Wow! My Fight Club post is #17 on blogdex.

Three people who I haven't heard from / talked to since High School have contacted me this week.

Three.

got hates shrimp

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I'm frightened to think that halfway through 2004 there's people who are still dumb enough to fall for this.

Drew catches a biased error in the redlinerants transcript of Fahrenheit 9/11. He not only catches it, he provides a video clip to back it up.

Here's another transcript of the part that deals with the facts of the Saudi flights out of the US. Here's a link to documentation about those claims. And, more discussion about the Moore criticism coming from the biased, botched version of the transcript floating around the web.

I just killed all my auto sorting e-mail filters. The problem has been I get new messages in 10 different folders, I read them all to see what is the most important and needs to be dealt with right away, deal with that, and by the time I get a moment to get back I have new messages and have forgotten what I still needed to respond to from before, and since it's not "new" anymore, I've got no reminder. Now everything goes in the inbox/action! box and only gets sorted, by hand, once it's been handled.

I don't know if this will work any better but it's at least a start.

Our phonecam art show, SENT opens the end of next week. We've gotten the images back from 99% of the artists involved and they turned out great. Really exciting to see what people came up with. Some people took the direct documenting approach, some people got super arty, some people just wanted to see what they could get the phonecams to do. I can't wait to show this stuff off. If you are in Los Angeles, you know you don't want to miss this.

I could wait 45 minutes so that I'm not quoting and linking to Tony Pierce twice in one day, but damn this is just too good:

"i don't have problems with bush because he's a republican. i have problems with him because he's a moron, a liar, a failure, why we hate fratboys, and because he's Not a republican. less government doesn't mean more FCC. less government doesn't mean coming out against gay marriages from the executive branch. less government doesn't mean giving less money to soldiers as they're in the middle of a hopeless "war."

not everyone who thinks bush is bad is a liberal.

some people just don't like being lied to in regards to why this country goes to war.

other people don't like being lied to about when public people are asked about their private sex life.

me, i couldn't care less about what you do sexually in the privacy of your oval office, but don't bullshit me about real matters of life and death.

and don't call me a liberal.

im an american, i can think for myself."

I'm fried.

I officially can't take on anything new. I'm multitasking myself to death.

I've got two freelance jobs to finish up, SENT opens in a week and a half, and then I'll only have sixspace and Bode Media (Metblogs, and a few other things in the works) and it needs to stay that way.

Right now I have 200+ e-mails waiting for me every morning, get 20+ e-mails every time I click get new mail, and I get 10 IM's the second I turn on Adium. Many of these I need to deal with, but the smaller stuff is getting in the way - I'll be very relieved when they are done.

Tony Pierce just wrote the best F9/11 review yet. He eloquently says everything I, and many others have been trying to say but couldn't find the right words. Thanks man.

"I went into the film cynical of Moore, and yet hopeful. I read a few negative criticisms regarding this movie as penned by the seething Christopher Hitchens, and the logical Jeff Jarvis. I thought about the things that they had written as I watched and I saw things like the Secret Service questioning Moore across the street from the Saudi Embassy (pictured) and I thought, "how is this a Michael Moore lie? Those guys really are protecting the Saudi Embassy from being filmed. White House secret service guys! Moore might have a point that we have an extremely cozy relationship with the House of Saud. Maybe too cozy."

...

"...the conclusions that I made at the end of this film isn't that Moore is a liar, its that the government *gasp* doesn't always know whats going on, and sometimes they tell us things that they think are true and theyre wrong, and sometimes they tell us things that they know not to be true, but sometimes they are doing business with people and then covering up those relationships in ways like blacking out their names on documents or shuttling them away on airplanes.

The images that remain with me are ones that any documentarian could have found and that was of the american mother and the iraqi mother crying over the death of their sons over a war that didn't need to be faught, but was faught, and is still being faught under the lie, yes, lie, that Iraq and Saddam had something to do with 9/11 and future terrorism to the land of the free."

