunch in the next few days as I get time.

It goes without saying this year: The Redskins Lost. So why am I saying it? I don't know, I have to bitch to someone, and my wife's a Giant's fan so she just laughs at me.

I will say, however, that I credit the Redskins for putting out some passing numbers today. The last few games have been the same fargin cycle: run, run, pass because you're 3rd and long, kick, and repeat, ad nauseum. I know Gibbs likes to play a physical run-style football, but it's been stupid since game 3.

I blame Tom Cruise. Dan Snyder picked up his production company and everything's falling apart. Tom's probably in the locker room now yelling at them like he's Jerry Maguire and about their thetans and n-grams.

I installed the MeeBo tool. MeeBo is tool that sits in the browser and lets you, the reader, chat with me, the author. It's like IM, but in the browser. If you see that I'm online, feel free to use it to chat with me.

I have a couple questions I keep asking myself, and I figure that I'll just post them here and hope someone smarter than me will answer them:

1. If the Shia in Iraq don't trust the mostly Sunni military and the Sunni don't trust the mostly Shia police forces, why not make them work together in a joint task force so there are both Shia and Sunni together, and each group can make sure the other isn't acting as a death squad?
2. The world thinks that the Afghani poppy crop is a problem that requires massive amounts of intervention and money and the destruction of the plants to prevent the production of heroin. Rather than spend money to destroy the crop and time to convince the farmers they shouldn't grow the only thing that's remotly profitable, why not get them to start converting it into biodiesel? The produce so much poppy seed there that they should be able to yield some significant amount of biodiesel, hopefully enough to respark their economy and help the farmers live free from the influence of the warlords who finance themselves via heroin? Imagine, they could potentially become one of the larger suppliers of diesel to China. Let's do some math quick. This site says that opium poppies yield 124 US gallons/acre and the NY Times reports that there were 321,235 acres of poppy planted in Afghanistan in 2004. That's 39,833,264 US gallons of biodiesel on a conservative estimate. While that's only 10% of the total daily US consumption of oil, it's a significant amount of money for the company, More than $101,000,000 at current US prices for a gallon of diesel. Again, it's just a thought.

I hope the Eagles clean T.O.'s clock. Seriously, I hope that T.O. eats so much turf at the Linc that he shits blades of grass for two weeks. I had to hear so much about the whole T.O. saga while I lived in Philly that I have so much hate for that man. There were weeks where every story on the news was T.O. this, T.O. that...it was disgusting.

Dear Shithead,
Thank you for contacting me recently regarding your concerns for the health of myself and my children. I appreciate your desire to help me, and trust that I know your admonitions about my intelligence, upbringing, financial well-being, weight, and...uhm...skankness come from the heart.

I hope, however, that you, as clearly someone who works in the mental health industry assisting other sad sacks as myself, will understand when I must correct you on a few points. I pray you do not take umbrage.

Please note, I see from your IP address that you live in Toronto, Canada, and as such, I will try to frame my responses in such a manner as to be easier for you to understand.

First of all, if you must know, I live here, which is 1,120 miles away from here. I'd heard good things about the Canadian education system, but praytell, may I suggest you hit the geography books a little more. Please, I do not mean to offend, only to educate.

Also, I would have converted that 1,120 miles into whatever wacky measurement system you're using these days (I think it's beaver pelts), but I can't find anything that converts miles to Canadian standard beaver pelts online. But I'm sure you can do the math.

Also, I can assure you that I have showered recently, as recently as this morning in fact, so I am not filthy. I'm not sure if you know this, but it's not snowing or icy yet here in the United States, so we still have running water! The pipes haven't frozen here yet! Most Americans regularly bath, sometimes twice a day.

Don't worry for yourself though, I'm sure some fisherman will cut a whole in the ice covering Lake Scugog up north of you and you'll be able to bath for the winter. I'm sure that it's almost as good as a hot shower with soap.

And finally, I must commend you on knowing what a salad is, living in Canada. As far as I'd heard, the only things green in Canada are the pine trees and the US dollars you crazy Canuncks crave so badly. I didn't think you'd know what a green leafy vegetable is, but I commend you sir or madam, for your obviously extensive worldly knowledge.

If you must really know, my son and daughter both eat their vegetables, including salads, and enjoy them, and neither of them suffer from the same weight problems I or you or your mother does. Please also be assured that I am exercising and have lost 30 lbs in the last 3 months, and plan to continue the weight loss, especially with your inspiring words of encouragement ringing in my ears.

Thanks again for contacting me, and for going a whole sentence with using the words 'hooser' and 'eh', and take care.

Sincerely,
Maurice Reeves

So the Redskins lost again in an embarassing show of inept defense and worse offense. Wow. I stayed up to just get heartburn.

Being the optimist, however, I have to say, at least at this rate I can pick up some fan apparel at deep discount. Woohoo!

I thought of a new "Your Momma" joke: "Your momma's breath's so bad her teeth fell out just to get away"

Ron Jeremy would like to share with you some of his surefire advice on how to pick up ladies: http://eatliver.com/vintage-ads/4.html

Heather and I were driving home tonight after her doctor’s appointment. It had been a long day of taking the train into Philly, sitting in the doctor’s office from The View all the way through the end of All My Children and then rushing back to 30th Street Station, only to miss the train by a minute. We’d run down the platform shouting at the conductor, our long overdue Taco Bell lunches in hand, until she gave us a wry grin, shook her head, and hollered back “Sorry, you’ll have to catch the next train to Harrisburg”.

Great, only another 90 minutes to wait. I sat and people-watched at the station while Heather slept against me. I sat for a while and watched the condensation collect and drip down the sides of my soda. We waited and waited and waited. Waited for the train to board. Waited for the train to go. Waited for the train to finally get to Harrisburg.

Finally at the end of the longest 10 mile drive home from the train station, we were stopped at a light to pull down the street into our development and we sat behind a guy in this 20-year old Bimmer convertible. It looked like one of those vials the lead for mechanical pencils come in, not curved and sleek. The guy behind the wheel had a bald spot that reflected back pink from the red traffic light above him. So I looked closer at him to try and guess his age. His ears were sagging and the skin behind it was starting to wrinkle just a little. He gesticulated wildly in the air and yelled into his cellphone; a gun-metal-gray cellphone the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread. His black Members Only jacket matched his Bimmer. I closed my eyes for a moment and heard strains of “Boys of Summer” running through my head.

I laughed when I pointed him out to Heather and I’m still giggling a little bit, I feel a lot of empathy for that man. He was having a great time, in this late summer day, and not hurting anyone. I thought about if for a moment, but I don’t know why he’d not grown with the times. Maybe he just enjoyed the 80’s that much that he didn’t want to move on. Sometimes it feels nice to go back to the times when that stuff was new and dazzling. Or maybe he just drove through some rip in the time-space continuum, and he was on his way to see Dr. Emmett Brown or Buckaroo Banzai before all hell broke loose. Either way, I wish him good luck and Godspeed.

I got a phishing email a few minutes ago, this one purporting to be from Western Union, which in an of itself is nothing new. I get at least 5 phishing emails a day, and average at least one "from" Western Union a week. But the thing that interested me in the email was that they included the phone number for Western Union's customer service number. Probably nothing new (I'm tired, it's late) but a thought occurred to me: "What if that's not the real number? What if that forwards to some phishers?" and I thought about it some more. It wouldn't be that hard or cost that much for someone overseas to set up a call center and route calls that are supposed to be going to Western Union or Citibank, etc to the call center where people's information can be stolen. I think that we'll start to see this more. The downside is, of course, the extra people that need to get paid and the extra people that can help the authorities if the phishers get caught...which limits the effectiveness of this attack, but there's another, more interesting alternative: VoIP URLs. Skype already offers the ability to use a skype:// or call-to:// URL structure, which should activate Skype and place the call.

Imagine a world where more people are using VoIP and get these phishing emails which encourage people to call up and it all routes to one person on a cellphone through Skype? Low cost, low risk, easy to implement...it's going to come people, the only question is when.

I am looking for the original source, which I'll link to, but did anyone else here that announcement from Michael Chertoff about new airline security regulations:

"Starting next week, all luggage will have to be checked. No carry-on luggage will be allowed on planes at all. Furthermore, to prevent the danger of suicide bombers, people will not be able to leave their seats during flights for any reason. In addition, more invasive searching of people and their possessions will be required. In order to make these changes possible, we're implementing the following regulations:
1. All infants will need to be checked at the luggage counter. A special nursery section will be added to the holds of airplanes that will most likely be pressurized for the entire trip.
2. Once seated, the flight attendants of the airplanes will come by and shackle you to your seats. We're going to leave people's feet unshackled for now and only shackle people's arms.
3. Each person will be fitted with a catheter before flight which will be hooked up to airplane's liquid waste removal system. Men will have the option of an internal or external catheter. The process of catheterization will also include a body cavity search.
4. All people flying on airplanes will now fly naked. We have had reports of people sewing explosive threads into their clothes, which could detonate on command. All clothes will be shreded at the airport prior to take off. You will be issued a government jumpsuit at your destination to wear while collecting your luggage.
5. All people will be shaved from head to toe prior to entering the plane. We must ensure the safety of all people on the plane, and with reports of explosive shampoo, we don't want someone's pompadour igniting.
6. There will no longer be any assigned seating. Upon boarding the plane, naked, shaved, and catheterized, you will be directed to a seat by a flight attendant. Families may no longer sit together, and all people who look similar will be separated.
7. During the flight, every person will be outfitted with a sterilized ball gag, which they will wear for the entire flight. This will prevent people from spontaneously expelling explosives they're previously swallowed.
8. Upon exiting the plane, all passengers will be shackled together at the hands and led by armed guards to the baggage claim.

We think this strikes a good balance between people's rights and the safety of everyone. Thank you."

Once I find a clip or the original text online I'll post a link.

I stood in the dark of my garage, balancing on two leftover pieces of banister. My father-in-law stood on a large piece of wood painted white that doubled as a work bench. I was holding a flashlight in one hand and long 2x4 in the other while he worked in the fuse box. I could smell my son's dirty diapers from across the garage and mosquitos picked mercilessly at my feet and ankles.

I'm sure that, by now, you've seen part or all of the Girls Gone Wild article from Claire Hoffman, staff reporter from the LA Times. In it, she follows around Joe Francis from Mantra Entertainment, the company that produces Girls Gone Wild, and at one point gets physically roughed up by Joe, as he pins her to a car and almost breaks her arm until she gets free and punches him in the face.

The article is entirely negative to Joe and his enterprising ambitions, and I'm always interested in getting the other side of the story, so I called Joe Francis and he had this to say:

Look, I gave Sweet Tits Hoffman all our killer swag, the trucker hat, the thong, and the shirt, and she still wouldn't show me her tits. I kept sweet talking her, asking her if the carpets matched the drapes, did she shave her cooch, did she like it in the pooper, all the sure-fire lines I've used on the ladies, and none of it was working. NONE OF IT. So I did what I had to do. Just like when those 14-year-old girls in Bangkok wouldn't give it up...."

