changes for changing domain names

So i get this email today from my domain host:

On November 12, 2004, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, put in place its new transfer policy for all accredited domain name service providers.

The previous ICANN policy allowed us to deny requests to transfer your domain names to another registrar unless you explicitly confirmed to us your intent to transfer. The new ICANN policy removes that protection. When we receive a request to transfer your domain name to a new registrar, we will still attempt to contact you to confirm that you authorized the request. However, if you do not respond, or are not able to respond within 5 days, your domain name WILL be transferred.

let me check. yup, it is Nov 30, 2004. So Nov 12 came and went, but I guess better late then never. Or prehaps it took the hosts a bit to find something to stop this for their customers, 'cause they've got a device in place that would prevent this from happening to their customers. i just wonder why ICANN changed their policy? Time to go do a google search.

Long Weekend Almost Over

Which really sucks.

Four days off and it's day four already. ::sigh:: It just seems like I was at work yesterday. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy work - but I also enjoy lazing about the house doing nothing or as close to nothing as one girl can.

I did manage to read 3001 by Arthur C. Clarke. I managed to it in two days, and prolly could've read it in one day if I had started earlier then 9pm. A decent end to the 2001 "series". I was more intrigued by Clarke's vision (so to speak) of the future, and his notes at the end of the book on the different science concepts he toyed with were interesting.

I also managed to finish season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The last episode of that season, Restless, was really good. And Joss' commentary for it was interesting. A good season. I've got Season 5 and 6 in my netflix queue. I started watching Buffy (or as I like to say: Buff-eeeeeee!) around the middle of season 6 and I stayed with it to the last episode of season 7. While I did manage to see season 1 on VHS (thanks Andi!) and I brought season 2 on dvd, and I saw the occassional episode on FX back when I was living with my mom, I'm playing catch up to see the entire series. I'm looking forward to the all singing episode. And I just saw on Amazon that there will be a huge box set of all the seasons, 1 - 7, coming out this Dec 14. Can you say wishlist?

She's a super freak. Super Freaky.

Well, not like Rick meant.

But we're all different from each other in our own little (or not so little) ways. What sets you apart from "The Crowd"? The things that make me "different":

• I have no television
• I have a phone number, but it has no telephone hooked up to it, nor do I have a telephone (I use it for internet only)
• My fave class ever: Thermodynamics
• I'm gay
• I'm left of left as far as politics is concerned.
• I hate talking on the telephone and will avoid it to the point of not calling family
• I love the comic book Cerebus.

And while listing the things I think make me different, I realize that someone else out there doesn't have a teevee too, there are other gay people out there, there exist scientists whose main goal in life is to research thermodynamical theorems, and there are other Cerebites out there.

So maybe I'm not as different as I thought.

More TeeVee haha

What do you think this refers to:

whose ... gizmo lets TV viewers record programs, fast-forward through ads and pause at will.

You might think, ahhh, the good ole VCR with which I can record any teevee show I want, watch it later and fast forward thru those ads that you don't want to watch. While that was true in the 1980s and still is today, that quote was taken from this article on TiVo whose consumer base is getting antsy again. TiVo plans on putting "pop-up" ads on top of ads which TiVo users are fastforwarding thru and they plan on limiting the length that an user can keep a show on their TiVo's hard drive. And the article goes on to state HBO will not allow consumers to save any on demand programing.

While I can understand why consumers like TiVo, if they want the same features, just go to a VCR. Sure you have to remember to program it to tape your shows for you, and the quality might not be as good, but you don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee, you can skip the ads without seeing more ads pop-up, you can keep your copy as long as the tape will last (or better yet, get a dvd writer / vhs combo and dub the vhs tape to a dvd), and you can make as many copies as your heart desires.

My point: I don't want to listen to TiVo consumers bitch and moan about how TiVo is "selling out" to the Man when they, the consumers, have other viable options for recording and viewing their fave teevee shows.

