Blogging Nonsense
Now relegated to Blogblivion...Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Finally, a use for my English degree!
You see, Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. ROFL! Check out the review of Snakes on a Plane: Serpentes on a Shippe! Complete with spoylerez warning. LOL!
Via Lynn S, who didn’t waste her time learning to read that stuff the way I did. 
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Blogging… Magazine?
I received an e-mail invitation to this moments a couple hours ago, and my first thought was to wonder if the people behind it actually knew anything about blogging, or if is was another “Blog Carnival” scenario.
That is, not really understanding blogging, or things like carnivals, but seeing an apparent way to piggyback on blogging for some easy cash. Or like already famed people supplementing their empires with instant-audience blogs, then holding themselves forth as blogging experts, even if they require an editor to be readable.
Just the very idea, too… a magazine for blogging? And podcasting. Which could mean it’s a magazine for podcasting that gives a wink and a nod to podcasting’s blog roots.
Anyway, seeing the lack of detail on the subscription page, I looked at the domain of the sender’s e-mail and had my thoughts reinforced, though at least they appear professional. Well, unless you click on the podcasting link and find they are so new to the topic that you get an “Index of /” page. Heh.
I might sign up regardless, as I am intrigued at the same time I am skeptical. Free is good, after all. Getting in a directory might mean a hit or two extra here and there.
I just couldn’t help those first thoughts, and can’t help that amused skepticism.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Biz/Econ Rankings
Brian Gongol created an interesting comparison between the traffic of a number of business and economics blogs and the top 200 newspapers.
While we’re only obliquely a business and economics blog, or partly, to use a simpler word, we’re reflected on the lists. In page views we correspond to Courier & Press (Evansville, IN ), and in visits we correspond to Greenville News (Greenville, SC ). Fascinating.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Rambling Thunder
Thor and Elisabeth Shue would be proud.
I can’t help mentally adding “shape of a blog!” after “‘ThunderJournal’ *lightning strike*” but maybe that’s just me.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Happy Birthday
To fellow blogging geek Chan Eddy, celebrating the big five-OH, but without the fun Hawaii part. Or is that the big five-OW?
Isn’t it remarkable how much some people already look like themselves, decades ahead of time? This is almost caption-worthy…
“Mom, could a face this innocent really have done that?”
“Not me, Dad. It was the summah people!”
“Whaddaya mean my room isn’t a ‘no wake’ zone?”
“Missing tubes from your radio? Haven’t seen ‘em.”
“Pay no attention to the device behind the curtain...”
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Carnival of the Vanities #200 - Acidman Memorial Edition
Deb posted the above picture in 2003, by way of apology to Acidman for some prior cat-taunting. Rob sure did love him some red toenails, but until this picture, I’d been apathetic. To this one I had a visceral reaction. Within weeks of Acidman as catalyst, appropriately, we’d gone from casual virtual flirting and reading each other to falling in love, making plans to meet in person, and fully expecting to be married. Almost three years later, here we are, lives changed beyond recognition, sad that our kids will never get to meet “Mr. Rob.” There will surely be some fond memories on the part of the local kids on High Point Drive.
So here were are, hosting what would ordinarily be a special event, the 200th edition of Carnival of the Vanities, the first carnival of the blogosphere. That makes it twice as old as one of the major carnival offspring, Carnival of the Recipes, which just had its 100th edition. The second major ongoing carnival, Carnival of the Capitalists, just had its 145th edition. 200? That’s a lot. That’s almost four years, which is forever in blogospheric history. Rob Smith was around back then, too, hosting the 24th edition, now lost to a “dude, where’s my archives” mishap.
Why not make it even more special? And so, here’s the 200th edition of Carnival of the Vanities, with some amazing stuff (and maybe some not so amazing; YMMV, BIITEOTB and all that), but with the addition of a celebration and remembrance of the life and interests of Rob “Acidman” Smith of Gut Rumbles, fan of fine red-tinged female feet everywhere.
Speaking of which, Leslie not only points out Project Red Toes while remembering Rob, but also displays a whole bunch of toe pics (not to be confused with toe picks) of her own.
In another post, Leslie notes “Rob was an absolute catalyst for friendship,” which is exactly in keeping with my intro, and enumerates lessons she learned from him. There are some excellent ones. I like the part about Switzerland. See also the flying monkey quote she links to at the end.
Appropriately enough to the intro above, Joanie was, if I remember right, the first fellow blogger I told about the budding long-distance relationship between me and Deb. After Rob left us, she found peace in a poolside vision of Acidman.
Livey remembers Acidman the ham, who just loved raw oysters. Ugh. Yet he makes it almost look… tasty. Great pictures!
Dax remembers the first time he met Acidman in person, and how it paid to take a chance.
James Joyner, one of my most direct contemporaries in the blogosphere, remembers Acidman as the Tall Dog he was, with many links to other tributes and reactions, and to some significant topics Rob covered. It was on account of being “discovered” by Rob almost as soon as I started blogging that I got my first major blog boost. It was almost as much of a rush to get an Acidbath as an Instalanche, and frankly more meaningful.
Laughing Wolf shares some wiseass humor in Acidman’s memory, since it was Acidman who tried to draw more of that kind of thing out of him. Better still, gun humor.
