Yeah, whatever

Hell.com is being sold at Web domain name auction – Oct. 27, 2006

The online address is the latest to be put up for sale in a growing market for domain names, consisting of Internet addresses people type in for Web sites, which has been fueled by the surge in Internet advertising, the newspaper said.

I don’t really care about hell.com – as search engines get better and better, the necessity for a good, memorable domain name goes down.  But the sentence quoted above is really awesome.  It’s like saying, “a growing market for houses, consisting of buildings that people live in”.  Whoever wrote that sentence doesn’t seem to have any understanding at all of what they’re talking about.  I mean, if the market for domain names consisted of cuddly little puppies and Elvis memorabilia, would it still be the market for domain names?

Ubuntu 6.1 released

Welcome – Ubuntu: Linux for human beings

Just saw on Lifehacker that Ubuntu has released a new version, which contains, among other things, Firefox 2.0. Sweet. Can’t wait to get home and upgrade my Ubuntu box.

Edit: Ooh, maybe I should have waited. Upgrade crapped out, now I’m not sure whether it’s going to boot back up. We’ll see how long it takes me to get a good install again.  Ubuntu forum users report some problems, which I guess is to be expected.  But I was so close to getting my Complaint Hub enhancements working, and now my development box is hosed. . .

Angry letters update

New update to the Angry Letters section.  I got a response from Senator George Allen telling me it’s not his f’ing problem.  He said it more politely than that.  And he actually has a point – stupid traffic patterns are not really a federal matter.  So I wrote to Delegate James “Jim” Scott and Senator Richard “Dick” Saslaw, my state representatives.  I eagerly await their responses.

Stop with the negative ads

The Year Of Playing Dirtier – washingtonpost.com

It is harder for Republicans to blame out-of-power Democrats for the current state of Washington, but they are equally eager to depress Democratic turnout and fire up their conservative base.

It may be that, after a conversation about ‘the liberal media’ yesterday with a definitely conservative coworker, I’m just looking for the Post’s liberal bias, but this line jumped out at me.  The article, up to then, had been close enough to balanced (It said that both parties are stooping to new lows in negative political ads, and the Republicans are worse about it.  That’s sort of unbiased) that I could live with it.  But if the Post honestly believes that the Democrats are completely blameless for the state of the country, I don’t even know what to say.

Back to the point of the article, though.  I’m pretty sick of smear ads.  Being near DC, we get both Virginia and Maryland ads.  George Allen and Jim Webb, running for Senate from VA, have been sniping at each other for a while.  Allen doesn’t seem to be trying that hard – he’s still focusing on some comments Webb made in 1979-80.  Allen also responded to my angry letter, which is nice.  I’m still voting for Webb, though.

I wish we’d get to hear why I should vote for one guy rather than why I shouldn’t vote for the other guy.  I’m tired of voting against the unacceptable canidate.  I’d really like to vote for someone because I think he or she is going to do a good job.  Is that too much to ask?

Slim with the tilted brim

‘Snoop Dogg’ faces gun, drug accusation – CNN.com

“An investigation revealed Calvin Broadus to be in possession of marijuana and a firearm,” a police statement said. . . .  “There was no basis for this arrest,” said the rapper’s lawyer, Donald Etra. “We believe that once this is cleared up, all charges will be dismissed.”

Numerous things here.

First, if I were Snoop, I would legally change my name to Snoop Dogg so the media would have to stop putting it in quotes.

Second, taped to the monitor on my old PC at home is a picture of Snoop from the Wall Street Journal about eight or nine years ago when he publicily made a big deal out of quitting marijuana.  It appears he’s started again.  Anyway, I was taking Public Finance in college, and we had to have a subscription to the WSJ for class, so I would usually read it during lunch.  As an aside, that was just after one of my roommates taught me how to make grilled cheese, and to this day I associate reading the WSJ with eating grilled cheese.  As for Snoop, I couldn’t resist the little picture of him – it seems so out of place next to big time politicians and important people.  So it’s been taped to that monitor for all that time.  I don’t know what I’ll do when I replace the monitor.

Third, Snoop needs to remember that a 2:1 arrests-to-albums ratio is safe, but if you get much higher than that, they stop calling you “rap artist ‘Snoop Dogg'” and start calling you “convicted felon Calvin Broadus, who rapped under the name ‘Snoop Dogg’ before his arrest”.

Fourth, as far as I’m concerned, rap doesn’t get much better than “Doggystyle”.

No substantial relationship

John Scalzi on gay marriage in NJ

Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose.

John Scalzi has a nice bit on the NJ Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. The above is my favorite line from the quote from the decision. It looks like the Jersey Supreme Court has sent a nice not-so-subtle message that the government is not in the business of spreading homophobia and discrimination. I think “no substantial relationship to legitimate governmental purpose” is a lovely turn of phrase, and I applaud the court.

I’m not so sure I’m happy with their failure to rule on whether you can call it marriage – this is an important issue for many, and not calling it marriage leaves them open to “separate but equal” challenges. But I suppose that leaving some of the decision to legislators is what the whole system is about. Hopefully New Jersey’s legislature will work something out that most people can live with.

Everyone else is posting it

outside.in

outside.in is designed to change all that, as a bridge between information space and real-world space — a place to see in a single glance all the interesting things that are happening around you.

I’ve read about this on at least three blogs already, so I figured I might as well check it out. It’s user-based content, so there’s not much there yet, although with all the pimping it’s getting from big shots like John Battelle and David Pescovitz at BoingBoing, it shouldn’t be long before they have a good user community.

The idea is that you will go and provide local information about where you live, and be able to find similar information about other places.  Or you might find that little hole in the wall restaurant around the corner that you’ve never noticed.

Nice idea.  Execution looks pretty good, although I didn’t poke around too much.  It’s certainly designed better than HotSoup.

Im very dusty

Dusty hallwayWhen I moved in to my condo, the seller swore that we could easily paint over the ugly venetian plaster he’d had put up. “But, of course, you’d never want to”, he said. I beg to differ. Brown bamboo floors and brown walls just don’t do it for me. So the wife and I painted over the walls, and it just peels right off. Now that we’re trying to sell, we’re sanding the stupid walls so we can paint them. We tested a little spot, and sanding actually makes the primer stick.

Unfortunately, sanding also makes a horrific mess. I’m at work now, and my hands still feel like they have plaster dust on them. And I haven’t sanded anything since last night. I’ve taken TWO showers since I touched a sander.

Oh, well.  I think we can finish sanding tonight or tomorrow, then we’ll paint, and forget this horrible dusty mess.  The cat will no doubt appreciate that, as well, so she can go back to being black again.

This is what they mean by liberal media

Bush’s New Tack Steers Clear of ‘Stay the Course’ – washingtonpost.com

But the White House is cutting and running from “stay the course.”

Oh, how clever.  Use the phrase that the Republicans use to attack Democrats and then the phrase the Republicans used before the Democrats used it to attack Republicans.  Where does one go for neutral news reporting?  I get Fox News at the gym.  Fair and balanced, they say.  Yes, fair to radical conservative nutjobs, and balanced between Republicans and other Republicans.  I tried Daily Kos, because that’s one of the first names in political blogging news.  If you take Daily Kos, and reverse the adjectives – that is, replace “bad” with “good” and all that, you have Fox News all over again.  I tried the Wall Street Journal, but they hide behind a pay wall, and I don’t want to get a subscription.  The Washington Post can’t possibly claim to be unbiased after allowing a line like the one above to be printed. Where do you get your news?