Do They Think We're Fucking Stupid? Some Of Us Can Still Do Math.

The US is going to test a 700 ton bomb. Say that aloud. Seven Hundred Tons. It's expected to produce a city sized mushroom cloud. OK, 700 tons isn't quite the 12,000 ton Hiroshima bomb but in the dusty desert they'll look the same to the untrained* eye. More importantly, the cloud will look something like one produced by a 300 ton mini-nuke to even a trained eye.

A conventional bomb yield measured in tons will come from a bomb that weighs very close to the explosive yield. The 21 ton MOAB is a good example of this. To get higher explosive yield then the weight of the device you have to use a nuclear device. To further complicate matters, the heaviest payload ever carried by aircraft is about 150 tons.

Why are we testing a 700 ton bomb if we have no method of delivery? Could it be to cover up for the covert use of low yield nuclear devices? If you ask me we're a lot closer to midnight then we think.


*(Journalism majors aren't required to take much science or math for their degree. No link for this but trust me it's about 12 credits out of 120 and can be satisfied by 101 level courses. This isn't a knock against journalists but every week I read something wrong.)

By Pressing Down A Special Key It Plays A Little Melody

"I wouldn't buy it with someone else's money." Windows Vista, the new operating system from Microsoft that was supposed to make the PC more like a Macintosh (again) has to be re-written. Sorry about the registration for this one. It seems that the problem is Bill Gates inability to let go of the past. Innovation isn't copying the "Look and Feel" of another company's product while retaining the ability to run software written 30 years ago. It's trusting your engineers and programmers to make something magic happen. You don't get it by shrieking at your employees like a howler monkey or insisting on always being upbeat and positive. You get it by treating your employees to Kobe beef and lunchtime massages. (No link to that, it's from "The Macintosh Way" by Guy Kawasaki) You get it by being first and foremost, an artist, then you trust your engineers with your life itself.

Unfortunately, today it seems as if Steve Jobs is the last true renaissance man. Someone who sees the interface between the fantastic and romantic and what technology can do tomorrow. It's that "tomorrow" that is the important key to the puzzle. It's one thing to dream of Star Trek transporters when you look at technology but you have to put it in your customers hands today. Jobs has always been able to see what's possible today, things that just aren't being done effectively and then make it all an elegant reality. Maybe he's a genius, or it's the acid or a combination of both. If you ask Jobs if he's an artist or engineer he'd probably not see it as an either or choice.

In his own words: I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to (learn calligraphy). I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, abut varying the space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful. Historical. Artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture. And i found it fascinating. None of this had any hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the mac. it was the first computer with beautiful typography. if I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never have multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

So is it the artist or engineer who moves the world? Here's what he has to say about being just an engineer: I wish him [Bill Gates] the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.

OK I didn't mean this to be a love letter to Steve Jobs. I just think art and science add up to more then just the sum of the parts. You can have one without the other but when you pay attention to both you get magic.

I Am Skin And Bones, I Am Pointy Nose; But It Motherfuckin' Makes Me Try

Came home last night
There was fire and smoke on the T.V.
Cops and the army
People running out in the street looting

I took off my clothes
And came four times
Could not leave myself alone

It was porno for pyros!

Didn't we learn anything after the last race war? I'm not even sure what's going on this time. Some people are upset that illegal immigrants are going to be kicked out of the country by one bill before congress and other people are batshit crazy angry that the president wants to give a bunch of criminals amnesty as outlined in another bill. Clearly those bastards in Washington DC are actively trying to Balkanize the nation by simultaneously submitting conflicting bills.

Don't fall for it. Don't get violent. It's a trap. If we're fighting ourselves we won't be strong enough to go after the real assholes that caused this mess in the first place.

Microsoft asking EVERYONE to rewrite web pages for IE 7!!

According to information reaching eWEEK, Microsoft announced plans during a conference call on March 28 wherein Redmond officials reiterated the need for Web pages to be completely re-authored to avoid possible disruptions as a result of major changes to IE 7 as a result of a patent dispute.

I say Bwaaaahh Haaaa Hhaaaaaa. Imagine for a moment a headline that read Apple asking EVERYONE to rewrite web pages for Safari. No one would give a shit. That's what you get for not following standards and relying on proprietary (closed) programming.

read more | digg story

I Love That Movie With 'The Cory's' Where A Character Named Dean Is Always Begging His Friends For A Ride

Massachusetts wants to punish all the children in the commonwealth for their parents failure to prepare them for the future. I was nearly 30 when I got my drivers license. I think back to my early 20's and how little respect I got for not knowing how to drive. No one took me seriously even when I worked a steady job and supported my first apartment. Rob's parents nailed it when they asked him why I didn't know how to drive. His response was that my parents wouldn't let me get my license because I didn't take drivers ed. 'That's really irresponsible of them.' was his mothers reply.

Why didn't I take drivers ed in highschool? If you remeber that far back, it was offered at 6:30AM and only accepted 30 students a semester, there were 256 students who needed it. I would have had to get up at 5:30 to make it. I'm not a morning person. That's OK. Marblehead really didn't want to teach it's kids how to drive. Other states have tracks and dedicate class time during the normal period. Every student takes it, not just the first 30 to sign up. So I never learned and despite my license today I remain woefully unprepared. That I haven't killed anyone is more a testament to my allertness then my skill with the wheel. I think I'd be a much better driver if I learned as a teenager, when I was supposed to. I'm a step 12, which for those who don't know is pretty close to the rating they assign you as a teenager. I've been getting screwed by my insurance company for years.

I did learn how to sail as a kid. It's the only thing I do well.

Third? Yay! That's Second Runner Up.

Last night was not our most stellar trivia night performance. We came in third. Although I am proud of not only that we got the final question right but how we figured it out. The question was what state erected a monument to a Revolutionary War battle honoring it's centenial that is 306 feet tall. It is the tallest structure in the state. We stressed on it for a minute and then listed the 13 colonies crossing off each one that has a building over 20 stories tall. We settled on Vermont. The other smaller Wisconsin.

Gob came in second and a dark horse team that pulled in some ringers crushed us all. At least Chris and I got a chance to catch up. There's always next week.

Who The Hell Is This Guy?

Ron Paul almost makes me want to move to Galveston. I know he's only a member of Congress and as such represents fewer constituents then the mayor of Oakland, but it's nice to know someone in Washington DC is on task.

Snakes on a plane! Is this man the only person who gets it? I mean come on. Why can't they all be so sensible? It's just too bad he doesn't support abortion.