Lynn didn’t set out to write a tribute post, but her post on age is something Rob might appreciate, or even say himself. Especially: “There’s no reason why a 50-year-old shouldn’t act like a 20-year-old if they feel like it.”
Jim at Smoke on the Water was not only one of the unknown hordes of bloggers Rob inspired into it, but also one he specifically cajoled into it. Yet another life dramatically changed... and ongoing:
Life goes on. Shitty things in the news which would’ve pissed Rob off still need ranting. The laughable idiocy of the Left still need lampooning. Bourbon needs be sipped, cigars need be smoked, hogs must be roasted and fresh green peanuts need their boiling.
Jim initially reacts to Rob’s death in Silent Echoes, which has a large number of links to the reactions of others.
Speaking of reactions, Sam’s original post with the news may be no Gatorade thread, but it was one hell of a way to pick up 564 comments and 64 trackbacks in short order. I suspect Rob would love and ostensibly hate all the attention. It was moving to read the comments as they were left, shedding many tears along the way. When I read this comment by Chris Muir:
Shit.
The good ones go.
I knew the next day to look for this:
Elisson remembers Rob’s grandest blogging achievement of all, when he was “flushed with pride” to receive the Golden Plunger Award.
Jim remembers Rob in the context of their most unlikely friendship, between a Yankee lawyer and a Jawja cracker.
Later, in one of the funniest posts ever, Jim puts us there when Rob meets up with St. Peter.
Then again, Rube was intensely funny with his tale of The New Guy.
Libby has an Acid Flashback, which for some reason is the first of these to really water my eyes. Included are some links to distinctive Acidman writings. Yep, Google still has him as number one for computer fucktard.
Catfish brings us a classic story of Rob, sex, and Costa Rica. Hey, it’s an Acidman tribute; old Roscoe had to show up sometime.
At Theater of the Soul, memories of Acidman and one of his best crackpot posts ever, followed by The Carnival of the Blogfaddah, rounding up submissions remembering Rob and some favorites among his posts.
James Hooker wrote a song for Acidman.
Nic presents a slideshow, featuring Acidman and friends extensively but not exclusively.
Lisa entered this particular post with Acidman in mind, because it reminded her of his “does this make me a racist?” genre of posts. And of course that would be a resounding “no.”
Elisson believes Acidman would have enjoyed this kind of cooking. Certainly he’d appreciate that kind of memory, not to mention the… motel incident.
Finally, courtesy of Elisson, we have a series of three videos of Rob being interviewed on an Atlanta Fox station. It’s part of a series on bloggers who lost their jobs due to blogging, as he so famously did. Left out was the part about the ex having the same employer and so forth.
There ends the Acidman tribute portion of Carnival of the Vanities #200. If I missed your entry, if you let me know ASAP, I will add it in.
Traditional CotV Entries - tons of them! - begin here...
Mama Duck weaves the tale of Lil’ Duck’s sudden aversion to soap, in the showers he has always loved as much as our girls do, and how she worked around it, while Daddy Duck, well, not so much.
BirdDC deviates from its usual topic of birding to point out an absolutely horrendous act of vandalism, in the form of graffiti painted over prehistoric Native American rock painting. Along with related vandalism elsewhere.
At Rigor Vitae we meet up with the intrepid Puffy Grubman, bane of bicyclists everywhere, and fine example of Greatest Generation Syndrome. While I’m glad the author was not hurt, I’m glad of the intensely humorous anecdote, quite possible the best mainstream entry of the week.
Seriously. If you read nothing else linked here, read this one. There’s also some seriously cool art. And more here and here.
Free Money Finance departs from the usual fare to elicit comments on what famous people you’ve met, and share his own list. My first thought was that I hadn’t met any, but that’s not true at all. I’ve met several authors and artists, including Bob Eggleton, James P. Hogan, and the late Jack L. Chalker, who could amiably talk your ears off at length about this and that. And what of bloggers we meet? At what point are they “famous” versus “just some blogger”?
Batya at Shiloh Musings looks back at Israel’s history, tracing current problems to the level of socialism of the founding fathers.
Peter Kua uses the example of a rudeness survey to discuss the danger of living in denial.
Zachary Moore ponders the intrusion of a naturalistic, materialistic worldview into Christianity, and whether you can be a consistent Christian while engaging in physical violence, such as a boxing match.
Francois Tremblay has noticed that some who call themselves anarchists are anything but, thus imparting a perception of violence onto anarchists in the minds of the general public. Perhaps encouraged by those who might benefit from such misperceptions?
Barry Welford discusses how you can profit from the combination of outsourcing and the internet.
Christine Kane describes the concept of a monthly Adventure Day, which sounds like a great idea for getting out of the same old rut. I did something like that briefly when I lived in Quincy, centered on trying new things at the supermarket.
Ah, memories! Of family reunions, food… and vengeance. Dazed recalls it all well.
Ruled Britannia is a book by Harry Turtledove, big name alt-history author. Shakespeare as a major character? Sounds intriguing. Doug Mataconis reviews it well.
The Liberty Papers brings us the sorry case of the nanny state versus the family, in which we learn that the government owns you and your children, so how could you possibly make decisions for them.
