Today I noticed something unusual. A user wrote in to our IT helpdesk regarding a problematic fax machine, and happened to mention the "corona wire," something I'd not heard of before. So I Googled for "corona wire". And when I did, the Adwords text ads that appeared were accompanied by a vertical line of candles:
I've never seen this behavior before, and attempts to locate other search terms that wind up with the candle display have been devoid of results. What do these candles mean, and are there other interesting banners that appear on seemingly boring searches?
So, the season is upon us once again. It's Christmas Eve, and if you're like me, you're probably sitting around asking a great big "so what?" Maybe you're trying to dredge up memories from ten or fifteen years ago, back when holiday cheer actually meant something to you. Maybe you're wondering when this magical time of year lost its allure and turned into a pain in the ass. Maybe you're hearing odd noises outside of your front door and you're tempted to holster up and go investigate. Or maybe you just don't care about this holiday nonsense, in which case, let's get married.
There's a distinct period in most Americans' lives during which we believe that Christmas is about loving, and caring, and sharing. Gifts are exchanged and great feasts are undertaken. Some people even have the notion that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. We envision Santa Claus flying around the world in a sleigh powered by nine reindeer*, Rudolph and his red nose a shining beacon in the night sky. Santa slides adeptly in and out of chimneys, dropping off presents, drinking the milk and eating the cookies that were set out on the hearth. And if you're a really good little boy or girl, you left some carrots for the reindeer; they, too, are gone when you wake up Christmas morning. It's a holly jolly time. Halls are decked and sleigh bells ring.
Then we turn 12, and realize precisely what this "holiday" is actually all about: securing profits for American retail outlets.
It's no wonder the religious right is so in love with Christmas. Jebus equals money, and if I had a financial interest in the Jebus racket, I'd probably love Christmas too. Speaking of religious people, can you guys please stop pretending that there's some sort of assault on your faith each year? I keep hearing about how there's a "War on Christmas." Funny, I don't see it. I'm not a religious guy, and even I'm wishing people a merry Christmas. It's what we do when it gets to be late December. I send the stupid Santa emails back and forth among friends and coworkers and I don't try to deny that there's some sort of religious undercurrent to this holiday that's perpetrated upon me year after year. Yet every time Christmas draws near, there's no shortage of bible-thumpers hitting the airwaves proclaiming that the entire country is against them and their holiday.
This year's been particularly bad, thanks to the release of some movie about a golden compass. I haven't seen it, I probably won't see it. I don't generally watch films which involve a religious theme of any sort, even if that theme is antithetical to mass-market religion. I never saw The Passion of the Christ. I never saw Apocalypto. I never even saw The Ten Commandments. But to hear the evangelicals speak, you'd think this compass movie was somehow put out there as a concerted effort to brainwash their innocent little children into considering the possibility that their god may not, in fact, exist. It doesn't seem to occur to these folks that maybe they're the ones indoctrinating the poor kids with fantasies and nonsense. If you're such good parents, why are you worried about a movie having such a profound influence on your crotch-fruit? Oh yeah - they know you lied about Santa Claus, so they might get curious about Jebus, too...
The one thing I enjoy about Christmas is that it's always the perfect opportunity to point out the hypocrisy of the uber-religious. They teach their kids about Santa Claus, knowing full well that he's a fairy tale, that he doesn't exist, that he doesn't really fly around in a sleigh and come down the chimney. But they teach their kids about Jebus like he's as quantifiable as the guy nextdoor.
Merry Christmas to all.
*How the fuck an obese asshole flying around in a sled drawn by reindeer, defying the laws of gravity and physics, ties into Jebus or his birthday is beyond me. Aside from the part about being completely fabricated with zero basis in reality, which is just the sort of shit most religious types are happy to perpetuate.
For users of the Foxmarks 1.0.1 plugin for Firefox who had Foxmarks set to use their own FTP server, here's an explanation of how to migrate and re-synchronize your bookmarks after upgrading to Foxmarks 2.x.
I remember years ago having the toughest time keeping my bookmarks synchronized across PCs. I'd find something really great at home, then be unable to recall that bookmark from work, or vice versa. Some time ago, that trouble came to an end when I stumbled upon the great Foxmarks add-on for Firefox. Foxmarks lets you store your bookmarks in a central location, allowing you to synchronize all of your computers to the same master list of favorites. Any edits you make on one machine are automatically downloaded to the others. It's really been a godsend for me.
