The most girlish font ever

http://www.urbanfonts.com/fonts/Fiolex_Girls.htm

I'm on Facebook

I got a Facebook account now, so you can be my friend there as well as on Myspace.

Plat du jour

So where are the A Mini and the B Mini?
(Could this have been a car from The Italian Job remake?)

Fossella reads the handwriting on the wall

Fossella Will Not Seek Re-election
Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY) has finally awakened to reality and decided not to run for re-election. His being arrested for drunk driving may be forgiven by his relatively conservative constituents, but not his having a child with a longtime DC-area girlfriend--while his wife and other children were living back here in NY.

Bush is an idiot (which is nothing new, of course)

Bush says he won't back bill that bails out lenders
Bush only wants to help "creditworthy people stay in their homes," not speculators or lenders. He seems to have overlooked the fact that the subprime borrowers who are now unable to pay their mortgages weren't really creditworthy in the first place. That's why they needed subprime loans.

The underlying cause of this whole mess was the ridiculous notion that it didn't matter how many subprime borrowers actually paid back their loans because ever-rising home prices would protect the lenders. The only people who didn't believe this idiocy were the people who were the real lenders, the buyers of the mortgage-backed securities that were created by bundling up the subprime loans. So the various banks and brokerages guaranteed the securities, in exchange for some (all?) of the extra interest the subprime borrowers were charged for not being creditworthy.

(Then most of these banks and brokerages made this risk magically disappear off their books. Through some accounting legerdemain it was not carried as a liability, presumably because they thought there was no risk, as the ever-rising home prices would cover everything. When many of the subprime mortgages did go into default, and it turned out the homes were no longer worth what was borrowed on them (if they ever were), the banks and brokerages had to write off billions to cover the payments owed to the mortgage-backed security owners. But that's a whole different problem.)

What we now have is a bunch of people in homes they couldn't really afford when they they bought them, and mostly still can't afford now, even at their current, reduced value. The creditworthy people in trouble now are primarily people who had regular mortgages, but have lost their jobs in Bush's recession. It's fine to help these people, I suppose, but no one should be under the illusion that this is going to help very many of the lower-income people who took out the subprime mortgages. And paying for it with money from a fund designed to help poor people get homes just transfers the taxpayers' money to the middle class.

There's an awful lot of blame to go around here. Practically everyone involved in the subprime mortgage fiasco (except the securities buyers) was stupid and/or ignorant, if not an outright crook. If the government wants to reverse some of the damage that was done, it's going to end up helping some blame-worthy people, and Bush should wake up to this fact.

Plat du jour

Semi-random thoughts

● One of the nice things about listening to WQXR over the internet is that I don't have to listen to most of the commercials. Even the ones that aren't obnoxious in the first place get pretty boring by the 50th hearing. There is a downside--they play these little snippets of music or WQXR.com promotions that are also repetitive, and the engineers occasionally forget to flip the switch at the end, leaving the internet listeners with dead air (is that a proper term for an internet transmission?).

● Sometime last week my glob had its 30,000th visitor. Thanks.

● GENDA (the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act for NY State) is on the agenda of the State Assembly Codes Committee's Tuesday meeting. This is further than it got last year, so I'm a bit hopeful.

● I'm wondering if the Connecticut Supreme Court will shortly make that state the third to have marriage equality for same-sex couples. The speculation has been that they have delayed announcing their decision until California's court ruled because they didn't want to be the second.

● Vista is still rather slow, but at least it's working now. Since the last update or two that Microsoft has sent down Explorer has rarely crashed, and the keyboard and mouse haven't locked up once.

● That jerk Vito Fossella has resisted all calls (even from his own party leaders) to resign. He apparently wants to run for re-election. More good news for the Democrats.

Plat du jour

Even his computer disrespects him

From Overheard in New York

Guy: So I tried to set my password to "Penis".
Girl: [...]
Guy: It said my password wasn't long enough.

Plat du jour

I was surprised to see this one, as I know New York has a rule against any plates that promote drinking. Perhaps it got by because it has a 1 instead of an I.

Living with coyotes X

Scientists probe recent coyote attacks in California

Websearch of the day

the best lesbian lover i've ever had caprice lists my glob first.

This wasn't my wife. It was someone at the University of Cambridge in the UK. So I guess they weren't really looking for me.

Semi-random thoughts

● A couple of years ago I posted about how Tab Energy had become my favored morning drink. Sadly, some months ago CocaCola discontinued it, at least here in the U.S. I hoarded my last few cans, saving them for days when I really need to get myself going when I wake up. But now I'm down to my last one.

● I got some new hand towels and washcloths to replace my worn out ones. I washed them before I used them, but the towels are still leaving a lot of little fibers--with the red ones I can't tell if I nicked myself shaving or it's just the towel. Grrrr.

● The only kind of "boutique"-boxed tissues the supermarket had was Kleenex's Anti-Viral type, so my wife bought that. The anti-viral claim puts the product under the Food and Drug Administration rules, I guess, so they are required to print various bits of information on the box. My favorite part:

It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Use only as a facial tissue.

So if I use a tissue on any other part of my body do I risk a visit from the FBI?

Fossella in more trouble

Earlier this week I posted about New York Republican Congressman Vito Fossella being arrested for drunken driving. Now he has admitted that he was on his way to see his child that he had with a woman he's being having an affair with for years. His wife and three other children were back in New York.

It looks more and more like New York City will be rid of its only Republican congressman by next year.

Plat du jour

A former highway patrol officer?

Sen. Grassley, back to Economics 101 for you

From the Associated Press:

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, one of the Senate's two working farmers and a longtime ethanol booster, said he finds it hard to believe that ethanol could be "clobbered the way it's being clobbered right now" over the issue of food costs. What does the cost of corn have to do with the price of wheat or rice, he is telling people.

It's called the Law of Supply and Demand, Senator. Ethanol production has increased the demand for corn, causing its price to rise. This will have two effects:

• Corn consumers will switch to wheat or rice, causing price rises for those grains.
• Farmers will, if they can, switch from producing other crops to producing corn. This decreases the supplies of these other crops, also causing price rises.

It's really sad when a United States senator displays such ignorance of basic economics.

Another Republican in trouble

NYC congressman charged with DWI outside DC

It's not for corruption, or even attempted sex in a public restroom, but I doubt this is going to win Vito J. Fossella any votes. The Democrats have already painted a big target on his back for the upcoming election. This might help.

Posted without comment

Plat du jour

I'm off to Albany

Later today I'll be getting on a train and going up to Albany for the Empire State Pride Agenda's Equality and Justice Day. They are expecting 1,000 to 1,200 LGBT people and allies to gather to press for three pieces of legislation for New York State: Marriage Equality, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) and the Dignity for All Students Act. We are hoping that 10% are transgender (last year we had about 80).

E&J Day is actually tomorrow, but I like to go up the day before. It takes me so long to get ready, I'd have to start at about midnight to make a 6:00am bus.

This year I've been appointed a Meeting Facilitator. That means I get to coordinate a group of people meeting with their legislators. I've been assigned to meetings with Brooklyn representatives. It should be interesting.

Spring has sprung

...at least in my neighborhood.

Plat du jour

Yummy! But, sadly, it's not on my diet.

Semi-random thoughts

● I was a little surprised to read that there have only been 110 U.S. Supreme Court justices since we adopted the Constitution--over 220 years now. I realize that the court didn't always have nine members (I think it started with five--I've always found it curious that the Constitution does not specify the size), but it has been at its present size for quite a while. I would have guessed there have been more.

● It somehow escaped my notice that among the stockholdings I inherited from my mother were three shares of Collective Brands. So now when I buy shoes at Payless I'm actually buying them from myself.

● It's great to see the judge threw the book at film star Wesley Snipes, at least as far as the law would let him. These "tax protesters," who believe that there is no requirement in the law that most U.S. citizens have to pay income taxes, are just a bunch of selfish fools. It's too bad that Snipes was acquitted on the most serious charges, but at least he's getting three years in jail for his misdemeanors. So, Judge William Terrell Hodges, I salute you.

I'm back blogging. Sort of. Kinda. Somewhat.

For the last year plus I've been having computer problems. My old machine, running Windows XP, was crashing more and more frequently. It never worked right after Service Pack Two. Also, my Internet response time was slower than it should have been. The result was that it took several hours just to read my e-mail every day.

I hoped the answer to my problems was to get a new, more powerful computer running Microsoft's brand new operating system, Vista. I should have known better.

The new computer still crashed sometimes, though not as frequently as the old one. In addition, the keyboard and mouse stopped working at random intervals. And Internet response was still slow--it took 13 days to download all of my files from Carbonite, the web-based back-up service I use, when it should have taken only a few hours.

To make a long story short, I had problems with the computer hardware (specifically the hard drive), the Vista operating system, and my cable service. But it took a long time to figure it all out. Dell replaced my hard drive in early August. That solved the crashing problem. But as time went on, the keyboard/mouse problem got more and more frequent.

Dell tried a couple of times to fix it. I was on the phone with their support people (one guy mostly) for hours. They tried all sorts of things--mostly removing stuff they thought might be incompatible with Vista. Maybe it helped a little, or maybe we just hit a random good period (it could be 30 seconds, or 3 days, between these failures). But the problem kept coming back.

I was afraid I would have to do what Dell was recommending: reformat the hard drive and start from scratch, with a clean copy of the operating system. I went out and got an external hard drive, so I could back up everything locally and avoid another 13 day download. But the back-up software that came with it didn't work right. It refused to back up to the external drive. It would only do its back-up to the same internal drive it was copying the the data from. I could then manually copy that onto the external drive. But I really wasn't happy with the situation.

And then the keyboard/mouse failures stopped. A couple of months ago, I think, I noticed it wasn't happening any more. I think it must have been one of the periodic Windows Updates Microsoft sends.

But my Internet was still slow. I kept putting off calling Time Warner, because I didn't want to have to clean out my office even enough to give them access to the outlet under the table next to my desk, which was blocked by a file cabinet, which I couldn't move without cleaning up two piles of junk and at least one stack of boxes. (I also really didn't want to even think about having to run a new cable on the exterior of my walls from the cable distribution box down a long hallway to my office--though I realize now that it probably would have been easier to have an electrician run a power line into the closet where the box is, and put my modem and router/wi-fi transmitter there).

But last week the Internet speed was so slow I had to bite the bullet--it was taking 5, 10 even 15 minutes to see one e-mail, and I had a couple hundred piled up. So I called the cable company. In fact, I killed two birds with one stone, because the hard drive in one of our DVRs had just died. I told them about that one first, as I figured it was the easy one. We scheduled an appointment to fix that (the CSR said it was possible that the hard drive could be fixed, but I had my doubts--I was 99% sure they would want to replace to whole DVR). Then I said I also was having slow Internet problems. I expected to be transferred to someone else, as that is a separate choice on their voice-prompt menu.

But the same CSR said she could handle it. After the usual rebooting which they always try, she sent some sort of signal, and it looked to her that everything was fine. But my response time was still horrible. So she put me on hold and had someone in their tech department run a more sophisticated test. She got back on to me and said that the modem needed to be replaced. She said I'd have to schedule a separate appointment--or I could just take the modem down to their office at 23rd St and get a new one. And I could also swap the DVR also, if I didn't care about them trying to fix the old one. That sounded great to me.

So Friday afternoon I went down to 23rd St, making sure I made it there before the after-work rush. I only had to wait about 10 minutes, and I walked out with a new modem, and a different DVR. It obviously wasn't new, but presumably it worked. It did come with a brand new remote control, with more buttons, which were all back-lit. Very nice.

After a some more shopping, lugging the DVR and modem (most of the weight was the former), I eventually got home. I connected up the easy one first--the DVR. The first two attempts to boot it failed, but I gave it one more shot and that worked.

Then I connected up the modem. It was a completely different manufacturer than the old one. It took a couple minutes or so for it to identify itself to the server and do all its handshaking or whatever it needed to do, but eventually the lights on it lit up, and I tried reading an e-mail. Boom. It appeared in a couple seconds. I tried another. It came up quickly. I found a You-Tube video, clicked and it started in seconds--AND PLAYED WITHOUT STOPPING! I haven't been able to this in over a year! I was in heaven.

It's taken me a while to get all caught up on my e-mail--not to mention a whole bunch of videos from You-Tube and elsewhere that I really wanted to see. But now I'm basically current. I had a nice 80-minute workout on my exercise machine this afternoon--the longest I can remember having had in months. This was after single-handedly putting away our weekly grocery order from FreshDirect, as my wife was out.

So now I have more time to blog than I have had in over a year--though I really don't know if I'm going to go back to the level I did when I first started, at least for a while. I still want the get my office cleaned up, and I want to get my audio-video system working the way it's supposed to. We don't use the VCRs much any more, but the last time I tried them there was no sound from the VHS one, and the Betamax (yeah, I still have one in my system) wasn't working at all. And the unified remote control has never worked right. But I do think I'll be posting more than I have been, more long posts, especially.

Headline of the day

Police on Pope Patrol Rescue Beaver from East River
I know it's very early, but I have a hard time imagining anything can top this one.

Neologism of the day

Quippie: a queer hippie.

I guess this one has been around for a while, but I hadn't heard it until today (Jennifer Finney Boylan describing herself--though she said she was more the hippie part).

A strange websearch

Someone in Japan found my glob Googling my name. Why would anyone in Japan be interested in me? I know no one there, and I don't remember having any contact with anyone there.

The only thing that makes this slightly understandable is that the ISP belongs to Temple University's branch there. So it was probably an American in Japan who did this search.

Wearable art museum

I have blogged how a museum (NYC's Metropolitan) can be art as well as contain art. And it's nothing new that clothes can also be art (at least women's clothes--men's stuff tends to stay away from this category). Now you can combine the two ideas. You can now wear a small piece of an art museum.












Just a few blocks up Fifth Avenue from the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim Museum is restoring its signature, Frank Lloyd Wright-designed, exterior. They have figured out a way to make some money out of this expense. They're selling the old, curved, walls.

But they're not just selling chunks of concrete, or whatever it was made of. They are embedding little bits of it in pieces of jewelry. Called "Restoration Rocks," they are priced from $175 for sterling silver hoop earrings to $4,350 for a 14k gold large cuff bracelet.

Even men can get in on the act. They have a set of gold cufflinks for $1,500.

If you really want to wear a bit of an art museum (I don't--I think you'd need rocks in your head to wear these rocks on your head), here's a tip: join the Guggenheim first. Members get 10% off.

Another interesting websearch

This morning someone at the Wal-Mart headquarters found my glob by Googling ga walmart shooting. Damage control time, I guess, though it does seem rather late.

Living with wild turkeys IV

Wisconsin: Postal Workers Attacked by Wild Turkeys

My old college town!

An interesting websearch

Well, I assume it was a websearch (which wasn't recorded on my log). Someone using the Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives ISP visited my recent post on Rep. Weiner.

Maybe Weiner isn't that bad

Last month I posted that probably would not be voting for Rep. Anthony Weiner for NYC mayor next year, because of his comments about the Roger Clemens-baseball-steroids controversy. Last night, at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force New York Leadership Awards Dinner, I was reminded that Weiner was one of the seven Congressmembers who refused to vote for ENDA last fall because protections for transpeople had been removed from it.

This certainly raises Weiner way up in my appreciation--ENDA is far more important than steroids in baseball. But NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn is still my personal frontrunner. I hope she isn't hurt by the ficticious group appropriation mess.

Semi-random thoughts

● There is something wrong when a benefit for the Harvey Milk High School in New York City contains material that "May be inappropriate for people under the age of 18."

● It's good to see Andy Roddick finally beating Roger Federer after 11 straight losses to him. It reminds me of when Vitas Gerulaitis won a match from Jimmy Connors back in 1979, after years of losses. Afterwards Gerulaitis quipped, "Nobody beats me 17 straight."

● I hope the delay in the adoption of the New York State budget doesn't interfere with Gov. Paterson's appearance at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Leadership Awards Dinner on Monday, that I'm going to.

Being a fashionista can be hereditary

And stay out of malls

Man Fatally Stabbed in Ariz. Mall
It's not just individual chain stores and restaurants that are dangerous.

Plat du jour

Another Republican leaves under a cloud

HUD Chief Resigns Amid Criminal Probe
Now it's one of Bush's cabinet members exiting. There is just so much corruption among the Repugnants, oops, Republicans.