First, let me say it is truly a joy to pay a ticket at the DC DMV website. Of all the things the DC government does, extorting collecting money through the DMV website is something it actually gets right. I got a speed camera ticket on Michigan Avenue near Catholic University a few weeks ago. There were all of two cars on the road, and I was doing 37 in a 25. It’s pretty annoying, because I really don’t speed much these days. It’s a $50 fine and no points, so I guess it isn’t too terrible in the grand scheme of things. It just bugs me because I’m mostly a law-abiding (though aggressive) driver. Every day, I see people doing things in a car that are unsafe and illegal with no consequences, and I get a ticket for speeding on an empty road. What about the cabbie who zipped around me to run the red light at 15th and Mass NW yesterday? Or the four cars that turned right on H from the middle lane of 18th because they didn’t feel like waiting in line? Anyway, I hope you enjoy my $50, DC. I hope it makes you very happy.
Tag: complaint
Spitzer hates our hookers
Spitzer Linked To Prostitution Ring by Wiretap – washingtonpost.com
New York Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer’s political future was thrown in doubt yesterday after he was identified as an anonymous client heard on a federal wiretap arranging to pay money and buy train tickets for a high-priced New York prostitute to meet him at a downtown Washington hotel.
Dear Eliot Spitzer: You’re a jerk. You got busted because OUR PROSTITUTES WEREN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU. I hope you’re happy. Love, Washington DC
To honor, you have to understand
Uni Watch | Los Gringos Massivos
Am I the only one who thinks this approach reeks of American ignorance? It’s like getting drunk on Tequila in Mexico City and then asking, “Where-o is el bathroom-o?” And it’s not like the words Spurs and Suns don’t have Spanish translations — Espuelas and Sols, respectively. Would that have been so hard? Just tossing “Los” on there is a lazy cop-out, especially since NBA jerseys don’t use definite articles to begin with (well, except for this one). And seriously, does the mere addition of “Los” really strike a chord in any Hispanic fan’s heart? If we’ve got any Latinos out there, I’d love to hear your reaction.
Before I start here, make sure to check out this photo and tell me that you wouldn’t wear a Milwaukee Cerveceros jersey. Anyway, Uni Watch is absolutely right – to honor someone, you must have at least a vague notion of who those people are. In this case, I’m pretty sure “the Hispanic community” is not “a bunch of crazies who use Spanish articles when speaking in English”. Maybe there’s some other “Hispanic community” that I’m not aware of, but I don’t think so. Seriously, it would have taken all of five minutes to look up the Spanish translations of “Spurs” and “Suns”. It would have taken a bit more time and a bit more money to do the extra customization of the jerseys, perhaps, but I can’t imagine they couldn’t make up at least some of the difference by selling Spanish versions of the jerseys. San Antonio and Phoenix, not to mention many other places in the US, have large Spanish-speaking populations that are growing pretty rapidly. If ten thousand New York girls will wear pink Jeter jerseys, is it so hard to imagine that a Spanish-speaking basketball fan might wear an “Espuelas” jersey? I know I can’t speak for the “Hispanic community”, but I suspect that it would have been better for the NBA to just continue to ignore them rather than making this less-than-half-hearted attempt to “honor” them. Edit: Uni Watch has some additional reaction today, from an actual Latino.
All of this just illustrates the point that “Latino” encompasses so many nationalities that it is very hard to get something like this right. But we have been all thrown in the same group, whether we like it or not.
So, this was probably a tough task for the NBA to get right, but I still think they could have at least TRIED.
John McCain hates bears
McCain Sees Pork Where Scientists See Success – washingtonpost.com
“Approach a bear: ‘That bear cub over there claims you are his father, and we need to take your DNA.’ Approach another bear: ‘Two hikers had their food stolen by a bear, and we think it is you. We have to get the DNA.’ The DNA doesn’t fit, you got to acquit, if I might.”
The title of the article on the Post RSS feed is better – “McCain Criticizes Bear Study”. Of course he does! None of the bears even had degrees! Anyway, I think he’s upset that we spent the equivalent of the budget for 48 seconds of the Iraq war on something that didn’t involve shooting at or otherwise endangering Muslims. Was that a cheap shot? Oops. Honestly, I do not understand the planet that John McCain lives on. I don’t know how rational human beings can listen to him and think, “Yeah, okay, President McCain, that would be cool”.
Give Maryland its wine in the mail already
The opposition is in the form of big, big money from the liquor distributors. Make no mistake about it, they spend millions to keep consenting adults from getting wine shipped to them.
So, Maryland is one of those crazy states that feels that having wine delivered in the mail is going to somehow be a terrible thing. The primary opposition to the shipping of wine to Maryland is not Maryland wineries, worried about what it might do to their business. The primary opposition is liquor distributors who do not understand the business they are in. If you all would allow me a Techdirt moment here: The business of shipping alcohol in the mail is not a zero sum game. Every case of wine shipped to a customer in Maryland does NOT mean one fewer case of liquor shipped to a customer in Maryland. In fact, I would be willing to bet that people who get wine shipped to their house are much more likely to get liquor shipped to their house, as well. We’re not talking about the market for wine vs. the market for liquor. We’re talking about the market for alcoholic beverages in the mail. If the liquor distributors would stop being jerks, maybe they could get together with the wine distributors and grow the entire market space. But no, they’d rather keep stupid laws on the books and fight with each other. Nice job, guys.
Well done, Toyota
ESPN – Kyle Busch needed more than his immense talent to nab Toyota’s first win – Nascar
Toyota general manager Lee White stood just inside the iron fence that surrounds Victory Lane at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday and watched Kyle Busch celebrate the first Sprint Cup win for the foreign manufacturer.
