More silliness

I find this comic exceedingly funny, as you may have guessed.

Biggest tool in the Senate?

From an AP story by Matthew Daly about a plan by U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that would lead to universal health-care coverage:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said his support for the bill made it “tripartisan” in the Senate. “This is a big day,” he said, calling the bill “a big step forward” to achieving private, universal health care.

Tripartisan, eh? So, independents are a party? Or Joe Lieberman is a party? If he's a party, I'm not going.

I don't want to dress up in polyester, drink Shirley Temples, eat miniature hot dogs and talk about how "we all thought the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was legitimate!"

Network failure leads to screwing off

A drawback - maybe the only drawback - to today's news-gathering operations is the utter reliance on computers and networks to get the job done, and that's only really a drawback when the network conks out.

Anyway, guess what is happening right now? So, while we wait for help to arrive, here I am, wishing I had photos to upload of all the great stuff I've been weaving, or video from the balloon ride, or...

So much for that. How about a cool cover of a Warren Zevon song?

Play it, Jamie

I know you've all heard this before... This is one of those songs I am never not in the mood to listen to.

What's music got to say?

Plenty! Or so it seems.

Having read the butterfly lady's post on research into what music can tell you about yourself, I took the test. I think it was pretty much right on.

Laugh until you cry

That's what I did, here.

Here's a for-instance:

Eerie similarity, no?

and

Drat, foiled again

Well, the Postal Service is on cracking down: The service now collects a fee when it returns "undeliverable-as-addressed items that were posted abroad with a United States return address."

Damn, and that was such a good way to send shit for free.

Anyway, this is 2008, so they mean business: Now the address to which the items are "returned" will have to pay First-Class Mail International postage on the item(s).

I'm not completely sure about the plausibility of posting your parcel in the foreign country without stamps, but this opens up a whole new world of sticking people you don't like: Next time you're in Afghanistan, put their return address on a bunch of undeliverable-as-addressed lead weights. It will be a double prank if you can find something equally heavy but much less desirable to receive in the mail. I'd vote for uranium, but that will only work when you're on a visit to Niger.

Snow days? Pah

A brief reminder of what winter weather looks like blew away with the breeze the past couple of days. Snow fell like mad (for here), but now it is so mild I wore a T-shirt and shorts to walk the dogs. Pretty nice, really.

Penny-pincher me is always happy to see toasty weather in the "cold" season, so as to keep the gas bill down, but ex-New Hampshire resident me is sad to see the flurries flee. What can you do.

Still in the Granite State, sort of

I realized this morning when I was asked for my phone number that I still have a New Hampshire area code, even though it's been almost three years since we moved. Three years! Freaky.

I like having the (603) at the front of my number - keeps people wondering.

All quiet on the front

I would call it the western front, but my father's definition of The West is west of Interstate 5, and the eastern front hasn't got the same ring to it.

Anyway, this is my way of saying, not a lot is going on in sunny Walla Walla. About the top piece of excitement just now is deciding what kind of casserole to make over the weekend. I want to do something new...

Avast, ye dogs

My pirate name is:

Red Davy Bonney

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

A list of games

Games owned by me:

Scrabble
Super Scrabble
Scrabble (auf Deutsch)
Boggle (Newfy loves this one - so soothing for her nerves)
Cribbage (for that matter, cards)
Mah jong
Go
The Farming Game (like Monopoly, but much better)
Abalone (the butterfly lady's favorite, for sure)
Tangrams
A few hundred old-school video games, but those are on the computer

I'm probably missing something here...

Information and communication technology and you

The Pew Internet Project is running a project that uses a short self-report to slot people into one of several categories based on how they use information and communication technology. You can participate, and find out your "type" here.

Me? Omnivore:

"They have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace and express themselves online." (A Pew description)

According to Pew, this slice is about 8 percent of the population, with a median age of 28 (the youngest of the 10 available types), have the most gizmos and the highest rate of broadband Internet access at home.

I suppose, but I know people in this segment who are way more of gearheads than me, and who are way more involved. Maybe the 8-percenters need a special test :)

An amusing pastime

A friend of mine in New Hampshire discovered this typing test online, and being the competitive sort, she badgered the rest of the newsroom into taking the test. Sealed off from the outside world in our reconditioned warehouse in an industrial park in Hudson, we may all have had a skewed perspective, but this was our idea of fun...

Oh man, another missed holiday

You might not have noticed, but May 1 was proclaimed Law Day, U.S.A., by our busy president.

His proclamation included this summons to action:

I call upon all the people of the United States
to observe this day with appropriate
ceremonies and activities.
I also call upon Government officials to display
the flag of the United States
in support of this national observance.