I think my client has said enough...

...that bitch wanted my baloney pony, she was just playing hard to get. I'm a stallion and she's just jealous I got tired of her. When I pinned her to that car I bet her panties were drip...

That's when his attorney terminated the call.

Well, there you have it folks. Just another day in the life of Joe Francis, at Girls Gone Wild. I feel edified, don't you?

I've been reading Trailing Technology lately, a blog by Scott Carney, a freelance writer who has written for magazines like Wired, etc before.

It's of interest to me personally because he lives in India, and it's fun to get his "outsider's view" on India, and current events in India. Always good stuff.

I'm also reading Sepia Mutiny recently too, for similar reasons.

I'm also very busy on working on the new house, which is why I've been so silent. Yesterday I was up until 23:45 installing blinds in my kids' rooms. We still haven't painted the windows in their rooms so the hardware's sitting in little yellow cups on the window sills. The heat outside creeps into the rooms during the day and makes the upstairs unbearable. Putting up blinds to keep the heat out will help, and my wife and I did that, drilling the posts and shims into the window frame, hanging the blinds, shortening them, and cursing the nimble fingers of the assemblers to tied the intricate knots in the bottom of each button holding the lift cords. But by this morning you could feel a noticable difference in each of their rooms, so it was all worth it.

Tonight I'm hanging the blinds in my room so I'm not flashing the neighbors while I get dressed, and assembling dressers. The house is coming together slowly, but I'm having a great time. I've wanted a house I could work on for a while, and I got what I wanted.

I got the following snippet in the bottom of a piece of spam this afternoon:

...and waved a smoke-stained flamethrower in the direction of the door. I
followed Commander Alphamega out, leaving Floyd prisoner in the chair.
Not for long, I hoped, if Fido-Aida had understood my suggestions.

If I'm not mistaken, that's ripped straight from the pages of Alpha Squad 7: Lady Nocturne: A Tek Jansen Adventure, somewhere in the 21st chapter. Shame on you spammers, trying to lend an air of truthiness and gravitas to your unsolicited attempt to sell me fake Rolex watches for the "best prijces online".

But, in true Colbert style, I have to give you a tip of the hat for picking some choice material to attach to the emails.

I sent an email to PBS Sprout ( a joint venture between PBS, Comcast, and HIT Entertainment from England ) about the firing of Melanie Martinez. I sent them this email:

I wanted to take a moment to let you know that the firing of Melanie Martinez for those two spoofed PSAs is unjustified. Melanie is a sweet girl who had a real rapport with my kids and was a joy to have on in the evenings if we’re letting the kids watch TV. I think that PBS has always shown itself to be a little counter-cultural to begin with and that you guys should return her to her post.

Thank you for your time.

This morning I got the following response:

We understand that you are disappointed with the recent changes to The Good Night Show, and we too are saddened that we had to make this difficult decision. Our foremost priority is to do what is best for our young viewers and those who love them, and we will continue to provide the quality programming you and your children have come to expect from PBS KIDS Sprout.
Thank you.

Thank you for getting back to me so quickly on this.

However, it is my belief that you have made the wrong decision, as I indicated below. Melanie was an important part of the good night rituals of not only my children, but many children around the country and without warning or preparation you have removed her, causing lots of children pain and sadness. The least you could have done was let her departure be an orderly one, with enough time for the parents of sproutlets to prepare their kids. Now we have to scramble to explain why she’s no longer a part of their lives. On the whole, however, I think your decision to remove her was silly because I have no worry that my toddlers would be able to find those movies on the internet, or have any idea what they’re talking about in those two short movies.

I think that by removing her so suddenly you’ve caused more harm to children than by leaving her in place.

Thank you for your time.

I'm not one to normally claim that we need to shield our children from all harm and pain. You can't nerf the world. Still, toddlers are big on routine and ritual. They build their lives around the sameness. That's why a child can eat chicken nuggets every day for two months and NEVER get tired of it. Ritual and routine for toddlers makes them feel safe, helps them to grow up strong, and to feel secure in and of themselves. And as a parent I want to help them maintain their rituals and shield my kids from disruption.

But it's not just that. I think that Melanie Martinez is being done a great diservice in being let go. I think it's an injustice and I don't like it. I support willful employment laws and I understand that PBS Sprout has the right to let her go for just about any reason they see fit, but I'm not going to like it, and I'm going to keep writing to PBS Sprout and here to voice my ire.

I wanted to talk about this earlier but BoingBoing beat me to the punch. Oh well.

For those that don't know, The Good Night Show appears on PBS Sprout (a channel devoted to toddler programming 24 hours a day 7 days a week (some would classify that as near hell on Earth, but I've made my peace with it)). It is, as the CNN article reports, soothing and mild shows that help a toddler get ready to go to bed. Melanie Martinez is the host of the show, and she's essentially the baby sitter that comes in the house through your TV and talks to your toddler and reads them stories, etc.

Seven years ago, Ms. Martinez made two PSAs that spoofed the pro-abstinence PSAs that used to float around. The one advocates "anal sex" because you're still technically a virgin after it. The other advocates mothers giving their daughters vibrators because they won't want to have sex if they get to use one. They're silly and juvenile and shouldn't be held againt Melanie, but PBS and Comcast are firm in their stance of not letting her on the show.

I think it's a shame that PBS Sprout let her go for this. Lots of toddlers know and love Melanie and she's not the first PBS personality to do something "not appropriate for children". Sonia Manzano, who plays Maria on Sesame Street, recently appeared in the Vagina Monologues.

If you too feel like it's a pile of shit, write to PBS Sprout here: info@sproutletsgrow.com. More information about PBS Sprout can be found here: http://www.sproutletsgrow.com/about.html.

As we all know, it started when Hezbollah guerillas acted illegally when infiltrating Israel, killing 8 soldiers and kidnapping 2. Israel responded stunningly, and might I say, in a manner that I would have too: with swift military force.

Lebanon, as a country, is split into two big pieces: the Hezbollah piece and the non-Hezbollah piece. When Lebanon kicked Syria out of the country and formed its own democratically elected government, Hezbollah was included in the process, and has two ministers that influence decisions. Worse yet, Hezbollah has a standing militia that is trained and armed by Syria and Iran that was supposed to be shut down once the democratically elected government took control. But it hasn't yet. So Israel is acting out of a desire to see this well-armed, well-trained, and determined military group sitting on its border shut down.

Israel is saying "Enough already".

The Lebanese people don't, on the whole, support what Hezbollah has done, but the Lebanese government does not have the willpower or the military power to shut down Hezbollah. If they attempted to, it would spark a new civil war that could have torn the country asunder. The ministers and people (that are not part of Hezbollah) have been saying "Enough already".

And now we, the rest of the world, are watching the attacks in pictures and video, seeing hundreds of innocent civilians in Lebanon killed, and scores of buildings in Israel destroyed by Hezbollah rockets and neither side is willing to back down or stop the hostilities, and even though we all support Israel's right to defend itself (including countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others, who refused to condemn Israel's reaction to having its soldiers kidnapped) we've all started to hear the chorus of the world: "Enough already".

And now I sit here, seeing people in the US cheer when little kids are getting hurt in Lebanon, and our leaders unwilling to even so much as condemn the killing of civilians, and evangelical Christians cheering what they think is the beginning of armageddon, and pictures of Israeli girls writing messages on artillery shells to send to the Lebanese, and all I can think is "Enough already".

Juergan Klinsmann, the well-respected coach of the German World Cup Soccer Team has announced he's retiring from coaching the Germans to spend time with his family in Los Angeles. Word is that he will take 6 months off to rest and then he will announce his intention to coach the US team, which would be great.

I've been following the news of the bomb blasts in India since they happened around 9am my time. Some in the US would like to think that this is India's introduction to terrorism, but India's been wrestling with terrorist organizations for so long already, that I can't say I'm shocked by this event, only saddened.

One thing I'm curious about is that they said that the nature of the attacks looks like the work of Kashmiri separatists and not Al-Qaeda, in particular because of the synchronized nature of the bombing, but that doesn't jive with me. Certainly it could be local terrorists in their own country, but Al-Qaeda's a fan of those types of synchronized attacks, or have we forgotten about how London, Madrid, 9/11, and the African Embassy Bombings were all synchronized?

Anyway, my condolences to the men and women of Mumbai and their families for all of you who have lost someone.

Mai bharosa aapka parivar theek hai karta hoon.

Read here for a local's perspective on the bombings: http://gauravsabnis.blogspot.com/2006/07/blasts-in-bombay.html

I have been a fan of Godspeed You! Black Emporer for a couple of years now and I came across this video for "Dead Flag Blues" this morning:

Some notes about the video:
If the pacing of the video seems slow, it is, but only because GY!BE do not make short songs. I have three albums from them, and the shortest song I have from them is a little over 6 minutes long. The song that this 7 minute clip came from is over 17 minutes long, and you're only hearing the first part. Yes, that sounds like Lee Marvin doing the monologue, but there's some uncertainity if it really is or not.

Some notes about the band:
Godspeed You! Black Emporer is a band from Canada that has a revolving group of members, but is usually more than 5 people. The music is almost entirely without words, and the members will play everything from stringed instruments to brass instruments, to electric guitars and drums, and so on. The music defies normal description because it sits in some area between ambient music, jazz, classical, and alternative. It's typically very moody and somber and stark. I would not recommend that people contemplating suicide or schizophrenics listen to GY!BE, and you may need to double your dose of anti-depressants after listening, but they are fabulous.

And as a last note, they take their name from a documentary from the 1970's about a Japanese motorcycle gang.

Their official website is here: http://brainwashed.com/godspeed/main.html
Constellation Records, which releases a good chunk of the GY!BE music, along with members' side projects (like the fabulous A Silver Mt. Zion) is here: http://www.cstrecords.com/records_index_new.html

The World Cup Final is tonight. France vs. Italy. Yeah...I don't know who to root for. It's not that I am possessed by some rabid anti-france attitude like a lot of American men, nor am I prejuidiced against the Italians for any particular reason, it's more a sense of ignorance against each team. I've heard more about the French team because the BBC has spoken about them more, and how the star of the team is French-African and this is his last game professionally, and my mom's from the Alsace, the area of Germany right on the French border, so I guess I'm going to root for the French, though I was really hoping for a Germany - England World Cup, or better yet, a US - Germany World Cup. Oh well. There's always 2010.

While I'm handing out praise (see my blurb on Ubuntu below), I should say that I find Microsoft OneNote, part of Office 2007 to be a really useful piece of software. It is like a collection of notebooks that you create that house pages, each page is a big blank canvas that you can click on anywhere and make a note and it saves it automatically for you. You can click on each of these little notes and modify them, delete them, flag them, and so on.

You can also send information from other Office apps right to OneNote, meaning you can click on an email and send to OneNote, and then start adding information to the original email.

OneNote also gives you the ability to trap screenshots from any application and drag them as notes into any page.

