Changes
Posted by Gremlin in What's New on Wednesday, 5th November 2008 at 4.34 pm Zulu Time
Historic day, and all that. Not really regarding President Elect BamBam, though that's something of a factor. In a way, I'm actually glad we're getting Obama, partly because I never thought up a good name for McCain [McSame was inaccurate and trite, McInsane was stupider still, and so on], and partly because, to date, there's not a lot I really dislike about McCain. Slamming Junior was always easy, because the guy was a goof. Slamming Obama should prove fun and reasonably easy to do, even if I'll be about the only guy not dazzled into worship. Of course, the real slamming will likely involve the democrats who, after eight years of calling to impeach Junior for everything from Iraq to his haircut [I'll grant that the haircut is close to treason], will never understand why Obama's willingness to accept contributions from stolen creditcards reportedly used by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein might be a little criminalistical.
But, this isn't really about that. To the extent that this changes anything around here, at least immediately, I've updated Lurkers with an alternate version I stored a couple weeks ago, in which Obama had been elected in November 2008, nine months before the story takes place. Which in a way I liked better anyway, since it has HippyGuy complaining not that McSame stole the election from BamBam, but that BamBam stole it from Hitlery, which the guy HippyGuy was based in part upon had already hit me with back in August 2008, silly though that was; I don't doubt that the guy still thinks that, nor that as many as millions agree with him and will be blathering such bullshit over the next four years.
Of course, I know people who are still pissed that Perot wasn't elected. So that probably follows.
Anyway. In the Site Update department: I added that YouTube.com thing to the top of the blogue, though I might play around with finding a better place for it. Officially, according to google.com/adsense, I can't recommend watching any of it, or even watch it myself, let alone encourage anyone to click on any adverts; but, for the uncommonly stupid, since I can't go into much detail, I suppose you could ask someone who wasn't me whether clicking on stuff might lead to watching various fullmotion stuff, which may or may not get me anything from a nickel to ten bucks every time you click on a link up there.
The funny part: what I might be safe in admitting is that I've seen the results of clicking on the adverts on other people's systems and, the adverts being targetted in theory toward the stuff I tend to talk about anyway, half of them went to websites selling stuff I'd actually buy—stuff, in cases, I have bought with, in something like irony, the money I'd got from the people advertising on my site because people click on the adverts. So it's kinda weird that I'm being discouraged from clicking on the adverts and getting myself nickels along the way to seeing something I wanna spend money on. But, those are the rules, I guess.
And, largely off that topic, I've got something else close to news. You know how we keep getting cool new stuff to print things onto, like shirts and bumperstickers and camcorders? CP didn't get it done [yet], but zazzle.com, which I kinda can't stand, given their backend, just got skateboards. That's something I've been waiting for since 2001 at the latest. I haven't really done much with them yet, since I've had this book thing going on; but I threw together a Predacious Moments Skateboard the other day, mostly to see whether I could get the system to do what I told it. Mixed results. But, now that I'll have a little more time to play with that, I'll see if I can get past the combative nature of their backend and get more to happen.
For those not into skateboards...well, you probably won't want a skateboard. But, for those lightly into skateboards, who can't tell the difference between Variflex and SantaCruz, the core materials they're using at zazzle.com are astonishingly not bad. So, to the extent that a hundred bucks for a deck, or $209.90 for a full skateboard seems expensive compared to twenty or thirty bucks for a skateboard at Target: it is; also, it's less than I'm used to spending, personally, on all the same stuff. Meaning, apparently, that I should mark the things up more to more properly compete with the retail I usually see. Or, really, meaning that a board selling for three or four hundred bucks is only selling for three or four hundred because the store selling it is greedier than I am. Or has more overhead and advertising to pay off, for those of you who didn't vote for BamBam.
Mostly I'm just thrilled that I can get the same quality board I'm used to buying for way less than I'm used to spending, with whatever I actually want on the undercarriage. Since about the only thing you can break on a skateboard is the deck itself [though I've never personally managed to break 7ply maple], snapping one and moving the unbreakable bits over to a new deck for a hundred bucks works for me. Whether anyone else ever buys a WastedBoard or not. Though that would be cool too.
More later....
