BillSaysThis

Seems like today would be an auspicious one for people who believe in numerology. 9/18/2003. Three squared is nine, nine times two is 18. Two cubed is one eight. Is this a clue or just another 42? You decide. Bonus link: BillG is the AntiChrist, proven by Numerology!

Have you been watching this series on FX? I can’t quite make up my mind whether it’s good or not, but I think the appeal is sort of like hanging around an accident to see the bloody mess. Seriously, the show pushes the envelope further than any non-premium cable television show and sometimes I think the whole thing is an excuse to show as much fascinating gore and near nakedness and sex. But with a plot thrown in and a bit of characterization. Which is the reason (I think) I keep watching.

Some completely unenlightened soul who thinks that selling crap via spam is a worthwhile use of his/her lifespan decided to make my day fairly annoying. One standard piece of these asshat’s toolbox is forging the sender information in their spam messages and today they decided to use a few made up addresses at a domain I own (but don’t actively use for now).

Of course not all of the addresses in their lists are accurate although the mail server is specified correctly. So sending email to 45west@example.com, where example.com is a working mail server but 45west is non-functional, means that the mail server will attempt to be nice and tell the sender there’s a problem with delivering the mail–I’m sure you’ve all gotten such messages. But when you receive literally hundreds of these bounce messages in a single day, that really sucks.

Checking with Support at my (reasonably excellent) hosting provider PHPWebHosting.com, I found there’s little to be done about this but on the bright side spammers tend to only use a given domain once. And people/groups that keep the spam blacklists understand this and add domains to their database based on the sender’s IP, not the return email address.

[Another Letter to the Editor of the SJ Mercury News I’ve submitted regarding this column by Joe Rodriguez entitled ‘Colorblind’ Ward Connerly has a case of selective vision]

I’ve been reading Joe Rodriguez’s OpEd pieces in the MN for some time now and am a bit confused. In today’s column for instance, he writes:

“That’s right, we should be able to throw innocent children out of school because their parents jumped the border rather than starve.”

So I guess Rodriguez is arguing that any individual who has a principled objection to any law can disobey that law. If I can’t find work, I should be able to rob a grocery store to put food on my table rather than starve?

I thought that in situations where one disagrees with the law, one obeys the laws as they are and works to change them. Further, I’m not clear that people in Mexico are actually starving, so this column throws emotional tinder on the fire simply because it reinforces his position. If the truth is otherwise, why is the Merc not reporting it? Why is Rodriguez sitting in a comfortable office in San Jose rather than getting the story down south?

Hello Muddah, hello Faddah, here we are at Camp Grenada:

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an preliminary injunction Monday stopping California’s Oct. 7 gubernatorial recall election, in the latest unexpected twist of the unprecedented ballot to decide whether Gov. Gray Davis remains in office. “The secretary of state is enjoined from conducting an election on any issue on October 7, 2003,” a three-judge panel ruled Monday. The court stayed its order for seven days to allow the parties to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

What does it matter know that we know Ah-nuld came to this country illegally? Odd, then, that he would be against laws that benefit illegal aliens. Next, do not forget that Bill Clinton was in state yesterday preaching in favor of Davis. I do mean preaching, the event took place at a church in Los Angeles with a gospel choir backing the ex-Prez. Anyway, if the recall is delayed until March (the next possible date after Oct. 7), it’s all over for the Republicans. Which would make me cry but not out of sadness.

The SF Chronicle gangs up on Scott McNealy for an interview that, unsurprisingly, is not at all nice and polite. If only things like this could get the (SUNW) stock price back where it belongs, in the mid-$20s.

I want to say that wide receiver Cedric Wilson cost the 49ers today’s game against St. Louis; all he had to do was go down after making a last-second reception inside the Rams’ 30 yard line with three seconds or so left. A timeout would have stopped the clock and let us kick a moderate, but not too difficult, field goal for a 27-24 win. Instead, Wilson ran sideways across the field in a vain attempt at glory, the Rams won the coin toss and drove to the Niners’ nine and kicked the winning field goal.

But that would put a little too much blame and emphasis on one play. The 49ers were called for well over a hundred yards in penalties, including a really unnecessary 15 yard face mask violation in OT, that time and again gave St. Louis better field position or put us out of it. And the defense, in particular the secondary, gave up way too much space in the second half after a sterling opening 30.

Hopefully next week against Cleveland the result will be more favorable.

Somehow I’m not surprised that there is no scriptwriter credit (which would actually belong to Richard Steen) in the IMDB database; makes me wonder what name’s the writer equivalent of Alan Smithee and why it wasn’t used for this piece of dreck. The Shipment does nothing for the careers of Mathew Modine or Elizabeth Berkeley, though clearly they hoped to show off the ability to carry a romantic caper comedy. Some moments of amusement but not nearly enough to justify the investment of 100 minutes of lifespan.

Not recommended

Dawn just cracks me up. She has an emergency appendicitis, is barely out of the hospital and has to go in for a follow-up exam and this is what she blogs about it: “So she poked and poked with the prod, and finally, when she went to pull it out, I suppose my cock-starved crotch had decided that it wasn’t done yet. My muscles had gripped the wand very tightly, and she had to fight to get me to release it.”

Johnny Cash is gone, not a surprise after long illness and the hole in his heart where June used to live, but he left behind some immense, moving works. Check out his video of Hurt, his last video. A dark and heavy ballad, this is actually Johnny’s take on a Nine Inch Nails tune transformed into slow country blues. The video compares and contrasts Cash at 70 with his younger self and since it was made a while back, June was still alive and is touchingly behind him, a profound presence.

A sad second loss this week indeed.

Today’s Krugman: “In other words, if you thought the last two years were bad, just wait: it’s about to get worse. A lot worse.”

This weekend’s Krugman: “The astonishing political success of the antitax crusade has, more or less deliberately, set the United States up for a fiscal crisis. How we respond to that crisis will determine what kind of country we become.” [via Garret]

And a bonus interview with the Princeton Prof, which I wasn’t going to link but just fits in too well with this column, and the MeFi discussion where I found it.

Let me be the first to say it: Paul Krugman for President!

Get ready for Christian Bale to be the new Bruce Wayne for director Christopher Nolan, but I sure hope he shaves the goatee first. Bale’s been in a few big–as in expensive–movies (Reign of Fire, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, American Psycho) but he’s yet to really drive a moneymaker. Nolan’s done some interesting work, as has screenwriter David Goyer, though I wonder if they’ll take the franchise back in the quirky direction of Tim Burton.

“There are no words to express my sadness and anger at the animals who perpetrated this horror.” Those were my first written words two years ago and I really have few more all this time later. I can still see the images of the second aircraft slamming into the side of the WTC tower, flames spouting, and the video broadcast from as close to Ground Zero as TV crews could get. People covered, coated in dust, screaming, crying, bleeding. Hearing my sister’s voice on the telephone before that, crying herself, telling me to just turn on the TV. While people in other countries grieved with us or celebrated our pain, America woke up.

I still can barely allow myself to think about this tragedy; just looking at the photo linked to the words “this horror” in the previous paragraph is painful. A couple of lines from Springsteen’s Walk Like a Man come to mind:

Well so much has happened to me

That I don’t understand

We’ve been to war twice, decimated two countries at a huge cost to our own, yet Osama bin Laden still remains out of reach, able to send messages taunting America and attempting to incite further hate and violence. Ground Zero is still giving up bits and pieces of the bodies embedded there.

Thanks to my sweetie for an incredible four months!

In case you haven’t been paying attention, tonight is the third season premiere of Star Trek Enterprise on your local UPN channel at 8:00; now you have no excuse not to see it. Archer, T’Pol (featuring even sexier new outfits!), and the crew are joined by a squad of MACOs as they search the deadly dangerous Expanse for the alien Xindi. Wipe out the Xindi before they wipe us out!

Scientists determined that a black hole is putting out a B flat sound but because the sound is 57 octaves below Middle C, humans will of course never hear it. Probably would blow out your stereo speakers anyway. Plus the black hole is 250 million light years away, only adding to the difficulty.

A bit easier to hear, not to mention more enjoyable by many orders of magnitude, will be Simon & Garfunkle (not Garfunckle as I originally spelled Art’s name) as the duo has finally announced a reunion tour. They’ll play the HP Pavillion in San Jose on Nov. 5 but given the price of tickets (up to $200 per seat!) and all, I don’t think we’ll be going. Bobby Slayton Oct. 11 at the San Jose Improv for $20 a ticket, that’s another story entirely. not to mention a completely different kind of sound than the black hole or S&G.

There’s a fairly new place over in Cupertino on Stevens Creek Boulevard. the Rib Crib, and I highly recommend it to those of you with large appetites. Every Tuesday night is the All-You-Can-Eat Special for $10.99 and that includes as much of the side dishes as you can stuff down as well. We at least were good in that regard, sticking mainly to the growing the huge piles of starkly naked bones on our plates. And the cole slaw, that was very tasty too, though I have a sneaking suspicion that’s because there’s a goodly amount of sugar in it. We’ll see at the morning weigh-in. Anyway, food’s good but be careful on the parking.

Started off the day with not enough sleep, for the usual reason, but then the weigh-in showed a loss of a half pound, followed by a decent workout and fine morning coffee.

Read about the passing of Warren Zevon, very sad. Was going to write my own little tribute but what more is there really to say? He was great, he lived wild and hard, he died satisfied.

Read another chapter of Pragmatic ADO.NET, about halfway done now, this one on “Working with DataSets.” Very strong book, tightly focused, and not too much time/space wasted on repeating crap out of the reference manual.

Lunch with a good older episode of Law and Order (George Dzunda was still the lead detective) and a trip to the post office to mail off some sold merchandise and a bonus cup of coffee.

Back home to struggle with the CSS. I’m coming to the conclusion that I will either need some help or have to give up and revert to tables. That would suck. I’ve been reading a bunch of web articles on CSS and positioning/box model but to no avail. Suckage!

Tonight should be better. TS1 is cooking a dish called Salmon and Bok Choy, or at least features those two main ingredients–nummy! And BBC America’s Mystery Monday has a new episode–the fourth and final episode–of Rebus.

“Human thigh bones are stronger than concrete.” So I should drink Miller Lite

Amazingly tough guys drive Toyota Tacomas. So I should buy one to be like them.

I’m telling you, it’s as bad as spam. Maybe not quite the volume but the intelligence in it. Of course they’re all repetitive as hell and so they sink into annoying wasp-like background noise, just another meaningless but necessary task to be attended. I appreciate the need for advertisers, at least on TV, who pay for the content but couldn’t the high-paid copywriters at least create some ads that capture my interest more than once a year?

And while TPTB are at it, could someone please send Joe Theisman away somewhere so I don’t have to hear his craptastic football commentary any more? No need to rip the thigh bones out of his leg again though if it’s really necessary…