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Election time is finally upon us and I can’t be more relieved. I’ll be so happy when all of these damned commercials finally stop. I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but it seems like Dick Devos has been campaigning since June.
I wouldn’t be so annoyed if they were good commercials – but they’re not. I’ve heard 20 million reasons why I shouldn’t vote for candidates but I’ve yet to see one commercial that says “Hi, I’m candidate and here’s why you should vote for me.” Apparantley those don’t work anymore.
For once I’d like to see a candidate come out and say “I am going to lie, cheat, steal, and do whatever I can to benefit myself.” At least then I’d know he’s honest.
Some of the ballot prosals here are also a bit weird. I’ve always wondered why we get to vote on some laws and not others and what determines that. If you know, can you explain? I’d prefer we vote on all laws – especially at the federal level
I already discussed the affirmative action proposal, so I won’t go into more on that. There’s one to elimiate dove hunting which I don’t understand either side of. Dove’s aren’t over populated, and you really can’t eat a dove after you shoot it. But on the other side, they’re not endangered and hunting them doesn’t do any harm. I guess I don’t care either way.
There’s another propsal that basically ensures teachers get a raise every year. I wish they had one of those for my job. I think that’s a bit retarded.. how about we let your performance dictate your raise. Don’t like it? Don’t be a teacher.
Don’t even get me started on candidates visiting churches..thank god (sic) there’s only one more day left of these ads.
November 6th, 2006
With the All Star game tomorrow and the Super Bowl coming later this year to Detroit, we at dotCULT would like to provide the following primer on driving to and from your destination in Detroit.
1. First, you must learn to pronounce the city name. It’s Di-troit. NOT DEE-troit. If you pronounce it DEE-Troit then we
will assume you are from Toledo and here for the country Music hoe-down.
2. Forget the traffic rules you learned elsewhere.
Detroit has its own version of traffic rules… Hold on and pray!
3. The morning rush hour is from 6:00am to 10:00am. The evening rush hour is from 3:00pm to
7:00pm. Friday’s rush hour starts Thursday morning. Weekends are open game.
4. If you actually stop at a yellow light, you
will be rear-ended, cussed out and possibly shot. If you’re first off the starting line when the light turns green, count to five before going. This will avoid getting in the way of cross-traffic who just ran their yellow light to keep from getting shot.
5. Schoenherr can ONLY be properly pronounced by a
native of the Detroit metro area. That goes for Gratiot too.
6. Construction and renovation on I-94,I-96,
I-75,I-275,I-375, The Lodge and The Southfield
Freeways are a way of life. Just deal with it.
7. If someone actually has their turn signal on,
it is probably a factory defect or they are “out-of-towners”
8. All old men with white hair wearing a hat have total right-of-way.
9. The minimum acceptable speed on I-696 is 85
regardless of the posted speeds. Anything less is
considered downright SISSY. Oh, and don’t even think of allowing more than one car length between cars!
10. That attractive wrought iron on the windows and doors in Detroit is NOT ornamental. DO NOT get out of your car.
11. Never stare at the driver of the car with the
bumper sticker that says “Keep honking, I’m
reloading.” It’s not a joke.
12. If you are in the left lane, and only going 70
in a 60 mph zone, people are not waving ‘because they are so friendly in Detroit’. I would suggest youduck.
13. I-275/I-696 is our daily version of NASCAR.
14. It’s not M-10, it’s “the Lodge”.
15. That’s not a lake, it’s a pothole.
16. If someone tells you it’s on Outer Drive, you
better hope you have a map.
17. The left turn is simple. If you want to turn left, go a 1/4 of a mile past your turn, get to the left, then make a left, then make a right. NOW you have gone left.
18. We have 4 seasons in Detroit: Almost Winter, Winter, Still fucking winter, and construction barrel.
November 5th, 2006
What does equality mean to you? Does it mean treating everybody equal? Does it mean that everybody – regardless of race, religion, gender, or beliefs – gets the same opportunities? That’s what it means to me. Equality means being blind to one’s skin color, one’s religion, what particular apparatus they have between their legs, and what they believe in.