(In the interest of full disclosure I also view abortion as ending a human life. I just don't really care what you do with your body. I'm pragmatic enough to understand that perhaps some women shouldn't be mothers. Obviously, the first hint at their unreadyness would be their desire to murder their baby. I'm strangely fine with that.)

Will This Be On The Test?

Many colleges now claim they no longer use SAT scores when considering a student’s application. Some colleges will only consider SAT scores as a last ditch tie-breaker for identically qualified applicants. California and Texas now refuse to consider standardized testing for admission to their state colleges. By all appearances the SAT is almost all but dead. Many of today’s students may consider that a good thing but really it’s quite the opposite. However varied it’s flaws, the mere existence of the SAT test and related SAT II, formerly the Achievement Test, is the defacto national standard with respect to what students are expected to know before college.

Recently errors in scoring have opened a national debate on whether students should even be subjected to the College Board SAT evaluation at all. It is a fact that the SAT’s are a blunt instrument when used to evaluate any individual students chance of success in college. Boys score higher then girls and with a tighter distribution but fewer take it suggesting only those boys who wish to attend college are counted. Many intelligent boys who expect to find employment with trade guilds right after high school don’t even bother with the exam, thus further illustrating the SAT’s irrelevancy.

Why is it important to keep the SAT? It serves as a concrete reminder to some of our more backward states that you can’t skip major portions of your child’s education and expect them to function in college. If anything, the SAT needs to be more rigorous and exacting in pointing out gaps in any student’s education. Perhaps then, when the entire state of Kansas scores a combined 800 average they’ll wake the fuck up and realize you can’t take evolution out of biology and expect your child to become a physician. At best you can expect your child to be a Christian game show host or talk radio DJ. At worse, you’ll die of antibiotic resistant strep. Maybe it’s not so bad, less competition for jobs that require independent thinking and reason. And we wonder why the flyover states are so hostile to northeasterners with our smug intelligentsia and good SAT scores. Our kids get into a decent college.

OK, perhaps an intimate knowledge of biology isn’t really important when one expects a career in software engineering. After all, it’s not as if the fastest growing technology sector is medical devices. If I remember correctly, one of the fundamental practical exercises in any calculus course is predicting the growth of a colony of bacteria as they adapt to changing food sources and antibiotic attacks. Bacteria don’t grow and change, God made them. In any event, it's not important to account for changing biology when designing life support technologies, is it?

There’s the old argument over why we should educate our children at all. You wouldn’t want your ambulance driver to not know how to read your street sign. The counter to that is not every child will be an ambulance driver. Some of them end up line cooks. Yes, some of them do end up spatula in hand. In fact, there’s a real demand for cooking staff in another growth industry, nursing homes. Wouldn’t you like to know that the people in your kitchen understand why it’s important to mix Steramine in the proper ratio?

So skip the SAT and teach your children that God made the dinosaur bones to test your faith. Just don’t complain when you catch Listeria from a dirty ice machine.

Doh!

WHAT? That looked nothing like them. Rest assured I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust.

A New Feature

Today marks a new feature here on the ol' blog where I answer letters to Dear Abby. Read the last letter from Steven

Dear Steven,

Your parents don't love you. If they did they wouldn't be forcing you to share a room with your little brother. In fact at 15, your parents are doing your social life a great dis-service by not setting you up in a loft apartment full of hookers and blow. You were adopted anyway.

Dean

Just Like In Friday The 13th

Robin Williams and Harrison Ford should do a movie together. They’re far too old to be in a buddy cop movie or action comedy. They’d probably end up in a taut political thriller. What I’d really like to see is a science fiction Agatha Christy mystery. You know the kind where a bunch of strangers are called to a big house and someone kills them one by one.

Imagine a future where we’re all finally Lojacked with brain chips that record our lives. Not unlike this piece of crap. Some crazy uncle dies and at his inquest reveals that he was murdered. His memory has been downloaded but it’s encrypted. It’s up to his nieces and nephews to spend the weekend trying to guess the unlock code so they can download the memories of who the killer is. The one who does inherits it all but if no one does before the end of the weekend it goes to his butler. The uncle wanted his fortune to go the one relative who actually loved him but if no one loves him his caregiver should have his estate. As an added twist the lawyers will only allow the code to be tried once. The whole thing takes place in some wood paneled Victorian estate on some island with really crappy cell phone reception. (Cause you got to explain why no one bothers to pull out their Nokia when the first guy gets killed.)

One by one, the killer who doesn’t want to get caught, will kill the guests while everyone is greedily sneaking off alone to find clues to the code. One person is flipping through every book in the library, she can get tied to the stack ladder and flayed open with a switchblade lightsaber stilleto. Another guy is in the study trying to hack into the old mans computer, which for some reason doesn’t have Internet, and he’s killed using the computer in some way that we haven’t seen before. Someone will go down to a big classic sloop to look in the ships log for hints. Their feet are tied to the deck and arms are tied to the mainsheet while the killer winches in the slack to stretch them to death. There will be the obligatory couple, a nephew and his gold digging wife who will rummage through trunks in an attic, she’s killed with a laser crossbow and he’s locked in a trunk with a nanotech bug bomb that unzips every cell in his body and turns him into grey goo. One guy will go into the media room and start watching home movies, he’s killed in a way that reveals the killer and alerts the last relative to a struggle. The last niece comes in right as one of the movies shows the uncle singing at her 8th birthday.

The code will end up being some song that the uncle used to sing to the kids when they were children. This will be revealed at the beginning so there’s no surprise at the end, it will be the same footage from the party in the video playing when the niece meets the killer. As it turns out the one who does love him was the adopted niece because the family are all assholes. When the niece figures it out she’s promptly killed and the murderer gets all the money. I’m sick of corny, happy, Hollywood endings.

As some of the nieces and nephews I think the following would be a fun cast:

Jennifer Beals (in the library)
Henry Rollins (acting nerdy, he’s computer guy)
Jake Gyllenhaal (perfect for the boat scene)
Tia Carrere and Tim Roth (the couple)
Brandy Norwood (as the niece who figures it out, although she might be too young for this cast)

I see Harrison Ford as the uncle and Robin Williams as the butler/murderer.

I'm Famous

Today there are over 10,000 unique hits to this site. That means about 1 out of every 600,000 people on planet Earth have read something I've written. I feel like F Scott Fitzgerald.

