First Time I Left For Hailey, I had to go back to get the following items:
(1) CD Player faceplate
(2) Cell phone
(3) Directions
(4) Digital Camera

Second Time I Left For Hailey, I had to go back and get the following items:
(1) CD Player Faceplate
(2) Cell phone
(3) Digital Camera

I'm off to Hailey to ring in the new year.

Have a good one, y'all!

Requiring an account appears to have turned back all commenters. Unfortunately, that makes things a bit less convenient for you all. basically, you have a couple of options:

(1) Create an account. Creating an account has a number of benefits. For one thing, Nucleus will not keep forgetting your name as it presently does. Secondly, it'll give you the opportunity to edit your own comments if you accidentally put HTML in there or something. Third, if I ever have to disable the blog, you'll still be able to see it. Lastly, it gives you a distinct name to comment as so that if someone with the same name wants to leave a comment, they won't mistake that person for you. If you would like me to create the account for you, please send me an email at first initial, middle initial, last name (all one word) at bigfoot.com or leave a message here as a guest. Once your account is created, you can log on in the fields on the left bar. You can change your password by logging in

(2) Sign in as "Guest." I have a special "Guest" account set up. The name is "Guest" (hence the superfluous-appearing quotation marks) and the password is the last month of the year in all lowercase. If this is abused by the spammers I'll have to come up with something else. If you do this, please sign your name on the comment so that I know who is talking and all that.

This situation may or may not be permanent, but if you do create an account you will be able to use it to edit your posts and have nucleus remember who you are even after another solution is reached.

Add-on: Make sure that none of your bookmarks have the www.* in front of the name. For some reason having that can cause some problems when trying to log in. I don't pretend to understand it, but there ya go.

One of the benefits of my job is that I can listen to music as I plug away at the keyboard. At first I listened to my CDs and MP3 CDs. Then more than a couple of coworkers started talking about RealNetworks Rhapsody, an online music service. I thought that for $10 a month, it might be a real worthwhile investment. But then I thought about the fact that you can't make MP3's and it lost its charm. However, I figured, you can burn songs for 79c a piece and it would give me a great opportunity to download (then rip) select songs that wanted copies of during my free 7 day trial period.

Internally, I also made a list of what I would require to actually pay for the service. If it had these artists, if I could burn most of the songs on there, and so on.

While I set the requirements intentionally lofty to dissuade myself from parting with my money, it not only met and exceeded those requirements - it's changed the way that I listen to music. When MP3s came along a few years ago, it made CDs redundent. The second I bought a CD the first thing I would do is download it and listen to it on my computer (and burn it as I choose). Rhapsody almost makes MP3s redundant. Whether or not I'll burn the songs I'm not sure, but I'm certainly not inclined to.

The basic gyst of the service is that you can listen to streaming audio. You can install the program anywhere, so I can listen to these songs both at work and at home. The songs canned be burned to CD for 79c a pop and you can download "tethered" copies of the songs, meaning that they will stop working if you cancel your service. They have various radio stations and you can also make your own playlists and most of the things you would expect.

But what really impressed me was the depth of the music available. They have everything from Matchbox Twenty to Robert Earl Keene to Bruce Springsteen to Tom Waite to Uncle Tupelo to Frank Black. They even have stand-up acts such as Bill Hicks and the Jerky Boyz. Outside of Texas Country (and even there they have Roger Creager) I can honestly say that I've found 95% of what I've looked for - and since I signed up six weeks ago, 100,000 tracks have been added. 95% of what they have can be burned.

This is at once a thousand radio stations, a music sampling service, and a CD collection with over 800,000 songs.

I'll write more at another time, but while I'm gone if you have high-speed Internet I strongly recomment you give it a try.

The man to the right would be my father. The shirt is new, but the yellow object on the mantle behind him has been around for the last few years. It's called a retirement clock and it counts down until, you guessed it, he retired. It's been interesting watching that thing wind down. While the retirement date been in the works for months now, I'm not sure that I believed it would actually happen until it actually did.

Right now he's en route to California to attend the Rose Bowl or already there or preparing for the trip. I can't remember the schedule exactly. But when he gets back, he will come home to freedom from the shackles of employment, a nice retirement plan, and a laundry list of chores that he's going to start doing since he doesn't have that whole "gainful employment" excuse anymore.

Something is telling me that Mom might be the one coming out a winner here...

"No news, as they say, is good news. Good news also tends to happen gradually, which makes it less conspicuous. Bad news happens in clumps. It makes itself known. In just a few hours, a hurricane or an earthquake can wipe out thousands of homes and businesses. The prosperity, wealth and rise in standard of living that created those homes and businesses took place over decades, if not hundreds of years. No one reports a new subdivision going up. Everyone’s on the scene when a tornado takes one down." -Radney Balko

Last night it rained.

This morning it froze over.

Then the sun came out and it was too warm to wear a jacket.

Then the sun went away and within minutes, it was too cold not to have a jacket.

Then the sun came out.

Now I'm driving home in a friggin' blizzard.

What an odd day.

PS Don't worry about me. My coworker told me a secret about driving in the snow: the faster you go, the less time you're on the road and the less danger you're in.

This outage has been brought to you by comment spammers.

Unlike the previous spammers, who spammed every 20 minutes and in numerical order allowing me to foil them, these go through every minute or two and in random order. Also, unlike the Online Gambling ones, which actually posited a thought or something, these just advertise.

I tried installing CommentControl last night and it's still bringing up a parsing error. I suppose that means I'm going to have to try to find another way around it. Unfortunately, if I get attacked again in the same manner I did last night, I'll have to take the site down again (albeit more temporarily)

I'm looking in to other solutions.

Either my software can't disable contents entirely (which is better than taking the whole site down) or I can't figure out how.

But until I get this figured out, I can't deal with comments flooding the site at a rate of 50 an hour.

Update: With some help from Kevin, I found the settings that I needed. Right now only "members" can post comments. I'm trying to see if that will deflect the spammers before coming up with a solution to the problem.

There's no reason that the spammers should be able to post without an account (considering y'all can't), but I'm currently under attack by a third spamming company that can actually post to my blog even when it's disabled.

Late last week I determined that I didn't want to listen to headphones on the way to Hailey and/or Boise. Not only do they impede my hearing, but the truth is that even on full blast I can barely hear it (oh, and I think it's illegal to boot). Having no music makes a drive take at least twice as long, so it was worth it to have the package overnighted and to include the difference in the considered expenses of the trip.

So I went online and found the model I was looking for (more on that in a minute). Unfortunately, the first couple of places that I ordered it required that the shipping and billing address be the same. The problem being that I'm not home during the day (and do not want it left at my doorstep). If I sent it to Eel's, someone would be more likely to be there and I could get it.

So I went to the first vender that did not require identical shipping and billing addresses. I wasn't off the site five minutes before they gave me a call saying that they needed the addresses to be identical. I asked why they had two seperate places to enter the addresses and they said that they just changed their policy. Can I cancel the order? For a fee.

But it all worked out in the end. I got it on the second day after they gave me a chance to write down that I wanted them to leave it at the office.

I decided to take a chance and order the same kind of player that I had in hopes that I could just pop the faceplate on my old player. If I had to install this thing myself I figured that could be problematic. Unfortunately, my instruction manual had two models on it and I wasn't sure which one was right. The only difference between the faceplate was where the Sirius logo was. So I closed my eyes and imagined the old faceplate for a logo that I'd actually thought that of a competing company, took a chance and ordered the one that seemed more righter.

The gambit paid off. I plugged the faceplate in and I'm good to go.

Woohoo!

While Houston is unusually experiencing white rain this winter, southeastern Idaho is unusually experiencing the clear kind. Rain would be unusual because it's Idaho in the winter and Idaho is drought-ridden land.

The rain froze by the morning, thus affording me the drawbacks of snow (frozen roads, slippery everything) without the actual benefit of my being able to say nyah nyah to all my friends back home.

Harrumph.

One thing that most people around me know is that I have a bladder the size of a gnat. It's rare that I can go more than 90 minutes without needing to take a trip to the john. For instance, in the movie theater I will usually miss a scene or two from the movie during at least one restroom break.

The faucet in my bathroom has been leaking. It used to be a trickle, but now it's full blown. So the water runs as if it is on all night long.

These two things make for a very unfortunate combination.

James Joyner has a thoughtful post on why the recent catastrophe in Sri Lanka isn't eliciting a proportional response compared to, among other things, 9/11:

While proximity is certainly an issue--we're naturally going to be more traumatized by the deaths of our countrymen than those half a world away--there is something else involved. Callers had several answers, the most compelling of which was articulated by Glenn Beck himself, who called in on his cell phone: We react differently to natural phenomena--acts of God, if you will--than to the intentional acts of humans. Beck observed that we react much more viscerally to the Nazi Holocaust than to the 1918 Influenza epidemic.

As a few coworkers of ours discussed Sri Lanka today, the same thought had crossed my mind. After 9/11, even the French were flying the American flag in solidarity. I haven't felt the need to go out immediately and buy a Sri Lankan flag (or even necessarily discover what one looks like). I have been reading about Sri Lanka a bit, but more out of curiosity than a search for kinship.

The points that Joyner and Beck make are pretty on-target and they are the same conclusions, more or less, that I came to. Man vs. Man stories (such as 9/11) are considerably more gripping than Man vs. Nature ones. In the former, not only do we identify somewhat with the victim, but there is also a connection to the perpetrator. By choosing to identify with the victims, and grieve, we simultaneously distance ourselves from the perpetrator. Mourning the victims on 9/11, on some level, differentiates us from those that would celebrate it.

In addition to being reminded of 9/11 for comparison, I'm also reminded of the most gripping national crisis that preceeded it: Columbine. In the greater scheme of things, it's amazing how less than two dozen deaths got so deep into the national psyche. More are probably killed on a daily basis due to street violence. But, as with 9/11, the perpetrators had a face. We couldn't blame god or nature, but only ourselves in a collective sense.

Whenever the gun control debate comes up, conservatives are apt to point out that more people die annually of x than of gun violence, so if we are going to illegalize guns, why not illegalize x. They also say that guns don't kill people: people do. These are both good points and I think that inadvertently they are coherently melded into the argument for gun control (which, in full disclosure I should say that I reject): protecting us from ourselves because we can. Advocates of gun control recognize the second argument and to a degree accept it: it's not the gun they're usually worried about, but the person using it. As people, guns make us more capable of doing more harm. To differentiate themselves from those that use guns, they support curbing their availability.

When it comes to human evil, it's natural to want to position ourselves in any role except a sympathizer to those that are committing the deed. People are prone to latch on to some figure in any story (fictional or real) and so we choose the victims.

The other reason, proximity, could be attributed to a self-defense mechanism as easily as anything else. We don't live in Sri Lanka, nor does anyone we know. A tsunami is very unlikely to invade our shores in our lifetime because the big ones only occur relatively infrequently. It was a freak occurance that happened to someone else. Contrast this with Columbine, which was one of many such instances, and 9/11, which we fear as a harbinger of what is to come, and the difference is night and day. We're much more likely to be concerned with the latter, seek someone to identify with, and choose the victims. In that context, our grief was prioritized towards that which is most likely to affect us in the future.

"[Independent Counsel Ken] Starr, have you no shame? Facts and law are always subordinated to the will of the American people." -William Ginsburg, attorney for Monica Lewinsky

In Houston, I had the good fortune of The Firehouse Saloon's annual New Year's Eve show/party. The first couple of years it was Roger Creager and last year it was Bleu Edmondson. Obviously this time around I can't make it, but it's just as well as the Idaho native Braun brothers are bringing their bands (Reckless Kelly and Micky and the Motorcars) up to the Gem State. This will be the second time I've seen Reckless Kelly since coming up here and I wanted to see Micky and the Motorcars..

There are only two problems:

The tickets are a bloody $75!!!!!

I don't know if they're going to sell out.

The second problem is bigger than the first. Honestly, $75 was two months worth of shows in Texas and since the Brauns only come up every few months it's worth whatever the price.

The problem is that the show is in Hailey, a few hours away in Idaho's dissident county. I don't mind making the drive, but would hate to do so if I can't go to the show. Especially when I factor in what's almost certainly going to be over $100 in hotel expenses.

So I'm mulling it over. I'm going to try to call the bar tomorrow and hopefully I'll get an idea of what my odds are of getting into a show. Even if I can't get in, they also have a (presumably cheaper) show in Boise on the first.

Sure would be awesome to spend an Idaho New Years with one of Texas's best bands, though.

Update: I'm officially going to Hailey! I called the bar and made reservations last night. I also found a really really cheap hotel called (this is not a pseudonym) Hitchrock Gas, Food, & Motel.

The Sheriff's Department of Ada County (home of Boise) apparently has quite the active web site. While most local government web sites are pretty static, Ada's regularly updates pictures of registered sexual offenders. I can't say that I have a problem with that as registering as a sexual offender is part of the conditions of release. What I'm a little less comfortable with, however, is that they post the mug shots of everyone arrested within the last twenty-four hours. Not only that, but another website called The Stump Online is keeping a record of the photos and arrest records.

From an entertainment standpoint, it's great. I just spent half an hour looking through the archives. Some of them are smiling, some grimacing, but most staring blankly at the camera.

But I'm not sure how good an idea this is. The thing is that they haven't actually been convicted of anything (in the jail roster, not talking about the registered sexual offenders site). The Stump makes a point to mention that they are innocent until proven guilty, but they all look guilty to me and that's a problem.

On the other hand, these are public records and I half-way want to applaud the ACSD for making (these) public records so available. And honestly it provides an interesting perspective. It puts a human face to some crimes. The fact that a lot of them - especially DUI's - look so much like you or me is a good reminder that criminals are people to and that these faces, some smiling, may soon find themselves in prison.

And it also puts some perspective on drug crimes. Seeing as how this is a pretty random selection of people arrested, very few of them are actually drug offenders and that strikes me as significant, though I'm not sure towards what end.

So I'm not sure.

Interesting, I discovered that a St. Paul, Minnesota posts pictures of accused prostitutes. I'm not sure if they're singled out, though I see no reason why they should be as they are among the less threatening of criminals out there.

[link via J-Walk]

Despite John Kerry's vacation residence in Idaho, the 2004 election was never in doubt. In 2000, Idaho was only surpassed by Utah in its support for George W. Bush. According to a (Democratic) state legislator that I talked to, roughly 4/5 of the legislature is Republican.

When the results came in, they were unsurprising. They were once again surpassed only by Utah and once again all but one county went for Bush. The same county remained blue between 2000 and 2004. The Democrats only have two strongholds in Idaho, Moscow (home of the University of Idaho) and my own Gate City (home of another university). Since Moscow is on the state's west coast and Gate City its east, I knew that the midling defecting county wasn't one of those two cities. I also knew it wasn't Boise, the state's most "urban" city located in the southwestern portion of the state. It seemed to be located around Twin Falls, but I found it hard to believe that Twin Falls would go Democratic.

Then I thought about Wyoming's sole blue county: Teton County, home of Jackson Hole. My friend Linus lives there and whent he subject of politics came up he mentioned that Jackson was a really liberal town. It's interesting when you consider that Teton County is actually the wealthiest in the nation (and Dick Cheney's official residence, incidentally). But as Slate noted a while back, those with more than $10 million in assets are often more likely to vote liberal because tax increases won't hurt them the same way it hurts the moderately rich trying to claw their way up.

Eel and I attended a Reckless Kelly show in Hailey, Idaho last August. We commented that we wouldn't mind ending up in a place as nice as that. It's gorgeous. It wasn't hard to determine that one would have to be pretty wealthy to live there as does, for instance, Bruce Willis. Hailey is also not particularly far away from Ketchum, site of one of the Heinz-Kerry estates.