Also cool is the automatic backups, the ability to password-protect sections, and to publish pages as PDF or XPS. It integrates with SharePoint, and you can create shared notebooks that all people have access to.

It's well done, and after I took a few minutes to read the documentation and try it out I found the interface to be, maybe not quite intuitive, but certainly easy to understand. I like it a lot and I'm happy that they've brought something like this out.

I'm reader of BoingBoing, and Slashdot, and other geekish sites, and I've been seeing a lot of talk about Ubuntu, which is one of the Linux OS flavors of choice right now, so I decided to download the LiveCD ISO and run the OS from the CD on my laptop to see how well it worked, etc.

It's very well done. Ubuntu recognized my wireless card, my wireless mouse, my wireless dong...no wait...most importantly it recognized the video card I have in my double-wide Dell Laptop and picked a suitable resolution for the wide-screen.

In the past, video cards have been a sticking point for me in Linux, causing me headaches and much gnashing of teeth.

I'm very very happy with Ubuntu, and if I had a spare box to throw it on, I would. I'm too dependent on this laptop for work to start monkeying with the partitions but I'm glad I gave this a try. I'm going to keep an eye out for a cheap desktop I can get my hands on and start playing with Ubuntu.

Update:

When I set up this site I set it up so that I could create a myriad of fake email addresses that I then used to sign up for services. This let me keep track of which companies sell email addresses to spammers, and I'm actually happy to report that for 3 years now, with the vast majority of companies, I've never ever had an issue, and I've signed up for a lot of services. However, this weekend, I got the first spam to one of these accounts from a "legitimate" company: BookSpan, or Book-of-the-Month Club, which runs sites like the HistoryBookClub.com and ConservativeBookClub.com, both of which I've belonged to in the last 3 years.

The email was for HistoryBookClub.com and I'm shocked and dismayed, but I'd like to state it clearly:

BookSpan sells your email address to spammers. HistoryBookClub.com sells your email address to spammers.

Pass it on.

Today I found out from a friend that my site is being blocked by the censorware company SonicWALL. The category they use is "Games", which is absurd, since I'm not a gaming website, I don't host games, and I have never linked to games.

I'm not sure why I'm being filtered, but SonicWALL does not provide people a way to appeal your label. Once it's set, apparently it's final.

I've found some other people who have had the same experience:
http://www.onlineconfessional.com/blog/archive/000018.html
http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/000798.html
http://www.zenarchery.com/2006/04/25/panera-bread-censors-their-wi-fi/
http://mediagirl.org/node/593

UPDATE - I found a link off the last posting above and was able to request a re-examination of my website. We'll see how it goes. They promise to get me reclassified within 3-5 days. I don't hope for much for two reasons: 1. My language and content can be kind of raw at times, and seeing how I just called Ann Coulter a tranny I'll likely be classified as pornography, and 2. If sites that employ SonicWALL don't install filtering updates (could happen) then my newly reclassified site is still blocked. I don't know what their policy is for making people update, but just like all those people I know that don't update their anti-virus after installing, this could be the same thing.

I was playing the dozens online this morning with a friend and managed to snap one out pretty quick. I was impressed, so I thought I'd share it with you:

Your mom is so loose that David Blaine's next trick is going to be falling her hole and trying to make it back in a week.

AWWWWW SNAP!

I hope all you dads had a good father's day, or as they call it around here, Happy Steak and Hardware Day!

I spent it down at the pool with the kids and napping on the couch, verily a heartily good Father's Day, except my wife somehow got to take the trip down to the hardware store, which, it is my understanding, I should have done. All in all, it was good.

I have some more ruminations on Father's Day that I'd like to share, but they're not ready yet, so, more later.

The US Team faced a very tough competitor in Italy and played without two players and tied the game. That takes some skill and balls, and I'm proud of them. Thank God they didn't repeat the embarassment of the game against the Czech Republic.

With Ghana beating the Czech Republic in a stunning game, we still stand a chance to make it to the next round.

GO USA!

I really do think that Don Knotts was born in the wrong time. If he were around no, he'd have no end of work imitating the president. You can hear it can't you, Dubya saying "Nip it, nip it in the bud!" I guess the difference is that in Mayberry, Deputy Fife only had a single bullet and was under the control of a patient and wiser boss, neither of which are true here. And Bush does keep shooting himself in the foot, especially every time he shoots off at the mouth. I know this is off-topic, but can I just say that I think every time Bush says some of the things he says, he's the one giving comfort and aid to our enemies as it keeps getting easier and easier to find angry men and women around the world willing to die in conflict against us and our interests. Anyway, Mr. Don Knotts, rest in peace. Where your close-minded buffoonery and bumpkin-like nature made us laugh, we can only cry at a president exhibiting those same qualities.

Something else besides the government and our king and all of the other issues I blog about lately: my family's overconsumption and world hunger. My wife's not crazy about the dishes, and strangely enough I find them very relaxing to do; my little Zen activity every night. I have noticed over the last few days how much food we make and how much ends up getting noticed and I guess finally this week it really really started to bother me. I can't stop thinking about how the little bit of rice that I threw down the disposal could mean the difference between life and death for someone, especially some children in other countries, and it depresses me.

I want to find some way to address the issue without having to rely on an organization like the UN, which I view as too tied up in its own bureaucracy to do a lot of good. Does anyone have any suggestions? I was looking at OXFAM, but are there other good reputable charities that are tackling world hunger I can deal with? In the meantime I'm going to work on reducing our own consumption in my family and try to not waste so much food. It feels...obscene to waste any.

• It's been a really mild summer so far. I've really enjoyed it actually, though I like it when it's stinking hot too, my wife and kids seem to enjoy the weather more so I'm happier too. A more conspiratorial mind would suggest that it's very rude of the CIA to crank the thermostat down low on their secret weather-controlling machines while Al Gore's movie on global warming is out running. ;)
• I cannot believe that Rear Admiral Harris, the man in charge of Gitmo would claim that the three suicides over the weekend were not acts of desparation but acts of warfare. The statement itself is so callous and offensive that I balled my hands into fists and bit my tounge to prevent a stream of obscenities from flying out of my mouth. I view it as indicative of how the administration views the people it detains, detentions, it pays to remember, that are viewed as without end or appeal. If there is not a more desparate situation you can think of, I'm not sure you're a thinking and feeling human being. I wish I could send out a big note to the world to say "We are not represented by this dickfaces anymore."
• In the last few days I have seen a flurry of "Impeach Bush" bumper stickers, and two new "Impeach Bush" books coming out, and an Impeach Bush website come out. Hell, even Garrison Kellior, Mr. Prarie Home Companion himself has been writing on Salon.com and recently wrote an article calling for Bush to be impeached. I am wondering how long it will take before voter referendums begin showing up. I doubt it will be long.

Other than they both have really bad hair, are an embarassment to almost everyone, and really annoying groupies? Dave White breaks it down for you.

As I'm sure you're aware, Canadian Law Enforcement, working with British and American intelligence and law enforcement officials arrested 17 individuals involved in a plot to blow up several large symbolic targets in Canada. Reports indicate now that at least one of the people involved was from Bangladesh.

A year ago I stated in a post:

More terrorists will now come from places like India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. This is occurring now. In western nations, the U.S., Canada, across Europe, desi are a quickly accepted minority, especially in big cities. As more people come from the sub-continent, our comfort level with them grows. This can work against us though. There are many muslim in that region, and some of the more extreme forms of Islam come from that area. Consider, for example, the Deobandi form of Islam, which is what the Taliban practiced. It is Indian in origin.

I wish I were not correct, and I hope that my being correct does not lead to more people being hurt or killed.

I stumbled across this tonight. There's part of me that can't believe this guy is real, much less that there are two guys like this.

Let it run for a few minutes, it gets better after about minute 2.

Watched two season finales last night: American Idol. Taylor won. We all knew it was going to happen. I'm happy because he's a great performer and he really can light up a stage. I'll be interested to see if they actually let him do the type of music he likes to do or will try to push him into the current musical styling. I think it would be a mistake, not only because he probably would not be happy and it wouldn't suit him, but also because the last 3 AI contestants were all singing music from the annals of soul, R&B, and so on. They weren't really singing contemporary songs, but songs with a lot of history and warmth behind them.

The other finale I watched was Lost. HOLY GOD. What a great two hours of TV. That was incredible. I don't care to share too much as I know some people probably have not watched it yet and are waiting, but I do want to say that I don't think it's a coincidence that you had a polar bear on the island and the two scientists at the end were in an arctic environment. But with a show like Lost, there are so many red herrings it's hard to tell what's a real connection and what they're doing to mess with you.

A man who rented a room at the same house a sex offender rented at was mistaken for a sex offender and was visited several times by police and federal agents. The worst of it is that the whole thing that got the ball rolling was a mother in the neighborhood was somehow able to track his license plate back to his address and "turned him in", albeit erroneously, and when he asked the police what he can do to make this better, their only suggestion was "Move away".

What the fuck? So that's what's going to happen from now on? Someone buys a house from a convicted sex offender or rents in the same building and they get the stigma by proxy?

Come on. That's just stupid.

(Link to the original MSNBC story)

So in January I made a comment about the NSA wiretapping all phone calls, and how I was pissed because my mom's phone calls could be listened in on. I stated:

"When my mom calls Germany to talk to her family she didn't consent to be listened in on by the NSA. It's an involuntary search, and that is the reason why we have warrants. It's gives us the assurance that an independent judge has at least reviewed the merits of the case and it passes muster."

My friend Scott made the snarky comment:

I find it ironic that when you heard about NSA wire-tapping Al Qaeda phone calls that you immediately worried about your mom being illegally wire-tapped during her phone calls to Germany.

USA Today reported this morning that the NSA has amassed the calling records of millions of Americans. Yes, they're not necessarily listening in on my mom's conversations, BUT, they are tracking all sorts of phone activities of innocent people:

"The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans � most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews."

There are SO MANY things bad about this, but consider for a second that the man whom Bush wants to put in charge of the CIA is the Gen. Hayden, the person who spearheaded this program at the NSA.

One bright note about the whole article: QWEST Communications, out of Denver, stood up to the NSA and refused to hand over their records because the NSA refused to get a warrant or to work through the FISA courts. Good job QWEST. If I could, I would change my phone service to you in a heartbeat.

It was an uneven night for the contestants. Each of the contestants had a fairly blah first song followed by a great second song. Well, almost. Here they are ranked in order of quality performances, best to worst:

1. Elliott Yamin - His first song was the best out of the first songs. His second song was fantastic.
2. Taylor Hicks - Jailhouse Rock was just...eh...but his cover of In The Ghetto was awesome!
3. Chris Daughtry - Both of his songs were just okay, though his second song was better.
4. Katherine McPhee - Both of her songs were not up to par. She was so strong last week, but pretty bad this week.

All that being said, I don't know if Elliot's going to stay or not. I'm not as confident about this prediction as I have been about my others in the past. I think the bottom two will be Chris and Katherine, and Katherine goes home.