Metatron. Sounds modern, doesn’t it? Like a Transformer or something. But it’s not. Reb Chaim HaQoton educates us.
Dan Melson says that volatility is a regular investor’s best friend, moving from the generic dollar cost averaging concept everyone knows about through a reasonable explanation. Don’t let the presence of numbers scare you away.
Stock Market Beat reports on Yankee Candle, complete with a picture of their tourist mecca. I once lived just down the street from Yankee Candle; luckily far enough not to have to smell it in my house.
Paul’s Tips gives you cautionary help in the form of seven simple ways to ruin your friendships. I found myself thinking of examples of most of them, as I read through, and there are people who really have no idea they’re doing whichever one, or that it can be so offensive. Everyone slips sometimes, but you know the people who talk at you, always complain, are difficult in the face of group plans, and so forth. Great post!
Supermom talks about how to turn weaknesses into strengths when operating, or contemplating, a home based business.
Adam Gurri has read Glenn‘s book, An Army Of Davids, and reviews it for us. Mainly positively, and with consideration of how webcomics are a part of the trend.
Gnotalex points out a site where waitresses tell their war stories.
Some Christians are apparently elated by Middle East bloodshed, shedding compassion for the victims in their eagerness to bring on World War III (IV, by many counts, V or, yes, III, by others) and get the proverbial end times over with. Ah, the joy. Ooh, the rapture. Jon Swift has all the details.
Miriam warns us that if we have tax business with New Castle County, we’ll need to ask for Betty, who she knows remarkably well. I just hope Patty can handle it when it’s Betty’s time to go.
Jack Yoest watched a lawyer get beat up and describes for us the gory scene, in the form of the Jim Haynes confirmation hearing. He really doesn’t sound like he ought to be a judge.
Wayne Hurlbert tells us about activist blogs, ones operated for a cause, and offers advice for them.
Jon Anderson has the goal of one million visitors, and an associated scheme in which you can essentially bet on when that will be reached, if I follow correctly.
Nubricks outlines good and bad reasons for cashing in on accumulated equity in your home.
In an excellent post, Water Causes Cancer!, ultimately about our perception of risk and nature of worry, Brad Warbiany looks at the history and nature of testing of chemicals as mutagens and carcinogens.
David St. Lawrence makes an excellent observation about doctors and similar care providers, noting the disparity that often exists between those with technical but no social skills, and those we find pleasant but who might be less competent. There’s a marketing lesson in here, for those who would accept it.
Daniel Collins notes the recent designation of the Aflaj Irrigation System of Oman as a UN World Heritage site, launching from there into the technology, history, and potential future benefit of these types of water systems.
Tam Hanna passes on customer service lessons inspired by bad experiences at a doctor’s office.
Leslie Carbone writes on the power of the market and the subjectivity of value as lessons of the famous red paperclip series of trades by Kyle MacDonald. This is similar to what I had in mind to write myself, when I saw the guy had succeeded far more quickly than I had expected. Which goes to show that the invisible element of the series of trades was publicity value, as noted in a less positive post by Warren Meyer. Less positive due to the final trade, fueled with taxpayer money. Still, it’s a pretty remarkable story, and economic/commercial lesson.
Basia asks ”who needs an SUV?“ An amusing pictorial of the alternatives is provided for your entertainment edification.
Neal Phenes compares Euro critics of Israel to teenagers, in complaining about proportionality, and likens Israel’s response to punitive damages.
At Debt Free there are questions about whether our soldiers deserve the best, and why they appear not to be getting it.
Adam Graham reflects on his call center experience - all very familiar to me, the time when the worst was happening, and the opportunities we get now and then to make a real difference to other people.
Soccer Dad promotes the library as a resource for accessing paid online sources that you might not want to subscribe to personally.
Western Resistance brings us another best post of this carnival, this one somber rather than funny, and long but worth every moment to read. In her own words, Flora del Mindanao tells us why she could not remain a Muslim. It’s a horrific tale of being enslaved and abused as an imam’s household servant, amazingly lucky to have escaped and lived to tell the world about it.
Dad at raising4boys.com reflects on a study that shows fraternal birth order affects sexual orientation. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Finally, Nickel would like us all to know that Dish Network customer service sucks. But do they at least have good hold music?
That’s it for the 200th edition of Carnival of the Vanities. If you entered and weren’t in here, you missed the deadline, I goofed, you entered multiple times and I only used one of them, or you were not a blog. You can probably figure out which applies.
Next week’s scheduled host is Siempre, Cait. After that, nobody is lined up until the special 208th edition, that is, 4 years, which will apparently be hosted by the guy in charge, per tradition.
Want to volunteer to host CotV one week? E-mail host [at] firstcarnival [dot] com if you’d like to sign up. Remember that it can be a lot of work, even without being a special edition, depending on how you choose to approach it. Intentional verbosity will slow you down every time.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Acidman Memorial Carnival of the Vanities Will Be Here Next Week
(Updated to make this post stay at the top. New entries will be below this one for the time being.)
I will be hosting the next edition of Carnival of the Vanities here.
Two things distinguish it.
First, this is carnival number 200! Not exactly the 4th anniversary edition, but a significant round number that’s getting up there and shouting out that we’re close.
