Les Jones

First post!

Hey, Melissa. I just created a blog!

Web whoredom

I showed Jay my blog the other day and he wanted to know if there was a way to make money from having a blog. It turns out there is, and it isn't even particularly indecent or immoral. Link is work safe.

Rent My Chest

More indecent and more immoral are camgirl sites that beg for presents with Amazon wish lists. If you're thinking about becoming a cam girl but aren't sure how to start, be sure to read How to become an obnoxious internet cam whore in five easy steps. The pictures are work safe, even if the level of sarcasm isn't.

If you're square like me, you'll build useful web sites that attract lots of visitors, as Philip Greenspun describes in How to be a Web Whore Just Like Me. It's no joke a very good guide to web publishing. Just be aware that Phil is a very persuasive writer, and understand that he will try to convince you that he single-handedly solved every problem on the web back in 1998.

Random Links

The things you'll find with Google. Rosemary Jacobs has argyria, a permanent, blue-gray discoloration of the skin from taking colloidal silver in the 1950s under directions from her doctor.

You may have heard of argyria during the 2002 elections, when Stan Joness, Libertarian candidate for a Montana Senate seat, made news because he suffered from the condition. In Jones's case, he used colloidal silver in 1999 out of fears of a social collapse in the year 2000 that would make antibiotics unavailable. (And Libertarians wonder why people think their party is a joke.)

I Googled for "colloidal silver" after seeing ads in Mother Earth News at the library tonight. I love hippie gardening, but hippie medicine sure sucks.

Business 2.0 discusses selling to the Federal government, and predicts that Federal IT spending will grow 50% in the next three years. This is interesting stuff if you're an e-commerce guy with a Federal purchasing contract.

Like a lot of people, I've thought that - in retrospect - George Bush, Sr., should have taken out Saddam Hussein while he had the chance. Now I'm not so sure. It turns out that the elder Bush may have been wise to limit the scope of the Gulf War.

Two publications at opposite ends of the political spectrum have noted how differently Bush I and Bush II have approached crises in the Middle East: Business Week and Salon both observe that Herbert Walker was careful to work with the U.N., build a coalition, and clearly define goals. Shrub, on the other hand, tried to ignore the U.N., insulted our allies, declared the U.N. vote inconsequential, and vacillated as to whether the goal was disarmament or regime change.

It turns out that the

It turns out that the condition of Melissa's friend is more serious than anyone realized. The day afer a car accident she was disoriented, and initially diagnosed with a light stroke. Now her doctors have decided she has a blood clot. She's been taken to Memphis for surgery. We'll be thinking of her.

Soon to be new and improved

I signed up for a web hosting plan tonight. That means this page will be moving from lesjones.blogspot.com to www.lesjones.com. It also means there won't be any ads at the top of the page. The site can have more features now that I can use Perl, CGI, PHP, SQL and other goodies. The new host even has Unix shell access, which is getting harder to find because of security concerns.

The site will also be getting some pictures. Blogspot's free hosting doesn't provide any space for storing pictures, which is why so many of the blogs you see are text-only. Not that there's anything wrong with that. One thing I like about the blogging movement is that it's moving the direction of web design away from empty glitz and back towards useful content.

I ordered a digital camera last weekend, so I'll be able to illustrate the site with photographs. Should be fun. I've been shopping for digital cameras for like five years. Some people actually think that I over-research major purchases. Can you believe it? But, hey, a digital camera is a lot of money to a poor person like me. Gotta be careful with cash.

The camera I picked after much agonizing was the Canon PowerShot Digital Elph S400, which was just released this month. The best piece of advice I ever got about outdoors equipment is that the handy item you take with you is more valuable than the super-duper, feature-packed gear that you leave at home because it's so heavy and bulky. The S400 weighs just 8.1 ounces with batteries, and is about the size of a wallet.

Despite its diminutive size, it has the features I was looking for: 4 megapixel resolution, 3X optical zoom, ISO levels down to 50, multiple white balance settings, CompactFlash storage, and rechargeable batteries. It costs a little more than I wanted to spend (hence the agonizing), but this review sealed the deal. The S400 is very quick to start up and to cycle between flash-assisted shots, and it has outstanding redeye reduction, which will save hours of sitting at the computer editing photos to electronically airbrush out Aunt Martha's demonic stare.

Content-wise, I'm writing a piece about daytrips around Knoxville. It's shaping up to be pretty good. Daytrips written up so far: Chattanooga, Crossville, and Jonesborough. Other possibilities: Townsend, Gatlinburg, Asheville, and Boone. I'll post the first batch this weekend and add others as they're written. We're going to Lexington in two weeks for horse races, so there may be some pictures from Keeneland.

Speaking of stuff to do in Knox Vegas, don't forget the Valleyfest Film Festival in Knoxville, April 9-13. If you've never been, I'd recommend going during the times when short films are playing so you that you get the most variety. The schedule lists playing times.

I've had a blast adding links to the site. Who knew that Brackins Bar had a web page? I also found out that Chris and Katie Granju both have web sites. Good ones, too.

I got out and saw

I got out and saw a couple of bands last week. Josh Talley talked me into seeing the Gourds at Blue Cats and they were great. Their "Dem's Good Beeble" CD is a good, loose record. Even ran into Mary Anne Walker and Ian Blackburn at the show.

Friday night we went to Brackins Bar for a Blue Mother Tupelo show. Blue Mother Tupelo is incredible. They're a must-see Knoxville band, and they too have a good CD - "Delta Low, Mountain High." They'll be back at Brackins on May 23.

The even bigger treat of the night was running into Cecil Allred, who I hadn't seen since either Josh's wedding or Marty's bonfire. That put a smile on my face for the whole night. Cec, I love you, man.

Domain moving, email may not work

I'm moving the lesjones.com domain to the new server. While that's happening I may not be able to send or receive email. You can still reach me at lesjones at mailshell D0T com.

Still Unpacking After the Domain Move

I'm still moving the domain. I found the box with the lesjones part, but I can't find the rest. I think the dot is in the one of the tomato boxes marked "laundry." I'm not sure about the "com." I've got Old Harper boxes from the liquor store, Mighty Dog boxes from the grocery store, and the box my Apple 17" monitor came in. It's probably in one of those.

Meanwhile, the post office hasn't gotten the forwarding sorted out. My mail doesn't work, and when I go to www.lesjones.com from home I still get the lesjones.blogspot.com site, but at work I get the new www.lesjones.com site, which says "page under construction."

I haven't found the kitchen stuff yet, so I'm going down to Taco Bell for an Encherito. When I get settled in, I'll invite everyone over for a party. You don't have to bring any housewarming gifts or anything, just a cold six pack. Later.

Best Of...

Inspired by Steven Den Beste's Best Log Entries, I decided to create a Best Of for this site. This solves one of the problems of blogging software programs: they're great for keeping track of the fresh and the new, but not so hot at keeping up with the good and the old. Erudite missives scroll off the front page, never to be seen again, least of all by new readers.

Let's be honest. No one ever browses archives. They may get to an old post by a link or a search engine, but no one archive dives to find the good stuff amid the garbage. Life's too short.

By making posts less disposable, a Best Of page encourages more thoughtful writing. It also provides incentive to update old posts with new information, and to check links for link rot. Those are standard maintenance practices for traditional web pages, but they're rarely practiced in the blogosphere.

A Best Of page also helps beginning bloggers buck up during those early days when their traffic levels stink. "Maybe no one will read it now," the suffering blogger steels himself. "But one day everyone will read my manifesto on why the Commodore Amiga was the GREATEST COMPUTER EVER!!!"

Finally, Best Of posts make good spider food to point search engines to your primo dope.

For now I'll maintain the Best of LesJones.com by hand. Ideally, the blogging software would do this for me. Rankings could be by page views, user vote, number of comments, the writer's own assessment, or an algorithmic combination of factors.