Three Things

1 My email isn't working. I'll try to get it fixed later. Darren, I didn't shut it down to avoid helping you move. Call my cell.

2 I just cleaned out Barney's super high tech litterbox. It was foul and I need to sit down for a while. He's crying downstairs because I'm not playing with any of his toys. I'm reminded of Chris Rock when he talks about how no one respects Daddy. No one ever says 'Hey, thanks for paying the electric bill for all these lights. Mmmm boy, I sure do appreciate hot running water.' Barney just doesn't understand the sacrifices we make for him. Now he's come upstairs to complain directly to me. He's sitting on the back of my chair biting my hair for attention. In a half hour when I want to play with him he'll be annoyed that I interrupted his third nap of the day.

3 Last night at O'Neils' trivia contest, Lisa and I won First Prize, alone. Where the hell were the rest of you? I love it when Chris just comes up and hands me the envelope. It was actually quite dramatic. We were down 10 points and in 4th. The final two questions were about The Peabody Award and Flame Throwers. Team Gob (joab?) got both answers correct but choked on the point wager. We got the half time question at 10 points, third time in a row for me. Lee would have gotten the picture round it was all gangsters wearing a wire and points were for the movie, actor and character name. This is the fith time I've finished in the money since Lisa and I started going in January. Kitty O'Sheas does it on Sunday nights. I'm thinking of taking them on too.

And finally, C I'm back down to the usual 30 or so hits I got before last weeks ride. So I picked up no new fans for all the attention I got. Maybe talking about my cat is a turn off. The Ancient Egyptians would have understood.

Mr Sniffy

Last night Lisa and I repaired a broken leg on our dining room table. The legs are a two part laminate and one of the six split at the seam. A couple dollars of wood glue and it's better then new. Of course Barney had to get involved.

Catfish Hunter

Maybe monthly wear disposable contacts really should be disposed of after 30 days. Perhaps some things shouldn't be skimped on. I finally threw out the pair I've been wearing since November when they gave me a wicked sore throat. I've been convalescing all weekend. I feel better today.

OH, yeah, speaking of contact lenses... What happened to AOSept Disinfectant Solution? Why did they stop making it? ClearCare is the same thing but with added Pluronic 17R4. (Picture Homer Simpson, Mmmm Pluronic 17R4, aaaaallllgggghhh.) It's only 50 cents more per bottle. I wish I still had a choice. Another thing CibaVision did recently is stop selling replacement disks for the disinfectant cups. Now you have to buy a new cup with every disk. That's a dollar more. They got me for ten bucks a year. I'm thinking of switching to Bausch & Lomb Renu.

Control click for download goodness. Right click if you aren't awesome and have a Macintosh.


As promised, here's a short movie featuring Barney. Sorry about the grainyness. Low lighting and too much zoom.

Last night I held Aladdin's lamp

The last couple days have been amazing. 6510 hits Wednesday, 3009 hits yesterday. I think I only had about a thousand hits in the 2 months I had counters. Traffic today, so far, is 163 hits. I’m guessing most of that is residual traffic coming in from the What Really Happened and America Uncensored links. (I’m not going to point you to America Uncensored because they have a really fucking annoying Midi file that you can’t turn off. Today it’s Martika’s ‘Toy Soldiers’. I promise you I will never embed music on this site.) Once I fall off the front pages of those websites we’ll see if I get any repeat traffic or my numbers fall back to an average 27 hits per day.

One thing that really surprised me were the comments that people left. Some of them were just plain rude. Some of them were definitely schizophrenic in nature. I know I’m more in tune to the alternate theories about politics then your average Fox News victim but really guys, it doesn’t help the cause by coming off as paranoid reactionaries. You've got to look and sound just as slick as the competition if you want to be taken seriously. Manic poems don’t impress anyone. They’re kind of a turnoff.

It remains to be seen where I’ll go from here. I think I’m going to take the weekend off. Tune back in Monday. I’ll post a movie about Barney.

Yeah, You Really Got Me Going So I Can’t Sleep At Night

For the last couple days I’ve been fascinated with the Will Ferrell hoax. The speed that it spread and how fast it was refuted is truly what the ‘Brave New World’ of online news delivery is all about. Hey, what can I say? I fell for it. Whoever you are you got me. I wish I could say ‘no harm, no foul’ but for reasons that I outlined yesterday there is some harm in giving those who wish to discredit the Internet the fuel to do so.

Yesterday I posted what some would consider a ‘conspiracy theory’ about the possibility of the hoax being staged and I speculated on two possible motives behind it. I passed it along to What Really Happened (the site that I got the initial report from) with the sentiment of “hey, they got me too” and Mike Rivero posted it immediately. (Thanks, my hit counter caught on fire.) Upon further reflection but mostly after my good friend Kevin Wolf pointed it out, I realized that I really gave George Bush or whoever pulls his strings far too much credit for being able to orchestrate such a cunning plan.

Then I found on digg a link to this story about a 15 year old who managed to pass a story off as real news by issuing a press release on an open indexed website. Google automatically aggregated Vendetta’s story on their main news page as if it was a wire report from a legitimate news source. Other online news sources picked up the story and reported it as ‘the truth’.

Some might call his clever prank hacking or cracking and lump it in with virus writing and spyware. In his case no one was hurt, no system crashed, no computer system was broken into and technically I don’t think he broke any laws. (Please inform me if I’m wrong.) The server where he posted his report was open to anyone who wanted access and the fake story was about himself, it would be a stretch to call it libel. Google and I-Newswire both had about three days notice that there was a flaw resulting in the automated dissemination of unconfirmed reports but appear to have reacted too slowly to stop further abuse. (Actually the exploit was first publicized on March 9th here but Vendetta’s story was the first to arouse controversy.)

What happened next is where lines were crossed and harm was done. Someone who took the most rudimentary steps to cover their tracks posted a phony and probably libelous report about Will Ferrell using the exact same exploit. Whoever it was tried to post several other stories but failed to get any more listed before the hole closed. So most likely it was a copycat prankster, probably another kid looking to cause definite mischief. The pranksters deserve some form of punishment for the hoax. Vendetta, despite showing some remorse on his blog, should face at least token discipline. The fake obituary should be treated with the same seriousness as placing phony 911 calls or pulling fire alarms. People get hurt that way. Whoever did it should be tracked down and punished to the full extent of the law. Unfortunately it’s much easier for the FBI to chase down a tip from your cranky neighbor then track clever criminals hiding behind a simple proxy server.

