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In opposition to the PERFORM act

Every so often people introduce legislation which, intentionally or not, which threatens to heavily restrict the relatively new medium of Internet radio. This exciting arena is largely run on free and open technologies and largely contains content that would otherwise be unavailable to an audience of such size and therefore impractical to produce. When arbitrary actions are taken to limit the methods and/or medium the ones who suffer most are those with the smallest financial resources and they are often the ones with the biggest emotional investment. The artists capable of producing the best of our modern times are threatened by legislation which stems from a cat-fight between some very large companies. Sad, isn’t it?

Link to Reuters/Washingtonpost story about the bill:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/AR2006042600054.html

Link to EFF site explaining the impacts of the bill:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004587.php

Link to site with simple, efficient method to communicate with your Congresspeople:
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/

Read on if you care to see what I have said to my Senators.
Read the rest of this entry »

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Nap Nomenclature

Naps are wonderful things. As an adult, I realize this. I wish as a child I had the appreciation for them which I have now. Incidentally, it was my mother I was talking to not long ago on a day when she had not been able to make time for a nap as she had intended to. “I didn’t get my nap today” she said, and I realized that you don’t get naps you take naps. It is always there, the time, the couch, the blanket. If you are to have a nap you must take that time from whatever other busy-ness your day may be filled with and apply it to only yourself and rest.

That highlighted to me just how important it is the way we talk about naps (among other things), and I started to compile a list of nap names. I realized that much like the Eskimo have many names for snow, we have many ways of talking about naps here are a few:

• Disco nap - One of the few naps taken at night, a disco nap is a quick sleep during a party or night out with which you recharge so you can get back and party with even more gusto into the wee hours.
• Power nap - Imagine a leather couch in a high-powered executive’s corner office. Imagine that they schedule twenty minutes into their afternoon to sleep soundly there and wake up ready to blaze ahead through an afternoon of boring meetings. Power naps are characterized by short periods of sound sleep in the middle of a productive day. Might be referred to as “getting a wink”.
• Cat nap - The key characteristic of a cat nap is not how you sleep but how you wake up. Where a power nap would conclude with a jump and stretch and bustle of activity, waking from a cat nap may include as little as opening the eyes and possibly rolling over. This may lead to another cat nap or just laying there and looking out the window at the delicious birds. Also called a television nap. A master at this kind of snoozing can watch a baseball game on television and sleep during each half inning while the opposing team bats and wake up to watch the home team on offense.
• Afternoon nap - An afternoon nap has been a regularly scheduled feature in the day of many remarkable people like Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Thomas Edison to name a few. The key characteristic here is the regularity and as the name implies it is done in the afternoon, after being awake and productive for several hours and with several hours of productivity still to go. This is a favorite of adults and often loathed by children. Also called a siesta
• Church nap - Also called a meeting nap, this is dozing when you are not supposed to be, and doing so with every attempt at stealth. My favorite part of this nap is when you are awake enough to feel the weight of your skull balancing on the vertabrae in your neck, but not awake enough to control the neck muscles to keep your head from falling out of balance. Often this feeling of your head falling off your neck is what startles you awake. Must also be taken sitting upright.
• Airplane nap - So named because it is taken sitting up, often while travelling (can also be taken on a bus or train, or in a waiting area). Usually in a confined area where leaning to the side is impossible, leaning the seat back three-quarters of an inch does little for comfort (except to annoy the person behind you), and guarantees that a flight attendant will wake you up to ensure that you cannot remain so comfortable for the last twenty nappable minutes. Thus, the airplane nap is often taken with the chin on the chest.
• Morning nap - Distinct from merely “sleeping in” because it requires getting up and dressing and/or eating but still arriving back in a horizontal position before noon. This rare and unusual nap is usually taken in circumstances of ill health or after an night of little or no sleep.
• Micro nap - Is characterized by being short (2-5 minutes). Although rarely deep or intense sleep, the micro nap can be an important psychological punctuation to one’s day.

Let us be clear about this, a nap is not a substitute for a restful night’s sleep. In fact the healthiest people in the world, the Japanese, say as much in their list of sleep guidelines (Engrish). Without a healthy night’s sleep, your body may commandeer your eyelids and a coup of exhaustion can occur (like what happend to Dick Cheney).

And finally, if you have any trouble convincing your boss that a nap will improve your performance, you can either take your wallet and head over to MetroNaps during your break or you can show this “official-looking page full of explanations about why napping is good for business.”

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What is it with the alternate jerseys?

Today the Nats wore their alternate red jerseys for the second time this year and they lost 5-0 to Cincinnati. Last year they wore their alternate jerseys only once and they lost that game too. Is it something with the jerseys? I certainly hope not because I personally like the alternate jerseys much more than the regular home shirts. I’m glad they’re only occasionally worn but, jeez, can’t we get a win in ‘em? (actually, at this point I’d like to see the Nats get a win in any shirts at all).

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catbox cake

From Catt’s Kitchen

1 (18 oz.) box spice or German Chocolate Cake mix
1 (18 oz.) box white cake mix
1 pkg. white sandwich cookies
1 large box vanilla instant pudding mix
12 small Tootsie Rolls
1 litter box (preferably a NEW one!)
1 plastic scoop
green food coloring

Preparation: Prepare cake mixes and bake according to directions (any size pans).

Prepare pudding mix and chill until ready to assemble. Crumble white sandwich cookies in small batches in blender, they tend to stick, so scrape often.

Set aside all but about 1/4 cup. To the 1/4 cup cookie crumbs, add a few drops green food coloring and mix using a fork or shake in a jar. When cakes are cooled to room temperature, crumble into a large bowl. Toss with half the remaining white cookie crumbs and the chilled pudding. You probably won’t need all of the pudding, mix with the cake and ‘feel’ it, you don’t want it soggy, just moist; gently combine. Put mixture into clean litter box.

Put three unwrapped Tootsie rolls in a microwave safe dish and heat until soft and pliable. Shape ends so they are no longer blunt, curving slightly.
Repeat with 3 more Tootsie rolls and bury in mixture. Sprinkle the other half of cookie crumbs over top. Scatter the green cookie crumbs lightly over the top, this is supposed to look like the chlorophyll in kitty litter.
Heat remaining Tootsie Rolls, three at a time in the microwave until almost melted. Scrape them on top of the cake and sprinkle with cookie crumbs.

Place the box on a newspaper and sprinkle a few of the cookie crumbs around. Serve with a new pooper scooper.

Man, I can’t wait to get invited to a pot-luck!

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Creatures In My Head

no really… you shouldn’t have.

Artist Andrew Bell draws the creatures that are in his head and what happens? … the cutest little monsters ever!!

He has a new creature almost every day over at http://www.creaturesinmyhead.com/ Check out the sweet backgrounds, too!

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Timezones map

Time zones always give me trouble. Especially with early morning conference calls to folks in various parts of Europe. Sometimes GMT, sometimes CET, sometimes London… Thank goodness for the World timezones map with current time- 24 hour format.

sigh it would be a whole lot easier if everyone just used GMT all the time.

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Not Savvy Enough

Once upon a time there was a fascinating radio program distributed by NPR called The Savvy Traveler. Then that show ran aground of funding issues and alas, it is no more. It has left behind, however, an excellent collection of links for those who travel and those who dream about travel (mostly, though, for those who actually travel):

The Savvy Traveler: Travelers Toolbox

bon voyage!

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How to: Make World

Ahh, brilliant. Someone with the handle Understudy wrote us an article How to: Make World.

It doesn’t really plow any new ground, but it does a couple of things really well. First, it is comprehensive. Most articles on this topic are written by folks so new to the process that they miss stuff or are half finished because they got familiar with “their process” and never completed the content or explanation. And by comprehensive I mean this doc walks you through mergemaster. Most docs of this sort say “read the mergemaster man page and figure it out and don’t call me crying if you screw up.” Secondly, the doc is available as a .pdf which seems key when you’ll be performing such low-level operations and you will need to be rebooting (and the system just might not come back up).

That said, I would offer that the suggested way to clean up the ports could be improved and a this could be nicely be paired up with an article on portsupdate. Maybe one day, kids.

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Scorecard, get yer scorecard!

Patrick McGovern over at http://www.baseballscorecard.com/ provides a nicely laid out baseball scorecard in .pdf format.

Granted, you have to be baseball nerd enough to want to keep score, but I personally love it. It makes the difference between just watching a game and really being into it mentally.

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