I have thought about it, and I've decided I'm not going to go see MI:3. I'm tired of giving Scientology money so they can go out and brainwash and harass people. I don't agree with their methods, intentions, or actions, and I think that the best thing I can do for myself is not go see the movie.

A friend pointed me to this latest review of Mike Thrush's artwork. I find his work to be so startling and arresting. I love it. The Bambi picture is one of those "ha ha not funny" pieces that I do find amusing. I guess I'm just a sick bastard.

I can't believe this is true, but a friend of mine told me that in Mexico, some of the futbol (soccer) games are fixed by their equivalent of the mafia (which sounds highly suspect already given how important the games are) so they have been known to shoot the ball on field from the stands to prevent scoring. I called immediate bullshit, and I CANNOT find anything online that even closely approximates this, but he swears it's the total anc complete truth.

Has anyone seriously heard of this happening, other than in pulp novels and 1970's Sunday Afternoon movies on channel 57?

The spammer that sent threatening letters to BlueSecurity users has not carried out his threats. After the letters were sent, he initiated full-scale attacks against BlueSecurity, which stopped the network for a while, but has, if anything, screwed him even further.

Instead of just complying with the demands of the members, he sent threats against thousands of people, tried to extort those people, and engaged in full-blown hacking activity against several companies.

Maybe they'll let him have a cell with a window when it's all said and done.

And I'm happy, because another spammer bites the dust.

This story made me tear up (MSNBC video). She is so beautiful, even with the hemangioma. I would love to adopt her. Thank God she's being adopted by a good family.

My Idol Recap:

• Elliott Yamin - I thought his first song was hot and great. He came out swinging and jumping. He was funky. I loved it. Second song? Not so great. Still, I think he's safe this week.
• Paris Bennett - I just don't get her. While technically proficient, her music never seems to connect with people. She's in the bottom two.
• Chris Daughtry - Maybe I'm just too much of a Styx fan, but I thought Chris undersang "Renegade". It's the kind of song you can put a lot of passion behind and he didn't do it. His second song choice was awful. Bottom two.
• Katherine McPhee - I thought her first song was just okay, but her second was fantastic. I didn't even know the song but it was hot. Safe.
• Taylor Hicks - Both of his songs were on fire and he burned up my TV. He's a born entertainer. Safe.

So with Paris and Chris in the bottom 2, I predict Paris going home.

I signed up with BlueSecurity because I was sick of the amount of spam I was getting. This morning when I retrieved my mail, I had 239 messages. I started looking at them and found half the messages were just meaningless blocks of prose, but the other half said this:

You are recieving this email because you are a member of BlueSecurity (http://www.bluesecurity.com).

You signed up because you were expecting to recieve a lesser amount of spam, unfortunately, due to the tactics used by BlueSecurity, you will end up recieving this message, or other nonsensical spams 20-40 times more than you would normally.

How do you make it stop?

Simple, in 48 hours, and every 48 hours thereafter, we will run our current list of BlueSecurity subscribers through BlueSecurity's database, if you arent there.. you wont get this again.

We have devised a method to retrieve your address from their database, so by signing up and remaining a BlueSecurity user not only are you opening yourself up for this, you are also potentially verifying your email address through them to even more spammers, and will end up getting up even more spam as an end-result.

By signing up for bluesecurity, you are doing the exact opposite of what you want, so delete your account, and you will stop recieving this.

Why are we doing this?

Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails.

Its simple, we dont want to, but BlueSecurity is forcing us. We would much rather not waste our resources and send you these useless mails, but do not believe for one second that we will stop this tirade of emails if you choose to stay with BlueSecurity.
Just remember one thing when you read this, we didnt do this to you, BlueSecurity did.

If BlueSecurity decides to play fair, we will do the same.

Just remove yourself from BlueSecurity, and make it easier on you.

Message to the spammer: NO. I will not remove myself from BlueSecurity. I will not give in to your demands, and I will not stop fighting back against you. Sending me this burst of mail does not lessen my desire to fight back. It only strengthens my resolve. I am heartened to see that BlueSecurity has become such an annoyance that you're trying to fight back. I hope our efforts are really hurting you.

In fact, I think more people should sign up for BlueSecurity.

Update 1 - I'm already getting more emails from this guy, so he's apparently not waiting for the 48 hours he offered. But what did I expect? He's a spammer. He's scum. Also, as Rich pointed out, the email is threat of a DDOS against BlueSecurity members, so it is something that could be handled via the law, if we could figure out who the hell he is.

I've talked about animals attacking before. This one is no laughing matter. It's scary as hell.

So I predicted the Idol Bottom three would be:

1. Paris Bennett
2. Eliott Yamin
3. Kellie Pickler

I said I thought Katherine did better than the judges said, and they lead the show with an apology to Katherine because after watching the playback they thought they were too harsh on her. I feel good that I nailed it.

And the loser was:

Here's my quick recap of American Idol last night:

1. Katherine McPhee - Did great, at least I thought she was better than what the judges had to say. Safe
2. Elliott Yamin - Last night was the first time in the competition he gave me chills. I thought he was more confident than ever before and he was good. Still...he's in the bottom three.
3. Kellie Pickler - What a disaster. Not the right song for her at all and she was all over the place. Poor girl, you know I love you, but you're gone.
4. Paris Bennett - She always sings well enough, but I never feel like she connects when she does. I think Simon was right when he said she's a singing wind-up doll. Bottom three.
5. Taylor Hicks - Man was good, but the song was a little boring, which is too bad. Still, he's safe.
6. Chris Daughtry - Surprised with a bottom three visit last week, he was better this week, but I personally found it boring. My wife, on the other hand, would like to have his children. He's safe this week.

Last year, Hummer presented that mess of a commercial with the giant killer robot and the mutant monster lizard giving birth to an H3. What a piece of advertising garbage that was. This is a real SUV commercial.

I wanted to say that I think it's fabulous that Terrell Owens made the move to go to Dallas this year. I wouldn't normally say anything nice about the Cowboys, as I'm a Redskins fan, but I'm going to enjoy watching Dallas implode completely around the shithead antics T.O. will do down in Texas.

Living in Philadelphia I've had plenty of opportunities on my TV to see what T.O. was up to ("We have word he's just pulled into the stadium.", "We have word he's just picked his nose and flicked the booger.") and everyone else's responses to him. All of the times that T.O. has had something bad to say about Donovan McNabb, all of those times he's talked trash, McNabb has just let it go and acted like a gentleman. He knows his business and acts like it's business.

That's not Drew Bledsoe. If you get in his face he'll get in yours. Same with Bill Parcells, and same with Jerry Jones. You have four extra-big personalities and T.O.'s going to try to push people around. And when he does, he's going to get in trouble with the coaching staff. And when he gets in trouble with the coaching staff, T.O. gets sullen and sulks and acts like a three-year-old. So Parcells will be sending him to his room a lot.

Sure, yes, fine, he's got something to prove, but his swagger is going to get the better of him. So will his agent. So will his wounded pride when Bledsoe throws the ball to Terry Glenn instead of him.

So rather than be a threat, I think T.O.'s presence in Dallas is a good thing...for Redskins and Giants fans.

It was recently revealed through secret documentation at Comedy Central that Mr. Colbert's continued rants on bears, highlighting them as the greatest threat against America, comes from a very dark place. You see, through his rapier wit and dry delivery style, Colbert is working us over so that we think there is no threat from bears. Oh no, we think it is only some ludicrous joke that he has dreamt up. But while we laugh, the bears are organizing, and like Howard Campbell Jr. in Mother Night, Colbert acts as one of our leading anti-bear voices while all along...he's really working for them.

Why else would he vilify bears in one breath, and then idolize Bill O'Reilly with the name "Poppa Bear" in the other. You thought you had us fooled, didn't you Stephen? But we're on to you. That's right big guy!

You're officially on notice Mr. Colbert...or should I say: Mr. Cole-bear

(AP Newswire) - April 19, 2006 - Amid reports that Katie Holmes has given birth to a little girl named Suri, people around the world are reporting that Scientologists are moving en masse into Scientology Centers carrying "all of their worldly belongings".

A source close to John Travolta stated that he has completed work on a series of rocketships which will carry the entire body of Scientologists into space. What will happen then is a secret guarded closely by the Church of Scientology.

Doctors and nurses, speaking on condition of anonymity have confirmed that Katie Holmes did indeed give birth to a mostly whole L. Ron Hubbard, and that reports it was a girl are an attempt by the couple to delay the press until they too have flown into space.

A friend posted a screed against President Bush claiming it's all his fault that gas prices are high. I know you are all aware I'm no fan of Bush, I think he's one of the worst presidents we've ever had, period. But Tom's post was purposely inflammatory and degrading, and some of my other friends took the bait.

Attempting to insert some logic and reasoning and facts into the flame war, I posted this comment:

Well truth be told, there are several reasons why gas is so high, not just because of Bush. Sure, Bush isn't doing much to correct the issue, but as a libertarian, I'm not so sure it's the government's responsibility to tell an industry how to operate, even an essential one like oil.

Issues that Bush has zero control over that are affecting the cost of oil:

* A huge increase in demand from China and India where the economy is exploding. These are also the cause for a skyrocketing price in steel (another reason why the cost of new construction in the US is going up).

* Civil unrest in the oil-producing countries in Africa are cutting off those sources of supply. Oil workers in Africa are constantly getting kidnapped and pipelines bombed.

* Lack of refining capabilities in the US hampers the flow of crude pumped out in the Gulf of Mexico and other regions, and produces an inflation in price of oil. The problem is that not many people want a refinery in their backyard and most states these days fear a refinery would become a terrorist target so they block new construction. The one serious effort to build a new one in the Arizona desert on an old military base is stalled because apparently even coyote and vultures suffer from the NIMBY attitude.

* OPEC are a bunch of shitheads. They obviously like the high prices and like having the US by the short hairs and so they're not increasing production. Economics clearly states that a limited supply inflates prices. Until their last meeting they were slowing production.

* Buying by traders. Traders the world over are bidding for oil reserves they feel are coming to an end, so their bidding drives up the price of oil.

Now, given the high price of oil, yes, hybrids are becoming more popular. Toyota just announced they're going to make more hybrid models available. Oil exploration is on the rise, and the pumping and refining of once unprofitable types of oil (shale and sand oil) is also increasing. Canada has, in terms of sand oil, the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. Biggest ever seen.

It's a mixed picture, and while it does suck to have to drop $2.77 a gallon right now, I'm taking the long view, and so should you. It's convenient to blame Bush (trust me, I blame him for a lot. I'm not fan of his. I voted for Badnarik) but he's not the only reason we're in this mess.

