… welcome.

As you may know, I’ve been trying a new tool called Wishpot. Part of what lured me into it was the ability to have folks contribute small chunks to buy expensive items.  The idea sounds fantastic: no more coordinating on get-together gifts, simpler cross-store wedding registries, etc. Of course, the way Wishpot integrated their contributions is a little half-baked, since when an item reaches the full contribution amount, it isn’t automatically purchased and shipped. They don’t even have fancy scripts to determine how much your contribution should ACTUALLY be based on the estimated assessed PayPal fees (boo PayPal fees!). It’s close though, to true distributed cofunding.

To test this (selflessly), I want to enlist you readers to help us out. It’s pretty simple, actually, and there’s a couple things you can do: first, Kari and I want to see Quantum or Solace in the theater. The tickets are a little pricey, and with our spending freeze it’s notgunnahappen. I’ve added the value of two tickets (plus PayPal fees) to my Wishpot, so you can go there and pitch in to help us out. Secondly, as a bigger attempt, I have added the entire box-set of James Bond DVDs to my Wishpot. As you can imagine, it’s quite expensive, at $120 for 20 DVDs (doesn’t include Casino Royale, which we already own).

What I need you to do is click on one of the following links to either pitch in for QoS tickets or the box set. What you do is up to you, based on the total contributed amount, total percentage, and final value of the goods. I pay about $100 per year, plus my time for this blog, so I’m hoping in one fell swoop it can all be worth it.

Click here to see the Quantom of Solice tickets Wishpot item

Click here to see the James Bond Box Set Wishpot item

As I see it, I get about 200 unique visitors a month, on average. If each person pitched in a dollar, we could go see QoS tomorrow. If each person pitched in $10, we’d have a Bond, James Bond collection in two days. If I run this for 2 weeks, and everyone pitches in $3, we’ll hit both goals. If this is a total failure, and nobody gives, I learn something, and probably try to bum a couple tickets off friends the old fashioned way.

When the dust settles in 2 weeks, I’ll report back with what happened, whether I think it worked out, and what Wishpot (or future distributed cofunding sites) should do to improve the experience. Please let me know in the comments what you think about the theory of distributed cofunding, or wishpot’s flavor in general. Do you know of a better way to do it?

Thanks Engadget for the head’s-up.

Today I got the call that my employment was being terminated, and while I’m saddened and nervous, I’m not surprised.

Goodbye PIER, best of luck to you all who remain, you’re a fantastic team and I will miss you.

Video below:

If you want the straight-up link to do it yourself, here it is: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fsparkwash.com%2FHoustonVotingLocations.kml&g=4000+Essex+Ln,+Houston,+TX+77027&ie=UTF8&z=10

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KML file courtesy of http://www.batchgeocode.com/

The Signing of the Declaration of Independence

While I was in church today, learning about Christ’s love and mission to bring his Kingdom to earth, the evil US government took action directly opposed to Christ’s message of love and tolerance.

Sorry for going political here, but I really have to get this off my chest. I truly see the original intent of the US Government as being one which allows the advancement of the Kingdom of God, because it promoted basic human rights (the fundamental basis for religious and/or moral expression). I do NOT believe that the US is a Christian nation, but that rather, on paper, it is the perfect government for the advancement of Christ’s mission. We have however fallen so far away from the original intent that it would be virtually unrecognizable to the founding fathers.

For the record, I voted for Bush twice. I thought (and still think) that Al Gore was an idiot in the 2000 election, and in 2004 I admit I was emotionally and irrationally caught up in revenge and a spirit of intolerance that many of us were both the victims and purveyors of.

Now we have gone too far. Our government, while corrupt for a long time, is over-stepping the bounds even us (now) authority-loving Americans can tolerate. The retaliation against Afghanistan was just. The war in Iraq evil and wrong. Now we attack Syria, and continue to antagonize Pakistan (don’t they both have nuclear weapons programs?).

Please dear reader who’s intellect I respect, expect and depend on, check out the following links:

This revolutionary document contains lines like “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government” and “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” One of the authors of the document was quoted as saying “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.” The author in question is the revolutionary Thomas Jefferson, and the document is The  American Declaration of Independence.

The second document is almost as old, and contains strict rules for the US Government. Most people have never read it, and as such have no idea what rights it grants them. According to this document, the lucky citizens of the mythical nation that adhere to it don’t have to let police search them without cause, or open their doors for anyone. They have the right to arm themselves in the case they should need to overthrow the government or fight an attacking army. They even have the right to say whatever they want, to whoever they want, whenever they want. They are innocent until proven guilty too! I want to live in the country that wrote and adopted the US Constitution!

Finally, not as old but just as important, there is another revolutionary document almost none of you have probably read, but you ABSOLUTELY MUST! It is called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was written by these crazy hippies called the United Nations, and these peace-sign flashing liberals signed it into “law” in 1948. It’s older than almost everybody with a working Internet connection. There’s a beautiful video summary below, for those of us who don’t like reading intensely long documents on the computer screen (I’m with you there!). For those of you who may be visually impaired, I apologize for not having a transcript for the said video, but the text is contained in the aforementioned link:

America, I love you. Please be the nation you promised us you could be. Switzerland is far away from here, and they probably won’t take me anyway.

Prophetic…

Well, power came back on about 5 minutes ago. It couldn’t come on until we had gone to the store for ice, and thrown out the entire contents of our fridge and freezer. Mullen luck.

Anyways, that’s about all I have for an update tonight! I never said it’d be a long update, just a big one.

We cleaned out our freezer this morning.  We will probably finish cleaning out the refrigerator this evening.  We tried to eat as much as we could so we wouldn’t have to throw much away and I think we did an ok job.  Unfortunately its difficult to go thru near-full jars and bottles of jam, salad dressing, mustards, and other condiments.  Last night we headed to Pearland to help our friends eat a bunch of meat that they could no longer keep cold enough to save.  It was really fun to see a number of our friends from church and feast on meat!  They had hotdogs, two kinds of sausage, pulled pork, chicken, hamburgers, salmon, and then some!  They felt good about using it up rather than having to throw it out.

We don’t know when our power will be restored, but until then we are very much enjoying the cool front that is moving through Houston.  We’ve slept comfortably with the windows open over the last couple of nights.  If this cool weather moves out and we still don’t have electricity, we may have to arrange to sleep over at somebody’s house, but for now we stay home and have candle lit evenings, awesome french press coffee, camp stove meals, and our battery powered radio to keep us connected to the happenings around us.

Thanks everyone for praying for us down here and for checking our blog for updates!  You are welcome to try calling, but we are still barely receiving calls because the networks are so busy.

Lance is REALLY scratched up from flying debris. Turns out roof shingles flying at 100 mph can do some serious damage. Even the back window has a huge scratch in it! yIKEs! We’ll be calling Geico on Monday to see wat tey can do before poor Lancie-poo starts rusting.
We’re going to drive around later to charge the gadgets (yay power inverter!) and cool off (yay AC) and take some pictures of flooding. We’ll have to be back by 9pm though because there’s been a city-wide curfew ordered from tonight through the 19th. Of course I view this as an unnecessary increase in power by what is essentially a police state right now, but I’m not about to go out and protest. This is Texas, I don’t want to get shot.

We’ve seen trucks driving around to restore power, and all around us lights are on, but not here. The city is rightly focusing on hospitals, nursing homes and Hotels. I scratch my head as we drive past lit-up car dealerships and strip malls, then sleep without covers in an 80 degree bedroom. :S

I’m working on uploading some photos to Flickr, it takes a while on this slow internet connections.

The cell phones still don’t quite work. Calls get dropped before connecting, ad even SMS and Voicemail notifications come in bursts a few times a day.

Flooding is still pretty bad (pics later?) all around town. There’s been a bit of rain today even with the storm gone, and it’s exacerbating the flooding problem.

That’s all for now, I’ve gotta get the Flickr upload to go through. More updates to follow!

UPDATE: Kari turned the sink faucet just before we left and our water is back! Yay!

The buildings nearby have lots of windows busted, there’s insulation blowing everywhere. The storm drains were plugged (until Kari and I walked past, that is *grin*). Fences are gone, trees are down, roofs are ripped up. The awesome power of the storm was very evident.

Lance was ok on the roof overnight. There’s shingles and metal roof pieces everywhere though, so I’m sure there’s scratches we’re not seeing.

We’ll have pictures and maybe video when we get power back.

If the video doesn’t work, it’s because we JUST updated it. Give it a few minutes, then try again. Cheers!

At this time, mandatory evacuations have been ordered for much of the city, but Kari ad I are safely outside the surge zone, and out of a flood area. We are subject to the wind and rain however, and are preparing for infrastructure loss. We can’t do much during the storm, but we have duct-tape and tarp for covering windows afterwords if needed.

We have friends we can stay with as needed, and I can work from TranStar once we lose power/connectivity.

Just be warned that our cell phones are already acting up, and we’ll probably leave them powered off to conserve battery life for when we may need it.

To get more information about us, keep coming back here. To get more info about the storm, check out the links below:

StormPulse
Weather Underground
Harris County Office of Emergency Management
CW 39 (Video Clips)

Keep us in your prayers!

Genesis 3

1 Now the Craigslist Scammer was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, “Yea, hath God said, ‘Ye shall not ride every scooter of Asia?’”

