William Reardon’s Blog

As Sang no longer sends out links of the crazy shit he finds online, I find myself to being simply one of the unwashed masses checking out Fark. Still, there are upshots, such as this post.

The post in of itself is great (adding to the irony that MoveOn is based out the city that recently voted against US Armed Forces recruiting in high school, as if serving your country is bad), but the true gem was in the comments:

When we acheive victory in Iraq, the Iraqi people win, the US wins, the Republicans win, the Democrats win, and the world wins.

If we were to lose, the only winners would be the terrorists and the Democrats.

A friend on a mailing list described it best:

It’s like watching that old SNL sketch where Michael Jordan becomes the
first black player for the Harlem Globetrotters.

There’s a link to the video of his high school video highlights in this NYT Times article.

If you’re using Firefox on a Mac, you really need to upgrade to 1.5 right away. It’s gotten a spring back in step, most notable on page loads, switching tabs, etc.

(On the downside, I can no longer use about half the Firefox extensions I’ve installed, as they’re not updated for 1.5 yet, but c’est la vie’.)

An artist, Shelley Jackson has put together a fairly novel project, Skin.

Skin is a short story of 2,095 words that will not be printed or produced anywhere but as tattoos on participants in the project. Each participant gets one word (they can pick where the tattoo goes on their body, but not the word) and only they will know the complete story.

I have to admit, I’m fairly curious what the story is. I don’t think I’ll get a tattoo just to find out, but maybe I can talk one of my tattooed friends into doing it. I think I know at least three good candidates. In the meantime, I’ll be limited to trying to piece it together with the help of flickr and Yahoo! Image Search.

After 41 years of permant residency in the United States, my mom’s getting started on applying for citizenship. In filling out the forms, we found out that Freedom isn’t Free: it costs $330 + a $70 biometrics free.

Tonight is Ted Koppel’s last night on Nightline.

Nightline was the first news show I watched with any regularity. He did a great job digging in with guests, always being respectful, but not afraid to ask hard questions or point out they’re not answering them. Their coverage of Katrina was unparalleled, Koppel taking Brown to task on his various claims of ignorance as New Orleans was in the throes of disaster. Having podcasts of the show was pretty terrific too.

Thanks to Audible.com, I listened to a recent interview of him by Terry Gross. Apparently they’ll be changing the format of Nightline (expanding the time & going multi-segment), neither of which Ted seems particularly thrilled about. Understandable, as it basically makes it another Dateline. He wouldn’t say he was doing after the end of the show, but hopefully that means he does have something else planned.

Best of luck, Ted. You’ll have a sizable audience waiting for you when you return.

A BIG congratulations to Dave, Diana and, as of 2pm , their newborn baby girl, Aurelia!

From the pictures she looks absolutely adorable. I’m already back in Chicago for Thanksgiving, but I’m looking forward to meeting her when I get back!

Back from Webmaster World. Lost $200 at various blackjack tables, but, hey, we all have to do our part to keep the lights on in Vegas. Sang recommended the “double your bet everytime you lose” approach, which is fine in general, except if you’re at a $10 minimum table, it only takes 3 bad hands to get $80 on the table… and, of course, that when’s you get two aces (that you have to split, bringing it up to $160, and an A,2 and A,3 just don’t hold up to a dealers 19…).

On the YPN panel, Willian announced the launch of our baby, Ads in RSS. Along withKevin, Marc, and a few others who remain blogless, it’s great to see our little guy reach the light of the day and let people start playing with it.

Hopefully they like it. :-)

Star Wars Meets Transformers:
http://www.starwars.com/collecting/news/hasbro/news20051107.html

A Darth Vader that transformers into a Tie Fighter… I… it…

the awesome… it blinds my eyes.

I’m blogging from Burbank airport, as I’m about to head off to the Webmaster World conference for a couple of days.

If you’re reading this, find me & say hello! (I’ll be the walking lighthouse, possibly wearing a YPN t-shirt if I remembered to bring it.)