I figured it was even and balanced and fair. Silly Mo! No, Tom instead replied that he supports free speech and abhors censorship, but it's his blog, and he doesn't have to display it. True enough. But what's the point in claiming you believe in free speech and support it if you're going to censor everyone that doesn't agree with you? He's content to hide behind his blog and holler at people, but when they get mad and holler back he mutes them. It's hypocrisy in the highest order and it sticks in my craw; as a writer, as a libertarian, as a thinking man. Society is always served better when people have full and free speech. I know that doesn't mean that you have to support someone's right to yell on your lawn at 3am, or to piss on your shrubs. I understand that someone's right to free speech ends at someone else's driveway, but seriously, a website has such a low cost of ownership, and it costs me almost nothing if someone replies to something I wrote, so I'm not going to sweat it if they write an entire dissertation on my blog. Cool! Being involved in that discussion will probably make me a better person, and maybe even some other people too.

That's why I've always had a policy of allowing every legitimate comment to go through. I do remove the "spam comments" but that's because I don't authorize people to advertise on my site without giving me some sort of cut, and they don't. So I consider that a separate matter. But if someone reads something I wrote and wants to call me an asshole, they can, and I'll publish it. Maybe they'll make me think of something I hadn't before. Maybe they'll help me come to a new conclusion about something that's been bothering me. Maybe I'll continue the discussion with them, and I'll help them learn something.

So Tom, stop being a hypocrite, open your mind and open your blogs to comments. Either you support free speech and mean it, or...you're the asshole.

I am crushed with depression today. I usually have a few of these days when the weather gets nice that my whole soul deflates. I sag from the shoulders down and I find it hard to look people in the eye. I'm listless and I don't want to eat or worse yet I want to eat my way through a mountain of food. I find one sad song that fits my mood and just play it over and over again.

I know why I am depressed today: I am beat up from house hunting and securing the financing and the worrying over every little detail of the move and finding my children a preschool and the million of other nits that are flying around my head.

I really just want to stare out the window for a few hours. Better yet, I want to be outside on some old bench in a forgotten garden out of cellphone reach and away from life for the afternoon.

I have very little to be depressed about. My children are beautiful, they're bright and vibrant and funny and loving and snuggling. I'm exercising every night and losing weight. My wife and I sit on the couch together at nights after the kids are asleep and the windows are open letting in the night air. She always smells so good and her warm body against mine while we sit and watch TV is the real home I seek at night. We laugh and talk and tease each other in the stillness. Sometimes we go to bed early and just relax in the silence.

I know anyone can be depressed over nothing in particular, only depressed because of chemical imbalances in my brain or neurons misfiring or lack of sunlight or lack of sleep or lack of some external stimulus, or even too much stress, and it's probably the dawning conclusion of the house buying that's finally unleased all of this stress into my body so that my shoulders ache and my neck is tight and pinched...but I know I have nothing to really be depressed about. And yet I am. I should be excited to finally hear the news, and I'm torn up inside instead.

Tonight I'll have the final word on our offer to buy our new house. I'll pull into the parking lot at home and the kids will run screaming across the lawn towards me and I'll be hammered with hugs and kisses and then everything will be okay again.

(AP Newswire) - April 17, 2006 - On condition of anonymity, a technician at the hospital working with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes revealed that ultrasounds taken a few weeks ago revealed that Katie Holmes is not actually carrying a baby, but L. Ron Hubbard himself.

"We were all surprised because we expected a baby, but there was this wrinkled old man in there with a typewriter. He was banging away at it."

When asked if Ms. Holmes knows she's carrying the thought-to-be-deceased controversial author and founder of Scientology in her womb, the technician was emphatic: "No! Tom told her she had to wear a blindfold and ear plugs during the ultrasound to block out 'negativity'. He then threatened to kill us and feed us to his children if we told anyone what we saw."

"So why did you come forward?"

"Honestly, I'm a god-fearing person, and this just has me scared and worried. Tom Cruise got on the phone when he saw it and called all his scientology buddies and started laughing maniacally. I haven't been to work since. I've just been down at the church praying."

Further efforts to corroborate this fantastic tale have not been succesful.

(AP Newswire) - April 17, 2006 - On condition of anonymity, a technician at the hospital working with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes revealed that ultrasounds taken a few weeks ago revealed that Katie Holmes is not actually carrying a baby, but L. Ron Hubbard himself.

"We were all surprised because we expected a baby, but there was this wrinkled old man in there with a typewriter. He was banging away at it."

When asked if Ms. Holmes knows she's carrying the thought-to-be-deceased controversial author and founder of Scientology in her womb, the technician was emphatic: "No! Tom told her she had to wear a blindfold and ear plugs during the ultrasound to block out 'negativity'. He then threatened to kill us and feed us to his children if we told anyone what we saw."

"So why did you come forward?"

"Honestly, I'm a god-fearing person, and this just has me scared and worried. Tom Cruise got on the phone when he saw it and called all his scientology buddies and started laughing maniacally. I haven't been to work since. I've just been down at the church praying."

Further efforts to corroborate this fantastic tale have not been succesful.

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you have a good one.

I don't know what it is about me and Mondays, but we just do not mesh. It takes me forever to get started on a Monday. I cannot seem to get my ass and head moving the same direction. Oh Juan Valdez, Patron Saint of cups of Joe, please rescue me.

So I said Taylor, Elliot, and Mandisa would be in the bottom three tonight, and I called two out of three. And the person going home was... <SPOILERS BELOW>

So I'm thinking about American Idol and I was surprised that some people did as well as they did. I didn't think that Ace was going to do well, and Elliot did better than I thought. Taylor was not good at all, which pains me to say, because I love the man. His last three performances have been lacking, and I felt that he was phoning this one in. Mandisa tried to do a hybrid of gospel and country that didn't work for me, which is a shame because she is also one of my favorites.

VoteForTheWorst is asking everyone to vote for Kellie Pickler, which is a shock to me. I don't think she's the worst by far. I'm really torn now on who's the worst on the show...but I'll throw out my guesses for the bottom three:

1. Taylor
2. Mandisa
3. Elliot

with Elliot going home.

The wife thinks it will be:

1. Katherine
2. Elliot
3. Ace

with Elliot going home.

And both the wife and I are a little disturbed by how much our own comments at home are syncing up with Simon. It feels dirty.

I got a email from Chad Kultgen, whom I'd blogged about before. His site's running strong, and I think that you should go read a review from him today. Like right now. GO! (Link)

The people who were in the original Star Trek should have been locked up post-Star Fleet...

Last week I was suffering from Shatner's spoken word rendition of Elton John's Rocket Man and now I have this pile of crap stuck in my head. MAKE IT STOP BEFORE I HURT MYSELF.

Nothing says "hi-class" like a large sculpture honoring "pro-life" by depicting a sexed-up Britney Spears giving birth on a bear rug.

I'm going to put it right next to that toilet planter I put in.

I started listening to "The Diner" by James Lileks. Think kind of like a one-man Firesign Theatre, or the Harry Shearer radio show. Here's a link.

My daughter came up with the term "stinky biscuit" today. Whenever someone farts, they become the "stinky biscuit". I hope that makes it into the Merriam-Webster one day.

I had my article posted on Gather.com today and I was very excited, but I wasn't so sure how much attention it would get as it was a very small piece of writing, but I've got 42 comments and a lot of discussion from people, some positive and a bunch negative.

I think the longest running argument in the thread, and the last comment sum up the plight of the libertarian party very well: No one really knows what the LP stands for, and there are a lot of people with very occluded understandings of its key tenants. I think the most important thing for me to do is to keep talking about the party with people, to keep doing more outreach, and to keep the professionalism high while doing that.

I am going to reiterate another point I know I've made before, specifically in regards to the Democrats and Republicans: what is the philosophical basis for the existence of your parties? What informs your legislation, what informs your actions and choice of candidates? I've asked a lot of Democrats and Republicans those questions and I have never heard an answer, good or bad, yet.

Anyway, here's the link to my article on Gather.com.

Arthur Winston, team leader of a bus maintenance crew in LA has decided that today, his 100th birthday is the day he'll retire. It sounds like it should be an Onion new story, but it's not. He sounds like an amazing man. My hat's off to you Mr. Winston. I hope your next 100 years are an amazing time for you.

A movement is afoot in London of people going out under the cover of dark to rip out old dying shrubs and replanting neglected flower beds while most people sleep. I love the idea of people sneaking out at night and randomly beautifying the world with new greens.

It's kind of like Fight Club in reverse. I'm big fan of that kind of nonesensical randomness in either direction, so this resonates really well with me.

They say it's the first day of spring today, but it's 20 degrees outside and the wind's blowing at 15mph...I stepped out of the house and my left nipple just fell right off.

This is not spring.

From the "Things You Probably Already Knew" Department - Picking your nose after playing with curry powder is NOT a good idea. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to jam some yoghurt up my nose.

Apparently I'm not the only one that's thought through who Cthulu will eat first. Read the Cthulu Chick Tract for more information. (Link)

None of this settles what will happen when the flying spaghetti monster returns. Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?

Man the skins are looking good this year, what with all of the acquisitions they've made so far. Looks like a lot of players want a chance to play for Gibbs.

I am waiting to see if the Seahawks will hold together this year in the face of their Superbowl loss. Considering most of my wife's family are Seahawks fans, I kind of hope they fall apart.

The word is that T.O. is going to Dallas. It will be great to watch them self-destruct around him if he goes. They'll need a new receiver now that they got rid of Keyshawn Johnson. Maybe the Eagles should pick up Keyshawn, they haven't really done anything else in free agency so far.

I posted about this article where the guy says that calls to America from Iraq are costing $0.21/minute and they're gouging US personnel over there. The author has since posted twice in addition to his original assertions. (Link and Link)

I'm thinking more and more about what he has to say, and something my buddy Jeff said:

1. They're almost certainly not putting payphones in the PBX as that's a circuit in office buildings that connects phones together to a block of outbound lines and gives offices the ability to do things like give everyone extentions. So probably the term meant was PX.
2. On military bases, they have the Defense Switched Network that allows bases to call each other and enables people to call home for free. It's not only set up to let people call home when serving overseas, but gives the Defense Dept the ability to monitor phone traffic.
3. $0.21 is lower than some troops on nearby military bases to have to pay. Evidence? Two years ago, troops in Kuwait had to pay $0.30/minute. Looks like the deals are brokered by AAFES, NEXCOM, MCCS, et al. Maybe we should be asking them why the prices are so high?

The fact of the matter is that it is not free for someone to call from one side of the globe to the other. I do recognize that a lot can be done to lower the cost of some of these services moving forward, but existing infrastructure still needs to be maintained, and the services of the employees that maintain that infrastructure, etc. I value the work of our soldiers, and if they asked me to help cut their costs to call home by, say, paying more taxes, I'd probably pay it, but I recognize that SOMETHING needs to be paid. There really is no story here.

I can't believe that the Redskins released Lavarr Arrington. I know that he's had a spotty record in the last 3 years, and that his leaving does give the 'skins some room in the salary cap, but it just doesn't feel right, like walking in on your uncle wearing your aunt's Sunday best. It'd be like Johnny Damon playing for the Yankees...oh yeah...

He did great things for the Redskins in his tenure in Washington, and I am going to miss him.

