December 2004 – End of Silence

Concession

Dec 222004

I officially and somewhat belatedly accept defeat in my attempt to participate in Holidailies this year. I’ve fallen too far behind to try to catch up at this point. Perhaps next year.

My project list continues to grow. I’ve got two websites and a pet film-related project slated for this site bearing down on me in addition to the annual holiday card that may become an e-card this year due to my dead hard drive and lost contact list. Many of you are about to get a mass e-mail requesting address/phone/e-mail updates so I can get back up-to-date. My geek ego is still reeling from the fact that I didn’t back the damn thing up. I technically have most things duplicated on my work pc and on my phone, but there were quite a few addresses that were only used at Christmas time residing only on the dead hard drive.

We managed to hit Trail of Lights on Monday night. Our tradition of going to Green Mesquite beforehand was thwarted. They were closed for their own holiday party. Our alternate choice was the newly-opened Austin Java in Pizza Nizza’s old digs. If the crowd that I saw Monday night and Sunday afternoon is any indication, they’ve made a wise decision in moving to that location. The old location in Barton Creek mall never seemed to get much traffic for some reason.

Sk8red

Uncategorized 2 Responses »

Dec 222004

I just noticed that the City Council has amended the ordinance banning skateboarding to include the new city hall. They’ve posted photos of the damage that prompted the amendment. Some of it does look pretty bad, particularly the bottom center photo where people have clearly been doing grinds and leaving behind a fair amount of paint.

As the press release mentions, this highlights the need for a skatepark in Austin and skaters will soon get their wish. Our local park, Mabel Davis, is finally undergoing remediation for the contaminated landfill on which it sits. If memory serves, the park has been closed for four years since the discovery of pesticide and broken car battery cases in different parts of the park. The history and details of the situation are too long for me to go into here, but the cleanup will result in the loss of much of the tree cover in the park, making it an ideal candidate for a long-planned city-sponsored skate park. I think it’s a really cool addition to the neighborhood and expect that my six-year-old is going to have a great time with it once it opens next fall.

Sobering thought

Austin No Responses »

Dec 172004

My work holiday party was last night. It was pretty cool, my fifth one with this company. As I was driving the babysitter home after the party, we almost got hit by some pigfucker in an SUV. We were about 25-50 feet from from the the light at Burleson and Oltorf coming from the south when the aforementioned SUV turned from heading west on Oltorf to go south on Burleson. The problem was that he was in our lane heading straight for us instead of staying on his side of the double yellow line. I stopped, honked at him and gave him the “what the hell are you doing?” look. He looked slightly surprised, corrected to his lane and then ACCELERATED!??!

I didn’t get a chance to catch the guy’s license plate, but I wish there was a way to sick The Man on someone like that. I suppose I should’ve followed him and called it in. I remember seeing something on T.V. once about a guy who would drive around with a video camera mounted on his dashboard. If he spotted someone driving erratically, he’d call the cops on his cell phone, follow them at a safe distance and film it. That’s a little extreme, but it’d be nice if there were a way to get a police response on something like this quick enough to catch the guy. Part of me is sympathetic to that idiot driver. I’ve had nights where I probably shouldn’t have been driving (last night was NOT one of them), but as soon as you do something that endangers other people, all bets are off. Russell had a post earlier this week that was somewhat related.

Within a couple miles of the SUV incident, we passed two different people pulled over with cops behind them, flashing lights and all. I didn’t see any field sobriety tests being administered. If you’re going out late over the next couple of weeks, you’ll want to be extra careful. You hear it every year, but it’s no bullshit.

Binge and purge

Politics No Responses »

Dec 152004

There have been many days since the election when I wonder if I’m in the right place or not. Perhaps it’s from lack of sleep trying to meet a work deadline last night, but that feeling seems particularly strong after listening to/reading news over the last 24 hours.

For your consideration:

Gay teen expelled from high school – One more reason to be glad I don’t live in Dallas anymore. TCA was one of our rival schools when I was growing up. I’ve been there for basketball games, track meets, etc. They always did seem a more uptight than we were. That being said, I’m not sure that my alma mater would have done anything different. I’d like to think so, but I doubt it. His consolation is that he doesn’t need any of their crap at this point anyway. He already had a successful enough web design business before he started the site that got him expelled. I’m sure this kind of publicity will score him plenty of new contacts as he moves into the real world. Good luck, James.

