Monday, January 13, 2003

Liebermouth set to waste more taxpayer dollars

Optimum Online - News - Lieberman to Seek White House in 2004

Lieberman told the crowd at Stamford High - where he graduated in 1960 - that he intends "to talk straight to the American people and to show them that I am a different kind of Democrat."

Yeah -- it's called a REPUBLICAN in ass's clothing.

So once again we lose 50% of our representation in the Senate.
posted by lee on 01/13/03 at 01:45 PM
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more accident stuff

This evening, a Norwalk PD lieutenant (I didn't get his name -- he said he's Sgt. Couture's boss) stopped in front of our house to examine the scene of the accident. He stopped twice -- once around 5ish and then again shortly after 7 p.m. The second time there were two cop cars and flashing lights, so I was curious and decided the dog needed to go out. I mean, really, it's not that complicated of an accident -- the lying jerkoff's tire tracks are still visible along with the broken hedge branches.

When I got outside, this lieutenant asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted to see what's going on and that I was the one who was hit last Friday.

He said he was there trying to determine the cause of the accident and the responsibility of each of the parties involved in the accident.

He also said he was trying to figure out the purpose of the white line that is painted on Strawberry Hill Avenue -- a line, he said, that means you cannot cross it and if you can't cross it, he wondered, how do you get into your driveway? (This took my breath away.)

He said that there are circumstances in which it's legal to pass on the right but refused to specify whether they apply in front of our house. He asked where my car was as I was turning (I told him in the traffic lane, between the double yellow line and the solid white line). He asked this, but when I also told him my right-turn indicator was on, he said he didn't want to hear it because that has no bearing on the accident. Why one "fact" has bearing and the other doesn't, I have no idea.

I asked him what I should have done differently to avoid the accident -- trying to figure out how they're going to try to pin this one on me (I hope I'm being overly cynical) -- but he didn't say anything in response to this other than he's trying to determine the cause of the accident.

He said Officer Page admitted he said something he shouldn't have.

As far as I know, the lieutenant didn't look at my car to see what happened to it.

The second time the lieutenant arrived, he was accompanied by two other officers and another patrol car, with one of the other officers directing traffic around the police car parked in the traffic lane.

I am happy that they seem to be taking my complaint seriously but wonder about the confusion regarding passing on the right and what the white line means on my street -- if the cops don't know the law/reason, how are WE supposed to know what to do?

I'm also wondering why it's taking so much manpower to do the follow-up. Just imagine how much money this investigation is costing the city (and me, ultimately) which could've been avoided if Officer Page had just done his job to begin with. The lieutenant told me the accident report is nowhere near being ready. Because I filed a complaint.

I do know that if they somehow figure out how to hang the fault, or any part of the responsibility, of this accident around my neck they'd better be damned clear in explaining precisely what I did wrong and why it was wrong as well as giving me precise instructions on how to make a right turn into my driveway without breaking the law or getting creamed by another idiot.

It would be really nice if they did something about the dangerous traffic on Strawberry Hill Avenue BEFORE a child is murdered by a speeding driver or another pet is killed by some asshole going 50mph on a 25mph street.

Meanwhile, my car is seriously out of whack. It's not so much that it travels down the road like a crab, but that turning, in either direction, is now an adventure. If I turn left, such as into a parking spot, the tire scrapes and the front end dips. If I turn right, the car does an interesting balancing act -- it feels like it's going to keel over.

Tomorrow I take it to the insurance company's auto repair place to get an estimate on repairing the damage and have them determine liability. How they can determine that, I don't know, except maybe they look at the scrapes or something. Didn't see anything about this on CSI ...

It's pretty amazing, the extent of the damage that was done by a car supposedly legally passing me on the right going 25mph while the driver was leaning on his horn. Yeah, sure it was.

The letter to the Mayor should arrive tomorrw, as I'm sending it via email tonight. I wonder what Mayor Knopp will have to say. I wonder if he'll have anything to say.
posted by lee on 01/13/03 at 05:30 PM
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Wednesday, January 15, 2003

maybe they’ll add google

I checked out ZapMeta.com - All Results, One Engine just because it was named Cool Site of the Day (I don't know why I still go to CSOTD -- it has so many annoying popups, popunders, and backdoor popups that the site displayed is rarely worth the aggravation. Habit, I guess.)

At any rate, zapMeta is a pretty interesting search engine. It doesn't (yet?) include Google, but it does Yahoo. You can set your preferences, such as how many listings per page, whether you want a preview, open in new window, etc. Speaking of preview, that's a feature I kinda like as it opens up the page in an iframe (it looks like it's an iframe, anyway) very quickly, so it's faster to scan than opening it up with the hyperlink. You can also maximize the iframe to see the entire page. What else is cool is that you can click "bookmark" to add it to your favorites list right from the zapMeta -- that's a great touch. Also, ZapMeta is pretty fast.

What I'd like to see is for Google to acquire ZapMeta and incorporate these features into Google to make it even better than I think it already is.

ZapMeta has ambitions: in addition to searching for websites and mp3s, it also list the Open Directory Project directories and has currently grayed-out buttons for the following: jobs, videos, images, news, and shopping.

The one thing that bothers me, though, is there is no "about us" to be found. Nothing about the founder(s), developers, etc. The domain is registered in Stafford, Texas. I would be more inclined to follow the progress of the venture if I at least knew a little about the people behind ZapMeta. As it stands right now, it's so anonymous I just don't really care. The interface is pretty cold, too -- I would design something warmer, more welcoming and friendly. If there's no real reason to use it, the developers better think about inducing people to WANT to use it "just because."
posted by lee on 01/15/03 at 08:40 AM
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Find out why so many SUV drivers seem to be such jerkoffs

Are Hummer Owners Idiots? / More delightful proof positive that most SUVs are, in fact, morally repugnant. Go, America! by Mark Morford, SF Gate.com (San Francisco Chronicle)

There are so many things about SUVs that are just so wrong. Now there's some proof.

[snip]
SUVs are owned, by and large (but not, of course, exclusively), by complete assholes.

You know it's true. SUV drivers tend, more than any others on the road, to be aggressive jerks. And New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher's new book, "High and Mighty: SUVs -- The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way," proves it.

As reported in a superlative Washington Monthly article that quotes extensively from Bradsher's book, SUV owners tend to be, in part, more selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, insecure and vain than their car-driving brethren. Oh yes they do. And the research backs it up.

They are frequently "nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors and communities. They are more restless, more sybaritic and less social than most Americans are."

Oh but it doesn't stop there. Only a small fraction of SUVs are ever used for actual work, or for their off-road capabilities, or by people who actually need them for incliment weather or for their hauling utility. And SUVs are, as Bradsher points out, intentionally designed to appear more reptilian and threatening, in an attempt to instill a false sense of ruggedness and menace and a get-outta-my-way machismo. And, of course, they succeed. Sort of.

Furthermore, SUVs are marketed, and widely accepted, as more safe, more solid and protective, which is of course one of the industry's biggest and most contemptible lies.

In truth, SUVs kill a great many more passengers than they save. They crush other cars, and study after study proves they themselves have shockingly high fatal rollover rates and lethal side-impact dangers. And, given the horrible visibility from SUVs, their drivers have a rather unfortunate habit of running over their own children in the driveway. True.

This, combined with how their false sense of ruggedness encourages their owners to drive them like maniacs, makes for one of the biggest and most dangerous mass delusions in modern American culture.

In fact, the "kill rate" for SUVs is truly appalling. To paraphrase the Washington Monthly article, for every one life saved by driving an SUV, five others will be taken. And research has proved that a tank like the four-ton Chevy Tahoe kills 122 people for every 1 million models on the road; by comparison, the Honda Accord kills only 21 per 1 million such vehicles.

In other words, SUVs aren't the slightest bit safe for you, or your children or other drivers -- especially other drivers. And to own an SUV, Bradsher asserts, essentially places the driver's own ego above the health and safety of those around him, not to mention the health of the environment.
[snip]

But read the whole thing. And the article it mentions. And if you drive an SUV, get rid of it and buy a station wagon.
posted by lee on 01/15/03 at 11:40 AM
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A nice review on Bloggy Opinions!

Bloggy Opinions v4 - Blog [Weblog, Diary, Journal] Review Service gave neurotwitch a very nice review. Here is the archive page if it's rolled off the front page already. I'd be dishonest if I said I didn't care about the review, or any review, for that matter. I do care!

Bloggy Opnions needs more reviewers--they've got a backlog to get through before they start taking on any more blogs to review.

About the background graphics on this page: they are images of Fresnel lenses -- lighthouse lights -- that I took at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum a couple of summers ago. This museum is one of my favorite places. I love Great Lakes lighthouses, and have a goal of seeing all of the lighthouses on all of the coasts of Michigan. I've made some good progress, but have a lot to go. Stanley doesn't seem to mind this obsession since he likes to see new places anyway and doesn't object when I drag him to the remote corners of Michigan. One of these days I'll put up a page or two with the photos we've taken of the beautiful places in Michigan.
posted by lee on 01/15/03 at 09:09 PM
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Saturday, January 18, 2003

shopping discount codes

Naughtycodes.com has a list of discount codes for a LOT of stores. Handy. It only has discount codes -- if you're looking for more deals, go to DealHunting.com.

Note: on each of these sites, I had problems linking to the sites listed. I'm not sure if it was at my end or if the PHP code these sites use is somehow screwed up.
posted by lee on 01/18/03 at 01:04 PM
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the two towers

Stanley and I finally got around to going to see LOTR: The Two Towers Friday evening. Although I can say I liked it, the 179 minutes did not fly by--if anything, it dragged longer than the first part. Now I can see how Jackson would want to drag out the scenes of the battle and of those tree things attacking Saruman's tower since the money spent on the special effects must've been astronomical (Stanley said the movie probably employed most of, if not the entire, population of New Zealand) and I would want to milk it out as much as possible. But stuff like the looooong goodbye scene between Aragorn and Arwen and the speeches by Agent Smith, er, Elrond could've been cut or at least shortened considerably with harming the movie one bit.

idiotsstealbandwidth.jpg The parts of the movie I liked the best were the ghosts in the Dismal Swamp, scenes where Smeagol was talking to himself, and Brego "rescuing" Aragorn. I liked the scene with Brego because the horse was behaving the same my my dog behaves, so it made me think of Ginger who by that time I longed to see since it had been sooo loooong since we'd left the house. It felt like the entire movie was going in slow motion and I couldn't believe it when the scene introducing Shadowfax really was in slo mo.

Though the battle scene was fascinating, it wasn't nearly bloody enough for what war was really like way back when, no festering wounds, no amputated limbs, such remarkable accuracy by Our Heroes. That death scene by the boss of the elves was something else again, I was thinking, "So die already!"

gollum.jpgDid I like The Two Towers? Yes. Would I watch it again? Only at home or at the movie theater in Wilton that at least has the benefit of comfortable seats and good popcorn. We saw it at the Crown Royale 6 in Norwalk, paid $5 for a small bag of bad popcorn (significantly smaller than the last time we bought it at this theater), and endured about ten minutes of commercials before the three-hour movie even began. I don't mind previews--I even enjoy them, but please, why do I have to watch Coke ads when I've just paid $8.50 for my ticket? And the seats there must've been designed by the same idiots that designed airline seats.

I wish part three were coming out sooner, though. While watching the first 45 minutes or so of Two Towers, I was very confused since there is NO recap--you either remember it, sort of know what's going on from the book, or sorta catch up sooner or later. So I know it'll mean confusion during the first 45 minutes of the next movie since my memory for plot details isn't what it used to be. Or ever was.
posted by lee on 01/18/03 at 11:28 PM
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Sunday, January 19, 2003

Tony’s Booksigning

Tony Anthony's Booksigning is today! I've never been to a booksigning before, and I really like Tony and LOVED his book, so I'm looking forward to it. It starts at 2:00 at the Barnes & Noble in Westport, CT. Go if you can!
posted by lee on 01/19/03 at 10:05 AM
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Tuesday, January 21, 2003

what, do we live in New England or something?

Weather Underground is my favorite weather service--especially since for a measly $5 per year, you can turn off all the ads and they send off alerts for things such as nasty storms headed my way.

It provides a list, too, of weather info from the people in this area who have hooked up their own weather stations. Pretty neat. Only tonight, I just don't like what there is to see: Norwalk, Connecticut Forecast. I know--whine whine whine.

My parents are off wintering on the Redneck Riviera (why they call the Florida panhandle that, I dunno, since I think the majority of people there in the winter are, like my parents, retired teachers from the Upper Midwest and Canada). Here, it's 11 degrees as I write this. In the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan, where their house is, it's 7 degrees and snowing. Where they are now, it's 64 degrees!!

If I ever get my car back from the auto repair shop, we might just think about escaping ... let's see, a two-day drive ...

Speaking of my car, nary a word yet from where it's being fixed, though according to last week's progress report, we might get it back tomorrow.

And nary a word yet from the Norwalk Police Department, even though the Captain promised me last Thursday that he would have the Lieutenant contact me to get a formal statement. It's been more than ten days since the accident, and nothing. I wonder if this is the way they treat all complaints by civilians against the police department--or just the complaints of women. Maybe they think I'll just go away, or that I was PMSing the day of the accident or something. I'm still angry about the whole incident, and the delay is pissing me off even more. Especially since it's going to cost us $500 just to get out car back, whenever it's ready, since that's our deductible. I was going to call the Captain today and ask what the hell is going on, but got way too busy. Tomorrow--that'll be item three on my To-Do list.

The Shield was good tonight. Poor Dutch.

Enough babbling.
posted by lee on 01/21/03 at 08:54 PM
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Thursday, January 23, 2003

Missed this last month ... Dubya’s song

If You're Happy And You Know It Bomb Iraq by John Robbins

If you cannot find Osama, bomb Iraq.
If the markets are a drama, bomb Iraq.
If the terrorists are Saudi,
And your alibi is shoddy,
And your tastes remain quite gaudy,
Bomb Iraq.

If you never were elected, bomb Iraq.
If your mood is quite dejected, bomb Iraq.
If you think that SUVs,
Are the best thing since sliced cheese,
And your father you must please,
Bomb Iraq.

If the globe is quickly warming, bomb Iraq.
If the poor will soon be storming, bomb Iraq.
We assert that might makes right,
Burning oil is a delight,
For the empire we will fight,
Bomb Iraq.

If we have no allies with us, bomb Iraq.
If we think that someone's dissed us, bomb Iraq.
So to hell with the inspections,
Let's look tough for the elections,
Close your mind and take directions,
Bomb Iraq.

If corporate fraud is growin', bomb Iraq.
If your ties to it are showin', bomb Iraq.
If your politics are sleazy,
And hiding that aint easy,
And your manhoodҒs getting queasy,
Bomb Iraq.

Fall in line and follow orders, bomb Iraq.
For our might now knows no borders, bomb Iraq.
Disagree? Well call it treason,
It's the make war not love season,
Even if we have no reason,
Bomb Iraq.

(Spotted in the comments on WebWord)
posted by lee on 01/23/03 at 08:53 PM
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