More importantly, this has been planned as the Acidman memorial edition of Carnival of the Vanities, which he once hosted in its early days.
What does this mean?
You may enter any superlative recent post you want to show off, as usual. However, you may additionally or alternatively enter a post, recent or not, in memory or celebration of the late Rob Smith of Gut Rumbles.
Such posts might be about Rob himself, even just pictures. Your memories of him. How he pissed you off. How he helped you out.
They might be on topics Rob often covered or would appreciate. Boiled peanuts, grits, and other southern specialties. Red toenails. John Prine and other music. Guitars and performing. Jawja. Life in hillbilly country and the south in general. Bionic dicks. Family. Humor he’d appreciate. Politicians and their antics he’d disdain. Evil exes and the games they play. Guns. You get the idea. You might write something inspired specifically by one of his posts, or following up from it, or responding to it.
If you can’t write something, or have nothing you’ve written in the past that fits the bill, I’ll even take selected “best of Acidman” posts that people might care to submit from his own collection.
How to enter? Entries get e-mailed to cotvmail -at- gmail.com, and should include blog name, blog URL, post title, post URL, entrant name, author name if different, and a brief description of the post. Please specifically note if your entry is an Acidman-related one, if it’s not glaringly obvious.
Entries are due by 6:00 PM eastern time on Tuesday, July 18, and I will attempt to publish the CotV post before Wednesday, July 19 is out.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Sadie Makes Fark
Sadie has been Farked. Learned via Jen, whose blog is the background of the picture in question. It’s the picture from this post.
I signed up for a Fark account so I could leave a comment telling people, well… this:
Just to let everyone know, that’s a picture of my daughter (not a boy, short hair at the time notwithstanding), Sadie, from a series I took and posted at Accidental Verbosity of her “reading” different blogs on my monitor. The one with Jen’s (Lintefiniel Musings) was probably the best of those. It was posted on July 18, 2005, so she’d have been just short of 10 months old at the time.
I just love a lot of these and will have to save them for her to see when she’s old enough to appreciate it.
Trouble is, it won’t let you comment for the first 24 hours after signing up. Sheesh.
Some of you might enjoy checking them out. They can be freaky, but mostly they’re quite cool and downright LOL amusing.
Friday, June 30, 2006
In Memory Of Acidman
“There’s nothing good about fireants.”
He used to cuss out the little buggers, and he got a kick out of this.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Wow
We’ve seldom come anywhere close to going over our bandwidth, which over time has grown to 23 GB per month as Hosting Matters has upped it to coincide with changes in costs and competition for hosting. I don’t really even check to see what it’s been, except incidentally, as today. I want to host a domain for my nephew, and I was comparing space available under elhide versus AV. Elhide has this odd problem where it thinks it is out of disk space. I upload large zip files of pictures, 50 mb or so each, four at a time. Deb’s father downloads them. I delete them. Rinse, repeat. Last time I deleted them, they didn’t release the space, but they are gone. So that account is technically fine, if I have HM support do whatever they have to do to make the disk space counter tally properly, but I also have other stuff going on there that maybe makes me not want to host an extra domain.
So I checked AV and it’s so-so on disk space, but instead of almost no bandwidth, we’re already at 60% for this month, which puts us on target to almost exactly use the whole deal. But… I see that in may we used 27.6 GB out of our 23 GB available! See, there’s a great thing about Hosting Matters. Another hosting company might have been all over us, looking to collect the extra charge.
The sad thing is that the next plan up includes 28 GB, which would have just covered that. We may have to switch. I can keep the bandwidth partly in control by never uploading zips of pictures to AV, which I do sometimes, though there’s only disk space for two at once.
While I was looking at adding a new business domain to elhide’s space, I was also thinking of getting hosting for that elsewhere, adding another basket for my eggs. Without resorting to Verizon, Mindspring and Gmail accounts also available but not really used, if HM goes down to a denial of service attack or other serious problem, I am completely cut off.
I looked at GoDaddy, since I have domains registered there.
They are insanely low cost and make HM look stingy on disk space and bandwidth. However, it seems each e-mail account is limited to 10 MB. Normally that’s fine, but I actually do need the ability to have my e-mail accounts unlimited in size. One, I can be e-mailed some rather large attachments. Two, I download the e-mails in more than one location and leave mail on the server for a specified number of days. It’s a safety mechanism.
Also, I didn’t formally ask, but I found mention online that a hosting account there is for one domain, period. I can add a bunch of domains to any given HM hosting account. Nobody without that is likely to get my business.
Anyway, I’m amazed that our bandwidth has actually gotten that large. In the past few months we have gone from routinely in the 200-something hits a day range per Site Meter (which misses a lot of actual traffic) to 400-something, some days 500-something, which is a big difference. We do have photo-heavy content, whch also matters.
Well. We’ll see what happens. At least I know to watch the meter.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Hackbarth, Sean Hackbarth
Sean has something he wants everyone linking him to know.
So be sure to comply. It’s not like he went and adopted an unbloggable symbol by which to be known and linked.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Almost There! (Updated: We’re There!)
We have fewer than 100 hits to go to reach 250,000. Woohoo!
Depending how late I am up and how traffic is, probably it’ll happen in the wee hours, but perhaps before I go to bed.
