Tuesday 4th February 2003
A funny thing happened on the way to yesterday's What's New: the entire fucking planet called me.
Spam of the Day
Let's have a look at these questions....
- Live in the United States? - Have a Social Security Number? - 18 Years of Age or Older? - Have a Valid Checking or Savings Account? - Have Income of at Least $850.00/month? - Have a Home Phone Number? - No Pending Bankruptcy? - No current delinquencies in past 60 days? Incidentally, the ability to answer Yes to these questions [not that these questions specifically asked whether these conditions actually applied to me], would get you approval for anything related to credit. Not that I fuck around with credit in the first place; if I can't afford something, that's a sign that I need more money, not a fucking creditcard.
More Later....
On the bright side, the bill for my mobile phone is a writeoff. I think I can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that my phone is used only for business purposes: everyone knows that I hate people on a personal level.
Anyway....
Stuff!Believe it or not, there's some actual website news. For one thing--and stop me if you've heard this one--I've been working on expanding the line of merch at store.HellhoundRecords.com. Which is the final stage of the startup for Hellhound Records. The next step is to go through and destroy everything I've done and do it better. For the moment, the prototype works pretty well.
In a related story, the development of BEASUR.com may start as early as tonight. We've got a shoot today to get a few images--or, really, a few hundred--for the site. Then we just have to work out the rest of the content.
We're still working on the content in theory. At the moment, we're thinking it could be a sort of cnn.com for GenerationX. Which could also mean something like News of the Stoopid. Our own weird outlook on current events, or something. Along with music news and tech stuff. Cross CNN with Mtv with Wired, minus the annoying elements of all three. Which may be to say that we'll have our own annoying elements; we're talking about leaving those out though.
Which leads to the next related bit....
The Library of Congress got hold of me today. Or yesterday. Since I woke up, anyway. First of all, they sent me an official-looking envelope with my POBox hastily scribbled in ballpoint. At least it wasn't crayon. Then, the envelope had been sealed, torn back open, and taped shut again. Then the thing contained a couple of smallish sheets of paper folded to look like authentic GoTard Origami.
So, at this point, I'm not sure whether I'm in trouble, or President Junior is helping at the copyright office. Or both.
What it turned out to be, of all things, was the ISSNs for NotS and The National Prevaricator. Which I'd forgotten about. A couple of years ago, I convinced the LoC that both NotS and the NP were, in fact, periodicals.
And they fucking ran with it.
So that, I guess, is good news. I'll be adding the ISSNs to those sites as soon as I have time. Watch for that in August. Ish.
In a...I don't know how related this really is.
The hitcounter [occasionally found to the right] and Mailinglist of Dispair [broken, to the left] which are supplied by AtheistBannerExchange.com have stopped working. Because AtheistBannerExchange has stopped working. I don't know why. I also don't know when or if it'll be back. If it's not back within a week or two, I'll just remove the stuff and figure out an alternative. Which would suck since, A) everything worked pretty well while they existed and B) everything was all nice and topical. Oh well.
Loosely related to that, I'm just about ready to start working on DeityFree.com now. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with that--although, given the name, there were a few obvious options. What I'm thinking now is that I could make a sort of spoof of all the Anti sites out there. AntiSmoking, AntiDrug, AntiDrinking, AntiGun, AntiAbortion, AntiReality [see also Creationist JunkScience Sites], and so on. Except that this one will be AntiDeities. You can quit; we can help. That sort of thing. I think it has a bit of potential. Which is good on its own. Better: I'm going to do it either way, and no one can stop me.
So there; neener.
Related in almost no way whatsoever, we moved up a slot. According to yahoo.com, and not factoring Sponsor Matches [people who actually pay yahoo.com to list their sites], gremlin.net shows up in third place on searches for 'gremlin' now. Which places us just beneath WaterGremlin.com...whatever that is...and, of course, gremlin.com...which is a halfassed search engine which tries to force you into setting your Home Page to partner11.firehunt.com. Which, of course, sucks.
How do you get ranked higher in yahoo.com, you ask? Good question. My best hunch is that, the more you have for content, resulting in having more words for yahoo.com to associate you with, the better you'll do. If that's the case, then mentioning, in the last paragraph, both gremlin.com and WaterGremlin.com, should push us a little further up the list >:)
Whee.
In other news, either another shuttle exploded, or various twits around Denver forgot to put the flags back at the tops of the flagpoles. Or take them down altogether. Or turn them upside-down because this country is fucked and in desperate need of help from anyone capable of fixing countries. I'm really thinking about moving to a warmer nation one of these decades. Or Phoenix. One or the other.
While there's no new shuttle news in our little corner of the 'net, I did put together a little something just to be weird and to risk a massive lawsuit from I Mother Earth; hit the Stop Button to your right to turn it off if you like; unless you're on AOHell, in which case you'll probably have finished reading this before the seven-hundred-kilobyte file finishes preloading. In which case switch over to a real ISP and hit the Stop Button if you like.
There is the one little bit of news regarding the shuttle. NASA Officials have released the final transmission from the Columbia, broadcast seconds before its destruction: Houston: this is Columbia; how close to Texas did you say our PriceLine.com tickets would get us?
You heard it here first....
On occasion.
Yes. And, thanks to the Privacy Act of 1974, it would be a felony for you to ask me for it.
Mentally? Chronologically? Emotionally? DogYears? Please be more specific.
No. My accounts are invalids; they tend to die if I don't pay attention to them.
Are you joking? I make that in a day.
See above. I don't fuck with landlines. I've got a CableModem and StarTac.
As opposed to impending?
Current in the last sixty days. What in hell does that mean?
--Gremlin