so, I worked on layout for Delaney’s page, and damn, I’m way more of a perfectionist on something that’s really mine than stuff I do at work. It’s a hindrance, really, because I over-analyze the tiniest parts and don’t just get on with it, and let it evolve as I’m building. That’s one of the true joys of the web, that it’s never finished….I need to remember that as I’m building this.

I spent about two or three hours so far, and I’ve built two pages. almost.

I’m getting there though, and it will be really special.

I terribly miss my wife and daughter, they left on Tuesday to visit my mother- & sister-in-law. Just thought I’d throw that in there.

Okay, so there are talks of reinstating the national 55MPH speed limit from the “oil shortage” era. Yes, it would save gas, but what the fuck?? For one, we’d be trading money saved from less gasoline consumption for the cost of enforcement. I have no numbers on anything here, I’m shooting from the hip, and I don’t give a fuck. If you want stats and a bibliography, go out and get them.

Better than a national speed limit, IMO, would be to enforce fuel consumption regulations. With the technology we have today, we shouldn’t be building engines that make tons and tons of horsepower. We should be building more fuel efficinet machines. What is the point of having a 300hp Subaru? Sure, it would be fun to drive. But you can’t even USE 300+hp safely on public roads. And you sure as hell don’t need it. My little Protege makes only 130hp and it easily is fast enough to be dangerous. And say we impose the 55mph limit. Why would you need an insane amount of horsepower if you can only legally drive 55? Oh yeah, you wouldn’t.

We haven’t complained about this enough. A 98 Ford Explorer for example gets about 14-15 MPG in town. BOLLOCKS! That is a small SUV, mostly used to haul kids. And Ford sells a shit-ton of them. They ought to be fined for making a rig that can’t get 20MPG. It doesn’t need to be able to tow a house, it needs to be fuel efficient. And Ford can make those gigantic pickups of theirs get about the same mileage. And they are much more powerful. So what the fuck?

Hybrid (gas engine + electric motor) technology is actually doing both for us, making power, and saving gas. The new hybrid Accord will get something like 30MPG in town. While still making more horsepower than the gas-only version. And the gas-only version only gets like 20MPG. SO let’s mandate the shit.

I know, I know, we can;t mandate it, because the politicians are fed by the oil industry. So that could be a while. It’s also exactly why we haven’t worked on efficiency. And why Americans have been convinced they need the biggest, gas sucking-est, earth-murdering SUV they can get their hands on.

This just drives me nuts. We are targeting the wrong parts of the problem. Much like the War on Drugs. Or the War on Terror. Or public school funding. Or…

/rant

My cable modem died a couple of days ago. All the lights still worked and stuff, but it would not connect. So, as a professional troubleshooter, I went through the paces, plugging it in to other cable outlets, leaving it for for an hour or so and trying again, etc. Nothing. So I called BendBroadband and talked to tech support; they wanted me to run through the steps on the sheet of paper from which they were reading, so I acted like I was doing that. Finally, they said, “yep, it’s broke.”

So I went down to their office, ready to give them the piece of shit broken Toshiba modem and drop $80 on a new one. But the dude at the counter was much more helpful, and finally, after 20 minutes of trying to track down a new modem, he decides I can trade my Toshiba straight across for a used, tested Motorola. Just like that, I had a working modem for nothing. It’s even the same model as the new ones they are selling. Wonderful, i tell you.

So Nini went to work today and I got to get up and play with Delaney. It was great, we had a ball. I love playing with DeLa. It’s just magical. Nothing i can really put into words, it’s kinda one of those “if you’ve ever been there you’d know what I was talking about” kind of things. So the morning was better than you can imagine.

And then, I went to hang out with the new guy we hired at work. He’s a DJ type, and he has quite a cool CD mixing setup. All Pioneer, two DJ CD players and a simple mixer. And *dope* music. Turns out, he’s fully connected, and has people like Mark Farina and Julius Papp in his celly’s phone book. Mad, mad cool guy. I hung out and spun (and damn, it’s much MUCH different than vinyl, but still incredibly cool on it’s own merits), for like 5 hours. He was totally stoked that I picked up on the equipment so fast, and actually plugged in his minidisc and started recording me. It was WILD. So look for me on the next Mushroom Jazz.

Anyway, I had an AWESOME day. I hope you did too.

Off to finish Silent Bob Speaks