Get the Lead Out

Why does it seem whenever the US Government tries to "look out for our well-being", it nearly always ends up doing the opposite? I'd like to think I'm making too generalized of a statement, but it really does seem to be the case.

The current incarnation of this is a law that will go into effect on February 10th of this year regulating the amount of lead in products for children. "How can limiting lead be a bad thing," one might ask. It seems recently that every toy shipped here from China has later been recalled due to lead, so this seems like a good plan. It's "for the good of the children" after all.

Except there were already lead restrictions on kids toys in place BEFORE these crappy items started rolling in from China. Based on that, I argue it will do nothing to change what type of products are cheaply made with potentially dangerous chemicals overseas, by large companies looking to "protect shareholder value."

Now - here's why I'm angry about this. The new law says that all children's products (toys, jewelry, etc.) must contain 600 ppm or less of lead. In August, that will drop to 300 ppm. If this fact can't be certified, these products are not allowed to be sold.

That certification part is the rub. Certification costs about $150, and must be done for each unique item. That's cost-prohibitive for many small, local businesses making handmade products in the U.S. [Note - the article linked mentions that second-hand stores will be hurt, there is now in-fact an exemption for them].

This of course is where it hits home for me. My wife has a line of jewelry that she designs, makes, and sells. One of her lines is children's jewelry. After Feb. 10th, she would have to get certification for each and every one of those items at $150 apiece. Not going to happen. Instead, that line will cease to be sellable on her website. Poof. Gone.

So - what will be the net effect. Fewer small businesses in the U.S. making handmade jewelry (and other products), and likely then even more of it being made in large factories in China instead. Does anyone think that is a good trade off? Were we worried the mom's working at home on a side income were killing off the kids of this country with lead poisoning? Were we wanting to run to China to keep our products safe?

I sure as hell am not. A few good places to go do more about this are http://cpsia-central.ning.com/, and http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/RepealCPSIA/. The usual letter writing, phone calls, and emails to elected officials are worthwhile as well.

Quick and to the point

This is sports-related, and it's going to be extremely short.

Now that Florida has won the BCS "championship game", many people are going to be calling them the national champions for college football. I beg to differ. The BCS can go suck it.

Here is a fantastic article that I found on ESPN that sums up my feelings for this bowl season better than I possibly could.

Screw it - I just want to watch the Hawks pummel the Cocks again.

iTunes Store Gripe

I could expound on this to include bad metadata that has plagued digital music from the beginning. I won't - I'll keep this succinct for now.

iTunes (Apple) - why the hell do you feel it necessary to change the name of the album for your free songs each week? You have the song, you list the correct album it is from, but then you tack on " - single of the week" and label it as track 1 of 1. NO!

Actually, it's worse than that in some cases. Sometimes the real name of the album instead becomes "song title - single of the week". But, it's not an actual single, and the album art will still of course be for the full album.

This came from a real album, with a real title, and it had a specific track number. STOP CHANGING IT!

Delusional Ramblings

First, can we finally now admit that the FCC has no idea what they are doing? I hope the fact that most of these articles point out that this is the "outgoing" FCC chairman indicates that someone with more intelligence will be coming in. We can't just print money, and I'm really tired of the federal government thinking it (it being the taxpayers of this country) needs to finance everything for everyone. Free Wi-Fi has failed in metropolitan cities - this would just fail in a more spectacular fashion, and that's not even considering their ridiculous "porn-free" clause. *Sigh*.

That plan segways nicely into the next delusional rambling though. How do we find a way to eliminate all credit cards? Now. Seriously, if you don't have the money, you can't spend it. It's as simple as that. You can't have a horribly failing economy and then have the best Black Friday ever - not possible. I know more people who bought flatscreen TV's, Wiis, and computers this year than any year in the past. When did it become a guarantee that every family in America was entitled to a flatscreen TV? When did people start spending thousands of dollars at Christmastime? There is one way to fix the giant blob of crap that the country is languishing in right now. Get some self-control and willpower back in our lives. Stop buying crap that isn't a necessity. Don't buy anything that you can't cover with cash in the bank (yes - I know there can be exceptions like housing - quit nitpicking). Let's want better for ourselves, and put in a little bit of hard work and restraint to make it happen.