One of the features that got me hooked on Foxmarks is that it supports FTP. While the default installation sets you up with an account on the Foxmarks website, the plugin also allows you to specify an alternate server of your choosing. So instead of trusting Foxmarks - the company - not to lose my bookmarks, I could set my own FTP server to be the central repository, knowing that everything there is properly backed up. Plus, by tracking my own favorites, I wouldn't be leaking to some random company how many Stickam URLs I was bookmarking. Tres bien.
I'd been running this way for more than a year, when suddenly, today I was prompted to download a Foxmarks update. Nothing too unusual there, so I allowed the upgrade. I wound up with version 2.0.34, and apparently things have changed. Bigtime. The differences were so great that in order to get Foxmarks 2 configured properly, I had to fire up a packet sniffer and see exactly what was transpiring. By detailing the changes, maybe I can save you the trouble.
Versions of Foxmarks prior to 2.0, which I'd been running for a long time, had a familiar settings dialog that was mostly unchanged from the original version I installed. In order to set up Foxmarks to use your own FTP server, you would tweak both tabs in the settings dialog like so:
In the above example, the following assumptions are made: I'm hosting my own FTP server at shaunc.com, my username there is shaun, and I wanted Foxmarks to write its foxmarks.xml file into the ~/foxmarks/ directory inside of my home directory. That translates to /home/shaun/foxmarks/ on the server, but the path I chose is really irrelevant; all I'm trying to indicate is that where you see /foxmarks/ as the directory, it was expanded to /whatever/my/homedir/is/foxmarks/ by the plugin. Foxmarks would automatically write to and synchronize from a file named foxmarks.xml in that directory.
Foxmarks 2.0.34 has a different way of interpreting the same settings. Here, we'll walk through setting it up. The first thing you want to do is decline the Foxmarks upgrade offer if it appears. Locate and backup your existing foxmarks.xml file (preferably to several disparate locations), in case anything goes wrong with the upgrade process. Make sure the machine you're working from has a synchronized and up-to-date version of all of your bookmarks.
Then, accept the download of the Foxmarks 2.x plugin (or trigger it manually via Tools > Add-ons > Find Updates) and prepare to reconfigure. Using the above example, here is how I'd set Foxmarks 2.x to use the same directory that Foxmarks 1.0.1 was using:
The first thing to note is that while the primary settings are the same, the advanced option to choose between FTP / HTTP / HTTPS has disappeared. (Foxmarks is apparently discouraging FTP, and while it's still supported, they say it will be less supported in the future.) If you're running your own FTP server where Foxmarks 2 should write its bookmarks, you now need to specify the protocol, username, hostname, directory path, and filename, all in the URL. The format is:
ftp://username@hostname/path/foxmarks.xml
As in earlier versions of Foxmarks, the plugin will use the password that you defined on the main settings tab when logging in to your FTP server. The username you specify on the main settings tab should match the username given in the URL on the advanced tab. When you select the advanced "Use own server" option, Foxmarks will bypass authentication to the official Foxmarks server, and will attempt to use your private FTP server instead.
Once you've installed Foxmarks 2.x on one copy of Firefox, the "Synchronize Now" option will not work initially, because the foxmarks.xml file format has changed. You will need to force an overwrite of the remote bookmarks (Tools > Foxmarks > Settings > Advanced > Upload), then install the upgraded Foxmarks on your other copies of Firefox and set their settings to match. You should now be up and synchronizing again.
Today I finally managed to go back to Bill Heard Chevrolet to pick up the tags for the car I purchased back in September. The original intent was for them to transfer my existing custom plates that I've had for the last 10 years (I only filled out 2 forms to do this), but they ran into some sort of snag, and sent me a postcard in October to tell me that they'd purchased new tags on my behalf instead. Since I'd kept my old tags and those don't expire until the end of December, I didn't get around to picking up the new tags until today.
Now I'll have to spend next Friday at the County Clerk's office, giving sperm samples in order to get them to transfer my old vanity tag back to me, in exchange for the randomly assigned tag that I now am displaying. 876 November November Delta. It has no ring, it ain't sexy, and above all, it ain't what I want. I've been sporting 31337 for 10 years and I intend to keep it.
