Hurricane-riffic! I have weathered through 4 hurricanes. The big one for me was when we lived in NC on the coast - I forget the name, though. Hazel? Phil? Jazzbo? It was just me, robot cat, and our pal (and neighbor) Jungle. The hurricane started during the day, which was nice of it. We lived downtown and I parked my car in a parking garage to protect it from debris - a good idea actually. Bought bottles of water, beer, and snacks and got hunkered down (I even did that 'fill the bathtub with water thing'). The storm came and we lost our power pretty quickly. Jungle suggested that we walk over to Matt (M)'s house because he was shooting off fireworks and had cases of beer - so we did that. It was about a 3 block walk to his house and it was fine except when you got to the cross streets and the wind was really coming down the streets.
Bad Idea I don't remember what we did at Matt's, but I got antsy and wanted to be back in our building, so we soon left and walked back. The storm had gotten stronger and it was difficult to actually walk. As we were crossing the main street in front of our building I remember the wind picking up again and hearing an actual train locomotive-esque roar. At this point I remember clearly thinking, "oh shit - this was a really bad idea". Tree limbs and debris were zooming by and I was pushed back and fourth as I tried to run (weaving-ly) to our building. Luckily, neither Jungle or I were smacked by anything and when I got back to the building I then announced something to the effect of "f*ck this - I am NOT going back out".
So, we went upstairs, had a few beers and cooked everything in our freezers (gas stove!) that was slowly melting. We both retired to our own apartments and took afternoon naps with our full tummies as our windows banged away from the wind.
For a hurricane, it was relaxing - except for that almost being killed part. The cat, by the way, slept through the whole thing. Nothing seemed to faze her at all (same cat that hides from the vacuum cleaner - but roaring wind and windows banging for hours doesn't seem to faze her).
Wesley Clark Yow! His credentials are dizzying. Howard Dean & John Edwards were both 'kind of' good candidates and had decent chances, but this Clark fellow... well, he makes them all look a bit weenie. Hope Clark gets the nomination because a debate with our National Guard flunky monkey president would be good fun.
Shun Lee. Taste-EE. In honor of our day of love, Mrs. Robot & I dined at the lovely Shun Lee in suit and tie midtown. We had the duck. The duck where they bring out the whole friggin cooked duck for you to approve and then chop it for you tableside. Lovely dinner. Mike Wallace was at a table nearby. Lots of white men in suits there. A good time had by all.
We then went and rode the tram to Roosevelt Island and then rode by. The view is great and it's just great fun. If you haven't ridden the tram, get on it. It's cheap good fun.
Señora Cojones Says We have a new advice column in the works - but since my internet connection has been flaky I haven't worked on the site much in the past days. I am taking any design ideas for this project if anyone wants to donate a sketch, an idea, a text treatment... most of you have my email address. Those who don't can email things to the webmaster account. This new advice column will be written by (shhhhhh) the father from letters from father. Yay!
Verisign Bites Lord. Verisign & NetworkSolutions are two companies I avoid like the plague. Verisign recently announced that they initiated a new process for 'domain not found' errors. Ok, quick background on what Verisign does in a goofy, simplistic way: 1. Verisign controls the DNS thing-a-ma-jig for all .com/.net domains. 2. This whole DNS thing works as a kind of a router. You type in "happyrobot.net" and the DNS server says, "oh, yes - happyrobot.net - that web site is at this IP address" 3. The IP address is the address of the actual server that the website sits on. You know, it's that number like 255.123.555.65
What this means is...
1. You want to go visit, say this site, but you type in the wrong address. Let's say that you type in hpappyrbot.net 2. Instead of the normal little "domain not found" page or the default page that your browser pops up, Verisign who controls the .com/.net DNS records will direct you to one of their own pages telling you that this domain doesn't exist. 3. On this page, they are planning on placing advertising for themselves and messages to "register hpappyrbot.net now!"
Annoying! There are also lots of other fun issues that I won't bore you with - just that there will be some internet admin types getting headaches from this.
File Sharing People be so dumb. On the radio today they were talking to a guy who is being sued by the despicable RIAA. He is stating that he went through the whole LimeWire site (the file-sharing client he uses) and no where on the site does it say that using this program is illegal - and so why is he being sued?!! F*cking tard.
1. File Sharing is NOT illegal 2. Sharing copyrighted works IS illegal 3. In theory, LimeWire and all the others can be used for purely legal and noble means (trading uncopyrighted fan fiction poetry maybe?) 4. The recording industry started losing money BEFORE Napster.
The same tard then uses this as an example: "Let's say that someone puts a pile of books on the street next to a Xerox machine and allows people to make free copies. Are you saying that it would be illegal if people start copying the books?" Ah, yea. dipshit.
As much as I hate the RIAA and the big music conglomerate, I know that technically I am stealing the music, but I sleep at night because I end up buying CDs of music I like (I look at it more as a sampling thing). File sharing has introduced me to tons and tons of music that I would of never heard any-fucking-where because of the homogenization of the music / entertainment biz.
