I think that, of all the writers named "Paul" who I have ever read, Paul Ford is my favorite.

I don't know how I have gone this long without someone I know telling me to go and check out his writing . . . but I stumbled across this at Fark today, and that lead me to read this and this. I know that I've just scratched the surface here . . . but Mother Jesus Balls. It's brilliant stuff. Just brilliant.

This doesn't need any introduction. It moved me, and I'd like to share it here.

From: "William R. Granberry"
Date: Thu Nov 13, 2003 9:21:28 PM America/Los_Angeles
To: wil@wilwheaton.net

Wil-

I'm a daily reader of your site as well as a fellow blogger, filmmaker, and writer. Something happened recently that changed my perspective on, well, life. At the very least, it solidified a notion that had already taken root in my psyche.

I give you a transcription of an entry from my own blog (http://lj.theobsidian.net) (already in HTML format) in the hopes that you might consider crossposting it to your website if you feel it's as important a thought as I do.

If not, then I thank you at least for being the insightful and creative individual whose material I have come to enjoy a great deal, and hope that you enjoy my entry and get something out of it. I loved, by the way, what I read of a friend's copy of Dancing Barefoot. I hope you have another printing soon.

Best wishes to you and yours.

--------
A good friend of mine, Trueman Muhrer-Irwin was injured by a homemade bomb in Baghdad as is detailed here. His wounds are serious and he will require a lengthy rehabilitation.

Everything is relative. When you choose to think that things are bad, think to the dead, and those who face death every day; who don't really have a choice other than to wallow in their helplessness or press on. Think to those who are wounded fighting a war that they didn't start, for those who fight in wars often do so because of duty rather than passion. Trueman is such a man- he disliked his lot in life in service, but was resolved to do his duty and serve his country. He followed through in his resolution through to its end. It cost him what will now be years of his life, his health, his mobility, and a man who was by all accounts a dear friend.

I've made the mistake of choosing unhappiness. We, of course, all have unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and disenchantment forced on us. That's life. There is no option. But we have the option to wallow in it or to press on. I've almost died five times in my life. Realistically. Very close to death. Three of those times it was at the hands of another human being. Those three times I fought and survived because I chose to press on. And yet later in my life, this lesson which I have been forunate enough to learn first hand escaped me, and I've opted for depression. For despair. To whine. Shame on me. Shame on those of us who make that choice. We all falter, but we don't all have excuses.

So let's learn a lesson from Trueman when we refuse to look on the brighter side of life; when we choose to wallow in misery and unhappiness instead of resolving as countless of people do every day to execute the tasks at hand in order to find happiness and satisfaction, because it's a privilege to even have a goal to work towards. Here is a man who made a decision and the result is not his own happiness and satisfaction, but hopefully everyone else's.

Let us honor him and others who pressed on, and hope to learn from him. Keep him in your thoughts, and let's all hope his reward is a quick and complete recovery.

At long last, R2D2 has taken his rightful place next to HAL 9000 and Mars Pathfinder in the Robot Hall of Fame.

The jury cited R2's "ambling, lackadaisical manner," his "spontaneity, affability, and loyalty," and observed "R2-D2 is crucial is [sic] assisting Luke Skywalker in a rescue mission to free the Princess from the Death Star. The little droid navigates the complex computer system to provide the rescuers with timely assistance and status updates."

Kevin Sites is a journalist. He's currently in Iraq for MSNBC (he was there for CNN earlier this year, but they made him pull the plug on his blog.)

He's been photo and audio blogging, and filing all sorts of amazing reports on his website.

This awesome story that I read at bOINGbOING today is all about how he does it.

I had a teeny tiny brush with journalism when I covered the recall election for BBC last month, and I have developed a ton of respect for people like Mr. Sites who go that much farther to make sure the story is told.

I just read this Register UK article at bOINGbOING:

Belkin's new router firmware "upgrade" automatically redirects http sessions to a Belkin sell-page for some bullshit censorware filtering crap. That's some upgrade: from a router that routes packets to a router that pushes the antithesis of free expression.

I'd be furious if my router, that I purchased to enhance my internet experience, effectively siezed control of my connection to spam me. It's even worse because they're pushing censorware!

Belkin says that you just have to click an "opt out" button one time to be left alone, but that's one click too many for me. I'm sick to death of advertising that's shoved down my throat, and the marketing monkey at Belkin who came up with this should be pelted with balls of spam for 40 days.

I dunno if anyone who reads this journal reads my website, or even visits my website . . . but my wife and I did this major road trip to Tulsa last year for a big old Star Trek convention. Along the way, we took about 600 pictures, and I've been steadily adding them to my gallery.

Last night and this morning, I uploaded and captioned a TON of photos in the Eastbound New Mexico and Eastbound Texas Roadtrip galleries, and I think they don't totally suck. There are also links in some of the captions to AudioBlogs I did along the way, and if it works out to look at the pictures and listen to me talk about them, I may do some sort of multimdeia e-book someday about the trip.

Some mothefucker calling himself Bruce Cook (myspecialworld2001@yahoo.com) thinks that it's okay to misrepresent me and my wife:

I had opportunity to go to a Star Trek Convention recently and Wil Wheaton was there. He has always been one of my favorite actors and I so looked forward to meeting him. Anyway, I did not know he sold his autograph. I bought a picture for $5 and,when it came time for me to meet him, he told me he needed $10 for the autograph. I was brought ,by my brother,in a wheelchair and it was explained we did not have $10. But,instead of showing compassion, his wife,who was there,said, "then wheel your crippled ass out of the way,we're here to make money,not give out charity!" I looked at Wil and he said "You heard her,now fork over the 10 or get the hell out of here!"

It's bad enough that this bastard made up some stupid lie about me. That I can ignore. Anyone who knows me or who has spent fifteen minutes at my website can tell that this is bullshit. But he crossed a line when he lied about my wife, who is the most loving, compassionate, caring and thoughtuful woman on this planet.

Bruce Cook, if you're reading this, you have one chance to set the record straight. Nobody tells lies about my wife and gets away with it, you son of a bitch.

This was just sent to me by my friend Cory Doctorow, who works for the EFF. I'll be posting this at WWdN Monday, but I wanted to get maximum exposure as quickly as possible. This is a SERIOUS issue. If you're reading this, and you know an IEEE member, please make sure they see this. If you have a weblog of your own, please consider copying this post and putting it there, too.

IEEE members: save democracy from a broken standards-committee!

The IEEE, normally the sobersided epitome of integrity and accountability, has had one of its standards-committees jump the tracks. The people who are writing the IEEE standard for voting machines have been doing their best to rig their deliberative process ot exclude input from non-vendors who want the standard to include performance metrics that will guard against electoral malfeasance. This is heavy stuff: the standard this committee produces will likely form the basis of the US goverment's voting-machine purchases (as well as those of governments abroad), and if there are holes in the standard today, they will be biting our democracies on the ass for decades. There's never been a clearer demonstration that "architecture is politics."

IEEE is better than this. If you're a member of the organization, please take a moment to read up on this disaster-in-the-making and then use the form at the EFF's action-center to write to the IEEE and ask them to investigate this -- before it's too late.

...instead of using this opportunity to create a performance standard, setting benchmarks for e-voting machines to meet with regards to testing the security, reliability, accessibility and accuracy of these machines, P1583 created a design standard, describing how electronic voting machines should be configured (and following the basic plans of most current electronic voting machines). Even more problematic, the standard fails to require or even recommend that voting machines be truly voter verified or verifiable, a security measure that has broad
support within the computer security community.

To make matters worse, EFF has received reports of serious procedural problems with the P1538 and SCC 38 Committee processes, including shifting roadblocks placed in front of those who wish to participate and vote, and failure to follow basic procedural requirements. We've heard claims that the working group and committee leadership is largely controlled by representatives of the electronic voting machine vendor companies and others with vested interests.

Here is a link to the EFF, with more information.

Over at bOING bOING I picked up this link to a script that translates English to 12-year-old-AOLer.

I ran that e-mail from my last entry through it, and it makes much more sense now.

FARE AND BALANC3D IS NOT WUT U AER!11!!! OMG TEH REAL HOST OF SCREN SAEVRS NEVER BUSTED ON WINDOWS LIEK U HAEV!1!! OMG LOL I AGRE LINUX HAS ITS PLAEC BUT MAN U JUST LOST FAN WHEN U BUSTED HARSH ON WINDOWS!!!!!11 OMG WTF LOL U SHUD RAALIEZ PEOPL3 WRIET VIRUSAS FOR FME AND WUT OS IS DA BST 2 GET FME ON IS WINDOWS!1!!!!! OMG U SHUD ONLY HOP3 TAHT LINUX DOESNT BCOME DA MANE OS OF CHOIEC FOR TEH DESK2P SOMEDAY B/C IT WIL B ATAK3D IN DA SME WAY1!1!!11 AL I GOT 2 SAY IS OP3N UR MIND MAN BUT U WERE RILLY NEGATIEV ON TAHT SHOW 2WARDS OTHARS AND 2 PRO LINUX111! OMG WTF IF U WERE TEH PERMAENNT HOST ID S2P WATCHNG TAHT SHOW FARELY QUIKLY
A!1!1111 OMG WTF FAN U LOST
MIEK

After re-reading this, in its native language, I have to agree with our pal miek. WINDOWS FOREVER MAN!!!111! OMG WTF LOL WINDOWS RUL3S1!1!111 OMG LOL LINUX SUKS TEH MOST!111 OMG LOL

Honestly, I can't make this shit up.

From: "Michael Bedford"
To: "Wil Wheaton"

Date: Today 20:00:06

Welcome to WIL WHEATON dot NET.
Fair and Balanced.

Fair and balanced is not what you are. The real host of Screen Savers never busted on Windows like you have. I agree Linux has its place but man you just lost fan when you busted harsh on Windows. You should realize people write viruses for fame and what OS is the best to get fame on is Windows. You should only hope that Linux doesn't become the main OS of choice for the desktop someday because it will be attacked in the same way. All I got to say is open your mind man but you were really negative on that show towards others and too pro Linux. If you were the permanent host I'd stop watching that show fairly quickly.

A fan you lost,
Mike

Let's go to the Big Board, shall we?

FUD: 1
Sanity: 0

We'll be back after this message.

A buddy of mine just sent me this page. It's a huge gallery of people who have contributed to the evolution of the Internet, and hacker culture.

People range from Lary Wall to Taran King.

Really cool.

WWdN is moving to a new server, and it looks like the textads database didn't get moved with the rest of the site.

I was gonna put up The Moose, but it looks like my shell access has been temporraily suspended, too.

So until that gets taken care of, my site will be nice and hosed, and readers will have to get their internet pr0n fix elsewhere.

People ask me all the time if I'll link their site, or if I'll link a site they think is cool, or something like that.

Some other people occasionally send me 10 bucks or so to offset the costs of keeping the website up and running.

So I figured, whynot marry the two?

Texads are now available on WWdN. I get about 500,000 unique visitors a month, and this test ad I've been running has done almost 900 pageviews in less than 45 minutes.

So it's just 10 bucks / 2500 impressions. If you're interested, head on over to my site and set your phasers to buy.

Heh. I like talking about setting phasers to do things. I once said to a waiter, "Set your phasers to 'refill!'"

He looked at me like I was crazy.

Speaking of crazy people, when I was in San Diego, the majority of people in our hotel on Thursday night were ultra-fundie xtian people, with their judgemental t-shirts and big ass crosses on chains.

Anne and I got into the elevator (i started to type 'enterprise. wtf is that about?). A girl rushed into the elevator, and I said, "where are you going," as I pushed the button for the 6th floor.

"Six," she said.

"Oh! Six!" I said, "That's the floor that's sweeping the nation!"

"Damn, Wheaton, you are a funny motherfucker," I thought.

She put her hand on her hip, and proudly displayed her "Not perfect, just saved" T-shirt, and said, "Exactly what is that supposed to mean?!"

"Uhh . . . it means that it's where all the cool kids are staying?" I said.

"Oh. Okay," she said.

Anne and I shared an unspoken "WTF?!" as the elevator stopped on our floor.

I'm not perfect or saved, baby. So suck it.

On Thursday, I'll be at the OSCon up in Portland. I'll be mostly running around, getting my geek on, but I'm also dong a couple of organized book signing events.

1. Thursday, 1:00pm: book-signing at the convention bookstore in the exhibit hall.
2. Thursday night, 7:00-9:00pm: book-signing at Powell's Technical Books.

At both events, they're letting me read from Dancing Barefoot, and I'll be signing copies when I'm finished. So if any of my fellow Slashdotters are out at OSCon, drop by and say "hello, world! \n"

Very exciting moment for me tonight: I updated my geekcode.

I even updated it using the geekcode generator, installed using fink on my iBook, running in an X11 terminal window.

Then I got it into my Red Hat machine using the iBook's webserver.

w00t!

Here it is:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.12
GPA d-- s+: a C+++ UL+++ P+>+++ L+++ E--- W+++ N+ o+ K+++ w--
O---- M+ V-- PS++(+++) PE Y++ PGP++>+++ t++@$ 5++ X+ R+ tv- b++ DI+ D++
G++ e h---- r+++ y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Decode it here, if you rate G- or below.