Goodbye Smoky Air - You Won't Be Missed

Today is the last day of dirty, stinky public air. No, sorry, I can't promise that actually. I can say though that tomorrow is the first day where the fantastic new Iowa smoking ban will be in effect.

I'm freaking thrilled about this. Any public place is basically now a safe haven from something I despise. Despised isn't actually strong enough - pure hatred is better. In fact, after my introductory post, the very first post on this blog was against smoking.

Some will say this goes too far and infringes on personal liberties. They'll say that it is a slippery slope of government control. I don't give a rats ass. I'm normally very careful about allowing government to get into our affairs too. The difference here is that this is something that effects others, not just the brain dead who is puffing away. I'm still not legally allowed to beat the hell out of them or defecate on them, so I think it fair that they can't smoke around me.

The only disappointing thing to me in this is the very few loopholes that still made it in. Casinos and hotels still have exemptions. F the casinos, I'll stay away from your smoky, old folk piss establishments. Now I just need to find a hotel chain that positions themselves as non-smoking.

Potpourri

It's been a while since I did a post with several interesting items, so here goes:

• Completely Missing the Point
  I'm to the point where I'm almost entirely paperless with my monthly bills. I think the city water bill is the sole holdout at this point; everything else is either delivered directly to my email (fantastic), or I download from the web (better, but still not the best). I can now use email tags or folders of PDFs to store all of this data very succinctly, and in a searchable and usable manner.
  
  Maybe the biggest benefit though was time savings and reduction of effort. Quite simply, especially with automatically tagged email, there is little to no interaction with these bills any longer. I check them over and archive them.
  
  So, I was highly disappointed to receive the following email after downloading my latest telephone statement from the local co-op:

  eLation@southslope.com

  Data concerning your account was recently made available offline.
  If you didn't download this data, it may indicate an unauthorized individual has accessed your account.
  
  A PDF version of invoice 10224020 was downloaded.
  
  In accordance with an FCC ruling, you are being notified that data from your online account was downloaded.
  The text of this ruling can be viewed at http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-07-22A1.pdf

  
  Needless to say, I was not "elated" about seeing this. What a pointless email. I can only hope they are taking this ruling too far, and that I won't start seeing this everywhere.
  
  
• Missing iTunes Feature
  Here's a sentence I'm pretty sure I've never said before: "Man, I wish iTunes had this feature I heard about in Windows Media Player." That changed after seeing a post on lifehacker today though.
  
  Basically, this is a way to put media player into a full screen mode and have it locked with a numeric password. So, the theory is that you can throw the player into party mode and go full screen with some cool visualizations. Now, somebody bumping or trying to use the computer won't kill the tunes. Simple, but cool.
  
  
• Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
  As always, this is a great mantra for living your life. Lately, near the holiday time especially, I have been very interested in the first. Looking at all of the pure excess and junk in the stores just leads me to believe we are wasting effort and resources on pointless junk.
  
  Without leaning too heavily into the preachy category, I thought I would share an interesting article about reducing the number of useless gifts given simply out of expectation and replacing them with things that are thoughtful and simple. In other words, something original and practical, not something overpriced and grabbed from an end cap.
  

Go Away!!

Before falling off the deep end and admitting he liked the blue light, Thaddeus had reminded me of a post that I had been meaning to write.

He talked a bit about the "Do Not Call" list, and wondered if it worked. While I obviously don't have hard and fast evidence, I would have to say that it has worked very well for us. I signed up on the first day that you could do so online, and within about 2 months our unsolicited calls had dropped off almost entirely. Anymore, other than the stupid political, highway patrol (usually fake), and alumni calls, we don't get any crap calls. If I could find a way to stop those entirely, I would be extremely happy.