• E-commerce
  • Why Consumers Aren't Getting the Full Benefit of E-commerce
  • E-commerce Companies in the Knoxville, Tennessee Metro Area
• Guns
  • .410 Handguns and Some Excellent Gun LinksAssault Weapons
  • Gun-Fearing Wussies in California
  • Melissa Learns to Shoot, and a Pair of .22 Target Pistols
  • Review: North American Arms Black Widow
  • Thoughts on Power and Weakness
• It's funny. Laugh.
  • Elvis is the Watermelon
  • GOUT!
• Knoxville
  • Daytrips near Knoxville
    • Chattanooga
    • Crossville
    • Jonesborough
    • Townsend
  • Knoxville Night Life
• Misc.
  • Do You Think I'm Addicted to Coffee?
  • Transient Ischemic Attacks (TIA)
• Politics
  • Homosexuality
  • Tennessee Income Tax
• Wedding
  • Bridesmaids Dresses
  • Lighter Side of the Ball and Chain
  • Modern Bride
  • Wedding Plan Version 2.0
  • Wedding Registry, Etc.

Notes from All Over

The winner of the World Series of Poker is from Knoxville. Chris Moneymaker attended Farragut high school and the U of T, and now lives in Spring Hill. He started playing poker just three years ago. He's welcome at my game any time. House rules are dime minimum ante, bet or raise. Fifty cent maximum ante, bet or raise. NO PENNIES!

MacMerc shows how to use Photoshop to make Matrix code.

The director-general of the Al-Jazeera news network has been fired for allegedly taking bribes from Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency.

Al-Jazeera and Mr Ali have been accused by western media of collaborating with the former regime in Baghdad, which the ex-director general visited before the US-led war, interviewing the president for an hour.

Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the American-backed Iraqi National Congress, has accused several Al-Jazeera journalists of working for Iraqi agencies based on documents allegedly found in state archives in Baghdad.

Al-Jazeera enjoyed a special status in pre-war Iraq, being allowed to work independently of the information ministry which strictly controlled foreign media.

I have a bunch of links on the distortions and lies that came out of Iraq before and during the war that argue persuasively that you can't trust information coming out of a dictatorship. I hope to post them soon, with some commentary and context.

USA Today reports that Bill Clinton's legacy is making a comeback. A new USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll finds Bill Clinton ranked as the third best U.S. president behind Lincoln and Kennedy. These polls are ridiculously short-sighted, of course. Many people can't remember more than four or five presidents. Still, the Clinton years are looking like the good old days to a lot of people. Once again, The Onion was right.

More evidence that polygraphs are unscientific:

Late last year the NAS [National Academy of Sciences] published its findings. It determined that the polygraph was not a worthless tool -- indeed, that it was much worse than worthless. The report said that "available evidence indicates that polygraph testing as currently used has extremely serious limitations . . . if the intent is both to identify security risks and protect valued employees." The NAS panel, made up of internationally respected psychologists and statisticians, further determined that the test was so nonspecific that even if the polygraphers managed to finally uncover their first spy, at least 100 innocent laboratory employees would have their clearances yanked because of the "false positives" inherent in the test. The NAS concluded: "Polygraph testing yields an unacceptable choice . . . between too many loyal employees falsely judged deceptive and too many major security threats left undetected. Its accuracy . . . is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies." It doesn't get much clearer than that.

A good reference is the Skepdic.com Polygraph entry.

Uncategorizable

If you need something to go with your giant Cheeto, why not an animal cracker that looks like a goat having sex with a hippo?

Congress is considering a law that would increase the SUV exemption to $100,000. It's currently $25,000. The law only applies to vehicles that weigh more than 6,000 pounds. A Honda Accord weighs about 3,000 pounds. So, if you buy a colossally huge vehicle, you can evade the laws that apply to car safety (such as crash-resistant bumpers), evade the laws that apply to car fuel efficiency (trucks are held to a lower CAFE standard), and evade taxes on a lot of income ($25,000 now, $100,000 if the bill passes). The law was intended to reduce taxes on industrial and construction vehicles, but now it's a huge tax and safety loophole. Expanding it makes no sense.

A new study found no connection between condom availability and teen sex rates.

Bob Geldof is praising Bush's handling of Africa:

"You'll think I'm off my trolley when I say this, but the Bush administration is the most radical - in a positive sense - in its approach to Africa since Kennedy," Geldof told the Guardian.

The neo-conservatives and religious rightwingers who surrounded President George Bush were proving unexpectedly receptive to appeals for help, he said. "You can get the weirdest politicians on your side."

Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid, claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all."

A woman who converted to Islam has requested that she not be required to show her face for her driver's license photo. See Eugene Volokh's law blog for the legal background. Now The Smoking Gun reveals the woman's face reports that the woman was arrested for child battery following her 1997 conversion to Islam.

Michael Totten has a great photo essay on Portland's architecture and new urbanism:

A new consensus developed in Portland a few decades ago after our progressive governor Tom McCall had the courage to kvetch in public about the "unspeakable ugliness" being built and strewn all over the place. The urban design code was scrapped. We started over, promising to sin no more.

An Urban Growth Boundary was established to separate city from countryside. Urban sprawl screeched to a halt, and it hasn't moved since. Not for thirty years has Portland expanded outward even an inch. Instead of sprawling outward, developers had to fill in the unused or underused land inside the city. (Want to encourage slum-renovation without having to pay for it? There's your answer. Three decades after the establishment of the Urban Growth Boundary, Portland has revitalized 100 percent of its slums for the straightforward reason that inner-city land cannot be neglected any longer in favor of sprawl.)

All building have to be built to the sidewalk (just like in the Victorian era!), which effectively bans strip malls and "Big Boxes" (like Walmart) which surround themselves with parking lagoons. Buildings must have windows at street level so that pedestrians are no longer subjected to sinister blank walls along sidewalks. Buildings must be mixed-use, with retail shops on the ground floor and apartments above. This way, people can go downstairs to get their groceries or their lattes instead of getting in their car and driving three miles to a parking lot.

Evan Nisselson looks at how camera phones will change the photography industry.

Mister and Miss E. Llaneous

I forgot to mention that Melissa hit an exacta on the derby last weekend. My bride-to-be is now $44 richer.

Excellent 1999 Atlantic article on school vouchers. Katie Allison Granju looks at the recent Supreme Court decision supporting public school vouchers in Cleveland.

A Texas man won the lottery, but the Feds are taking the $5.5 million because they say the winner bought the ticket using money from selling cocaine. Like I always say, finances are like a bucket. You throw money into the bucket, you dip money out of the bucket. This kind of granular traceability is an illusion. Hat tip to SayUncle.

Bill Hobbs is on the job, bulldog-like, tracking states taxes on Internet access. The money he saves could be your own.

Terri Killefer writes: A link to story on gaps in U.S. animal import regulation, leading to monkeypox virus outbreak in pets and humans, and threat of jump to wild U.S. prairie dogs and other animals.

I caught a few minutes of the Fox TV show Test the Nation. Among the celebrities was Heidi Fleiss, whom the host introduced as "Newsmaker and author Heidi Fleiss." Newsmaker. Now that's a euphemism!

SouthKnoxBubba is giving sue-happy right-wing pundit Michael Savage his comeuppance:

So, what do the Dixie Chicks do when angry right-wing morons get them kicked off the radio, burn their CDs, and organize boycotts against them?

Why, they sing louder and prouder, they get their nekkid pictures on the cover of a magazine, they wear controversial t-shirts, and enjoy a boost in sales and popularity.

So, what does a racist, homophobic, misogynistic right-wing radio talk show lunatic do when angry listeners organize a boycott that results in the loss of a couple of ad accounts?

Why, he sues the hell out of everybody in sight! That's the deep-pocket Republican thing to do, you know, stomp the little guy and take his wallet. Freedom from speech! Freedom from association! Freedom from truth!

Damn, but The Usual Suspects is a great movie. I watched it again for about the tenth time this week. I grabbed some of the best lines for the quotes file. I also noticed something that Gabriel Byrne does in the Dean Keaton character. A physical move he makes over and over. The next time I watch the movie I'll write it up.

New to the Quotes File

To a cop, the explanation is never that complicated. There's no mystery to the streets, no arch criminal behind it all. If you've got a dead body and you think his brother did it you're going to find out you're right.
- The Usual Suspects

How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?
- The Usual Suspects

Londing calling / To the Zombies of Death
Quit holdin' out / And draw another breath
- The Clash

Learn to love your inner redneck.
- Jay Gregory

Stick with me, kid, and you'll be wearing diamonds as big as horseturds.
- Gregory family saying

Cette page a été slashdottée !!!
- Slashdotted French web site

You may have noticed the

You may have noticed the out-of-place Kevin Spacey/Usual Suspects picture at the bottom of last night's post. There's supposed to be a paragraph about the movie and some quotes, but I made a minor typo in coding the image (I used align="right' instead of align="right"). Now the text is hidden, the image is out of place, and the permalink and datestamp are hosed.

No problem, thought I. I'll just go fix it in the editing interface. Problem is, the nice Edit link that should be at the bottom of the post goes to the Internet Movie Database link for Usual Suspects. No problem, thought I. It's for reasons like these that I'm paying for Blogger Pro, so I'll go get me some tech support. Problem is, the tech support link gives Apache Tomcat errors when it does anything at all.

I'm moving to Movable Type. Remember: friends don't let friends use Blogger.

UPDATE: the tech support page was fixed around 11:00 PM, I reported the problem, and BloggerControl fixed it around noon the next day. Blogger has bad code, but they've got good people.

All Links Only a Dollar

Stop by Friday for pictures and QuickTime clips from last night's Tommy Emanuel concert at Maryville College. I'm finally going to get the first batch of pictures off the camera. Watch out for the pictolanche next week.

Welcomes go out to the newest members of the Rocky Top Brigade: Sister Secret City from Oak Ridge and Thomas of Newsrack Blog, formerly of Oak Ridge but now of Washington, D.C. Sister Secret City writes:

You can always tell a foreigner by how they say "Oak Ridge." Any native will say "oak RIDGE." Foreigners say "OAK ridge." Now some foreigners say it right, but you can bet that anyone who says it wrong is Not From Around Here.

When I bought my house in Louisville, TN, from Steve and Terry the first thing they told me was how to pronounce it: Lewisville, to avoid confusion with Louisville, KY. Only foreigners (people not from Louisville, TN) use the French pronunciation.

Speaking of the Brigade, last night someone posted inflammatory comments over at SouthKnoxBubba under the name Bill Hobbs. Hobbs says it wasn't him, and Bubba's check of the IP logs confirmed that it was indeed a troll. The forged comments have been taken down and I won't repeat them here, but they were made by an imposter, not by the real Bill Hobbs.

UPDATE: lots more Brigade members, including my friends Chris Range and Ron Crowe over at CelticGrove.

Steve Den Beste explores the North Korean problem: communism, despotism, starvation, and now cannibalism. If North Korea follows the Soviet Union and collapses under its own weight - and it eventually will - who will take over? Den Beste believes that less populous South Korea won't want to reunite with a nation so besieged by debilitating problems. His solution: let China have North Korea.

Funny Stuff

Awful pun. Not dirty, just awful. Here's another one. (Ariel writes: "Omigod, Les, those are so bad they're good. Or, like PopTarts, so hot they're cool.")

James Lileks is excellent this morning. Come to think of it, he was excellent yesterday, too.

With the resignations and changes at the New York Times, Jim Hightower hopes that the Times will do the right thing and retract some of its deceptive headlines:

Candidate Bush Supports Environmental Legislation Bush Won't Touch Social Security Surplus "Under Any Condition" Bipartisan Bush Presidency To Change Tone In Washington Rumsfeld Assures: No Plans To Invade Iraq Rumsfeld: U.S. Has "Bulletproof Evidence" Of Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection Ashcroft Domestic Security Enhancement Act To Further Protect American Freedoms Bush Economic Stimulus To Benefit Everyone, Not Just The Wealthy George W. Bush Elected

Scott Adams writes in the June Dogbert New Ruling Class newsletter:

Like the proverbial dog chasing a car, the Induhviduals [Al-Qaeda] haven't considered what would happen if they caught one. For example, let's say they (the Induhviduals, not the dogs) accomplish their stated goal of destroying the economies of the Western world. Is that really a good plan for people who live in a desert and import most of their food?

Just for the record, if I'm down to my last potato, I'm not sharing it with a guy who wants to kill me so he can get a better supply of virgins in paradise. That lesson is a little thing I call Economics 101, infidel style.

No pictures this morning, darnit.

No pictures this morning, darnit. I couldn't find the CD with the camera software.

(Via SouthKnoxBubba, where there's an active discussion) The Daily Times of Maryville-Alcoa TN reports that parents of a teenager are suing Forest Hills Baptist Church for $2 million after the church mis-represented an Underground Church event as a "car wash." From the description the Underground Church sounds like a horrible, manipulative way to brainwash kids into religion. They also seem to ignore common sense practices for obtaining consent and allowing participants to leave:

The suit alleges that group members were blindfolded and handcuffed with Velcro, ``dragged out'' to the parking lot and told to climb in the back of a truck. According to the suit, Janie Doe fought back and pleaded to be let go but was laughed and yelled at by one of her alleged captors.

The suit claims she managed to escape but was grabbed again, blindfolded and handcuffed with metal cuffs which caused her to cry out in pain. She was allegedly lifted and put in the truck, then driven to another location where she was led by her arm down a hill and lined up with the other youth group members.

The suit alleges the group was told there would be ``one chance to deny Christ, or you will be killed.'' When Janie Doe refused to deny Christ, the suit says there was the sound of a gunshot and she was soaked with water, then she began ``screaming and crying'' before being told to go inside the residence of another church member.

The parents retained Herb Moncier as counsel. I know Herb from my days in the local Mac Users Group. He's the best trial lawyer in these parts. Herb was the defense for accused Knoxville serial killer Thomas "Zoo Man" Huskey.

The BBC is reporting that Israeli has instructed its army to wipe out the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. It's about time. Watch the spin on this story. The Israelis will be spun as being as bad as the Nazis because they defended themselves against terrorists who kill innocent civilians. Via Donald Sensing.

Glenn Reynolds (AKA Instapundit) has the scoop on Alaska's new concealed carry law.

Incidentally, I can't decide if I should cite bloggers' real names or the names of their blogs. I don't personally know Glenn Reynolds, though I went to high school and college with his sister, but since I know his real name shouldn't I use it? I'm friends with Chris and Ron at Celtic Grove, so I often mention their real names and blog name simultaneously. When I mention Donald Sensing's blog, should I cite his name or his page, One Hand Clapping (whose address is www.donaldsensing.com)? Confusing stuff, and the AP Stylebook and Libel Manual ain't gonna help. Thank goodness for SouthKnoxBubba. He's anonymous, so I don't have to make any pesky decisions.

Gregory Peck passed on yesterday. SW Virginia Law Blog recalls Peck's connection to the Barter Theater. Via Bill Hobbs.

Father's Day, Knoxville, Meerkats and Sprite: How Will I Tie Them Together?

Chris Range of Celtic Grove emails:

After having the worst headache in my life all day Saturday - you know the one the medical home reference books tell you may be a tumor and to seek help immediately - after having one of those until 3AM - I fell asleep and woke up at 10AM - rushed off to church, groggy, un-coffied, and generally a lot grumpier than Jesus would have wanted me whilst I was engaged in the meal of transubstantiation. But I digress..