U.S. missile defense test fails – The fucking thing never has worked and probably never will. What a colossal waste of money. Thanks, Bush administration. You’re a bunch of geniuses. Let’s keep sinking ridiculous amounts of money into a system that isn’t going to protect us. The only worse offense would be spending a bunch of money to invade a country, creating an insurgency that we can’t defeat in an attempt to counter stateless terrorism. Oh, wait…

Wal-Mart sued for selling Evanescence CD that contains obscenity – While I’m all for sticking it to Wal-Mart, this is a ridiculous lawsuit that should be thrown out of court. The parents should be fined for being dumbasses and the lawyer involved should be stuffed alive with copies of the “offending” CD until he admits he’s a money-grubbing pox on society. I think I’m going to sue anyone who actually listens to Evanescece for bad taste.

Since I used MTV News as a source for my last post, they’re also the source of what I’ll call “Headlines that should come as a shock to no one” today:

ODB dies of a drug overdose and the singer from one of the gayest bands of the 80’s is HIV positive. At least there are some things that we can rely on.

Retired Army colonel, 70, sent to Afghanistan – I don’t think I really need to comment on this one. It pretty much speaks for itself.

Wow. Of all of the items, even I feel I’m being a bit harsh on the second to last one. See what no sleep and paying attention to current events does to you?

Lap pillow?

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Dec 142004

I was innocently checking out BBC News’s Day in Pictures when I came across this. The caption reads:

“Makoto Igarashi, inventor of the ‘lap pillow’, a top selling Japanese product, demonstrates his creation in Tokyo.”

A little searching reveals a few posts about the lap pillow before it was released. Apparently, it’s a follow-up to the boyfriend arm pillow, which I somehow missed the first time around.

Insert pithy cliché making fun of a culture different from your own here.–> Damn those Japanese are weird.

Ketchup

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Dec 142004

Time for a little geek-out. If you haven’t tried Google’s new Suggest feature, you should. It’s pretty cool in that it does a search as you type. It’s already made the rounds on Slashdot and other geek sites. Somebody went through and tried each letter in the alphabet to get the alphabet according to Google:

A is for Amazon
B is for Best Buy
C is for CNN
D is for Dictionary
E is for Ebay
F is for Firefox
G is for Games
H is for Hotmail
I is for Ikea
J is for Jokes
K is for Kazaa
L is for Lyrics
M is for Mapquest
N is for News
O is for Online dictionary
P is for Paris Hilton
Q is for Quotes
R is for Recipes
S is for Spybot
T is for Tara Reid
U is for Ups
V is for Verizon
W is for Weather
X is for Xbox
Y is for Yahoo
Z is for Zip Codes

The ABC results remind me of another little Google feature: Zeitgeist. Somebody figured out that typing porn, xxx, or sex into Suggest gets you nothing. The combination of that and P being for Paris Hilton proves that most of Teh IntarWeb is still preoccupied with one thing. Other than dictionaries, that is.

Between Suggest and Gmail, Google is doing some really cool stuff with JavaScript. They’re introducing some really cool interfaces for Web applications that jolts me out of the mindset that it’s just for form validation, swapping images and popping windows. Of course, you’re also supposed to be able to customize a good portion if not all of Firefox via JavaScript as well. I guess it’s time to take another look.

One last note, last week, our CTO, who definitely falls into the geek category (I’m sure he won’t mind), introduced his geek co-workers to Keyhole, now owned by Google. The application is pretty amazing. One look at it and the mind boggles that the possibilites of marrying that sort of location information with the stuff that they’re already storing. Of course, I’m struggling not to go and shell out the $30 for a year subscription.

Recidivist

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Dec 132004

Ok, so I said I wouldn’t slip up and then the weekend goes by without a peep. I’m like Tim Meadows as Ike Turner humiliating Kevin Nealon on Weekend Update.

Illness still hangs over our house. The Boy seems to have recovered back to his bouncing off the walls self. There’s nothing sadder than a sick almost 6-year-old. When I came home Friday night, he was nested into his Buzz Lightyear comforter on the living room floor, looking particularly lethargic and pathetic as I asked him how he felt. He had a few sips of ginger ale at dinner and put his head on the table while the rest of us ate. I couldn’t take it anymore and brought him upstairs where he promptly fell asleep for the rest of the night.

