Mason student falls to his death

Yesterday at 3:14pm, after Carlos came by with the news, I im'ed Will to see if he knew anything (since he works on that side of campus):

theAlphaJohn: have you heard about the JC?
Will: yeah
Will: i was actually eating in the bistro when it happend
theAlphaJohn: wtf?
theAlphaJohn: what happened?
Will: dude or lady fell four stories
Will: and died i think
theAlphaJohn: no idea if they jumped or were pushed or it was an accident
Will: no idea
Will: actually the body fell right in front of danny
theAlphaJohn: omg no way
Will: yeah
Will: he went home and refused to talk to the media
theAlphaJohn: holy shit i would too
theAlphaJohn: is the media there?
Will: they were
Will: there have been a lot of calls to this office but so far none deal with me
Will: just press releases
Will: stuff like that
theAlphaJohn: what does the release say? something bad happened and it's being investigated?
Will: i would bet so
Will: but the fucked up thing is josh and i were eating in the bistro when the kid fell and when the cops were there
Will: and we had no idea what happened
Will: they cleaned it up hella quick

I was hoping the news would have more information, but not-so-much right now:

Student Falls to His Death at GMU
Jan 10th - 6:10am

FAIRFAX, Va. - George Mason University Police are investigating how a 27-year-old student fell three stories to his death at the university's student center.

The man was with a group of students when he fell from an open-air staircase to the tile floor below shortly after noon Tuesday, investigators say. He died at a hospital.

It is unclear whether the man was pushed or jumped.

Although school is not yet in session, the building was crowded with people preparing for the start of classes.

People saw the body falling and saw him land, but no one saw him go over the side, school spokesman Dan Walsh says.

Investigators are talking with the man's wife and the people who were with him.

Replacing my Pool Gear

In the process of turning the WRX in, I somehow lost my pool bag with all of my gear in it (goggles, paddles, pull buoy, fins, and sandals). I've looked everywhere, and the only thing I can guess is that I left them in the trunk of the WRX when I turned it in.

In any event, I needed to replace everything. I made a trip to Sport Fair in Arlington and was able to get goggles, paddles, and fins. I decided that I could get away with those for the next couple practices and ordered the buoy and sandles on the internet(s). I was asked when I checked out how I found their site:



I wonder if they'll think I'm serious...?

iTunes and box checking

I know that over time, all of you populists rewrite history and pretend that you were an early adopter too.

I tend to be an early adopter. The rest of you benefit from the beta testing that my fellow mavens and I do.

I bought a 2nd Gen iPod (the first 20GB model) in March of 2003, right after iTunes for Windows came out. This was long before I got my Powerbook and made the switch to the dark side.

There is a magic check box in iTunes:



Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized it says. Until this weekend, that box was never checked. Why? Because I used to have a page on my website that listed all of my MP3s, which did so off a copy of my music files that used the organizational structure I developed for my MP3s in 1998 when all you motherfuckers were still hiding in caves; afraid of the sun and shit.

Anyway, I don't have that page on my website anymore, but I still keep a replica of all my MP3s out on my server. I deleted all my MP3s on kaitain, checked the box, then began rsync'ing them back up. It will probably take 10 days to get them all back in sync.

In the process, I took a look and noticed that iTunes had not put things where I expected. Then I found this delightful bit of faggotry:



The Is Compilation attribute is a point of disagreement between iTunes and I. If this album is all songs spun by DJ Irene, then it's not a compilation. A compilation implies that the album contains a variety of artists, not a variety of songs all spun by an artist.

You don't agree with me? Then explain why the fuck a Pink album is marked compilation in Gracenote? Are you telling me because The Indigo Girls collaborated with her on Dear Mr. President it's a fucking compilation album?



The people at Gracenote need to fattened up like Thanksgiving turkeys and sent back in time to Jeffrey Dahmer's dinner table, cause they're fucking useless.

House Speaker Grandma-natrix

Witness as she emasculates the important (wo)men of Washington with her legislative riding crop.

How fucking hot is that?

File Under "douche bag"

Mary shared this article in today's Rocky Mountain News about a sad little man who thinks that Lady's Night discriminates against him:

A self-proclaimed "agitator" against feminism declared ladies nights at Colorado nightspots dead Friday after prevailing in the first stage of a civil rights complaint against the Proof Nightclub in southeast Denver.

Steve Horner learned Thursday that Colorado's Division of Civil Rights for the Department of Regulatory Agencies sided with him in his complaint that men were unfairly having to pay cover charges and higher drink prices than women at the Proof's ladies nights.