2 And the woman said unto the serpent, “We may ride the scooters of Asia, Honda, Yamaha, and Genuine Scooter Company, which the LORD God had made: (3) But of the scooter of Craigslist which is of China, God hath said, Ye shall not buy of it, neither shall ye ride it, lest it die.”

4 And the Craigslist Scammer said unto the woman, “It shall not surely die: (5) For God doth know that in the day ye ride thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing Chinese good. Ye shall possess disc brakes, remote start, and engineering similar to the Honda scooters, which the LORD God also had made.”

6 And when the woman saw that the Scooter was good for features, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a 150cc water-cooled engine to be desired to make one fast and quiet, she took of the scooter thereof, and did ride, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did buy it.

7 And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were foolish and broke; and they changed the fluids, and made themselves new gaskets.

8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garage in the dry afternoon: and Lach and Kari hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the cars of the garage. (9) And the LORD God called unto Lach, and said unto him, “Where art thou?” (10) And Lach said, “I heard thy voice in the garage, and I was afraid, because I was poor; and my feet are sore from walking.” (11) And God said, “Why were you walking from Montrose, Hast thou ridden the scooter, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not buy?” (12) And the man said, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the Craigslist Scammer, and I did buy the scooter.” (13) And the LORD God said unto the woman, “What is this that thou hast done?” And the woman said, “The Craigslist Scammer beguiled me, and I did ride.”

14 And the LORD God said unto the Craigslist Scammer, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all Craigslist, and above every angry blogger; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: (15) And I will put enmity between thee and the Mullens, but you will not be punished in this life, because Christians aren’t to sue one another.”

16 Unto the woman he said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy transportation; in sorrow thou shalt go to work; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, but he shall be without a vehicle.”

17 And unto Lach he said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of Kari, and hast purchased the scooter of China, of which I commanded thee, saying, ‘Thou shalt not purchase of it:’ cursed is the pavement for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou walk of it all the days of thy life, upon thy four-wheeled contraptions shalt thou go, and gas shalt thou buy all the days of thy life. (18) Pollution also and gas prices shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt drive alone with three empty seats; (19) In the ache of thy muscles shalt thou walk home, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

20 And Lach called his wife’s name Kari; because he had to carry everything wherever he walked now.

21 Unto Lach also and to his wife did the LORD God make Lance run well, and be inexpensive to repair.

22 And the LORD God said, “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know Chinese good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Japanese brands, and ride, and smile for ever:”

23 Therefore the LORD God sent the Mullens forth from Craigslist, to walk and drive the four wheeled vehicles.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the top of his bank account zeroes, and a broken scooter which could not even be driven to the shop, to keep the way of the Japanese brands.

The real problem here is that Platies give birth to between 10 and 100 young, and have a tendancy to eat their babies (yeah, I know they’re called “fry,” bite me) after giving birth. Our filter’s also not ready for babies, and there’s Gouramis and a Betta in the tank too, and I think they will be prone to devour the baby Platies. My attitude has always been “they’re just fish,” but now that they’re baby fish I’m having this huge moral quandary. On one hand nature is cruel, and the other fish would have an honest shot at eating the babies in the wild; on the other hand they’re babies for goodness’ sake!

I need your help, as a faithful reader of my blog (hi mom). Should I try to protect and raise the fry, or let nature run it’s course? If I choose option 2 (nature) should I get the tank ready for nature by putting a screen over the filter inlet? Vote below

[poll id="2"]

UPDATE: DARN IT ALL! Turns out we have 2 boys and 3 girls! Oh noes! Apparently you can sex Platies fairly easily: a male Platy has a skinny anal fin and a female Platy has a fanned anal fin. It might be my imagination, but I think I can already see the darkening spot above her anal fin that would be the fry’s eyes. I might be taking the boys back to the pet store to avoid this problem in the future…

That’s right, boys and girls. while downloading the newest OOo beta release (lets hear it for native Aqua on OS X!), I noticed it was seeding quite quickly. Just weeks after they were ordered to stop too!

Torrent on (legally, of course)!

I guess I was born for this texas stuff…

This is me, back home in Washington, in the Mount Baker National Forest on the eve of my wedding. In case you’re wondering, Wile E. Coyote didn’t come home with us.

What fantastic service from PayPal! … not.

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Just a friendly reminder to read carefully, examine URLs, and NEVER enter a password if you’re suspicious of phishing.

Take THAT Houston, triple hitched semi truck! Who would’ve thought those hippies in Oregon would have you beat on that one?

UPDATE: If you liked that, you’ll love these. Because most of these are in Australia (infamous for their “road-trains”) I can’t help get a “Mad Max” vibe from this.

