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| Wednesday, December 31st, 2036 | | 12:00 am |
Locked journal
This is a "date out of order" post sent far far far into the future. If I'm still using LJ in 2036 then I guess I'll have to edit it! This journal is now mostly locked. The occasional post is open, and historical ones are (I can't be bothered to go back to edit their settings). WARNING: This is Livejournal. My postings here may be geeking, they may be sex related, they may be crap about my (lack of) exercise results, or they may be emo whining about my life and how I feel about myself. With that warning in mind, if you know me and want to read my journal then leave a comment. If I recognise you and like you, then I'll add you to the misnamed "friends" list. | | Monday, April 13th, 2009 | | 1:17 pm |
Internet-fail 2009
I wonder if the last few years of 200x will become known as "the time of internet outrage". It seems that every other week there's something new happening for people to get outraged about, whether it's LJ against breastfeeding icons, Harry Potter slash, strikethrough, the open-source boob project, race-fail or the current #amazonfail... People have always got angry about things (letter writing campaigns; Mary Whitehouse and her so-called Moral Majority; the Daily Mail crusades against whateverthefuck) but now the internet, through blogging and LJ-like tools, allows people to express their anger and for like-minded people to rally around the flag  What I find most annoying about this trend is that people are knee-jerking in support. We had a mass exodus from LJ because of previous "fails". Mass self-flagellation over race issues. Screams of censorship when communities hosting blatantly illegal content were shut down. Currently, I've seen a number of sites where the site owner has removed links to Amazon without even waiting to find out the what/why/how. Otherwise rational people are acting according to mob psychology. I'm beginning to believe that phrases such as "foo-fail" are just a code for "time to go down the pub while people get outraged... again". Except I'm not sure my liver would survive! Current Mood:  frustrated | | Thursday, August 7th, 2008 | | 12:17 pm |
Eureka is beginning to annoy me
The current season of Eureka is being very blatant about its sponsorship. In both of the episodes currently shown there has been a character drawing attention to it ("hey, what are those?"), with the sponsorship logo being prominently displayed on the screen (on shipping boxes in one case; the logo appearing on a coverall after a character presses a button). There was also a pseudo-advert (starring the same character). This is HIGHLY intrusive into the story and causes me to be snapped out of the show. Please, SciFi Channel... stop it! And advertiser... please note: I won't buy your product. | | Friday, July 11th, 2008 | | 9:06 pm |
| | Thursday, June 26th, 2008 | | 3:07 pm |
Time for another ebook rant
So last night I got my dead-tree (paperback) copy of Halting State from Amazon. It cost me $8. But, really, I want an ebook so I can read it on my Cybook. As previously written, I'd be willing to pay $2 on top of the $8 I already paid to have both editions. Not $24 (diesel-ebooks). Not $25 (ebooks.com, US penguingroup, ereadable). Not even $15 (fictionwise). Even Amazon charge $10 for the Kindle edition. WTF? I'm not even able to find an ebook version as cheap as the dead tree, let alone at the price I want to pay. Ridiculous | | Monday, April 14th, 2008 | | 7:02 pm |
Mini review of Accelerando, by Charles Stross
My Cybook came with a PDF of Accelerando. Charlie is giving away this book for free under a modified Creative Commons License (kudos to Charlie, and the publishers that allowed this!), but I also bought the dead-tree edition just 'cos (after all; even authors have to eat!) Unfortunately the Cybook edition was a PDF. It was pefectly readable but the text size was so big that I was spending too much time flipping pages. So I hit the above website, downloaded the LIT file and converted it (using the convert LIT ("clit") program and the free Mobipocket Creator) to mbp format. This allowed me to read the book in the size font I prefer. The Cybook really is quite a nice reader for mbp files; not so good for PDFs. I've actually not tried HTML or TXT or others. Anyway, to the book itself. I've only read one Stross before this (Singularity Sky) and I liked it enough to try more (hence Accelerando and Iron Sunrise were in my to-read pile) . The first chapter had me wondering if this was some second rate cyberpunk story. Or maybe a Shadowrun story. It really was hard going and totally failed to generate any enthusiasm. I haven't read much cyberpunk, but it just seemed archetypical of what little I had read. Part of the difficulty might also have been the fact that the book was written in the present tense. This is an unusual choice and is distracting because it is so unusual. But I forced my way through (bullheaded reader; once I start I try not to stop. I've only ever given up totally on one book). Eventually I got used to the tense. And eventually the story moved on. It actually became more engrossing as the characters fleshed out; we learned about their motivations and more about the world they were in. A world that is rapidly changing. For