David McNett (Nugget)

This fall I will be running in the Komen Houston Race for the Cure. I'll be putting on my goofy toe shoes and running a 5K race alongside many of my FlightAware employees and cow-orkers.

The marketing copy I'm supposed to spam you with says that I'll be running in order to "raise awareness" and "fight breast cancer" but really I'm running because holding a high-profile event like this has proven to be a very effective way to raise funds for breast cancer research. And that's really what is needed -- funds. Not coincidentally, that's where you guys, my merry band of LiveJournal compatriots, come in.

I'm going to abuse my knees in the crippling Houston heat but all you need to do in order to help is bust out your wallet and donate a few bucks to the team. You get all the good karma, you get to make a positive contribution to medical science, and you'll help me embarrass my colleagues with my undeniable fundraising prowess. When it's all done I'll even post pictures to Facebook of my feet shod in silly toe shoes for everyone to mock. What a bargain!

All you need is this url and five minutes: http://rfch.convio.net/goto/nugget

My blisters - your dollars - everyone wins.

Hope all is well. things are doubleplusfantastic here.


^ isn't that logo awesome?

I never participate in these insipid memes, but this one turned out to be fun... Sorry.



Let's start a band!

1 - Go to wikipedia and hit 'Random Article'. The name of the first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band. (mine)

2 - Go to quotationspage.com and hit 'Random Quotes'. The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album. (mine)
...
3 - Go to flickr and click on 'explore the last seven days'. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. (mine)

4 - Use photoshop or similar (picnik.com is a free online photo editor) to put it all together.

This morning I went back and consulted my IRC logs to determine when, exactly, I first stumbled across Craig Mitchell's web-published serial novella "She Hates My Futon." Anyone familiar with my logging OCD will be as amazed as I was to learn that my IRC logs do not go back that far.

So anyway, Craig resurfaced on the net about a year ago and I've been Facebook stalking him and combing his new site (he lost myboot.com a few years ago). This morning he posted a new chapter.

Let me say that again...

This morning he posted a new (penultimate) chapter to She Hates My Futon -- The Stew-Man A Cometh. Chapter 25, the conclusion, is in the pipe.

Those of you who are familiar with SHMF have surely already stopped reading this post and have headed off to find the new chapter. Those who aren't are highly encouraged to start here at chapter one.

"Futon" has been my constant for a decade.

08-Jul-2000 * Nugget94M is reading myboot.com 
08-Jul-2000 <phule> hey, thanks for pointing out myboot.com  that site is wild and wierdly great :)
06-Sep-2000 * ItsIllak idlly wishes the myboot guy would write another chapter or two..
24-Oct-2001 <Nugget> myboot.com rocks.
07-Mar-2002 <RyJones> the novella at myboot.com is annoying, he never finished it
11-Nov-2002 <NevTHC> I was up until 5AM the night I started Futon.
28-Nov-2002 * ODD^work is bored at work, and rereads 'myboot'
05-Jun-2003 <NevDull> I wish myboot.com was updated more often.
13-Apr-2004 <url> i think good story is at http://www.myboot.com
14-Jun-2004 <Mike> I wasted a Saturday night reading myboot
21-Jan-2008 <Leto> omgwtf futon is back?!? 
21-Jan-2008 <gregh> finally finished reading the futon story

Hey, if url likes it you know it's gotta be good...

Thank Harry Burn (a post by GoofyHoofy)

If you ever wondered who elected Abraham Lincoln, or Grover Cleveland, or Woodrow Wilson, or any of the Presidents before him, it was men. Women couldn't vote. Finally, in 1919, after 7 decades of protest and suffrage, Congress passed the 19th amendment giving that right to women.

But a Constitutional amendment requires passage by 3/4ths of the states, and by the summer of 1920, only 35 of the required 36 had done so. Three had explicitly refused, the others found it not important enough to consider, at least for a while.

Anti-suffrage forces were happy when the Tennessee legislature decided to take up the cause, the head count being slightly against the proposal, but when it came to a vote the count was 28-28.

Harry Burn, then in his first term as a state legislator, had previously announced that he was a "no" vote, but then he got a letter from his mother urging him to vote yes. He did, and that broke the tie and put Tennessee in as the 36th state, and the amendment was ratified.

Asked later what changed his mind he said, "A good boy always does what his mother asks him to do." In spite of, or rather because of that, Burn had to go into hiding for several days, the anti-suffrage forces being so outraged by his "betrayal."

In our lifetime it seems normal that men and women share the vote, but women have been eligible in only the last 16 Presidential elections, while men have voted for all 44 US Presidents thus far.

Sometimes one vote makes a difference. It did for Harry Burn - and for 51% of the country who, up to that point, had no voice in the laws under which they were governed.

Two Gentlemen of Lebowski:

LEBOWSKI
Was it I, sir, who urinated on your rug?

THE KNAVE
Not in person, sir—but if a man is his name, and his reputation his indelible inkstain, surely thy sea of care is tormented; what tongue shall smooth thy name?

LEBOWSKI
Make me to understand, sir, for you are slow of speech as I of step, and I am unsatisfied in motive. When any rug is micturated upon within these city walls, must I stand accountable? Or are you as one of a thousand rogues, fishing for sixpence betwixt another man’s pursestrings? Are you a labourer, Master Lebowski, earning that you eat, getting that you wear?

Author unknown, I'm just a parrot here...

Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you’re wrong.

What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

Bad decisions make good stories.

I totally take back all those times I didn’t want to nap when I was younger.
( more... )

From Investor's Business Daily where we learn how socialized health care in the UK leads to euthanasia..

IBD Exclusive Series: Government-Run Healthcare: A Prescription For Failure

"The U.K.'s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the "quality adjusted life year."
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Aren't we lucky Hawking wasn't born in the UK! It's impossible to argue against facts like that!

(you can tell he's American because he doesn't have a British accent)

I recently reconnected with my friend Steven, who I'd known well during the early '90s but had lost touch with over the years. I happened to stumble across an interview with him online over the weekend which sent me off searching for his name on Facebook and all those other places where layabouts from my generation congregate.

When I first met Steven he'd recently met Peter and I watched as their relationship bloomed and grew. I grew to be friends with both of them over the years. As it turns out, Steven and Peter stayed together this whole time and even got married just as soon as the state of Massachusetts allowed them.

Quite tragically, though, Peter died in an accident just about a month ago -- literally just a few weeks before I stumbled across Steven's name and tracked them down. I'm gutted to learn the news and morbidly fascinated by the coincidence of the timing. I wish (and sort of don't wish) I'd found that interview a year ago, or even just a few months ago. It's rough, you know?

In the aftermath of Peter's death, Steven wrote about the impact their marriage had on his ability to navigate the complications surrounding his husband's death. It's sad to reflect on how different the circumstance might have been in the absence of a marriage, a reality faced by gay couples in all those states which do not allow gay marriage. Steven is articulate and his story is moving:

"We will win when we focus on equality."

I'm glad that he was motivated to write about his life because I think it's invaluable for this debate over gay marriage to be grounded in real people and real stories and not the abstract societal ideals that the conversation is so often about. I'm sad for my friend, but I'm more sad for the couples who have to deal with death and weren't allowed to marry.

Goofyhoofy @ fool.com:

There are two famous tea parties that I can think of.

The first, of course, was in Boston Harbor, where a group of revolutionaries dumped someone else's property into the Boston Harbor to protest the tax on it, the rationale for the protest being "Taxation Without Representation." (Well, actually there's a lot more to it than that, but that's become the popular meme.) Economic terrorism and property destruction at its best! I'm hoping today's protestors aren't calling on that historical precedent, but I could be wrong.

The other famous tea party, and one more closely attuned to today's events is the Mad Hatter's tea party from "Alice in Wonderland." You know the one, where the Mad Hatter (sponsor of the tea party) talks in nonsensical poetry and unanswerable riddles, changes positions at his whim, and fulminates against the Queen or any other imagined slights without bothering to give solutions, evidence, or anything else. He's great at slogans, however.

Perhaps the most appropriate part of the story involves the Mad Hatter asking the riddle: "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" After much discussion, it turns out he doesn't have an answer to his own question. I can't think of a better metaphor for the Right Wing inspired and Fox News promoted astroturf campaign we are seeing played out among the babbling goobers who have only complaint, historical revision, and memory lapse when it comes to the politics of the past eight years.

Love those signs, though.

A nice guy named Thomas came out and installed our AT&T u-verse service this afternoon. We've got television and Internet at the new place (yay). I swear I'd rather have this than running water. I've spent about $30 at the iTunes Music Store buying all the television we've been missing for the past 14 days and it'll be nice to get back onto the old broadcast/DVR bandwagon again.

I'm measuring a boggling 21Mbps download / 2Mbps upload from their top tier internet plan. I'm paying $65/month for that speed which is roughly 2/3rds of what I was paying for 6mbps DSL at the Austin house and about half of what I was paying for a 33.6Kbps dedicated modem connection a decade ago. I did give up all my fancy static-ip, routed subnet, reverse DNS goodness as a byproduct of the switch but to be honest I think I'm done with the whole "hosting servers from my house" thing. I just don't find that to be worth the hassle and complexity any more.

On the television side the DVR is no TiVo, but it's at least as good as the DirecTV HR22 that it's replacing. The online integration (for scheduling recordings from a web page) is pretty solid but the flexibility overall seems poor. HD quality looks good but HDMI support is sucky.

Looking forward to watching the Daily Show tonight!