Treating somebody equal means that when it comes to selling a house, I’ll sell it to the best offer – not the best male offer, or best offer from a white family, or not even the best offer from a straight couple.
Equality means that I’ll admit people to college based upon their grades, community service, and extracurricular activities – and I won’t do so just to fill a quota.
Michigan’s proposal 2 aims to do just that. Opponents of the proposal claim that it’ll cut funding for women and minorities – and it will. It’s part of being equal. Being equal means NOT giving blacks and asians an extra tenth of a point on their college applications. It means not hiring somebody just because they’re female, but because they’re qualified for the job.
ADL.org defines can you buy Pregabalin over the counter racism as Racism is prejudice or discrimination based on the belief that race is the primary factor determining human traits and abilities. Princeton defines prejudice with one simple word: bias – and that’s exactly what affirmative action is: Bias.
It’s Bias toward minorities, but bias nonetheless. I’ve still yet to hear a compelling reason why a minority deserves preference over a non minority, and I’m convinced that there isn’t one. Given the definitions, it doesn’t make sense to use “equality” and “affirmative action” as the same thing – they’re 100% opposites.
You may have heard the opponents of proposal 2 claim that it would cut funding for programs like breast cancer checks for women – and it will. The reason is simple: There’s no such thing for men. There’s no free programs that offer prostate checks for men, and proposal 2 says that’s not fair. It’s certainly not equal.
You may have heard them talk about college makeups, and how there’s more whites than blacks at certain colleges. I propose that this isn’t about racism – it’s about statistics. The same goes for prison populations. Take Detroit for example. Most of the population is black. It only stands to reason then that most of the Detroit prison population would also be black. I’m not saying blacks commit more crimes; they probably don’t. I’m just saying that if 80% of the population is black, and all races have the same tendency to commit a crime, then 80% of the criminals should also be black. The same holds true for students. If 80% of california is white, then 80% of UCLA students will probably also be white.
Anyway, I don’t want to tell you how to vote this November 7th. Just vote, either way. But please stop handing out pamphlets telling me that your prejudicial ideas are about equality.
November 2nd, 2006
Wow, Halloween was a few days ago. I barely noticed. I was invited to play hockey on tuesday, and since I got new skates I couldn’t pass up a chance to break them in. Man do my feet hurt!
Anyway, I returned home from hockey at 8pm to see that every neighbor on my street’s porchlight was out. In fact only 1 group of kids came to my door, and it was after I turned the light out and while I was in the bathroom – so no candy for them.
I’m going to see Roger Clyne and the PeaceMakers tonight at the Magic Bag. I’ve never even heard of that place, but I hear it’s really small. If you like southern rock you should check them out. They’re sorta like cracker meets matchbox20 meets gin blossoms and all go to mexico for the weekend. If you remember the refreshments, this is the lead singer’s new band.
Anyway.. I’ll post something with some real content tomorrow.
November 2nd, 2006
It’s getting to be election time again so I thought I’d chime in with some timely advice. Bin Laden is expected to reccomend voting republican so that he can stay in business. Of course if you’re in Florida you’ll probably be voting republican anyway – even if you selected democrat thanks to faulty voting machines. Consipiracy anyone?
Speaking of voting machines I don’t know what’s worse: The fact that Hugo Chavez owns them or that they’re so easily hacked.
So remember, as you head to the polls: It’s not important who you vote for. It’s not even important that you vote. What’s important is that you actually believe your vote matters when selecting the oligarchy to rule over us.
October 30th, 2006
If you know me in real life you know that I’m big time anti-piracy and anti-file sharing. As a software developer and author I don’t want people taking my stuff without paying for it, so I don’t take theirs without paying for it. It’s the old do unto others.
Like all Geeks, I have an Ipod – an Ipod that has about 20 or 30 gigs of music on it. Unlike most geeks however, I actually have all the CD’s to back up the music. I estimate that I’ve probably spent over $5,000 on CDs over the years. Lately I just buy them used on Amazon for around $5 – sure somebody else has probably just ripped the songs, but at least my actions are legal. I believe that’s all a man can do, make sure what he does is correct. If everybody thought like that the world would be a better place.
Anyway, occasionally a song comes out that I like, but I still won’t justify paying $5 for the CD when I only want one song. I used to use ITunes for that. It was great for getting those one hit wonder songs. One of my favorite bands, Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, even released a special CD only on ITunes. I had no choice but to buy that one. Seriously, if you like Country, Southern Rock, or Americana, Check them out on MySpace.
Alright, enough fluff. When my computer fried (power lines went down) I was forced to buy a new one, and transfer all my data to this new computer. That’s where the problem comes in. ITunes offers no way to re-download songs you’ve already paid for. It’s not $0.99 per song.. it’s $0.99 per download! I wish I’d have known that up front. As often as I change computers I’d have been better off buying the CD even for one song – and I wouldn’t have to deal with DRM either.
It’s time to step up to the plate Apple. You have a record of me buying songs, you have the songs.. Why can’t I re download them?
October 27th, 2006
Just a quick note to any of my readers who live in Florida, the latest issue of Family Times Magazine features an article I wrote on page 20. It’s about internet slang and the top 25 terms parents should know.
I’ve been dabbling in freelance lately, so if you’re interested in a fresh new writer, drop me a line. it’s ryan at noslang dot com … but you probably already knew that.
October 26th, 2006
Wow, I feel like an old man. I was watching TV last night waiting for FOX to tell us if the world series was going to be cancelled or not when I heard a noise outside.
Before I get to that though, what was up with FOX? Apparantley the rain was over 25 miles wide on the radar, and they strung us along anyway just so their crappy “war at home” show could get viewers. They could have made that decision within 30 min of the scheduled start time, not 2 hours.
Ok, so I hear this noise right.. and I look outside to see 3 kids kicking over all the trash cans on my street. WTF??
Since I’ve had my car broken into in my driveway 3 times so far, (prior to buying materials from lumber yards Colorado Springs and getting a fence installed) I called the police on them. Man do I feel old.. I’d have never done that before. In fact, a few years ago I’d probably have had friends who’ve done that stuff before.
Speaking of criminals, This has to be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long long time.
Anyway, I just wanted to rant a little bit to break that whole “newsy” type feel again.
October 26th, 2006
Just when you think you’re doing an act of goodwill, the city of Chesapeake turns around and spits in your face. At least, that’s what happened recently when a Massachusets based software company finally handed the chesapeake.com domain name over to the city of Chesapeake – after 10 years of being bugged about it.
That’s right, the city of Chesapeake bugged this software company for 10 years to give them the domain for free… 10 years! Eventually the software company gave in and donated the name to the city.
So what did the city do with this generous gift? Why they sold it for $120,000, that’s what they did. And people wonder why more people don’t donate things. Here’s your answer.
The city of Chesapeake should be ashamed of themselves. At the very least, they should donate the $120,000 to the software company that donated them the domain. There’s a difference between being given a gift, and pestering somebody until they finally give in.
October 26th, 2006
Ok, well not really. I’ve never once intentionally sent any spam emails before, and none of my websites collect emails or even send any out…. or so I thought that’s what they were doing.
Years ago (we’re talking 1999 here) I headed over to hotscripts and grabbed a generic form email script. This particular script was written by Dennis of DarkMix.net (which no longer exists anymore, so I assume Dennis had the same problem)
The problem was with the following lines of code that I just seemingly noticed:
$headers = "From: $Name <$Email> \n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: $Email\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer: Darkmix Mail Sender\n";
$headers .= "X-Mailer-Version: 1.1";
I’m sure many of you can spot the problem. It’s very easy to add whatever I want to that header by entering a creative email address. Worse, this code didn’t use the $_POST or $_GET variables either. It relied on register globals.
Anyway, I caught this problem well over 6 months ago, and the site it was on isn’t even on the internet anymore. I was just reminded of it while perusing some old legacy code at my company and remembered that I’d forgotten to blog about this. All in all it only sent a few emails before I noticed something was funny. No harm no foul I suppose.
Let this be a lesson to those who release free code on hotscripts, as well as to those who blindly use code found from such repositories.
October 25th, 2006
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