Sure enough, Blaine County, home to both Hailey and Ketchum, is Idaho's dissident blue county.

Note:
First map: This is actually a map of the 2000 vote, though no Idaho counties changed direction. Note that this map has a color-gamut ranging from faded to stark colorization. Not only is the rest of Idaho red, but with a couple of exceptions it's very red. The only tinges of pink are Gate County, Moscow's county, and Shoshone County on the Montana border.
Second map: This one is from 2004. Teton County went from Bush to Kerry, proving that my friend Linus's Kerry vote at least counted for something.

It turns out that when I inadvertently ran across The Best Soft Drink Of All Time the other day, it was just the tip of the iceburg. Since then three more convenience stores in Falls have had a resurgence of the drink. I'm in hog heaven.

Briefly, I wondered if Mountain Dew had come to their senses and brought it back permanently.

Then I discovered that all of the Livewire that remains is at least a month past the sell date.

Oh well.

Some of you may have noticed that today your comments did not appear immediately. Apparently CommentControl was set active and I had to go approve them manually. I uninstalled it and it appears to be working now. Having some problems with TrackBack, so some of the plug-in improvements that I've planned are more iffy.

The last thing I tried to do when my last computer died was burn CDs. It was actually while burning CDs that the computer rebooted for the last time and fried. So I finally have my computer and CD burner set up and lo and behold, on an entirely new power supply, the same thing is happening. the computer hasn't died yet, but it has been acting suspiciously like the one that did. First, it refuses to burn at anything above 4x - it doesn't even list it as an option. When I try to burn at 4x, it likes to reboot. I've successfully burned 2 CDs out of six attempts. The problem could very well be software because I'm using the same Windows installation that I used on the previous computer, but there seems to be a hardware component as the computer is getting insanely hot. But it could be the software putting the hardware in a power-intensive loop causing the overheating to occur (the fans work fine).

Anyone familiar with this unique combination of issues?

RAW: Hello?
Other End: Hello, I have a question about my billing.
RAW: Okay, just give me one moment to bring that up.
OE: No problem.
RAW: [pause] I'm sorry, your account?
OE: Yes, this is Earthstar Electronics. We're having some trouble with our online documentation.
RAW: I'm sorry, you've reached the IAC programing department.
OE: Oh, well I asked them for technical support and they transferred me here.
RAW: I see. Just one moment while I transfer your call and thank you again for calling Omnistar... errr... Cooper & Price Digital Solutions.

The rebuilding project has belatedly succeeded. There are obviously a few changes to the design, but they're pretty minor. The big thing is that I no longer have foreign code so I can more easily make planned changes in the future. I do have one piece of added functionality in the form of TrackBack. I tried actually using it (which was probably pushing my luck) and after it failing twice and then telling me that I wasn't authorized to use ping cause it logged me out, it gave me another error message saying that it had already been pinged. I don't pretend to understand it, but I'm glad I got it working. I also have installed Comment Control, though I haven't figured out some of that functionality, either.

Baby steps!

It's Gregoire by 130; is it over? Rossi says this wasn't a clean election
Rossi might contest election results - Republicans concede that at this point it could be his only option

In the run-up to the election, many feared that this one would be too close to call as the last one was. Florida, ground zero in 2000, was considered a likely culprit was was Ohio. Many - including myself - feared that we would see the "sausage-making" of democracy again with an embittered result. Bush won by a sufficient margin in both states to appease all but the most extreme leftists and we had a winner the day after election day. Whew.

The state of Washington is pretty reliably Democratic and Kerry won by a significant margin there. For those of you out of the political look, however, the governor's race was considerably tigher - so tight that a winner was just declared for it. the short rift is that in the midst of the standard recounts, Democratic stronghold King County produced 1,200 previously uncounted ballots (they first discovered 700, which wasn't enough, then found 500 more) which was just enough to push Democrat Christine Gregoire from a 261 vote deficit to a 130 vote victory on the third vote tally of areas whose votes were favorable to the Democrat.

I've been interested in the Washington gubernatorial race for a couple of reasons. First, I'm a political nerd and even races that I'm not voting in interest me. Second, and of slightly more personal importance, there's a decent chance that two years from now I'll be living in Tacoma and will be living under the laws signed by the race's victor.

It is my natural inclination to say that this stinks to high heaven.

But let's be honest here. The four hundred vote swing was out of nearly three million ballots cast in total. Were it not for the mysteriously appearing ballots in King County, I wouldn't have thought a whole lot of the vote swinging a few hundred votes in the first recount. And honestly, if Washingtonians were truly clammoring for Republican Dino Rossi to become governor, he would have won by more than 261 votes to begin with. Washington was evenly divided.

There's been a lot of talk in the past four years over which ballots should count and which ones shouldn't. Democrats worked themselves in a fuss about making sure "every ballot counts" (except when it doesn't favor them) and Republicans have been equally concerned about illegally cast ballots (when they favor Democrats). While making sure legitimate ballots are counted and illegitimate ones are not are laudable goals, we must keep in mind that however sincere we are in fair elections there is inherently a margin of error.

Democrats have been highly critical of electronic voting, and not without reason. Four years ago Republicans were concerned about counting ballots based on who the voter "intended to vote for", also not without reason. But honestly we could have every voter vote three times (electronically, optically, and punch-cardily) and I can guarantee you that we would have three different vote totals. People screw up. A ballot that seems punched may not be. Anyone who's taken a scantron test knows how goofy optical ballots can be. Electronic ballots are subject to computer error, which is concern in and of itself. People forget. People get lazy. People don't always know what they're doing. And, apparently, ballots get lost.

Ideally, none of this would happen. But in the real world, it's not unreasonable to assume that one or two of every 100 ballots gets goofed up. It is reasonable to believe that unless we do away with anonymous voting that we will never know what the voter intended to do. We can chalk this all up to conspiracy theories or we can take reality for what it is and accept the fact that the stars will not always align in our favor. That Bush came out slightly ahead in 2000 does not mean that BUSH STOLE THE ELECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and similarly that it took two recounts and 1,200 ballots to surface does not mean that GREGOIRE STOLE THE ELECTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rossi's original margin of victory in 2004 was a fraction of a percent. So was Bush's in Florida in 2000. So, for that matter, was Gore's national popular vote margin in 2000. Even Bush's "mandate" in 2004 was a couple percent, but even that's conceivably within the margin of error. If Bush, Gore, Rossi, or Gregoire had really truly been the choice of the people and not roughly half of the people, they would have won without any controversy.

Just like a controversial call by a referee in a close sports contest, sometimes the decisions are not made on the field or in the ballot box. Sometimes it's a tie.

It's tough to accept a close loss. It's easy to say "they cheated" and to repeat the mantra "president/governor-select" until you've alienated anyone that was sympathetic to your cause to begin with. You can certainly take your ball and go home, or you can pick up the pieces and try to cross the finish line in such a way that will not be determined by a photo finish or referees watching an instant replay until their heads explode.

Yikes:

There's not much laughter today at the home of a Pasadena information technology specialist who has decided to auction off his sons' Christmas presents — and possibly dismantle the family tree — because the youngsters, ages 9, 11 and 15, have been naughty, not nice.

"One thing we teach around this house," said the man, who asked that his name not be revealed, "is that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people."

In a Christmas context, bad people get switches or lumps of coal — or lose the presents they want the most.

"BAD CHILDREN get no Nintendo DS. Santa will skip our house this year," the man announced in his eBay posting to sell three DS systems with PictoChat and Metroid. Also offered were three games for use with the system. "No kidding. Three undeserving boys have crossed the line. Tonight we sat down and showed them what they WILL NOT get for Christmas this year. I'll be taking the tree down tomorrow."

I'd imagine that Jack Cluth is correct and that there's no easier mistake to make than spoiling your children. Sounds like putting the foot down was a bit overdue.

What I find most amazing was that this family on self-described "limited means" bought $700 of gifts in what they called "one tier." That didn't include a bike, a karaoke machine, and a fish tank in a "second tier" of apparently more than two tiers.