this is a story of society approaching Vinge's fabled Singularity. The book jumps through a series of connected stories. Here, possibly, using the present tense makes sense; the readers viewpoint jumps with the stories and with the society. As the Singularity approaches the story becomes more and more fantastical; from being a near-future vision it becomes a far-future vision... but the time constraints are still relatively short term. The nature of the singularity causes increased advances and even the most forward looking individual can find themselves future-shocked, and maybe the usage of the present tense helps put that across (or maybe I'm talking shit). Things have changed so much that reality itself can almost be shaped through thought and people interact more in virtual spaces than they do in reality; so much so that the distinction has become blurred. Eventually the number of elements Stross throws in makes the story fantastical. And somehow how of all this there is an excellent story. When I started the book I was worried that this author I'd found and started to read wasn't as good as I'd hoped; when I finished it I was more determined to track down more of his books. I'm not sure this is a good introduction to Stross's work (on the scant evidence of two books read, so far!). It is a hard read, to start with. It might turn people off. But it's well worth reading. For anyone used to Vinge's work or have read other Singularity related stories then this story is very much fun indeed; it's the first one I've read that focuses on people near the point of the Singularity itself. This could be our children, or grandchildren. If you believe the Singularity is possible. I'm not sure I do, but it does make for some good fodder for the current generation of authors! | | 1:18 pm |
Cybook build quality
As previously documented, I'm concerned about the build quality of the Cybook 3. Yesterday I prised out one of the other rubber stoppers and... yes, that screw was loose as well. As were two screws inside the battery compartment. I've tightened them all up again and now the machine feels as solid as the day I bought it; previously I had noticed it was flexing slightly. So it seems that it _did_ come from the factory tightly screwed together but in the space of 2 months the screws have worked loose. Hmm. I think I'll mail them, just so they know of the issue. | | Sunday, March 30th, 2008 | | 3:34 pm |
Build quality
Hmm. So last week as I was in Penn station waiting for a train to upper bumblefuck NJ (well, Florham Park) and I noticed one of the rubber stoppers on the bottom was half out. So I pushed against it with a finger and it popped all the way out... and a screw came out with it! I guess the screw had been loose and during the flexing and bouncing around of travel the screw had worked it's way out and pushed the rubber cover out with it. Fortunately I had a plastic bag to put the parts in until I returned home and could screw it back in again. But it does make we wonder about the build quality of the machine. | | Monday, March 3rd, 2008 | | 12:32 pm |
Cybook firmware
Bookeen responded to my email, thanking me for feedback and stating "We are working on improving the device with a coming firmware upgrade in March." I wonder what they've fixed. A better PDF reader would be wonderful, as would faster startup times and better library handling. | | Sunday, March 2nd, 2008 | | 9:37 pm |
cybook, ebook, pdf
The Bookeen Cybook 3 reader can read PDF files. BUT it's pretty pathetic at it. You can't zoom in (you can "fit to page" by height or width, and rotate 90 degrees). So a letter sized PDF gets shrunk to something less than 1/4 of that size. It makes things really hard to read! PDFs that have been formatted for the small device are perfectly readable (the Cybook came with "Accelerando" by Charlie Stross and that appears to work out around 60% of a paperback page per PDF page and is easily readable) but PDFs designed for letter sized papers are almost impossible to read. Disappointing. At least in eBook reader mode you can select from multiple different fonts. I've actually selected a font size 2 choices smaller than the default because that fits more on a page (so less page turns, so less waiting for the eInk paper to refresh) and is still readable. The font smaller than that is too small for me to read in comfort. I decided not to read "20,000 Leagues" but to read the next Dresden book in my "unread" pile (#8; Proven Guilty). And now I'm a little annoyed at the physical size of the dead-tree edition! Amazing how quickly I got used to to lightweight size of the Cybook. But I guess I'll lug the dead tree around for a while :-) This means my battery life testing won't be very accurate. But it might work as a good test of how much drain there is while the cybook is turned off. Now I don't understand the economics behind the selling of ebooks. Well, firstly I don't know how much money the author actually gets per sale of a paperback, nor whether they get the same amount for ebook editions (or if that's a seperately negotiated contract). But I think they're gouging the customer here. eBook distribution costs must be vastly less than the cost of physically dealing with dead-trees; printing and distribution and shipping (and return of unsold items for pulping) and physical