I posted about the people I'd like to see Cthulu eat when he reawakens. I've got a new one!

Travis Frey, a real dickhead of a husband from Iowa, tried to force his wife to sign a contract that outlined her wifely duties. This included oral sex on demand, excluded her from wearing anything to bed, and a warning to not do anything "half-assed" or she'd lose her "good behavior days". When his wife balked at signing the contract he tried to kidnap her and a child, he assaulted her, and he's been downloading child pornography, because I guess building a marital prison for his on-demand sex slave just wasn't sexy enough for him.

Cthulu, please eat this fucker right away...or better yet, I hope his cellmate in prison gives him a contract outlining his duties as a bitch. I'm willing to bet many of the provisions on both contracts will be the same.

I hope Travis likes thongs and giving out oral sex.

In my house we're avid American Idol watchers. Heather enjoys the auditions more than the final competitions, but I like watching the singers progress and change as the final 12 are picked and they move on to the finals, but something we've both agreed on: we want Kellie Pickler to win.

There's just something that's so adorable and wonderful about her, it almost feels like we're watching a Southern My Fair Lady every week...I mean that in a good sense.

Anyway, we love her, and I hope she goes all the way.

NASA discovered a significant gamma-burst explosion "nearby" our galaxy this week. NASA is at a loss to explain the explosion, and some people have said that perhaps it's the Vogons finally making their hyperspace bypass, and one of my friends suggested it's the Cylons, but it's obviously the Elder Gods returning to rule the Earth again. Given their imminent arrival, I'd like to suggest the top 10 people Cthulu should eat first, in no particular order:

1. Jerry Falwell - This should be no surprise to anyone who reads my blog that I would nominate him for this list. His religious and political bigotry is unbearable, alon with the second entrant to the list
2. Pat Robertson - The beautiful thing is that we would probably get to see Pat Robertson's demise live on TV while he decried Cthulu as working for the gay jewish liberal Hollywood elite, which is silly, because we all know that Cthulu voted for Bush in Florida in 2000.
3. Michael Moore - While always thought-provoking and eye-catching, like a monkey in a tuxedo dancing with a water buffalo, his mud-slinging and truth-dodging make him an ideological equal to people like Karl Rove, only Karl Rove uses TV commercials and phone banks to spread his lies. Michael Moore's been given a larger soapbox to spew from. That makes him a bigger target.
4. Fred Phelps - As the man who leads his entire extended buck-toothed and cross-eyed family to protest at funerals of gay people and American soldiers, holding up signs praising the insurgency in Iraq and praising the 9/11 terrorists, this nutjob does nothing but sow hatred and anger in America. When he arrives in hell Satan has a job waiting for him to be the jizz mopper at the All-Night Suck-And-Fuck Bone-A-Rama Movie Hall in Hades' gay district.
5. Osama bin Laden - A man given all of the best in his youth through his father's hard work and pious life has turned it towards so much despicable evil. With all his vast resources and know-how, he could have commanded an army of volunteers to dig the muslim faithful out from under the rubble in Kashmir after the earthquake this fall, or saved the lives of children trapped under 20 feet of mud in an elementary school in Leyte. That would have truly been God's work. Instead he left it to the "great Satan": the US. I actually hope he gets trapped alive in the teeth of Cthulu and is slowly ground to death.
6. Michael Brown - Former FEMA chief should have known that he wasn't cut out for his job as the head of the agency in charge of first responding to the worst disasters one of the largest nations in the world would have to face but he tried to fake it, and when the mini-apocalypse happened, he ignored all the reports, all the indications, and all the pleadings of people on the ground in the middle of the shit and LET PEOPLE DIE. While Brownie was complaining, through his assistant, that he had to wait 20 - 30 minutes to get through traffic to eat dinner, his response was "I just ate an MRE [military rations] and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants." (Link)
7. David Mayberry - An HIV-positive Boy Scout leader who admitted to having sex with children and soliciting children online to have sex with, KNOWING he was HIV-positive. WTF? In fact, maybe the first thing we should do is empty the prisons of ALL of the guys like him and make a giant hamburger patty of them for Cthulu. (Link)
8. Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin - McKinnon (Link) and Dworkin (Link) worked hard to make all pornography a civil rights violation, saying that it's mere existence was harmful to women because it made men into rapists, murderers, and in some extreme cases politicians (alright, I made that last one up). The fact remains, however, that they perverted the real meaning of equality and feminism from something that means men and women are to be treated both the same and are equally responsible for what happens in their life into something where feminism meant that women are always the victim even when they don't think they are. True, Dworkin's dead already, but I advocate Cthulu eating what remains.
9. Louis Farrakan - The "civil rights leader" is another person, like McKinnon and Dworkin who took a position that originally stated true equality and twisted it so that equality mean the right to be a constant victim. He has worked nonestop to turn every event in history as part of some grand conspiracy to keep black people down. Doing that, with as loud a mouth as his, has stunted and deformed and derailed race relations, making people in two generations of black America even more unduly put upon. With his charisma and speaking ability he could focus on the real problems black people face in America and around the world, but instead he travels around talking about secret holes dug in the levees to wipe out the black population of New Orleans, or praising Hitler for killing Jews. So, into Cthulu's mouth you go.

There are so many other people that could go into the mouth of Cthulu that just couldn't fit on the list: the president of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, most of Hammas, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, but seriously, I'm hoping that by feeding Cthulu the shitheads I've listed above, he'll get such a bad taste for humanity that he'll decide we're not worth the trouble and just leave the rest of us alone.

I wrote about the Canadian family that decided not to return the camera they found in Hawaii. Boing Boing is where I and others picked up the story and now said Canadian family sent their imaginary lawyer against Cory Doctorow and Boing Boing.

Cory responded with logic and fact-checking which is usually harmful to lawyers, especially the fake kind.

The latest commercial to catch my eye is the Avis commercial done up to look like a hip-hop video with DMX's "Ruff Ryder's Anthem" but with old white people driving the fancy white vehicles.

Quite a tasty treat.

I'm looking for a copy now. Anyone have any pointers? Who's Avis' ad agency? Anyone know? This is a very different direction from their "What If We Didn't Try Harder" campaign from last year, and I like it.

Some folks lost their camera in Hawaii and were despondent because they lost all their pictures. Recently the park ranger called them and said that a family from Canada had found the camera and gave the original owners their phone number so they could call and get their camera back.

The family in Canada isn't going to give the camera back because their son likes it. Read the whole story here.

I got an email that appeared to come from EBay sent to a non-existant address on my domain that asked me to please go to www.savetimothy.net and give them money so they could fight neuroblastoma.

Neuroblastoma is a terrible disease, and for someone who lives in SouthGate, MI to pose as the struggling family in Russia fighting to save their toddler is despicable.

I've contacted EBay already because the guy's spoofing their domain to send emails and they'll probably shut it down right away but in case you feel like it, the guy's information is available here.

I'm not one to usually publish this type of information, but something about this is just so bald and ugly that I want to spit on the man who's doing it.

So I'm no economic expert, but everyone seems to have a economic gloom and doom scenario, and I thought I should post the one I have rattling around in my head.

One of the best commercials I've seen in a long time. It's work-safe but not politically correct in any way.

I really want one of these: an oversized blanket with sleeves. The person who thought that up is a genius. Of course, the next thing they need is to make one with two sets of sleeves so you and your SO can sit together under the blanket and both have sleeves. Hoods would be a bonus too.

Maybe this says something about the temperature in my house...

I'm rereading "Getting Things Done" by David Allen and implementing the book's suggestions at my new job. I've got a DayRunner that Heather gave to me years ago that I never used and I refilled it and I've been using it to help me track my tasks and get myself to complete. It's been good so far, and I have seen a spike in my productivity and vast decline in my general level of angst...but one thing occured to me yesterday.

In addition to doing "Getting Things Done" I'm also doing the "Artist's Way" and one of the things that's important in that process is the morning pages, which is a time when you sit down for 30 minutes as soon as you wake up and just write free-form stream-of-consciousness so that all of the scum floating on top of your brain gets skimmed and left behind. The idea is the same as Getting Things Done: when you've cleared these little nagging issues and problems from your head you're more able to focus on the big and important stuff (not exactly revolutionary, but important to address all the same).

As I was writing out my morning pages yesterday I came to the realization that a large part of my anxiety surrounding work had nothing to do so much with the complexity of the work or the deadlines so much as it was that I am suffering from a profound doubt about my ability to architect a software solution around a problem, so much so, that I often end up procrastinating on building anything until it's (almost) too late and then I try to hack something out.

I know in my head that I have the skills and knowledge to be a good architect, but somehow I lack the emotional fortitude to believe it. That's huge, and I've never openly acknowledged it until now.

So I think that that has been a contributing factor to all of my stress and worry and job churn that I've gone through in the past. I'm happy though, because naming it means I can tackle it and fix it.

I think this is a huge step for me.

I started my new job today at a company in King of Prussia. It was a tough start to the day because my daughter was awake and in bed with mommy when I walked in to tell my wife I was leaving.

She looked at me and said "Daddy, I want you to play with me today. I told you that yesterday." and little tears ran down her face. It was very heartbreaking.

But I'm happy to have a job again! Hooray for that.

I'm seeking new employment, and I'm looking in the Harrisburg, PA area, so if anyone knows of any companies doing .Net, Perl, or Java work in Central PA, shoot me an email.

Thanks

I can begin to live out my plan to become a Czech hobo.

So the World Cup is quickly approaching, and the US Soccer Team is in again (GO USA!). FIFA announced this week the groupings for the first round of playoffs, and USA got screwed over. Rather than put us in a grouping where we'd have a chance, they shoved us in Group E, where we will have to compete against Italy, and the Czech team, which is currently second in the world. Because of this, the US team is now considered a long favorite to even make it to the next round.

bah.

I know that France was not so harsh towards the US during the disaster post-Katrina in New Orleans, but much was made about how America was broken, American capitalism was broken, America's "safety net" of socialist programs weren't working because the people in New Orleans were rioting and raping and shooting, etc.

Now we see a country that is supposed to have a vaunted set of socialist programs, cradle to the grave and so forth and the youth there, the disaffected poor people have been rioting more and for a longer time in France than in the US. They're not abating, and the French are reeling.

I feel badly for them. I don't like when any country has to deal with that level of unrest and disquiet. But it appears that America's not so alone in being "broken" after all. Let's be honest here, the stuff happening in NO was after a major disaster when people were dealing with a lack of food, water, and medicine.

These riots are occuring because two youths were running away from the French police and got electrocuted in a power sub-station and died. Really? That's why they're lighting cars on fire and throwing rocks at cops and causing all of this unrest.

So it's even more despicable. But at least we're not the only ones broken.

Last night, NPR ran a story saying that lawmakers are starting to examine drunk driving laws in the U.S. to see if they are too strict. In that story, they interviewed MADD CEO Chuck Hurley who compared drunk driving to a "violent crime" and "terrorism" because it takes innocent lives.

