The Smoking Gun brings us Motion to Dismiss: The Constitutionality of Fuck, “Fucker” and “Fucking Fag”. Almost filed as part of a lawsuit, and voted by The Smoking Gun as best legal document of 2003 – even though the year is just over half done.
Well researched and documented, and an interesting – and entertaining – read.
How to recognize a Weblog tool by its permalinks
It’s just a look at how you can tell which blogging software someone uses by looking at their permalinks – something I’ve noticed before.
If you go to a store and there’s 10 people on line, they would normally do something about it – say, maybe opening a new register.
But not CompUSA – they want you to wait. They enjoy it. They’re really hoping that you’ll get so bored waiting that you’ll buy more of the crap that you have at the registers.
They didn’t, however, count on me and the kids. You see, when :noah: gets bored, he likes to play. So now one of the end displays in front of the ONLY register that was open has been re-arranged. And I let him do it. He switched price tags around, he switched products around – hell, I think he even adjusted the shelves a bit too.
So that was my morning. How was yours?
I went to CompUSA to get a fan for a computer last night. They didn’t have one I was willing to buy – not at their prices, anyway – so I looked around some while on the phone with a friend, and then I went outside.
Only to discover that someone had destroyed the drivers side rear-view mirror. I can’t tell if they did it by hand or by SUV, but it’s not attached to the car anymore, except by the wire I would normally use to adjust the view.
Now, I’d like to think that if someone did this on purpose and by hand – which I guess is possible – then they had to have had a good reason. A damn good reason. And if they did it with their car, whatever it is, then how the f*ck could they not notice the noise and resistance when their car was wrecking mine?
The topper to all this, of course, was when I went back into CompUSA to find out if I could get the local number for the police. I was asked by Jabba the Security drone why I needed it – so I explained.
“Oh, then your best bet is probably 911″ she said.
Look – I said my car was vandalized, not that I was shot in the leg. If I wanted to call 911, I could have just as easily done that from my car – hell, I was just about to call the insurance company, 911 would be much easier to deal with. Grrrrr.
Our insurance company was actually pretty easy to deal with – so far. I’m supposed to hear back from an adjuster today about what the next step is. I don’t know if I need a police report – probably not, according to the person on the phone, but who knows – and I’m not sure how long it’s gonna take to get it all done.
What a way to end a fairly decent day.
And I should know – I’ve been using it off and on for a few weeks now.
SixApart has started “Five Days of TypePad,” wherein they will be revealing features and screenshots of the TypePad system.
It’s different from MovableType, but it’s also better in some ways. I would LOVE to be able to manage a photoblog on my personal site the same way I can with TypePad – and it turns out that I just might be able to, if the pricing is right.
Anyway, go check it out – it’s a must see!
The Seattle Times Magazine reports on Stopping Traffic: Can the car that Rick and Bryan built get traction?.
A home made electric car that gets 80 miles to the charge, does 0-60 in under 4 seconds and would hopefully end up costing about $20,000.
Well, the flood slowed to a trickle and then just drops every now and then. The total, to the best of my guesstimate, is about 2100 forged emails that were returned to me – and who knows how many others that made it through. It was good to note that some of the error messages were either software intervention – aka “White List” filters – or just flat out SPAM elimination software doing it’s job. Sadly, it wasn’t a lot – probably only about 5-10% of the total.
Now for some forensic research – i.e. who did it, and figuring out what I can do about it.
email roulette is the fun new toy of the internet generation. At least according to me, anyway. I just signed up, so I’ll have to see how it goes. But it sure is interesting!
WTNH TV reports that the “Penthouse Boutique” didn’t open today, but instead had a private party. Why? Because the local police department isn’t done running background checks on all the employees.
Considering that the town government and the local citizens have been fighting to keep this store from opening, one has to wonder if maybe they didn’t “accidentaly on purpose” have delays with the checks. Whatever.
The bigger news, however, is concerning “Video Pleasures” in the Devon section of town. A local church – the Kingdom Life Christian Church, to be exact – has purcased the property that the store is on – for $245,000. Church members apparently passed up vacations, sold their second cars and even gave up a full months pay to help the church buy the property.
The owner of the business has the option to renew the lease for three years in December, but it was unclear if they planned on renewing when the first article appeared. Today, however, the owner shot back: he’s announced that he plans on renewing his lease unless the church wants to buy him out. His price: at least $200,000. Guess he’s gonna be a thorn in their side for a few years to come….
Tonight we went back up to the West Farms Mall for dinner at the Rainforest Cafe again.We went for a walk around the mall first to get ready for dinner and kill some time – then we headed toward the restaurant.
When Noah first saw the facade for the restaurant, he started to whine. Then he started to say “I scared” and whine more – eventually he just jumped out of the stroller and started to act scared and refused to move.
Needless to say, expectations were not good. Emma wanted to go in since it’s her favorite restaurant in the world so far, and Noah was basically refusing to return to the scene of the crime. I signed us up for a table while Jen distracted him by taking Emma to the bathroom – this just plain irritated him, so he had something else to focus on 
.
When it was our turn to be seated, I explained that we needed something away from the gorillas – they really freaked him out last time and he was already not looking forward to them. Not that I can blame him.
Anyway, we did ok this time. Noah was a little afraid the first time the elephants we sat with did their thing, and Abby started to hav total meltdowns because of them – guess we’ll just have to see what Abby’s reaction is next time we go – oh, and Noah’s too.
Turns out when I moved to the new server, I forgot to take my index.rss file with me. I just created one, so hopefully I’ll ping in more often – and properly – now.
So today I’m going to be doing a bit of work, and a bit of cleaning. Well, maybe more cleaning than work – but there’s a good reason.
When I moved into my home office, I had planned to take it slowly and throw as much away as I could. Granted, I was only moving about 20 feet, but that’s a lot of stuff to move – so the more that went curbside, the better.
But then, during the process of moving, I forgot to take something into consideration: the kids. You see, they were always trying to get into my stuff to begin with – something about daddy’s computer stuff makes it appealing. I had various baby barricades and stuff put in place to stop them, but it didn’t always work. I was okay with that, to a degree, but then when I was moving, I just wanted to be able to sort the stuff the way I wanted – and without interference.
The problem came about when I moved my desk – now the kids were able to climb onto their toybox, as usual, but now there was nothing stopping them from going all the way over and into my “space.” Since I still had a lot to move, I could either fight with them over doing this, or just basically chuck it all into my office and deal with it later.
Guess what? It’s later. I have a hard time getting into/out of/around my office, and it’s just got to stop.
So today I’m taking photos of things to sell on eBay – things like an old computer that might get me some bucks, or some old toys that I know will sell well, or even something from my meager – er, large – er, frickin’ huge – comic book collection. Everything must go, all offers accepted…..
Someone sent me $1.00 for my XBox fund. Of course, after PayPal’s cut, that’s 0.98ยข, but that’s still just a little bit closer to my goal….
Who sent you the Washington????
This is a sweet little display. There are a bunch of new LCD’s on the market that combine the computer monitor and a TV tuner so you can watch TV at the same time as you’re doing things on the computer. This particular model apparently has nice speakers, and offers nine different locations for the picture in picture – and let’s not forget that the smaller picture can be either the tv or the computer – so when you have a long download or installation, you can watch Carson Daly until the install is done, then switch them back.
Ahhh, I can picture it now…..
The Onion reports….
Unemployed Man Getting Really Good at Unemployment
Add three kids to his story, and it sounds a lot like me. I guess I better go work on the script for the movie so I can sell the rights…
Robert is discussing. 
Chris is discussing.
Robert 16:41 on 2008/12/04 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Why wait? Why not build your own electric car? A lot of information on how to build an electric car, including cost cutting measures and design tips, can be found on Frank Didik’s website at: http://www.didik.com/didik_ev.htm. In particular, check out the section entitled “How to Build an Electric Car”, “Didik Turtle or How to build a two person electric vehicle in 14 hours” and “Critical and accurate assessment of electric vehicles”. He is the first to truly mention the pro’s and con’s of electric cars and an excellent history directory of electric cars, starting in the 1800′s. Many years ago, Didik was the found of the Electric Car Society.