Pretty crazy.

I am making some major changes to the template & skins right now. It's going to look positively goofy throughout. Right now it's a hybrid between Nucleus's programing and my own and I need to move it all to the latter so that I can more easily make changes. As it stands right now, some of my code is not being honored because of superceding Nucleus coding that I have difficulty locating.

So bear with me and by the time it's done, it should actually look a lot like it looks right now.

Update: Things are temporarily restored to normal. I'm expectedly going to a Christmas dinner!! Goofiness will return when I get back.

Update II: Still working on it. The goofiness returns.

All it took was for me to leave...


As odd as it sounds, I think that stuff on the lawn of my folks' house is "snow."

A letter from the CEO/President of Starbucks to a Human Resources assistant newhire:

Date: Weds, 27 Oct 2004 10:47:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Orin C. Smith" |
To: rxxxxxxxxxx@starbucks.com
Subject: Re: Welcome to Starbucks

I understand how difficult moving is. As for what I told you to do earlier, we'll try it again shortly. I don't want to raise suspicions so let's give it a few days.

There is something else you could do for me. There is a Starbucks on 5th and King that I sometimes go to on the weekend since it's near my house. The service is usually really good but last time I was there I noticed this very, very heavyset girl behind the counter. I don't know the girl's name but she was quite repulsive to the eye. Obviously, as CEO I can't just walk into a Starbucks and start firing baristas and service people because I don't like the way they look, but this girl should not be allowed near scones, if you know what I mean.

I don't know if you want to earn a little extra money this weekend but I'd like you to go there, have a look around and see if you can find out which girl it is. She needs to be terminated. I want the fat girl gone. Let me know when this is completed.

Thank you,,

Orin C. Smith
President, Chief Executive Officer
Starbucks Corp.

It's all part of a pretty long prank on said Starbucks newhire. I don't laugh out loud often, but I did at this one.

For those of you who don't know (or have forgotten) who Bloodninja is, you can read the adventures of his many personae here. Warning: sexually explicit material.

Here's a neat story about one of the little applications on the PowerPC and the story behind it:

I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn't ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive. We worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Greg had unlimited energy and a perfectionist's attention to detail. He usually stayed behind closed doors programming all day, while I spent much of my time talking with other engineers. Since I had asked him to help as a personal favor, I had to keep pace with him. Thanks to an uncurtained east-facing window in my bedroom, I woke with the dawn and usually arrived ten minutes before Greg did. He would think I had been working for hours and feel obliged to work late to stay on par. I in turn felt obliged to stay as late as he did. This feedback loop created an ever-increasing spiral of productivity.

People around the Apple campus saw us all the time and assumed we belonged. Few asked who we were or what we were doing.When someone did ask me, I never lied, but relied on the power of corporate apathy. The conversations usually went like this:

Q: Do you work here?
A: No.
Q: You mean you're a contractor?
A: Actually, no.
Q: But then who's paying you?
A: No one.
Q: How do you live?
A: I live simply.
Q: (Incredulously) What are you doing here?!

Continuing the argument started here and here.

College For Everyone (Matthew Yglesias)

By and large, I think this would be an excellent thing for many of the reasons David cites. This would have a dynamic effect on the sort of jobs that exist in America and allow a larger proportion of the population to have better jobs. Still, it's worth noting that there are certain sorts of non-tradable unskilled jobs that would have to get done anyway. You can't outsource janitors or construction workers or landscaping, etc. Now in the context of a workforce that was, on the whole, extremely well-educated and productive these jobs might just become higher paying. On the other hand, you might have a replay of the European situation where rising productivity (and a robust welfare state) made it hard to find people willing to do these jobs for the customary low wages, and instead of paying higher wages the governments chose to simply import unskilled labor.

What's The Point (Alex Knapp)

I don’t see the point of that, myself. What does a plumber or a mechanic or a construction worker or an electrician or a flight attendant need with a college education? It doesn’t make sense. There’s nothing wrong with these jobs. Hell, I admire the people who do them. I don’t know the first thing about cars and let’s face it: to be a flight attendant you need the patience of a saint. I know the argument goes that people ought to get a good education about the wider world, but let’s be honest here: if our public education system from elementary through high school did what it was supposed to do, that wouldn’t be an issue, would it?

universal access? (JB)

i'm not going to challenge this on the economic basis. the real question, as alex knapp begins to hit on, is why you would want to force people to go through more school to achieve the same results. why not just raise standards across the board?

i rather suspect that this is based at least partially on the belief that some people just oughtn't be able to cut it in graduate school; that is, it should be sufficiently rigorous that not everyone can just wake up one day and succeed in a master's program. and i see no reason why this shouldn't apply downward as well. that is, all the way down. no reason for a single diploma track in secondary education.

Educational Costs: School Can Be Good Because It Is Expensive (Ian)

Fundamentally, the costs of an education over several years include not only the money to pay for tuition, but the opportunity costs of spending your time pursuing the education itself. The reason to do so is that you believe (understanding better than anyone else your potential and ability) future returns make this expenditure worthwhile. That is, the increase in income stream from spending four years and however many dollars on college is enough to make the investment make sense. A good portion of this is determined by natural ability, though we do have to consider educational attainment of the parents, economic status, health, and more. These, broadly, are the returns to education that people receive. For very smart and hardworking people, scholarships make it worthwhile even when they plan for low-income careers. Immediate costs are defrayed, so the long term income stream is still high enough, in relative terms, to make schooling "worth it" because personal returns are so high.

The returns are not, however, homogeneous. No matter what caliber of school you talk about, people at the instiution all get varying amounts out of it. The best you can say, I think, is that the people who are there are getting enough, at least, to pay them back for the cost to get in. This includes lazy kids of wealthy parents as much as it does brilliant children of impoverished parents. The lazy kid may get little out of education, but spent little to get there and foregoes little by being there, since the wealth of the parents will help ensure future worth. The brilliant child may also spend little in direct costs though for very different reasons (due to scholarships, grants, loans, etc.), and will most likely do well enough later in life to cover loans or make up for the hard work in high school and the time away from the labor force.

Let Them Eat Sheepskin

We need to:
1. De-stigmatize vocational education, apprenticeship, and on-the-job training for non-academic-track careers in the eyes of the educational establishment
2. Encourage more of our society to seek further development of everything that makes them a person - their minds, their skills, and whatever it is that drives them and, incidentally, puts food on the table and pays the rent.
3. Make primary and secondary education better; there's no reason that people shouldn't know what they need to be good, productive citizens, whatever their vocational choice, well before they graduate from high school.

You'll notice that these links tilt against the idea, but that's only because that's the argument I found made more often. Outside of David Adesnik and Matthew Yglesias, I didn't find any other support for it. If you fine one, let me know and I'll put it up.

I see them all the time.

Shirts like the one to the right.

They drive me crazy.

It takes a special effort for a t-shirt to have usually no more than five words on it and yet be factually incorrect. That shirt does not belong to the Texans. If it did, you would be stealing. Why would you want to announce that to the world?!

Actually, I must sheepishly admit that this particular shirt could, if read literally, technically be factually correct if it was worn by someone that is actually a Texan -- but that's a testament to the team's lousy name more than anything else.

But anyway, these shirts are everywhere. The only remotely cool one was an anime shirt that listed itself as being the property of Ranma Saotome's school (Farunken High or something to that affect) but that's only acceptable because the school doesn't exist. In this case, the entity in question (Houston Texans, complete with logo) does exist. Not only that, but part of the proceeds of the shirt (if not most) go to the entity that it supposedly "belongs to." I guess you could say that since it theoretically belonged to the Texans at some point prior to being sold to the dealer that sold the shirt (and even that's unlikely), it might be okay.

But not really.

The origins of these shirts, as I understand it, come from shirts being marked as "belonging to" an institution to keep people from stealing it. After all, who would want a shirt that advertises loudly that it belongs to someone else?