"Ladies night is now illegal," said Horner, a 59-year-old corporate speaker, who says he's been on an anti-feminist crusade since his wife left him with two young children several years ago.

At this point you're thinking, "That seems like a really douchy thing to do, but maybe he's just one of those touchy-feely Colorado residents who eats too much hummus and has read the writings of Betty Freidan one too-many times". Then you get to this quote which proves that Steve Horner is a complete fuck-face:

In the meantime, Horner plans to catch any club owners who continue to offer women special deals.

"This is now a violation of law. I will now make it a point to visit as many ladies nights as I can every week. I'll have my rights violated, then I'll sue them in county court and collect my $500 (the maximum penalty in county court for each incident of discrimination)," Horner said.

"I feel it could net me $3,000 to $4,000 a week easy, and I'm going to do it," he added. "It takes me five minutes to be discriminated against."

At which point you realize that the only left for you to do is drive to Colorado, kidnap his children, cover their faces with dirt, and smuggle them to some 7th world country where their next meal will come through UNICEF donations. Anything is better than growing up in a household with an asshat motivational speaker as their role model.

Cleansing my electronic music pallet

I've been on an electronic music bender for weeks; nothing but trance, break-beats, drum and bass, and the occasional house track. Without even thinking about it, I open iTunes this morning and it was half an hour before I realized I'd been listening to Smack That on repeat.

I had to use the Google to find out what a Lamborghini Gallardo looked like. After all, I'm not a 12 year old boy anymore.

Six Years in my personal Gitmo...

...came to an end this morning:


OMG is payback a bitch. The comments on Wonkette from the trolling opposition are hysterical:

Where's (1) mandate daily reading of Koran in every elemntary school classroom, (2) abolish Christmas Trees and Easter, (3) put Charles Drawin's face on the $1 dollar bill, (4) humbly surrender to Al Queada ... and Japan and (5) appoint Michael Fox head of NIH?

I need to add Redstate to Google Reader so I can get my daily dose of schaudenfreude! This is the graphic on their front page today:


There are no words for the delight I will feel for the next two years. I might have swerve to avoid little children in parking lots from now on.

Google Reader Delights Me

To know me is to know how much of the Internet(s) I traverse in a given day. Often, I run out of Internet(s) to read because it can't make news fast enough. Not only do I check many different types of sites, but I check them all pretty often.

It is, frankly, a huge waste of my time.

I tried using an RSS reader (Thunderbird) a couple times, but the experience was really annoying. I gave up and went back to checking my sites the old fashioned way.

While George has extolled the virtues of Rojo for some time, I didn't like that either.

And then, while I was enjoying my holiday break, I saw that Google Labs has incubated a little something they call Google Reader. Though the name is uninspired, it has changed my browsing habits.


All the sites I visit are subscribed in the left hand pane. I clickity-click a button:


And I only see sites that have unread articles (if there are any). As you can see in this picture, the Internet(s) need to get busy and make some more news. I hit refresh for 147 seconds until Google News made something up:



As you can see, "Google News" appears and it tells me I have (4) unread articles. When I click on the feed, I can get a list view (with just headlines):


Or I can pick the expanded view and see a snippet of each article (along with pictures if there are any):



This way, I can scan the 20 posts that Autoblog puts up in an hour in list view, read the one I want about the Mercedes S-Guard, and mark the rest read. This miracle frees me up to find another way to waste an hour of each work day.

CNN.com's editor celebrates 7th birthday

What the fuck is this?



Pandas are faggots.

So long, Scooby!

I turned in the WRX tonight after 36 months; I think it's the longest relationship I've ever had. [According to my credit report, I've had a trade line with Citibank for the past 89 months.]

While Andrew certainly got me a phenomenal deal, my own actions made it a more expensive endeavor than it should have been. Let's take a look:

$14,000 Payments ($400 * 35 months) [includes: GAP, Warranty, all Maintenance]
$500 Deductible [Accident July 3rd, 2004]
$1200 Tires and Rims [April 2005]
$0 The delight of driving a Gold Dodge Stratus
$460 Autocross ($160 Tuition + $240 Helmet + $60 hotel)
$800 New Tires [August 2006]
$780 Bumper #3 [November 2006]

$17,740 Total

More than I should have spent, but more than fair to enjoy the best three years and 39,658 miles of a $27,000 Japanese sports car's life.