We just went to Staples to get some mailing labels and found this interesting packaging. Check out who the "sample label" on the box is addressed to:

I'm guessing some designer snuck that in without his boss or anyone else knowing - how fitting.

AD: Dick Cheney Quote T-Shirts

I saw this post on anonyblog the other day and have been meaning to write about it. It strikes me as the kind of thing that can only be solved by talking about it, but if the person is using an anonymous blog to post it, they probably aren't talking. Looks like Michael, who set the blog up in the first place, is thinking the same thing. You get a really different vantage point on people and their lives when they aren't worried about you knowing who they are...

Imajes points out that a "video cam version" of Fahrenheit 9/11 is already available online... on the film's distributor Lion's Gate Films own website. Hacker? Marketing? Pissed off worker?

UPDATE: The Lion's Gate Films website is totally moshed, no doubt from a zillion people trying to download it all at once.

Lisa Rein just posted a clip from The Daily Show where Cheney gets caught in a bold face lie. Lovely.

Cory posted about this Star Wars / Office Space mashup but it's only in WMV, which I've never gotten to work for anything. Michael was kind enough to convert it to MPEG for me, so here's a link to the 19 MB MPEG version.

Greg just sent me this link. I can't wait.

Can't we all just get along?

I saw Moore's new flick today and was going to write about it but Caryn did such a great job I decided to just point to her take on it. There's a ton of pot shots at W which will make some people cheer and some people skoof, but the real story in the movie, the real focus is the people, and that can't be ignored. How anyone can watch a woman beeming with pride that her son is in the military in one scene and then watch her crumble and try to find a reason, a justification as to why he was killed in another and not feel for her is beyond me. This is much more serious than his other movies which I don't think is a bad thing.

Moore has always had an agenda, this one is very much about the people.

A very good friend sent me a link to Christopher Hitchen's rant on Michael Moore the other day, she doesn't like Moore and suggested this article was "in support of [her] loathing of the fatuous hypocrite Michael Moore." We e-mailed back and forth, and in the end both agree, but I decided I'd post my reaction here just just for the record:

This article itself is loathsome and fatuous. He says: "However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that “fact-checking” is beside the point."

That's fucking ridiculous.

If you are going to call something phony, you HAVE To fact check it, or you yourself are a phony. Clearly this guy did ZERO homework. I'm all for conflicting opinions, but when you say someone is lying, have something to back it up. Throwing around insults isn't credible, nor is it going to get any Michael Moore fans to stop and listen. While *LOTS* of people take issue with Moore's practices, his methods (he's a publicity whore, we all a know that), I've yet to see his facts actually looked at. I'm not talking about his "disney won't distribute my film, write a story about me" shit, I'm talking about the actual issues he talked about in his book and film. I say this because he's got PAGES of sources, and I looked them up. I did my own research and could only find things that back up his claims - that's why I put up America For Sale All the info is there and easy for anyone to find on their own.

I would love to see something that proved the Bush and Bin Laden families were not connected through the Carlyle group, because all the actual facts say they are.

I'd love to see documentation that Texas oil group Unocal was not dealing with the Taliban, because there's years worth of business records that show they were.

I'd be beside myself for an explanation as to why the white house authorized private jets to fly around the country on the days following 9/11 to pick up the Bin Laden family members and get them out of the country. There's FAA documents that prove this happened - the white house won't even deny it.

If someone is lying, call them on it. If you can't, STFU.

_____ obviously this is directed at Christopher, not you. In the same way the Moore is using hype to get more boxoffice sales, this guy is bashing it to get website hits. It's a poorly written opinion piece at best.

---

Tony Pierce has something to say about it as well.

The metblog for London is now live!

Also - Chicago was picked as the Feedster Feed of the Day!

Politically, when would it be best for the Bush administration to announce they captured Osama Bin Laden?

