What's in Your Wallet?

Cleaning out my wallet this morning made me wonder what its contents say about me. After receipts and other junk were tossed, here's what I've been carrying around:

• My driver's license (Florida, organ donor)
• A MasterCard credit card, VISA debit card and health care plan debit card
• Two proofs of auto insurance and five health care plan IDs
• Retailer cards from BlockBuster, PetCo, Barnes & Noble, Borders, GameStop, Quiznos, Dave & Busters, Ollie Koalas and Borderlands Comics & Games
• A $25 gift card good at Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze and Smokey Bones restaurants that I haven't redeemed in four years
• A library card
• A Microsoft Bob calling card that expired in March 1996
• $15 in cash

I can provide documentation for 10 retailer relationships and no personal relationships. I feel so bad about this I'm going shopping to cheer myself up.

2006/07/20 · 15 COMMENTS · Link

I Do Chicken Right

Louisville Courier Journal:

The new Colonel is younger, better defined, a video-age celebrity chef. And he doesn't have to share his space with the letters KFC. He's meant to represent Kentucky Fried Chicken again. His new look is less like your grandfather and more like your cousin.

2006/07/18 · 15 COMMENTS · Link

Running Online Communities is Better in Moderation

This Blog was started by five guys (RZ, JA, DKIA, STP & H) who simply got tired of all the BS of the supposed wonderland of Open Expression on the 'Net.

The Leftists claim they adore & stand for Free Speech & then use it to hammer anyone who doesn't agree with them right before they take it away. They'd rather tell you how immoral you are for standing up for what you think is true than to actually debate.

I'm glad they started their own site and will provide technical advice where I can, even though they believe I've become a censor-happy dink. If PoliticalWarZone takes off, they'll learn that a commitment to free speech buys a lot of aggravation. No matter what the rules are, an online community will inevitably attract some people who believe it's their solemn duty to resist them. These people will have more time than you do, because they haven't made the mistake of starting their own blog.

This is especially true on a political site, because you can never convince some people that the rules are being enforced without political bias. Changing the rules of the Retort had nothing to do with my "government-sponsored medicinal marijuana for gay whales" liberal beliefs. I got tired of spending more than an hour a day dealing with a small crowd of gleefully obscene, rules-flouting hellraisers on a community with 3,000 members.

Before PoliticalWarZone gets too established, I think they should consider a move from BlogSpot to TypePad. Movable Type, the software that powers TypePad, is much more flexible and powerful than the Blogger software running BlogSpot, and its template tags enable anyone with HTML skills to customize how a blog presents weblog entries and comments.

For example, they could use the MTComments tag to create a recent comments page like the one on the Retort:

<MTComments lastn="50" sort_order="descend">
  <MTCommentEntry><MTEntryTitle></MTCommentEntry>
  <MTCommentBody>
  Posted by <MTCommentAuthor> at <MTCommentDate format="%Y-%m-%e %X">
</MTComments>

The Retort employed Movable Type for more than a year, though I eventually wrote my own software when it couldn't handle thousands of user comments a day without big delays as pages were republished.

Movable Type · Politics · 2006/07/18 · 61 COMMENTS · Link

Road Testing the Samsung SPH-A920

This phone has brought web access to a remote South Carolina campground and now the interstate highway system, leaving the bathroom as my last safe haven from total connectivity.

The SPH-A920 connects to the laptop's USB port and acts like a dial-up modem, requiring a call to one of my ISP's access numbers. The claimed speed of 230.4 Kbps seems like wishful thinking -- I'm getting one page load of web traffic per half-mile, and the connection dropped a few times as we zoomed through the Sumter National Forest. But the phone was fast enough for me to read the news and update the Drudge Retort.

When I first attempted to hook up the modem, Windows XP wouldn't install it without a driver. Sprint didn't include a CD and there weren't any A920 drivers available from the Sprint or Samsung support sites. The problem was fixed when I ran Connection Manager for Sprint PCS, a free download that installed the driver after a reboot while the phone was disconnected.

I routinely drop phones on hard surfaces, so without Sprint's blog-swag program I wouldn't have tried an expensive phone that offers live TV, music downloads, games, a camera and decent web access. After using this one on the road, I'm sweating the prospect of my free review period ending in a matter of days.