The real point of my post though is that the list expires every 5 years. If you registered early like me, that means you are nearing the time where your number will fall off the list. You can renew your spot early, so I strongly recommend you go update your number. Actually, make sure to update ALL of your numbers.

This makes me sad/angry

I'll get off of my soapbox here one of these days and start posting new content again, rather than just syndicating other news items, really I will.

However, I couldn't skip this one. The original slashdot link for this story is here. The summary from there is:

"A student at the Houston-area Clements High School was arrested, sent to an "Alternative Education Center" and banned from graduation after school officials found he created a video game map of his school. School district police arrested the teen and searched his home where they confiscated a hammer as a 'potential weapon'. ' "They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.' With an upcoming May 12 school board election, this issue has quickly become political, with school board members involved in the appeal accusing each other of pandering to the Chinese community in an attempt to gain votes."

I hate close-minded people screaming terrorism, censorship, etc. and running for the hills in general. I do my best to try to educate people when this is happening, to stop it from spreading. This one hits close to home though.

When I was in high school, I made a DOOM 2 map of my high school (a wad, for those who remember). It turns out our school was old enough that it had all sorts of cool, hidden areas that I had found my way into over the years. My personal favorite is the lofts above the auditorium, where there is likely still tagging with my name to do this day.

All of it combined to make a really cool world for my friend and I to play DOOM 2 over 9600 bps modem. Good old days indeed. Would I have had an inkling in my mind that anyone would ever consider something like that a threat? Hardly, and I bet this kid didn't either.

Texas, I'm seeing proof that your education system ranks near the lowest in the country. You don't have to look farther than the political personnel that have risen from your ranks in recent (or not so recent in certain executive examples) years.

What is this number?

How DiD i come up with a Very Dumb blog post? And, Ask yourself Could Sending it to the junK foldEr be verY smart?

In either case, I have no idea why my typing was so bad on the previous sentence, or what this number means: 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

Why Google, Why?

Others have talked about how they really like the personalized Google homepage, and even the new themes. I personally no longer use a homepage, I never really close my browser so it wouldn't make much sense. I tend to just bounce between a few Google applications for the most part.

However, even those I know who do like the homepage would have to question Google's latest move I'm guessing. Since its start, the personalized page was at http://www.google.com/ig (OMG, how did I just link to your personalized homepage? --fun with n00bs). Apparently, that "ig" now stands for "iGoogle", complete with an ass-tastic logo and all.

Google, you should know better. Why did you stoop to this lowness?

Negative Feedback

No, not Ebay, a bank. I do plan to create a financial advise blog very shortly, as I have a fair amount of experience in that area. Until I do, I will have to let some of it leak into this blog.

For tonight, enjoy my response to a certain large banking company who requested that I fill out a survey after a recent loan application. Keep in mind that I am glad to see companies requesting feedback of any kind, but I was particularly annoyed with them.

I did not have any problems with a recent mortgage through Countrywide, so I assumed I would not have problems with an equity loan either. Since I had the offer on my online account, I assumed it could be done more cheaply and easily than somewhere else also.

Instead, while I wanted to be closed within 2 weeks of my loan application (about 2 weeks before the end of the year), it was a few weeks into the new year before I received anything in the mail.

Once I did receive the package, I was expected to fax/mail an exorbitant amount of paperwork. My emails to my designated loan officer about this went completely unanswered.

Moreover, the closing costs were $600, compared to my local bank, who were able to close within 3 days, who had costs of $48.

So, a company that had just recently obtained all of my information and advertised this service to me (Countrywide), was completely inattentive, slow, and wanted to charge me over $500 more than my local bank for the privilege.

Congratulations. That is a spectacular formula for generating negative word-of-mouth and pissing off existing customers.

Random Dumbness

It's Sunday night. Bear with me as I hit you with some mostly random stories of stupidity.

I was going to post about the stuff on Slashdot from today that just plain made me angry. Especially the comment from the guy who said, "I'm smarter than most other people (98th percentile)...", but I just couldn't contain my rage long enough to write about it.

Instead, I'll start you with this gem. This guy lives near an International border and doesn't bother to check if he can build a 4 foot wall? I would check on that for my own private property lines, which come nowhere near the border of even a small municipality. Moreover, why did they need a $15,000 wall to contain erosion? I could have set them up with a few hefty bags strung together like the DOT uses, and pocketed the rest.

Next, less pure stupidity, and into the scary stupid category. How do we have government agencies that are setup to be so dumb? "Hey, let's kill the golden goose, because that's what our process says to do." I'm sorry (not really), but I completely disagree with this type of thinking. This is wrong and should be stopped/blocked/killed immediately.

Man, I see why Lewis Black finds it so easy to come up with material and get worked up over it. Because of that, I will leave you with some great quotes of his:

"Metal detectors don't work. I went through the metal detector and they said, 'we're gonna hafta check you.' 'I just went through the metal detector. That should be it.' Then they check you again. That means, that doesn't fuckin' work, does it? All right, so then, they got a thing called a wand. It's the same thing. It's like a metal detector for your hand. And they go, woo-wooo, and then you're clear and then they say, 'well, we'll pat you down.' Well that didn't fuckin' work either then, did it? And if what you really need to do is pat us down, then pat us down. Pat us the fuck down. Don't do this bullshit. Don't send me through two fake things that don't work."

and now a long one...

"When from behind me, a woman of 25 uttered the dumbest thing I'd ever heard in my life ... She said, 'If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.' I'll repeat that. I'll repeat that because that's the kind of sentence that when you hear it, your brain comes to a screeching halt. And the left hand side of the brain looks at the right hand side and goes, 'It's dark in here, and we may die.' She said, 'If it weren't for my horse...' as in, giddy up, giddy up, let's go - 'I wouldn't have spent that year in college,' a degree-granting institution. Don't! Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood'll shoot out your nose. The American medical profession doesn't know why we get an aneurysm. It's when a blood vessel bursts in our head for no apparent reason. There's a reason. You're at the mall one day, and somebody over there says the dumbest thing you've ever heard and it goes in your ear. So you turn around to see if your friends heard it, cause if your friends heard it, and you can talk about what the jackass said, then it'll be gone. But your friends are over here, pretending they're gonna buy a cellular phone, and they're not gonna buy a cellular phone, because they don't even understand how the rate structure works. So you turn back, to find the person who said it, because if you can ask 'em a question like, 'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKIN' ABOUT?!' then it'll go away. But they're gone. And now those words are in your head. And those words don't go away. Cause the way I see it, 7% of our brains functions all the time, because 99% of everything that happens is the same old stuff. We get it. All right. Move on. Get it. Right. But every so often, somethin' like that happens: 'If it weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college.' So your brain goes, 'LET'S FIGURE IT OUT! Son of a bitch! I wonder what that's about!' I wonder, was she riding the horse to school? No, she wouldn't be riding the horse to school. Maybe it was a polo pony; she had a polo pony scholarship. Maybe she sold the horse and that's how she - she was betting on the horse! WHAT THE FUCK?!! And then you realize that anybody who went to college would never say anything that stupid in public. And as soon as you have that thought, your eyes close and the next morning they find you dead in your bathroom."

Needle in the haystack (aka the ballad of strstr)

Slashdot over the years has degenerated to the point where I expect nearly no value any longer. However, I keep it around just for the rare times where it finds a gem. This is one of those cases.

Any readers of this blog should already have a pretty good idea what I think about Digital Rights Management (DRM). (sidenote - what a nice spin of words to try to make it sound like something non-evil, was Digital Handcuffs (DH) already taken?).

This blog post, courtesy of Slashdot, is just about perfect. Fantastic read. Macrovision sucks.

Weekend Tidbits

Some interesting sites I stumbled upon today, to occupy (I.E. waste) your time.

The first is an interesting concept albeit a bit too focused on the MySpace generation. Share2me is a site that lets you add your contacts from email, IM, and other places. Then, if you have something interesting to share with people, you can automatically add them from a list of contacts and send it to all at once. Regardless of whether that means it sends by IM, email, or posts to a MySpace page. I dig the concept of send once, regardless of mechanism. Go check out the demo on their page.

Second, is something even more tailored to me. A site that exists simply to allow for debating various topics. There are 3 different methods for presenting and arguing a topic. You choose one, make your case, and then attempt to with the debate. I know at least one person who reads this blog fairly regularly should be as interested in this as I am. I smell a new time waster...

Sensationalism

I may have actually posted about this before. It bears repeating though.

I am disgusted and tired of sensationalist journalism. It along with media saturation are why I have almost completely eliminated traditional media from my life. I now almost solely get my news from aggregated sites online such as Google news. I like to get as wide of a variety of news as possible, in as quick to digest of a form, and available when I decide, not on any other schedule.

This article represents most of what I find wrong with the news currently. News is no longer about just reporting events of substance, it is now about filling all available time and senses with anything that can pass for a story.

How is this story relevant to me reading the HawkCentral website at all? Why is the fact that this guy once played for the Hawkeyes years ago even a part of the story? Shouldn't they mention that at one point he used to eat baby food and wear diapers too? I think that is equally relevant. Moreover, why do they need to mention that the injured party was an airman who served in Iraq? Is that any different than if he was a pimp from Oakland? Seriously, the only story here is local policeman potentially used unnecessary force on another local person. It is only relevant to that location, and only to those concerned about their local police force. Nothing more.

Blech, I need more of the tasty Bud Light in the cool aluminum bottle (yes, you read that right) to get the nasty taste of this story out of my mouth.

Oh smart phones, why do I hate you so?

It has been said far too many times, but I have expressed dislike for cell phones in the past. Unfortunate in some regards, as I do occaisionally see some value in having one. If I wasn't averse to paying money for them, or if they were cheap enough, I would actually still have one. The problem is that I have complained about some aspects of them often enough that I nearly seem hypocritical if I did.

Crackberrys and other smart phones though, that's pretty much a different story. I still find them to be a useless annoyance dragging people down. Apparantly, I am not alone.

I really want to reach through my monitor and give an ass-whooping to a few of these parents. When, oh when, will that technology be created?

Now, a few of my favorite comments from this story (RTF story first...):

• "His dad, private banker Ross Singletary, calls it "a legit concern." He adds: "Some emails are important enough to look at en route."
  
  "No. No, no emails are important enough to look at en route. Period.
  Get a life, and pay more attention to things around you instead of work. There's a whole world outside, and your kids mental well being is more important than your job no matter what you might think."
  
  
• "The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men." -- Charles De Gaulle
  
  
• "I suppose kids aren't reading this, but if you are, smash your parent's blackberry. Blackberries are expensive. They might get another one, but after you smash three or four, they won't get more. If their blackberries are issued by their employer, your parent will be fired after you smash two or three. Again, problem solved. Don't be afraid. Your parent my yell at you, make scary faces and noises, and send you to your room. But that's attention, and any attention is better than none. And they'll get over it an a day or two and love you again, without a blackberry."
  
  
• Maybe the best comment of the whole thing (too long to list it here)

I realize bad parenting isn't new, and neither are clueless companies. It does seem like both are increasing lately though. I would like to see an active effort to reduce both.

Apple - You Fail It

I've been sitting on this post for a while, but I needed to get something back out there after taking a little break.

I've talked before (although I can't easily seem to search for where) about how much I want a nicely integrated system update service. All applications could tie into it to update themselves. Very similar to how I think backup should work. Let the system control it all, but each application can register with it, since who better than the app to decide what to backup or update.

Ryan has also said several times how ridiculous it is that due to the lack of this, every app feels the need to bundle their own updater. Apple it turns out is no exception. When iTunes 7 rolled around, Apple created something called Apple Software Update, and included it with iTunes. I groaned, but I thought, "Hey, Apple stuff is generally simple and just works." So, I installed it.

Then, after fixing a ton of bugs in iTunes 7, they released an update. I thought, "awesome, I'll have it automatically thanks to that update package, right?" Wrong. Not even when I tried to use it to check for an updated manually. Check the screen shot. The software updater doesn't have a clue, but iTunes itself prompted me to do the update.




Yep, that was the end of Apple Software Update. Promptly uninstalled.

I hope the next operating system that convinces me it is worthy of being installed finds a way to integrate these services that I want.

Extreme Stupidity

(Click here to skip the background, and go straight to the stupidity)

First, some background. I am not particularly fond of cell phones. I hate when the ring, pretty much always. I hate when people talk on them very loudly, about worthless and mundane topics. I think they are the single biggest contributor to ADD in existence currently. What I really dislike personally though is paying for them.

I had a cell phone for about 4 years in college. I remember being excited to move from my analog to a digital phone. I liked them occasionally. However, I really didn't like paying lots of money, so that people could get a hold of me immediately, rather than waiting until I was near another phone. Sometimes it's actually nice to just disappear for a bit. So, even though I never moved beyond a $25 per month plan, I eventually dropped the phone about 3 years ago, and haven't regretted it since.

People are often amazed that I am able to survive without one. Apparently, generations previous to us were just lucky that they didn't die on a daily basis without a mobile telephone.

Now, to the point. Our friends at one of the plethora of cellular service providers have decided they need to help people out, give back to the community. They have a new deal for those less-fortunate, who somehow can't manage to pay their bills, but absolutely have to have a cell phone (and a satellite, and new sneakers, and...sorry, getting off-topic).

Now, if you already qualify for low-cost utilities or subsidized phone service, they will give you an extra special package. It has 700 minutes, free incoming everything, blah blah blah. All for the low, low cost of $37 per month. $37 per month!!! That's over 1/3 more than the point where I considered my service too expensive to continue. And this is for those who are struggling with money? Bullshit. This is just one more excuse for the cell companies to line their pockets.

However, lest you think all lost, the Hawks won big today. All is now well with the cosmos again.

Hawks 47, Purdue 17

Battle Hymn

iTunes 7 came out today. It rocks hard, very cool all around, couple this with a lower priced iTV, and things are looking good on the Apple front. I don't think I need any more explanation of all of this, as the geek sites should have it more than covered. However, there is one little caveat, Apple has now phased out anything prior to 6.x buying from the music store.

This eliminates my current workaround for being locked into DRM, using iTunes 5 with Jhymn. Sucko. The only saving grace is that iTunes 6 recently had a workaround created, and iTunes 6 is still allowed to purchase songs, even if you use that account with iTunes 7. So, I do believe I will use iTunes 7 on my main machine because it rocks, and keep a virtual PC image with iTunes 6 and purchase/un-DRM over there. Cumbersome, but necessary for the time being.

Here is a quoted block from the forums over on the Jhymn site explaining this:

Ok, here are my final results of testing iTunes version. I have three machines:

1) XP with iTunes 5.0.1.4
2) XP with iTunes 6.0.5.20
3) Macbook with iTunes 7.0

When I tried to "purchase" (free song of the week) a song with iTunes 5 and an account created with itunes 5 it told me I need to upgrade. Apple must have phased out 5.0 completely with the changes made today.

I was able to download the free song using iTunes 6 no problem.

I created a new account on my macbook with iTunes 7.0. I was then able to use that account in the windows version of iTunes 6 to download the free song.

Conclusion: Thankfully, using iTunes 7.0 does not stop you from using iTunes 6 on another computer. However, I wouldn't recommend upgrading to iTunes 7 unless you know what you're doing. It may be hard to go back to iTunes 6 on the same machine once you've upgraded."

You've got your tongue in where?

This is probably the best self-help tutorial I have ever read. Unfortunately, I have to work with several of these bottom-feeders, some of whom live under a rock.

My personal favorite: "Try smoking some crack to ease your pain."