The real joy of the day came when we went to the [Knoxville] zoo. The billboards for the new Meerkat exhibits read something like:

"MEERKAT MADNESS - Come see the new Meerkat exhibit - It's EXTREMELY NOT BORING"

Well you know that can only mean one thing - Meerkats are the most boring animal on the face of the earth.

Yep, just like Joel Sposky says about marketing - you take your product's worst characteristic and swear that the opposite is true.

CITY BUS SERVICE: Cavort with New York's elite as you inhale the heady aroma of success from your busmates, who are homeful and certifiably sane.

DOLLYWOOD: We're a bucolic center for environmental education and the fine arts.

AUTOMOBILES: Paying a note on a $40,000 car will make you happy and serene, and won't be seen as a sign of mid-life crisis or flagrant status-seeking.

SODA: Drinking Sprite will give you the slim build and energy you need to dunk like a professional basketball player. Need a slimmer build? Drink more Sprite!

POLITICS: George Bush is the compassionate candidate who would never compromise Grandma's social security check with insane deficits.

PS When I go on my honeymoon in August, I think I'll invite Chris to guest blog. Celtic Grove is not enough of an outlet for his creativity. Also, everyone needs to encourage Chris to post his artwork online.

PPS Speaking of Sposky, if some Induhvidual ever starts talking about setting down a set of Core Values for your company, show them this Joel on Software article. Then show them the Mission and Values Statement from this fine, upstanding company with high ethical standards.

PPPS. I didn't invent the multi-level postscript gag, Dave Winer did.

Delicious Mix Tape o' Links

I had always heard that people with guns in their homes were more likely to be killed with a gun. Now Eugene Volokh dissects one recent study from the University of Pennsylvania, only to discover that the researchers failed to control for criminal behavior. A similar study in San Francisco found that two-third of gun-homicide victims had arrest records. In other words, a criminal lifestyle - not gun possession - was the determining factor.

Donald Sensing rightly says "I told you so" regarding Bill O'Reilly's meltdown.

This Plastic thread points to a Chernobyl on O'Reilly's show this year. O'Reilly tried to blast Jeremy Glick, but got caught in the blowback. Glick's father had been killed in the WTC attacks, yet Glick was opposed to war. Whether or not you or I agree with that position, it's one that takes tremendous moral resolve. The kind of resolve that O'Reilly's typical belligerent shouting couldn't budge. O'Reilly made an ass of himself and cut the interview short:

They were talking to Glick today on the radio, and he seemed like a reasonable enough fellow. I was impressed that he didn't seem to feel intimidated or flustered whatsoever by O'Reilly's yelling. He had another little interesting "off camera" story. After O'Reilly threatened to tear him to fucking pieces, he pointed out to O'Reilly that he's essentially "Joe Millionaire in reverse" - claiming to stand-up for the working-class hero, when in fact he's a white-elitist multi-millionaire.

Sensing also mentions that his hometown of Franklin, Tennessee was named one of Money magazine's best places to retire. We're a long way from retiring, but Franklin sounds like the kind of place Melissa and I would enjoy visiting.

My hometown of Maryville, TN was named one of the best places to retire by Your Money magazine in 1999. Josh Nelson and I prominently featured that fact when we designed the web site for Green Mountain, a low-impact development in the wilds of Blount County.

There's going to be a sixth season of the Sopranos. Melissa and I are happy. We're watching the third season on DVD right now. Filming on the fifth season is wrapping up, and will be aired starting in March, 2005.

Melissa's favorite new quote: "When a man opens the car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife." She found that quote from Prince Philip in a book she received at her bridal shower. She's flying to San Diego to be in her friend Ian's wedding next week. Ian asked her to read an inspirational message at the wedding. Any suggestions? If it matters, this is for a gay wedding.

SouthKnoxBubba reports on a format change in Blount County's venerable WGAP radio. I've posted my comments at Bubba's site. (BTW, is Maryville now considered South Knoxville? Judging from his recent cites, Bubba obviously gets the MAD Times (the Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times) (and I don't care if they call it the Daily Times now; it was the Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times when I was 10, so it will always be the Maryville-Alcoa Daily Times (AKA The MAD Times) (and isn't it amazing how deeply parentheses can be nested?).).) :-)

I found Off On a Tangent in my referral logs, though I'll be darned if I can find a link from his site to mine. Anyway, you should read his "walked into a bar" jokes. I've never heard any of them, and I know a lot of jokes.

Telegram from the 1900 House

Sorry for the lack of posts, but Melissa and I have been living in the stone age the last week. Like many other Charter customers in Tennessee and Georgia, our cable modem has been mostly down since Thursday. During the brief periods when the modem was up, my Blogger Pro account was down while the blog was moved to the new system (which has a much better interface, though the features are about the same). I had to use another Internet connection to SSH to the server to manually fix an error in Friday's post.

What have we done while the Internet connection was down? We read books, did lots of cooking. I trimmed trees. Last night I made a batch of beer. If the modem is still down next week we may get some goats and start making our own cheese.

More posts later.

PS I found the disks for my camera, so I now have 256 MB of pictures and video clips I can unleash on the site. Be afraid.

Library Blogging

I'm blogging from the Blount County library in case the Internet connection doesn't work when I get home.

I talked to another Charter tech last night, and he suspects my cable modem is so old that it isn't compatible with Charter's upgrades of last weekend. I swung by Charter today and exchanged it for a newer modem. They swapped modems for free, which was nice of them.

I met Rich Hailey, SaysUncle and Chris Range at Barley's last night. Nice guys, all around. SaysUncle and I are talking about having a Rocky Top Brigade Range Day. Get together, try some different guns, and introduce non-shooters to the sport.

SaysUncle told me about MoxiePop losing her job over blogging, and the whole nasty scene around the MoxieWars. Steve Chapman has advice on blogging while working for the man.

Incidentally, this is why I don't talk about my job on the site. I don't want a connection between one and the other. It's also why SaysUncle and other bloggers prefer to be anonymous.

New to the Blogroll

GunBlast - Three Tennessee brothers - Boge, Jeff & Greg Quinn - and their excellent gun reviews with beautiful photographs. I've shot some of the same guns and agree with their opinions. These guys know how to shoot and write. I've sent an email to Bubba to see if he'll add them to the RTB. They aren't strictly bloggers, so I'll understand if he doesn't.

TalkLeft - Crime-related news not found anywhere else.

Honeymoon's Over

Well, the honeymoon's over. I ordered three large pizzas for dinner, cancelled my gym membership, and threw away all of my grooming products. I'm a husband now, not a boyfriend. Deal closed. Too late for her to back out now.

I kid. We're still decompressing after the wedding and honeymoon, so blogging will be light this week.

Test

This is a test post using Movable Type.

Installing New Software This Weekend

I'm switching the software that runs this site from Blogger Pro to Movable Type. There may be some down time due to the changes. I've got MT working already. Next step is to import all of my Blogger Pro postings and then build a new template file.

I'll let you know how the switch goes. Installation wasn't that bad. Installing Movable Type and getting to the point that I could post took about two hours. If you've installed Perl CGIs before, you should be able to handle it. If not, you can have it installed for $40.

Bad web page authors destroy old file and directory names willy nilly when they redesign a site. Good web page authors do their best to preserve the file and directory structure. I plan on leaving all of the old Blogger posts up so that inbound links will still work, so if you've linked to me in the past there's no need to updates your links. That also means the site will maintain its current search engine rank.

Why the Switch?
Blogger Pro hasn't been very reliable. That was the biggest reason.
Movable Type offers a lot of features that I'd like to have:

• Built-in comments
  
• Built-in, powerful search engine
  
• Multiple archiving options
  
• Posts can be assigned to categories and even multiple categories
  
• Large posts can be split up to preserve space on the front page
  
• Generates XHTML compliant code out of the box
  
• Movable Type features can be added with plug-ins. This should reduce my current reliance on JavaScripts and externally-hosted features.

Jeff Jarvis on the Rewards of Blogging

Responding to Clay Shirky's article I mentioned yesterday, Jeff Jarvis agrees with everything Shirky says, but points out a material reward of blogging. It isn't micropayments or even tip jars, but connections, reputation enhancement, and book and career deals:

In the world of weblogs, I often point to Glenn Reynolds and say that he has branded himself online in ways that he could not in the classroom or in journals, and this is sure to pay off for him not just in audience and ego but also in wealth: Because he is the famed Instapundit, he is more likely to get book deals, TV deals, and a cushy Yale teaching gig.

I keep doing this weblog for many reasons -- gratification (I like writing again), ego (I like having an audience), learning (this weblog has helped me understand how to bring weblogs to my work), community (I like you people, I really do), but also some distant bet that it may help me get a book deal or a teaching gig. Thus, it's hard to see where fame leaves off and fortune begins; the line blurs.

I tend to agree. Offering free advice on the AOL Mac forums back in the early '90s helped me to meet David Pogue and contribute chapters to one of his books. It also lead to a book deal with Sam's Publishing. Writing 56K.COM lead to magazine work. I hope to land some e-commerce consulting work with my next project.

Writing 56K also lead to one of the proudest moments of my life: getting a call from the Playboy Advisor, asking me for advice. True, the advice was about 56K modems, but I usually don't tell people that part. Downtown Julie Brown was the centerfold that month. Yee hah.

Changes at Blogger

I switched from Blogger Pro to Movable Type this weekend, so this no longer applies to me, but this email arrived this morning from Blogger. They're giving users of the free Blogger service most of the features that were part of the pay Blogger Pro service. Here's the email I received:

Tune in Tuesday

I spent all day Saturday in the handgun carry class, and all day Sunday working on JavaScript projects, so no posts today. I'll post notes from the carry class tomorrow. I learned a lot about the legal aspects of deadly force, and even learned a thing or two about firearms.

Quick Links

DIVE INTO MARK: How to make cruft-free URLs in Movable Type. You can use some of the advice in other programs. The best reason for short URLs is to avoid links that break across lines in email, which is typically 72 columns wide. My permalinks are 42 characters long, including the "http://" part. If I used Mark's tip to leave off the file extension I could get that down to 36 characters.

NEW YORKER: Review of the new Chicago Manual of Style.

NATIONAL REVIEW: Ahnold isn't clear on California's gun laws, but he's sure he wants more. Link via InstaPundit.

VOLOKH CONSPIRACY: The Secret Service appears to be keeping anti-Bush protestors away from Bush appearances. Pro-Bush crowds aren't being kept away, so censorship - not security - seems to be the motive.

Blogging Love Fest

From Jeff Jarvis's Buzz Machine comes this quote:

As we scientists say: Blogs are the only medium that can praise itself simply because the audience is the producer and vice versa.

Man's got a point. Most of the people who post in the comments here are other blog authors. For a counterpoint to the self-congratulatory blogging revolution, read John Dvorak's Deconstructing the Blog, published in 2002. Choice excerpts (he's discussing rules for a successful blog):

Blog daily. If you miss a day, use the next day's entire blog entry to apologize profusely. Explain in detail the fascinating adventure you had that caused you to miss a day of blogging. Make sure to rave about how great blogging is and why everyone should blog and how blogging will change the world.

I won't quote the parts about blogs that have "blog" in their name (d'oh!) or the artisty types that use black backgrounds (double d'oh!). For something even closer to home for all of us cross-linking bloggers, read Dvorak's Cult of the Cluetrain Manifesto, which contains this zinger:

In fact the brown-nosing that goes on between bloggers singing each others' praises makes the worst office kiss-ups look tame by comparison. I mention this anomaly since these Cluetrain folks all believe the opposite to be true. Somehow networking like this, according to the Cluetrainees, reveals truth - when in fact it supports and forces the worst kind of conformist behavior.

I'm not expecting to get a lot of inbound links or comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

Kim du Toit to Rant 80% Less

Kim du Toit announced that he's going to make the Daily Rant the Weekly Rant in order to finish his novel. He also anticipates fewer Gratuitous Gun Pics.

Blogging takes a lot of time. I remember reading InstaPundit for a while and thinking "this guy couldn't keep this up if he was married." Then I found out he was married and figured he couldn't do it if he had a ki- whoops - he's got one of those, too. Glenn is apparently a ball of energy, but even his energy and interest will wane at some point.

What happens when Glenn retires? Will it be like Michael Jordan retiring from basketball? Lots of bloggers read InstaPundit every day to get the big stories, yours truly included. With Glenn gone or on a reduced schedule, it makes it harder for everyone.

On the other hand, this is the freakin' Internet. There will always be someone new to step up to maintain the FAQs, post to the message boards, program the software, and write the prose. Life will go on. In du Toit's case, some other gun-lubbing bloggers will take up some of the slack and get more traffic as their reward.

Me? I'm enjoying it right now and it isn't cramping my life. Long-term I plan to focus my blogging efforts on e-commerce to drive consulting business my way in order to justify the time spent blogging.

The Blogger Hoodie Arrived

Before I switched to MovableType I used Blogger Pro. Last month Blogger decided to make most of the Pro features available to all users. To compensate people like me who had paid for the premium service, they offered free Blogger hoodies. Mine came today. It's actually a pretty nice sweatshirt, so I guess I won't stencil "Friends don't let friends use" above the Blogger logo.

Help John Reed By Fact-Checking Russ Whitney's Ass

Anyone who has ever published a Web page has wondered about the possibility of being sued. It's especially unnerving to imagine being sued by a powerful person or company. John T Reed is in exactly that situation right now. He's being sued by a multi-millionaire and convincted criminal named Russ Whitney, and Reed is asking for help.

Who is John T. Reed?
Reed is a real estate investor who writes about real estate investing and property management. He was disturbed by some of the promises "real estate gurus" like Carleton Sheets and Robert G. Allen were making in their seminars, tapes, and TV commercials. As a result, he began posting his real estate guru ratings on his Web site.

As Reed says, the real estate guru business is something of a rogue's gallery. Many of the gurus have gone bankrupt, served time in jail, been sued by state attorneys general, or flat out lied about their investment success. In one of the better known cases, Robert Allen (author of No Money Down) has gone bankrupt, and the head of one of his investment clubs went to jail for using the techniques in Allen's book. Which leads us to the next guru.

Who is Russ Whitney?
Whitney is a real estate investing guru who sells seminars, tapes, and books, the best-known being Building Wealth. He's CEO of Whitney Information Network, a thinly-traded bulletin board stock, of which he owns 81%. The SEC has advised Whitney Information Network that they need to restate their earnings. The restatement would wipe out all of the profits they've ever reported. The company's liabilities are currently greater than its assets.

After Reed gave him a bad rating, Whitney filed a lawsuit against him in June, 2002. Rather than backing down, Reed decided to fight and to serve as his own counsel. The lawsuit is ongoing. There's a progress report here.

What Reed and His Readers Have Uncovered About Whitney So Far

Using his own resources, and drawing on his reader's help, Reed began investigating Whitney as part of the informal discovery process leading up to trial.

• Whitney is a convincted felon and ex-con. One of Reed's fans ran Whitney's name through a criminal database and found his record. Whitney was convincted of robbery in the second degree. He served a year and a half in prison in New York.
• Whitney lost a paternity suit. A reader searched the Lee County, Florida court Web site and discovered the case. Whitney - a married man - had an affair with one of his employees, got her pregnant, denied paternity, and then had to be sued to support the child.
• Whitney ran over a pedestrian. Reed says Whitney committed hit and run; Whitney says the summons for hit and run was the result of faulty reporting. The man he struck was left with permanent brain damage. Whitney was never prosecuted in criminal court, but he lost a $1.1 million civil suit.
• His business practices have gotten him in trouble with attorneys general in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

It's very likely he has more skeletons in his closet. That's where you come in. The blogosphere is great at fact-checking. If you have access to any legal, criminal, or government databases, you could very well dig up more information about Whitney that would be useful at trial. If you've had dealings with Whitney or his company, that could be useful, too, especially if you have notes from his company's seminars.

UPDATE: Reed and Whitney have settled as of July, 2005.

Politburo Diktat and Other Bloggy Goodness

Stephen at Politburo Diktat just emailed me to say he had blogrolled me. I hadn't been to his site so I had a look. Wow. If you think VodkaPundit is heavily stylized, you may not be ready for Politburo Diktat. (Stephen: feel free to use that as a tagline. No one ever quotes me in the taglines on their blogs. (Everyone else: wouldn't that last sentence make a good, ironic tagline on your blog?))

Other blogs and discussion sites I've added to my links lately:

• Mark Steyn
• Primal Purge
• Rec.guns Newsgroup
• Rimfire Central
• Security Arms Gun Pics
• Smith &Wesson Forum

In other news, the new Carnival of the Vanities is up, and I'm innit.

Movable Type and Images

So my text was butting up against my pictures. You could really see it when the image was left justified. I fixed it with this addition to my stylesheet:

.blog img {
padding: 0px 6px;
margin: 0px 6px;
}

The "blog img" part says that it only applies to images within the blog class, and not to images on other parts of the page. If you don't have a blog class, use whatever class you use for blog posts. Otherwise, just use "img", but it will apply to all images on your Web pages. That's OK, but be aware that it could cause spacing issues.

The first value (0px) puts zero pixels at the top and bottom. That way the images align with the top of the paragraph. Then second value (6px) puts six pixels of space to the left and right. CSS is pretty flexible. You can also specify one value (which will apply in all four directions) or four values (for top, right, bottom and left - an easy way to remember the order is that it's clockwise starting from the top).

Les Jones is a Gun-toting Capitalist

(The obnoxious title is an experiment to see if I can game my Googlism results.)

Deb is hosting the Carnival of the Capitalists at the Accidental Jedi. This is my first month as a contributor.

I've also started contributing to the Shooter's Carnival. If you haven't visited lately, James Rummel has a bunch of new articles. His articles on holsters and concealed carry are especially good.

Alleged Suspects

Colby Cosh has a darned good point about news coverage of the dramatic video of William Strier shooting a lawyer in Los Angeles:

Is Strier really only "suspected" here? Maybe we could agree to call him "the guy who f*cking shot that other guy in front of a sh*tload of video cameras" instead of a "suspect"? Would that work?

Enter Sandman

I don't know what happened, but I got home last night, went to bed at 7:00, and never woke up until the alarm went off this morning. Tune in Friday.

Terms of Use for LesJones.com

LesJones.com
Terms of Use

By reading, linking to, quoting, printing out, or in any way making use of this Web site's content in any means, place, or forum, you agree to the following:

1. Except where noted, the content on LesJones.com is copyrighted by LesJones.com's owner, presently Les Jones, and is not to be used without permission except as provided herein. All content is provided on an as-is basis, and that no factual statement on this site should be relied upon without further investigation on your part sufficient to satisfy you in your independent judgment that it is true. These terms of use are subject to change, and should be reviewed regularly.

2. Permission is granted to read, quote, cite, link to, print out or otherwise use LesJones.com content, so long as you comply with the terms below.

A. All quotations from LesJones.com will include credit to LesJones.com or to Les Jones and, wherever practicable, a hyperlink of the form http://www.lesjones.com ... to the site.

B. In exchange for the access to LesJones.com content described above, you agree not to sue LesJones.com for its content, whether original or linked or quoted from another source, in any court, on any grounds whatsoever in law or equity. Should you violate this agreement by filing such a lawsuit, you agree to pay LesJones.com's owner or owners the sum of one million dollars ($1,000,000) as liquidated damages, in addition to all attorney's fees, court costs, and other expenses associated with this litigation, and to indemnify and save harmless LesJones.com and its owners from any damage award made against them in such an action. Should this agreement not to sue be held unenforceable by a court of competent jurisdiction, you agree to binding arbitration, with all arbitration expenses to be paid by you. The arbitration panel shalll be composed of three (3) weblog operators selected by LesJones.com's owners or operators from those in the links list on the LesJones.com site. The award in such arbitration shall be limited to (1) a monetary sum not to exceed $10; and (2) the publication of a retraction on the LesJones.com site. Should this arbitration provision be held uneforceable in a court of competent jurisdiction, you agree to accept as liquidated damages in any lawsuit against LesJones.com the sum of ten dollars ($10), and you agree that you will be entitled to no other relief of any kind in law or equity. You agree that all disputes concerning these terms of use or the content of LesJones.com.Com are to be resolved in the courts of Knox County, Tennessee, under the laws of Tennessee and the United States of America.

C. You agree that efforts to obtain LesJones.com content in violation or circumvention of these terms of use constitute a violation of LesJones.com's copyright and you understand and agree that (1) by virtue of this agreement you are estopped from arguing otherwise: and (2) such violations may lead to civil or criminal penalties.

D. If you are a corporation, you agree to provide, upon the filing of any lawsuit or the mailing of any letter threatening legal action, a bond in the amount of one million dollars ($1,000,000) as security against the liquidated damages provided for in paragraph 2.B. above. If you are an attorney or law firm representing a party filing such lawsuit or causing such a letter to be sent, you agree to provide a bond in the same amount as security against the liquidated damages provided for in paragraph 2.B. above unless you have never accessed, viewed, read, or otherwise made use of LesJones.com content in any form.

3. If you do not agree to these terms of use, exit the site immediately, destroy all copies of LesJones.com content remaining in any form on your computer, any other computer or network device under your control, in print form, or on any information storage or retrieval device that you possess or control. Then execute the following affidavit and send it by certified mail to my attorney, Jason Rose, 605 Smithview Dr., Maryville, TN 37803:

Affidavit

I hereby certify under penalty of perjury that I possess no copies of the LesJones.com website in any form whatsoever; that neither I nor any employee or associate will access that site in the future in any form whatsoever; that I will immediately destroy any copies of LesJones.com content that happen to come into my possession. I understand that action contrary to these statements constitutes both perjury and a violation of the LesJones.com Terms of Use, subjecting me to possible civil and criminal liability.

_________
Signed (include date)

_________
Witnessed (notary)

Notary Seal:

My commission expires: ______________

Based on the terms of use created by Glenn Reynolds.

Carnival of the Vanities #64

Signal + Noise has this week's carnival, in an attractive layout with insect photos.

Siflay Hraka has cool pictures of a jumping spider he found.

Everyone likes arthropods, right? P.S. Brian Stewart from the UT Ag. Extension Service identified the spider in the comments of that post. It was a trapdoor spider after all.

Weblog Award Winners Announced

The winners have been announced. I didn't win, but Rocky Top Brigade member BusyMom took home the prize in her category. Congrats!

Carnival of the Vanities 65

Drumwaster has the latest carnival.

Found at the Carnival: Eric Berlin speculates on Time's Man of the Year 2003.

Blogroll Update

More blogs I like.

Argghhh!!!
Michael Williams
Civilian Gun Defense Blog
Siflay Hraka
CalPundit
Hell in a Handbasket
Wince and Nod

Life in Public

Dang. Chris and Gretchen Parillo - the LockerGnome and the LockerBabe - are no longer together. What a terrible time of the year for a breakup. Via Jeff Jarvis.

Go Read Tim Blair

Tim Blair is on a streak lately.

Read his collection of the best quotes of 2003.

"May I just single out for salutations, on the ‘anti-war’ side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam." -- Guardian columnist Julie Burchill

"The obnoxious garlic-breathed drunken homosexual concentration-camp bullfighter who's into organised crime." -- Mark Steyn devises a Single European Stereotype

On predictions of the worst books of 2004:

Hans Blix details the search for weapons of mass destruction in Disarming Iraq (Bloomsbury, March). Borders fun: hide all of Blix’s books, then tell the staff you can’t find any. Send them all on a storewide search. Repeatedly ask if they “need more time”. If they get close to your hiding place, deny them access.

And the all-purpose Democrat response for 2004.

Username blog, password blog

Jeff Jarvis has a useful suggestion:

And so I'm surprised we haven't seen people creating a universal username and password (blog/blog) for sites that demand onerous registration: Try to get into the site with the blog/blog combination; if it doesn't work, register under that combination to do the next guy in a favor.

Works for me. I'll remember that the next time I hit a site that requires registration.

Carnival of the Capitalists

This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up at The American Mind.

Happy 2004 (also Wireless, Laptops, and a Mac for Sale)

Happy New Year's to all of my readers. For the first time since I had chicken pox a decade ago I didn't go out for New Year's Eve. I've had a cold this week, so I was a little tuckered, and Melissa and I were laptop-shopping before the end of the 2003 tax year.

We bought a his-and-hers set of Compaq 2190s from BestBuy. If you're looking for an affordable laptop, these can't be beat. Very quick and only 650 Samollians. (The extended 3 year warranty is about $250 per. For that price we could nearly buy a spare. We'll take our chances, thanks.)

BTW, if you're at BestBuy and want to bypass the kiosk screen and actually use the laptop, type Control-M. The local store uses "bestbuy" as the password on some of their computers.

Power Mac for Sale
Yep, after publishing a book about Macs, I'm going WinTel. For what I do, Windows is just as good, the hardware is faster and cheaper, and there's more software.

If anyone in the Knoxville area wants a Power Mac G3 233 I'll make you a deal. 40 GB HD, 320 MB RAM, dual-port USB card, and I'll throw in a Kensington trackball, an 17" Apple monitor, and any other Mac-only goodies and cables I have in the computing labor-a-tory. Call it 200 bucks and I'll buy you a beer and regale you with stories. LATER: I just realized I won't need my Mac software anymore, so I'll throw in licenses for Microsoft Office, Filemaker Pro, Norton, and whatever else I've got.

Wi-Fi
I also used the time at home to set up a LinkSys wireless 54G router. It was fairly easy, though I've set up my share of modems, ISDN modems, cable modems, firewalls, etc., so I'm not the best judge. I came this close to buying a D-Link system because it was cheaper, but another customer at the store said he bought one and couldn't get more than 20 feet from the access point before the signal petered out. After hours of work with tech support he swapped it for the LinkSys and hadn't had any problems since.

Sure enough, our Linksys is working great with no tweaking. The G routers and cards are backwards-compatible with 802.11B, and offer higher speed and longer range in G mode. G is now a standard, so it's a safe time to buy. Be sure to change the default password/SSID (linksys). To keep people from roaming on your network, turn off SSID broadcasting. Even better: use the MAC address filtering so that only your computers/NICs can access the wireless network. Come Friday I'll pick the brains of the security engineers at work. Meanwhile, here are more Wi-Fi security tips.

The Power of Comments

One reason I prefer blogs with comments: the commentors can make such good points.

From a Winds of Change article about John Dean and Wesley Clark, reader Mike G. comments:

As every management book ever written says, if you don't like the way the game is going, you need to change the rules, the playing field, the objective of the game. The Bushies, with their mostly CEO backgrounds, have done a Steve Jobs on the problem. They're not buying influence with dictators any more, they're building a whole new country in one of the worst old ones. ...

Like their policies or not, it's hard to escape the notion that they're simply several years ahead of the Democrats on what foreign policy is like now. They're making iPods and selling 99 cent songs through iTunes while the Democrats are still trying to prevent music piracy and protect margins on CDs.

From Spoons' post on Chicago's status as the murder capital of the U.S. despite the city's gun control laws, reader Marks comments:

You know, it would really be inappropriate, and maybe downright mean, to place billboards on the edges of town, big signs that said "Come on in, criminals! We're unarmed" and "Chicago is a criminal-friendly city" That's what they've done in principal already, all they lack is the signage.

Blogroll Changes

A couple of people who were already on my blogroll asked me to blogroll them. Both of them were listed under a heading other than "Bloggers" (like "Guns") which tells me that was a bad design on my part. I've moved all bloggers under the Bloggers heading.

New to the blogroll:

Neal Boortz
Jeff Jarvis

On an unrelated note, I added an Economics category for posts. At some point I need to re-think my categories altogether.

I Always Knew He Was a Cat Lover at Heart

Someone's having fun with Acid Man's blog while he's away.

New Trackback Links

Since switching to MoveableType I've had trackback links, but you had to click on a link to see who's linking to me. I've switched to inline trackback links, so that it's easier to follow the trackbacks.

Traffic Spike

I was checking stats and noticed that my average daily page views had shot up from 800 or so a day to 5,000, with a peak of 20,000.

It wasn't an Instalanche. It was a Janetlanch. In the days after the Super Bowl half time incident, the referal logs show a ton of search engine visitors interested in Janet Jackson's boobies. Apparently sex sells. Who knew?

New Comment Code

Thanks to AlphaPatriot, I've added a new feature to the main page. You can see who has commented before you open the comments. Here's the code:

<MTComments lastn="7" sort_order="ascend">

<br />&rarr; <em>
<$MTCommentAuthorLink show_email="0"$> had something to say</em>

</MTComments>

1st Blogiversary

Today is the one year Blogiversary for LesJones.com. On this day one year ago I wrote these words that changed the world:

Hey, Melissa. I just created a blog!

Since then, mankind has made the first tentative steps towards exploring the cosmos. The two Germanys have been re-united. And four young lads from Liverpool taught the world a new kind of music. I hope the next year will be just as exciting.

Wintery Mix of Non-blogging

Had a little emergency tonight, which turned out fine, no big deal. But by the time I got out of that and picked up milk, bread, and driveway salt on the way home it was almost midnight.

So, no free ice cream today, unless this storm hits and hits hard, in which case I may get to stay home and make some free snow cream.

Bright spot of the night: asking "Where's Candy? The person, not the delicious treat." And then telling Da Goddess's joke.

Off to the Eye Doctor, Back Soon

I noticed a couple of Movable Type blogs had Preview buttons in their comments. Pretty cool, thought I. Maybe I'll add those to my Movable Type blog.

While I was responding to a comment from Spoons I realized I had them all along. The eyes are 20/20 with corrective lenses. It's the brain they're connected to that needs glasses.

RDF Question

I'm looking for ways to cut my page loading time, which is currently pretty atrocious. My HTML is enormous right now, and one reason is the RDF tags for my entries. In some cases, the RDF tags are bigger than the post.

I've read a little about RDF, but I'm not sure if it's doing me any good. Is anyone actually using it right now? Does it help my search engine ranking?

I poked around MovableType, but didn't see where to get rid of the RDF tags. It doesn't seem to be a preference, and I couldn't see it in the main index template.

Here's the RDF for this post:

Clicking Around the Web

The Onion: Pregnant Woman Acting Like No One Ever Got Pregnant Before.

Via Rebel Yell I found FlashBunny, which is as addicting as promised, especially for gun lubbers.

Kehaar at Siflay Hraka suggests a solution for Haiti's long-standing problems - let them become a U.S. territory.

Michael Williams notes the problems with aid to foreign countries: much of it goes to kleptocratic governments that divert aid money from ordinary people to the ruling class, and countries that get money from us on average vote against us in the U.N.

Boots and Sabers links to a letter from an elected official who isn't afraid to speak uncomfortable truths about race and government.

Jacob Levy points to Bush's shenanigans with his bioethics advisary council that undermines its scientific and objective credibility.

Straight White Guy has a brutally funny comparison of love, lust, and marriage.

Laura Miller reviews a new history of the bombing of Dresden, using information that became available following the reunification of Germany. The casualty figures for Dresden have been exagerrated in the past, and the city's role in the war effort has been minimized. Interestingly, Kurt Vonnegut based much of his information on - and directly referred to - David Irving's 1963 book,The Destruction of Dresden. Irving has since become best known as a Holocaust denier, and his earlier research is being re-evaluated.

Just because: great pictures of spring in Appalachia from SmokyBlog. Queen Medb's bulbs are coming up, too. (So are Melissa's.)

New word for writers via Filthy Hippy Speak: Hooptedoodle

Random Links

John Stossel's Confessions of a Welfare Queen discusses welfare for the rich, corporate welfare, and abuse of eminent domain.

Reason's Ronald Bailey recounts the history of the politicization of science at the White House level.

Clayton Cramer blogs an example of protectionism causing a loss of jobs in the U.S. Protection against sugar imports is causing U.S. candy workers to lose their jobs to foreign competition and offshoring.

Alex Tabarrok points to Ecuador's new insistence on punctuality. "Hundreds of institutions ranging from local councils to airlines have signed up to a promise to keep to time. Stragglers are barred from entering meetings. Hotel-style door signs have appeared in offices and schools. On one side, they say “Come in: You're on time'' and on the other “Do not enter: the meeting began on time.'' A local newspaper is publishing a daily list of public officials who turn up late to events."

Australian blogger and journalist Tim Blair caught Uli Schmetzer fabricating a source for a quote in a Chicago Tribune article. All of Schmetzer's work is now under review.

Dodgeblogium has the latest Carnival of the Vanities.

Grab Bag O' Links

AlphaPatriot points to an analysis or Bush and Kerry that says neither is as extreme as the media portrays them.

SouthKnoxBubba points to RTBers in the media.

Stephen Green catches John Kerry still changing positions on the Iraq war.

Tim Blair notes that some Guantanamo Bay prisoners speak fondly of their experience there.

Alex Tabarrok offers more proof that the less you pay for healthcare, the more you use.

Tyler Cowen has a fascinating history of countries that have switched which side of the road they drive on.

Carnival of the Vanities

Encyclopeteia is hosting Carnival of the Vanities #79.

Dancing Baloney - One Week Only

How about that dancing title bar? I didn't know you could do that in modern browsers.

Yeah, it's obnoxious. I'll take it down. Eventually. Meanwhile here's the code.

No Blogging Today

Went to a funeral Friday, a wedding in Cades Cove on Saturday, and a birthday party in Maynardsville on Saturday. Worn out.

Carnival of the Vanities

Southern Musings has the latest Carnival of the Vanities.

A Definitive Answer

LongPauses answers the question, "Can a mid-90s Nissan Altima take out a four foot, solid brick mailbox?"

Happy Birthday to VodkaPundit

He just hit the big 3 5. Funny, we're within six months of the same age and both married gals named Melissa. And of course there's the immoderate drinking. I wonder if he's a gun nut?

Blogroll Changes

Here's a long-overdue update. New to the blogroll:

Charles Krauthhammer
Classical Values
Da Goddess
Feces Flinging Monkey
Protein Wisdom
Triticale

I added these in the last few months, but never mentioned it:

Geek With a 45
Jane Galt
Joel Rosenberg
MadOgre
Publicola

New gun-related links:

Hi Powers and Handguns
National Rifle Association
Shooter's Carnival (I had this listed under associations, but not under guns)
The High Road

Welcome to everyone.

Michael Totten Got Downsized

But he's taking it well, and he's looking on the bright side. It may give him time to work on his writing career and/or knock up his wife. (I made up that last part, but it may be prophetic.)

Blogroll Changes

It went ages between blogroll updates the last time. Now I'm down to eight days between changes.

A Small Victory
Balloon Juice
Bastard Sword (tons of good stories lately)
Jacqueline Passey (the only blogger I've seen covering the Internet personals scene)
Virginia Postrel (not blogrolling her before was an oversight, since I frequently link to her)
xrlq

Welcome, all. If you haven't visited these guys, give them a shot.

Changes in Blogging

The vacation last week was great. Among other things, it gave me a chance to think about how blogging fits into my life. I love it, but it's taking too much of my time, and it's becoming too insistent a demand on my time, so I'm making some changes. I'm not giving up blogging, but I plan on blogging less.

I'll still write the Thursday Gun Links. So many of the bloggers I read cover guns that I never want for material.

I'll still write the Tuesday E-commerce Report. It's actually fairly demanding: there's little material out there to link, so the report is mostly original writing each week. It's worth doing, though, because it's the most unique thing on the site, and it encourages me to do research in my professional field. It's already done some good in focusing my thoughts, and in attracting some consulting contacts.

The easiest thing for me to cut back on is blogging about current political events. Most politics is the politics of the last five minutes. I work a full-time job, so it's impossible for me to have timely coverage. There are other people in a better position to cover those issues. In the big picture, covering the latest fusillade between Democrats and Republicans isn't the best use of my free time. In a week they'll be on to different talking points, and I won't be able to get that part of my life back.

The other change is that I'm going to put blogging at a lower priority. If I have to make sacrifices in another part of my life in order to blog, I just won't blog. Blogging is fun, and occasionally important, but it's less important than family, friends, and work, so I'm putting it in its proper place.

Even Less Blogging!

I'm enjoying not blogging so much that I'm going to keep it up through the rest of the week. Later.

SayUncle and SayAunt Are About to be SayParents

The cake's almost out of the oven.

Top Commentors on LesJones.com

Thanks to all of the great folks commenting on my blog.

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And the runners-up:

• Barry
• Chris Wage
• Manish
• SayUncle
• Steve K
• Thibodeaux
• Tom Girsch
• Triticale

MT Blacklist Installed

I had a persistent "Online Casino" spammer this week. I'd delete 30 comment spams, and a couple of hours later he'd post more.

That gave me the motivation I needed to install Jay Allen's MT Blacklist to block comment spam. I had to use the "less easy" installation option, but even that took less than 30 minutes start to finish. With the easy option it would have taken 10 minutes. If you've installed CGIs before, it's a snap.

Bite me, spammers.

Most Comment Spam Ever

I started deleting a few spams this morning, which was easy thanks to Jay Allen's MT-Blacklist. After deleting 25 (the default setting), there were more. So I deleted another 25. Then I noticed the comment count:

My comment count should be about 1500 or so. A spammer hit my site with almost 3,000 comment spams, which works out to three comments for every post I've written in a year and a half. Lousy SOB. I'm cleaning them up right now with MT-Blacklist. If I hadn't installed it the other week I'd sure be installing it now. Clearly, the spammers are using automated spam-posting tools, and bloggers need automated spam-deleting tools.

LATER: Finished. Here's a tip that helped speed up comment deletion tremendously: uncheck the "Rebuild the relevant entries after comment deletion" box in MT-Blacklist. Otherwise the comment gets deleted, then Movable Type rebuilds the page the comments are on (Movable Type is notoriously slow at rebuilding pages).

Unchecking that box also prevents some problems with 500 Internal Server errors during the deletion process. I deleted all the spam via MT-Blacklist, then rebuilt the site using Movable Type's Rebuild Site button. Also, you can go into MT-Blacklist's Configure screen and change the default from 25 to something higher. I discovered that I was able to delete 1000 spams at a time, as long as "Rebuild the relevant entries after comment deletion" was unchecked.

LATER STILL: LateFinal got hit with 1,000 spams last night, and I'd bet there are other blogs getting hit. For reference purposes, the spam on my site came from the royaladult domain.