storage space and..and..and... "Proven Guilty" is available in paperwork for $7.99 from Amazon. They sell the Kindle edition for $6.39 (which is useless to me, since I don't have a Kindle). That's $1.60 less than the dead-tree. But surely the savings to the publisher and reseller must come to more than that. So the profit on an eBook appears to be totally unrelated to the actual cost of the book. Elsewhere I've found this eBook (in Mobi format, which I could use) for $9.32 (ebookmall) or $7.99 (diesel-ebooks, mobipocket.com). WTF? I still like the idea of dead-trees for my shelf. If I'm gonna buy primarily in eBook format then it MUST be DRM free (in particular, I can backup the files and restore them to _any_ reader I decide to get in the future; the book isn't tied to the specific breakable piece of hardware). Given how much I've come to like the Cybook, buying ebooks isn't as far out there as I thought it would be, just a year ago. But I'm not going to pay the same amount as is being charged for paperbacks. I'm almost seriously contemplating dropping publishers without a sensible ebook policy. Given I have an unread pile of around 40 books (and that pile will be refreshed due to birthdays and Christmas), I could probably last 3 or 4 years on that and the 160 books I've got from Baen. If I like a Baen book I may buy the dead-tree edition to help support them. Earlier in this post I mentioned that it came with Accelerando; well I also bought that in dead-tree because this is a book I want to read and wanted to pay the author for the right. I don't want to steal from authors, but I don't want to be ripped off by publishers. Maybe by the time that I run out of free ebooks and my backlog of dead-trees has diminished some of the more forward looking authors (hey, I'm talking about SciFi here... there must be some!) will have pushed publishers to better ebook policies. Or maybe I'll go back and reread some of my existing books. In a library of well over 1,000 books I'm sure I'll find something interesting to reread! So a warning to publishers: sort out your ebook policies or else you'll end up losing my money, totally! | | Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 | | 11:49 am |
Cybook 3 update
I'm getting used to this as a reading method. It's a little awkward at night because the screen is slightly reflective and so the bedside lamp causes a reflection. But I'm getting used to it. Battery life is an oddity. As an experiment I disabled the "auto off" feature, so it was on permanently. Over a 24 hour period the battery dropped by around 20%. That's not so good. That'd be approx 5 days of life if left permanent on. I reset it to 15 minute idle auto-off and recharged it Sunday. Since then I've read about 6 or 7 hours and the battery life indicator is still at 100%. So I think it's very possible this machine could easily last a week of my regular commute and night-time reading between charges. Maybe longer. I'm going to see how long it takes for battery life to drop an appreciable amount. Typically when I change trains I In the cold, the Cybook is quite slow at page turning. Whether this is eInk technology running slow at colder temperatures, or something else I'm not sure. But it's definitely slower in freezing temperatures. And that leads to my biggest worry; damage. Physical books can be used in almost any environment (temperature, humidity etc) that I'm likely to be in (excluding actual precipitation, of course). The ebook reader? Not so sure. It's always in my mind that I've got a $400 piece of electronics in my pocket, rather an $8 bunch of paper. | | 11:37 am |
Old SciFi
In my hunting around for free eBooks I came across a few golden oldies. It struck me that I've never actually read "The War Of The Worlds". It's a short book (the ebook size is something like 1/5 of the size of "Shadow Of Saganami"; 251Kbyte vs 1306Kbyte). And, wow, have writing styles changed! It took a while to get used to the pace of the book. In writing style it reminded me a lot of "The Day Of The Triffids" (John Wyndham). But that could just be my memory playing tricks. A lot of first person narrative and exposition. The action feels a step removed as a result. And, wow, does the book show its age. A fascinating look into the attitudes and standards of people 100 years ago. Next up; 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. I know I had this on my bookshelf as a kid, but I'm not sure I ever read it. | | Sunday, February 10th, 2008 | | 9:22 pm |
More cybook
So the device is actually quite usable in bed. There's not quite the contrast you get on normal paper (the background is greyer; maybe like early 90s cheap recycled paper) and in exactly the wrong spot you can get reflection off the display. But mostly it's fine. I found myself spending more time with both hands on the pad while laying on my side, but there was no stress and it worked out quite well. The slow page refresh and flashing between pages isn't optimal. I'm a relatively fast reader and the slow page turns (which happen more frequently than with dead trees) and apparent control key issues I mentioned in my previous entry can be slightly annoying. A slower reader might not notice. A very fast reader, such as Tori, might not like it. Her speed would drop because she'd be spending more relative time waiting