I bought a scooter a few days ago. No, not a Razor Scooter (why does everyone assume that?) -- a Vespa-like scooter, the Bajaj Chetak. The plan was that I would commute to work on my scoot, enjoying great savings on gas and parking. The Chetak is a pretty sweet scooter, compared to the other new scooters for sale out there -- it looks a lot like a late '70s Vespa P200, but has a 150cc 4 stroke engine, 0 on the odometer and comes with a warranty :) Oh, and MSRP is $1,999. Driving a scooter is also far more defensible, environmentally speaking, than driving my aging truck (~100mpg vs ~13mpg. The emissions are far cleaner, too.

This was a brilliant plan, except that I have no experience with powered two-wheeled vehicles. Bicycles, sure, but there's the rub. While much of the weight-shifting, ass-balancing mojo of motorcycle riding seems similar to bicycling, there are some subtle differences. Subtle differences which may cause you to lay down your nice new yellow scooter and be launched over its handlebars. A trip to the emergency room will likely follow.

FWIW I'm still into the idea of scootering to work. It's just a question of how soon until I'll be able to use my right arm :-(

I posed this question to AskSlashdot. Unfortunately it didn't make the main page, and as a consequence hasn't generated as much non-troll discussion as I'd have liked. Some good suggestions, however. I hadn't seen .tk before.

The long and the short of it is that I'm interested in registering a domain with a relatively obscure ccTLD, but my chief concern is that the NIC be actively working to improve things for the country's populace, not just ripping them off. Surprisingly few NICs reveal their relationship to the country whose TLD they manage, and there's not much news coverage on the subject, so evaluating the relative morality of purchasing domain space from them is difficult.

Even identifying the NIC for some countries/territories can be tricky, since the authoritative list from the IANA is woefully out of date for many records.

If you have knowledge of how a small ccTLD NIC either works for or disregards the needs of the country it (supposedly) serves, I would be very interested to read your comments here in the journal, since the original thread is now archived.

Today I sailed up and down the Willamette River, in a boat filled with drinking, reveling new media types, most of whom are unemployed. Some of them are temping until the newer-than-new economy comes into its own. Others are scheming. Everyone seems very interested in talking about work.

Suffice it to say the conversation wasn't exactly riveting, and the Swedish meatballs could've used more sauce. And the drinks weren't cheap enough.

Then I came home and watched some Iron Chef to raise my flagging spirits.