Google is equally culpable for their role in this mess. Although it’s technically possible to automate news delivery, some tasks should be handled only by a real human being, common sense can’t be assigned to an algorithm. News reporting is too important to leave exposed to common hooligans or those with a more sinister agenda. That is unless Google doesn’t want the reputation for unscrupulous accuracy in their news service. Up until now they were a trusted source. Maybe we should keep an eye on them, see if they make that mistake again. At least we now know better then to accept automated news reports as accurate. Hey, it’s the new media and I guess there are still some more growing pains headed our way.

As for my conspiracy theory, clearly I attributed malice and cunning vision to the Bush administration and the tiny handful of men who control the media. For that, I’m sorry. In the future, I’ll try not to over estimate the technical savvy of any bureaucrat when obviously the brilliant masterminds behind the Will Ferrell hoax were a couple of bored teenagers.

Holy Crap!

So far there are 4922 unique hits today and over 5000 total hits. I've had some feedback that suggests a few folks checked out my other posts. I wish AdSense still worked. I'll explain what happened later. I'm giving Google a fair chance to respond to my concerns. Then I'll post the full story, it'll probably end up a vitriolic rant.

I’m Not Dead. I Feel Fine. I Don’t Want To Go In The Cart. I Feel Happy. I Feel Happy.

I’m beginning to think that this Will Ferrell hoax is a setup. Not on the part of Ferrell but as a method of discrediting the Internet as a source of news.

Newspapers are all tanking due to competition with the new electronic media. Unfortunately Internet versions of subscription newspapers can’t make any money. There are too many that were free in the beginning and now like running water in Bolivia, no one wants to pay for it when it was provided gratis for so long. Geographic lines are no longer a barrier to the reader so when they do charge there will be no reason for me to pay for The Boston Globe if I can read all the AP wire stuff on Yahoo. Sure I miss out on the local or metro section but there are other sites that do a decent job of providing regional coverage. Also, I don’t want to read the news a day late now that I’m used to instant information.

So then you can see how threatened dead tree publishing is. It would be in their best interest to throw some monkeys into the wrenches and show how easy and fast a hoax can spread. I found the story on one of the news aggregators that I frequent shortly after it was posted and thought how strange as I was just thinking about Will Ferrell the day before. So I linked to it. Now I know my 30 readers aren’t going to be enough to support me as I start some publishing revolution, but unless I pull my posting it will eventually hit the search engines and come up when people search for ‘Will Ferrell Dead’. I’ll be forever linked to as that guy who wants Jake Gyllenhaal dead. (Really I don’t want him dead. I’m just sick of hearing about some lagging ‘B list’ actor who managed to get his ‘Q Rating’ up by taking such an obviously calculated career move. I could just as easily have picked Joshua Jackson, hell Hollywood is full of actors in the process of washing out. You pick one.)

Another theory could be that the hoax was perpetrated as the first step toward enacting legislation locking down the only free press that can do serious national and international damage to our increasingly totalitarian government. After all, congress is trying to sneak in a law penalizing reporters who report legitimate news against the presidents wishes. With TV, radio and print media all merged and owned by a tiny handful of powerful friends of the president, the Internet is now the only counter source of news. It’s the only thing forcing the mainstream media to acknowledge and report on real controversies. It will only be a matter of time before the Internet becomes the sole challenge to the Oval Office’s totalitarian control of all reporting media. Take a look at China with how oppressive the official news is and their efforts to keep international dissent from reaching their citizenry. Our own government has every reason to fear bad publicity, remember it was the fax machine that brought down the Soviet Union. Cell phones and text messaging helped the Muslim underclass organize a national revolt in France and Australia this past summer. It will be electronic media that helps organize the next American Revolution. Consider your camera phone to be the new ‘Liberty Tree’ (just don’t forget to take out the battery when trying to hide.)

It makes perfect sense to me that during the run up to grab away our freedom the government needs a scandal to point their vulgar little fingers at so that the (unfortunately) less astute majority will shout out a resounding ‘Yes, show that Internet who’s boss! We can’t have phony news reports showing up on the computers that most of us don’t understand how to use.’ It’s not like if we wait a while the truth doesn’t arrive just as quickly. That system can’t be any worse then the official daily publication and smearing of lies and propaganda that the mainstream media broadcasts continuously and then quietly ‘corrects’ at 3am on Sunday, once, never to be mentioned again.

Oh My!

Will Ferrell died.

Will Ferrell taught me how to make love to a woman and how to scold a child.

What is Chris Kattan going to do now? I guess Chris, Garfunkle, Alex Winter, Nicole Richie, Oats and Mechagodzilla can finally get together and start looking for that next big role that will turn their careers around.

Link is broken. I'm beginning to suspect that this is a hoax.

OK so I fell for a hoax today. If I hadn't mentioned him in yesterday's post I probably wouldn't have been so quick to perpetuate this untruth.

It's too bad too. I was beginning to think that if I mentioned someone on this blog they'd die. I had a whole long post about Jake Gyllenhaal in the works.

Thank You, Chuck Norris

If you’re reading this, you’ve got an internet connection (or some friend thought it was so cool they printed it out and handed it to you.) You can’t swing a dead cat around the internet without hitting some cliché turned meme stuck firmly in our electronic zeitgeist. My latest favorite is the ‘Legend of Chuck Norris’. Chuck Norris doesn’t do push-ups he stays flat and pushes the world down. Funny stuff. It reminds me of Will Ferrel on Saturday Night Live drinking and toasting to another legend, Bill Brasky. Bill Brasky hated Mexicans and he was half Mexican and he hated irony.

Can you identify whether the following statements describe Chuck Norris or Bill Brasky?

1 ___________ once showed me a video of him making love to my wife, and it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw!

2 ___________ is the reason why Waldo is hiding.

3 ___________ counted to infinity – twice.

4 ___________ wears a live rattlesnake as a condom."

5 If you drop a phonograph needle on ________’s nipple, it plays the Beach Boys' 'Pet Sounds.

6 ___________ is so fast, he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.

7 ___________ drives an ice cream truck covered in human skulls.

8 Did I ever tell you about the time ________ was in a production of, 'The King & I?' On opening night, ________ chloroforms the entire cast and slowly eats them in front of the audience for two hours. The production got pretty good reviews."

9 ___________ doesn’t wear a watch, HE decides what time it is.

10 ___________ does not sleep. He waits.

11 ___________ sleeps eight hours a night! ........ well, he was pretty normal when it came to that."