Apparently a lot of people because they purchase these shirts at least in part because they proclaim to belong to the organization whose licensee they bought it from. I'd appreciate the irony if it weren't so late and I didn't just realize that my sleep deficit is about to grow.

"Frankly, do we really need another lockstep member of the MSM preaching anti-Americanism? Oh wait, this one is going to be in French. So, apparently there's a need to have more French people despise the U.S. Wait a minute. The channel known as "CNN a la Francaise" will not be available in France. I'm confused." -Interested-Participant

My first thought upon reading BBC's article below was "That's nuts!"

My second thought was, "Actually, that makes sense."

My third thought was, "Holy cow! I'm nuts!"

A 22-year-old gamer has spent $26,500 (£13,700) on an island that exists only in a computer role-playing game (RPG).

The Australian gamer, known only by his gaming moniker Deathifier, bought the island in an online auction.

The land exists within the game Project Entropia, an RPG which allows thousands of players to interact with each other.

Entropia allows gamers to buy and sell virtual items using real cash, while fans of other titles often use auction site eBay to sell their virtual wares.

Earlier this year economists calculated that these massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have a gross economic impact equivalent to the GDP of the African nation of Namibia.

This actually makes perfect sense to me. Just as back in the day friends would buy Nintendo Power to give themselves a leg up on Nintendo games, this guy bought himself an island. Kinda neat, actually. Yes, it cost over twenty-six grand, but from the sounds of it he's going to get a lot of that money back by selling rights to other users. In that vein, it's kind of like the card game Magic: The Gathering, in which buying more cards (to an extent) helps you win.

But if you step back and put it in perspective, I guess it's actually about as silly as it originally sounds. We're entering a market where people sell land that doesn't exist in a world that doesn't exist in a game that has no long-term impact on anybody's life.

Now one of two things is going to happen. Either one, this will prove itself to be a beanie-babies-like house of cards that will collapse under itself with a ton of people holding the cards.

Or we will have demonstrated that The West (including Australia in this by concept, if not geography) is so wealthy that it borders on the obscene.

Note to self:

When you withdraw money from the ATM, the receipt goes in the trash slot and the money goes in your wallet.

Not the other way around.

Yesterday I suggested that higher education is, in some ways, a zero-sum game. If everyone has a college degree, that degree becomes less valuable. Oxblog's David Adesnik (whose post I was responding to) and commenter and congressional candidate Scott Chacon responded. Both of which are very thoughtful and have given me a lot to chew on throughout the day.

Their argument, as I read it, seems to come down to two main points:
1. Increasing education will create its own opportunities.
2. A more educated work force is a better work force, regardless of whether or not their degrees are directly related to their adopted career field.

For all I know, both of these arguments may be correct. But I retain my doubts on the matter.

Adesnik notes that the same argument against universal college education could have been made post-WWII for universal high school education and history has indicated that the latter was a worthwhile investment.

The question is: at what point can we say "they have enough education to enter the work force" and direct young people to do so? It's hard to determine, though I'd say that it's some point after high school and before a four-year degree. Keep in mind I am talking about "the work force" in general and not those career tracks, such as medicine or engineering, that do make use of four years of college and beyond. As long as the public school system is in the shape that it's in, I think it would be worthwhile for people to take a year of life preparation courses to tackle such subjects as personal finances and organizational structure.

But regardless of where we put the pin on the timeline, I believe that we'll have to move it again later. If everyone gets a bachelor's degree, more and more jobs will start requiring a master's, all the way up to PhD. While on one hand it would be wonderful for everyone to get the opportunity to do that, taking everyone out of the economy until they're 27 is a financial drain on the economy through the sheer expense of education and young people taken out of the workforce. I'm not sure even David or Scott would disagree with me on that point.

As to whether or not increased education will create its own opportunities, that's a speculative argument on both sides. High school education for everyone post-WWII proved worthwhile, but since we've made the shift from a manufacturing to an information-based economy, I think we may have gotten what we're going to get from that. If a need for higher levels of education were required, we'd see a higher premium put on education than on experience. In some areas (such as police work) we do, but for the most part I see parity-leaning-towards-experience.

I worked while I went to college and I'm very glad I did because I've seen countless more jobs ask for experience (but not a degree) than those asking for a degree (but not experience). My job hunting experiences are limited to the IT sector in Houston and Idaho, but in both cases while the college degree helped get me in front of the line it was the work experience that got me in the line to begin with. And honestly I can't say that I necessarily blame them.

While those of us that went to college were going to college, others were working. If I was looking at an unskilled, inexperienced, and uneducated 18 year old and a degreed 22 year old, you can bet I'd hire the latter. If I was looking at a 22 year old with four years of experience (even at a position lower than what I'm hiring) and another 22 year old with no experience and a degree, they'd be on almost equal footing. The difference is that the second person's education cost somewhere to the tune of $40,000 and the second was making a positive contribution to the economy while making money. And I don't doubt either's ability to make a better mousetrap or make a faster cup of coffee. That depends almost as much on the type of experience, the type of education, and the type of person rather than the years invested in either of the first two.

To use Scott's fish/fishing metaphor, it's not at all clear to me that four years spent on the lake is all that much less valuable than four years spent in the classroom learning all about your prey.

A college degree is valuable. It demonstrates less what you know and more what you are capable of. It demonstrates your work ethic, your dedication, your ability to manage your time, and countless other attributes. But so can work. College can prepare you to start your own business, but so can working in the industry of the business that you'd start. College can prepare you to build the better mousetrap, but so can spending four years working with mousetraps. College is the easier way to do these things, but the main reasons that they are (ability to secure loans, ability to get a job in which you have input, and an employer's willingness to take you seriously) are because of markers that society puts to differentiate those that jumped through the college hoops (no pun intended) and those that didn't. Erase that distinction and you're simply putting everyone in the same line.

BMJ: Rethinking childhood depression [via MedPundit]
The British Medical Journal presents an interesting look at childhood depression. It simultaneously ponders that changing family and societal structures might be to blame and also that there may not even be a real problem as we have understood it to be. Instinctively I agree with a lot of what it has to say (even the seemingly contradictory parts), though it's seems somewhat speculative.

Times and Seasons: Chastity and Terrorism
Times and Seasons is an LDS blog I ran across during my never-ending search for local blogs. Despite not being of that faith and despite not being inclined to comment on the topic, I found their discussion of whether or not chastity leads to terrorism to be interesting and quite thoughtful.

The Royal Family [via AmScene]
When I was a kid I really liked the Babar books. Who knew they were so controversial?!

Writers in Paradise
An interesting look at the receptive and impatient French novel market.

This is pretty cool:

Critics scoffed when Ashley McElhiney was selected as the first female coach of a men's pro basketball team. They called it a mere publicity stunt, a ploy by a new ABA franchise desperate to make a splash.

McElhiney turned 23 in July and had never coached before taking this job, but she has been much too busy with the Nashville Rhythm to worry about detractors.

"Honestly, it really doesn't matter right now," McElhiney said. "To me and my players right now, I am just the coach. As far as what everyone else says, it doesn't bother me either way. On this job or any other job, I'll know what my purpose is."

McElhiney couldn't have started much better, coaching the Rhythm to six straight wins to open the season and a 9-2 record.

It sounds like she was hired in part for the purpose of breaking new ground, but honestly it's ground that needed breaking. A lot of men coaches have success coaching women and there's no reason outside of attitudes as to why that can't work the other way around. In some ways I think the fact that she's only 23 to be more problematic. But this is the ABA after all and so there's a lot of room for experimentation in a league that puts a team in Sherman, Arkansas. I'm curious what the history of women coaching men's college teams is.