for the page refresh. And now what may be a bad bug. I loaded 161 ebooks onto the 2Gb SD card. I had these in a hierarchical structure, so the book I'm reading is /...path.to.SD.../eBooks/Weber,David/Sag anami/Shadow_of_Saganami.prc which appears OK in the library (however, also see earlier post about scalability of the library interface). BUT... when the machine powers down, on reboot it forgets what page I was on. Once or twice it remembered, but most frequently it started again at the front page. For that bug and the slowness of rebooting with so many books and the library interface issue, I've actually stopped using the SD card and copied a subset of the books into the internal flash. Not ideal, but it seems to solve both problems. I'm a "everything" person; I like to have my whole "stuff" with me, so a large iPod for all of my CDs; a large memory card for all of my eBooks. Fortunately I think I'm less likely to want to pick a book at random than a CD, so I might be able to survive with just the internal flash. One thing I've not been able to work out... when to charge this thing. About the only time I don't want to have the device close to me as a book is when I'm at work. In theory overnight, but I want it bedside to read in bed, and I don't want to have power cables trailing around in my bedroom. So maybe I'll actually charge it at work once a week (or however often it needs a charge). Tomorrow is my first day of using it while commuting. | | Saturday, February 9th, 2008 | | 3:13 pm |
Cybook 3 initial thoughts
So after the initial shipment being hijacked and Lost In France, the second shipment was sent by Bookeen on Thursday. According to Fedex it would arrive before 10:30am on Friday. Hah, yeah, right. Like that'll ever happen; overnight from France and FedEx deliver? Bwahahah. At 9:25 I got an email about failed to deliver because I wasn't home to accept it. OK. So FedEx _did_ do what they said they would. Annoyingly the door label they left didn't say what day they'd redeliver and the web site wasn't updated until 9:54pm saying the package was back, so I got Tori to take me to the depot to collect it on Saturday morning (fighting road works; they literally took away the whole bridge that we needed to cross!) Now I ordered the "deluxe" package; the reader, leather case, spare battery, 2Gb SD card, portable charger, headphones. So I was a little worried when FedEx gave me a light "medium" sized box. As Tori was driving home I opened the FedEx box and pulled out the single Cybook box. Aww crap; they didn't send me everything. Opened that box and... oh! Everything _is_ in here! Wow, that reader is small. I mean, small. And so light that I thought the battery in the box was the one that needed to be installed. But, no, it powered up. According to their specs, it's 0.3" thick and 6oz. Now it is wider and taller than a normal paperback, but it's so much thinner and lighter. Even fits into the pocket of my lightweight jacket. To give some sort of idea, it's the same height as your standard DVD case, not quite as wide, and only half as thick. It felt just like how I expected a datapad from Star Trek:TNG to feel; just the right heft and balance and size to be held naturally with no stress. Despite the thinness there's little give; it doesn't feel like it'd snap in your hands by accident. OK, let's turn it on. Hold the power button down for 2 seconds and a splash screen shows. Hmm, it stays on this screen for 15 seconds. Then it switches to a second screen where, presumably it's scanning for media. This takes another 5 seconds. That's after I cleaned out the internal flash and removed the demo books and images, leaving just 5 books. On the 2Gb flash card I put the 161 Baen Ebooks I have and that media scan took 24 seconds. So, for me, overall boot time is somewhere around the 40 second mark. That doesn't sound much, but it's a lot longer than it takes to open a real book to a bookmarked page. I think Bookeen need to add a "keylock" mode where controls are disabled but the device is still on standby mode. If I put the pad down (ugh, it's gonna be hard not to refer to this as a datapad!) for a while it's nice that the screen is still where I left it, just like a real book. But after 15 minutes (tunable) the machine turns off. Unfortunately I don't want to turn off the "autooff" mode because the controls are too easy to hit by accident if I put it in my bag or coat. So we need a "keylock". Navigation through books is also a little clumsy when dealing with a large number of books. Where coverart is available (eg in PRC files), the Cybook will create a thumbnail image and store this on the SD card or internal memory. Creation of these thumbnails are "on demand" (eg as you go to the index page), so initial movement through the 166 books was quite slow. But eventually they've all been made and movement is quicker. BUT... we're still navigating 166 books in bulk. You can change the index page to 5, 10 or 20 books per page but the more books you put on the less detail you see from each book ("The Best o..." isn't a great title, which is all I see at 10 books per page). Now that's with 166 books, taking up 135Mb of the 2Gb SD card. I have definite doubts as to the scalability of the user interface in the current form. I think Bookeen need to add a tree navigation option. My Ebooks are stored hierarchically by author/series, so allowing me to go through my library that way would be good. At least the media scan _does_ search sub directories! Epaper... this technology is very neat. It's quite readable. I don't think quite as readable as real paper, and the contrast isn't very good so grey-scaled images aren't too good (especially when reduced to thumbnails for covert art!) but it's neat and results in quite nice readable pages. (A brief primer: it takes power to move "ink" particles to the right place on the screen, but once there it requires no power at all to maintain the image. Cool, huh?). One downside is that the screen needs to "flash" between pages. The Cybook allows you to turn this off, but this can result in ink remaining where it shouldn't; the page needs to be forced to black between refreshes or else ghosting can occur. Apparently all epaper readers suffer this issue (I noticed someone on the subway with an Amazon Kindle a couple of weeks ago and his did the same thing). Now the flash isn't quite as bad as I originally thought it might have been because it's at the same time as your eye is scanning back from the bottom of the page to the top again. A "white" page would be less intrusive, but I guess the technology just doesn't work that way. It takes somewhere slightly over 1 second to go from one page to the next. In a way the Cybook is almost developed for left handed use; you want to leave your thumb over the navigation pad so you can hit left or down to get to the next page. If you rest the pad in the web between thumb and finger of your left hand then the thumb is naturally in place. If you use your right hand then I find I'm holding it more by the corner with the little finger providing the supporting balance (which isn't a problem given how light the machine is!) with the thumb joint being in the right place to press the controls, or with the thumb flexed. Not quite as nice. The main button controls themselves are the most annoying part of the cybook thus far; they don't always register presses (especially the central OK button) and you have to press more firmly. Because the CPU and subsystems are frequently in sleep mode it's not always clear if the machine is just slow to respond (waking up, writing data to flash, whatever) or it just hasn't received the keyclick. Conversely the side controls ("mp3 mode", "menu", "return", "delete" - the last currently non functioning in this software version) appear too easy to hit and I've found myself hitting the buttons by mistake when picking the device up off the table. ETA: Actually the main button controls may be noticed, but the software is ignoring it. I just pressed "down" and noticed the green light showing activity... but no page change. Hmm! Now the accessories; mostly I got the deluxe package because I wanted a case to carry this around in. Unfortunately the leather case increases the thickness to slightly _thicker_ than a DVD box, and it's a sleeve design with cover, with cutouts for the screen, controls etc. These never work that well, and it looks like the cybook is slightly off center inside the sleeve. When the cover is open it looks like a book and I'm tempted to hold it that way but then my hand is nowhere near the controls, so the cover needs to be folded completely around. There's resistance to that, but this might be because it's new. It also came a spare battery (the battery compartment is held on with a small screw and the battery clips in with a small fly lead). A set of earbud style headphones (this device can play mp3s, but I very much doubt I'll use it for that; that's why I have my iPod Classic 160Gb). A standard USB cable. A 2Gb SD card (the cybook can not use SDHC, only SD, so my spare 16Gb SDHC card wasn't much use). And a travel power charger. Now this is also tiny. It's actually a mains to USB power adapter; the output looks like a USB port where you just plug in your normal USB charging cable, and is smaller than an egg. Now I have a similar charger for my iPod Classic (infact they look identical, except the Cybook one has retractable power prongs for better portability) so I might have a two-for-one travel charger! Last week I read "At All Costs" (David Weber) using my cellphone (PPC 6700, the HTC Apache) as an ebook reader. It was quite easy to use one handed while standing on the subway; one hand holding the bar for support and one hand holding the phone and navigating. Battery life sucked. Each night I'd find my place in the dead-tree edition so at night I'd read that (phone on charge). This week I plan on reading "Shadow Of Saganami" using the Cybook to see how that compares. I'd like to use the Cybook in bed as well. We'll see how well that works with my bedside light and the way I typically read in bed :-) | | Monday, January 7th, 2008 | | 3:27 pm |
Moore's Law again
Well, I was right!. Panix did update their policies and added 20% free RAM to their v-colo plans to match linode. Unexpectedly they also reduced their physical server co-location prices as well. I don't know how competitive that makes them since I haven't looked, but it's $100/mnth for a 1U. ETA: Plus a $25/month power surcharge, effectively making it $125/month. | | Monday, December 24th, 2007 | | 11:32 am |
Moore's Law, a competitive industry, or merely insanity?
In 2001 I got Verizon DSL. For $50/month I had a 768/128Kbit connection. Neato! Then prices started to come down, speeds went up and by the time I moved house in 2005 I had something like 3M/768 for $40 (memory is hazy, but it was something like that). Today I have FIOS which is 20M/5M and as part of the triple play costs roughly the same. In 2004 I got a linode. For $20 a month (paid a year in advance) I got 64Mbyte of RAM and 4.5Gbyte of disk (and some network transfer I don't remember). Today (literally; they just increased their service) the same service is 360Mb RAM and 15Gbyte of disk and 200Gb of network transfer (lots more than before). I don't know how competetive the VPS market is; not done any real research. I know Panix V-Colo try to remain competetive with linode. They seem to follow, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if Panix increase their service levels to match in the near future. I also have a v-colo and my websites/mail configs etc are replicated; redudancy! Some of Panix's configuration options are different to linode's and may, in some cases, work out better value for money. I'm cheap and stick with the base model from both providers. Now I can see some of these increases coming about through changes in technology (especially Verizon switching from copper to fiber). But others like linode? Sure, some of the changes will be due to newer hardware (bigger disks, more memory)... but a factor of 6 memory increase over 3 years? Wow. Anyway, the extra linode memory was a nice Christmas present. Of course I built my server config back in the 64Mb days. According to "free", after 30 minutes of uptime my linode says I'm using 22Mb of RAM (the rest is cache). The v-colo (up 7 days) says 96Mb of RAM used. The v-colo is Xen based running Centos 5; linode is UML based running Centos 4; both fully patched... interestingly the v-colo memory usage always seems higher. I know peak load is higher, especially when indexing the Panix news groups for the search engine I've built :-) Heh, just realised the uptimes look real low. It's an anomaly. Had to reboot the linode to get the extra memory. I updated my v-colo to CentOS 5.1 last week so rebooted for sanity. Both services have been very stable. Maybe I should look at building something more than just a plain lighttpd configuration. Perhaps a full LAMP setup! | | Sunday, November 25th, 2007 | | 6:20 pm |
| | Thursday, October 11th, 2007 | | 2:25 pm |
National Coming Out Day
Today is National Coming Out Day It's also the 20th anniversary of the "Gay and Lesbian March on Washington" and the unfurling of the "Aids Quilt" on the National Memorial. Coming out and living openly is the most important thing that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight-supportive Americans can do to build lasting understanding and equality.Gay rights are a big issue these days. Some states allow gay marriage, others have civil unions (including, I'm happy to say, New Jersey), yet others don't recognise it. The "Defense Of Marriage Act" (1996) prevents the federal government from recognising same sex marriage and allows one state to ignore others marriage (overruling the "full faith and credit" clause of the constitution). The US Supreme Court has thus far refused to listen to any constitutional challenges. There have even been proposals to ammend the US constitution itself ("Federal Marriage Ammendment" 2006) to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Fortunately it failed to gain sufficient votes to pass. And yet: Today, nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of Americans say they personally know or work with someone who identifies as gay or lesbian, according to Peter D. Hart Research Associates Inc.This means that there must be a fairly large sized proportion of US citizens that are (either openly or closeted) either homosexual or bisexual and these people are being denied rights that other couples have, simply due to sexual orientation. Gay people are people, just the same as you and me. Their desire to settle and make a home with the person they love is no different to that of any other couple. Their desire to express that love in the form of marriage does not and can not impact your marriage to the person you love. Their desire to gain equal protection under law for their partnership doesn't harm you in any way. Clearly there is a lot of divided sentiment on Gay Rights and yet there was a lot of sentiment over slavery and segregation, but finally common sense won out there. I can only hope that America comes to its senses and soon! | | Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 | | 7:54 pm |
I hate cold calling spammers
"Guard Me Security". I just got a new phone line (Verizon FIOS last week) with a new number. Already these people are cold calling me (and asking for me by name) and when I tell them I'm not interested they hang up immediately and then call back again multiple times the next day. So far I've had 6 calls in 2 days. Apparently they have a reputation for this disgusting behaviour: http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-732-696-9600Companies like this do not deserve any custom and should be avoided. Current Mood: annoyed | | Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 | | 3:58 pm |
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