This is an odd topic for discussion, but this just never ceases to amaze me.

What’s so fascinating you ask?  Why the temperature of my office of course!

As you can see from the lousy pictures I shot, when I got to work at 10:00 AM, the office was at 71F.  (and it actually changed from 70 to 71 as I was about to shoot the picture)  Then at 1:15 PM it hit 86F, turning on the AC.

Okay, this may not seem all that odd, but… it’s only 61F today outside with a lot of wind blowing.  It’s actually fairly brisk if you go outside.  Not in the office though, oh no, it’s shorts weather in here!

Our heating is run on natural gas, a 500 gallon tank powers it, and all winter last year we didn’t even have to refill it we use so little.  I’m not sure what we did when built this building (a 3,000 square foot metal pull building), but this office is sealed up like a submarine it would appear.

The office isn’t huge, but it’s not exactly tiny either.  I’m the only one in the office today, so it’s not excessive body heat… maybe… unless three sleeping cocker spaniels generate a ton of heat, but it was like this before they came to work with me everday.

Either way, it’s October 19th, 86F in my office, and the AC is on… that’s just messed up.

Yesterday, at approximately 5:45 PM, I lost my Internet connection… for 15 hours.  It was due to a horrendous thunderstorm we were having, and everyone in my area went out.  It did teach me some interesting things though.

1. Cable One does a lousy job of updating their national call center on what the heck is going on.  “Well… I think they’re working on the problem.”  Really? It’s seven-hours in to this and you “think”?
2. I am in desperate need of a dial-up ISP as a back-up for Internet access.  As much as it would pain me to be at dial-up speeds, at least I would be able to send out some emails to let people know I’m down instead of calling a friend in Boston to dictate emails to her.
3. If one makes their living on the Internet (blogging and online ecomm stores), being without the Internet is like having both arms and legs tied behind your back… and not in the “fun” way.
4. 15 hours of not checking my RSS reader leads to an annoyingly full reader.
5. I had the most visitors ever to my blog yesterday, and I have no clue why.  Apparently I should disappear more.
6. As I was writing this, my blog went down…

Yes, I am currently in possession of an iPod Touch, but no one freak, it’s not mine, it’s my mom’s. I did not buy a Classic and then turn around and buy yet another iPod… I swear.

All that being said, my mother is currently out of town, so I’m playing with it so I can teach her how to use it when she gets back. So… easy blog entry as I give some thoughts.

I don’t get who this is for.

Seriously, it is absolutely perfect for her needs as she is out on the road 26 weeks a year, and it’s a pain in the ass to haul out her laptop to check for hotel rooms. With this, she just needs a Wi-Fi connection and she’s set. So, perfect for her.

For the general populace… it’s an over-priced toy. Yes, you could say that about any iPod, but this one in particular seems extreme. The biggest selling point, to me at least, is the Internet capabilities, but who’s going to sit around doing serious surfing on a screen this size? And blogging? Forget it, you’d go insane. So when you strip away the Internet portion you’re left with… a really expensive iPod.

You can’t even classify it as a PDA (at least not yet) since you can’t enter new calendar entries from it. You can add new contacts, but not update your calendar? What the heck?!? I will say the keyboard works far better than I expected, but I still don’t see adding too many contacts that way.

Yes, it plays videos too, but the idea of watching a whole movie this way, except for maybe an overseas flight, just doesn’t appeal to me.

There’s no denying it’s small, and there is an allure to that, but, again, the price pops up. For your common, everyday person, I just don’t know if there is enough value here to warrant the price. If you travel a lot on business, I could see it, but if you’re in an office, near computers all the time, then no, there’s nothing here. If you really only 16GB of music storage, save yourself a couple hundred and get yourself an iPod Nano. I would even give college students, with campus wide Wi-Fi a “maybe”, but if you’re between classes, are you looking at a website, or where you’re walking?

Overall it’s cool, perfect for what my mom needs it to do, but not so great for John Q. Public I feel.

Even in Scotland there are music problems it seems.

The Kwik-Fit chain of car service centers in the UK is being sued… for playing their radios too loud. The Performing Rights Society, a UK based organization charged with watching over musical copyrights, is saying that employees of the chain play their personal radios too loud, and this qualifies as a public performance as customers can hear the copyrighted material. Kwik-Fit maintains that the playing of personal radios is not permitted, but the PRS has documented evidence of more than 250 accounts since 2005 in the service centers. The total bill is £200,000 in damages, just a little over $400,000 USD.

“Damages”? Seriously… “damages”?  I have always felt this was such a load of hooey when it comes to “public” performance.  The United States has similar groups that will go in to businesses and demand licensing fees if they feel your radio is over a certain decibel level to make it for more than “personal enjoyment”.  My feeling is if it is true over the air radio, as in a radio station, shut up, and get out of my face.  You’re getting your cut where you need, and if I want to play the radio at a level that *I* enjoy, then I’m going to listen to said radio at that level.  Who are you to say what my “personal enjoyment” level is?  Perhaps I want my chest to thump when I hear a drum beat, that’s my choice.  If someone else can hear it, too bad.

My disgust with the music industry just keeps growing and growing.  At what point will they finally go “Ya know… I think we’ve come up with enough ways to earn money, we’re good.”?  Instead they just keep grabbing more and more, just making people such as myself think “Ya know… I really don’t ever need any more new music, thanks!”