[via Kuff]

I'm not sure exactly when it came out, but I happened upon U.S. News's Top College rankings for 2005. Texas schools improved on last year with UT-Austin moving back in the top 50 and A&M moving into the 60's. Unsurprisingly, Rice was the highest rank university in Texas at #17. The biggest surprise was UT-Dallas, which landed itself in the third tier along with Texas Tech. A bunch of UT's and A&M's made it into the 4th tier along with North Texas and Texas Southern (?), neither of which made it last year. Houston found itself in the fourth tier again, but honestly there are some areas that will always hold it back. Houston uses weed-out to keep enrollment down, which hurts both acceptance rate and retention numbers - the latter also hurt by the demographic that UH serves, which is less likely to graduate in six years due to work and family obligations. UH did, however, tie with Rutgers (Newark) for the most diverse campus in the country for whatever that is worth.

Rankings of colleges that I found interesting for one reason or another:
#17 - Rice
#21 - Cal-Berkeley
#35 - Case Western Reserve
#41 - Georgia Tech
#43 - Tulane
#43 - Cal-Irvine
#46 - Texas-Austin
#62 - Texas A&M
#71 - Southern Methodist
#74 - Clemson
#74 - Virginia Tech
#84 - Baylor
#90 - Tulsa
#98 - Texas Christian
#111 - Utah
#120 - Oklahoma

Third Tier:
Idaho
Louisiana State
Oklahoma State
Texas Tech
Texas-Dallas
Utah State

Fourth Tier:
Houston
Idaho State
Louisiana Tech
Louisiana-Lafayette
North Texas
Texas Southern

Ones I Expected To See But Didn't:
Boise State
Texas State

At work today we had a seminar on our insurance plan. I was considering skipping it so that I could get more work done, but they offered free food and drinks and I figured "Who am I to turn that down?"

I can safely say that it wasn't worth the grub. I can also say that I came out of it knowing a lot less than I went into it "knowing."

The seminar was sponsored not by our insurance company but by AFLAC. AFLAC, for those of you that can't quite place it, is that insurance company with the duck that was mildly amusing at first but is perhaps the most aggravating duck I have ever known - and yes, I have seen Howard the Duck. For those of you that have wisely put a mental block on what those ads actually say, AFLAC offers insurance above and beyond what traditional insurance offers.

So AFLAC gave their sales pitch, as expected.

Afterwards, a rep that I assumed was from my insurance company told us about our benefits package. I can't repeat what the man said for the life of me, but at one point he had me convinced that there was a $7,500 deductable, that my insurance plan was no good outside of Idaho, and that anything above and beyond a doctor's visit (such as bloodwork, CAT scans, STD screenings) was not covered. But, he repeatedly pointed out, if you sign up with AFLAC you can have all of this (and more) covered.

I went upstairs to use the john and spent some of my time there seriously considering switching back to Fortis. I go back downstairs and he preceeds to explain how the deductable is really only $500, how I am covered outside of Idaho, and that (approved) tests are covered. So what was all that he was telling me before?

At first I thought that we were actually hearing from another AFLAC rep dressed as an insurance guy from our company. Or, I thought, he was one of those people who gets high off making people around him feel dumb. But the more I listened, the more it appeared that what he was trying to do was explain how bad things could be if our employer and our insurance company weren't bending over backwards to serve us.

I'm not sure which it was,he whole experience was surreal.

But the one thing I did learn - that I had not learned at any previous job because I never ended up using the insurance plans I was paying for - is how utterly insane our health insurance system is and that "not being able to choose your own doctor" is really the least of its problems.

The Business Wire cites a study by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary with what might be considered sensational results:

A national survey of 1,100 physicians, conducted by HCD Research and the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religious and Social Studies of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City over the past weekend, found that 74% of doctors believe that miracles have occurred in the past and 73% believe that can occur today.

The poll also indicated that American physicians are surprisingly religious, with 72% indicating they believe that religion provides a reliable and necessary guide to life.

Fascinating, but it might be undermined by the next paragraph:

Those surveyed represent physicians from Christian (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox Christian and other), Jewish (Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and secular) Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions.

Isn't there one "tradition" missing here? Atheism, for instance. If they surveyed doctors that fit within the religious traditions described above then it stands to reason that a majority would believe in the metaphysical. If, on the other hand, they were included and the article doesn't consider atheism a "religious tradition" in the sense that the others are, they still should find a way to put that in there, I'd think.

Even if true, however, it may not be altogether surprising. As the saying goes "there are no atheists in the trenches." That's a broad overgeneralization, of course, but it stands to reason that those that are either personally in danger (such as soldiers) or are surrounded by people in danger (as is the case with doctors) that many would need faith in some higher being in order to, among other things, stay sane.

On Kevin's recommendation, I set up an account with FURL. While I don't have anything fancy like RSS going for me right now, you can access it by way of the link on the menu to the left.

Installation was easy enough and the interface is a snap (with FireFox, anyway). The only problem I've had thus far is it hanging while the interface loads, but I think that has more to do with my Internet connection than anything else.

I've put a few links up while to test it. I've been harvesting stories to consider posting on at a later date, so I put those up. I have a handful of others at work that I will put up tomorrow. It's just a test-run. In the future, it'll likely be more timely stuff. The kind of thing that used to go into RAW Links, which incidentally is changing formats informally from current events-based to linking to essays and things like that. Some sort of formal change is in the works once I get what I want nailed down, but FURL fits in wonderfully with that change!

Imagine a contract-based company that manufactures custom-made widgets. The company falls behind on some contracts, but does well on others. Sometimes when they're up against a tight deadline or working for a big company, they put "RUSH" on the order and it goes to the front of the widget-making assembly line. During an audit, they determine that items they put a RUSH on always get done on time whereas the ones they don't put the RUSH on are often delinquent. Their solution: put RUSH on everything!

David Adesnik writes about some statistics on the American workforce:

One striking statistic briefly mentioned in the WaPo is that "The unemployment rate for those with a bachelor's degree or greater in the United States is 2.5 percent, far below the national average." Wow. I'm willing to guess that the median income for college graduates is also significantly above average. Perhaps the real question we should be asking is not what happened to the good union jobs, but how we can put more Americans through college.

It's a funny thing. I've been out of college for about three years now. I've held three jobs since. I can safely say that college helped prepare me for one of them. It's also safe to say that a number of people I know without a college degree also could have done that job with a little bit of training. Lastly, I can safely say that my college degree seriously helped me secure all three positions.

I know only from my own experience and the experiences of those around me, but I'm not at all convinced that putting everyone through college isn't as simplistic and ineffective as putting a RUSH on every item coming out of a widget factory. My degree helped get me to the front of the line. If everyone were to have that piece of paper, I have my doubts that the overall employment rates would change much and I seriously doubt that it would lead to a serious wage increase across the board. Instead, I believe the result would be a lot more college majors working at Starbucks.

The current economy doesn't have enough jobs for those of us with college degrees. There isn't a huge dearth of white collar job candidates to fill a whole bunch of vacancies. On the contrary, jobs that don't necessitate a college degree are simply requiring them to weed people out.

I could be wrong about this and invite Adesnik or anyone else to show me where exactly I am wrong. I hope I am. College was a wonderful experience for me and I would say that it contributed to my being a better person. Part of me wishes that experience on everybody. But as far as it approaching the solution that he cites, I have my doubts.

Update: David responds.

Update II: I respond

A handful of Houston schools have all but been caught red-handed cheating on Texas's new standardized test, the TAKS:

The principal and two teachers at one of Houston's highest-rated elementary schools have been reassigned pending the outcome of a state investigation into possible cheating on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.

Houston Independent School District Superintendent Abe Saavedra requested the inquiry after an analysis by the Dallas Morning News revealed that 31 of Sanderson Elementary's 38 fifth-graders scored perfect, or near perfect, on the TAKS math exam last spring. Twenty-five of them correctly answered all 44 math questions, and six students missed just one question.

Those scores were substantially out of line with the students' scores on past TAKS exams and other tests, Saavedra said.

[...]

The Morning News analyzed scores from 7,700 Texas schools, searching unusual gaps in performance between grade levels or subjects. Research has shown that schools that are weak in one subject or grade are typically weak in others.

More than 200 schools had large, unexplained score gaps between grades or between the TAKS and other standardized tests.