I'm not sure Part A was accomplished, but I'm pretty sure Part B was not a big deal. What constitutes appropriate activities and ceremonies? I'm not sure, and I'm also not sure this big day will hold up under much scrutiny. To wit, check out the creepy theme for this year's Law Day:

"Liberty Under Law: Empowering Youth, Assuring Democracy"

What? Why is liberty *under* law? To keep the militias down?

w e i r d

You know you're not from around here when...

you're watching Saturday Night Live and you are puzzled as to why the show has a note at the bottom of the screen indicating it is taped version of a show that was broadcast live.

The butterfly lady turned to me and said, "but it is supposed to be live!"

Between that and my new Bob's Clam Hut (Kittery, Maine) T-shirt, I'm thinking I'm probably not really from around here yet. I'm not convinced I ever will be.

Places worth going

• Chris Jordan has a cool and somewhat illuminating art project, here. No doubt this would be impressive in person. Reminds me of a guy in New Hampshire who collected 1 million pennies with his kids (I think they donated the $10k to charity), just so he could show them what a million is. That's a cool project, too.
• Not yet depressed about the state of math education in this country? Well, check out a quick comparison of British and Chinese math education in this BBC story. The contrast between problems at the bottom of the story is, alas, stark.
• The Onion's stories are usually obviously bogus, but this one, about RadioShack, seems a little too plausible. One of my friends (the only person I know who extends pronouncing wolf, the animal, as "woof" to what you can do with food, as in "woof down burgers") worked at RadioShack during the 1980s in, I believe, a Lynn, Mass., strip mall. What a godawful dump. Anyway, he said they were paid minimum wage, plus commission, and were instructed to try to upsell every customer. An example: "If a guy comes in looking to buy an LED, steer him toward the three-pack. That'll get you a better commission!"
  

Blogosphere civility code

After reading (and, I'm afraid to say, adding to) the Blogger Code of Conduct that Tim O'Reilly and others are formulating, I am reminded of a column I wrote a few years ago, about beaked whales. Not a whole hell of a lot is know about beaked whales, ironic considering their size (up to 15 tons, I believe) but not at all ironic considering their habitat, which is the deep, open oceans of the world.

My column - written after a species was described in more detail than is common for beaked whales - was a small mourning for the demise of the ocean - or at least that small part of it - as a great unkown. I like the unmapped and uncharted places just because of what they represent: a great frontier.

In the same way, the Web is a place for exploration, a world that isn't fully known and that has many odd corners. Most of the time I spend online, I spend at mainstream sites or at blogs that are written by typical, but interesting, people.

However.

Although I prefer to carry on civil conversations, such as they are, online, and I prefer to spend my time in places that wouldn't raise anybody's eyebrows, I do not think my predilections should be codified for others to fall in line with.

What am I talking about? Well, here's part of O'Reilly's draft of a code of conduct:

Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.
The next time you're tempted to vent your anger or frustration online, imagine you're talking to your mother. Or if you have no respect for your mother, imagine you're talking to a big, mean dude that you met on the street. Or simply imagine the person you're speaking to as a real person, standing in front of you. Would you say what you're saying to them if you were in the same room?

Is he kidding? That's almost as good as "If you didn't bring enough for everyone, you can't share with anyone." What the fuck. Is the Web a fucking grade school?

I understand the serious nature of what has spurred all this talk of codes of conduct, but give me a break. Or better yet, don't. Go ahead, fuckers, spend your time cooking up your little book of rules, and let's just see how many people bother to read it.

Strange routes to Davy Jones's locker

Which, for the record, is at the bottom of the ocean and is the final home for drowned seafarers. You'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't) at how many people want to know "where is Davy Jones's locker?"

You'd also be surprised, if you were me, at how many people (3 in the last day, one from Mass., one from Ohio, one from NYC) got here by searching for Mark McGwire's favorite food.

Other searches that lead to me:

• strep nose infection (really, the No. 1 way people find my blog)
  
• recipe for acorn squash, Indian (yum, but I'm not sure I have any recipes for Indians. Squash, though, sure.)
  
• eggplant and okra indian dishes (also yum)
  
• pse ethical dilemmas pharmacy (What's the dilemma? Lots of drugs have more than one use.)
  
• "Plane Clothes" Lack of Anonymity at the Federal Air Marshal Service Compromises Aviation and National Security (hilarious report)
  
• I like toast too. It is warm and crispy and a perfect (place for jelly to lay. Now stay away from me Frampton, I ain't got shit to say to you!)

Damn, that's a lot of parentheticals.