The Wife and I both have some sort of congestion/cough thing going on that neither of us have managed to shake yet. I slept really late (i.e. 10 or 11) both Saturday and Sunday morning. The La seems to have escaped the germs swirling around the household. If it is affecting her, she doesn’t seem too much crankier than usual. It hasn’t stopped her from walking around the house with her shoes on the wrong feet wearing a zipped up pink hoodie with the hood over her head and her hands stuffed in the pockets. We’ve decided that we need to have her name embroidered on the back of the jacket gangland-style. The La, an alien gang of one.

My new linking technique

Politics No Responses »

Dec 102004

Bobby Fuller vs. JPB

Politics No Responses »

Dec 102004

I posted a few months ago about my dismay that airport police at ABIA are now conducting random searches of vehicles driving up to the terminal. In the very same post, I linked Bruce Schneier’s site. He’s a well-known security expert who gives very good explantions of why random searches are ultimately ineffective.

Fast forward to today – I’m a frequent reader of John Perry Barlow’s blog and noticed that he hadn’t updated much lately. Today’s update explains one of the reasons. His experience goes a step farther than what I blogged about at ABIA. At least you’re simply directed away from the terminal if you refuse. Thankfully, he and co-founder of the EFF, John Gilmore are fighting this affront to the 4th amendment for the rest of us.

As a completely random aside, I googled for “i fought the law” because I couldn’t remember the name of the artist most often associated with the song. It was, of course, Bobby Fuller. However, he didn’t write it. It was originally written and performed by The Crickets, as in “Buddy Holly and”. It was written after Holly’s death. The link responsible for my musical enlightenment appears to belong to a site about the roots of the Grateful Dead. Those who know anything about JPB know that he was the lyricist on several Grateful Dead songs. How’s that for a little Internet daisy chain?

Repentant

Miscellaneous No Responses »

Dec 102004

Ok. I missed a day. I’m truly sorry. It’ll never happen again. Can you forgive me? No, wait. Don’t turn your back on me. I thought we had something… something special. And now you just want to throw it all away? Please. Stay. I’ll change.

I do have a good excuse. I’ve been under the weather most of the week. The Wife isn’t feeling so hot either and this morning, The Boy yakked all over the living room. We expect this on a semi-regular basis from The La, but The Boy hasn’t puked in quite some time. In fact, I was commenting to a bandmate last night about how long it had been since The Boy was sick. I guess I should’ve knocked on wood or something.

While checking up on the other Holidailies participants, I came across this post. The insurance industry has to be the most evil industry on earth. Bill Hicks constantly railed against marketing and advertising, but he should’ve included insurance.

A couple of months ago, my mother-in-law got into an accident in our minivan (with an off duty cop, I might add). She was the only one in the car and it was ruled her fault, so our insurance company had to pay for both cars. Almost exactly a year ago, some old guy hit me on the way home from the grocery store with the whole family in the car. It was clearly his fault and he admitted it. Despite the fact that those were the only two incidents in the last 8 or 9 years, we got a letter from our insurance company right after Thanksgiving informing us that they wouldn’t be renewing our policy. So, two accidents in a year, neither of which were my fault, and they dumped us. I’m about to go off on an incoherent rant here, so fair warning.

Isn’t it the insurance companies that are really the problem with our healthcare system? I know the patients aren’t the ones benefitting. Who do we have to fight to get the healthcare that we deserve? Who have I had to call multiple times and remain on hold for what must amount to hours of my life to get decent service? The insurance companies. Who’s responsible for making my father, a surgeon of thirty years, work more years than he intended for his retirement because he’s getting paid less and less for the same work and because he has to shell out insane amounts of money for malpractice? The insurance companies. We recently passed malpractice lawsuit reform here in Texas. Do you know who’s going to keep the money saved from the lowered damages instead of lowering the costs for doctors or patients? The insurance companies. I know doctors aren’t perfect. In fact, I’m as well aware as anyone that some of them are arrogant assholes, but WTF? We’ve somehow let these huge corporations come between the patient and the doctor.

Why the hell am I paying money to an auto insurance company if they’re just going to drop me the minute that I try and collect what I’ve been paying for? I should just set up a savings account and sock away the insurance payments to cover any accident costs, but I can’t do that because we’ve legislated a liability requirement. I can’t drop collision because my loan company requires it. There’s got to be a better way. I had my both my home and auto insurance with the same company. As soon as I find a better deal, I’m fucking dropping them and paying the absolute minimum that I can. So, here’s a big FUCK YOU to Texas Farmers Mutual Insurance Company. If you’ve got to get insurance, stay the fuck away from them. They suck, suck, suck. Did I mention that they suck? Damn.

And don’t even get me started on PMI.

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