In contrast to my lunch-break annoyance, here is a piece of mail from an Evolution/Connector user I got late last week that made me smile:
… Just wanted to say “Thanks.” I struggled for a couple of sessions, but your thorough docs made it possible for me to get Connector working with only a little reading. The software is very intuitive, but not “[sender]-proof” apparently…
They like the software, and the read the manual. Amazing.
When I bought my scooter, I was told that it was technically a motorcycle, since it went faster than about 25 miles an hour, so I should, technically, register it as such. If I were to claim it as a moped, I could probably get away with it. Probably. I figured, I have the license, I might as well get the plate and register it properly. The salesman was confused, somewhat, but let me go ahead and regsiter and pay taxes and get insurance. All on the up-and-up. Which was good, because not two months later my plates got stolen, and I got pulled over for riding a moped too fast, and was able to avoid the ticket by showing them my registration papers.
And now I have to pay excise tax on the bike to the city of Somerville. The RMV seems to think I have a $7000 motorcycle, and so the city billed me for taxes on a much nicer bike. When I called the assessor’s department to complain they told me I had to go by the sticker price even if I got a good deal on it. I said, that is the sticker price. They said, we have to go through the RMV to change the valuation, once we do that we can bill you the correct amount.
I called the RMV. They said, you have to go by the sticker price, and I said, that is the sticker price. They said, no, like what the dealer charges anybody. I said, that is the full list price for a new Honda NPS50: $1899. They were confused that I had bothered to register a moped the proper, legal way. Nobody does that.
We’ll see if I can eventually get this sorted out before I end up selling the scooter and buying a bike that’s actually worth what I’ll be taxed for.
Louis is probably thirty years old but he looks like a solid 45
Louis says he’s got a headache
I look in his eyes, and I believe him
The big L.K.’s and the gangster disciples
Louis can’t think of who else could take over
But he just can’t get up in the morning
A genuine face, braced for survival
It’s nice to be liked
But it’s better by far to get paid
I know that most of the friends that I have
Don’t really see it that way
But if you can give ’em each one wish
How much do you wanna bet?
They’d which success for themselves and their friends
And that would include lots of money
OK, here’s a bunch of random stuff for the weekend:
The papernapkin.net rejection service: make up an email address ending in papernapkin.net and give it to someone you don’t want to hear from. Paper Napkin will tell them to go away, so you don’t have to.
The Week in Craig sorts through Craig’s List and looks for the weird, funny stuff, so you don’t have to.
The Nerve Pickup Line Contest chooses the best pickup lines, so you don’t have to figure them out for yourself the hard way.
Blast Off is a great political blog with a great transcript of an obviously deranged person calling a political talk show. Some items are serious, and some are not. Like the one about how you just have to giggle a little bit when a frozen-foods executive is found dead in a freezer.
WSJ headline today on the front page: “When the big hand points to the IV, some get ticked off. Subhead: “Traditionalists say IIII is how the Romans did it; Striking a proper balance.” Apparently IIII balances against VIII better than IV does, and fine watchmakers prefer the IIII for that reason. But IV lets you cram in a couple extra features, and it’s becoming more popular.
I love the way they do this sort of weird detailed reporting– tiny aspect of one business that reflects a gradual change that has some impact on business. It’s just neat. Fridays are best, because that’s when they go for the more personal angle, and publish stuff that they allow to border on silliness.
Headline that sounds almost obscene, from page A3: “Regulator Pressures Fannie Officers.”
“Ash joins Telly in her increasingly mysterioso quest, one that takes them from under the Brooklyn Bridge to the wilds of Long Island and, in due course, involves the National Security Agency, a police detective (Alfre Woodard), an omniscient stranger (Linus Roache) and some tawdry special effects.”
Oh yeah. Don’t fail to miss it.
It’s supply-side Santa and the most destructive ideas of the next decade.
Awesome power!
Hey! Someone reads this page! And noticed when I wildly and inaccurately stated that the New York Times was totally out of it. The director of the Intersex Initiative actually read my page, and pointed out to me that the Times was one of the first media outlets to cover the issue. There were at least two articles on NYT that predate Salon.com one: Natalie Angier’s report on March 14, 1997 and ISNA board member Alice Dreger’s contributed opinion piece on July 28, 1998.
I still think the article belongs in the medical section and not in style, but I regret that I insulted the Times, which is still, after all, the Paper of Record. Well, actually, the insulting was fun. I don’t regret it at all, paper of record or not.
I’ve been trying to figure out a good thing to put as my tag line. For awhile I had some random words from spam, but then I noticed that bloglines (which, by the way, does for blogs what tivo does for TV, and which you should use) uses the tagline as an actual description when it’s showing you a list of feeds you might like. Mine appeared, therefore, to be a blog completely composed of spam. Not so good.
So I switched to an actual description of the content, which was pretty boring. I want something clever. Cleverer (more clever?) than “yes, that is a stupid question.”
Candidates:
Hm. I had a really good one earlier today that I have forgotten.
Salon covered the forced surgical sex-reassignment of children with anomalous genitals back in 1999, and the Times has finally noticed. In the STYLE SECTION? Oh yeah, we’re well-informed.
Secretly Ironic 