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Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/210 first.

It's strange. I can never predict which photos at Flickr are going to be popular.

Big shout-out and thank you to the folks at SeriousEats who were kind enough to call Gaia "Adorable."

I'll pass on the discussion over whether this is a correct application of the creative commons license in favor of simply basking in my daughter's new found internet fame.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/193 first.

I'm back at work and I'm trying to wrap my head around what today's news on Wall Street really means to me.
This is the best I can come up with:

I really like how one of my co-workers put it:
"I'm not really sure there will be much impact for those of us who cling to the hairs of the economic underbelly."

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/186 first.

Got a take down notice from the Oconomowoc Enterprise at Ocono.com. I feel so grown up now.

Oh Internet, I am ready to give up on you and move to the Next New Thing.

On a totally unrelated note, I played through the first half-hour of Final Fantasy Seven again today while I was jogging in the basement. 1997 was a strange place in the video game world.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/158 first.

The AP really doesn't get it. I point you to Making Light:

The Associated Press ... has now published a web form through which intimidated parties can give the AP money in return for “permission” to publish as few as five words.

In this spirit, I will shortly be putting up my own Web form through which people can PayPal me money in exchange for my promise to not blow up the moon.

At least the RIAA dirtbags pretend that they're protecting copyright on behalf of the artists. (They're not, but that's a discussion for another day.) How much of those "permission" payments will end up in the hands of the AP member who wrote the article in the first place?

This is just another greedy money grab by the established fat-cats who see that their industry is dying and think that they can sue there way back to the 1950's when we had lots of trees to cut down so paper was cheap and people actually cared what the traditional press had to say.

But let's talk about the hypocrisy at work here. The press is happy to cry "fair use" when they're stealing beer can logos and clippings from private speeches in order to cover the news-- (in the sense that you _honestly_ consider everything that's not in the two main news sections of any given paper news).

This gets at the thing fundamentally wrong with the traditional press, and one of the main reasons I left it. The press seems to have forgotten that they aren't special. The tools of a good reporter are the same tools available to any member of the public. Reporters don't have any special rights or magic (beyond certain shield laws, which, believe me, have never been exercised on my behalf).

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/135 first.

My friend Ryanne from The Watertown Daily Times.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/xpdoesnotpreventtigerattacks first.

Microsoft is the Ziggy of the software industry. Think about it. Everybody knows who Ziggy is and most people hate him. And then some people take great pleasure drawing a nipple on his voluptuous nose.

Case in point: Today's ZDnet.com's article breathlessly entitled "XP SP3 performance gains - Nothing to write home about."

The article does little more than draw a giant nipple on Microsoft's voluptuous nose, running a series of benchmark tests on various computers to prove that what was essentially a hot-fix roll-up service pack doesn't magically accomplish something beyond the scope of it's intended design.

May I suggest the following story for next week's headlines at ZDnet: "XP Service Pack 3 does nothing to protect users from tiger attacks." Then we can all point and laugh at Microsoft for being so large and stupid that it can't see the implicit danger of tiger attacks and don't they have any engineers in Redmond they can throw at the tiger attack problem?

This kind of reporting is easy kicking at the cat. It's lazy journalism at best and irresponsible at worse.

I installed SP3 on an old laptop last night. The experience was less than flawless and less than easy, but you know what? I only had to reboot twice. That's roughly six times less than I would have had to reboot in a pre-SP3 world. And that, in my opinion, is a service pack done right.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/118 first.

A church on Wisconsin Avenue freakin' exploded, man! Ask me what it was like on scene! Ask me!
I don't Freakin' know! I don't cover breaking news any more!
I've been quietly blogging at Ocono.com for a month or so, and today was the first time since I left Journalism that something happened in the city that I kind of secretly wish I could cover.
Of course, breaking news isn't really Ocono.com's forte, but I thought a Google news search was probably in order. You hate to leave your readers looking for news you're not offering them, but you hate to pretend news isn't happening.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/88 first.

The Wauwatosa Public Library has a great and growing Graphic Novel collection. It's given me access to a lot more Graphic Novels than I'll typically get a chance to read. So, here are  reviews two of my latest grabs from the Library, presented in photographic and minimalist terms.

Good Comic.

Bad Comic.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/60 first.

After this post made was highlighted at the Consumerist, I got a call from a local radio station to tell the story. I love the Consumerist! Not just for the traffic, but because the kind of Journalism the consumerist does is Journalism that matters.
So, this morning, I did a ten minute segment on Glen Gardner's morning show at WTDY in Madison. Didn't have my recording setup at home with me, so I didn't capture the interview to share, but I did have a nice conversation. My favorite part was when we started talking about how Justice was really my motivating factor.

Regardless, it seems like a decent station that WTDY.

Also, my brother-in-law Jessie made a cameo on Fox 6 last night. I'm not really sure what he's doing there with that plank, but that's ok. He had to have tons of dental work once because of an accident that happened while he was working on my car.
Fox6's links go away after a time, but here's a screencap:

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/58 first.

I'm pushin' an Elephant up the stairs. I know this. But let me tell you, in December, I got almost _no_ Telemarketing calls from advertising reps. The first week of January, I've received at least 13. I don't even bother checking my voicemail at work because it's someone looking for a call back about any possible spending I might have in mind for their special "Womens Health" Pull-out section.

With the new year, I have made a commitment to spend less time looking at or even considering print advertising. Unless you're going to deliver me the kind of metrics that I get from online ads, don't bother calling, mkay?

Seriously, Print is dead. Why advertise in a medium that nobody cares about, can't demonstrate its effectiveness, and is old before the next edition comes out? Am I under-estimating the shopping power of old people in nursing homes who still read their daily newspaper? Maybe. But I guess I don't really care. I know for a _fact_ that Google Pay-per click is driving traffic to my website. I have to take my rep's word that my print ad is.

Look, Newspapers and Print Periodicals still have a vital role to play in our society. It's just too bad that the lazy bastards who run them can't be bothered to figure out a way to re-monitize their products so that they'll be around in five years to continue to fill that role.

There will always be a niche audience who reads Newspapers and print periodicals. But that niche is going to get more and more unimportant to me going forward.

I just worked the most in-your-face Simpson's reference into a story . Here it is:

City of O – Homer Simpson, when promoted to the position of Mr. Burns’ safety inspector at the power plant inspired safety with powerful messages like “Hey you, Safen up there!”
While in Homer’s case the message was doomed to failure, One local firm has managed to maintain a high safety standard for over eight years.

I'm counting down the seconds until D. calls me and tells me how much she hates it.

I updated my Amazon Wishlist for all of your MLK Day gift-giving ease.

Of particular note are the recent additions of "The Walking Dead" books, a zombie comic series that I've been reading lately (you can read the first issue online here), and, the 4-1 writing instrument.

Now, seriously. When I need ask for a pen, and many of you can attest to this, I tend to ask for a "writing thing" because I don't want to limit my options. If you have a crayon, I don't want you to think it won't qualify as a thing with which I can write simply because I asked for a mere pen. Pen, pencil, marker. Whatever. They're all writing things.

However, I object to the classification of the Paper Mate(R) PhD(TM) Multi(TM) Multipurpose Writing Instrument, as proper "writing instrument" because the stylus portion of the product is NOT A WRITING INSTRUMENET in and of itself.  I suggest that Papermate reclassify this product as a Paper Mate(R) PhD(TM) Multi(TM) Multipurpose Writing Instrument and Stylus.

Truth is, I don't really need the Stylus anyway. My Zoloft stylus works great although it makes my inner teenager feel slightly suicidal.

H. and M. have learned the hard lesson that Apple computer don’t care about its customers. Like being a fan of Nintendo, being a repeat Apple customer is a little like sadism. (Nintendo's E-reader? It's like an Apple 2GS. Trust me. The paralell is nearly perfect.) That’s not a revelation, people. Apple doesn’t now, and hasn’t for a long time, cared about you. They just love you for your almost fanatical devotion to their sexy little OS and their cute designs. Ultra-64 anyone?

Before you think I’m mean for bashing on your best friend Apple Computer, know that I’ve been abused by Apple since before you were born. My mom and dad bought an Apple ][c about an hour before the ][Gs came out. My dad’s Se30 is still kickin’ but sadly, the ImageWriter ][ isn’t. My beloved PowerBook 145b was stolen from me, but not before I bought an $99 upgrade of System 7.5 for it because it didn’t come with any system software to speak of. I also bought a StyleWriter ][ when I was in collage. An hour later, the StyleWriter Color came out. Neither of them worked for more than a year, really. I nearly bought a zip drive for my 145b one time, but the store I was buying it from was out of the custom SCSI adapters that only the 145b and about two other PowerBooks used. Fortunately, in those days, a pirated copy of Word 4.0 fit on a single floppy disk. Of course, if I had bought the 100 MB Zip Drive, I would have effectively tripled my disk space. (I had the big drive for the 145b. It was 40MB.)
Of course, if I recall correctly, my brother’s 880X Performa did come with system software and a crap-ton of bundled software. But Apple insisted that you make a back up of the pre-installed state of the computer when you bought it. That backup took 50+ floppy disks. My brother later upgraded to a PowerPC, and then to one of those Macintosh clones (The brief period where apple licensed the OS to other Hardware makers, but then unceremoniously revoked that license because the clones were outselling and, frankly, out performing the apple hardware.)

Somewhere around this point, I gave up and bought a Windows98 Dell. It ran for 5 years and in that time it burnt up one hard drive, which they SENT A GUY OUT who replaced for free. I also added a CDRW drive to it. I bought that CDRW drive at ANY STORE I WANTED TO and I installed it myself WITHOUT A SPECIAL GODDAMN TOOL. Sure, there weren’t the signatures of the original designers on the inside of the case, and I didn’t have a stupid dogcow popping up when I tried to make my printer go, but I’m not so sad about all that, really.


Now is the point where Jenifer talks about her Apple Lisa.

I had an opportunity on Christmas Day to call in a drunk driver.
Now, I’m no professional drunk driver identifier. I did not make the guy pull over and perform the horizontal gaze test. So, I guess, in the interest of fairness. I called in a crazy-ass stupid motherfucker who was swerving all over the roadway even though his hands were clenched at 10 and 2 and his gaze never left a stony dead-ahead.
But what I do know is how the roads work in Milwaukee.

( This is why I don’t like to call 911. It’s always a hassle )

Local store starting to seem like a drive-through
Two accidents in one week at Kwik Trip cause building damage
They say lightning never strikes twice, but what about cars plowing through a local business?
Last week brought unexpected challenges for the Kwik Trip convenience store located on Highway 16.

( More Under the Cut. )

Under the cut you will find a letter I, along with our good friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, composed and sent to Gwen Moore. My elected representative. I will also be sending copies to our senators when the time comes. I'm also sending a few to our state government, not that they care.

( Your right to watch your TV on your terms in being threatened )

I sent the letter, just so you know, with about three fewer pictures of my baby in a laundry hamper.

We should really be paying more attention as France goes apeshit.

As a means of illustrating why the "blogosphere" is a bad place to look for news, ( I offer these samplings collected from our dear friend, the interweb: )

Mmmm... Nested Blockquotes. Seriously, though, Internet. Try a little compassion. You don't have to be a dick to everybody.