If I can't resist the urge to take the phone to the bathroom, I won't provide such a high-resolution photograph.

Mobile · 2006/07/15 · 14 COMMENTS · Link

National Lampoon's Nuclear Family Vacation

I'm writing this afternoon from the shore of Lake Keowee, an incredibly beautiful man-made lake in South Carolina.

Also on the water's edge: Oconee Nuclear Station, a massive three-reactor nuclear plant that needed the 18,500-acre lake as a source of cooling water. I haven't figured out yet whether I'm downwind.

I spent some time yesterday in a ginormous lakefront home, one of many I've seen here that appears newly built. The area -- not far from Clemson University -- contains some of the most expensive real estate in the state, which makes me wonder whether catastrophic nuclear disaster that renders the region uninhabitable for decades is one of the risks a realtor is expected to disclose. The plant went online in the early '70s with the same reactors as Three Mile Island. The lake flows atop a historic British fort and sacred Cherokee sites and was originally promoted by community leaders under the slogan "Oconee: Arrowheads to Atoms."

The people who live here "have developed an easy peace with the plant," according to one media account:

"We realize that it's here, and we know that there's always potential risk, but we also ride Harleys and there's a risk involved in that," said Kenneth Klein, 58, who moved to Lake Keowee in 2003 from Ohio.

Velvet Turman shares her sunset views on Lake Keowee with a sidedoor shot of the Oconee Nuclear Station.

Since moving to the lake four years ago, she says she's made peace with the plant knowing she is downwind and out of luck if something were to happen.

"It's in the back of my mind," said Turman. "You have a plan in your mind of what you're going to do if something happens, but you just cannot live that way. You just look at the lake -- it's beautiful -- and just go on."

I don't ride Harleys, but as I sit here and weigh the picturesque natural setting against the risk we might need to flee in terror at a moment's notice to avoid certain doom, I'm tempted to think it's a fair trade.

2006/07/11 · 27 COMMENTS · Link

Mr. Hasselhoff, Tear Down That Wall

[David] Hasselhoff enjoys cult status across Europe. This is most marked in Germany, where his 1989 album, Looking for Freedom, topped the charts for three months. Two years ago, Hasselhoff expressed disappointment that he was not recognized as having helped end the Cold War through his music.

Politics · Music · 2006/07/06 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

We Enjoyed the Space Shuttle a Lot

This picture was taken on Saturday in Titusville, Florida. If you look closely, you'll see the space shuttle not taking off in the background as thousands of people watch with excited anticipation along the banks of the Indian River, 19 miles across the water from the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center.

I'm standing in a field on U.S. 1 just south of the Miracle City Mall, which the Unofficial Space Shuttle Launch Guide recommends as one of the best places to not see the shuttle take off:

If you can't get a launch pass I suggest you come to Titusville. Go east on State Road 50 from I-95, to US-1. Go north on US-1 to the "Miracle City Mall" at Harrison. Park somewhere north of this spot. Anywhere north along highway 1, or east (as far as you can) along highway 406 (402) is good (specifically Sand Point Park), just as long as you can see the VAB and don't have trees blocking the view.

Because another disaster would mean the end of the program, I dragged the kids on one of those "memory of a lifetime" moments when parents force their children to enjoy something under protest, like the time in 1981 my siblings and I were subjected to a live performance of the Gatlin Brothers.

Traffic was horrible on Interstate 95 between the scheduled launch, the Pepsi 400 race in Daytona and July 4 weekend vacationers. After the shuttle was declared a no-go because of gathering storm clouds, the three-mile drive back out of Titusville took an hour.

The family will never forget the time we spent six hours in the car to stand spend 45 minutes in a weed-filled vacant lot.

On Sunday, we saw the launch from Butler Beach south of St. Augustine, which looked like a lot like this picture from Canova Beach to the south of the cape. This was a thrilling experience that left hundreds of beachgoers awestruck -- especially if miraculous feats of human engineering make you weepy.

But next time around, I'm going to get close enough for the launch to shake loose a few fillings.

Jacksonville · Florida · 2006/07/05 · 8 COMMENTS · Link

Read More Entries