Archive for the ‘News’ Category

So I had planned to write something cute and witty yesterday, about a situation that I felt might be comedy gold.

Instead I just sat on the couch and watched TV and whimpered.

This weekend my family and friends celebrated my ability to keep babies alive, and the fact that my wife and I had somehow managed to get through it with at least some shred of our sanity still tenaciously clinging to our battered heads.

And on Monday I went and got myself fixed. Because frankly two children is enough. Any more than that and they will outnumber the adults. And then they will win.
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We are rapidly approaching the first birthday of my children.  So it would appear that we have managed to keep them alive for a full year.  I imagine there may have been some bets amongst my readers covering this possibility.

As I think back over the past year, I am reminded of all of the things that being a new parent has taught me. (more…)

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So if you have been following the news for the past few weeks, or if you or someone you know is a pimp, you may have heard about what recently transpired on Craigslist.

The short version, is that they eliminated the adult section of the site.

The longer version is that throughout this country, law-enforcement and a variety of DA’s kept threatening legal action, on the basis that the Craigslist adult section was a haven for prostitution. Which to be fair, was probably a very accurate assessment of the situation. And even though Craigslist has traditionally assisted law enforcement, to the point of setting up a special interface for police to examine and track posters, many felt that it was their responsibility to society to take the whole section down, and failing that, these folks tried to use the courts to take the whole site down.

And so, in order to protect themselves Craigslist took down their adult section. More specifically they blocked access to that section from any computer coming from America.

Now I’m not going to talk about the 1st Amendment or the Federal laws that protect websites from the consequences of third party content. Others who are more knowledgeable and frankly better writers than me have already done a more thorough job than I ever could.

I’m not going to talk about the legalities and morality of prostitution. Police, and to a lesser extent Government lawyers don’t have an ethical right to choose what laws they will enforce. For good or ill, prostitution is illegal, and they are duty and oath bound to do what they can to stop it.

But what I am going to talk about is how incredibly fucking stupid those folks are who tried to bully Craigslist into shutting down the adult section.

Your job is to fight crime. Hookers and their clients are criminals. Therefore, it is up to law enforcement and the DA office to find a prosecute them. So far so good.

And then along comes a website that has not only a list of every harlot in town, but also a picture, a phone number, a vague geographic location, and more often than not, a price sheet.

I’m sorry, America’s law enforcement, but I am calling bullshit on this one. Given the information Craigslist just dropped into your lap, every working girl (and both guys) should have been off the streets years ago. I mean, it would have taken literally just one police officer about 15 minutes to have the contact info of nearly every sex-worker in the city.

I mean, at this point, the fact that they haven’t busted every single strumpet, floozy, and bawd in the market is really just laziness. Which brings us to the actual problem. It’s not that these folks are worried about the internet being used to spread the sex-trade. It’s that they are worried about how obvious the Internet makes it that they aren’t very good at stopping it.

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My wife is passionate about web-promotion the way that I am about zombies and video games. This leads to her constantly exploring and researching newer and better trends to take advantage of.

Of these trends is this whole “transparency” thing that some companies have going on. My understanding is that by revealing information about myself as a person, that means that potential customers will feel like they know me as a person, if not a friend, and are thus more likely to give me their business and/or keep reading my site.

For a while now my wife has been hinting, with rapidly decreasing amounts of subtly, that I need to start using these techniques. Partly to keep people interested in my site, and partially to get them more interested in our business. And partially because I think she just enjoys telling me what to do.

She actually wrote a whole big article about it on the business’ blog, which can be seen here.

“People like knowing things about the people they see online…” She would say (a lot) “You should totally be more open about personal information about yourself, so that people think of you as their online friend, instead of just this random Internet joke machine.”

“Actually most people think of me as a one joke pony, that is way past my expiration date. I mean, The List was funny, but it’s not like people really care much about anything else I’ve done since then.”

“We never do what I want! Your reluctance shows that you don’t respect me as a wife and business partner! I am totally not going to let you buy Dead Rising 2 if you don’t do this!”

I am less convinced of this idea, but hey, it will get my wife off of my back, so here we go. (more…)

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So for the past few weeks I have been getting ready for a move, which we finally did this weekend. It wasn’t a “big deal” move, like the many cross-country moves I’ve managed to make over the years, TX-CA, CA-TX, TX-IL, IL-AZ, AZ-TX damn I move entirely too much. This time it was just from one part of the Dallas area to another part. I now live in a city that most people have heard of only because it was featured in a zombie movie, which I suppose is strangely appropriate.

Well it turns out that moving is a lot more complicated when you have small children. You see, my wife and I have worked out this system where at any given point in time one of us is watching the twins, and one of us is doing something to make money through our web design business.   Now we added a third job: packing.  Which would seem to require the services of another adult in our household to do this while keeping up with the first two jobs.  My suggestion that we simply add another wife to the household to increase our ability to deal with extra chores was met with a surprising amount of positive consideration, which probably says quite a bit more about the realities of juggling a home business with multiple children than my spouse’s views on polyamory.

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It probably shouldn’t shock most of my regular readers that I am not particularly a fan of the Tea Party movement. I don’t agree with them on most issues, and on the ones where I do have a similar attitude, I tend to disagree with their proposed solutions. I know this is a bit of a generalization, as for the most part they are a loose confederation of people with similar attitudes.

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I have a news story that I feel I need to bring to your attention. A 74 year old Canadian woman was recently extradited to the US to face a 30 year old marijuana charge.

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The Department of Education is purchasing several tactical shotguns.
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Longtime readers may remember when I mentioned that here was a movie called Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus.
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And much to everyone’s surprise, he is now a SOLDIER in the service of JESUS CHRIST.

By soldier, of course, I mean dressed up in plus sized surplus uniforms and yelling at people who are not members of his church. Like what the Westboro Baptist Church would be like, if they watched too many Michael Bay movies.

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