I hit Tunica tonight for the first time in two months. It was a profitable night. I turned $100 into $350, then gave $100 of that back to the house as I sucked down Heinekens delivered by my favorite lovely chocolate cocktail waitress who recognized me immediately and didn't disappoint in her attention to my thirst. It's amazing how you can go AWOL for 2 months, then you appear out of nowhere and everyone still knows exactly what you want.
I suppose my reputation precedes me. Considering that everyone at Sam's Town is jumping over themselves to please me, I guess I have a decent reputation. I miss the weekly trips; now that I have a mortgage and a car note, I can't go down there so often. I miss the drives, too. 80mph south is a teaser for the 100+mph I get to hit on the way back. A rush as always, and still no speeding ticket.
If I ran up on your ass and forced you over, sorry 'bout that. I was just in a hurry. :)
It amazes me what the media will cherry-pick out of a story to use as the headline. In particular, I'm talking about the present version of the Robert Hawkins Omaha shooting story on CNN. The headline as of the time of this posting reads, "Computers may yield clues about mall shooter." The article has 31 sentences, only one mentions computers, but CNN has made a conscious choice to sensationalize the "OMG HoLY CYBER FUCK EMO KIDS" aspect.
"There was an opportunity for intervention" or "There were arguments amongst our friends" would have been equally misdirecting headlines, and both of those are exact quotes from the article, but certainly they're far less inflammatory or technologically sexy. I suppose it's just easier to assume that computers are to blame for every homicidal outrage that takes place these days. The shooter was 19? Oh, well then, he must have learned it all online and plotted it with his MySpace friends, so we should probably charge all of them with obstruction of justice and failure to report a conspiracy.
Hello, American media. Human beings among us commit all sorts of fucked up acts on a daily basis. We're a wired society, and that means that many of those people who are responsible for various atrocities will happen to be participants in the online community. The guy who shot a convenience store clerk to death yesterday probably likes collaborating with his friends on Facebook, but that doesn't mean the internet made him do it. The random chick who got pulled over for a DUI at Hacks Cross and Winchester likes to drink beer, but the fact that she makes daily contributions to the forums at commercialappeal.com doesn't make them liable for her actions.
I have no doubt that before the weekend is over, there will be all sorts of "evidence" that the shooter had a MySpace page, played video games, and liked to eat macaroni and cheese. Wait, scratch that last part, normal people like to eat macaroni and cheese. You should only be in imminent fear for your life if your child is on MySpace and plays video games and frequents the local shopping mall.
This 31-sentence article currently consists of 28 distinct paragraphs (CNN frequently reworks their articles, so this may change). I don't know whether this is a page-lengthening technique, or what, but it's anything but traditional journalism. I'm not sure where these folks learned to write, but it certainly didn't involve the MLS handbook.
It's not often that I post a pro-business, commercial-oriented message; then again, it's not often that I feel that any business has gone out of its way to make me happy. I've posted a few restaurant reviews over the years, and even at that, only when I've been sincerely impressed by an eatery.
So tonight I'd like to give props to a liquor store, one Stellar Cellar located in the Schnuck's shopping center on Highway 64 just east of Rockcreek. Over the past year, I've begun shopping at Stellar Cellar because they're on my way (to my relatively new) home, and they're right next to Schnuck's, where I do most of my grocery shopping. As soon as Schnuck's opens its gas station, I'm going to be able to complete the holy triumvirate of shopping - groceries, booze, and gas - all in the same strip mall. That's going to be sweet.
I should backreference this narrative by saying that I don't like to buy liquor (or even beer [or even cigarettes]) from some random corner store. This is generally due to the fact that although I'm 28, I could probably pass for 17. It's always awkward trying to buy liquor at a new place, or even smokes at a gas station. Do I show them my driver's license, with a photo taken when I was 21 and 25 pounds lighter with no facial hair, or do I show them my handgun carry permit, which at least looks like me but causes most cashiers' eyes to glaze over and ask for the driver's license instead? I like to develop a rapport with the people who sell me age-restricted substances, therefore I like to shop at the same places all the time, because it makes things easier for all involved.
