The media didnt predict for a week that Lazarus would return

A Dramatic Second Act for the Senator From Arizona – washingtonpost.com

Now even his supporters are wondering whether he can take his adrenaline-fueled campaign national, a transformation he could not make eight years ago.

Did someone very important in the world of mainstream news decree that everyone must use dumb words to describe McCain?  During the New Hampshire primaries, he was called “the Republican Obama”, “Lazarus”, “the Eschaton” (Although I think that one was tongue-in-cheek”), and probably a bunch of other stuff I didn’t notice because his followers were too busy chanting “Mac is back!”, which I 1)  found annoying and 2) kept hearing as “Yankees suck”.

And now the article linked above called him an “insurgent”.  Now, I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me the word “insurgent” calls up images of IEDs and 12-year-old Iraqis with rocket launchers.  Is this a jibe at McCain from the Post?

And there can only be one “Comeback Kid” per election, and you can’t start calling yourself that after only two states have officially voiced an opinion.  Hillary and McCain need to sit down and negotiate an agreement.  One of them can be the Comeback Kid.  Since Bill Clinton already had that nickname, I guess Hillary probably has the upper hand there, but the 71-year-old McCain can maybe play the irony card.

So, I’m disappointed that Hillary won.  I’m encouraged that Obama made another strong showing.  I’m encouraged that Huckabee was back in his rightful place with the second-tier candidates.  I think it’s awesome that, for a long time, Gravel’s vote count was below 100.  That would be cool if you were one of the dinks in New Hampshire who voted for him, where you could really see your vote mattering, right there on the CNN ticker.

Inhabitat is fired

I don’t know how many of you read inhabitat.com. I’d been reading for a while now, and have just removed them from my RSS reader. You’re probably familiar with the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which aims to provide laptops for children in developing countries. You can argue about whether or not this will do any good, or about the motivations of the founders, or whatever. But you can’t call it the “$100 laptop”, which is what they were originally calling it. It doesn’t cost $100. It’s at least twice that, and a website calling it the $100 laptop is irresponsible and misleading.

So, when Inhabitat did that for the umpteenth time, I left a comment expressing my displeasure. It was strongly worded, but no profanity. It was, I thought, an entirely reasonable criticism. Well, whoever moderates the comments there apparently believes in censorship rather than actually defending a position.

I have never deleted a comment here based on the content.  All I’ve ever deleted was spam.  Not to say I wouldn’t delete a comment if it were sufficiently offensive, but if I were going to delete comments of everyone who disagreed with me, I might as well just stop allowing comments.  Or stop blogging altogether.

So, does anyone know any good wind-kissing hippie blogs?  I stopped reading Treehugger because they just aren’t very good.  So I’m left with almost nothing.  I can only deal with a pretty small amount of Al Gore worship in my hippie blogs, so keep that in mind.

And now for something totally important

Spears hospitalized; loses right to see kids – CNN.com

A court commissioner Friday gave sole physical and legal custody of the former couple’s two little boys to Federline and suspended the troubled pop star’s visitation rights.

So the court decided that the genius who is now romantically linked to Paris Hilton is the more qualified parent.  Actually, romantically linked is probably too strong.  They probably got drunk and hooked up.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, someone should have sat Britney down and gave her a little talking-to.  She could have been Madonna’s little protege, making obscene amounts of money and doing pretty much whatever she wanted.  Instead, she’s a joke who lost custody of her kids.  How often does a judge give custody to the father?  I have no idea what the number is, but it’s small.

At the same time, I hope whatever she’s been hospitalized for is something they can treat and fix.  Just because she’s retarded doesn’t mean she should be in the hospital.

Iowa is a bunch of jerks

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive – Clinton out of it, Edwards suggests « – Blogs from CNN.com

“Iowa does not have best track record in determining who the parties nominate, everybody knows that,” [Third place Hillary Clinton] said at an event in Manchester. “You know, New Hampshire is famously independent, it is a place where people want to make up their own minds — they’re not interested in what anybody else has decided.”

I’m sure CNN is cherry-picking the most controversial quotes, and I’m cherry-picking the best of what CNN has, but wow, that is totally awesome. Even cooler than Edwards calling Obama a “corporate sellout”.

I hope all you readers are ready for some politics, because the race is finally interesting again. People are dropping like flies. Pretty soon we’ll only have the legitimate candidates left.

Anyway, as people who know me are already aware, I don’t much like Hillary. It has been suggested that this is because I don’t like strong, smart women. To that I say, “Have you met my wife?”. Still, I can’t really explain why I don’t like Hillary. It’s probably her cabal of witches.

If I were an Iowan, I’d be salty. The only two Iowans I know are both sensible, intelligent, and didn’t vote for Huckabee. Hillary basically said, “Hey, you didn’t vote for me, but New Hampshirians are much smarter and less easily influenced, and surely they’ll vote for me.”

So, Hillary is a big jerk.

Iowa could have been worse

Richardson out

Meanwhile, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who will finish a distant fourth in Iowa, with roughly 2 percent of the vote is staying in the race. “We are on the way to New Hampshire tonight. We plan to make this a referendum on the Iraq war. This is far from over,” Press Secretary Tom Reynolds tells CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux.

As Biden and Dodd step gracefully away, Bill Richardson decides to make this campaign his personal soapbox. Good job, Bill. If you’re lucky, history will remember you as a large-jowled buffoon and not the guy who cost the Democrats the White House. Face it – you aren’t a serious contender, and your time would be better spent supporting someone who is.

I just overheard my project manager and another employee discussing the results. The employee is happy that Hillary didn’t win, although he would have preferred Edwards. His reasoning? She’s cold, and she’s assembled a cabal of women around her who shield her from advisors and the people a President has to listen to. Seriously, he used the word “cabal”.

Now, there are some good reasons and some bad reasons to vote against Hillary. But if this is your reasoning, you might as well start talking about how she’s a space alien who wants to sell us all into slavery. You thought I was uninformed about politics? Wow.

I’m glad Obama won. I count myself a reluctant Obama supporter. Of all the candidates, he’s the only one I can really see as the President.

Huckabee, meanwhile, really scares me. Religion can certainly be a positive influence on people. There is much to learn from many religious documents, including the Bible. But I can’t fathom the thought process that leads one to vote for a man who believes in the literal truth of the Bible.

His recent potshots at Bush are a little childish, too. I haven’t heard what he’s said, just that he’s been ticking off Republicans by insulting our fearless leader. If he wants to distance himself from the President, fine. He probably should. But there has to be a better way. If I was in Huckabee, I’d distance myself by proposing that Bush and Cheney be tried for treason, but some might call that “overreacting” or maybe “lunacy”. To those people I say, “History will redeem me.”

It worries me that Obama gets a lot of his support from young voters.

Obama also apparently had a better showing among young voters. Fifty-seven percent of poll respondents age 17 to 29 said they supported Obama. Clinton handily beat Obama among voters 65 years or older. (link.)

People in that age group typically don’t vote in huge numbers. And wow, I just realized that, by the time November rolls around, I won’t be in that demographic anymore. Anyway.

Still, a somewhat encouraging night. People thought a Clinton victory in Iowa would pretty much seal it for her, and that didn’t happen. I would have liked to have seen something different on the Republican side. For example, anyone but Huckabee. But at least it could have been worse.

Well, thats kind of scary

Sentient Developments: Odds of Mars getting plastered by an asteroid lifted to 1 in 25

Asteroid 2007 WD5 was only discovered 2 months ago. Had it been heading towards Earth, we would have been utterly helpless to respond.

On January 30th, there is a 3.9% chance that a 160-foot-diameter asteroid will smash into Mars, possibly creating a crater about a kilometer wide.  While this is incredibly cool for scientists, and on some level for the rest of us, it’s also a little terrifying.  If something like that were headed for, say, Washington, DC, things would be a little more interesting to the average American.

I don’t know how big an area we’d have to evacuate if one was heading for us.

The uncertainty region during the Mars encounter now extends over 400,000 km along a very narrow ellipsoid that is only 600 km wide.

Since 400,000 km is much more than the diameter of Mars, that region must extend well into space.  So I don’t really know how big a spot on Mars is actually in danger of being hit, or how far away one would have to be to avoid it (Assuming one could survive on Mars otherwise).

In any event, I hope we have something taking video of Mars when it happens.  That would be pretty sweet.

Is this legal?

alli –weight loss program for healthy weight loss

Take a look at the link above.  I keep seeing this commercial while the wife watches various Law and Order marathons while she pretends she’s doing work.

The first thing I thought when I saw the logo was “Google”.  I imagine that was intentional, and I imagine their lawyers have determined that they haven’t crossed any lines, but it seems like they must have come pretty close.

Not only that, but their red-blue-yellow-green letters mirror eBay’s, too.

Now, eBay doesn’t have much of a sense of humor, so I imagine if they determine they don’t have a case, they’ll let it go, just mutter to each other at the corporate office.

Google, however, ought to send a nice little note to GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Alli, and tell them in no uncertain terms that they’re a bunch of dicks.  They probably won’t, but it would be cool.

Where do you draw the line between a similar logo and an attempt to piggyback on the good name of another company?  Alli is really, really close to that line if they haven’t actually crossed it.  They aren’t competing with eBay or Google, but that’s not really the issue.

Happy New Year!

So, it’s 2008. The wife and I are enjoying the day off. Well, I am, at least – she has work to do. I think I’m going to bake some bread (Still trying to get a loaf of whole wheat to turn out as nicely as the white loaf did).  And I’ll probably play around on the computer.  Maybe even do something constructive. I don’t have any big resolutions. I’m trying to be more organized and motivated, get more done, and that sort of thing.

The tv is on, and there was just a commercial for a toilet cleaner that kills 99.9% of germs deep down into your toilet.  The commercial ends with a mom walking out after cleaning the toilet, patting her young son on the head as he goes to use it.

I have a better idea when it comes to protecting your kids from germs in the toilet – tell them not to stick their hands in it.  I mean, come on.  Cleaning is great, but toilets are dirty.  You know what we put in there, right?

Anyway, I resolve to be less annoyed by stupid things like that.  I’ll probably still write about them sometimes, though.

Kill Microsoft with Ubuntu, not BitTorrent

Techdirt: How Pursuing Software Piracy Hurts Proprietary Software Firms

After all, as Microsoft and others have long admitted, you’re much better off if someone is using an unauthorized version of your software, than if they’re using the competition (especially if that competition is free). If they’re using an unauthorized version of your software, then at least there’s a chance that they’ll either buy it at a later date or convince others to buy it. However, by putting such a big effort into cracking down on software piracy, all the industry has done is highlight why people are better off going with free alternatives.

This is a big reason why I’m using Ubuntu as my only operating system.  I dislike Microsoft, and have no interest in Vista.  But I’m not going to pirate it.  I dislike stealing, as well.  I won’t say that I’ve never pirated software or music or movies.  But when there is a free, open-source equivalent that fits my needs and I can live with the drawbacks (Ubuntu is obviously rougher than Windows.  But nothing deal-breaking for me.  YMMV.), I’m going to go with that, even though I know I could get a cracked copy of Vista or Photoshop or whatever expensive software I wanted.

Of course, I kind of shot myself in the foot with my last computer – I paid for the computer with Vista because I couldn’t get it without, and then overwrote it with Ubuntu.  But I remain hopeful that my next computer won’t have the “Microsoft Tax” on it.  I’d love to see Dell or someone start shipping all their computers with full hardware warranties and then some stripped down version of Linux.  When you boot up, it tells you, “This operating system is not supported by us.  It’s up to you to put whatever OS you want on there.  We promise the hardware will work, and we’ll replace it if it doesn’t.  Otherwise, you’re on your own.”  Or something to that effect.

Anyway, it’s great to see that the use of open source is expanding.  Maybe soon we’ll also be able to convince people that jumping to Apple because you hate Microsoft is like running from the hyena and getting eaten by the tiger.  Sure, the tiger is prettier and impresses your friends, but you’re still dead.

Someone complains about Vector Security

Complaint Hub » Blog Archive » Vector Security – still cool This is a comment left on the above post (I get about 30% of my Google search traffic from people looking for Vector Security and finding that post).

Vicky Says: December 29th, 2007 at 12:40 pm eDon’t be fooled. Vector Security in North Carolina is renewing our contract WITHOUT NOTICE OF ANY KIND FOR A THREE YEAR PERIOD. In order to cancel, we are required to buy out the contract for the entire remaining period plus pay a penalty of 80% of that amount. This, after we experienced a false alarm, and could not get the system checked for six weeks. Buyer beware. An additional note: my mother’s Vector carbon monoxide detector malfunctioned. It alarms every five minutes, a shrill, piercing alarm, 24 hours a day. She called the Saturday before Christmas, and was told nothing could be done until the Wednesday after Christmas. The Saturday after Christmas NO ONE HAD CALLED HER TO ADDRESS THE PROBLEM, DESPITE REPEATED CALLS FOR SERVICE. It is still alarming every five minutes.

As I’ve mentioned, I can’t speak to how Vector responds to problems because we haven’t had any. Nor do I think that one incident is enough to condemn a company. And certainly this time of year is tough for everyone. However, ignoring “repeated calls for service” is not a good way to endear yourself to your customers. I hope Vector fixes this problem quickly so I can continue to recommend them to people.