I mentioned to my mailing list I have a few Gmail invites available and somone pointed me to Gmail is too creepy - a site listing some concerns with Gmail (of which I've heard many). The first of which is:

Google offers 1 gig of storage, which is more than 100 times the storage offered by Yahoo or Hotmail, or any Internet service providers that we know about. The powerful searching encourages account holders to never delete anything. It takes three clicks to put a message into the trash, and more effort to delete this message. It's much easier to "archive" the message, or just leave it in the inbox and let the powerful searching keep track of it. Google admits that even deleted messages will remain on their system, and may also be accessible internally at Google, for an indefinite period of time.

After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record. This means that a subpoena instead of a warrant is all that's needed to force Google to produce a copy. Other countries may even lack this basic protection, and Google's databases are distributed all over the world. Since the Patriot Act was passed, it's unclear whether this ECPA protection is worth much anymore in the U.S., or whether it even applies to email that originates from non-citizens in other countries.

Google's relationships with government officials in all of the dozens of countries where they operate are a mystery, because Google never makes any statements about this. But here's a clue: Google uses the term "governmental request" three times on their terms-of-use page for Gmail and once on their privacy page. Google's language means that all Gmail account holders have consented to allow Google to show any and all email in their Gmail accounts to any official from any government whatsoever, even when the request is informal or extralegal, at Google's sole discretion. Why should we send email to Gmail accounts under such draconian conditions?

Can anyone confirm or deny this? That does indeed sound sketchy as all get out. Compair that to the terms of use on blogging.la:

COOPERATION WITH LOCAL, STATE, AND FEDERAL AUTHORITIES Unless you're a total knob and Blogging.la feels you need to do some hard time in pound me in the ass prison, Blogging.la will not cooperate or provide any information to anyone, due in part to the fact that Blogging.la does not retain any information about it's users. Due also in part to Blogging.la thinking that "the law" going after someone for posting something on the internet is a hunk of crap. Blogging.la site administrators are also highly trained ninjas and martial artists who usually like to solve problems on their own

sure it would be great if they didn't exist, but they do, so you just have to make sure you have bigger, more powerful ones than everyone else.

---
I said that earlier this evening and just wanted to put it someplace where I'd remember it.

That's how an application I got the other day to write for metblogs started.

"I'm not sure I do want to write..."

Then what the hell are you applying to write for?

The application went on to discuss the pros and cons of blogging and writing and how totally up in the air the author was on the subject. I e-mailed back and forth with it's sender a few times and still have no idea where they stand on the subject. It's not very convincing or encouraging. Why ask me for the keys to my car when you have no idea if you even want to drive it?

Tony Pierce lays out how to blog.

There's some dame fine advice there. The best stuff always comes from experience and most people aren't lucky enough to know it before they walk in the door. I wish blogs I read were written by more people who also read the busblog. Althought I read it and you know as well as I do it hasn't changed much around here. I've been blogging in one form or another for almost 6 years now and I think I'm still about as sucky as when I started. Luckily there's others out there in the sea of suck so I don't stick out so bad. And more of them know me by name, so all is well.

One thing he says is don't use your real name. That's something I've talked about before. If I was able to write about anything at any point and not have any concern for who might read it or what they might thing I'd sound a lot more like I did in college. A lot of people really didn't like me in college.

I don't know if I'm more reserved now or what, I think I've just never been good at keeping my mouth shut but I've learned to pick battles a little better. Much to your dismay - things would be more interesting if I didn't.

I've considered getting a clean slate. It's the web, I could start a new blog tomorrow, under some other name and no one would know. Or maybe they would. Or maybe I already have. Or maybe not. If you ever wanted to paint a picture of yourself that was exactly the way you wanted to be that would be the way to do it though. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch onto the affirmative...

