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Most of The Four Of You know what cybersquatting is, I think.
The other day I got the 90-day warning from GoDaddy that my domains, including good ol’ fredsmythe.com, are coming up for renewal. I’ve been tossing around some ideas for minor changes to the site anyhow (I really need to implement CSS, I want the archives on their own page instead of on that minimally-useful dropdown above, and does anyone with some artistic ability and a charitable spirit feel like making me a neato logo to stick in the upper left corner? Contact me if you do.), and in doing so I was thinking maybe I would register chezfred.com and direct that here too, just for the hell of it.
Well, this afternoon, during a slow time here at work, I decided on a whim to see if it was available. Imagine my surprise to find that chezfred.com had been squatted by some outfit out of Great Britain. I was amused to find that some Brit thought I was gonna pay a mint for a domain name for two reasons: 1) I don’t HAVE a mint, and 2) I’m nowhere near popular enough that the domain name is worth anything to me anyhow. The only reason I called it Chez Fred in the first place is because the restaurant menu theme was all I could think of at the time when I set it all up; I could yank all of that theme and just call it plain-ol’ fredsmythe.com and nobody would notice. So I giggled, satisfied that some squatter asshole had wasted their $8 or whatever their domain registrar soaked ’em for.
Then, out of curiosity, I decided to see just how widespread the Chez Fred name is, so I Googled it. This was the first hit. Oops.
That said, there are far worse things to share a name with than a British fish and chip shop, especially one that mentions on their menu: “If you’d like some more chips on your plate, please feel free to ask – there’s no extra charge…”
My kind of people.
For quite a few years now, among all of the other gadgets I have on my person at all times (iPod, cellphone, Game Boy…I’m a veritable cornucopia of EMF), I’ve carried a PDA. It’s a Palm Zire 72 now, but originally I bought a Handspring Visor back in 1999 or 2000 or so, mainly for it’s potential to be a fun toy, and then discovered a little app called MyCheckbook that has been an absolute godsend. Of course, I have a buttload of games and whatnot on it, too, but MyCheckbook has basically justified the expense.
Anyhow, one of the other actual practical applications I use it for is to keep shopping lists. (I hate writing; my handwriting sucks (part of the reason I’m such a computer geek) and anytime I can have something do the writing for me, even if it takes slightly more effort on my part than just writing, I’m down with that.) When I think of something I need to get at the store, I just whip it out and add it to the appropriate list, and when I’m actually going through the store I can check items off as I get them. It’s really really handy and it’s kinda fun in a geek way to wander through the store plucking things off with the stylus. And I never forget that I need butter. Unless I don’t add it to the list.
Anyhow, last night I needed to charge it, so I put it on the charger and went to bed. Long story short, I forgot to return it to my messenger bag this morning, and I need to make a grocery run this afternoon, ‘cuz I’m outta milk.
So this morning, I had to recreate the shopping list by hand. And I realized that this is probably the first time in six or seven years that I have actually made a physical grocery list. It was weird. What is this “paper” you speak of?
Now that my Lakers suck again, watching the NBA has kinda lost it’s luster for me.
However, I’ll usually try to watch the All-Star Saturday events. Not the All-Star Game itself; I could give a rip about that. But I LOVE the Three-Point Shootout, and I USED to enjoy the Slam-Dunk Contest, to a point. You can only watch so many behind-the-back two-handed gorilla jams, and I’m not the type to jump off of my couch and yell “OH NO YOU DIN’T!!!” at each successive defiance of gravity.
So in all of the Olympic hubbub I totally forgot that yesterday was NBA’s All-Star Saturday, until someone online who happened to be watching mentioned it, and I turned it on right at the end to discover that Nate Robinson and Andre Iguodala (whoever they are) were tied at the end of the contest, and that a Dunk-Off would determine the winner. Okay, nothing else on, so I’ll keep watching.
And Robinson goes first, and he’s got some ornate dealie where he passes the ball under his legs a couple times, throws up an alley-oop, and jams it home. So he sets up, under the legs, and tosses….too hard. Whoops.
Reset, try again. Dribble, jump, under the legs, toss….over the backboard. D’oh.
Third time’s the charm, right? Dribble…jump…the toss…oh, too hard. Rerack the tape.
This went on FOURTEEN TIMES. And to their credit, they had lost the crowd of 18,300 (probably a few more, they usually find a way to shoehorn in some extra seats at thoe prices for events like this) in Houston after about the fifth. At the end, Cheryl Miller comes out to interview this guy (who won, by the way, despite Iguodala only needing a couple of attempts to make his dunk), and fires off a desperation “Let’s hear it for him, Houston!” at the end, and we heard…crickets. Nothing. Nada. That sound you heard was 18,300 cars starting, because everyone might as well have left.
This made my night. I love when stuff like this happens; you see it every so often on wrestling shows, too, when the reaction of the live crowd is the exact opposite of what you know the producers were hoping for. It amuses me when you see irrefutable evidence that an event’s producers are totally out of touch with their audience.
So I offer up a Well Done to the fans in Houston last night. Good on y’all for not being mindless sheep and cheering when the scoreboard flashed a “WOW!!!!!!111!!ELEVEN”, when you were watching a stinker.
Found on Craigslist in the job postings:
Seattle-based company is the leading provider of enterprise customer communication solutions that enable dynamic conversations between companies and the customers they serve. Our interactive communication solution is a blend of advanced multichannel applications built upon enterprise software. It delivers its services through a software service model. Businesses use technology to leverage their rich enterprise level customer data to proactively and personally interact with their customers with timely, relevant information.
I suppose they could have said “We’re a spamhaus”, but that wouldn’t have justified expensing a couple dozen Krispy-Kremes for the brainstorming meeting.
It’s the rainy season here in Seattle. Now, I like rain (hell, I wouldn’t have moved here if I didn’t), but this particular set of rainstorms has been annoying, because I get to stand in it.
I haven’t really had to before. My parking space at my apartment complex is covered, and stays covered until I’m inside, so most of my experience with rain here has been running between the drops to and from my car when I go someplace. And really, for as much crap as Seattle takes over the whole rain thing, most of the time it’s just a light drizzle, it never really comes down that hard. Most folks just ignore it.
However, with my new job, I have now become a bus rider, because I don’t feel like paying out the ass to park in the garage at the building I work in downtown. It’s actually worked out pretty well; I found a nice quiet little Park & Ride lot a mile from my place. It’s a church parking lot, which they make available for commuter parking during the week…really kinda smart of them to take the check from the King County Transit people to use their lot during a time when the majority of it isn’t being used anyhow. And the bus I catch goes straight to my building, pretty much, so no transfers to worry about. Not bad at all.
But now it’s raining, and the bus stop isn’t one of those ones with the little shelter at it so you can stay out of the rain. So for the last week or so, when it HAS been coming down hard enough that you notice it, I’ve been standing there in the morning, getting drenched, thinking “Wow, this sucks.”
But no more, my friends, for the rainy season is about to end. I am not a meteorologist and I hold no NWA certifications whatsoever (feel free to insert a Dr. Dre joke here), but I can tell you with confidence that there will at the VERY least be no rain between the hours of 7:30A and 9:00A, and between 5:00P and 6:30P or so, for the remainder of the winter.
Last night, you see, I bought an umbrella. I think of it as rain insurance. Fifteen bucks for the guarantee of dry mornings? Sold American.
So to all of you outdoorsy types, and my fellow commuters, all of y’all who have been suffering because of the wet weather, I say to you: you’re welcome.
(Oh, by the way, I forgot it leaving the house this morning. So it will come down torrentially tonight. Sorry about that.)
While I don’t consider myself a HUGE football fan, I’m at least tangentially interested enough to follow the local Seattle Seahawks from week to week, and I’ll usually watch the playoffs and the Super Bowl. I don’t stay glued to the set all day Sunday, but I’ll play the hell out of a football videogame. I’m that kind of fan.
One of the interesting things about the game is, because of the one-game-a-week nature of the season, if a team does well enough over the course of the year, the last game or two becomes completely and totally meaningless, and you don’t get to see any of the big stars play because they’re being rested for games that matter more. Such is how it’s playing out for the Seahawks this year, who by virtue of a 13-2 record have won their division and are guaranteed to have home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs. As a result, sometime in the fourth quarter of the game against the Colts last week, when it was pretty obvious we were going to win, all of the first-string players were pulled out and the benchwarmers got to mop up in garbage time.
The point of all of this backstory? Well, one of the big stories of the Seahawks this season has been running back Shawn Alexander chasing the record for most touchdowns in a season, which was set by Priest Holmes of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2003. Holmes found the end zone 27 times that year. And up to that exact moment in the game, Alexander had 26.
So the ‘Hawks recover a fumble and the scrubs drive all the way down the field to the Colts’ 1-yard line. And Alexander, who has been sitting on the sidelines for this entire drive drinking Gatorade, gets a slap on the butt and is sent into the game to run the ball in for Record-Tying Touchdown #27, at which point he returns to the bench and picks up his Gatorade again.
And this Sunday, in a COMPLETELY meaningless game against Green Bay, a game that Alexander will likely otherwise not even play in, I’m guessing that if the same situation comes up, he’ll be sent out to run the ball Yet Another Yard to break the record, and everyone will celebrate him like it’s some vast achievement.
So let’s recap this: Someone ELSE does the work for 99 yards, and then this guy gets put in to move the ball three feet? _I_ could move the ball three feet.
What good is keeping track of this record if it’s so easily hacked like this? Why not keep some guy on the bench whose LONE JOB it is to run the ball in every time they are on the 1-yard line?
Football specializes everything else; every team has a guy whose only job it is to snap the ball to the punter. No other time, just when it needs to be snapped a long way ‘cuz the punter stands back some. Why not this? I would be more than happy to be the Seahawks’ designated Three Feet Guy, and for a whole damn lot less than most of these guys pull down.
Tonight I made a frozen lasagna I picked up at the store last night for dinner, because I’ve spent much of the rest of the day doing my holiday candymaking and didn’t want to have to worry about making something more complicated.
A few minutes ago, I was packing up the leftovers (the other advantage to frozen lasagna is that it leaves behind plenty of leftovers to take to work for lunch during the week), and as I finished transferring the final piece to Tupperware, I noticed the following, imprinted dead-center in the bottom of the pan:
ALWAYS SUPPORT THE BOTTOM
While I appreciate their concern, and their desire to keep me from spilling lasagna all over my kitchen floor as a result of picking up a flimsy foil pan, I feel it necessary to point something out here:
When the pan is EMPTY, and you are able to read this message, there is no need to support it.
When the pan is FULL, and therefore requires some extra support, the cook will never see this warning. BECAUSE THERE IS LASAGNA IN THE WAY.
I’m not sure what appalls me more: that someone came up with this idiotic idea, or that someone ELSE approved it.
If you can read this, then I’m one very happy camper.
I’m pleased to announce that Chez Fred now has a legitimate home.
For the longest time (well, really, always, until today), fredsmythe.com was merely a domain name, which redirected to whatever free web space my ISP gave me. It always felt kinda fake, since it wasn’t REALLY fredsmythe.com, it was actually clemon79.home.comcast.net with a pretty decoration on the front door.
Well, a combination of some of The Four Of You mentioning to me that all too often they couldn’t get to the site, me being incredibly frustrated with the shortcomings of Comcast’s free web space (mostly the lack of server-side include capability, though I suspect as I play with this new space I will find quite a few other how-did-I-make-it-this-long-without-being-able-to-do-this-type things), and the recommendation of my friend Peter at Static Zombie caused me to kick a (very reasonable) few dollars to webhostingbuzz.com for some real honest-to-God digital real estate for Chez Fred.
And, amazingly, it’s been really easy to port the site over. Granted, it’s not a big site (certainly not as much stuff to move as Peter had when he did it), but I was afraid there would be all kinds of stuff to fix and hierarchal stuff to worry about and what not. Nope. Most of it just copied right over, and I’ve had to spend maybe an hour total noodling with the Blogger and Frontpage publishing settings. I anticipate having more problems getting Bloglines fixed.
The difference to you? Well, the site already seems twice as responsive, and up there in the address bar, you’ll see you are in fact at fredsmythe.com now, which is a big thing to me; I felt kinda like a fraud before. (And if you catch any broken links (and I’m sure I left some laying, although I’ve always tried to make site links relative instead of absolute for just this reason), please let me know.)
So, welcome down. Now that I have no excuse not to do all of the modern stuff people do with web sites these days, I guess I should go learn how to do it…
The Donald was starting to lose me on The Apprentice. The incredible over-commercialization, Donald’s massive ego, and the complete ineptitude of the contestants was getting to be too much.
But The Donald won me back last night.
Following a reshuffling where each team was allowed to select three people to shuttle over to the other squad (and the men couldn’t dump off Markus quickly enough), the newly-intergendered (and now Markus-free) Excel team went on to suck down the biggest asskicking in the history of the show, actually causing the sporting goods store they were dispatched to create an “interactive sales event” for to LOSE sales.
So the contestants haven’t gotten any better. But the upside is that Trump apparently knows this too. Come Boardroom time, he stripped the Project Manager of his right to nominate people for firing, sent up the guy who was exempt (Brian, and, once again, the Vote For Exemption is more an issue of asskissing than any kind of assessment of the P.M.’s ability) and the two players who didn’t abjectly suck (Rebecca and Marshawn), and told the remaining four (Mark, Jennifer, the aforementioned P.M. Josh, and James) to go out into the hall.
Upon calling them back in, he let them try to shove each other in front of the bus for a while (hey, at least Trump knows what makes good TV), and then canned the lot of them. Wave of the hand. Yer all fired. Get the hell out of my office.
THAT was what brought me back. Making the four of them cram themselves in the Yahoo Cab Of Shame was just the icing on the cake. About the only way it could have been better would have been if the doorman went out of his way to hit them in the ass with the door.
Sorry, folks, it’s another hockey post. But stay with me.
Longtime readers of this site know of my utter hatred of that no-good sack-of-crap Ed Belfour, the goaltender of the Toronto Maple Leafs. But I happen to think he’s a perfect fit for that team, as I pretty much have hated them long before that scum-sucking waste-of-flesh turd-magnet signed on to play for them.
If you don’t follow the hockey like I follow the hockey, it can be summed up very easily: The Leafs are the hockey equivalent of the New York Yankees and the Dallas Cowboys. (And, let me tell you, I had to make a concerted effort not to type “Cowpies” there, as that is how I refer to the team in any other instance.) The team’s management and fans completely believe that it is their birthright to win the championship every year, and any other outcome is clearly the result of some kind of horrible and unjust bias against them.
Not that “it would be nice if they won”. Not “if they put in the hard work and team cohesion necessary to win”. Their BIRTHRIGHT. They’d have the Cup off at the engravers before Opening Night if they could get away with it.
Anyhow, long story short, I hate the Leafs and revel in the schadenfreude whenever they lose. But I’m getting off the track a little.
Last night, I’m flipping around the games on Centre Ice. Everybody is playing, so there were 15 games going on throughout the evening. And the league’s P.R. people have come to the amazing conclusion that it might be nice to offer up a nod to the fans that didn’t tell the league to go screw after denying us the last season over the labor dispute. So along the blue lines of every ice surface, it reads in large letters:
Thank You Fans!
Nice sentiment. Except in Toronto, where it read:
Thank You Leafs Fans!
Which is TOTALLY appropriate, considering it’s the Leafs. “Yeah, screw you fans of other teams who might be watching, we just want to thank OUR fans, ‘cuz they’re the only ones who mean anything.”
I’m pleased to announce that the Leafs lost last night, and Ed Belfour will go down in the record books as the loser of the first shootout in NHL history. Good. Bastards.
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