Friday, February 09, 2007

Just More...uh...Stuff


Overall we prefer Gmail over all other webmail applications because performance (speed) is consistently fast, and emails can be tagged making search much more effective. They also offer more storage and other features, and it’s free. However, Yahoo and Live Hotmail offer more mainstream Outlook-like user interfaces (although Live Hotmail does not allow you to access other email accounts from their application), whereas Gmail takes some time to get used to. If you are looking for speed and tagging is important, Gmail is for you. If you are looking for the closest thing to Outlook online, go with Yahoo Mail.
There’s a neat three-way comparison chart of available features, too.
Everyone suspected that the investors, founders and early employees of YouTube made tidy sums when it was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion in stock late last year.
[…]
A founder and YouTube’s chief executive Chad Hurley received 694,087 shares of Google and an additional 41,232 in a trust. Based on Google’s closing price yesterday of $470.01, the shares are worth more than $345 million.
Another founder, Steven Chen, received 625,366 shares and an additional 68,721 in a trust, for more than $326 million.
[…]
When the deal was announced in October, YouTube was less than two years old and had about 70 employees. Several of the early employees are listed in the filing statement as owning thousands of Google shares.
That’s a lot of beer. And a Ferrari. Or three. Assuming the stock recipients are selling their stock. And they are.
So…I’m a little slow sometimes (ed: sometimes? How about MOST of the time? Shuddup!). I’m watching C-SPAN this morning, and Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army Chief of Staff, is testifying before the House Appropriations Defense sub-committee. He’s looking pretty sharp in his new Army Dress Blues. “Dress Blues?” Yep. Complete with Civil War era rank epaulettes. I didn’t realize the Army has changed its uniform, but they did—last summer. You can see it here.
Lileks to the rescue! I’m fond of describing myself as socially moderate and conservative when it comes to fiscal and national defense matters. But…what exactly is a “social moderate,” anyway? James provides the definitions, thusly:
Social liberal: believes Howard Stern should be able to say the F word not just on satellite radio, but broadcast as well.
Social moderate-liberal: same as above, but wishes Howard wouldn’t say it so much.
Social moderate: believes Howard Stern should not say the F word on broadcast radio, but has no desire to control the content of satellite channels to which people freely subscribe.
Social moderate-conservative: Howard should definitely not say it on broadcast radio, and while he probably has the right to say it on satellite, Senate hearings into decency on cable and satellite stations isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Social conservative: doesn’t believe Howard Stern should say the word, and if you subscribe to satellite radio, you’re supporting Howard Stern, and have no right to call yourself a social conservative.
Yep. That’s me!
He kept them…but you probably already know this. The NYT:
Mr. Edwards announced on Thursday, after 36 hours of deliberation, that he would keep on his campaign staff two liberal feminist bloggers with long cybertrails of incendiary comments on sex, religion and politics.
Deliberations over the fate of the two bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, created a crisis in Mr. Edwards’s nascent campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 and illuminated the treacherous road ahead as candidates of both parties try to harness the growing power of the online world. The case of the two women had left Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, with difficult choices.
Difficult choices, indeed. On the one hand, if Edwards had fired them, the nutroots would have had his head, figuratively speaking. They were already going down that road. On the other hand, his disingenuous rationale for keeping them just reinforces his hypocrisy, and that of the two bloggers in question. Marcotte’s and McEwan’s “apologies” said, basically, “it was just satire, we weren’t serious.” In pig’s eye. They were damned serious, and that’s the frickin’ problem. Jeff Goldstein says it best:
Of course it was her intent. Just as it was McEwan’s intent. And worst of all, Edwards knows it. That he has pretended to take the two at their word, in an ostentatious gesture of “trust,” is precisely the kind of staged treacle that makes people doubt the sincerity of politicians; and that both Marcotte and McEwan have assured their own personal Patriarch that they’ll behave, now that he’s promoted them to the grownups’ table, is, to put it bluntly, one of the most pathetic public surrenderings of personal integrity I’ve ever seen.
Seriously. We should feel bad for them.
That is, were we to actually believe they meant any of it. Because how this plays out for the netroots is this way: either they are cheering on an ideological sellout, or they are knowingly and happily embracing an opportunistic liar. So. Congrats to them. Once again, they’ve covered themselves in white hot sticky glory!
What he said.
Today’s Pic: More Adolphus. The pic on the right is an interior shot of the ex-girlfriend in front of one of those Flemish tapestries, and the exterior (at the top) is a more-detailed shot of some of the stonework on the façade.
Lou mentioned in yesterday’s comments that she would post about the Adolphus on her blog. And she has. Great story, that!
Still February of 2004. Still in Dallas. As always, click the pic for the larger version(s).

8 comments:

  1. It was an area very much like your picture that the herd had gathered for after dinner drinks. Quite lovely.

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  2. Looks like a really neat hotel. Fancy Schmanzy!

    I was looking back at old posts of yours, specifically Nov 30th-Dec 1st 2005. A day I remember very well. You talked about the dust storm on Nov. 30th and how the sun was reddish-brown and how the weather was beautiful but seldom life-threatening. Just curious, did you know that half the county was on fire that day? LOL! That was the day myself, my 3 year old son and 11 day old baby were evacuated from our home and nearly 3/4 of my ranch burned and came a bit too close for comfort to my house. The school was evacuated as well and children taken to town. Everything around the whole town burned except for the town itself. It was an eerie feeling driving home that night to see if I still had a home and to see all the cedar fence posts still on fire lighting the way. For days all we could smell was smoke, and the duststorms that year were really bad. I was vacuuming nearly every day. That fire burned nearly 30,000 acres I think.

