Jeez, where have I been?

Wow, I just figured out it's been awhile since I've been on here. I guess I should get off my butt and post some more. I'll be working on that in the future to push more updates here instead of just Twitter. More to follow...

Just a quick update

GenCon Indy is next week for those of you who don't know, so I'm going to make the annual pilgrimage to Indianapolis next Tuesday to work the show for my favorite Tournament Organizer and good friend. Unfortunately, the wife and kids are not making the trip this year, so that's a big bummer for me. I'll try to update from there and maybe start a Flickr stream with sights from the show.

Alex Albrecht's Secret Cobra Army?

I gotta pimp this out because it's really cool. There's tons of WoW sites out there today, but I've seen none like this. Project Lore from occasional game show contestant, DiggNation and Totally Rad Show host Alex Albrecht is live. The site is for strategy guides, videos, etc. The thing that makes this site unique is that it puts 4 of 5 party members in a room with pimp systems, video caps all the screens, AND videos the players (minus the gent not in the room obviously) and their witty, catty banter - or as the site puts it: Five Dudes. Four Cameras. One World of Warcraft. Personally I love the site and the video content. I'm really looking forward to more since I've run maybe 2 instances the entire time I've been in Outland (yeah, I know, lame).

Sorry Obama, my kids don't need to learn Spanish

Thanks for one of my all time favorite people, John C. Dvorak (the best and only curmudgeon in tech) and his blog, for the link to this interesting tidbit on why we as Americans don't need to learn multiple languages from the American Chronicle.

Personally, I took 4 years of Spanish in grammar school and also can't put together a grammatically correct sentence outside of "Where is the bathroom?" and "Beer please." However, the national language is English. To head off all of the arguments that this is a nation of immigrants, I'll agree with you on that point. However, when that statement was first made, the immigrants had the understanding that they would need to learn English to adapt to the new environment. That's definitely not the case today. California is a prime example. If I recall correctly, the electoral ballot is in 17 different languages. How is this making people adapt to the English speaking environment?

Pelosi's not happy with recent SCOTUS Second Amendment Ruling, now wants to go after the First Amendment?!?!

Big props to Slashdot for bringing this Chicago Boyz article out into mainstream (at least mainstream geekdom and the blogosphere, not to mention a new RSS subscription for me). Pair this with the Fairness Doctrine resurrections she's pushing on in Congress, and she's making an end run around the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech clause.

Government is supposed to be open to it's citizenry. Steamrolling the former above does nothing to make it operate outside of public scrutiny, making the purpose of the Second Amendment even more clear and pertinent. Not to mention even limiting the interaction between Congressman and constituent - pushing the Congress more in to an Ivory Tower. Congress should be encouraged, if not mandated, to use new social media outlets - such as blogs, FriendFeed, Twitter, and the like to get MORE information out to and input from those that they represent.

I was just commenting to a friend about this that (insert nefarious accent here) "Ze Public Information Bureau ees now open!"

Identity protection of sensitve assets - not at the New York Times

The New York Times really got this one wrong. The editor's remarks about revealing the name of a top CIA Interrogator (who has since moved to the private sector) are WAY off base. That's just about as bad as outing an undercover cop or a CURRENT covert agent in an operational theater (not like Valerie Plame, who was no longer a covert agent when she was outed by her own husband and Robert Novak).

The editor goes on to say that they have withheld articles/names when danger was imminent. In today's environment, we can't say that danger is imminent, especially to a single individual who may be a high priority target to Al Qaeda. We're making significant inroads in breaking/peering in to the intelligence and operations networks of the wierd beards and other folk who wish to do us harm. For the Times to go out of their way and out this guy after talking to everyone short of the Director of the CIA - who all advised not to reveal his name - is nothing short of treasonous.

Interwebz File Drops

I happened to be poking around for something similar to Rapidshare (I really don't like it by the way) and ran in to a service called Drop. It looks really promising and they have a bunch of features to make it ubiquitous. The 100MB limit is fairly good and should allow me to do what I need to do (nothing illegal here, move along citizen!)

Up and running (more like limping)...

Well, I've finally got off my ass and started a blog. I'm pushing a bunch of data in the sidebar for you to peruse/read/reject/ignore so enjoy that. The design is still a work in progress so more content and design will be coming in the near future. Hope you enjoy!