One of the coolest things about announcing MetBlogs is watching the reactions. Good or Bad. (Although luckily most have been *very* good) But by far the best part is that people are "getting it" without a lot of explanation. With blogging.la Jason D and I agreed the best thing to do was point people in a direction (LA based) and set them free. The personality developed better than if we'd tried to sculpt it and I think that's one of the things people really like about it. With the new sites, we did the same and when we announced it, we purposefully didn't give out a lot of details. Let the sites and bloggers speak for themselves. In the past 24 hours I've gotten hundreds of e-mails about this, and while I'm still trying to go through the stack, it's really, really awesome to see feedback from people who right away see what we are trying to do. It's not a calendar listing, it's not citysearch - it's a perspective of the city from people who live and breath it every day. And if you click with one city, you know where to look when visiting another. It's not hype - it's what people are really into and reading these e-mails it's really inspiring to see how many people know that without us shoving it in their faces.

In addition to the great review on Random Bytes that I mentioned earlier, some other feedback is starting to pop up around the web. LA Voice says:

"Whoa.

blogging.la's Sean Bonner had been hinting for some time that he was working on something big, and it appears to have popped at last:

Bonner and Jason DeFillippo's new network, Metroblogging proposes to spread blogging.la's successful (or at the very least, incredibly industrious and often engaging) formula of hyper-local entertainment listings, photos, urban rants and reviews to an impressive and ambitious array of cities"

And Jason Calacanis has our back:

"Sean Bonner and Jason Defillippo, who I had dinner with on Friday night, are behind the a new site called www.metroblogging.com which hopes to bring together 20 blogers in every city—in the world! Sean blogs on our Apple Blog and we’ve become friends since I moved to L.A.

...

Ambitious… sure, but if you shot for the stars and you get the moon that’s not a bad strategy."

Thanks very much guys, I know we won't disappoint. More soon.

Jeff Jarvis doesn't like our metblogs project, and was particularly harsh on the New York one. Although he also didn't bother to do any homework and made the incorrect assumption that the Jason doing them is Calacanis not DeFillippo (I got away scott free), and kind of implies that the writers don't know how to write blogs, even though most of them have their own blogs - so that kind of puts the review in perspective.

I'm kinda bummed because I respect Jeff and he's been so positive on other local projects I was hoping he'd reallly like this, but I guess you can't please everyone all the time. It's also disappointing that someone with so many eyes on him would make such a blatently false statement as if it's fact - No where on the sites does it say Weblogs Inc, or Jason Calacanis, but all over it they say Bode Media, and the FAQ says that's me and Jason DeFillippo. What's worse is how many people will read Jeff's post, not read the comments, and then walk away with that false info thinking it's the truth.

For what it's worth, this is a brand new project - it took a month or so for us to get into our groove on blogging.la and for only being live a day I think the other cities are off to a great start. I think we found some very interesting people who have a cool, new perspective on things and I can't wait to see what they are going to do with the sites.

UPDATE: this was just pointed out to me. Maybe Jeff has other reasons for trashing our project?

UPDATE 2: Fortunately other people are actually getting it.

"Way to go guys! This is the way to do "local". I'm really looking forward to seeing how these stack up against blogging.la and evolve in their own directions. Its also a great way to get new bloggers involved in a very grassroots way. Like opening a window on a nice spring day, this is definitely going to bring some fresh air into the echo chamber."- Random Bytes

UPDATE 3: Jeff updated his post to correct the errors but then spent several paragraphs seemingly trying to justify it. I'm all for discussion and even for constructive criticism, but he's still hasn't actually posted a *link* to the sites he's dissing, even though he was happy to quote their text.

OK, months of work are now public: Metroblogging is officially live! That's the project Jason and I have been working on so secretly. The first cities we've launched are New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco. We've got a kick ass group of bloggers involved, and I really can't express how excited I am about all this. We're working on more cities too, check out metroblogging.com for details or to apply or whatever.

A few years ago there was an art writer in Chicago who decided he was sick of reviews talking about how great some exhibition was decided he was going to trash everything from there on out. In some cases he didn't even go to the shows, and wrote a bunch of bad things about it based on the invite. Luckily most people saw through this right away, but for some reason that still seems like a good idea to some people - that is, trashing things without doing your homework.

A lovely example of that is a "review" of SENT, the phonecam show we (sixspace) are doing by Nate over at STREETtech. I say "review" because the writer seems to be passing judgment on the entire exhibition, most of which hasn't happened yet. He's also making blanket statements that if he bothered to click a link he'd know were incorrect.

Just for kicks, I decided this was worth a good line by line fisking. So here we go itallics are quotes from STREETtech.

Sent: Phonecam Art Project Launches

That's the title, and it's partly correct. The site has been live since 2003, we started taking public submissions last month, and the physical exhibition is next month.

Xeni over at BoingBoing is co-curating an online "art" project called Sent.

Man, first sentence in and already it's full of problems. I'm going to have to take this one word by word. This isn't a BoingBoing project and that sounds like it is, yes Xeni is one of three curators, but her blog isn't sponsoring the event or anything like that. It's not an online project - sure currently a part of it is online but thats more of an archive than the project, the physical exhibition will be happening next month. We have archives of all the shows at sixspace online, this by no means makes them online art shows. This is the first incorrect assumption this guy makes and pretty much wrecks the rest of his article. If he's taken a moment to read the site, he might have know that and saved himself the embarrassment, but oh well. This is the best part - he writes art in quotation marks, as if that's questionable. That could take an entire post to argue, but hundreds of years worth of "is this art" discussions have pretty much come to the conclusion that if something is intended to be art, it's art. But that aside, is a exhibition, including photos taken by word famous photographers and put on by an art gallery, really something that might not be art?

The project aims to "test the limits of creative possibilities" of phonecam moblogging.

Again with the jumping to conclusions. We're very clear about the fact that we want to test the creative limits of phonecams. The phonecams themselves. The hardware. I don't know whose ass he pulled that "moblogging" thing from.

Celebrity "artists" are contributing, but nobody you're likely to be impressed by.

I'm not sure if this is a knock on the celebrities or the artists involved, but I think it's amusing that this guy thinks he knows what other people will be impressed by. It's not like that's an opinion or anything, right? Because one of the artists, Glen E. Freidman has 4 books published and has had three solo shows at sixspace over the past several years, all of which have drawn thousands of people to the openings - but that's not impressive right? My guess here is this guy assumed that since he was uneducated and didn't know who a lot of these people are that other people must not know either. Nothing like being presumptuous eh?

Unfortunately there seems to be no difference between the project and any other foto moblog.

Ouch. This is what I'm talking about. If he'd spent a few seconds reading our website, maybe the about/exhibition format page he'd know that wasn't the case. I'd love to be directed to the all the other "foto moblogs" that include printed images, hung on gallery walls, with opening events, and open to the public. I just checked the usual suspects - Buzznet, Textamerica, Mobog... nope - no gallery exhibitions.

There's not even an interactive ranking system or anything to let you see the best of the "amateur" contributions -- just random flotsam from the sea of bad photography.

What the hell is this - Am I hot or not? Rate My Poo? Interactive Ranking System? Are you nuts? Can you please tell me when the last time you went to a museum or art gallery and they handed you a rating card so you could let them know if the art they were showing was crap or not? Go look at the "most popular" images sent in over at mobog.com - oh what a surprise it's all boobs and dicks.

We love you Xeni, and we're all for the idea of moblogging, but at some point you need to ask yourself if this project is a tad over-hyped.

Again with the moblogging. Dude! This isn't a moblog. Writing that is like going to Pizza Hut, ordering a large Pepperoni Pizza and then complaining that it's absolutely the most over hyped ice cream you've ever tasted. Don't be such an idiot - read the site, see exactly what we are trying to do before telling us if we've done it well or not. Oh, and maybe wait for the event to actually happen before saying it's over-hyped.

I would think that a red flag would've been raised as soon as you saw the phrase "Phonecams are changing the way we see the world, and our place within it" on the website?

Really. How disillusioned / slacker / cynical / gen xer of you. And buddy, I'm not sure why there's a question mark on that sentence, I'm thinking the punctuation you were looking for is a period.

And can you really be deconstructivist if you're sponsored by Motorola?

Hmmm.. can you tell me where we said we were trying to be deconstructivist? Cuz I must have missed that one. Unless you are again criticizing us for not doing something we're not trying to do.

But on another note, would it have been better if I bought $400 phonecams for almost 30 artists myself, rather than have Motorola give them to me for free, or would that just have made me look like some rich asshole flaunting his cash?

Dear Journalists / Writers / Editors / etc:

Since this is continually mistaken in articles written about us, we've felt the need to spell it out a little more clearly. The name of our art gallery is "sixspace" - that's all one word and lowercase. It's an aesthetic choice yes, but one that we'd appreciate you respecting. For some reason writers in the past have felt the need to write it as "SixSpace" or "Six-Space" or as two words and this is painfully incorrect. Also, in this case, the word "space" in the title is synonymous with "gallery" so writing out "sixspace gallery" is redundant. Would you write "salsa sauce?" If you feel that your readers are not competent enough to understand that art is shown in a "space" the same way it is shown in a "gallery" then please refer to it as "sixspace art gallery" not "sixspace gallery." Additionally, please never write it as "The Sixspace Gallery" since that is clearly a proper title, one that does not belong to us. It's wrong on so many levels it's not even worth discussing. The gallery is called "sixspace" so if you can just call it that, that would be great.

Thanks for your time.

So says Jossip.

So maybe this wasn't all rumor. I'm still saying I'd vote for that combo in a heartbeat.

I'm typing for the next five minutes straight so en-fucking-joy. This is kind of to make up for the fact that I haven't had time to write much this week mostly because I haven't had time to think much this week. I've been playing catch up from the days I was out with the busted computer and it's been insane. I did take a short break to see SAVED and if you haven't yet you need to. Macaully Caulkin is in a wheel chair and they called him "differently-abled" and I almost spit coffee out of my nose. That's right, coffee. They serve coffee at Arclight which is pretty right on in my book, makes it easier to jump right back into work when you leave. Jason and I have been busting ass on the new super seeekret project but should be able to start yapping about it in a few days. I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. I've also come to the solid conclution of what my next tattoo is going to be, maybe I'll post about that later on, don't want to tranish this scary rant with something focused. There's worker dudes upstairs drilling or sawing into concrete or something and it's loud as hell. I sure am glad that the landlords at the gallery care so little about their tenets business. Caryn is taking Lebowski back to the vet right now because he got his one year puppy shots on monday and had a super negative reaction to it and almost a week later is still acting weird, poor little dude. I'm posting and getting off line to read Jessica's book "30 days of hate."

Bye.

People are stupid.

"At first, I was really leaning toward voting against Kerry, because the way he tried to hide his ambivalence about his military service made him seem like a political operator," poll participant and Trenton, NJ resident Amber Barthelme said. "But then, the Bush Administration's mishandling of the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal got me thinking that there's a lot to not like about the current administration. It's almost impossible to decide which side I don't want to be on."

According to the poll, 46 percent of the registered voters surveyed would vote against Bush if the election were held tomorrow, while 45 percent said they were ready to vote against Kerry. Factoring in the 2 percent margin of error, the two candidates are essentially deadlocked in the race to determine which candidate America doesn't support.

Once again, The Onion nails it.

Holy crap... the internet sure is a wacky place. Check out this chain.

This f.a.q. is amazing. Thanks kat.

I just posted the story about the Apple Loan I didn't get for this new machine. Go read it.

What tricks will BushCo pull to attempt to win the election in November? What Will Happen Before The Election?

Osama bin Laden captured! 43.3%
Spectacular terrorist attack on US soil! 17.6%
Vote is threatened by terrorist attacks, vote suspended due to red alert. 13.3%
Diebold Election Systems fixes the vote in battleground states. 8.9%
Escalation in Israel, Iran, or North Korea. US opens a new war front. 8.0%
WMD's found in Iraq! 5.1%
US pulls out of Iraq in October, leaving the UN in charge. 3.8%

What do you think?

Anyone have a 15" or 12" (or maybe 17") AlBook that they need a 256MHz RAM DIMM for? I've got an extra one that I'm looking to get rid of. The new PowerBook I just got came with two of them, but I ripped one out and replaced it with a 1GHz chip. Let me know.

OK, new machine is up and running so expect things to pick back up shortly. I've got a ton of catch up work that I've missed out on the past few days but I'll try to chime in when I can until then. In the meantime, check out Caryn's post about the Vet chaos we had to deal with yesterday. Let me tell you, adverse reactions to vaccine shots is not a fun situation, a small upside is these's a kick ass DVD store right next to the vet, and since we were there for hours I did some hunting and found a copy of Salesman which I've been looking for for quite some time.

OK, gotta get some work done.

The 667 TiBook is dead. I gotta get a new machine so things are going to be a little quite here for the next few days while I'm laptopless. Sorry about that...

UPDATE: Question of the day - do I go for a business finance plan at the Apple Store and pay through the nose for finance changes and tax and all that, or do I buy from Amazon.com with no tax or shipping but then deal with paying off credit card interest rates?

UPDATE 2: I spent an hour at the Apple Store yesterday filling out business loan paperwork and was promised a call in two hours to let me know if it was approved so I could come back and pick up a machine. 24 hours later when I still hadn't heard back I called and was told "I don't know anything about that, and can't look it up without an account number, but I can have our business loan manager contact you when he's back in the store, sometime next week." Meanwhile, this is PB is crashing every 5 minutes, and taking an average of 10 restarts to actually boot up.

UPDATE 3: I'm typing this from my new 15" PowerBook. Working on setting everything up tonight and then I have a long story about the hell the last few days have been. Short Version: Apple approved the lease 1 hour AFTER I bought the machine on my own.

my laptop just crashed, and when I rebooted NetNewsWire had lost all 400+ RSS subscriptions.

I have published OPML files, but they are out of date and missing tons of feeds.

This bites.

I haven't had a chance to talk about this yet but it's something I've been thinking about for the past few days. After the panel the other night I got a lot, and read of a lot of comments from "right leaning" people about my take, or about my comments. Now I hate to qualify people like that, but it's walls that they kind of built up on their own, and not something I'm imposing on them. See I have a lot of friends who are way more "right" than me, and a lot of friends who are way more "left." But they are still my friends, and that's more important that a particular stance on some specific subject. So anyway, I'm not used to dealing with a lot of division, but maybe a lot of these people are.

What I'm talking about is e-mails or comments I got from people, very nice people, who started off pointing out that they are "on the oposite side" or by saying they're "glad we can be civil." Why wouldn't we? We're just talking. It's just ideas. Are we really on opposite sides? Don't we all want tomorrow to be better? Don't we want America to be a better place? So what if we have differing opinions on what will get us there, we both have hope.

I just don't understand the walls and seperation. One person wrote of a group of friends whose "political preferences lean to the left but they're pro-American" as if most people who lean to the left are "anti-American." It's just depressing sometimes to see that people would rather draw a bunch of dividing lines than look at the bigger picture.

The Weblogs Inc Network launched a new site today, this time for car freaks. Go check out Autoblog.

I finally got off my ass and set up a del.icio.us account to keep track of interesting articles and things, feel free to subscribe to the rss feed.