    Sorry, your blog, not mine. LOL! Just sharing with ya. Funny how we live so close to each other, but that day, two beings doing different things. Hopefully the air force won't bomb on windy days in the future? LOL!

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  3. Jenny said: Just curious, did you know that half the county was on fire that day?

    Not on that day, I didn't, Jenny. I only learned about the fire(s) after the fact. I think a reader commented on the fires that day, or perhaps a day or two later. In any event, I wouldn't have treated the subject as lightly as I did, had I but known. I've had to evacuate on short-notice before...and it's a very scary thing!

    Feel free to comment for as long as you like, Jenny. The space is virtually unlimited, thanks to our good friends at Google. :-)

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  4. Wow, Jenny. You had a traumatic time, all right. So sorry you went through that - and with a 3 year old and infant, too!
    You mentioned the air force? Was it responsible in some way? I never heard that. (It wasn't in wikipedia, anyway!)

    Talking about fires in our town brings up sad memories with many of us, too. We still go on emotional "fire alert" whenever there is a Santa Ana wind condition.

    Here is a site that explains our situation better than I could.
    Laguna fires of 1993
    If you take a look at the second and third photos, they show what I saw when I raced up to get my kids - one at the elementary and the other at middle school - both on the top of the hill. In fact, my oldest may have been in one of those school buses you see in the photo there. He had already been evacuated to our high school.

    Fortunately, we were able to wait it out at our house, which was in a safer part of town.

    Maybe I'll write about it on my blog someday... but it's been written about by so many others, who lost so much more than we did.

    I hope your land is recovering, Jenny, and that this will never again happen to you or those you love.

    We'll hog Buck's comments, since he said he's not in the mood for posting yet today... :)

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  5. Buck, I wasn't meaning that you took the events lightly. Just that the sun that day was colored that way because of not only the dust in the air, but the smoke, too.

    Bec, I've heard about those Santa Ana Winds! Those are scary too!

    Winter/spring 2005-2006 was a massive fire season for us. That particular fire was caused by the Air Force (I harbor no hard feelings and hold all the armed services in the highest regard, BTW). Cannon AFB in Clovis was put on the BRAC list May 2005. The whole town rallied and fought to have it removed. Just west of my ranch (we have 1,200 acres and raise black and red angus beef cattle) is the Melrose Bombing Range. Well, the governor and the BRAC folks were at Cannon that day and the Air Force was showing off how useful Cannon is because we have a bombing range right here. But it was a very windy day, and the bomb they dropped caught fire. We also had had a very wet summer but dry fall and there was flamable vegatation (ie tumbleweeds) galore. My husband saw the smoke from town (he was hauling hay that day) and asked me to check on it and check the cattle. At that time, the fire was about 7 miles away and wind was from the SW. An hour later, the wind shifted and blew the fire straight towards us. I was evacuated so quickly, my lunch was left uneaten by the computer, and I was wearing my grubbiest clothes it seemed. The guy that got me out had the toddler in his carseat before I knew what was going on. In the end, it took about 200 fire fighters from 14 towns (most volunteer) to get the fire out.

    I searched our newspaper and looks like a couple of the articles are still there, but no pictures. I put a few pictures on my family website: http://www.jandjessary.com/december05

    The Air Force owned up to what happened and compensated us for our burnt fences and damaged property, as well as some loss of income (it burned a semi load of our hay, and since it burned up nearly all of our grass, we had nothing to feed our cows and had to supplement feed them). They were really great about the whole thing. Amazingly, only one habited house was destroyed (the fire did take care of some abandoned eyesores and probably improved some land because of it! LOL!).

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  6. Wow, Bec...that was some fire! And from the sounds of it, quite an anxious time.

    Just out of curiosity, any further developments, re: this?

    The intense overgrazing and soil destruction - far beyond what is reasonable - is caused by too many goats kept in too small an area for too long a time, and is a calamity in the making.

    Prepare for the day when, after a few weeks of heavy El Nino rains, the entire denuded and rocky hillside above Three Arch Bay comes roaring downwards, destroying many homes and possibly killing people....


    Wasn't it last year that there were all those landslides? Or the year before? One oculdn't hardly watch the news without seeing another landslide that year, but I think most were up in Ventura County and the coast north of LA, IIRC. Time does SO fly...

    Jenny, that was a great description of the fire. And I'm sure it was terrifying to (a) have to flee for your life and (b) not knowing if your home was still there, or not. And I just sat inside all day, fat (figuratively speaking), dumb (literally speaking), and happy...

    Your home page is cool! You have some great "baby" pictures, as well!! I spent quite a bit of time looking around, but didn't sign your guest book. I should go back and do that... I particularly like dthe pics of Floyd, but I think the town just has to be seen to be fully appreciated! :-)

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  7. I particularly like dthe pics of Floyd, but I think the town just has to be seen to be fully appreciated! :-)

    LOL! Doesn't take long to see the town, does it? Don't blink, you might miss it! Floyd, aka: the town Alsups forgot. Population about 40. Maybe. When the movie "Believe In Me" was being filmed a couple of years ago, they used the Methodist Church. We went down to check it out. One of the crew asked me (seriously) where the rest of the town was. LOL!

    Glad you enjoyed the website. I desperately need to update it again.

    I remember all those mudslides in CA! That must have been horrible! Good thing about this part of New Mexico, there is no hills to slide from.

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  8. Jenny says: Floyd, aka: the town Alsups forgot.

    Town and Country, too! :-)

    For you non-New Mexicans/West Texans, Alsups (and Town and Country) are the ubiquitous convenience store chains in our neck of the woods. They are literally everywhere. Except Flyod.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask.