Blog: Ramblings and Rants

Is your blog hosted as a subdomain? Has your provider received a cease and desist letter? If so, you might find your blog taken offline. You may want to contact your provider with the information below and ask how they plan to respond.

According to the below story on WHIR, Stateline, Nevada-based Ideaflood Inc. claims that it owns the patent on subdomains (e.g. “yourblog.blogspot.com”), and that all companies using subdomains are infringing on that patent. Ideaflood is sending cease and desist letters to an as yet unknown number of hosting and service providers ordering them to stop issuing and/or using subdomains or begin paying licensing fees to Ideaflood.

Subdomain Patent Sparks Concerns

March 26, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — In astonished postings to Web hosting discussion forums last week, several hosting providers announced that they had received letters from a party representing Stateline, Nevada-based Ideaflood Inc. (ideaflood.com). The letter stated that Ideaflood has patented the idea of assigning users subdomains, such as AutomotiveWidgets.hostingcompany.com.

According to the discussion postings, the letter said that, since Ideaflood has patented the concept, further subdomain service for customers would require the purchase of a license through Ideaflood.

So impressed am I with the new “Choclate Is Better In Color” campaign for M&Ms candies that I felt compelled to express that sentiment to Mars, Inc., the maker of M&Ms. Through the M&M’s.com site feedback form I just sent the below letter.

Unexpectedly I need to spend the day out taking care of business. Consequently, the Saturday Slant will be late. I’ll post tonight.

If you’re on the notify list, you’ll get a reminder when today’s Saturday Slant posts.

“Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” was a rerun tonight, so I flipped through the channels while I tried to tame my MP3 collection. My channel-flicking thumb paused on VH1’s new show “You Rock With…” This, my first exposure to the new show, was about a trio of amatuer guitar players competing to join Poison live on stage at a ten-thousand seat stadium show for a single song. I honestly hadn’t known Poison was still touring.

Following “You Rock With…”, VH1 aired three more hours of shows focusing on the heavy metal music of the Eighties and its major players. I won’t cite examples because there are so many, and to miss one would be an injustice.

I miss the music of the Eighties and the simple fun inspired by that music.

Strawberry Blonde has expressed a curiosity, and is asking:

Ladies, when you go in for your annual exam, removing all your clothes and donning a gown, do you leave your socks on or off?

Happy birthday to Kimberly at Neurotic Fishbowl.

It’s my birthday too, yeah. Unlike Kimberly, however, I won’t tell my age.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Here are some interesting facts about this emerald holiday, courtesy of Finnegans Rainbow St Patricks Day Facts

Saint Patrick was not actually Irish.

“Erin Go Braugh” means Ireland forever

The first American celebration of Saint Patrick’s Day was in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1737

Nine of the people who signed our Declaration of Independence were of Irish origin, and nineteen Presidents of the United States proudly claim Irish heritage—including our first President, George Washington.

St.Patrick introduced the Roman alphabet and Latin literature to Ireland.

Green is the Irish national color, symbolic of the lush green landscape of the Emerald Isle.

One man’s trash…

WSJ.com - For Orlando Soto, No Day Is Complete Without Some Spam

Mr. Soto routinely comes home to some 150 e-mail pitches, and he loves getting them all. The 45-year-old grandfather opens most of them. He answers spam questionnaires. And he buys stuff pitched in spam e-mail — again and again. “Everyday people call it spam,” says Mr. Soto, who prefers calling it “unsolicited” e-mail. “But I’m open to everything.”

I met Mr. Ex tonight. There was no fanfare, no explosions. No one was hurt.

If you’ve been following my blog for the last year, you know meeting Mr. Ex is a big deal.

Strawberry Blonde turned to Mr. Ex, who, along with his girlfriend and our shared children, were standing together with Strawberry Blonde and me, and asked if he was ready to meet me. He responded in the affirmative and stuck out his hand. I shook it while introducing myself. Then I complimented his suit—it was a nice suit, one of those neutral browns I like so much. I wear similar colors and appreciated the cut of his suit in that color. According to Strawberry Blonde, it was his favorite suit; my compliment was well placed.

We, the four adults of the group, then chatted about Eighties’ hair-metal music, specifically super groups like Contraband. I met Mr. Ex’s girlfriend as well.

It’s been a busy week—and it’s only Thursday.

•   Strawberry Blonde and I successfully installed a new garbage disposal. It was an all day project, but we got it done well.
•   Tonight Mojo’s third grade class is giving a recital. Mr. Ex will be there, and is aware that I will as well, so he might finally deign to meet me.
•   I’ve upgraded the security on my site and my blog after dealing with blogspammers.
•   I announced the winner of the Free Blog Makeover Contest.
•   This week, on the 9th, the Saturday Slant turned a year old. In honor of that I’m redesigning the Slant posts and changing some things about its display and listing.
•   I fixed a major memory issue on this blog.
•   The deadline for a fun design project on the Graphic Design mailing list hit today, so I uploaded my project a little after midnight this morning.
•   I setup and troubleshot my mom’s Internet connection over the phone Tuesday night.
•   Smallville was in reruns last night, and Angel is gearing up for the series’s final six episodes. All the shows I enjoy get cancelled.
•   Work has been good and busy.
•   I’ll be gone all day tomorrow on a training gig.
•   I’m considering an offer to collaborate on writing training material for Adobe applications.
•   I’m writing a series of articles about the business of graphic design.

It’s a busy week. Ayup. Adnd it’s only Thursday.

Belief-O-Matic — A personality quiz about your religious beliefs and spiritual beliefs - a quiz answering What Religion Am I — Beliefnet.com

Even if YOU don’t know what faith you are, Belief-O-Matic knows. Answer 20 questions about your concept of God, the afterlife, human nature, and more, and Belief-O-Matic will tell you what religion (if any) you practice…or ought to consider practicing.

Belief-O-Matic Results [for me]:

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

1.  Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2.  Neo-Pagan (96%)
3.  New Age (95%)
4.  Liberal Quakers (89%)
5.  Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (86%)
6.  Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (80%)
7.  Secular Humanism (79%)
8.  New Thought (76%)
9.  Mahayana Buddhism (69%)
10. Scientology (67%)
11. Theravada Buddhism (62%)
12. Taoism (61%)
13. Bahá’í Faith (57%)
14. Nontheist (54%)
15. Hinduism (53%)
16. Reform Judaism (53%)
17. Orthodox Quaker (47%)
18. Jainism (46%)
19. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%)
20. Sikhism (40%)
21. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (37%)
22. Jehovah’s Witness (31%)
23. Orthodox Judaism (28%)
24. Islam (23%)
25. Seventh Day Adventist (20%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (14%)
27. Roman Catholic (14%)

There’s some serious irony at work here. I was raised Roman Catholic, and Belief-O-Matic feels my current belief system is least related to Catholacism.

Spam in my mailbox? I cannot utter enough expletives to describe the depth of my revulsion for spam. Spam on my blog? Sailors, cover your ears.

Fighting spam is a pain in the ass. For the first time in my twelve years of experience online, effective spam fighting tools are hot on the heels of spammers or so-called “internet marketeers.” Cleaning up the spam and providing a strong ongoing security to my blog took less than an hour this evening.

After reading and re-reading, after much thought and the input of Strawberry Blonde, I have picked a winner in the Free Blog Makeover Contest. Before I announce the winner I want to state that there were many, many excellent entries. Choosing the winner was not easy. Still, I had to choose but one entry to win the blog re/design.

And the winner is…

Seiry’s Ramblings: The ‘M-Word’

Before I get into my response I’d like to strongly recommend the above link to anyone curious about the trials a homosexual person goes through when trying to understand his or her sexuality. The author, Andrew Sullivan, talks about the feelings of isolation and longing that he didn’t understand and that, against his will, separated him from other teenage boys. For this man, sexuality was not a choice. Rarely is it.

My response (further down) is directed specifically to this passage from Andrew’s post.

When people talk about “gay marriage,” they miss the point. This isn’t about gay marriage. It’s about marriage. It’s about family. It’s about love. It isn’t about religion. It’s about civil marriage licenses - available to atheists as well as believers. These family values are not options for a happy and stable life. They are necessities. Putting gay relationships in some other category - civil unions, domestic partnerships, civl partnerships, whatever - may alleviate real human needs, but, by their very euphemism, by their very separateness, they actually build a wall between gay people and their own families. They put back the barrier many of us have spent a lifetime trying to erase.