Things to be Thankful

Well, it is thanksgiving.

so of course, i'll prolly be asked at dinner/lunch what i'm thankful for. i was going to post a list of something like:

• i'm not straight and therefore don't have to worry 'bout birth control
• i'm living on my own and can do what i want when i want
• i didn't vote for bush or kerry
• i went 5 & 0 in the online forum football pool
• I live in the United States and I'm white. Too bad on the whole being a gay woman thing. Oh, and i'm not Protestant or in anyway religious. And I'm not terribly rich. Well, I've got one of the requirements at least for being President. (this last bullet point, all sarcasm on my part, but unfortuately seems the truth to me: to be elected one must be: rich, white, male, straight and at least have a religious affilation, protestant helps. oh, and tack on married to the straight bit. don't want any bachelors running the country. opps, drifted off into sarcasm again there. teehee)
  

then i figured to continue a list like that, even here, might be too sassy, and there is no way i'm going to be saying that stuff at the dinner table in front of everyone. well, that first one and last one would be sure to drop some forks at least. teehee.

Office supplies, chocolate cake and hardcover books

A list of things I like:

• Office supply stores: I love walking down the aisles of supplies, looking at all the different pens and shades of paper, all the different clips and office knick knacks.
  
• Chocolate Cake: Gregg's Death By Chocolate. So much chocolate.
  
• The Everyman's Library editions of books. Hardcovers. Nice font. Nice paper. Right size. Good books.
  
• Dead Like Me, Simpsons, NFL
• The Patriots.
  

sleeping in

I managed to sleep into the alarm this morning.

well, i did wake up at 2:30 am or thereabouts with some cramps. damn period. but after some aspirin, and a trip to the bathroom (lest i have dreams i'm hunting for a bathroom) i went right back to sleep. usually i wake up earlier then the alarm and just get up. but not today, i managed to be awoken by the alarm, a full night's sleep. it was nice for a change.

tomorrow is sushi and a movie (The Incredibles) with Mario and then dinner with Mom, a late BDay celebration for her. then sunday is more sleeping in, and the sunday paper, some cawfee and enjoying the Sunday Morning Routine.

I just thought of a funny: give that comcast guy from the other night my home phone to call. teehee. he'd just get a constant ringing with never an answer. ha! like having a 'junk' email for all the spam to go to so i don't get it in my actual email.

Teehee!

Ahh, funnee!

Working For The Man RULE #56
Nobody really cares about the monthly report you compile. Unless you turn it in late. Then people care. They'll act like the world is about to end, sending you urgent emails and leaving you testy voice mail messages, making mental notes about your incompetence and failure to deliver all along the way.

Substitute monthly report with corrective action report and you've got it.

Catch me if you can

I don't own a teevee. Not even a small little B&W with rabbit ears thing. And I've no desire to ever own a teevee or "subscribe" to cable again. So reading "news" articles like this one on how TiVo Will No Longer Skip Past Advertisers makes me laugh with quotes like this:

[TiVo] . . . is rapidly becoming a marketer's best friend, proving that try as they might, consumers cannot hide from marketing.

Haahahahaha! Umm, yeah, we can choose not to buy a teevee and see that advertising. Sure, I'll still see some via the newspapers, magazines, movies and the other media I take in, but I still don't have to watch any commericals. HA!

And to the ComCast cable sales guy that stopped by last night and left his card: I'll never get cable for teevee again, but I'd like to get cable internet. If ya can give it to me for $30 to $40 a month, with no modem rental fee, and no other "strings", then we'd have a deal. If not, then fuck off and stop sending me all your junk mail.

Just when you think it wasn't possible

The IQ does drop another notch.

Bam indeedy. Here is the AP Wire from Texas:

Delana Davies, 33, said she complained after reading a school notice about "TWIRP Day." Davies, whose 9-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter attend Spurger Elementary, said she viewed the day not as a silly Homecoming Week activity, but rather something related to homosexuality. "It's like experimenting with drugs," Davies said. "You just keep playing with it and it becomes customary. ... If it's OK to dress like a girl today, then why is it not OK in the future?"