This is an amazing picture of a large prop plane dumping fire putter outer right near a house in Santa Barbara.

From here (more cool pics on that page too).

Today I opened my email from Clint to find the ad shown above. Priceless. GOOGLE KNOWS!

Please see this video, so you can know what’s happening to the constitution right now. This is extremely terrifying.

Thanks firedoglake.

UPDATE: More information on the FISA fiasco is here. RIP 4th Amendment, 1791-2008.

I usually try to have some witty or smarmy comment to make about my links, but just… wow. Wow.

Link

• ICS was born out of wildfire response. It was developed out of the need to communicate response activity and centrally control efforts. Before ICS was developed, you would run into a situation where team A was using controlled burn to slow a fire, and inadvertently run the controlled burn into team B, who was also running a controlled burn in the opposite direction from another fire. The two teams would end up back to back battling blazes they had started, and there were many fatalities.
  As a result of the fire-focus of ICS, and the fact that these folks have been using it for decades, this is a very well run UC (Unified Command) and JIC (Joint Information Center).
• PIER was made for this crap. It’s great to see it working so well. The age of the product is showing through, the UI’s a little crusty (something Geoff’s addressing already) and out old-as-dirt version of TinyMCE is aggravating at best.
• As usual with incidents where PIER is used, this is a bit of a love-fest for the product. People are using and it’s clicking. Encouraging to us folks who typically only deal with customers once something’s broken.
• This place has some col toys. Sure, the internet connection SUCKS (really lame state and federal firewalls, between the two it’s hard for people to pass stuff back and forth), but who needs good internet when there’s fire-dumper airplanes reloading and refueling 100 feet from you?

I’m having a really good time here, posted below are some pics from here in the JIC and around the complex as well. Cheers!

I’m off, last-minute style, to help with the JIC in Redding for the California Wildfire response. The PIER site they’re using is here.

I’ll try to post pics and updates while I’m there.

I’m excited to be working with the department that invented the Incident Command System, it should be enlightening and exciting.

More to follow…

It looks like Bond’s hitting hard, and finally behaving like a normal action hero. This may disenfranchise Bond fans, but it caters to the Bourne Identity crowd. Today’s moviegoers want smart, gritty action, with a good guy we can identify with. With the old Bond movies, I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to kick “a” or it I wanted to kick him in the junk and tell him to move on. I wouldn’t dream of kicking Daniel Craig int he junk, because he’d come after me and defibrillate me. I know he wouldn’t be afraid to either because he did it to himself in Casino Royale. Plus his pants are probably Italian and worth more than my life.

Also, Aston Martin’s are extremely sexy. I’ll watch it just for the scene where the car spins around on the parking garage ramp, certainly with machine-gun bullets spraying everywhere. Bond, PLEASE, don’t crash it this time!

I was cruising through my old photos the other day when I found this pic. I realize not everyone has heard the story about why this image is so epic, so here we go.

In June of 2004 my old Chevy Cavalier broke down on the I-90 floating bridge. Twice. On Tuesday both times. In the exact same spot. I towed it to the repair shop, fixed it, sold it to my neighbor for $500 and went to Tacoma to find a new car. At the auto mall I was shopping for old Land Rovers (hey, gas was cheap and I lived in Bellevue) but for some reason I test drove a 2003 Lancer OZ. It was fun. I was no longer looking for Land Rovers. Unfortunately, the dealer claimed that OZ was spoken for (lies!) but he had a nice red one back at the dealership. So I rode to the dealership to see my new destiny. It was a red 2002 Mitsubishi Lancer ES, I loved it and I bought it and named it Reuben.

“Now wait a second,” you may now be saying, “I thought your car was blue.” Well two days later the dealership still didin’t have the final papers from the bank, so I was still waiting for them to call me and I decided to explore my options. I drove up to Seattle Mitsubishi to see what they had. They just so happened to have a clean 2002 LS with no plates for sale for $1000 less than I had agreed to pay for the red one. They found me a 4.5% interest rate and I bought it instead. I returned Reuben to the other dealer and they shredded my papers.

Part of the sale with Seattle Mitsubishi was that they do some work on the car to get it up to snuff. They agreed to do a brake job and alignment, and replace the weatherstriping on the windows, “Come back next week.” “No appointment?” “Naah, just come on in”

The next week rolls around, and on Thursday I take Lance in to have the work done. I notice there’s no cars in the lot and the lights appear to be off inside. There’s a note on the door that says “Inventorying, please come back Thursday.” I figured I must have just missed them, and I’d come back the next week. I called the dealer just in case to leave a message, and the voicemail was full. Weird.

The next Thursday rolls around and I show up again, and there’s still no cars. This time the door has another note on it, in addition to the “Inventorying” note… It’s from the State of Washington. Something about taxes, oh, and a chain around the door handles with a fatty padlock on it.

I had a good laugh and came back later that night to take a picture, that’s how you get the image above. What followed was a 9 month debacle to get my car licensed and registered, since they never processed the paperwork and actually never fully processed the prior sale. The state had no proof I had bought the car, save for the copies of my papers I mailed to them. Seems the dealership hadn’t been reporting sales to the state in that last week, so they could pocket the money and run. guess the joke’s on them now.

The funny thing is how things settle into place after somehitng like that happens. Some weird stuff I remembered afterwards:

• They knocked $3000 off the price of the car, “Just for me.”
• When Kari walked in with me the sales guy looked her up and down and asked, “How’d you get so tan?”
• They offered to fix everything. No extra cost. “Just come back next week.”
• They offered to return Reuben for me. Yeah right.
• The repair bays had what looked like props for 3Fast3Furious in them

Man, if I could do it again I would have bought the 04 Lancer Sportback they had and negotiated them down to $500 for it.

Anyways, in true Lach fashion, nothing could come without some crazy unlikely story surrounding it and Lance is no different. He’s been such a trouble-free car too, maybe he’s compensating.

• We bought a Scooter. It was a bummer broken one (what, no coolent in a water cooled scoot?), but we’re getting it fixed as we speak. While we’re waiting, I’m staring at this picture and sobbing.
• Max died. I think some friends may have fed him one night, the next morning he was laying on the bottom of the tank “gasping.” We put him in new clear wayter, but he didn’t make it.
• We moved on past Max and got ourselves a proper tank with a filter. We have two Blue Guarmis and plants. We’re going to add more fish and finally a new Betta.
• Kari is almost done with her teacher certification classes, and finished her EC-4 test last night. We don’t know for sure yet, but I’m positive she passed.
• Kari will be looking for teaching jobs in the next month or so here.
• Kari’s 10 year high school reunion is coming up the weekend of the 5th. She’ll be in Corvallis, but I’m staying here, tickets are expensive!
• Church is going great,w e’re hosting the membership class thing at our house, it starts the week of the 13th, I think it’ll be on Sundays at our house.

Did I miss anything?

Found this on the internet, this is of course in response to Obama’s quote about stopping climate change, where he said, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …”

Ahh, the audacity of hope indeed…

Right after I shot this, a bolt hit the building down the street. The thunder hit me while the bolt was still hitting the building. It felt like someone punched me in the chest. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

People know me as an early adopter, someone keen to snatch up the latest gadgets the moment they hit the shelves. I have good news, it’s not true: I don’t own an iPhone, an e-Book reader, or a particle accelerator… I still buy my movies pre-viewed from Blockbuster and I still buy my music in iTunes and occasionally some random brick-and-mortar store. I don’t do a lot of downloading, although I’ve been known to snag a torrent of a hard to find movie (Hors De Prix, Salt of The Earth, BBC’s Top Gear) while I scour the interwebs for a place to really buy it. I’m listening carefully to Toshiba’s claim that BluRay is only a storage media, and waiting to see what the world brings us next for high-definition audio and video.

My first big step into the brave new world was last week when I downloaded an app called Requium (link to .torrent, may have NSFW ads) and stripped all the DRM out of my iTunes music. Over 8,000 legally acquired songs, none of which I could listen to on my non-iPhone. What Requium does is remove the “FairPlay” (ironic, eh?) DRM from the files so they can be used anywheres. It’s not a file sharing app, it’s not a piracy tool, although it is a violation of the iTunes TOS to use it (illegal?). Now I have 8,000 songs which are still playable in iTunes, only now I can put them on my Nokia 5610 ExpressMusic AND Kari’s new iPhone (should she get one?).

Now that I have all these gloriously nude MP3 files, I have sworn off the iTunes music store. Never again will I pay for something I can’t use and fortunately there’s some fantastic alternatives out there. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on Amazon.com, since I’m totally in love with the big yellow smile. Yesterday I made my first non-iTunes digital music purchase: Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. The whole process was seamless. Once I had downloaded the Amazon downloader (download a downloader anyone?) the files were downloaded and simply dropped in the folder of my choosing. No DRM, no drama.

In iTunes’ defense, you can also buy the new Coldplay album DRM free in the iTunes Music Store, by purchasing iTunes Plus music, but it’s a dollar less over at amazon, enough savings to buy one of the only other good Coldplay songs: Spies or Yellow ;).

I also finally opened up Miro, the new name of the old Democracy player. Miro runs on Windows Linux and Mac, and lets you download free video content to your computer. From there you can play it on the road, or just wait until the video has downloaded for a seamless viewing. Miro also lets you do naughty illegal things like subscribe to RSS feeds of torrent files of your favorite shows… but that’s bad, illegal, and way too logical so don’t do it. Now thanks to Miro, I’m subscribed to CNN’s daily video podcast, and the ONN. If tech like Miro keeps developing like this, we can kiss movie rentals and physical media goodbye (see the above video clip DOES have something to do with this random, disjointed post.).

I registered the mullen.me domain name, but had no idea it would go this far…

I think this about settles the bets on whether Houston will change Lach more, or it Lach will change Houston more…

My apologies to Otis, but I just don’t care much about Facebook status. I know, people use it to update what they’re doing, but it’s annoying to have to check Twitter AND Facebook. As a compromise, I don’t check Facebook. I understand however, that others may want to know what I’m up to (how narcissistic of me) so I update Twitter, which posts on my blog (above, under the title), and on Facebook via TwitterSync. Well, the TwitterSync dev (bless his little Seattle heart) wrote TwitterSync on the Twitter IM API (good call), which is terminally down (bad call). Twitter IM has been down for weeks now, and so has TwitterSync. At first I didn’t really care, since Facebook status sucks, but it’s been long enough now and every time I log into Facebook it says “What are you doing right now?”

So today I break down and add the terrible Twitter Facebook app. It works, but it’s pretty gimped and doesn’t have the features TwitterSync has. Of course, Twitter’s own Twitter app is FUBAR as well. I add it and after signing on get some crazy Ruby/FB error message (image above).

Now c’mon guys. You’re freakin’ Twitter, the golden child of the internet. Can’t you fix your app? Is the economy so bad you had to go get second jobs and don’t have time to update your software. Times like these I wish I knew one iota about code so I could go make my own app that doesn’t suck.

A Starbucks store very far from Seattle has taken Otis Kimzey’s advice. In December of last year Otis wrote about how Starbucks should have happy hour from 5:00pm to 6:30pm, to get people in during the slower times of the day. He was referencing this AdAge article (registration/subscription required, those rat bastards) and adding his own $.02.

On friday, on an OtisKimzey.com reader tip, Kyle told us that the Starbucks he worked at in Houston was offering a Happy Hour. That’s right ladies and gents, half off frappuccinos between 5 and 7 even on weekends. Kari, myself and Philip and Amber piled in the car to go check it out, and sure enough, right when we arrive we see the sign on the door (pictured above). Definately not corporate. Inside we see the following sign as well:

Of course, we were not alone. Youths everywhere. Frapps flying across the counter. Starbucks happy hour FTW.

We asked for Kyle, but the other employees jumped right on me, “He’s not here.” Manager? Shift supervisor? Why so defensive?

The employees working there said it was this store only, and not a push from corporate. They just printed the signs and started selling half off frapps during happy hour that Monday. They did seem nervous about all my questions, but they should be. The Mother Ship will not be pleased. They run a tight ship and don’t generally give stores flexibility over pricing.

This is such a great idea. Frapps have to have the highest margin of any thing ever sold. A grande costs $3.85, and there’s just no way it takes a) 20 minutes for the barista to make, b) lots of R&D cost recoup, or c) little flecks of gold to get that perfect sugar-infused flavor. So take a hit on margin for 2 hours a day. Get people into your store before or during dinner. I’ sure you’re still making money, and it encourages more people to buy Frapps and get hooked on them.

Corporate, if you’re listening (probably not), please give us happy hours in every store (but make better signs)!

I do not want to seem insensitive here. Children are at risk on the internet. Young people in general lack the ability to discern between what is safe and unsafe for them, and often times make emotional decisions despite the strongest (sometimes overwhelming) advice from smart and caring adults. Mix this with the amount of freaks and weirdos on the internet, and you have a powder keg waiting for a match.

That said, the internet is not inherently dangerous. While many geeky types can find out almost anything they want about you, most of them lack the cajones to do somehting with that information (I am essentially the poster-child for such people). The problem is that the media treats the media like a poison leaking into our school’s water supplies, infecting and raping our children.

Such is the case today with KOMO 4 News in Seattle. Like Gerald says, it’s annoying to turn on the news and just know you’re being spoon-fed a huge pile of you-know-what. The longer you sit and watch, the more you eat too, since it’s mostly you-know-what on there. Notice the following story:

Girl, 14, disappears after online relationship

A 14-year-old Boise, Idaho, girl has disappeared and is believed to be in danger after meeting a 27-year-old man on the Internet.

I originally clicked to this article because as Otis pointed out, the car he’s allegedly driving her away in has the license place OMGROFL (Oh my god, rolls on floor laughing). I barely made it to that point of the story though, as I sat and re-read the first sentence over and over again. “A 14-year-old Boise, Idaho, girl has disappeared and is believed to be in danger after meeting a 27-year-old man on the Internet.” What relevancy does it have that they met over the internet? Is that what put her in danger? How does that sentence make any sense at all. It should read: “A 14-year-old Boise, Idaho, girl has disappeared and is believed to be in danger after MEETING UP A 27 YEAR OLD COMPLETE STRANGER WHO LOOKS LIKE THIS.” She is not in danger because they met on the internet. She is not in danger because she met him. She is in danger because fro some reason she traveled over 500 miles form home to meet up with a compete stranger who is almost twice her age. How. Stupid.

Of course, the media won’t run with the story “14 year old girls shouldn’t meet up with 27 year old strangers” because nobody cares. They will all say, “duh, we know that.” So they have to SELL the story to you, which means they need a bad guy. The problem with casting the 27 year old as the bad guy (besides the fact that he has the dorkiest license plate ever, almost as silly as the delicious library guy’s Lotus’ license plate: pwn3d.) is that nobody cares. We don’t want to hear about the neighbor kid who’s luring girls in and kidnapping them. We don’t want to think about nice looking young people who are bad inside, but we want to think “the Internet” is evil.

The problem here is the lesson learned. Naieve parents hear “Don’t let your kids online” and will react by closing Facebook profiles, MySpace pages (good move, btw), and moving a bunch of Flickr pages to Private. The problem of course, is even with the whole internet barred off from kids, alleged perverts like Mr. Morgan D. Jones will still find victims. They’ll find neighbor kids, or schools. They will continue to be perverts, the just won’t drive across 10 states to take kids.

The lesson learned should be “parents, watch your kids, talk to them about REAL dangers and be involved in their lives.” It took Mr. Jones several days to get to Boise, in that time well connected parents would have known he was coming. The police could have been waiting in her kitchen for him.

Please people, use some common sense. Don’t believe everything you see/hear/read.

UPDATE:

Anyone else in? I’d like to see this happen down here in Houston.

Wow. Everyone knows you don’t mess with the Hoffmeister. Yes, that’s his real name. No, you should not Hassle the Hoff’, he will crush you.

Sory for posting a clip from Faux Fox News, this is too good to pass up.

Thanks dead-blog Fedorable.

I kid you not, this is an illustration from the CF Moto E-Charm owners manual depicting how to change the oil. I can see how this discussion went over there across the Pacific…

[In a dimly lit room, the chinese president meets with the executives of CF Moto and his most trusted military advisors, the chief of CF Moto speaks up:] You see, Mr. President, you have already accomplished phase one of the attack: selling lead-filled toys to their greedy children. Phase two has now begun: telling them to spill their expensive precious oil all over their ground, destroying their environment. Bwa ha ha ha! [Chinese general chimes in] Bwa ha ha ha. [Everyone in the room joins in] Bwa ha ha ha!

You know what? She needs this.

Tim has spent the last few months planning this jump. He built the ramp entirely from scratch using his own two hands, and lots of power tools. It’s his pride and joy, and he intended the jump to be his last hurrah in Bellingham.

This is simply amazing. Kudos to Alex for this vid.

“Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature. Asian-American, please.”

Kari and I have been scooter shopping. We’ve looked at Craigslist just about every day for the last month, calling everyone we could and asking them about their rides. I had zeroed in on one particular scooter, a Honda C70 Passport (pictured). All the reviews say it’s reliable, sturdy and fun. The thing’s as cute as a button.

We found “the one,” a beat-up old Passport for $650 in NW Houston. No pic. Runs and functions perfectly. Dream. Come. True. We spent Saturday late morn driving up there and looking at the thing. When Kari saw it she got nervous. It was cosmetically as described, except for no headlight, title, or electronic ignition, and it had no leg cowl. This thing, without a leg cowl, looks like a motorcycle missing a gas tank. Then with no headlight and a bundle of old wires in it’s place, it looks like a scary motorcycle. Never-mind that it starts in 1/2 a kick of the starter and idles so quietly you can whisper while standing next to it. Never-mind that it effortlessly glides up to 40mph, and shifts quickly and firmly. It LOOKS unreliable. Then when I turn it off in first gear, the transmission seizes up. We have to roll it and drop it into first to get it to start up again, and then it works fine. At this point poor Kari is probably crapping her pants. I’m talking about how we can buy it, put $300 into it, and have a nearly perfectly working Honda scooter, Kari’s wondering why we’d bother when there’s a brand new chinese scooter down the street for $1095.

So, as you’re guessing, we didn’t buy the C70. There was a perfect functional C70 in the guy’s garage, teal even, but he said we didn’t “even want to know” how much he was going to ask for that one. No deal. We instead drove down to Richmond last evening and bought a 2006 CF Moto E Charm 150 for $1,500 from one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He bought it for his wife, and they put 2,600 km on it before deciding she really just wanted a golf cart. We bought it for $700 less than he was asking and gleefully rode back towards Houston on it. This thing FLEW. I thought the speedometer was in Km/h, “35mph? Give me a break Kari,” I thought to myself while driving down FM 359. We stop to put gas in it and I comment that she’s driving too slow and she tells me she’s going 50, I look at the speedo and am a little shocked. The thing had more in it. I wanted to open it up and see how fast it would go. I had nicknamed it “the Chinaman.”

We left the gas station and cruised along the back-roads towards town. There’s a section in there that’s all forested, and the road’s just been paved this year. It’s smooth and curvy and green and beautiful. It was bliss until I looked down and noticed the temperature gauge was reading a little high, just up to the part were the red starts. We pulled over and put more water in the water tank and kept driving. After a couple more miles the scooter died at a stoplight and wouldn’t restart. I pushed it into the gas station to see what was wrong. Dead battery. So now we have overheating and dead battery. This time I topped off the crankcase oil, thinking maybe the oil’s low/bad and making the thing run hot. We jumped it and drove it another mile before it died again, this time in the street. We jumped it again. We took it to Phillip and Amber’s place and jumped it again, slowly this time, chatin it up with friends.

We start it up and its great, cool, bright lights, the works. I drive it 2 blocks and it dies at the light again. It restarts and I keep on the throttle while stopped. Seems to work. We make it all the way to 24/7 Flowers on Westheimer before it dies again, dead battery and still running hot. Jump start, drive further (about 2 miles). Dies again. Jump start. Drive almost 3.5 miles before it dies this time, with me now giving it FULL THROTTLE to keep it running at lights, the headlight about as bright as Tara Reid. I go over the train tracks on Richmond and when I try to accelerate I get almost nothing, then a burst. I lay on the throttle getting up to about 40, take the corner onto Drexel hot, and suddenly lose all lights, power, everything. Coast to a stop. Five blocks from home.

I pushed it home. I’m going to call Scott today and ask him to come take it back, as it has serious problems. He seems like a nice guy, I hope he’s cool about this. In all we took this route. We stopped 9 times, only two of which were planned.

We’re buying a Honda. Joel in NW Houston with the teal bike just emailed me and offered me $1600 for it. There’s two Elite 80’s for sale for $1000. Never again, China, never again.

Migrating Outlook to Gmail is a bad idea - simply because the user interface in Gmail is a real piece of crap. We just need to fix what he has.

Thanks,

(Name Removed)

Of course there’s truth in that quote, but it’s not the gmail UI crappy part (Outlook is just as crappy), it’s the part about fixing what people use because that’s what they chose to use. Welcome to Web 2.0, the post-modern internet. If I like Gmail, I should be able to use Gmail. Every web app I use should work with my browser of choice, my OS of choice, and my hardware of choice. If it doesn’t, it’s broken.

Also, Gmail is not an Outluck Outlook replacement. Gmail is a simplified, pared-down email client. We don’t use Gmail because we want Outlook features, if we wanted Outluck features we’d use Outlook with our gmail. In fact, some of us use Gmail BECAUSE it’s a web app, and has features Outlook doesn’t like attachment previews. In gmail I can open that virus-filled Word document someone sent me right in my browser window, no need to wait 15 seconds for Microsoft Office to start up. Same with powerpoint files and even PDFs.

I’ve used lots of email apps. Apple Mail, Outlook Express, Eudora, Pegasus, Thunderbird, Outlook and more. None have been as easy to use, flexible, and convenient as Gmail. Say what you will about the UI, it works fantastically. I’m interested in Google taking Gmail out of beta, polishing the UI a bit, allowing sub-labels, a preview pane and offline editing. Gmail’s not perfect, but neither is Outlook; if anything I’d have to say Thunderbird is the most impressive and flexible full-featured email app out there.

This is just one of the many recent events at work that have been really getting me down. Stuff like this just discourages and demotivates me. We were so progressive, so hip, so flexible and savvy just a year ago. I guess when you’re successful you get bigger, and bigger companies can’t afford to use Web apps and Macs…[/sarcasm]. If it acts like a big company, what’s the point in working for a small company? Where are the small company perks like Wii Wednesdays, beer thirty, stock options that flow like wine, the hip progressive semi-celebrity board, bonuses, green programs, cool computer hardware, iPhones for employees, etc? What happened to Web 2.0?

Desperate and starving gas guzzler car decides to give coffee a try.