(Link)

I don't even want to talk about it.

Heather's a Giants fan, I'm a Redskins fan. Skins vs. the Giants today at 1pm in the Meadowlands.

If the Skins lose, I have to wear a Giants shirt tomorrow when I'm walking the kids around the neighborhood for Halloween, but if the Skins win, Heather has to stand in the front yard and sing "Hail to the Redskins".

Everyone expects that the Redskins are going to lose, though not by much...the spread isn't big. I'm not so sure.

Washington's got the second ranked offense in the NFL right now, but the Giants are only 15th in the NFL right now. The Redskins have the 4th ranked defense in the NFL and the Giants are below 30th. Yes the Giants lead the league in 3rd Down and 4th Down conversion, but again, the Redskin's defense is 4th in the NFL: They only allow an average 17 points per game right now, and the Giants D are giving up 22 per game. The math just seems to add up: the Redskins will win.

Now all I have to do is sit back and hear my wife's painful rendition of a classic:

Think I'm full of shit? Sound off here.

I don't often have nice things to say about Philadelphia, but I have to say that one thing that I really like about it is the music scene...if you look at the musicians that have come out of the immediate area you have to wonder if they put LSD in the water here. (You'd have to be taking something to put up with SEPTA and the insanity at City Hall and the ever present piss smell). But bands like The Bloodhound Gang, The Dead Milkmen, Atom and his Package, all good goofy bands that can't decide if they want to rock or geek out or be stupid funny.

I love that.

In fact, it doesn't seem to end there. People like Bam from Jackass are from this area too. It's like the whole area's populated by half-retarded goofballs...and I mean that in a good way.

Bob Sullivan, an author and journalist who contributes to MSNBC.com amongst others, and is considered an expert on identity theft, recently wrote on his blog about the new bankruptcy laws that took effect.

He highlighted the fact that the victims of Katrina will get an exemption (as I asked in a previous post) but he also highlighted another problem: When you file for bankruptcy now, you are forced to go to "Credit Counseling", at one of a handful of "accredited" counseling firms.

I don't know how familiar you all are with these firms, but as someone that was one in deep debt (post-college) and considered filing for bankruptcy, I investigated those firms, and everyone I ever talked to scoffed at the mention of them. It seems like a good deal, right? You don't file for bankruptcy, you work with your creditors, you get your life back on track, and you did it with honor. Problem is that many of the same credit card companies that pushed for this reform look down on people who use the counseling agencies more than if you just went straight through bankruptcy. A lot of times, a counseling agency can stain your credit record more than the "final solution" of Chapter 7.

Worse yet, many of these agencies are far from reputable and work to deceive the very people they claim to protect and work with. They are generally very shady.

Anyhoo, read the post from Bob Sullivan. I think he raises some good points.

I've watched the first three episodes of 'Colbert Nation', and I say it's a homerun. What a fabulous show. Stephen Colbert is doing a fantastic job.

I think the highlight for me was the first night with the "Gravitas Showdown" (look for the link 'Let the Gravitas Begin') between Stone Phillips and Stephen Colbert, but it's also been quite amusing to see how often the word "balls" gets said on the show.

I know I'm not the only one that feels good about the show. Someone's already started "Colbert Nation".

http://www.thepartyparty.com/.

These political remixes are pretty damn good. I recommend "Who's the Nigga?" and "Dick is a Killer".

I saw a piece on CNN this morning about how the new bankruptcy laws are going to take effect soon. I thought they already had, but I guess it's at the end of this month, whatever.

I imagine that in the face of Hurricane Katrina there are a lot of people that are falling behind on their bills and that a fair number of them would have used bankruptcy as a step to get back on their feet once they got their house back in order, got a job again, etc.

But that door's been shut on a lot of people because the new laws greatly restrict who can and cannot file for bankruptcy, plus it makes the steps necessary to file more difficult AND more expensive. Last I heard, it costs between $600 - $1200 to file for bankruptcy which for Joe Average Middle-Class can already be hard to rustle up, even without Katrina wiping people out.

So, is this what everyone in Congress envisioned when they revised the laws? In my head, it was an event precisely like Katrina that made the bankruptcy a neccessity, in addition to all of the other freak occurrences of life.

I think it's a shame. My only hope is that the credit card companies and mortgage companies, the entities that pushed for this reform are going to be magnanimous in the face of disaster and help the people suffering now.

I went to see the Ravens play today at the M&T Stadium. Someone snagged four seats for one of the luxury boxes at the stadium and we got to sit and watch in style. It was very cool.

The seats were good, the food was good (burgers, pasta salad, Maryland Crab dip, 20 different kinds of cheese, subs, potato skins, beer, etc), there were TVs everywhere so we kept tabs on the Red Sox v. Yankees game and I also got to watch the Redskins pull out an OT victory against the Shehawks.

I'll write up more about the experience tomorrow.

Anyway, bitch about the Redskins more here. And anything else in general here.

I went into Philadelphia on Saturday and played two rounds of cricket with a bunch of the Indian guys from work. It was an awesome time. I suck at throwing the ball, but I did a pretty good job batting.

Then we tried playing some American football, but that was a little hard with only 6 people.

I woke up sore as hell this morning at 3am to do the paper route, but it was totally worth it. I think I'm going to buy a cricket bat and go play some more.

Extra bonus was the awesome Indian lunch after the matches.

I was watching the Pats - Steelers game on CBS, and the ads coming up were trucks, tools, food, more sports, yadda yadda yadda. The minute the game was over the 60 Minutes stop-watch showed up and they introduced the topics for the evening. When that was done, the next three commercials were: fiber, a drug, and joint replacement.

Methinks CBS views the viewer demographics of 60 Minutes as...older...

Obviously they would, the transition was just so stark. One minute it's Howie Long in a Chevy truck extolling skid plates and then the next is about getting a new knee. It was kind of jarring.

A couple of notes:

• New Honda Civic SI ad in the red with the car jumping buildsing features "Galang" from M.I.A. I enjoy the song and the ad for that matter. Good stuff.
• I finally had to buy "Eat Steak" from the Rev. Horton Heat because I couldn't get the song out of my head since the Boston Market ads keep showing up during NFL commercial breaks. Not that this is a hardship, I really enjoy the good Rev.
• Burger King's doing more interesting things in ads with chickens. They did the whole chicken whopper thing with the "Subservient Chicken" thing. Now they've created a rock band called "Coq Roq". The band members come replete with chicken costumes and various chicken masks. Watch the videos. They're quite amusing.
• What's the damn song in the VW Passat commercial for the climate-controlled glove box? The two guys drive out into the middle of the desert for the sushi and they Japanese guy is there obviously a master of his craft...anyway, I'm rambling, but I want the song. I can't seem to find out who it's by. Anybody know?

I am amused by the thought of a vegan website running ads for steak.

I'm torn, do I click to give them money by supporting something that they don't stand for or not click because I think that most vegans are little nuts?

I'm pissed. I'm on my second pair of iPod headphones and now these are broken too. I love the iPod itself, but to have the headphones keep breaking is ridiculous.

Why can't they build a strong pair?

I've tried both the standard and the in-ear kind, so now I'm going to trek back to the Apple Store and raise hell.

In less than 30 minutes is the season premiere of Lost. I feel like a damned kid in a candy store on Christmas day.

I'm so hot to see what's in the hatch.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Put them here.

His new essay on economic inequality is fabulous. The wonderful thing for me is that he works hard to try and establish a logical proof on how wealth redistribution schemes do not work to raise the level of everyone's wealth, but eventually wreck economies.

His ideas are obviously nothing new; many people have said the same thing throughout history.

But it's fun to see how he came to the conclusion himself.

His essay will of course upset a lot of people in the computer industry who believe that economies can and should be planned.

The Redskins pulled it out of their asses to win. w00t! Good job guys. Santana Moss is just about incredible. What a catch on that 70 yard bomb from Brunell.

Wow.

Listening to the Redskins Radio right now via NFL.com's FieldPass and I was excited, sounded like the Skins were about to do something big and Brunell threw an interception...

One day, yes one day, I will have an offense I can be proud of. Probably by that point, the defense we have now will just be a memory.

Thank God the Red Sox are doing something I can watch.

So I've been thinking about what makes me really happy and other things I can do with my life. I love computers and programming, but there are also times where I think about doing other things, and there's no reasons why I shouldn't look into them.

So one of the things that I was thinking about was going to get a job as an "Open Source Officer", which, despite its name, has nothing to do with open source software.

Instead, it's a job where I would consume foreign media and create analysis of it for the CIA. The thing that I would enjoy is that it's basically what I do for my blog, but in an official position. God help us all...

But it would give me a chance to use my language skills and do something that I find interesting. I don't feel that it conflicts with my libertarian ideals either because the Founding Fathers never precluded the use of external espionage by government, and were in fact using spies themselves. Knowing what the rest of the world is important, and can be valuable intelligence.

I think that I have something of a knack for foreign languages (despite what my mother would say about my grades in German in high school) and my dad was also a whiz at languages, so I guess it runs in the family.

It's just something that I've been thinking about.

There's so much commentary about the Koran these days, about what it says and what it doesn't and what it means and what it doesn't that I decided to buy the Koran. I was able to pick up the Bantam Classics Edition.

I'm going to start reading and trying to offer my commentary...so I guess I'm going to be adding to the noise, but it's something that I think is important.

I do recognize that the translation is an important aspect, so I'll probably end up reading more than one edition and comparing translations as well.

I'll start the commentary next week.

I admire the subliminal one-two punch of this book at Amazon. (link courtesy of boing-boing).

Word is that this book is just one of a series. Next month will come "Taking It In The Ass For Jesus" and the month after will be "Avoiding the Cock of Satan".

I've been asked to put my cat Hex up for adoption. He's a sweet sweet all black cat that's only 3 years old. I adore him, but my wife has ordered him out. He's not getting along with the other cats in the house and he wants attention.

I really don't want to give him up, but the order has come down.

If you're in the Quakertown, PA area, and you're looking to adopt a cat, email me at hexadoption@mauricereeves.com.

Thanks

Last year while I was at work, bored out of my skull, I swung by Kuro5hin.org and was dismayed with what I saw. I posted my thoughts then here.

Last night I started getting several comments of questionable quality, all coming from here. My criticism was directed towards those people that get on sites like Kuro5hin and cook up some half-cock theory about some issue and then espouse it with high doses of vitriol. It's the same reason I hardly read the comments on Slashdot. The signal to noise ratio is very very low. And I know that even on my website, a lot of the stuff I write is crap. But I admit it, and I try to stay away from writing publically when I think it's going to be total shit.

But these dipshits coming to my site screaming about me being a faggot, or being fat, or sucking at computers, or eating my daughter's panties (what the fuck?) just go to prove my point. The site is populated by more trolls than good people, and it's not worth my time to go peruse the site if I have to keep wondering what I'm going to step in next.

Yesterday's game was the same old Redskins. I mean, there are some glimmers of hope on the team, and there were some great moments in the game, but I came down to the kicking and defense.