So I guess this lady (heh!) dresses her little daughter in skirts and dresses all the time lest those pants she wears turn her into a man hating dyke. 'Cause she is so worried 'bout her little boy dressing like a girl and catching the gay!

::sigh:: It is people like that who shouldn't have kids. And to answer her question, it is okay for the boy to dress like a girl in the future or vice versa: what is the big deal about cross dressing? It doesn't turn a kid gay. And even if it does, who cares? Ahh, yeah, Delana Davies cares. I'm so glad she isn't my girlfriend. Oy vey.

And isn't it reassuring to know that one loud obnoxious parent can force her will onto the school and take away the fun from not only her kids, which is her right, but also from other people's kids? If my kid were in that school district I would complain for the right for my kid to be able to cross dress that one day of the year. No other woman is going to tell me what is good and bad for my kids.

::sigh::

So if it wasn't already clear to the world community about the President's policies on Foreign Policy, when Powell stepped down as Secretary of State, President Bush nominated Condoleezza Rice. Of whom the AP wires say

President Bush turned to his most trusted foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice to lead U.S. diplomacy during his second term, replacing Secretary of State Colin Powell, who often was out of step with more hawkish members of the administration's national security team.

As if the current administation couldn't send any more hostile messages to the world.

Snow, white purty stuff

So on Saturday I woke up at 5:30 am to the sound of the snowplow plowing the parking lot. As a kid it was a sound I loved to hear on the weekdays 'cause it would usually mean that we didn't have to go to school in the morning.

But nope, this Saturday morning I still had to get up and go to work at 8am. My weekend to cover ya know. So laying in bed at 5:30 am listening to the plow go back and forth I realized that I wasn't going to get back to sleep. So I got up and checked work's main phoneline, ya know, just to see if we didn't have to come in to work. But of course, we were still working. With work a stone's throw from the ocean, they don't get as much snow as where I live, only a couple more miles inland, but still colder enough for a few more inches of snow. So when we get snow, they almost always get less then us.

So I've got to drudge though several inches of snow, shovel it off my car, slip and slide though the parking lot and when I get to work: empty parking lot. ::sigh:: So they always are open, even if I'm up to my knees in snow.

Apolgize?

Seems like much more people are sorry then aren't sorry.

Us Vs. Them, Red Vs. Blue: Can't we all just get along?

This is for all you Red Staters out there that got upset (as if anyone else but me reads this) about my FuckThe South link. From The Bookslut:

It seems to me that many liberals are the same way. Your church starts getting a little too radical, so instead of staying and running for a position of power within the church, they go find one that has their political sensibilities. Live in a red state? Move to a blue one. Kids' school suddenly wanting to teach creationism alongside evolution? Yank 'em and put them in private. I am guilty of this as well, but lately this mess has made me want to move back to Kansas. It has made me sign up for theology classes at the Unitarian Church. Liberals are never going to win with a Fuck the Red States attitude. The Midwest is not evil, just neglected. When liberals start letting the Right frame the debate and in four years time we run to the Midwest and say, "We didn't mean it, what we said after the last election? Vote for our guy, even though he won't do one god damn thing for you," we're going to get our asses handed to us yet again.

Can't take the heat, Liberals leave the kitchen:

...this Let's Divide Up the Country attitude is bullshit. It's like every liberal is doing exactly what lost them the election in the first place: leaving.

I don't know how true this is, for I haven't had time to think it over / look into it. But if I remember correctly, Kerry really didn't campaign too much in the "red states", didn't try to talk to the people there. Not that I want Kerry to win mind you, but just to lend a little back up to the whole leaving the kitchen 'cause someone turned up the heat idea.

These girls make the rock n' roll world go round

Ahh, the news. You've got to love a headline like Big-Bottomed Mannequins Boost Profile in New York with accompanying pictures like:

The Bible

I never argue the Bible with a Believer. Because I don't believe in the bible. Believers say it is the word of god, and I say whose god and they say The God and I say well you're god ain't my god and my god didn't write the bible, some old white straight men striving for power wrote the bible to keep the masses in line and some hundreds of years later the bible is still controlling people.

if you need a book, albeit written by your "god", to tell you what to do and what not to do, how to treat others and how not to treat others, and what is a sin and what is not a sin, then I think you're in pretty bad shape. For morals are pretty easily defined: Treat others like you'd like to be treated and consenting adults can do what they want with each other and themselves as along as they are consenting.

