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July 30, 2004
99rooms
This is amazing. I'm constantly surprised by the creativity and level of skill that goes into these types of Flash adventures. It's so easy to screw this up, but 99rooms does it right.
Don't be an asshat
Donate to the AIDS Marathon program
As many of you know, Micki and I are training to run the Honolulu Marathon this December. We are doing this to raise money for AIDS patient care through AIDS Project Los Angeles. If you have yet to donate money to us, you are an asshat. I know, I know... Harsh words. I knew you say that, you asshat.
Want to relinquish your asshat status? Time to cast aside the shackles of asshattery that so plague you? GIVE ME SOME GOD DAMNED MONEY!
Here's where you do it:
http://www.aidsmarathon.com/participant.asp?runner=LA-8043&Year=2004&EventCode=HN04
July 28, 2004
9-11 Commission Report
The Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United State
The final report of the 9-11 Commission was made available this past week. It can be downloaded by chapter or in it's entirety here. It can also be purchased for $10 from many major book stores including Borders and Barnes and Noble.
July 27, 2004
Love. True love.
Apparently, Oprah Winfrey was so enamoured with a chicken curry sandwich that she had while in San Luis Obisbo, that she offered to invest in the cafe to keep it from closing. Yeah. Word somehow reached her that the resteraunt's doors may be closing, so she cut the owner a check. Is anyone else creeped out?
Blog Wibble
My friends are cooler than me. To prove it, here are some of the best recent entries fromt their own pages:
13saves - How could we ever have forgotten?
kimprobable - Just stupid... or a closet fecalphiliac?
the red carpet - Clinton in the Hiz-ouse
Ben Brown - The Call
Coronary Bloggage - A Question for Men
What it is to be a Patriot
My buddy Mark pointed this one out, and has a great post on it as his own site, but I had to bring attention to it myself.
As reported by Slashdot, charges have been brought against a Stargate fan for creating and maintaining a site called SG1Archive.com, where some episodes of the show were made available for download. Sure, this is illegal. Of course he should have realized he could be made an example of. What he didn't realize, was that he'd be subject to... drumroll please... THE PATRIOT ACT! Yay!
That's right. The charges were brought by the MPAA and "the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP."
Pretty awesome.
So long, suckers!
Well, it finally happened. I grew tired of the instability, the mistrust and the overall sense of dread looming over the office, and decided I no longer had to be an employee of McElroy Advertising. It was a difficult decision. It wasn't at all that being at work was unbearable. We'd just moved into a new office space downstairs from the other departments: concrete floors, 20 foot ceilings, no cubicles. I had a fast machine with current version software (a struggle to get, but gotten, none the less). I worked with a team comprised of some of the smartest and funniest people I've ever shared an office with and I was working with the programming language of my choice. The day-to-day was actually very bearable.
But sometimes, you have to leave the bubble. McElroy had tripled in size in the year I was with them. They grew quickly, and badly. Veteran employees were marginalized and those still employed became worried or polarized or both. We didn't receive bonuses, our health care was cut. These appeared to be the acts of a company feeling around for a foothold in a place they've never been. I think that's fair, but it also caued a lot of concern in the office, and this concern was never addressed. Instead, fingers were pointed, "efficiency experts" were hired, and blame was placed. Departments were set against one another. The pain of birthing a company-wide process seemed worse than the pain of missing one entirely. Out of fear of angering our one and only client, promises were routinely made that could never, ever be kept. There were even rumors that the company would dissolve it's Tech Dev department and move exclusively into Strategy and Analytics. It's happened before.
When I updated my resume on Monster, I was just trying to be prepared. Then the calls started coming in, I found myself considering options. I agreed to go on a single interview, just for practice. One week later I was offered a long term contract position with the Walt Disney Internet Group, at an hourly rate that would equate to nearly a 46% raise. McElroy made a counter offer that was slightly less than I would have accepted for my 12 month raise (to come up only 2 months later). I left angry.
So here I am, at The DIG, sitting at my new desk. This is my second week and I'm starting to settle in. I'll talk more about the new job and the way they work, but that's for another post. In the meantime, I'm keeping in touch with my former co-workers, and staying up on the status of the projects that consumed the last year of my life. I'm doing several freelance jobs for several former coworkers and even heading in to McElroy on the weekends to fix bugs. Had things not gone so poorly, I could have seen myself staying with the firm and growing my skills there instead of shopping them around. It's unfortunate, but it's what happened. Tune in this August to see the launch of the VeryBestKids.com redesign. Now THAT was a cool project.
Bush... TO THE EXTREME!!!
I guess it hasn't hit the web yet, so I'm not sure if there are any photos. Let's hope there are...
According to NPR's Steve Julian, George W. Bush decided to go out on a leisurely mountain biking trip on his Texas Ranch yesterday. Mr. Bush enjoys mountain biking "For the mind-clearing effect." Perhaps to further clear his mind, he brought along a reporter. Apparently the President sailed down hills and raced back up them in a rather haphazard manner until he finally flew over his handlebars and landed flat on his back. Receiving nothing more than a few scratches and the wind knocked out of him, Evil W. Kneival waved off medical help and peddled on.
July 22, 2004
It's just not fair
PC modders & enthusiasts are no strangers to water cooling systems. They've been installing water blocks and cooling their cpu and video processor with distilled water or other heat conducting liquids for several years, but only at great expense using self-installed, 3rd party cooling systems.
Apple, again making the mainstream PC manufacturers look stupid, has announced that the new line of dual proc 64 bit G5's will be liquid cooled.
