Gaining Ground in the War on MySpace

Montgomery County, MD has finally apologized for the smoking ban (when I was still a smoker) by banning MySpace in schools:

No R-rated movies, and now no access to MySpace? What fun is going to public school in Montgomery County these days? NBC 4 is reporting that MoCo school officials have decided to ban access to the popular online social networking site from school computers, having expressed concern over students' use of the widely used site to publish private information that can be used against them or against others by online predators. Critics call the move an invasion of privacy.

Fuck the critics, I call this the most intelligent thing a county government has ever done. If it wasn't in Maryland, I'd already be packing to move from my overpriced-house-in-va to my ridiculously-overpriced-house-in-md.

That's right princess, add this to your top 8:

Dashboard Blogging

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Dashboard in Mac OS 10.4 has changed my life, but it's cool to have my bills up in the browser window and use the calculator in there to add things up (since you can see what's behind the Dashboard while you're in it).

Google just released Widgets for Dashboard that include Blogger, Gmail, and Search History. As you can see from the screen shot, I installed the Blogger and Gmail widgets and decided to give them a try.

Neither widget is what I'd call full-featured.



The Blogger one only lets you post (no other management features), doesn't let you insert pictures, and the window grows with the text and doesn't scroll (which is annoying) but for a quick post it's cool.



The Gmail one only lets you see new messages, otherwise you have to click the button and head over to the browser to see what's in your inbox.



Not a bad first attempt, but definately still beta.

What a bunch of goose shit

I could not invent this email:

Subject: Mason E-Files Alert
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:41:16 -0500

Canadian Geese Management Program Begins

Over the past several months the Canadian geese population at George Mason's Fairfax campus has increased dramatically. The result has been a greater health risk for the university community and increasing traffic problems. As a result, Mason has secured the services of Windchazer, Inc., a Virginia-based firm that specializes in geese management and in helping organizations deal with this type of situation.

Beginning Friday, March 10, faculty, staff and students can expect to see the beginning of a process that could ultimately take a full year to rid the campus of the geese. Windchazer is bringing in a team of border collies trained to chase the birds off campus in a way that is not harmful. The dogs will be brought back to campus in the days, weeks and months to come until the geese population has been removed.

The university and Windchazer are working closely with animal rights organizations to ensure the safety of the birds and dogs in this effort.

My employer retained a Geese Consulting Firm. Great. I would do this for free.

My former employer (Feld Entertainment, Inc.), if faced with the same problem, would have nailed a horn to each Goose's head and toured "the Amazing Gaggle of Goose-a-corns!" and had Sears sponsor it.

Worthless Wednesdays

theAlphaJohn: i have a wonderful idea
theAlphaJohn: why don't we get 20 IT people to sit in a room for an hour and discuss how we think the university should do business
theAlphaJohn: and then we can decide not to include the people who have the most information about this problem because we don't like them
Kirsten: too funny
Kirsten: i think we already just did that ...
theAlphaJohn: shit!!!
theAlphaJohn: who stole my idea??
Kirsten: rofl
theAlphaJohn: Bobby P and I are BFF now
Kirsten: too funny...i noticed that
theAlphaJohn: we have charms
Kirsten: rofl
theAlphaJohn: mine says "CMDB" for change mgt db and his says "CRB" for change review board
theAlphaJohn: it's a little database, but broken in half
theAlphaJohn: very masculine
Kirsten: lmao

The Obituary for the Human Race

I really, really dislike Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). Yes this is a free country, yes you have the right to choose your form of recreation (unless it's on The DEA's schedule), but I also have the right to abhor your form of recreation and lobby against it.

I want MMOGs on DEA Schedule 1, it's out of control.

Slashdot posted a question to Ask Slashdot about the ethics of buying gold (not the prescious metal, but the virtual prescious metal in the fictional game world). Stupid as the question was, some of the answers make me want to schedule a pogrom:

Damn right he is stupid. This guy just sent $60 of his money to the same people who are responsible for his skins being worthless in AH. That is the problem with gold farming, it makes gathering skills worthless by having two seperate effects, first the raw materials are oversupplied so they sell very cheaply affecting people like this guy who can no longer earn any reasonable amount through skinning, secondly they artificially inflate the prices of items by giving plenty gold to clueless nabs who throw it around like theres no tomorrow. Pity this dude was too dumb to realise that he is basically rewarding the people who created his problem.