So want to steal from your local grocery store? well, treat that grocery store as you'd like to be treated: I'm sure you'd dislike it if someone stole from you. Want to have sex with a prostitute? As long as she (or he) says sure, then go for it. Want to smoke some dope? fine, go ahead it is your body. But want to smoke dope and then drive a car? would you like someone to smoke dope, drive a car and possibly hit and kill you with it? I think not, so smoke your dope, but don't drive afterwards.

life would be pretty simple if people just knew what was right from wrong, but i guess they must all have failed at morality 101 for they think it is an open book test, with that book forever open (and open to as many interpretations as there are readers of it).

Hahahaha!

This is great. I found this via the Delphi Forums: a site called Fuck The South:

Let’s talk about those values for a fucking minute. You and your Southern values can bite my ass because the blue states got the values over you fucking Real Americans every day of the goddamn week. Which state do you think has the lowest divorce rate you marriage-hyping dickwads? Well? Can you guess? It’s fucking Massachusetts, the fucking center of the gay marriage universe. Yes, that’s right, the state you love to tie around the neck of anyone to the left of Strom Thurmond has the lowest divorce rate in the fucking nation. Think that’s just some aberration? How about this: 9 of the 10 lowest divorce rates are fucking blue states, asshole, and most are in the Northeast, where our values suck so bad. And where are the highest divorce rates? Care to fucking guess? 10 of the top 10 are fucking red-ass we're-so-fucking-moral states. And while Nevada is the worst, the Bible Belt is doing its fucking part.

Oh that is class! And before you start yelling at me for stereotyping everyone in the south as "liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou" asses, all I have to say is Fuck Off. I've had enough of the Religious Right waving their holier-than-thou "laws" and "morals" under my nose. All this site is to me is venting. I know 100% of southerners ain't like that, but whatever. And to the southerners who happen to be Republican and / or voted for Bush: do you want to secede again 'cause this time we'd let you.

Individualism

So I was reading this essay called MINORITIES VERSUS MAJORITIES by Emma Goldman in her collection of essays called Anarchism and Other Essays. And it got me thinking. She says:

Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, as then, the majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty.

She sums up her argument against majorities by stating:

In other words, the living, vital truth of social and economic well-being will become a reality only through the zeal, courage, the non-compromising determination of intelligent minorities, and not through the mass.

But she also goes to state that she believes what Emerson once said:

"the masses are crude, lame, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them. Masses! The calamity are the masses. I do not wish any mass at all, but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished women only."

Draw individuals out of them. That one line. In every majority there are individuals.

But yet, as humans, we are drawn together, it feels good to be with pack. Maybe we do it out of some primal need for survival, for with the pack our chances are better for protection, food, etc. But it is the majority that rules, the majority elect the President and other elected officials. The majority vote into law (or not) our legislature. The majority. We are a nation which leads by majority rule. So the majority have it in their best interest to retain that power.

But who is this majority? Not the Democrats for they lost the Presidential election to the Republicans. But every couple years the cycle rolls on that one of the parties will win the Presidential election. So does the majority in charge change with every change of the President's political party?

I think not.

The majority isn't one political party or the other. The majority isn't one religious group or another. The majority isn't one gender over the other. The majority isn't one ethnic group over the other. Though politics, religion, gender and ethnicity have all been used by the majority to retain that power.

The majority isn't even a majority. The majority are those that control the masses. The majority use what they can to retain their power, and lead others to believe that they are part of this majority rule. Those with the money, with the resources, are ones who rule the masses, who lead the masses to believe they are part of the majority and therefore in the right. But even as the majority think they are leading, they are being herded around as a flock of sheep by the shepard. The shepard in this case the rich. The sheep are scared and need to be led.

But occassionally some individual in the minority, the ruled, wants a better life for her/him self and therefore struggles against the majority. And while it looks as if some progress is being made (the end of slavery, civil rights, giving women the right to vote and own property), the majority, the rulers, the rich, still are the ones in control. For they will give us, their sheep, some more meadows to play and eat in, but they will not give us the shepard's crook.

It isn't the end of the world

When I woke up Wednesday morning to find out that Bush had won the election I was feeling a bit despondent. Another four years of this crap I thought. ::sigh:: To tell ya the truth though, I don't know how much different it'd be for me if Kerry had been elected.

Sure, the deficit is growing with astounding speed, the environmental saving policies are going to the wayside, there is a serious vibe the four Supreme Court judges might retire in this four years which might somewhere down the line mean the end of abortion rights for women, and there is no clear end to the war in Iraq or the war on terror for that matter. . .

but yet, does it all effect me at all? About all I can see is an ever increasing price at the gas pump. so i'm getting cynical about the whole election and politics thing. I want change, you know what I'd do if I were President, but I'm not straight, Protestant or male. About the only way I see myself bringing change to this country, or for any changes for this country would be a revolution.

Well, okay maybe I won't go so far. For one, I don't have the time, money or followers to start one. heh.

eww blood

So I got asked to donate blood about a week ago when I went to the rental office for my apartment complex. Sure I thought, I've done it once before (though about a 15 years ago) and it was no big deal. So I signed up for an appointment at 6:30 pm to give me time to get back from work.

I went to the rental office about 6:20 pm. They had me read a 7 or 8 page warnings and who could and could not give blood. I call bullshit on the Red Cross with their not allowing gay men who have had sex past 1977 to donate blood. what the hell? not all gay men have AIDS. Heck, should we have all straight people who currently have sex not be able to donate blood and only allow lesbains donate blood since they've got the lowest risk factor of getting AIDS? Screw the Red Cross and that homophobic out of date policy.

Anyways, back to me.

After reading their 8 page document, one of the volunteers asked me some questions and asked for an ID. Then I filled out a yes / no questionnaire for different health things. I answered yes to two questions: if I felt healthy and if I had spent more then 6 months in a foreign country since 1980.

So after explaining that I had been deployed to Panama and Haiti, the volunteer took a pinprick of blood from my finger for a quick test she did right there. Then some more questions and I was handed my yellow folder and told to go to the back room.

So I went to the back room and the volunteer there told me to have a seat while I waited for a table to open. A table opened up and another volunteer checked my arms to find a good vein. Lay down, wipe off the arm with Iodine, breath out, breath in and in went the needle. I felt only a slight prick and it glided gently in. That was one of the best, if not the best, blood draw I've ever gotten.

After some slight light head feelings, I sat down and waited my 15 minutes while drinking some water and reading my comic book. All in all it took 1 hour to do, between the reading, filling out the paperwork, answering all the questions, pumping out the actual blood and the 15 minute wait.

Hopefully someone out there will get use out of my O positive blood.

What a week

It has been a great week at work. It seems two problems have been solved and I've been a busy little bee. How time flies when you don't have time to sit down and eat your muffin top.

Other then work work and a bit more work and the election there ain't much going on. I'm making this a quickie, just like my week, so I can get started on the end of The Dark Tower.

Wars of Aggression

Hit them first before they hit us. That seems to be Bush's theory of international affairs. Of course the Terrorist hit us and then Bush hit them back. Or tried to. Then Bush decided that hitting Iraq before they hit us was the next method of "taking it to the terrorists".

But what about North Korea? They're trying to build nuclear arms. Should we put the smack down on them? We're still at war with them from the Korean War in the early 1950s. We only signed an armistice, no conclusion was ever come to. Hence the DMZ and the American troops still patroling it.

And why didn't Reagan smack down those commie bastards (said tongue in cheek) before they could get us?

Ohhh, yeah, right that whole assured mutual destruction thingie we had going on with the nuclear weapons. Is that why bush isn't putting the smack down on north korea? Or maybe he just thinks asian people can't be terrorists. but then why are they considered a rogue nation?

I wish the USA would stop being a bully and hitting the smaller kids. The smaller kids can hit back, but not as hard, and they risk being shoved into a locker all by themselves and having their lunch money taken away. play by our rules we say, or don't play at all. i'm waiting for when the rest of the world wakes up and decides, like the smaller kids, that they should all just get together and take out this one bully 'cause together their combined force can overwhelm the schoolyard bully.

Mix tapes and DVDs

Well, I was going to write something on Rethink. Reuse. Recycle. prehaps for a later column. I'm in the middle of making a mix tape. A mix CD actually. gone are the days of using the double cassette deck to copy one cassette to the next and getting the tape at just the right spot to start recording. Of starting the tape on which you'll be recording so you don't start it on the blank tape that came before the recording tape.

Now I just make a playlist, shuffle around the songs. Delete a song, add some others. And the hit burn CD. I can add a few seconds between songs or have them fade into one another. I can adjust the audio level so they all play at the same volume. I can even make a CD of just MP3 fitting at least a hundred songs onto one CD and then play it on my MP3 compatible stereo in my car.

goodbye mixed tapes. Hello future.

Gah!

Oy Vey.

So I went to sleep last night relatively early for me. By 9pm I was in bed reading the last Dark Tower book (aptly name The Dark Tower) by Stephen King and I couldn't keep my eyes open. Not that the book isn't interesting or exciting, it is, I was just exhausted. Before I got in bed I did a quick look at the Yahoo.com main page to see the current exit poll and it seemed like the two were in a dead heat.

When I got up today and checked, Bush was up 254 to Kerry's 252. Gah. Again with the close elections.

I can't believe people, 'specially middle and lower class people, vote for Bush. Heck, I can't see why anyone would vote for Kerry other then to vote out Bush. Both are rich straight white men with not much difference between them. Sure, they'll promise us the world to get elected, but all the same, they are politicans and that is what they want and they'll do anything to get it.

If I sound a little pissy this morning, I'm blaming it on my lack of cawfee - which is brewing right now.

Vote!

So voting at the polls in Massachusetts wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. When I drove home the polling places I passed where packed, traffic was crazy and from one I could see a line. So I thought my polling place was going to be crazy.

It wasn't. Traffic was a bit nuts, but I found a spot easily. There was no line. I just went up, said my address, and then my name and showed my ID. Then was handed a ballot and filled in the circles for what / who I wanted to vote for. I then went to another lady who asked my address and name and then placed my ballot in the machine. Easy.

Interesting sad site: how many military personal from your state have died in the Iraq war? Find our here at the Iraq Coalition Casualities site.

Well then, drive a Hybrid Car and shut the hell up

So I had to listen to a coworker bitch and moan about how he hated to drive, how he wasn't going to do it, no sir. wasn't going to have any bit of it.

No one bothered to ask him why, tell ya the truth, I really didn't care. I was just hungry and wanted to eat my (homemade!) meatloaf sandwich. But he told us anyways. He was angry and shocked that it cost him nearly, or maybe it was, $50 to fill his 20-odd gallon tank in his Dodge Durango with what was prolly premium gas as it costed him $2.29 a gallon (while it only costs me $1.99 a gallon for good ole regular gas).

Wah. Wah.

But it gets better.

He then continues on about how when he checked how many miles he had driven since the last fill-up he calculated that he only got 10 miles to the gallon. 10! Oh, he was angry as he normally gets 11 miles to the gallon.

Right about then I had enough listening to this and told him he should buy a hybrid car and get 50 miles to the gallon, which seemed a bit better in gas consumption to me.

But of course, this is the guy that isn't going to vote tomorrow because he doesn't think he has done enough research into the candidates to choose one over the other.

Umm. Dude. You had like a year to look into all the different parties and their "planks" and see which one you agree with the most. Ohhh, yeah thats right: there is more then two parties with candidates running for President. Wow. He does need to do some research.

Seesh. Maybe it is a good thing this guy isn't voting tomorrow.