The funny - and sad - thing about this is that opponents of standardized testing (and the No Child Left Behind Act as a whole) will look at this and say, "See? This is why standardized testing is a joke! It focuses all of the attention on the stupid tests!"

Meanwhile, supporters of standardized testing will look at this and say, "See? This is why we need standardized testing! If they're willing to cheat to avoid accountability, we surely can't let them grade themselves!"

Meanwhile, the kids still aren't learning. Or at least we don't think they are. Or we don't know if they are.

But thank heavens we have the TEA, NEA, and governments of all levels as guardians of the gate, right?

[link via blogHOUSTON, more here]

good dad / bad dad
An Incredibly Sad Epilogue
Karma
Ulysses Zweibel has a holiday tale involving his daughter and a video game.

Ace of Spades: How Jay Mohr Pretty Much Saved My Life
Ace of Spades relates his experiences with Basic Panic Disorder and how modern science is helping him overcome up.

Mother Tongue
The Case Against Family. I don't agree with it, but it's the strongest case against family ties that I've ever read.

A Doctor and a Pimp
When Dr. Charles was just starting out, he was approached to become a doctor in the seedy underworld.

Brain Fertilizer: Random Thoughts [via BF]
Anyone who's ever had to deal with a random person IMing them and trying to make inane conversation with a stranger ought to really, really appreciate this one!

SusanW: Adventures in Missing The Point
Ostensibly a book review, but more interestingly read as a woman reviewing her faith, looking at who she was and who she is.

As I've written before, my hearing ranges from "below normal" to "hard-of-hearing." It's something that I'm generally loathe to talk about and it frequently has me "faking" my way through conversations. It's something I've tried to address by paying more attention (part of the problem is my poor attention span), finding new and inventive ways to ask if they could repeat themselves, and becoming better at reading lips (part of it is not my poor attention span).

The other evening Eel and I were eating out at Applebees and it got worse than I think it ever has before. When I found myself asking her to repeat every other thing she said. Eventually I resigned myself to almost completely reading her lips. A couple of points when we were eating she'd say something as I was looking away. I had to ask her to repeat herself. Every. Time.

I'm not sure why it's been getting worse. I think it might have to do with the fact that I'm listening to my headphones in the car right now while I wait to get the CD player in it fixed. I listen to headphones at work, too, though it's at a more reasonable volume because it's not competing with as much noise and I need to be able to hear someone calling my name, but I think it's the headphones in the car because I have to put it on full blast just to hear over the sound of the road and air-leak in my back window.

So I guess I really need to get the CD player fixed and hope that takes care of it.

The New York Times has a good article on FireFox's challenges of Internet Explorer:

With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.

Microsoft has always viewed Internet Explorer's tight integration with Windows to be an attractive feature. That, however, was before security became the unmet need of the day. Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a "natural defense."

For the first time, Internet Explorer has been losing market share. According to a worldwide survey conducted in late November by OneStat.com, a company in Amsterdam that analyzes the Web, Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. Firefox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.

Microsoft, never known to be a humble entity, exudes more arrogance than I have ever seen coming from their direction. It's staggering. The insinuation that FireFox has gotten a free ride, that people who can't get the latest IE patch need to just go ahead and upgrade their computer, and that people will continue to choose IE for the reasons they always have (and that, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that it comes installed on every computer) - coming from a PR rep that admits that he doesn't even use IE.

Not to mention that they are considering a charge to users to clean up the spyware mess that their programing negligence allowed to be made in the first place:

Microsoft's disclosure that it may eventually charge extra for Windows protection reflects a recognition inside the company that it could collect significant profits by helping to protect its customers.

Some experts blame Microsoft for Windows vulnerabilities that help spread spyware. Microsoft and some others, meanwhile, said blame should be directed instead at spyware manufacturers.

"Spyware usually gets on your computer through human error," said Marc Maiffret of eEye Digital Security Inc., which regularly discovers serious Windows flaws.

Alan Paller, research director for the SANS Institute in Bethesda, Md., a computer-security organization, compared Microsoft's new anti-spyware tool to sophisticated products sold to help manage computer networks. "It's not just a clean-up-our-mess tool," said Paller.

Very oftenly (even mostly, I'd say), the spyware is indeed the fault of the consumer. But an entire industry was created around the security loophole that is ActiveX. A marginally secure set-up (which IE and Windows are not) would never have allowed that industry to crop up in the first place.

I have been - and will continue to be - a defender of Redmond from time to time as I do believe they are damned-if-they-do-and-damned-if-they-don't a lot of the time. That said, I am for the first time becoming a proud user of not-Microsoft and am going to start looking again at hastening my exit to Linux.

[Links via Kevin and Kuff]

"I do, however, repudiate in no uncertain terms the "support" BeldarBlog receives from the small handful of miscreants who visit only to leave behind their links plugging V!agr4, p0rn0 websites, and the like. Even those "readers," however, serve a useful function in one sense — they leave me feeling righteous and powerful as I slay their spam, feeding my fantasies that I am indeed the master of my own domain[-name], ruler of all that I survey [through my TypePad interface], and a legend [in my own bandwidth]." -Beldar

Recently an acquaintance that is a professor for a mid-sized southern university told me that he'd caught some cheaters on the final exam for his class. I suppose it's a pretty regular occurence during finals season. Professor Hugo Schwyzer has apparently caught some cheaters in his class. Plagiarists, to be exact. There is a small discussion in his comments section in which a reader and also a professor laments that he's going to have to do a lot of googling in order to check on his students. As the Internet becomes faster and more available, such things are almost unavoidable.

It does seem to me, though, that if there isn't a way that this can be done automatically there ought to be. At least when it comes to plagiarists. Assuming that they ran across it through the Internet, and that a professor can do the same, there really should be some way to utilize search engines and mathematical software to compare the final paper with the first x number of sites that come up when you put relevent information into a search engine. With some good coding, there ought to be a way to for the software to determine that the key words are to put in to the search engine and then determine a "degree of similarity."

It wouldn't necessarily be a simple program - or a fast one - but it seems to me to be quite possible. Does anyone know if such a program exists and if not if it would be as do-able as I am thinking it is?

FOXNews.com writes up a report on anime. There's been a lot of write-ups on anime's increasing presence on the American culture scene. Most of them say something along the lines of:

Although American animation releases, such as "Toy Story," "Shrek" and "The Incredibles," continue to wow audiences, they are largely aimed at children. Japanese anime and manga (search) spans a wide range of topics, including science fiction, horror-thrillers and soap-operatic melodrama. At American video-rental shops, whole shelves are taken up by titles like "Ninja Resurrection," "Neon Genesis Evangelion" and "Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040."

One animation, "Ghost in the Shell" takes place in a futuristic world, where memories become individual identities that jump like spirits from one mechanical body to another, a dark science fiction that raises questions about death and the metaphysical threat from technology.

The whole "cartoons aren't for kids anymore" angle has been done 100 times over, but at least this one touches on what exactly many of us find so appealing about the goofy looking cartoons with big-eyed characters:

"They're fascinated by the difference in the culture," Borders said in a telephone interview, giving as an example stories starring Japanese schoolgirls. "They like reading something that's not the normal, run-of-the-mill story that they might have been used to."

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. America has its way of telling stories. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's refreshing to watch features that work off of a different set of assumptions and a mildly different storytelling formula.

Japanese animation stories are not inherently superior to American animated stories, but they're different. That's enough for me.

One of these days I want to do a more complete write-up on all this, but that'll have to wait.

On a side note, I need to set a Category for comic books, superheroes, and anime. Right now I'm putting them all under Superheroes, which doesn't really fit. Anyone have any ideas?

More thoughts here.

You Are a Religious Republican

You make up the conservative, Christian, dedicated core of the Republican Party. You believe it's important for religious people to stand up for their beliefs in politics. And for you, this means voting your conscience - which almost always means voting Republican. Your pet causes include the sanctity of life, school vouchers, and prayer in school.