Now, come on. This wasn't out of left field. The PC guys could have beaten them this time. PC users have been doing this for a lot longer than Apple's been winning the game. m Now Apple has the only flagship 64 bit system, which happens to also be the only flagship dual proc system, which happens to be the first ever mainstream liquid cooled system, and which could beat the pants off any Dell on the market. Too bad there aren't any games for the system, or more nerds would give a shit.
July 21, 2004
Bored Designers
Your little tricks do not go unnoticed.
July 20, 2004
D'oh!
Main Entry: doh Function: interjection Definition: said when annoyed or disappointed; also spelled d'oh Etymology: Popularized by the character Homer Simpson in the animated television series The Simpsons, performed by Dan Castellaneta; written in the scripts as "annoyed grunt"
Source: Webster's New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, © 2003 Lexico Publishing Group, LLC
July 19, 2004
Why I'm a good person
...and you're just you.
Micki and I have been training for the last five weeks for the Honolulu Marathon. The event will take place on December 12th and many of those who run will be doing so to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles.
More information on the AIDS Marathon program is available here.
More information on AIDS Project Los Angeles is available here.
Most importantly, the link to donate to Micki and myself and to help us to raise money for AIDS patient care, is right freakin' HERE.
Please help us do what may be the only good and decent thing I'll ever be a part of. Honlestly. I'm usually kind of a dick.
PS - If you do decide to help us out, please send me a note or leave me a comment so that I can thank you properly. The donation system does not post contributions for up to 10 days.
July 13, 2004
The Legend of BloodNinja
I have no idea who this guy is, but he's my new hero. He zooms around from chatrom to chatroom, propositioning people for dirty chats and then making them wish they were dead. Really, that's what it's all about.
This was sent to me by my buddy Jeff and it's among the funnier things I've ever seen.
July 12, 2004
Lunatics among us
Even as recent as this week, I found myself sitting side by side with the enemy. A perfectly nice girl, intelligent by all indications, revealed to me that she intended to vote for George Bush. I was absolutely dumbfounded. She was young, a friend of my sister's.
What in the world does an 18 year old girl think that George Bush is going to do for her? What explanations has she been offered that justified the lies and answered the questions that should be plaguing every American voter? Does she have the answers?
If I asked, could she tell me why George Bush made specific remarks in multiple speeches including the State of the Union that he knew to be false? Statements that George Tenet's CIA had previously requested be removed from the address, but were reinserted by the office of the President?
Could this 18 year old girl give me a satisfactory reason that our President, his administration, and indeed every branch of our governing body was taken entirely by surprise when the populace of an invaded country rose up against the occupying force? Should this really have been a surprise? Should so many have died because our troops were not furnished with enough body and vehicular armor? Does this girl know how many troops died when their non-armored vehicles were attacked riding through a hot zone?
Maybe she's simply voting Republican because her daddy's a republican and her daddy's daddy is a republican. She does, after all, hail from Arizona. Maybe this is another example of partisan politics making the decision for the voter. Maybe this is another argument against a polarized bipartisan electorate. Maybe it's another argument against giving the vote to anyone who can pull a lever. I'm thinking you should have to take an aptitude test before you're allowed to vote. At least a current events test. If you are ignorant of the world around you or unable to understand the issues, perhaps your vote should not count like mine.
This is all starting to sound very East German. This girl had no problem finishing a sentence. She had no problem following the conversation. She even had the tact and the sense to steer the conversation away from politics, knowing it would surely be a hot button.
So why does a young, intelligent girl vote for Bush?
God.
This girl is religious and believes that George Bush, regardless of anything else, will do his best to follow the word of the lord. In the year 2004, perfectly intelligent college students can still be swayed to vote for the most obvious American villain in a century because he quote the bible -- even if he gets the quote wrong. When god is involved, logic is not. There's no sense arguing. God is a loophole. An excuse. God is the reason people are allowed to do violent, dishonest and illogical things, and perpetrate crimes against their friends, peers, or populations at large. People in the middle of the country still smoke, still use cod liver oil, and still believe in god in a very literal sense. These are the people who will be voting for a warmonger in November, and this is the reason I'm angry.
July 09, 2004
Be afraid! Be VERY afraid!
(But still vote for Bush)
Tom Ridge: Terrorists' aim is to influence presidential vote
In a press conference on Wednesday, Tom Ridge warned us that we are all in terrible danger, but they have no specific information as to why, but the threat is possibly as high as it's been since 9/11, but they won't be raising the threat level because we will be perfectly safe under the wing of President Bush.
Are you fucking serious?!
Unless you're referring to the Bush administration, or you've lost your mind entirely, you must be a moron. No matter which of the previous three scenarios are true, it's plain that you take the American people for morons. Well, that's no shock, I do to. But it's not an excuse to lie and manipulate using popular safety as leverage! This is among the most transparent, devious ploys they've perpetrated upon us in four years of transparent, devious ploys.
And thank god we have CNN to bring us the news in a responsible and objective manner. Their report was written by CNN Homeland Security Producer Mike Ahlers and included such misleading tidbits as
"A Democratic senator who attended Thursday's CIA and FBI briefing said, 'It is the most worrisome situation since 9/11' without elaborating specifically."
No one has elaborated specifically! There are no specifics! The standing administration would like to direct our attention away from the now-favored Democratic candidate and his running mate by threatening our lives!
So remember: if you vote for Kerry, you've let the terrorist win.
God I hate everyone.
July 07, 2004
Stupid Dirty Education Secretary
This is old news, so I'll leave it alone.
God, I hate everyone.
July 01, 2004
The Declaration of Independence
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain [George III] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
The signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows:
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton