December 2005 Archives

As traditional newspapers are facing declining circulation and largely fail to meet the needs of current readership, I've been considering canceling our newspaper subscription to The Seattle Times. Though Amy reads it in the morning, she's acknowledged that she gets a lot of news online. I read it in the evenings, after the news is all old. I get all my news online; the paper pretty much provides me with comics, 90% of which are awful. It's beginning to seem that we're shelling out $20/month for no good reason other than habit.

Saturday's paper moved me one step closer to cancellation based on the Times' seemingly timid (or incompetent) photo editorial policy.

The Business section carried a story about high-end retail stores that cater to male shoppers by providing them with beer, TV, and easy chairs. The story spanned two pages and contained two related photos — one of a man eating something at a table, and another of a man drinking a can (a can!) of beer in a Barcalounger. The whole thing is questionably newsworthy to begin with, but I fail to see the need for two photos (one in color) for something so irrelevant.

In contrast, the front page carried a story about the recent surgery peformed on the 12-year-old Haitian girl to remove the 1 pound tumor from her face. This was a follow-up to the previous day's story about preparation for the surgery. The Saturday story even mentioned that "the doctors unveiled an 'after' photo, showing a dramatic difference from her pre-op profile." But neither this story nor its predecessor ran one single photo.

Now, I'll admit that my motivation for seeing a photo of the girl's tumor is a bit morbid, but I think it's a pretty common reaction when the tumor in question is apparently so spectacular that its removal makes the front page. It's even more understandable to want to see photos when the story itself refers to photos being released.

It's not as if the photos aren't out there. Even the Nation's Worst Newspaper® USA Today ran photos in their story. Print publications are increasingly irrelevant as news sources.

Last week, Slashdot posted a link to some guy's "Top 10 System Administrator Truths." Missing from the list is one of mine, which is "When a device fails or acts badly, jiggle the cables." During our recent cell phone woes with our new T-Mobile service, however, I failed to pay heed to that truth.

Nearly 2 weeks after I first reported our defective new phone to them, we received the shipping label today. After I removed the battery to take the SIM card out of the phone and prepare it for shipping, I noticed that the SIM card was not properly locked into its slot in the phone. I popped it into place, and the phone works fine now.

None of this exceuses the fact that it took so long for T-Mobile to send us a shipping label, but it is does mean that I don't have to worry now about whether or not they will actually refund us the cost of the phone package.

It's been pretty exactly two months that Amy and I have been on the South Beach Diet. At the beginning. I weighed in at almost 178 lbs. I joked that it'd be nice if I could reach my "goth weight" of 155 -- the weight I remembered being when I was 20 and trying to emulate the look of gaunt, vampiric Peter Murphy of Bauhuas. I had no intention of going that far, nor did I think it would be possible.

This morning, the scale read 155.4.

A few caveats need to be applied, however:

• Throughout the diet, my weight has fluctuated up and down by as many as 5 lbs. Last night, for example, I weighed in at 162, but I was fully clothed and had just eaten dinner. This morning, I was in my underwear only and had not yet had breakfast. My "official" weight is probably around 160.
• The original weight of 178 was registered after several days of pre-diet binging, so it was probably a bit inflated. My clothed weight from previous years' doctor's appointments, however, was around 175, so low- to mid-170's is probably a fair estimate of my "normal" weight prior to the diet.
• Amy observed that I'm not really all that gaunt, and that 155 for someone my height (5' 10") isn't that far from "normal." In all liklihood, my "goth weight" was probably lower. I am, after all, relying on my admittedly faulty memory of something 15 years ago.

So, rather than claim I have lost 23 pounds in 2 months, it's probably more like 15.

Nevertheless, my size 34 and 35 pants no longer fit; in fact, the 35's fall right off my body to the floor. I bought a pair of 32's from Value Village the oher day, and even they were a bit too loose. I haven't worn a 32-inch waist since my mid-20's, and I haven't been a size 31 since those halcyion black-hair, eye-liner-wearing days of my late teens and early 20's.

It seems that all the "liberal" hand-wringing and claims of fraud after the 2000 Presidential election may have had some merit, especially with regard to the security of the electronic voting machines.

Leon County recently ran a voting test that proved the Diebold vote machines could be easily hacked. Orlando's WESH reports that a standard-issue voting machine was put through a simulation that resulted in modified vote totals with no residual evidence that vote-tampering had occurred. Security expert Bruce Schneier, who has written on this issue before, has posted a version of the story with more details of the test. Interestingly, during the 2000 Florida recount, Leon County had uncovered an "error" that had given Bush votes while removing 16,000 votes for Gore. They corrected it; one has to wonder how many other such "errors" there were that went uncorrected.

All of this comes in the wake of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell's resignation over imminent SEC fraud investigations. In 2003, O'Dell sent a letter to Ohio Republicans that stated he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

Black Box Voting, a non-profit organization that is the official consumer protection group for elections, has a lot more information about problems with electronic voting implementations. They also need donations to continue their work exposing these issues.

US House Resolution 579 — to fight "attempts to ban mentions of Christmas" — passed 401-22. The Philadelphia ACLU's humerous blog, Speaking Freely, has the story (including my home state of Michigan's awesome congressman, John Dingall's, sarcastic version of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas).

Here's a mention of Christmas for you: Fuck Christmas

This is one of the most stunning photographs I've ever seen. It takes a while to load, but it's worth it.

Paris by night

Makes me want to go back ... only this time, without an insane person.....

T-Mobile hates its pre-paid ("T-Mobile To Go") customers.

At least, that's the impression I got from attempting to resolve a problem with them.

This is awesome! (Plus, I hope the word "porn" will drive more people to this site!)

A while ago, I mentioned to Amy that I make it a point to not return voice messages that simply include someone's name, phone number, and a directive to call them back. You know the kind: " Hi Jim, this is Bob. Can you please call me at 555-6789 as soon as possible? Thanks." She was appalled at this and thought I was being petty and mean. I saw it as a way to save my time from being hijacked by people who obviously don't respect my time enough to even provide a hint of what they want, how important it is, etc. Too many times, I have responded to such cryptic messages only to end up playing phone tag for days before finally connecting and realizing that (a) it was something someone else could have done, or (b) it was something I could have easily looked up and left a response on the caller's voicemail if only I had known what it was about.

Today, I stumbled upon this article on telephone timesaving by Bob Parsons, the President of GoDaddy.com, which seems to vindicate my personal policy on voice mail and offers up several more tips on time management I hadn't considered.

If someone wants me to return a call, I've got to know what they want.
If someone just leaves a name and phone number and I don’t know who they are and what they want, I will never return the phone call. This doesn’t, of course, include messages I receive from family and friends.