[via Greg]

Got an email from Dad this morning stating that Mom was taken to the ER. My initial pessimistic thought when I read ER was that it was something immediately life threatening, but it looks like just-shoot-me back pain. She has some pretty bad back pain a few weeks ago when she reached into her car awkwardly, but apparently this is different. The CAT scan didn't appear to yield any results. So... I dunno.

Part of me wishes I was down there right now, but I wouldn't be of any help and would likely just end up standing there and waiting to hear more just as I am now.

Dad called me last night for our weekly chat. I couldn't talk right then and we decided to talk today. He explicitly asked me if I'd have my cell phone with me as I'm notorious for leaving it in whatever place that I am not.

Lo and behold, the cell phone seems to have disappeared.

Argh!

EA Sports has gotten exclusive licensing of NFL teams and players:

Leading publisher Electronic Arts has announced the signing of an exclusive five-year deal with the NFL and its players association, effectively eliminating any competition to the firm's NFL sports titles from rival publishers.

The deal signs the National Football League and the NFL Players Inc licensing division into five years of exclusivity with EA, preventing any other company from using the NFL brands, stadiums, player names and player likenesses in their games.

The deal will come as a devastating blow to SEGA and Take Two, whose ESPN sports range made up significant ground on the EA Sports titles this year thanks to an aggressive $19.99 price point.

Without the ability to use NFL players and brands in next year's game, however, the ESPN NFL titles are likely to sink without trace, as are all other rival titles - leaving EA's Madden NFL and NFL Street titles as the only real contenders in the sector.

Chris Elam posted on this earlier in the week and I've been trying to figure out how to get across what I want to get across as effectively as I can. Absent effectiveness, here ya go:

I am, of course, having a ball with EA's college game. I've mulled over getting the NFL game, but since the college one suits my needs so much better, I'll likely stick with it. On the whole I think it's kind of a bummer. Two (or three) competing versions are better than just one (well two: Madden and NFL Street, though they're not competing against each other).

But my real point of interest is this part:

The exclusive NFL deal isn't the first exclusive sports licensing deal that Electronic Arts has struck - with one high profile example being the firm's exclusive licensing deal with the English Premier League, which has forced rival titles such as Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series to use fake player names and rename famous clubs, with Liverpool becoming Merseyside Red, for example.

The funny thing is that if Sega did do this for football, I'd not only want the game but I'd start saving up for the console just to get the game.

Way back when, few if any games were licensed by the NFL. Even Joe Montana Football and early versions of Madden had fictional teams and leagues. I had so much fun creating teams. That was half the reason I even played the games. I even created teams for computer baseball games despite the fact that MLB licensed early and often and I didn't have to.

The licensing has, in my view, taken all the imagination out of sports video games. Shouldn't it be more fun to play your own players than the guys you can watch every Sunday on TV? This obviously didn't stop me from enjoying Tecmo Superbowl, of course, but I would have enjoyed it all the more with fictional or created players.

To me it's another manifestation of the direction that kids toys have been going for some time. Talking and moving toys have made the childhood imagination all the less relevent. Of course, the same could be said for video games and imagination and there's something to that, but some of the areas that were left to the imagination (the "behind the scenes" part of the game that went on in my mind, at least) have all but been quashed.

So I hope that Sega doesn't just let its game engine rot, though I suspect there are not many fans out there that feel the same way that I do so it's probably a lost cause.

New Mexico:

On the surface, Steve Barreras looked like another deadbeat dad.

He'd been hauled into court and had his wages garnisheed. He and his new wife had lost their 2003 tax refund to pay child support. He had been peppered with threats and demands for money for a child he supposedly fathered five year ago.

But this legal case had one big problem. Last week, a judge ruled the child does not exist— even though Barreras had already paid $20,000 in support.

In what was apparently an elaborate ruse, the alleged mother orchestrated fake DNA evidence and forged a Social Security number and birth and baptismal certificates, court records show.

In the strangest twist of all, Viola Trevino on Monday brought a stranger's child to court, alleging it was her daughter. Under consideration in Judge Linda Vanzi's courtroom was a motion filed in September to reopen the couple's 1999 divorce on Barreras's request that the child be produced.

Israel:

An Israeli man who refused to provide child support to his ex-wife for nearly eight years finally had to start paying up when he remarried and police raided the reception to seize wedding gifts.

The 40-year-old man had managed to avoid payments since 1997 by frequently changing address to escape the clutches of the law, Israel's Maariv daily reported on Friday.

With 198,000 shekels owed to her, his ex-wife finally tracked him down when a relative passed on a copy of a wedding invitation for his second marriage this week.

Police and bailiffs allowed the newlyweds to celebrate before confronting the groom and confiscating the wedding hall's safe in which guests had deposited cash and cheques, a tradition for Israeli nuptials.

Police decided not to arrest the stunned groom, but that was of little consolation to his distraught bride, who fainted as her wedding turned into a nightmare.

[links via The Comedian]

Michael Duff muses the following:

If you want to see a person's true character, watch how they treat waiters. Lonely people talk too long, inventing reasons to drag things out. Withdrawn people place their orders without making eye contact, in anticipation of some quiet judgment that never comes. Pretentious people adopt an air of self-importance, and selfish people stretch out their orders, making the servant wait while they decide.

I think there may be something to this. Eel and I have very similar stances when it comes to waiters: polite, generous, and critical. That describes some similarities in our personalities as well.

To take it a step further in regards to myself (and not Eel), I tend to try to make things as easy as possible for a waiter, even if it means bending over backwards and not getting exactly what I want. I've mentioned before that I never special order food at fast food restaurants because I know how much trouble that can be (yes, it's their job, but I'll take my own tomatoes off). Even if a waiter or server screws up my order and gets me the wrong thing, I'll eat what I was given (unless it's not something palatable).

When it comes to the little things, and I consider food such, I am flexible enough to be a pushover. It's like I grab as many juggling balls as I can hold in my hand and say "do whatever" with the rest because I know if I don't I will go absolutely crazy trying to keep track of every last one of them.

That and I realize that I'll have something to post about later on, so I just start taking notes. :)

The NBA needs to find a way to take team names back to their original cities: New Orleans Jazz and Charlotte Hornets. Come up with something more appropriate for Memphis and just about anything is more appropriate for Salt Lake City than the Jazz.

mumblegrumblemumblegrumble

The Montreal Expos announced their move to Washington DC a few weeks ago. I wanted to comment on it, but couldn't quite make the time. The move is now in jeopardy, however, as details of the stadium financing become cloudier.

In my mind, Washington was a poor pick to begin with.

The two expansion failures attendance-wise have been its two eastern cities: Miami and Tampa/St. Petersburg. Their average annual attendance compose of two of the four worst in major league baseball (one of the other four is Montreal, the city that's being left, the other is Minnesota) with less than 3 million attendees combined. Westward Phoenix and Denver, on the other hand, have over 6 million combined.

This is despite the fact that Miami (3.88M) and Tampa/St. Petersburg's (2.4M)metro areas are larger than Denver (2.58M) and Phoenix's (3.25M).

There's an excellent argument can be made that Washington's demographics are better than the other mentioned cities (Portland, Charlotte, and Las Vegas). Washington DC's numbers are a bit harder to delineate as its combined with Baltimore (which has the Orioles) and transportation issues between eastern and western cities are not comparable insofar as how easy it would be for fans to attend games. The two cities combined have a combined metro population of 7.61M. Split it in two for the Baltimore area and DC area (which is crude, I admit) that brings it down to 3.8 million which does indeed blow competing cities out of the water.

But I have my doubts that whether that population would necessarily translate into attendance. There is a corrolation, to be sure, but by any standard Miami and Minnesota should be doing a lot better than they are. Even if it's a matter of how good the team is (Minnesota isn't very good, though Miami's Marlins have won the world series a couple seasons back), the Expos are terrible and it's going to take a city that's enthusiastic about its team to carry it through what are going to be some tough times. Washington, like Miami and Tampa/St. Petersburg, is a busy city. I'm not sure how much excitement baseball would generate there. Other cities (Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis)