Pamela Geller is despicable.
  I mean really despicable. If this country is or was ever great, than 9/11 should be no more than a triviality compared to its greatness. Compared to what this country represents, the fact that 19 lunatics with boxcutters flew planes into some buildings and killed 3000 people should be nothing but a blip on our history.

Instead, we've got people like Geller trying to make it the American Reichstag. I've never been more ashamed of other Americans than I am of Geller and Gingrich and Reid and anybody who's tried to turn the building of a community center into something ugly. Even if the people behind this community center were everything they're being accused of, it still does not excuse the kind of behavior I've seen these past few weeks.

I've never felt so disgusted with other Americans. I wish I could pass myself off as Canadian, honest to god. I wish I could get a goddamn visa to live in Finland or Belgium or evem goddamned Serbia. Anything but a country where people like Geller and Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved get treated like patriots for (and despite!) denigrating such basic, founding principles as freedom of religion and property rights. They say things like "oh, it's not about freedom of religion and property rights, it's about good taste". Good taste! Now the standard for freedom of speech is supposed to be good taste. And they say "oh, the muslim group must compromise". If they "must" then it's not a goddamn compromise. I don't care if you hate the idea of a community center with a mosque built near ground zero or near your house. If you go on television and try to compare it to Nazis putting signs up at Auschwitz, that makes you the scum of the Earth. You share a hell with the religious fundamentalists that perpetrated the crime in the first place.

So ten years after the fact, this bunch is going to turn into a bunch of drama queens over 9/11, turn the site of the Twin Towers into hallowed ground (or, as Ben Quale says, "hollowed ground"). Is the USA such a flimsy society? Are Americans such weak sisters that they're going to turn a tragedy into a pyre on which to burn each other (yes, the people who want to build the community center are Americans. Yes, there are bombs being thrown at mosques throughout the US in the last few days. Yes, there are "Americans" burning korans in Wal-Mart parking lots. Fucking mutts). I'm so tired of you, America. Never missing a chance to tell the world how great you are, how superior, how above the behavior of "terrorists" but the veneer of your Christian "reformation" turns out to be pretty goddamned thin, after all.

Things like this make me wish there actually was an afterlife where people were judged for their behavior on Earth. I'm willing to do the time for my crimes, as long as I can do it with the knowledge that people who've tried to spread this kind of ugliness were going to do the time for theirs. I'm so tired of you, America.

Rewriting history textbooks isn't nearly enough for the Religious Right. It appears that the "conservative alternative to Wikipedia, "Conservapedia" has some serious issues with Einstein, too.

The first note in the references section of the Conservapedia entry on "Counter-examples to Relativity" will be of special interest to any physicists out there.

I guess that Colbert's throwaway joke about "reality having a liberal bias" was truer than he knew.

I've been writing many stupid posts recently.

If you see such a post, please don't hesitate. Mod me down.

Modding me down will help to tame me and make me a better person.

Just read in the comics that it's Memorial Day for USA. Just want to wish your countrymen and soldiers a good day.

According to a research article published in the current International Journal of Biological Sciences, genetically modified corn from Monsanto increases the levels of liver and kidney failure in rats, as well as other harmful effects to the "heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system.

Apparently, Monsanto has wasted no time claiming the study was based on "faulty data" saying that it's own 90-day study didn't show similar problems. Of course, that ignores the fact that the organ failure only starts to show up after "5-14 weeks" according to the abstract.

Just thought I would tell the story of what happened to us tonight. I am not sure how widespread the problem was, but I suspect there were many people with the same experience... although I know that no news story has hit the wire... yet

I live a little north of Seattle WA. My martial arts teacher has been very excited over the last few months about UFC 100, which happened tonight. He had Fios installed in the martial arts club, replacing his old internet and phone service, because he wanted to be able to watch the fights. He talked about this for more than a month and invited a few good friends to come to the club tonight and watch. He called yesterday and talked to verizon service to make sure there would be no problem and that the fight was ordered. They assured him that everything would be great. He moved an old (non HD) big screen into the club and hooked everything up. This was not a business thing, just a few friends in a closed martial arts club, after hours, eating chips, drinking pop, and very excited about the historic night, you can picture the scene...

I arrived a few minutes after the fights were to start, right before the club owner, who cut short a weekend at his cabin (a 3+ hour drive away) to come back for the fights. Everybody was already pissed. Our friend was on the phone... on hold and the screen said press OK to order this PPV event. Pressing OK bounced back to the same screen. We started to get updates online about the fights we were missing and he continued to hold. Club owner arrived and eventually they got a person on the phone who answered "lemme guess, UFC right?". They explained the situation and the guy demands we power down the box and the TV and back on again, confirms the account shows it should be working and the charge went through. I already knew this guy didn't know what he was talking about because the TV did not need to be power cycled, it was connected to the box with regular analog composite video, and showing the menu fine... the box couldn't know if the TV was on or off.

After a few minutes on the phone the guy explains that everything was fine now and he was "pushing it through" and it would take about 3 or 4 minutes to go from "server to server". He then hung up! We waited, thinking we had only missed a couple fights and the night wasn't a bust yet. Nothing happened. About 15 minutes later our friend gets back on the phone and waits for another 40 minutes to talk to somebody. She promised not to disconnect until the fights were actually on. He talked to her, power cycled the box... and the TV (sigh) again. nothing. My teacher was looking online and saw that some people have had trouble with the credit limits and ordering PPV events on Verizon. She said she had just checked that, and it wasn't the problem, but she upped the credit limit anyway. Said the charge had already posted to the account and it should be working. Said she was "pushing it through" and we should see the fights soon. Several minutes later she said there must be a technical problem and she would transfer us directly to a tech support person for some help.

20 minutes of holding later a tech support genius came on and had us power cycle the box... and TV (sigh again) one more time. He "checked a few more things" said that everything was fine and should be working, the charge was posted to the account fine... the TV had to be hooked up right to get to that screen... the box seemed fine... still no fights. By the way, if I wasn't clear the lady who promised to stay on the line was long gone. The guy finally said that "too many people had ordered the fight" and there was nothing he could do. He said the system was completely overloaded.

Tech support genius then said he could get us the replay of the fight on MONDAY... for full price. He said there was no way we would get anything at this point (now almost 2 hours into the event). We told him since our party was tonight it made no sense to get a PPV replay for two days from now, and that we would have the fights online by then. He sort of apologized. So we asked that we get a refund posted to the account since no service was going to be delivered. He said he couldn't do that, would have to transfer us back to the other department, but they were very busy and we would probably have to hold for a very long time (don't we know it!). He suggested we call back next week sometime so we wouldn't have to hold quite as long, and ask for the refund. We looked at the timer on the phone and this second call had taken well over an hour!

The weirdest part of the night was after our buddy had been on hold for the second call, for about 20 minutes, the club owner called the same number on his cell phone and got through to a rep 5 minutes faster than the other guy! The phone system wasn't even assigning the calls in the order received!

The lesson learned is that I wouldn't touch anything verizon with a 10 foot pole, and I will tell everyone who listens to stay away also. What should have been a fun Saturday with friends turned into a complete waste of time... and somebody still has to call and beg for a refund.

a complete failure in EVERY way

Just received 15 mod points. This is my second time receiving mod points.

Now I have to STFU or else I can't mod. And I have to read EVERYTHING (all the -1 posts) as well.

Arrgghh, I don't have the time!

Someone wrote that I should get a new moniker. He guessed that I was trying to be funny with "troll8901".

My answer:
Yes, I was trying to be funny, but over the past few months, some of my messages were marked "-1, Troll/Redundant/Off-topic", and quite rightly too. I learned a lot by being marked down.

One of my recent messages might be modded "3, Insightful", but the last line "I just wasted 15 minutes on you!" is pure flame, and I should have STFU. I found that lately I couldn't resist flaming other people sometimes.

Well... I guess I may change my moniker or create a new one, when I can write well, default to 1, and get modded 3 to 5 most of the time. Especially "Funny".

I got my mod points for the first time.

EDIT on 11 Apr 2009: I ended up using 1 point only (out of 5), to mod a post as Funny. I knew mod points would give me a feeling of POWER, and to combat the seductiveness of power, I had intentionally refrained from blowing the mod points the first time round. I wanted to teach myself to resist the urge of deciding other people's posts' fates.

Well, Mr. 4-digit UID asshat: I now know who you are. Let's just say my spies are everywhere. Oh, no, I'm not going to call you out. I want you to sweat it: does he really know or not? Because you don't want a war. You really don't want to pick a fight with me. I've been on this system at least as long as you have. Think about what that means. Or are you too stupid? Better watch your back, pal.

This is another open letter to Brad Smith, Microsoft's general legal counsel, in regards to their thinly veiled Linux patent threats and related lawsuit against TomTom.

(Disclaimer: As I am a nobody as far as Microsoft is concerned, I don't honestly expect Brad Smith or anyone at Microsoft to read this, and I don't care. Mostly I'm just blowing off steam and getting my beefs out in the open).

So it's come to this, is it? Suing over an ancient filesystem developed from the the 1970s (FAT) and the assorted ugly hackish kluges that have been necessary to keep the decrepit pile of garbage on life support? The one that only became a defacto standard because at one time its use was all but mandated by some older versions of Microsoft Windows that didn't support anything else? You know, the one originally developed for floppy disks?

Why don't you just stop your lawsuit now before you get laughed out of the courtroom? Seriously, you guys are starting to look more and more like your old sock puppet, The SCO Group? Remember them? Yeah, they're basically on life support now thanks to IBM, Novell and Red Hat practically bankrupting them. Guess they chose the wrong opponents to pick a fight with, huh?

So you thought maybe TomTom would roll over and play dead, eh? I guess they didn't. Especially now that they're backed by the Open Invention Network.

So you have $20 billion in the bank? Wanna watch that money continue to slowly dwindle whilst you fight the Linux community? You don't get it do you? A lot of people with serious cash have a vested interest interest in watching Linux succeed in dwindling your market share. You think others in the industry aren't prepared to enter the melee between you and TomTom? Wrong.

Give it up before you embarrass yourself. Seriously.

On Sat 14 March 2009, I complained about Team Fortress 2 Blog having holier-than-thou words, by saying that the "Administrator who enjoys his powers a little too much".

I'm ashamed to say that I'm 100% entirely wrong. These words were in fact posted in-character style, following the game's style. The words were aimed at gamers who understood the humor behind the sarcastic style.

Please see the rebukes to my comment. I'm now hanging my head in shame. My comment definitely deserved the "0" points that it originally received.

I'm modded down 4th time. Got a "0, Flamebait" for comment on or about Sat 07 Mar 2009. :(

I'm modded down 3rd time :( since started posting in mid Nov 2008.