I was shocked when Leia

I was shocked when Leia pointed out that you were leaving for, as you cryptically put it, the Northeast. You’ve clarified it a bit since then but your absence from the area will still remain. I’ve enjoyed your firey candor and puzzling secrecy. I was hoping to have a friend to hit some Stars games with next year. I hope this move really works out for you. Maybe when I have a car again I can stop by for a visit!

Trailer Checkers

I did not know that people are paid to sit in the movie theater to watch trailers and the audiences reaction to them. Two of the people at film group do this.

They get like $10 or $20 to write down what trailers are shown, what order they are shown in and what movie they are shown with. Then they record the audiences reaction to the trailers. They also get to see free movies.

Shocked!

Okay the National Science Foundation came out with a report about the most connected cities. San Jose isn’t in the top ten. San Francisco and New York are even less connected than Atlanta. Color me surprised. The BBC has an article about the NSF report. I can’t find the actual NSF report online. According to the article “The higher up the list a city is placed, the higher economic growth it is likely to experience over the next seven years…”

Waking the Dead

I will never see my car again. I left it behind in a body shop in Monroe, Louisiana this Monday. When I sought refuge from the world I turned to my car and drove around North America. It was there for 135,000 miles over the past four and a half years. Now I feel awful. I abandoned it because I was too scared to figure out how to pay all the repair bills. I have rewarded four and a half years of service with a slow decay in some graveyard in a forgotten corner of the world.

The hunt

After making the decision a few weeks back to stay in Dallas for another year I am now faced with the challenge of finding a new place to live. The place I live now is too expensive. Also Julie, Leia and I have decided to get a place together.

Today we began the search for a new home. After a dud, and a nice but boring place we found something truly great. It’s a two story house near Deep Ellum (sort of the arts district of Dallas, near downtown). We would have the bottom floor. It’s a hundred year old house in the Munger Historic District. In order to maintain the character of the neighborhood they can’t use things like screen windows or siding. An ample porch wraps the front and side of the house, and a nice wooden swing hangs over it. It will be nice to have a back-yard again, especially one that is maintained so well by the owners.

.eliteland

Salon has an interview with John Gilmore about the problems of ICANN and why it must go. For those of you who don’t know who ICANN is they control the top level domains like .com, .org, .net, etc. They make the rules about how they are used and who can have a name inside the domain space.

Hmm, just had an idea for a site that let’s people create their own TLDs, handles name conflict resolution and serves as a new root domain name service. I remember other people working on this before. Surely some site out there must let you create rogue TLDs like .eliteland and handle name resolution for you. I remember places trying to do this in the 90s. Wonder if they are still around.

This will go on your permanent record

Julie, Jason and I were waiting for Minority Report to start at the IMAX theater. I’m having one of those moments where everything seems to connect and pretty soon I’m blabbering about linguistics…

In one of those delusional and excited moments I’m talking really fast…“You know the way you comprehend the world, the very ideas that you are allowed to think come out of the words you know. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you understood word formation so you could create your own words to capture new and original ideas?” Strictly one of those shallow notions that bounces off the scar tissue I call a brain and out my mouth. But it sets me on a tear…

Regarding the 9th Circuit Court

Regarding the 9th Circuit Court opinion about the Pledge of Allegiance Bush said “The decision points up the fact that we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God.”

Which part of “We, the people” in the Constitution does he not understand. After the American and French revolutions I thought the “Divine Right of Kings” concept had been banished from legal thought.

Sure, Bush is referring to the Declaration of Independence “Endowed by their Creator” line. However our law is based on the Constitution and it’s clear from that document that the people wanted to “form a more perfect union,” not God.

Old times

One of my ex co-workers, Andy, wanted to get screen shots of the tools we built when I worked at BroadbandNow!. The only way to do that was to configure a PC I have with all the old Vignette software and old content databases we used.

The useless Vignette administration stuck in my head from almost two years ago came in handy in configuring everything. In a few hours I had the pages coming up. Even though a number of the pages are almost two years old it still looked really cool. I haven’t worked on a project since which has been its equal in ambition, scope or exhilaration.

"I'm not an animal"

I’ve been wanting to make a downloadable commentary track for the movie Kiss Me Deadly (A sadly ignored masterwork of 1950s film noir). The movie has all the hallmarks of 50s America with some dire warnings about atomic energy, and American jingoism. I was at the Richardson Library waiting in line to get a card when I realized the lady at the front of the line was upset.

“Don’t just shuffle my papers and shove them back in my face. I demand respect. I am not an animal. Where is your manager?”