Entries from October 2007The Posts You Asked For

Here’s a disturbing trend, and something to add to the long list of things that this country will have to undo when Bush is finally out of office: International travelers are looking for ways to avoid stopovers in the U.S. because of the frustrating, belittling, and bully-like treatment they receive at the hands of Homeland [...]

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My friend’s father used to sing this on occasion. It inserted itself in my head, so I looked it up. Not a lot of places have the lyrics, so I figured I’d include them here.
The Old Family Toothbrush (to the tune of "The Old Oaken Bucket")
How dear to my heart [...]

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There are some jobs out there that I wouldn’t apply for, but that I’d love to see the résumés of those who did. A perfect example (and what prompted me to post this) comes from About.com:
Cheese Guide
QUALIFICATIONS: Our ideal candidate is someone with professional experience in a cheese-related field.

I could, of course, insert some snarky [...]

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Any other DirecTV users out there? Did you notice a software upgrade overnight? (That is, the night of Oct. 24-25?)
The company doesn’t often announce these things, so it’s hard to find out what the changes are.

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The bang (exclamation point to some of you) is because I’ve been working on the photos section for quite a while. That’s because I was on a quest for the best photo-album software I could fine — or at least one that met my specs.
I went back and forth between photoblog software (geared toward new [...]

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As we don’t have an address (nor do I have an official job title) in Richmond yet, but I like to have personal cards to give out, I came up with this:

I almost added “Certified.” 

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AKA, reason #1737:
A seven year old boy at Dennis Township Primary School in Cape May County, N.J., was suspended for a day for drawing this picture:

The ACLU spokeswoman said it best: "What are they accomplishing by keeping that child home?"
Amusingly, the AP took it seriously enough that it wouldn’t mention the name of the [...]

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I’m kinda wondering that. I have a MySpace page (I try to have one on most popular networks), and it’s come in useful several times. But that’s the exception.
I’ve begun to realize that all I get out having a MySpace account are 1) Spam friend requests to get me to visit porn sites, and 2) [...]

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Schools banning tag.
Yes, sure, on rare occasions kids can get hurt. So? It’s certainly not life-threatening, and if you banned every activity in which kids could get hurt you’d end up having them sit quietly in a dimly lit padded room.
Kids do get hurt. They skin knees, bark shins, loosen teeth, bleed and cry. And [...]

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An $8.5 million NASA study of aviation safety consisting of detailed interviews with thousands of pilots found that commercial air travel is so unsafe it is refusing to release the results.
Doing so "could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated [...]

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Schools’ (and others’) like to tout their "zero tolerance" policies for drugs, weapons, bullying, and so forth; it’s supposed to sound strong and tough and all those good things.
In reality, though, if a school district has a zero tolerance policy, what it means is "we don’t trust our teachers and administrators."
Zero tolerance is [...]

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South Carolina teen accidentally brings butter knife (!) to school. Teacher sees it when it falls from her locker. Student expelled.
Welcome to Goose Creek High School, and it’s idiot principal, one Jimmy Huskey. (I’m not being snide. He really is listed as "Jimmy" on the site.)
I wonder what lesson he thinks he’s teaching. I [...]

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For no good reason other than I wanted to put it on “paper,” here’s the laundry guide for people who still think you wash light colors in warm water….

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I hope if when I’m arrested, I have a bit more dignity.

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So Matthew Jones was arrested in New York for a rather heinous crime: standing around when other people were walking.
Seriously.
Per the New York Times:
According to the original complaint against Mr. Jones, the officer “observed defendant along with a number of other individuals standing around” on a public sidewalk in June 2004.

[snip]
Mr. Jones’s reckless intent, [assistant [...]

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Answer: It doesn’t matter what you think. It’s kinda obvious.
I wonder if Xenu ordered them to do it.

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So it’s official: We’re moving to Richmond. Roanoke’s economy is just not very good, and, as our neighbor pointed out, finding a decent job that pays more than $8.00 an hour isn’t easy.
In Richmond, though, we have the lowest unemployment rate in the state (3.2 percent, I think), plus the whole state-government thing. And a [...]

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If you want to check out an awful, awful Web site, go to Adidas. Wow.
I saw an Adidas backpack that I wanted more info on, so I hit the site. I left without getting the info because the site was so bad.

You can’t skip the opening Flash animation.
The links are all but useless — “Originals” [...]

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The good folks at Appalachian Power (“Our name says it all”) have told us we’re losing power from 9:00 to 3:00 today. Doing the math, that means I won’t have power between 8:45 and 6:00 or 7:00 tonight.
[sigh]
(I’m saying this for the benefit of those who might try to e-mail and not get a response.)
Meanwhile [...]

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I like using Wikipedia’s “Random article” link; I invariably learn something interesting.
Sometimes it takes a few tries. That’s because sometimes it takes me to a particularly odd article.

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