*sigh*

What in the HELL?????????

Fucking Patrick Ramsey throwing an interception in their first set of downs????????

It's going to be another long season.

Redskins play their regular season opener at FedEx field today against the Chicago Bears! Go SKINS!

Of course, having been burned for many seasons now, I am fearful that they will screw up and lose what should be a fairly straightforward game for them to win.

The problem is that Dan Snyder doesn't know when to leave well enough alone. Boomer Esiason said on NFL.com a few weeks ago in an article about who the big losers will be this year: "They could buy every available free agent, but that won't fix internal organizational problems."
(Source: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/8792831)

He's right. When it comes to his sports teams, Dan Snyder can't find his ass with both hands, and he continually meddles in the affairs of his coaching staff. I cannot stand when people from the top try to micro-manage in the affairs of their staff. CEO's should not be focused on trying to do the job of their talent.

I believe that if Jesus Christ himself descended from heaven and offered to coach the Skins, Dan Snyder would spend the entire season hovering over his shoulder "Do you think that's the right decision Lord? Maybe we should do something else. Do you really know what you're doing Jesus? Maybe I need a different coach."

So, dear Redskins, please don't embarass us, the fans.

This is a really bizarre story, to say the least.

I found the following update on the fire at the grave of Noah Webster:

"The New England Society for Paranormal and Phenomenology Studies was working in the area of the grave of Noah Webster and picked up disturbing vibrations and noises the day before the fire started. We've been in contact with the police with our findings and will work with them in this matter". (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nespps/)

I don't know what it means, but I'm intrigued.

Halliburton has been hired to do Katrina clean-up.

The Dept. of Homeland Security has ordered the Red Cross to NOT enter New Orleans, because it would apparently convince people to stay. WTF??????????

A larget group of private citizens show up with their own personal boats to rescue people trapped in New Orleans but are turned around by the LA Dept. of Wildlife and Fisheries and FEMA. They were told they were not needed. All I can think about it in that circumstance is how on 9/11 a vast number of people in New York and New Jersey voluntarily picked up people and took them across the river to safety without having to be asked. That's always pointed to as one of those moments of great spontaneous human charity. Again, apparently the government decided that wasn't needed this time. WTF?

President Bush said, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." He added, "Now we're having to deal with it, and will."

A fictional Category 3 Hurricane Pam, with "winds of 120 mph, up to 20 inches of rain... and a storm surge that topped the levees," was the picture presented to officials from 50 federal, local and volunteer organizations, according to a Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatch from July 23, 2004. (Emphasis added)

Fascinating.

So no one anticipated the levees failing?

Didn't they say the same thing about 9/11 "no one could have anticipated terrorists flying a plane into a building" even though several federal training scenarios involved that same incident?

I just keep picturing the president being like Vizzini in the Princess Bride. "The levees were breached?!?!?!? Inconceivable!"

I've heard this same question from several people that I've talked to: "What should Bush have done instead of playing guitar and laughing with senior citizens? It's not like he could stop the flood himself!"

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP

There comes a point, when being the leader of a country that you must appear, what's the word...presidential...

If Bush had a car in his front yard on blocks before he was the president, that's fine. But the minute he becomes the president, what he does and how he presents himself matters. It matters in that it sets the tone for the nation. It matters in that it gives people hope. It matters in that he is the leader of this nation.

So what should he have done? He should have cut his vacation short. He should have immediately flown over the area and surveyed the damage from the air on his way to the Red Cross command center in Mississippi, or to Baton Rouge to meet immediately with the governor of LA.

Even though these actions would be largely symbolic, they would still have gone miles toward making people feel like something was being done.

Instead, everyone from the media to the state and local governments of the affected areas feels like they've been abandoned by the Federal government.

Bush should have appeared like the leader of a country facing the third worst natual disaster in its history and an increasingly terrible human nightmare...not playing guitar for senior citizens and posing for photographs with Senator McCain.

I cannot fathom the horror of what's happening in New Orleans. I don't even think it's sunk in for most people that a major US city has been completely ordered evacuated because they cannot stop the flooding. I don't think I've ever heard of this happening before. They're going to move everyone out, the prisoners, the ill and dying, those staying at storm shelters, EVERYONE.

That's staggering to me.

Heather and I are looking to find some way to donate food, clothing, and money to the relief efforts but our biggest fear is that if we give these things it won't go to the suffering in the Gulf Coast. I wish there was some DIY charity framework that was transparent and you could track your donations.

Also, speaking of the things happening in the Gulf, I know I'm not the only one that's absolutely fucking horrified and pissed off that Bush was having meetings about Medicare in California while people were dying in their houses. I want to say more but I don't have the composure right now to express it. Instead I'll point you here, which says it much better with pictures than I ever will.

Seriously, Bush is a fuckface.

The First Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has its first hymn.

I was talking to my friend Latoya via GMail and the subject of masturbating and farm animals came up and for the next few messages in the thread, no adwords appeared next to the message. They were there before masturbating and farm animals came up, and the other messages still had adwords, but apparently the combination of the two made them run away and hide in GMail.

Such prudish behavior!

Where are my contextual ads offering me websites on americanfarmanimalsingles.com inviting me to become a pen-pal to animals locked up at local farms, or a link to places seeking those interested in the exciting field of animal husbandry?

Oh well, maybe next time.

I got on the train this morning and I really intended to get to work on some code. I yanked the laptop out of my bag and booted it up when suddenly this giant of a black man leaned over and asked me about my laptop. Steve, it turns out, is a huge anime and comic book fan, which was awesome. He wanted to talk to me about being able to watch movies on a laptop on the train.

He kept talking about one anime series called "Gunslinger Girl" which, like almost ALL anime is about young school girls with guns. But apparently this one is the shit. I'm kind of bummed that I put my Netflix account on hold now, because I want to rent it, but I think, based on what he was saying and my own immediate impression of the object, my own instinct, that I should just go ahead and buy the first of the series because I'm pretty sure I'm going to like it.

To the guys who hacked my site, props to you and thanks for not deleting anything. I forgot to check permissions on my site when I did the last upgrade to MT3.2

Thanks! But next time you find a hole like that, just shoot me an email.

Bastards.

I think that if Owen were to die in combat, I would not have the power to attend the homecoming of his unit, as this father did.

I admire his strength, and I imagine his son was one hell of a Marine.

In a fit of vanity, I googled all of the websites that link to mine and I found Blogshares.com. I was surprised to see my site on there being traded like a public company, but hey, cool!

Perusing through their site (it needs some UI help) I found out that Melissa owns the second highest amount of shares after me (as the owner I get 1000 shares automatically). Wow.

Cool.

Uhm, hey Melissa! Thanks for taking a chance on my site.

I have noticed something that disturbs me and I want to reach out to all the other parents out there that might be having the same issue. As a father and pet owner, I consider myself something of an expert on the various odors an ass can make.

But once in a while, one of my children will make something so powerful and aromatic that it instantly reminds me of expensive fancy gourmet cheeses.

Of course, no one's going to wax poetic about the pleasing scent eminating from my son's diaper, but I swear to God, put his butt next to some feta (fetid?) cheeses I've had, you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Of course, this also raises the issue for me: given the similarity of odors between the two, is there a particular wine that goes well with wiping his ass?

I just upgraded to the new version of MovableType to get all the fun new features. I'm hoping to put up a new face on my website this year, but we'll see. I'm kind of busy now.

Let me know if you notice any issues on the site while using it.

May you be forever touched by his noodly appendage...

Wow. This man deserves a painful and hideous death.

I mean, we've all experienced having a spouse or signifigant other nagging us to come to bed when we're up doing something, BUT REALLY???? Beating his wife 70 times with a hammer right after they've had sex just because he wanted to watch SportsCenter.

Holy Shit, the Red Sox Radio Podcast on mysportsradio.com is awesome. It's hosted by a kid, Alex, who has to be about 13, but he's SOOOOO in depth, he's got personality, he's fun to listen to.

I'm not the only one who thinks so: he's going to be on the Today Show (Aug 10th 2005), and on Sirius Radio talking football. This kid's going place fast.

I'm hooked. Keep it going Alex. You rock!

Dear Humidity,
I noticed that you weren't around this weekend. I thought you went away on a vacation, but you were back today for the work week. It's really sweet of you to think of us, but truly, if you'd like to go away for a while longer and stay on vacation, we really wouldn't mind at all.

Truly! We're fine. Go...shoo

It's almost bed time, and Owen's sitting up here in the bedroom with me. We're listening to "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star, which is on it's way to becoming classic rock...how long ago did that song debut?

Owen's chilling out up here because mommy took his hammer away that he was using to beat on everything. I'm up here because it's been one of those two weeks.

There's all sorts of shit going on at work, my responsibilities changing and growing and shifting, and some friends left for better opportunities. I'm really sad about that. Life intervened and presented them with choices, and they made their's. I'm still sad though. You work for a while with a group of people and any more, they become your family; many times the only reason you get up and go to work is to see them.

Now I'm going to have those two less reasons to go. I love my job most times, and I enjoy what I do, and I'm sure we'll find very good people to replace them, but it's not the same.

A couple of times I've stopped at work and wondered "Why am I so scatter-brained? Why do I feel so grayed out and fuzzy? Why am I so depressed?" I look over at my friend's desk and remember why, and get back to work.

I'm absolutely terrible about keeping in touch with old friends, especially when I don't see them every day. Moving to Philadelphia two years ago to get closer to my job sucked so bad because I was moving to a place without friends, without family, without connection, to an area with none of the comforts of home.

I had good friends at MortgageRamp, but the company kept threatening to implode so I made my goodbyes and left. I talk to almost no one there now.

And so now, at my present company, I make good friends, and we then they start to leave again. I've got friends moving to Florida, getting married and losing themselves in jobs and marriages, and now, again, friends leaving. I know not every acquaintance lasts forever, and not all friends stay in touch forever, but goddamit...

Maybe we need to move back to Harrisburg, and back to family, and back to my old friends.

I hate feeling this alone.

I got a copy of "Mesmerize" from System of a Down. I'm already a huge fan of their music, and I picked up the special iTunes Bundle two months ago with two of the songs off of Mesermize, but the album has surpassed my expectations ten-fold.

It's amazing. It's aggressive and powerful but well-crafted and deep and insightful and the heaviness and speed doesn't overpower my appreciation of the craftmanship of the songs.

I have watched the last two episodes of "30 Days", the show by Morgan Spurlock on FX. I am deeply impressed with the quality of the show and the emotions it evokes. I mean, I find some of the little explanations that Morgan interjects into the show about the topic at hand are simplistic (too simplistic at times) and that can be annoying, but the show's very good, and I'm going to keep watching.

This show, along with "Penn & Teller's Bullshit", "The Daily Show", "Real Time with Bill Maher", "The L Word", "Mythbusters", etc are why I keep the cable plugged in. I used to completely hate TV, but more and more I think that TV is getting better, and there is more intelligent discourse to be found, so I'm happy.