aubreyturner.org

I went to see Identity this evening.  I’m still cogitating on my opinion of the movie.  Perhaps a few more Jack-and-colas will unlock my true thoughts on the topic.  Or something.

Since my cellular contract expired at the beginning of the month, I’ve been contemplating a new phone.  The one I have now is two years old and I’ve abused it quite a bit in that time.  Since it appears that cellular number portability isn’t going to be implemented any time soon (and I didn’t find any other carriers that I liked enough to hassle with getting a new number), I went to the Cingular kiosk in the local mall to renew my contract so I could get a new phone and a new rate plan.  Cingular doesn’t have a very large selection of phones available, but after a bit of consideration I decided on the Nokia 6340i.

One of the things I was glad to see among the phones that were available is that the race to build the smallest phone is finally over.  My previous phone was a Nokia 8260, which was technically a good phone.  But after spending two years with it, I learned that something that small isn’t really practical in everyday use.  My fingers were too big for the buttons, causing me to misdial numbers or make mistakes entering passcodes.

But what really inspired this post is the fact that the new phone has an IR feature that allows it to exchange information with computers and handhelds.  I usually dread having to enter all those numbers from my old phone into the new phone using the cumbersome alphabetic entry method that is required on cell phones (since they only have a numeric keypad).  However, with this one I just turned on the IR receive feature in the phone, pointed it at my Palm Vx and selected the “Beam address” option in the Palm for each person I wanted to add to the phone.  Further, the people at Nokia got their act together and created true address book entries for the phone directory.  This means that I can have several different numbers for the same person and they’ll all be subentries under their name.  In the past I was forced to create separate entries for each number for a person.

It’s the small things that make really make a difference in my experience of a product.  So far, this has been fairly pleasant.  If I get really adventurous I may enable internet access on this phone just to see if it lives up to all the hype I’ve been hearing about it (it’s only $3.99 per month).

An old post of mine on the Dixie Chicks seems to have attracted a response (I need to remember to start turning off comments on old posts).

It’s been a trying morning here so far, so my patience is stretched a bit thin.  Here’s the comment that was left:

I have to say that country music lecterns can’t and won’t stand by their own. We are all entitled to speak our minds and yes – that is a right that all Americans fight for everyday.

EVERY AMERICAN SUPPORTS THE TROOPS HOWEVER NOT EVERY AMERICAN SUPPORTS THE POLITICAL VIEW OF THE AMINSTRATION.

THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO AND EVERY SOUTHERNER AND COUNTRY MUSIC LISTERN SHOULD TAKE NOTICE.

DON’T HATE THE DIXIE CHICKS FOR STANDING THEIR GROUND.

Stand up to everyone who brings their children to CD bashings that local radio stations host. We should all be ashamed of parents who teach their children to hate others for not agreeing with their political beliefs.

That’s UN- AMERICAN.

Once again, this commenter demonstrates the fact that so many people don’t understand the true meaning of free speech.  Free speech does not mean that you can say whatever you want without consequences to your friendships or career. 

Free speech simply means that the government isn’t standing over your shoulder ready to haul you off to an acid bath or cut your tongue out if you say something the government doesn’t like.

As a free citizen, I have an absolute right to disagree with someone and to withhold support from them if I choose.

There seems to be this sentiment from some quarters that we should somehow ignore what others say and continue to support them no matter what they say.  This seems to include the idea that “standing your ground” is somehow such a noble act that it negates the content of the ideas expressed while standing that ground.  This is complete and utter crapola.

Of course, the commenter couldn’t make her point without resorting to that old canard about hate.  This has absolutely nothing to do with hate and if she’d be honest with herself, she’d realize that.  To compare it to hate is to unnecessarily polarize the debate.  Of course, that seems to be a standard tactic amongst those who don’t understand the debate or would like to focus attention away from it.

Let’s make this absolutely clear once again, just in case some people aren’t getting it:
   Free speech isn’t free of consequences.

Don’t expect me to continue to shell out my hard-earned money to support someone that I don’t like.  To demand that I do so out of some misguided respect for someone “standing their ground” is what is truly un-American.

A man in Missouri filed a civil rights complaint against a radio station that allegedly denied his request to dedicate a song on the air because he stuttered.

If it is true that he was denied air time because of his stutter, it’s cruel, but it isn’t a violation of civil rights.  The station owns the transmitter and has control over who goes on air.  I have a hard time with people who go to such great lengths to force a private entity to bend to their wishes.  It’s unfortunate that people have such a poor grasp on the concept of rights.  But it’s about what we should expect given the poor overall state of education that people are getting in the area of the constitution and civil rights.

Watching tonight’s episode of CSI I was struck by just how gaunt Bobcat Goldthwait looks these days.  I remember him from Police Academy back in the 80’s.  It doesn’t look like he’s been doing so good lately.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say Happy Birthday to my sister, who turned 30 today:

I hope she doesn’t kill me for telling everyone about that….  But really, 30 isn’t so bad.  Besides, I didn’t upload that picture I found of you from the 80’s…

Some quick thoughts:

• It’s too damn nice outside (around 80°F, sunny, nice breeze) to be stuck in this office.  I feel like the cat that’s been left inside to stare out the window.
• I hereby declare that I’m fed up with the use of the word leverage.  If I hear that word and there’s not a lever involved with lifting something it really grates on my nerves.  Perhaps I should leverage my hatred of that word and go do something productive….
• Which reminds me… the word solution is not to be used as a verb.  You have been warned.

There’s an old saying that the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.  I would love to have one of these to replace my two-year old Palm Vx, but aside from my living room, I don’t go to many places that have 802.11b access.

I saw this dumb law (scroll down to Seattle) as a quote at Slashdot this morning, and it amused me greatly.

Seattle

• You may not carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length.

I will admit that I’m easily amused, though.

I went to the range today and spent most of the time trying to figure out what was wrong with my Witness .45 Tactical.  It had developed the habit of misfeeding on the next-to-last round in the magazine.  I purchased a new magazine recently and it seemed to function fine for the first 100 rounds.  However, in the next 50 rounds it started doing it even with the new magazine, except on the third round remaining.  As an experiment I let the gun sit and cool between sessions and the problem seemed to go away.  I’m suspecting that it’s some weird combination that happens when the gun gets hot.  Or maybe I should just take it to a gunsmith instead of wasting all that time.

Today was a weird day.  I guess I was tired and I’ve had a lot on my mind, but I felt like I was just going through the motions, and my marksmanship was OK, but not up to par for me.  Maybe part of it was that I was disappointed that a friend of mine couldn’t make it because of car trouble.  Who knows, but something’s definitely wrong if I’m not having fun at the range.