Frankly, most of this article is about whining and accusing others of cheating (Which seems to be an all too familiar refrain in all of sports these days), but what caught my eye is that Toyota has its first NASCAR Sprint cup win. I was a NASCAR fan for a couple of years – Dale Earnhardt’s first win at Daytona was the first race I ever watched, and the second race I saw was live at Daytona, the Pepsi 400 in 1998. By the way, I find it amusing that the Pepsi 400 is now known as the Coke Zero 400. Nice job, Coke. It’s interesting to see Toyota coming in. Never mind that Toyota doesn’t have a single car with a V-8 engine. NASCAR doesn’t seem to care that the cars on the track bear basically no resemblance to the production cars they’re named for. And it’s weird to see the 18 car not be Bobby Labonte’s green Interstate Batteries car. Anyway, I haven’t really paid any attention to NASCAR since 2004 or so, but I would have liked to have been there for Toyota’s first win. I wonder if the 300 pound guy in overalls and no shirt with a #3 shaved in his back that I saw at Daytona one year was watching. I’ll bet he was, and I’ll bet he said something disparaging about Toyota at some point in the race.
Bite me, Microsoft
The company I work for recently upgraded Outlook Web Access from “borderline intolerable” to “still pretty bad”. It’s still a piece of junk, light years behind Gmail, but it’s an improvement. Until I tried to save an attachment in Firefox. A coworker sent me this PowerPoint about the mortgage crisis. OWA gives you the option to “View as Web Page”. Cool, I thought. I don’t have to save this file to disk and open it. So I did that. It was too slow. The PowerPoint is 45 pages or something, and the page transition time was getting annoying. So I decided to download it after all. I mean, it’s not like hard drive space is at a premium these days. There’s a little hyperlink that says, “MortgageCrisis.pps(2MB)”. So I clicked it. Firefox will generally handle things like that well – if you click a link to a file type it can’t open itself, it gives you the option to open it with a program you have installed, or save it to disk. That’s fine. Not with the new OWA. It just gives me an error message that this type of attachment has to be saved to disk. This is annoying, but not unexpected. Microsoft has never played well with others. So I right-clicked the file to “Save Link As”. None of this should be shocking to anyone who spends a lot of time online. This is where Microsoft punched me in the face. “Save Link As” attempts to save “attachment.ashx” instead of the PowerPoint. For those who don’t know, .ashx files are idiotic proprietary Microsoft script files for handling HTTP requests. It doesn’t matter if that’s Greek to you. The point here is that, once again, Microsoft has decided that the way everyone transmits data on the internet is wrong, and the way to really serve the needs of internet users is rewrite the rules so that nothing else is compatible. There are agreed-upon standards for transmitting data on the internet. Microsoft repeatedly defies them in order to make competing technologies incompatible with Microsoft products. It’s absolutely unconscionable, and one of the primary reasons I switched to Ubuntu Linux as my home operating system. BTW, “unconscionable” is a totally awesome word. It may be Microsoft’s only redeeming quality that they create so many opportunities for me to use it. Well, only redeeming quality other than Bill Gates’ newfound philanthropy. That’s pretty cool, too.
Florida and Michigan made their beds
It is absolutely absurd that Michigan and Florida are even considering spending $25 million and $10 million, respectively, of taxpayer money to hold new elections. It is unfortunate that Democrats in these two states will not get to contribute to the selection of the nominee this year. But we can’t punish the Democratic party leaders of each state by throwing them in the briar patch at taxpayer expense. The whole reason they knowingly violated the rules was to give their states a louder voice in the election process. They were told they couldn’t move up the primaries, and that they would be punished if they did. They ignored the warnings, and they were punished. If we now let them revote, we’re giving them exactly what they wanted. I’m not sure why the media doesn’t seem to find this absurd. I think Florida and Michigan should send delegates bound by the proportion of delegates already pledged. That is, if Obama has 53% of the delegates from the other states, then he gets 53% of Florida’s and 53% of Michigan’s. That should get someone to the magic number (I think – I haven’t actually looked at the numbers) without giving Florida and Michigan any real influence on the election.
Et Tu, Ohio
I expect this sort of thing from Texas. I mean, what does “Texas Democrat” even mean? I think it’s like dark matter – something we think might exist, and we’ve seen evidence that it might exist, but no on has really ever seen it. But I expected better out of Ohio. I always figured Ohio was a sensible state. I mean, Cleveland just screams “sensible”. Let me tell you this, Ohio – Hillary doesn’t love you. She used you, like she used New York to get her into this race. She used you to take away some of Obama’s momentum. And now that she’s done it, she’s going to be insufferable for the next few weeks. But no matter. Obama will be our next President, and things will get better.
I hope my friends in Nashville are involved here
Nashville copyright craziness — success! Rematch on Mar 5 – Boing Boing
Yesterday’s rally in Nashville to stop a new copyright bill that would put the expense of policing the movie industry’s business model onto universities was a success — the bill has been stalled and won’t be reconsidered for ten days.
I have two friends down in Nashville (Well, just outside of Nashville, but close enough). One of them probably knows about this already. In fact, I was sort of expecting a post on the subject. I won’t elaborate on all the reasons why laws like this are absurd – BoingBoing does it pretty regularly, and I don’t really have anything to add. But if you’re in or around Nashville, especially if you are or soon will be a student at a Tennessee college, this matters to you. Don’t let them raise your tuition to support the lazy recording industry that stubbornly refuses to embrace the new business available to them through the internet.