12 I once saw him scissor kick Angela Landsbury.

13 Did I ever tell you about the time _______ went hunting? _______ decides he's going to hunt down all four of the Banana Splits. He stalks and kills every one of them with a machette. They all begged for their lives...except Fleagle.

14 When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for ________.

15 It was the sight of _______ naked body that drove Brian Wilson insane."

16 _______ doesn't read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

17 ________ once breast-fed a flamingo back to health.

18 ________ sweats Gatorade.

19 _______ hand is the only hand that can beat a Royal Flush.

20 _______ can slam a revolving door.

21 _______ drank a full glass of liquid LSD with his eggs. Then he slept for 8 months straight. When he woke he rubbed his eyes and said, 'All in all, I prefer gin.

22 He did 3 tours in 'Nam...... I was in Corpus Christi on business a month ago. I had this eight foot tall Asian waiter, which made me curious. I asked him his name. Sure enough it's Ho Tran ________.





The answers BNNBBN(both)BNNBBBNBNBBNNBB

Yet Another Love Letter To My PowerBook

Still more news about an end to the Macintosh’s viral invulnerability. Nothing new just a rehash of the oompa loompa threat and a contest rigged to make the Macintosh look like a hackers paradise. The result of the contest was quickly refuted. Apple has nothing to worry about, the reputation for the Macintosh is still bullet proof. It's not that the Mac is so much better then the PC it's that the PC is by nature very unstable. Writing the operating system for any bios, processor, mother board and hardware combination from multiple vendors leaves many more avenues for exploit then an OS written specifically for one hardware vendor. This isn't to say the Mac is bullet proof just that there are fewer threads to tug at. Granted that it may only take one thread for the whole shirt to fall off but again the Macintosh is built from ground up to a higher standard then a commodity PC. The difference is like comparing basting glue to overlocked threads at the hem. It's like comparing a shack with a 5 button Simplex lock on the screen door to a bank vault. It’s like comparing steel exterior security doors to thin paneled interior doors reinforced slightly with plywood.

Sure hacking or more correctly put ‘cracking’ is a recent problem. It’s like petty thievery, it’s become a crime that probably won’t ever go away. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more at stake then just one person’s lawnmower and some trimmers. One attack affects thousands of computers and collectively, each year billions of dollars are lost to these electronic thugs. Clearly the punishment should fit the degree of damage. Unfortunately writing virii for the PC is like breaking into a shack, trivial. Children do it for kicks. Law enforcement sees it as a nuisance due to the frequency and ease. Breaking into a bank vault takes much more skill and forethought. There is premeditation and planning when breaking into a bank vault. If a thief steals a $100 weed wacker from a tool shed or $100 from a bank vault you can bet that the police will be looking for the safe cracker not the person who tried 123, 124, 125, 134, 135... for 20 minutes.

That's the real problem here. Until the PC is more secure it won't matter what lock you buy. No one takes it seriously for security. That's why the Mac is gaining popularity as a target. It's exactly that challenge that now makes Apple 'fun' for malicious hackers. However, I still trust my PowerBook more then I ever trusted a Dell, Compaq or eMachine even with Symantec Antivirus. There are fewer threads to pull, fewer places to drill and pop the tumbler. It will take more then a screwdriver to pull the pins off the door hinge.

The day will come that a virus does hit the Mac with a vengeance. Apple will address the problem. It will be very interesting to see the difference in how Apple handles hacking when compared to Microsoft. Maybe then law enforcement will see the problem for more then just a joy ride on someones computer but as a targeted planned attack.

In the mean time, it’s not the virus and popup problem that drove me away from the PC. It was constantly getting the blue screen of death. I got sick of DLL Hell and that problem is squarely Microsoft’s fault. One that Apple has avoided. Fewer threads to pull.

Fountains of Wayne

I thought for sure it was going to be in the last episode.

Come and Knock on our Door

I used to love ‘Three’s Company’ when I was a kid. I’d sneak on my TV, a monster console with a 30 inch black and white screen, after my parents put me to bed. (They were still married then and yes, 30” B&W, they got it for free; it had hundreds of tubes inside.) I was only 8 years old. I had no idea what the fuss was about a guy living with two girls. I just thought it was funny when Jack slipped or had a door close in his face. There was some indefinable stirring, a funny feeling, when Suzanne Somers was on the screen but I didn’t know what it was. I just liked it when she was on my TV.

If you were a TV junky and grew up in the Boston area during the 70’s and early 80’s you were lucky to get anything on the dial, there was no Cable back then. At least you didn’t have it because your parents didn’t see the utility in paying extra for TV. So you’d watch whatever the round coil on the back of the set could collect. UHF 56 came in great, so did 38. I remember a 25, 27 and 68 but they were crappy and 27 was scrambled during an attempt to sell movies, I think it was called StarCase. V66 didn’t come around until the mid 80’s.

You probably watched cartoons on Saturday and then switched over to Creature Double Feature on Channel 56. Unless it was an all, obscure Japanese monster day, then you went outside. Godzilla was cool but anything with Mothra or that turtle just plain sucked. Black & White movies claiming that someday-men-will-walk-on-the-moon rocked!

On Sunday mornings your viewing habits were a little less rigid. After Davy and Goliath the day was pretty open. Channel 56 and 38 always had cartoons from the 40’s or ‘The Three Stooges’. After, they’d trade the same handful of old comedies. If 56 ran Jerry Lewis, 38 would show Abbot & Costello. In six months they’d swap, or so it seemed. Basically, the two channels were interchangeable. There was no loyalty, you watched whatever you thought was funniest. Sometimes they’d get creative and show an all Bikini Beach Blanket weekend, an especially welcome sight in February.

On the rare lucky Sunday one or all of the movies would feature the high-strung antics of Mr. Jesse Donald Knotts. I can’t get enough of the old Don Knotts films. It’s the rare comedian who can play his own straight man. It’s even rarer for an actor to thoroughly enjoy being typecast. In career spanning five decades that saw many comedians quit being funny to make their ‘Truman Show’ or ‘Moscow on the Hudson’, Don Knotts always delivered the laughs that his fans wanted.

Many critics consider his character of Ralph Furley to be a comeback but that’s disingenuous. Don Knotts never left, true his movies cooled at the box office but were among the first to attract big numbers on Cable. ‘Private Eyes’ showed poorly at the box office but became a runaway hit on new-fangled cable channel Spotlight. After that all his older Disney comedies found new life with the new subscription movie channels and in part prompted Disney to launch their own cable network.

