I set up a dummy email address on my mail server that forwards everything to /dev/null. Now I can sign up for sweepstakes and never get the spam for it.

I saw a woman wearing a “What Would Jesus Do” shirt the other day. I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I don’t think Jesus would have worn shorts that tight if he had saggy legs covered in cellulite.

I’m going golfing with my dad tomorrow. I’ve decided that I’m going to pick up my ball when I’m three over par, just to keep things moving. I’m no good. I know this, and I’m okay with it. I can’t really expect to be good with my frequency of play. I haven’t hit a ball in so long that my clubs are still in the trunk of the car that broke down last December.

I enjoy playing though. At least, I enjoy hitting golf balls–playing is frustrating. I can understand why baseball is so popular. Once you learn how to hit the ball on a regular basis, you can enjoy playing. It doesn’t really matter how well you hit it. You get to spend time outside, enjoy the company of your teammates, and spend half of the game sitting on a bench and the other half standing in a field.

In golf, you spend time outside, and, if you take a cart, you spend most of the time sitting. But you play with two or three people you’ve never met before, and you get to humiliate yourself as every tiny mistake sends you farther into a pit of dispair from which there is no return. A mishit drive off the tee can send you into the rough (or worse, sand). It is hard to hit long from sand or high grass, so then you just have to concentrate on getting the ball back in the fairway. Once you hit it from one side to the other, you finally get it on. If you make it on the fairway, you have to try to make the ball land in a 10-30 ft. circle, with precisely controlled rolling, from one to two hundred yards. It just gets worse from there (assuming you make it; if you don’t you’re in the rough again, or sand).

Golf is cunningly deceptive. It sounds easy–hit a ball with a stick, find it, repeat. I prefer to think of golf this way: put a two-inch-square piece of metal on the end of a yard stick, then try to swing it at about one hundred miles per hour and hit a one inch ball with the exact center of the piece of metal. And that’s the easy part. That’s the part you can practice at a driving range, free from the pressures of a game. It’s easy to feel pretty good about how you hit the ball when you have no real goals. When you aren’t thinking about how far behind you are, about how you’re slowing everyone down.

I, like most other golfers, am damn good on the driving range. I can hit just about any of the targets I want to. I have a swing. When I start playing though, it all unravels. My swing goes away, and I turn into some insane woodsman, incessantly hacking at the grass, divots flying left and right. I’m just not a good golfer, and I’m okay with that. I can’t afford to be good, with even the low end courses charging $15 per game. So instead of golfing tomorrow, I’ll just have a nice stroll through the course, occasionally hitting my ball when I come to it. If I can’t be a good golfer, at least I can be a gracious quitter.

The rumors are true–they are actually making Terminator 3! But due to Arnold’s age and failing health, the series will be going in a new direction. Terminator 3: The Mediator will star Arnold as an android sent back in time to find Sarah Connor and talk her out of sleeping with the guy who was sent back to protect her from the android that was sent back to kill her. He’ll have all our favorite lines, such as:

“Sarah Connor–come with me if you want to talk things over.”

“I’ll be back. Don’t discuss anything while I’m gone.”

Plus, there will be a funny scene where The Terminator runs into The Mediator.

How many rocket scientists does it take to make a successful space probe? We’ll let you know when it happens.

I don’t understand how these guys can keep making mistakes like this. I can understand the Mars probe–they didn’t know what the surface was like, so they messed up the landing. But this last one was lost when it shot itself out into space. Something they’ve been doing for fifty years. Even if they’re still using slide rules they should have done it right. I just don’t get it.

Stupid survey inside

Read the rest…

Work swells tempest winds Stormy clouds unpierced by play Jack loses fine edge

The secret to a good French accent is learning to speak without moving your jaw.

I think I have gaydar. I’ve always been pretty good at spotting gay people, but this guy came into the store last night who wasn’t at all obvious. I just knew somehow that he was gay. Then I went outside and noticed a rainbow sticker on his car. Coincidence? I think not! I should take this on the road.

I sometimes wonder if the book 1984 has done more harm than good. It seems like it has made people believe an authoritarian government is inevitable and acceptable. When people see something like this (excerpted below) http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html they dismiss it with a “big brother is watching.” That is not an appropriate response. An authoritarian government is not inevitable, and it is our duty to ensure it doesn’t happen.

Corporations are taking advantage of consumers, because we don’t care enough anymore to stand up for our rights. We live in a mostly free market, which means consumers are responsible for keeping the market in check, not the government. That is an extremely important concept that has been forgotten, so I’ll repeat it. The consumers are the group with the power in the free market.

How does this work? It’s deceptively simple. If you don’t like a company’s actions, you don’t give them business, and you let them know why. This is a boycott, and it has been an effective tool throughout history. There are two reasons it doesn’t work anymore. First, people don’t care. Most people have been screwed over by employers and the government for so long that they are just happy to be paying their bills. They don’t want to make waves. Second, people are not willing to make sacrifices for their beliefs. They may strongly oppose something, but they expect someone else to make the sacrifice needed to change it.

This is why I hate soccer moms so much. They embody these awful traits completely. As long as they have the illusion that their family is safe and happy, they couldn’t care less about the world. But who should make their family safe? The government, or special interest groups, or the entertainment industry. They aren’t responsible for it, and responsibility is really what we’re talking about.

Consumers have the power in a free market, but it is their responsibility to excercise that power. Corporations roll over us because we jump at the chance to lay down. Nothing will change until we stand up and take back what is ours. Nothing will change until we are willing to make sacrifices. You are not entitled to safety and luxury. You are entitled to dignity and fair treatment. We can’t just dismiss the authoritarian moves of the wealthy. We have to get mad and fight for what we want.

Read the excerpt about Palladium, the content control chipset