I'm sorry, are we discussing the value of manual labor in a fictional world? Is there a new kind of Virtual Calculus to find the rate of change of the fictional market-forces, or does the Calculus we have work in Weirdo Universe??

You appear to be thinking that people buying gold won't spend that gold on raw materials in order to raise their profession skills. At level 42 in WoW, I decided to learn cooking. It took me a great deal of cash to get all the materials to level my cooking skill up, but I got to 250/300 in about two evenings. Now, I used a great deal of my own cash to do that. But, I could have just as easily gone out and bought gold farmer cash to do it as well.

Even so, you can't both blame inflation and deflation on the same group of people. That seriously makes no sense.

The fact is that you have no idea how these gold farmers are making money. The likely thing is they're using multiple means of getting gold. Sure, they could be overfarming, driving down the price. The problem with that though is once the prices are down, they make no money from overfarming. So, like everyone else, it is in their best interest not to overfarm. Further, economies on servers tend to improve over time as players level up. That would suggest that a bad economy has nothing to do with gold farmers and everything to do with the number of higher-level players overall.

I swear to Ford, you don't hear debate like this in 300 level Economic classes, but nerds on the internet are discussing the economics and market forces of a fictional economy. This isn't me playing Sim City and being like "my city is broke" or simple supply and demand, this is just sad.

Why is it sad? These people have been waiting for a chance to discuss this. They had to:

• Play this game


• Learn the rules


• Develop morals, values, and ethics around this fictional world


• Reach a proficiency to be able to debate the morals, values, and ethics of this fictional world

All when they should have been:

• Taking a shower


• Going on a date


• Not calling in sick to work


• Being a participating member of society, perhaps as a meth addict

This Slashdot post is 26 hours old as I blog, and 448 people have taken time out of their day to comment on the exchange of real money (which, admittedly, is an abstract itself) for fake online multiplayer bucks.

These people need interventions. These people need rehab. MMOGs need to be schedule one drugs and policed by the FDA. That will give those 'tards in ONDCP something to wage war on.

Google Video has more on this here.

Again with the insanely fast downloads

I was downloading CD 1 and 2 for 10G Application Server from Oracle this morning, and each download was coming in at over 3200KB per second. That's 6 megabytes (not megabits) per second!

Our Internet connection at work is so hood rich.

Missed Connection with Newt Gingrich

I wonder who could have written this...?

If Calculus was an STD, and you were infected...

I still wouldn't suck your dick, you crazed Fox News fembot.

I've got nothing

It has not been a good week, I'm glad it's finally over. I think I'll stress test my liver this weekend.

What this nation needs is a(nother) Secret Police Force

For what you ask?

To put an end to Karaoke once and for all.

If you know me, there's no doubt that you know how I feel about the intersection of King and West Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. Long before Manassas and Woodbridge discovered that "GW's" was no longer a country bar, I had already lived in the house that the Rock-It Grill built (and broke). The Washington Post calls our old haunt, "lowbrow and proud of it". I prefer to think of it as an incubation chamber for the CDC's sexually transmitted disease laboratory.

The line, however, has been crossed. It's time to burn that dump to the ground. American Idol, a show I dislike with the red-hot passion of a thousand suns, actually had a former Rock-It alum (Fat Ho Marry) make it to the early tryouts before the rubbing of her thighs against her windpants drove the judges (not the celeb ones, the faux ones) to return her to the curb from whence she came. Her loss is our gain, because invariably she'd be there on Friday night with her ego and the place would be over fire code.

For the record, what finally pushed this over the line is an article on MSNBC by Craig Berman:

Kinnik Sky followed with Gretchen Wilson’s “Here for the Party,” and while the song was fun and the performance was entertaining, it felt more like karaoke night at the Rock-It Grill than a future star’s breakout performance.

: : rubs eyes : :

Hello obscure local reference.

Hi Craig, are you with me? Do you think the rest of the United States (whom, you hope, will read your horse-shit writeup about this Nielsen-fluffy piece of plastic Americana) is going to know WHAT THE FUCK THE ROCK-IT GRILL IS???

Do you think fat sluts in Sheboygan are text messaging each other about how drunk Gary was last night, and what little Laura said to them when their credit card wouldn't go through? Do you really think that water coolers all over Los Angeles are a buzz right now with what slut went home with what dirty pool player?

Is that what you think Craig? Is it?

Keep thinking it, because the Intellegencia will be by this afternoon to settle this matter, you talentless oxygen-thief.