Prior to ever setting foot in Stellar Cellar, I was a regular at Natalie's Liquor Warehouse for years. They've been seeing me since back when I actually resembled my driver's license photo, although they've gotten used to me as I've evolved heavier and hairier over the years. I still shop there occasionally when traffic diverts me off the interstate and down Germantown Road. Natalie's has been good to me and I've remained a loyal customer, but Stellar Cellar is stealing me away for several reasons:
1) Recognition and service. A couple of the folks at Stellar Cellar greet me by name, and more often than not, they intercept me on my way in the door and direct me towards the register while they go pick up my bottle. No one at Natalie's knows my name, at least not that I'm aware of, and they've certainly never made any effort to grab my bottle before I can. It's not that I expect that sort of thing at all, it's just that when it happens, it's so out of the ordinary as to be remarkable.
2) Price. The bottle I buy was, for a long time, $13.10 at both establishments. Natalie's has raised the price twice over the past couple of months, first to $14.28 and now to $15-something. Stellar Cellar still has it at $13.10. Granted, Natalie's keeps getting robbed, and I guess they have to pay for those new windows somehow, but I also imagine they have a much higher volume and turn a better margin than the Cellar. Yet the Cellar can afford to keep the prices low.
3) Online presence. Natalie's has a website which hasn't been quantitatively updated since 2005, where the "Online Specials" link says "Coming Soon," and the "Advertised Specials" link points to this JPG:
No joke, it's really that small and has "EXAMPLE" emblazoned across it.
Stellar Cellar, on the other hand, doesn't have a website that I can find, but they do have a mailing list and they're not shy about soliciting their regular customers to sign up for it. I get emails a couple of times a month "From the Cellar" highlighting the current booze and wine specials, as well as special events, like some sort of wine-tasting dinner that the Cellar is sponsoring this month. I've scored a couple of sale specials that I would not otherwise have known were going on (nor would I have bought, without knowing in advance that they were on sale).
4) Doing it right. Tonight, I stopped into the Cellar to pick up my usual bottle, and they were out. I grabbed an equivalent product at the equivalent price, but I was given a courtesy discount due to the fact that they were out of stock in what I'd really come for. My usual $13.10 purchase was discounted to $11.79. You're probably sitting there thinking hey, that's only $1.31, what the hell are you so happy about?
The fact is, that $1.31 compelled me to write this entire entry. The simple and cheap act of discounting me for something that nobody else would have bothered with made enough of an impression on me to sit down and recount all of the other good experiences that I've had at the Stellar Cellar. Y'all are good people. Just don't fuck up your prices to where I'm having to compare against you a year from now! :)
Tonight I came across this video of shoppers stampeding into a mall early on the morning of Black Friday. It starts out tame, but it gets worse. Embarassingly worse.
I'm not anti-consumer by a long shot. I buy stuff around the holidays, some things for myself and some for others. I didn't take part in "buy nothing day" or any of the other boycotts surrounding Black Friday, Cyber Monday, etc. I have no qualms with the notion of a holiday shopping season, aside from a general malaise at the fact that the holidays themselves are all about corporate profits nowadays.
But I honestly don't get it... What compels people to wait in lines like this, flooding into a mall screaming and shouting and whooping and hollering at oh-dark-thirty the day after Thanksgiving? Is it the allure of saving 20% on a loss-leader item that brings them into the store, only to leave several hundred dollars in debt after picking up a few more overpriced gifts? Is it the idea of being the first on the block to have a specific product? Is it about some repressed desire for physical competition, Full Contact Shopping style? The way this crowd is yelping and stumbling over one another, it's easy to envision that someone had just opened a bread line in St. Petersburg - 20 years ago.
Maybe I've just settled into a happy and cynical medium. I'm old enough to have reached the point that there is no killer, must-have item on my list at Christmas time; in fact I no longer have any answer to the ageless question, "What do you want for Christmas?" Anything I wanted that badly, I've already bought. And I don't have any children, so I'm not compelled to capitulate to the increasing demands of today's kids. (Let's see, Mackenzie wants Hannah Montana tickets for $750, and Tristan wants a Wii which is gonna set me back $500... That's more than the mortgage, but no problem! I'll just max out another Mastercard!)
You want to give me something for Christmas? Make it something useful. Cash always works. How about a 12-roll-case of paper towels, or a few bags of cat food? Maybe some Svedka or a carton of Camels. Y'know, the same stuff that you could buy at any of a hundred different places, 364 other days of the year. If you waited in line, anywhere, at 4 in the morning on November 23rd to buy me something, I'm going to kick you in the fucking ass. Because you don't understand what giving is about.
Fellow Memphians, be on the lookout for an MLGW scam that appears to be engineered to con you into signing up for electronic billing.
This month, as usual, my MLGW bill showed up and I paid it on time. I've never been late paying MLGW, so imagine my surprise when in Saturday's mail, I found a "CUT OFF NOTICE" from MLGW. The notice informed me that "To avoid disconnection of services, a payment of $121.71 must be received by close of business November 26, 2007." This notice was postmarked Friday, November 23rd.
The notice went on to extol the virtues of online payments, and informed me that I can pay on the Internet at www.mlgw.com. Of course, my first reaction was to load up MLGW's website to determine what in the hell was going on. One of the links at MLGW's site is to "View, pay and analyze your MLGW bill." I clicked there.
Not being an existing user of MLGW's online service, I chose to enroll as a new user. The enrollment form asks for the basic information: name, address, MLGW account number, and a "My Account Access Code" that began appearing on our bills in September. I filled out all of this information, then saw the "eBilling Options" checkbox. If you check the box, you agree that MLGW will no longer send you paper bills via the Postal Service. I did not check this box, because I want to continue to receive a paper bill.
Upon attempting to submit the form, a rather sneaky dialog box popped up. I don't recall the exact verbiage, but it was something along the lines of, "Click OK to continue without enrolling in eBilling, or click Cancel to proceed and also enroll in eBilling." I'm an internet-savvy sort of person, but I had to carefully read and re-read that dialog several times before finally deciding what to click; and even then, I'm still not sure that I avoided being enrolled in eBilling and sacrificing my paper statement.
After all of that was said and done, I was logged into a page at energyguide.com which told me that my balance was $0.00, and that my last payment was received on 11/15/2007.
If my payment was received on 11/15/2007, why was I mailed a "CUT OFF NOTICE" on 11/23/2007? The only answer I can come up with is that MLGW is attempting to trick customers into enrolling in eBilling, to cut down on the number of paper bills they send out each month, and to then begin billing late fees for those users who subsequently don't receive a paper bill and thus don't pay on time.
Be careful if you receive a similar notice and you know that you've made your payment on time. Don't accidentally waive your paper invoices.
Piss and moan about the immigrants,
But don't say nothin' bout the president?
A democracy don't work that way,
I can say anything I want to say.
So fuck the FCC, fuck the FBI,
Fuck the CIA.
I'm livin' in the motherfuckin' USA.
People tell me that I'm paranoid,
I admit I'm gettin' pretty nervous boy,
It just gets tougher every day,
To sit around and watch it while it slips away.
Been called a traitor and a patriot,
Call me anything you want to but,
Just don't forget your history,
Dirty Lenny died so we could all be free.
So fuck the FCC, fuck the FBI,
Fuck the CIA.
I'm livin' in the motherfuckin' USA.
EFF YOU, CEE KAY.
EFF YOU, CEE KAY.
Fuck the FCC, fuck the FBI,
Fuck the CIA.
I'm livin' in the motherfuckin'
Fuck the FCC, fuck the FBI,
Fuck the CIA.
I'm livin' in the motherfuckin'
Fuck the FCC, fuck the FBI,
Fuck the CIA.
I'm livin' in the motherfuckin' USA.
It's no wonder the religious right is so in love with Christmas. Jebus equals money, and if I had a financial interest in the Jebus racket, I'd probably love Christmas too. Speaking of religious people, can you guys please stop pretending that there's some sort of assault on your faith each year? I keep hearing about how there's a "War on Christmas." Funny, I don't see it. I'm not a religious guy, and even I'm wishing people a merry Christmas. It's what we do when it gets to be late December. I send the stupid Santa emails back and forth among friends and coworkers and I don't try to deny that there's some sort of religious undercurrent to this holiday that's perpetrated upon me year after year. Yet every time Christmas draws near, there's no shortage of bible-thumpers hitting the airwaves proclaiming that the entire country is against them and their holiday.