Update:
Visitor number 250,000 was on shawcable.net, from British Columbia, Canada, using Windows XP and IE6, at 12:44 AM, referred by Google for a search of:
erica durance stats figure
Friday, June 02, 2006
Oh No!
It’s the Phillips Screwdriver Paradox!
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Fox News Spam
Well, we got hit with another Fox News comment spam. The e-mail address of DDFV@LINA.COM is probably bogus, and lina.com is a parked/link-farmed domain with pop-ups. I searched the IP address:
Search results for: 68.175.32.64
OrgName: Road Runner HoldCo LLC
OrgID: RRNY
Address: 13241 Woodland Park Road
City: Herndon
StateProv: VA
PostalCode: 20171
Country: USReferralServer: rwhois://ipmt.rr.com:4321
NetRange: 68.172.0.0 - 68.175.255.255
CIDR: 68.172.0.0/14
NetName: ROADRUNNER-NYC-4
NetHandle: NET-68-172-0-0-1
Parent: NET-68-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: DNS1.RR.COM
NameServer: DNS2.RR.COM
NameServer: DNS3.RR.COM
NameServer: DNS4.RR.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 2002-11-25
Updated: 2004-03-26OrgAbuseHandle: ABUSE10-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: Abuse
OrgAbusePhone: +1-703-345-3416
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@rr.comOrgTechHandle: IPTEC-ARIN
OrgTechName: IP Tech
OrgTechPhone: +1-703-345-3416
OrgTechEmail: abuse@rr.com# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2006-05-31 19:10
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.
This appears to mean someone doing this from home, or maybe from a business using RoadRunner service. My guess is someone or some group does this comment spamming of Fox News article URLs in an effort to make Fox look bad.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Quarter Million In Sight
As I start to write this, we are 3,381 hits away from a quarter million here at AV. Woohoo! At the rate we’ve been going, if there were strictly weekdays involved, we could expect that in about seven days or so. Given the slowness probable today and tomorrow, and assuming we don’t get a bonanza of “Erica Durance nude” or “Todd Gross fired” type of search hits, it’s likely to be an extra day or so. Maybe Monday the 5th or so; an auspicious day, when my father turns 39 for the umpteenth time.
That 250,000 doesn’t count the 131,000 and counting at my old blog, some of which came from sharing Site Meter with the original info pages for Carnival of the Capitalists. Which has its own now, almost 10,000 and counting. It also doesn’t count Deb’s old blog traffic.
Speaking of my old blog and searches, it is amazing the search traffic I get over there. Unless I start posting there again, which is never outside the realm of possibility, the traffic is all residual from unupdated links and searchs. One of my favorites is for naked vulvas, and other terms in combination with vulvas.
All on account of this post on shaving down there, and the confusion in terms between vulva and vagina, and lingual shifts.
I’ve probably never mentioned vulvas and vaginas here. Just celebrity (mostly) female names and words like nude, naked, without clothes, photos, fake, topless, and so forth. Otherwise instead of Erica Durance nude, naked, topless, house of the dead, and such, for all I know we’d get searches for Erica Durance’s vagina or vulva. Sorry, we’re not privy to those.
I sometimes fret that it’s not quality traffic, but Erica Durance has been a huge boon for traffic. Some of the other names have been as well. The only things that come close to celebrity names and associated keywords are technical items when I post about work problems or other geek stuff. Make a few of the right posts mentioning the right errors or technology, and you get a steady stream of traffic if you never post anything else. The celebrity names can depend on when shows air or who’s hot at a given time. For instance, West Wing has ended, so there should be far fewer people looking for Janel Moloney nude. But there will be some, and they add up. So I keep expanding my nude, naked, without clothes, undressed, dressed, fake photo, video, film, topless list and posting it periodically, even if it doesn’t attract as much traffic as ugly things like beheading videos: Kate Hudson, Emma Watson, Linda Park, Jolene Blalock, Alexis Bledel, Lauren Graham, Keiko Agena, Liza Weil, Amber Tamblyn, Becky Wahlstrom, Mary Steenburgen, Mageina Tovah, Constance Zimmer, Hilary Duff, Sprague Grayden, Lacey Chabert, Lindsay Lohan, Erica Durance, Allison Mack, Kristen Kreuk, Emma Taylor-Isherwood, Meg Ryan, Kathryn Morris, Jorja Fox, Emily Procter ("Proctor"), Moira Kelly, Mary McCormack, Janel Moloney, Melissa Fitzgerald, Lisa Edelstein, Elisabeth Moss (did you know migraines are real?), Teri Polo, Mary-Louise Parker, Annabeth Gish, Jennifer Finnigan, Haylie Duff, Lea Thompson, Amy Pietz, Melissa Theuriau, Hallee Hirsh, Lauren Storm, Kristy Wu, Jill Hennessy, Kathryn Hahn, Caroline Dhavernas, Katie Finneran, Diana Scarwid, Tracie Thoms, Jewel Staite, Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin, Summer Glau, Sarah Paulson, Helena Bonham Carter, Missi Pyle, Annasophia Robb, Julia Winter, Dakota Fanning, Maura Tierney, Parminder Nagra, Linda Cardellini, Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell, Kelly Rowan, Mischa Barton, Melinda Clarke, Rachel Bilson, Kellie Pickler, Kelly Pickler, Katharine “Katâ€? McPhee, Melissa McGhee, Lisa Tucker, Mandisa, Paris Bennett, Becky O’Donohue, Stevie Scott, Brenna Gathers, Heather Cox, Kinnik Sky, Ayla Brown, Nicole Vicius ("Vicious") (of Diet Coke fame, and I think also in the latest Old Navy commercials), Mandy Amano, Lisa Ryder, Lexa Doig, Laura Bertram, Brandy Ledford.
But I digress.
We go through each thousand so quickly these days that I don’t normally note even the five or ten thousand demarcations, nevermind in-betweens. But 250,000 is a big deal number. A quarter of a million. Nothing compared to some of our contemporaries like this guy and that guy, who tried harder to become traffic powerhouses whatever it took. Pretty cool nonetheless. We’ll be watching for the big moment.
Friday, May 19, 2006
Three Wishes?
This is something I am borrowing and paraphrasing from the soc.history.what-if newsgroup, where I saw it last night. I haven’t actually dreamed up answers of my own for it yet, but perhaps some of you would like to tackle it via the comments, or the old blog-and-link method.
The proverbial lampbound genie comes out and is willing to grant you three politically or economically themed wishes, as opposed to ones for self-aggrandizement. This means new social, economic or political policies you’d want instituted in the world, disliked politicians or laws you’d want replaced or revoked, or that sort of thing. What are your three wishes? Feel free to elaborate on reasoning and expected consequences.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
CotV #191
...will be hosted here tomorrow. The cutoff for entries is 6 o’clock this evening. To enter, you can send an e-mail to cotvmail at gmail dot com, or use one of the alternate methods described here. Want to host? E-mail zeuswood at harshlymellow dot com. It really is great fun.
Fox News Spam
Has anyone out there who blogs figured out what the deal is with the Fox News comment spam?
I delete it as soon as it appears, so you wouldn’t have seen it here. What happens is someone comes along and leaves an unrelated comment on a recent post, saying to check out and linking a new news article at Fox News.
The question is whether someone does this to make Fox look like scum, or whether someone at Fox actually has intentionally employed people to do this. Either way, I’d like it to stop, but the latter would be particularly bad.
Update:
Ed Cone addressed the Fox News comment spam issue. Brian Lewis at Fox News tell him they are not behind it. Or at least it is unknown by the Fox “communications honcho,” which is possible and they could still be the genuine source.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Am I A Liberal?
I’ve seen this “are you a liberal” test everywhere and thought it might be amusing to answer the questions. But do I answer based on absolute ideals and assume my answer encompasses the idea that things were rolled back to a position that makes the answer valid? Or do I answer in either a way that is realistic and practical but points us more in the right direction, or a way that accepts that if you’re going to go a certain way, then take it all the way and do it right? Hmmm…
1) Repeal the estate tax repeal: Estate taxes are evil. No.
2) Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI: No. This is government economic intervention at its worst, and then to put it on autopilot…
3) Universal health care: How about a market in health care? The government and the AMA got us where we are today. The lack of same is needed to make it right. But in the real world we are headed for universal health care and it’s not wrong to talk about how best to get there, even if it’s not where we should be heading and will be less superior to the hybrid mess we have now than a market would be.
4) Increase CAFE standards: No. How about letting the market function, rather than letting the government dictate what we should drive and what it should run on. How about letting ethanol, as well as petroleum, have a market. How about letting refineries and nuclear plants exist, and encouraging technology if only by getting out of the way.
5) Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice: As always, a state issue if a government issue at all, which it’s not. In the world as it is, sure, for the most part. In the world as it should be, the government and education wouldn’t intersect any more than would government and reproduction. As things are, abstinence-only education is outrageously stupid, like something an anti-human death cult might dream up.
6) Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code: Aren’t these mutually exclusive, and besides, who says so-called progressivity is good and right? There should be the minimum taxes possible. They should be on consumption before income, fees for specific services before consumption, and be less invasive of the general citizen’s privacy than the KGB’s NSA’s crazy compilation of phone records. I’ve sometimes called gasoline taxes my favorite tax, funny as that may sound these days, because it makes a relatively direct connection between provision of roads and payment for use of same. Not that the government necessarily is the only way to do roads, hard as that may be to imagine. A few days ago we were talking about how great the interstates are and an alt-history “what if” based on the feds never having built them.
7) Kill faith-based funding: You mean kill government funding of things the government wasn’t conceived to do? Okay. In the world as it is, not so fast. Does it descularize the government? Does it establish a government church, or favor one religion over another? No? What’s the problem then? Does it get help where needed at least as efficiently as alternatives? Yeah? What’s the problem then? If we’re going to steal people’s money and throw it around, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this.
8) Reduce corporate giveaways: What are corporate giveaways? Making roads cheap and plentiful so commerce can happen? Government recording of patents? A court system and stable system of laws for ease in doing business and resolving disputes? The fact that corporations are a government-sponsored legal structure granted a form of personhood and some legal benefits? Government sponsored or encouraged monopolies? Shall I go on? Some might say almost none of this should be governments job, and even that corporations as such shouldn’t be able to exist. Some might say we should interfere in business as much as needed to shape society into our own mental image. But they would be wrong.
9) Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan: Don’t you mean “eliminate Medicare and the Medicare drug plan”? After all, that would be part of number three, and an overwhelming contributor to the current non-market in health care. Real world answer would be “you mean it’s not? Why?”
10) Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions: The knee jerk answer is “duh, yeah.” Apparently there is more to this, legally, and the government that would go after them for underfunding has also made it impossible to do otherwise. In the real world… heck, in the real world it’s still nothing to do with the government, because it’s a contractual obligation between business and employee, or union and member, in which nothing should interfere.
11) Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana: Hell yeah, and the states should leave the people alone on same.
12) Paper ballots: Duh. Even if we’re voting electronically, it’s stupid not to have a clear and extensive paper trail.
13) Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies: And a gobbledy goo gah to you too. In the sense that daycare should be easier to get into as a business, so there is less regulation, zoning, etc. to contend with, absolutely. Funny how less keeps meaning more. Pro-family? No. Get away from our families, thank you very much.
14) Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes: No. Eliminate FICA taxes. Which in the real world must either be gradual or replaced by an adequate, all-encompassing consumption-based tax. This administration and congress missed such an opportunity to be transgenerational heroes.
15) Marriage rights for all, which includes “gay marriage” and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens: I said stay out of our families. Marriage is not a government institution, nor is it something for the government to meddle in. In the real world, then yes, but I’d rather see government out entirely. Certainly the feds have no place in defining or legislating marriage. Immigration, that’s a whole other topic that this only just nudges, but under the status quo, then quicker transition is to the good.
16) Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration: Absolutely. It was essentially written by the creditors for the creditors. At least, given the government sets law for bankruptcy in the first place, it should go. And if government’s role includes creating the legal structure within which people do business, having such a thing as law to handle bankruptcies isn’t out of place.
Others answering these rather arbitrary questions include Glenn Reynolds, Dean Esmay, Daniel Drezner, Megan McArdle, Stephen Bainbridge, and Pixy Misa.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Take a Leak
How’s this for the goofiest thing ever: Encouraging bloggers to link other blogs!
Amazing. Why didn’t anyone ever think of that before? Blogs and linkage going together? Who knew!
Or have I been unwittingly transported out of the blogosphere, to a new place where links are hoarded and camaraderie stifled? Guess I should pay more attention to the ‘sphere around me so I don’t get confuzzled.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Erica Durance NSFW and Search Spike Oddness
I have a lot of fun loading the blog with evocative (provocative?) search terms that get people landing here unexpectedly. Probably the most successful ever has been Erica Durance nude, naked, topless, without clothes, free pictures, photos, whatever. Mostly the first one though.
Erica Durance is the babe they brought into the Smallville world to play Chloe’s cousin, Lois Lane. I haven’t watched Smallville in ages, though not for lack of interest. It’s the tradition I have of compulsive show watching drifting off into “whatever,” whether triggered by schedule changes or viewing conflicts or lapses in quality or what. In this case I figure there’s always DVD eventually.
Unlike most celebrities, she did appear nude in a film, House of the Dead, and at least one picture of her topless does exist.
We recently had a strange spike in traffic, primarily from image searches for Erica Durance that treated us as if we were hosting the NSFW (not safe for work) picture you will see below the fold, somehow passing it through from another site, in their 2004 section. The archive it sent people to on our blog didn’t even appear to mention Erica Durance, let alone link the picture. Crazy interwebs. And so we got this:
Makes me wonder what happened on the latest Smallville to provoke the surge of searches for Erica Durance in some state or another of undress.
If we’re going to get the traffic, we might as well have the real thing available. So here it is, below the fold:
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Online Integrity
Via Glenn Reynolds, this Online Integrity Statement of Principles makes sense to me, and as far as I can recall is something I have always inherently followed.
I see no reason not to be counted in. Especially as one of those who sought pseudonymity initially, and still is largely identified that way.
Monday, May 01, 2006
Newstex?
Has anyone who reads us syndicated their blog through Newstex? We just received an offer to do so and wondered how it works out in reality.
My guess is that it’s harmless, worth some extra links in otherwise unlikely places, and given the nature of our content has almost no chance of ever accumulating into a single $25 minimum royalty payment, let alone enough of them to be meaningful compared to $100 or so a month in ad revenue.
Do I read it right? Or is it not harmless? Or more likely to be remunerative than I’d expect?
Saturday, April 29, 2006
I Preferred When DOS Only Meant “Disk Operating System”
Why yes, we’re here. Yesterday morning? Not so much.
There was a Saudi-based denial of service (DoS) attack against Hosting Matters, where we are hosted, yesterday, lasting a few hours. I’ve seen mention that it came back for a while after 9:00 last night, but I didn’t observe that and have no idea if it’s true. There was rumor that the attack was aimed at a specific blog, then point blank denial from HM that the particular bellicose blog was the target. Be that as it may, if you go around goading a bully to punch you in the stomach as hard as he can, and the bully punches you so hard you lose your lunch all over your neighbors, don’t be surprised if your neighbors aren’t unhappy with the bully exclusively.
Anyway, this made things interesting, as I was working from home and couldn’t get work e-mails. This is going to lead to changes in how I have things configured. Any internal e-mail to me forwards to an elhide.com account I can get anywhere. That’s on HM too. Along with the business site and thecotc.com, which is supplied hosting directly by the business site, a couple of client web sites, and one client’s e-mail. My new business sites I’ve been too busy to pursue are hosted in elhide.com’s space, which meant they’d have been down too had that mattered. For me the e-mail was the main thing. The big client’s MX record points inside the building, so even as their web site was down, e-mail worked fine.
Apart from any notions I may have of diversifying my hosting, and apart from having made sure people have Gmail and Verizon e-mail addresses as backup, I think I will switch it so internal client e-mail (to clarify, my office is on their network and I am directly on their internal e-mail, which is great when I am at the office) forwards to Gmail instead. In turn, the Gmail forwards to my primary account, so it would look the same. But if elhide.com were down, I could go to Gmail and have complete continuity.
I almost went and blogged at my original backup site yesterday: InstaJay. That was meant as an “if Hosting Matters is down” backup to my old blog, but after I set it up, HM got more reliable. I may setup something else as an AV backup, but you might bookmark the one I just mentioned so if I do post “we’re down, here’s what’s happening” someone will actually see it, even if I don’t create and publicize another backup site.
Michelle Malkin took it upon herself to be the reporter of record regarding the outage. She offered to list and link all the blogs that were affected, so I sent her ours as an experiment. I guess we don’t count.
My old cell phone also chose yesterday to act up, spontaneously rebooting itself, and being found to be off completely as it sat on the charger. That made me say “well, time for the cell upgrade project like NOW,” until I discovered the back cover was loose and letting the battery disconnect randomly. Doh. I had been thinking I’d try to get a mixed-use portable web and e-mail and phone device as part of updating the cell situation, but maybe it will make more sense just to get a family plan with two or three basic phones (me and Deb, and possibly one to leave at the office), then later do something about “e-mail anywhere” (and web if possible). We’ll see. Just because it’ll officially be a business expense doesn’t mean I don’t want to do the whole thing as reasonably in cost as possible.
Okay, enough digression. This was supposed to be just an obligatory “we were down and we’re back” post. Oh, and I meant to note that from my perspective we’re loading even slower than ever, as if things atill aren’t completely right in host land. Hope that goes away.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
No Comment
When I try to comment here I get “Unable to receive your comment at this time.”
Would anyone else care to test it for me? If it works I’ll see it, and if it doesn’t, you could drop me an e-mail to let me know…
Update:
Apparently the problem is a security feature that disallows the posting of a comment identical to an existing comment. Thus my attempts to comment “Me too” and “Same here” and “test” failed. Perhaps I’ll modify that setting…
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Pretty Cool
We’ve been linked by Melissa McNamara in her Blogophile column at CBS News.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Would you rather?
Via Caltechgirl, a perfect meme to kick off our Friday:
Barefoot or Shoes? Barefoot. Or even better, Birkenstocks. Which I guess is a vote for shoes, but I think they’re more like the perfect cross between the two states.
Tea- Sweet or Unsweetened? Sweet. It’s not tea if it’s not sweet tea. Gawd I miss the South. You just can’t get proper tea anywhere else.
Clothes- fitted or loose? Loose. My tendency anyway, but a must for nursing, not to mention crawling around on the floor with the Sadie.
Fish- fresh water or salt water? Skip the fish. Ugh.
Gravy or plain? Depends. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, I’ll generally go for gravy, but otherwise I generally don’t bother. Then, of course, there’s the sort of gravy that provides a reason for biscuits to exist...yum.
House- spotless or lived in? ROFL! Two under two. Do the math. 
Solitude or people? Solitude. I’d kill for an evening to myself right about now…
Beer or alcohol? Tequila. Heh. Though I haven’t had a drink since sometime before I got pregnant with Sadie, so I’m scared to ever drink again. I was a lightweight in the first place.
Fiction or non-fiction? Depends on my mood, but fiction more often, probably.
Weather- hot or cold? Hot. Steamy, humid, sweating in the shower hot. As long as there’s an air-conditioned space handy so that I can sleep at night, anyway. I never did master sleeping overheated.
Of course, there are so many other important questions that didn’t make the list, like “fold or scrunch?” or the classic “yellow v. green” debate, but the meme is young, no? If I had another cup of coffee in me, I’d probably try to add to this one. Any ideas?
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Roundup madness
I’m late with this, but I have to note it anyway just because it’s so insanely impressive: Miller’s Time has a Bear Flag League roundup. Wow.
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Taxes
So… have any of the bloggers who read this ever filed revenue from advertising or whatnot and expenses associated with blogging as part of their taxes?
Thursday, April 06, 2006
I was hoping to fill the empty space here a bit…
But our DVD player chose this week to expire in a fit of irony (Jay got DVDs for his birthday, you see), and the bit of guilty me-time it (in cooperation with the Baby Einstein Company) buys? Gone, baby, gone.
In other news, Sadie is right this minute having a breakdown because she wants grapes and we don’t have any. This is newsworthy because she’s whining, “gay, gay, gay,” and she almost never asks for anything by name or whines with any specificity. Yay for language development.