After wrapping up ‘Three’s Company’, Knotts found mostly voice work in animation, but his scattered appearances in live action films and television received critical acclaim, particularly as the TV Repairman in ‘Pleasantville’. Always the consummate entertainer, Knotts continued to work on stage or as a special guest giving a failing show a much needed ratings boost.

Fans of Don Knotts fall into two generations, those who know him best as Deputy Fife and mostly younger fans who loved him as Mr. Furley. I will always think of him with karate chop hands and sucking in his cheeks, ready for action. So I guess I fall in with the second camp. I see it fitting that his last performance was on ‘That 70’s Show’ during an homage to ‘Three’s Company’. He plays The Landlord and is the high point of the season. Television will never be the same.

She Blinded Me With a Face Full of Nitric Acid

I have a big problem with people who think science says things. Science say's nothing. It's merely the descriptive term for a collection of ideas and methods using repeatable observation and logic to help make sense out of the world around us. People say things. Sometimes they're backed up by evidence collected using scientific method. Sometimes people make complete asshat statements with either no or very flawed logic. But it's not science that does the talking and assuming so clearly demonstrates your staggeringly fundamental misunderstanding of what science is.

Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?

Take a look at Usama and then take a look at Whitey. Whitey Bulger gets three pictures, a movie and a Playboy Centerfold style biography of his hobbies, likes and dislikes. Usama only gets the bare minimum of coverage. The thing that’s most glaring about the difference here is that the FBI actually seems pretty clear about the nature of the crimes that Bulger committed. There’s no mention of the jet plane attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on Usama’s page. There is some vague reference to “OTHER TERRORIST ATTACKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD” but nothing specifically linking him to any attacks actually on US soil. So how is it that he’s constantly waved around at us as some sort of boogey man on the news if the FBI doesn’t really seem to want to capture him. Could it be that they know he’s already dead? Usama does have a bounty that’s 27 times that of Whitey’s paltry million dollar offer. Perhaps it's easy to offer a fortune that never has to be paid.

George Méliès

For the better part of the last three decades I’ve been fascinated with top-secret airplanes, especially the super fast, near space flying, SR-71 Blackbird. In high school I wore that shirt with the spy plane printed on it nearly every day. I had little dye cast toys. I had all manner of books and magazines with pictures and stories of the design and history of the most famous spy plane ever built. There was a poster on every wall of my bedroom. I even built the Revel plastic model.

When the Stealth Fighter and Stealth Bomber were finally unveiled I became even more fascinated with Black Project Aircraft. The Internet soon supplanted books and magazines for feeding my curiosity about America’s most secret technologies. A lot of hobbyists traded stories about Tacit Blue and began to discuss other more current projects. Unfortunately the community soon became a quagmire of wacky conspiracy theories and outlandish claims of UFO technology. UFO doesn’t mean saucer men from Neptune, it means Unidentified Flying Object but to the average person, it makes no difference. Unfortunately there are so many wacko’s who insist that Area 51 is full of dead aliens so the military further clouded the issue. Fox showed specials featuring hoax Alien Autopsy films. Knowing what we know now about Fox News it’s obvious how that was a straw man meant to offer the government an easy avenue for skepticism. At the time, it worked. I lost interest in secret spy planes when they became synonymous with Martians.

For the last decade, there have been rumors and uncredited reports of the existence of new secret black project aircraft. A flying triangular shape sometimes called ‘The Black Manta’ or ‘Aurora’ sometimes gets a whisper in the more credible aircraft related publications but rarely make it into mainstream reporting. Some of the latest rumors about secret aircraft have been about a ‘Two-Stage To Orbit’ aircraft called ‘Brilliant Buzzard’. This plane is thought to fly in two stages, a launch vehicle or ‘mother ship’ that does the heavy lifting then separates from a capsule, which completes the journey up to orbital altitudes. Some believe that the Aurora and Brilliant Buzzard are mother ship and orbiter, together known as ‘Blackstar’. It makes some sense in that the Aurora is thought to be a smaller craft yet it needs a tremendously long runway to land. That suggests it would carry an amazing amount of kinetic energy upon touchdown; kinetic energy from velocity due to falling from high orbit. The airstrip at Area 51, already one of the longest in the world was extended to five miles when the rumors of the Aurora first surfaced. It’s not known conclusively that these programs exist however there has been evidence, witnesses and the occasional photographic slip from NASA of unknown aircraft.

Although the Aviation Week article above is speculation I believe there’s an advanced military aircraft capable of reaching orbital altitude. It would make sense. Burt Rutan can make a civilian two stage aircraft capable of reaching the edge of space for less then $30 million. By now, the Air Force with classified secret technologies and an unlimited budget must be capable of Le Voyage Dans La Lune.

The Prophet Elijah

Each of these names are regular characters from a TV show who were never actually shown on camera or seen by anyone else. Can you guess what show they’re from? I’ll start you off easy.

Mr Snuffalufagus (I know they see him now but in my day he was invisible to humans.)
Sigmond (The show that started the Vans shoe craze.)
Carlton the doorman (A better voice for Garfield then Bill Murray.)
Charlie (You don’t need a hint for this one.)
Any Adult (Waaah Wah Waaaaahhh Waaaaauuuunnnngggghhhh)
Jenny Picolo (Before the shark.)
Mr Shotz (How many spinoffs from Happy Days were there?)
Elizabeth (I’m coming to join you.)
Orson (People are funnier on cocaine.)
Brenda the human blenda (See next clue.)
Bart (I really miss Don Knotts.)
Sparky (We’ve got incoming.)
Serge (Yes I faxed the volcano.)
Robin Masters (I never believed the last episode.)
The Gooch (He’ll teach you the facts of life.)
Mom (Peggy’s ginormous mother.)
Mom (Your mom’s a babe. If she freed the slaves she’d be Babe Lincoln.)
Both Mothers (Your mom’s a slut. You said slut.)
Marris (This really was the smartest show on TV.)
Tracy Bluth (This show was smarter.)
Little Pussy (I think they whacked him off camera.)
Number One (Not number Six.)
Alan Brady (Maury Amsterdam can make a nice guy kill.)
Bill Brasky (He’d eat a homeless person if you dared him.)
Michael Ellis (I think he’s related to Dennis Moore.)
Tino (My regular readers will know this.)
Danny (The real reason Fox never kissed Skully)
Magic Voice (In the not too distant future.)
Klaus (same show as Wilson Wilson, Jr.)
Eric (This is a tough one.)

This list is by no means comprehensive. Can you think of others?

This One Goes To Eleven

I hate to post above 'Swimming To Cambodia" because I think it's one of the finest and most honest things I've ever written, but this belongs on yesterday's list.

Swimming To Cambodia

I think the thing I’m going to take with me when I leave This Island Earth will be my perfect moment; the memory of a strange out-of-the-blue time where for just a flash I felt comfortable and at peace with my place in the universe. Nothing was worrisome and everything was calm and right. The perfect moment is elusive. Most people only get one in their life. You’re lucky if you see five in eight decades. You can’t buy them and you can’t drink or drug your way into one. They’re not merely moments of happiness, it’s more profound then that. It’s the feeling of sublime perfection; a feeling of life is as it should be.

I’ve come close to it a few times lately but the last one I really remember was when I lived in Charlestown. I was living on a sailboat slipped at Pier Six in the Navy Yard. I was coming home on the Harbor Shuttle. It must have been thirteen years ago on an unusually warm night in December. Rain controlled most of the day and was still misting in that strange New England way of raining without actually getting you wet. The cabin was full of commuters in suits and power skirts trying to avoid a visit to the dry cleaner for one more box on the calender. The deck chairs were surprisingly dry so I sat out alone, slumped back, watching the city lights wash by. Every thing had that beer-commercial-at-night look, the look of unlimited possibilities. I was overwhelmed with a feeling of tranquility.

I mention all this because I’ve been thinking a lot about life lately. It’s not so much that this instance was a turning point or some great moment of definition. I just can’t escape the feeling that everything in my life had lead up to that moment and everything since has lead me away. Of course that’s pretty much the very nature of time. You could pick any point on a line; call it zero and project a ray into the past, another toward the future. This works out nicely if you think of time as a line. I’ve always wondered how much more marvelous the universe could be if we measured time with spherical polar co-ordinates.

Don’t think this introspection is a sign of some unhealthy emotional pathology. I’m happy in ways I never was as a single young man. Lisa brings me joy. I don’t make a living ripping people off, and for the most part I try not to spread misery wherever I go. Barney purrs when I pick him up (sometimes). Still I can’t help wonder what it was about that one moment that made it so perfect and why it sticks in my mind so profoundly.

Let's Talk About Something Important Today

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Will This Be On The Test?

OK, despite the sharp pains down my neck and spine from looking down all day yesterday, I have a pretty good feeling about the MTEL. For those who don’t know there are two exams to take for a license to teach in Massachusetts. The first is a communication skills exam that every one takes. There's also a qualifying exam in the particular subject to be licensed in. The big surprise is that I chose chemistry. Both exams are about four hours long.

The communication exam was pure Easy Bake Oven for me. From the way Lisa describes it when she took it, they’ve changed the exam and made it much simpler. It’s probably a good thing too. That was the exam that several veteran teachers failed when it first rolled out. It even made national headlines when some high profile individuals failed. I’m pretty sure I passed it. I may even have found a mistake where one question carried over from the 20th century made mention of the last century, the 19th century. The last century is now the 20th. It’s a minor point but still nagging when your future is on the line. One thing I really wished I could have done is typed my answers for the essay. My handwriting is a brutal mix of intercaps and different ways to write a single letter depending on the letters before and after. Staying on the line alone hurt my hand.

The chemistry exam was also a slice of Georgia Peach Pie until the two essay questions at the end. The 80 multiple-choice questions were pretty easy. There was only one that I flat out guessed with a 1 in 4 chance of winning. There were a couple questions that I consider trivia not chemistry. One was about the Gold Foil experiment, briefly, neutrons are fired into a thin gold foil, most pass through but some scatter and bounce back thus proving the existence of the nucleus. Another was about the Bohr Model of the atom, which is no longer considered accurate but is still taught out of respect for Niels Bohr.

The two essay questions were a different story. One question was on titrations, which I’m pretty sure I got 100%. You have an unknown concentration of hydrochloric acid and a known concentration of sodium hydroxide, how do you find the concentration of the HCl? The other question was about ∆G=∆H-T∆S, the formula for Gibbs Free Energy. It’s been 6 years since I looked at thermodynamics. That’s where things went woefully wrong for me.

Lucky for me that the essay questions are only worth 25% of the exam. I’m only looking at 13% off which is still a B. I may have passed it but I’m not going to be terribly disappointed if I find out otherwise. I can easily take it again in May. In the mean time I think I’m going to brush up on thermodynamics. Just in case.

As for how the advertising revenues are treating me, I can't figure any of it out. Yesterday one hit earned about $74 but 4 hits later that number fell to less then $30. I've still made more money in March then I did from the last two weeks in February. So far I'm now worth about 75 cents a day. That may change.

Tommorows Post Today!

I've been bitchy lately. Sorry about that. Been in a bitchy mood. For some reason I get more hits when I'm either angry or I post videos of my cat. Perhaps it's been driving me to add angrier content. Teachers test tomorrow morning so here's Saturday's post early.

This game is like crack! Really it's more fun then a kitten and string. At least it beats a kick in the nuts or mesothelioma or laser hair removal. And it's easier then Yahoo domain registration.

And I said ad content wouldn't drive editorial policies.

I didn't sell out son, I bought in.

It’s That Big Black Boat in the Charlestown Navy Yard

The other day I filled a prescription at CVS. The nice folks at CVS (and all the other pharmacies in Massachusetts) had to make me show my ID before they’d fill it. The pharmacist wrote some notes on the prescription slip and handed me my driver’s license back. This normally doesn’t happen but Ritalin is a Schedule II Controlled Substance. Two things bother me about that course of events.

The first is that potentially I would not receive crucial life supporting medications if I didn’t know how to drive a car. Sure I could use a passport or some other official state issued ID. Because I need something the government thinks I shouldn’t have except in the most extreme cases I am forced to identify myself to the government and request some form of identification. At some level you lose the right to hide from the government if you need certain drugs. Mind you this isn’t law. It’s a ‘regulation’ that the pharmacies comply with in order to keep their license. They are required by law to have a license.

Don’t forget I had a prescription from a local doctor and one that I’ve filled before. So my right to engage in a lawful transaction with a private company anonymously has been regulated away in order to protect me from what? Someone who forges prescriptions. I don’t need protection from someone who’s only hurting themselves. Prescription drug abuse is a growing form of addiction in the US. It says so on CNN. So what. Let them get clean pharmaceuticals. It beats having them try to cook up drugs in their own kitchen. Anyway, fuck’em. If they want to be junkies on Oxycontin let them. At least they’ll be out of my way in the job market. But junkies aren’t good little workers who contribute to our consumer culture. See now that’s really the problem here. Junkies don’t need fuck all when they’ve got a good hillbilly heroin addiction. Junkies commit crimes to support their habit. Maybe, maybe not. The crime rate goes up when junkies get desperate. Give them a cheap clean high and they’ll stay out of your hair.

The other thing that bothers me is that the Scheduling System is a backdoor to prohibition but without proper ratification. In the first half of the last century there was Prohibition, Constitutionally amended. The law of the land was no alcohol for sale. Alcohol flowed like, well, any fast flowing liquid from one state to another. Alcohol was so easy to get because there was such a high demand. It didn’t work out. The government realized the amendment was a failure. They won’t make that mistake again.

Now in order to protect me from drugs the government hasn’t outlawed drugs, they’ve regulated them just out of reach. Slowly they’ve slipped in a system of classifying chemicals and made regulations on how they may be handled and sold. These regulations are loosely tied to taxes and interstate commerce. Anything on the Schedule I is absolutely forbidden. Schedule II is still forbidden but there’s an exception, if you ask nicely a physician will give you a permission slip and as long as you are known to the government you can have your medicine. This works out nicely for the physician, you have to get a prescription every thirty days. That's $1200 a year for three hours work.

The higher a drug is listed on the Schedule the easier it is to get. Schedule V drugs can be prescribed by some nurses, dental hygenists or just asking the pharmacist. Drugs are Scheduled not by scientists who have done exhaustive peer reviewed studies on their safety. Drugs are listed on the Schedule on the whims of law enforcement agents who have no demonstrable scientific background. They find a bunch of stoners abusing some anti-cancer drug on a Saturday night it goes down a tick on the Schedule. Make it harder for those junkies to get. If it gets really popular or there’s a particularly damning study that they can point at it goes Schedule I. Mind you they don’t have to understand the study, they just have to point at it. Cancer patients can have fun dying.

The study doesn’t even have to be accurate. It can even be retracted by other scientific evidence. It doesn’t matter. Drugs don’t come off Schedule I. That would be admitting to a mistake. Ecstasy doesn’t burn holes in the brain. The one published study that made this claim has been retracted. The researchers were supplied with mislabeled bottles of research materials. After years of other scientists failing to reproduce the results of the study the principle investigator discovered the error. Ecstasy is still Schedule I despite a growing body of evidence of its usefulness in therapeutic settings.

Sadly, although it’s not a law, you and I have no right to privacy at the pharmacy. Also, prohibition didn’t work when it was written into the Constitution. What makes anyone think that prohibition by a myriad of confusing regulations is going to stop a junky from getting high? After all, teenagers can’t buy beer but they have no problem finding drugs. In the mean time, my pharmacist treats me like I’m about to commit a crime when all I want is the medicine that helps me feel normal.

“Prohibition? HA! They tried that in the movies and it didn't work”. Homer Jay Simpson who more Americans know then who know The Bill of Rights.

Sick of La Mancha

Cape Cod can munch on a bowl of my nuts. That statement is going to come back and haunt me while I run for Senate when Ted Kennedy dies. Fuck’em, the South Shore can burn in hell. I’m tired of hearing them whine about how they don’t want the windmills. “They’re too nasty. They’ll ruin our view. They’ll scare fish. Windmill farms have already proven to wreck havoc on migrating birds.” Fuck the fish and the birds. While you’re at it, fuck the blue salamanders as well. I’m god damned sick and tired of limousine liberals with a scorching case of ‘not-in-my-backyard’ syndrome doing an ideological 180 when it means they’ll have to take a bite of the turd sandwich the rest of us eat every day. It’s almost as insulting as ‘just-not-with-my-daughter’ racism.

The South Shore has the clean nuclear power plant. The North Shore has the PG&E coal power plant in Salem. We’ve been taking it up the ass with breast cancers and filthy cars for decades. It’s completely impossible to keep the silver clean. Barnstable just doesn’t want to lose out on the view. Fuck that. I’ve been looking at smoke stacks all my life. And I have to pay three god damned dollars to drive into Boston. How come they drive in for free?

Personally, I don’t think windmills are all that ugly. Lisa and I once drove 8 hours out of our way to see the ranch in Palm Springs. It’s marvelous. Sure, God made the oceans, wind and sky; they’re beautiful. Men make windmills and they’re just as stunning. Even more so given our limited tool set and palate.

The debate has raged now for five years. Environmental groups are split with many favoring the development and just as many opposed. Fighting the power plant with the EPA isn’t going to work this time. The builder has vowed to follow state and federal regulations for the planning and construction. Ultimately what will settle the debate will probably be the voters. I just hope that we all get to vote, the whole state not those privileged enough to live in Hyannis. What it will come down to is the question of what is more important, clean energy for a state that desperately demands it or some smug yuppies and the view off the back of their beach front McMansion. If it makes any difference, the leader of the opposition to the windmill project is a Kennedy. Fuck him too.

I Really Don't Get This

Today I made a few changes to the ol' blog. A best hits collection, new name, new logo and more ads. I know. I totally sold out. Well not completely. Ad revenues aren't driving editorial content. Fuck them if they think I'm going to censor myself. Still there's something I just don't understand about the ads. Today Google made $10.47 so far and I get a $1.63. I don't get it. Last month Google made over 90 bucks and I got less then three. In one day I get more then half what I made in the two weeks I've been sponsored. My hit count went through the roof today. Mostly that was me reloading the pages to check my HTML. Still, there were also thirty unique address hits today. That's three times my average so far. Either every one I know checked my blog at once or I have tons of new fans. I did get some feedback from someone in Wisconsin. I don't know anyone in Wisconsin. So welcome. Pull up a chair. I'm bitching about Macintosh Virii or Windmills tomorrow.

Here's a Picture

Robin Michelle Lisa Dean
Thanks to Dede for the photo.

A couple short ones today

Last night playing trivia for gift certificates at a O'Neils, our team name was 'The Barney Fifes'. We won first prize. I know there was a 60 year difference in their age but I'd give up a lifetime with Paris Hilton for one more Don Knotts movie.

How are the advertisments treating me? Average 28 hits a day. Average 23.4% click through rate. Google made $93.34 and I will get a check for $2.17. Snakes on a plane! I'm worth fifteen cents a day.