Blog Action Day is upon us, and as I mentioned before, this year’s subject is the environment.

Since each blog that is participating is supposed to write an entry that relates to your blog’s theme, and how you can give tips on being more green, but since my blog tends to wander, I’m sure this post will also.

While I know not all of my readers agree on global warming, I think we can all agree on there is too much pollution in the world. I think we can also all agree we like to save money. So, I thought I would approach everything from the aspect of how you can live a bit greener, and save yourself money at the same time.

Compact Fluorescent Bulbs

My love affair with compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) continues, and shows no signs of dying down. The bulbs are becoming easier and easier to find, with Wal-Mart having displays of them all over the store now, and more vendors carrying them. The prices are steadily dropping, and they really do cut your electric bill by using less wattage for the same amount of light.

I did a full post on these back in June, and since then, I finally had a bulb burn out… 2 & 1/2 years after I put it in. So, yes, I pay more for the bulbs to begin with, but tell me last time you had a standard bulb that was on approximately 8 hours a day last for 2 & 1/2 years. I think we all know how that question will turn out.

Soda Cans

Do you live in a state with a deposit on aluminum cans? Do you remember to save them up, or do you just throw them away? Well, if you toss them out, it must be nice to throw money out in the trash. Do what I did, I got a large cardboard box, lined it with a trashbag, and instead of throwing the cans in the garbage, I shake them out in the sink, and then toss them in the box. No more effort than throwing them in the garbage, and when the box is filled, I just pull the bag out and take it in. No muss, no fuss, and the cans get recycled.

Even if you don’t live in a deposit state, at least look in to recycling centers, or see if your trash collection offers recycling options.

Bottled Water

It seems so innocent when you run in to the convenience store on your way to work, grab a bottled water, and go on your way to the office. Multiply that by 250 working days, and you’ve just used 250 water bottles in a year. Even if you send them to recycling, do you consider the environmental impact of producing the bottle? Never mind shipping the bottle to the plant, transporting it to the stores, and the energy involved in the bottling.

I love bottled water also, and it’s nice to screw on the cap so you don’t run a risk of spilling it all over your desk, but how about you refill the bottle yourself? Say every Monday you picked up one bottle and reuse it for the entire week? You just cut out 200 bottles from the cycle. You’ve saved yourself money, you’ve removed carbon emissions from the air, and you aren’t polluting as much.

Sure, there are situations where it just isn’t practical to refill all the time, like say a cab driver, but if you work in an office with a water fountain, water cooler, kitchenette, bathroom… any clean water source… just refill your bottle and you’ll be surprised by the impact that will have on the planet, and your wallet.

Carbon Footprints

Pretty much everything we do leaves some form of carbon footprint, the amount of CO₂ something produces, but do you know how to reduce yours? Here is a collection of footprint calculators to help you figure out how you may be able to reduce yours.  And trust me, some of them are so easy, such as properly insulating your house, which will in turn cut your heating bill.

BeGreen – A carbon calculator and offers lots of information on how to be “neutral”.

BP – British Petroleum (or “Best Petroleum” as they go by in the USA), has an animated carbon calculator with little people that asks detailed question about your home.

Carbon Footprint – Since they grabbed the .com address, seems natural to inclue them.

Ecological Footprint Quiz – A very detailed quiz to let you know how much you depend on nature.

NativeEnergy – See your impact, and get carbon offsets.

PaperCalculator – See just how much impact all the paper you use impacts the planet.

TerraPass – Emissions calculator and carbon offset options.

The Carbon Diet – Track your footprint, compete with friends.

The Nature Conservancy Carbon Calculator – Calculate your impact and see what tips they offer.

Yahoo! Green Carbon Footprint Calculator – See your impact, pledge to save.

Zerofootprint – Create a profile, calculate your impact, see how you can cut back.

So, there you go, four easy things that no matter how you feel about global warming, will save you money, or just will help cut pollution however you view it.

Also be sure to see my post on TECH.BLORGE.com about greening up your computing life. 

You know how I always know Ann Coulter has released a new book? She says something insanely stupid.

I’ve talked about her a couple times before, and I honestly don’t view talking about her as violating my self-imposed political neutrality. I view it as “You’re so insanely stupid, you really should just fall off the face of the Earth.”

This time, if you missed the news, she once again said women shouldn’t have the right to vote. She then went on The Big Idea on CNBC and said Jews needed to convert to Christianity to be perfect. I mean, never mind the fact that the host, Donny Deutsch, is a practicing Jew, that was just insanely stupid to say about ANY religion. You can see the Wikipedia entry about it here.

DEUTSCH: You said — your exact words were, “Jews need to be perfected.” Those are the words out of your mouth.
COULTER: No, I’m saying that’s what a Christian is.
DEUTSCH: But that’s what you said — don’t you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic –
COULTER: No!
DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You’re an educated woman. How do you not see that?
COULTER: That isn’t hateful at all.
DEUTSCH: But that’s even a scarier thought.

I say it about here every time she pops out of her cave: She’s an Internet Troll.

She is no better than those people who get their kicks by going on Internet message boards, and say inflammatory things just to get a rise out of people. Is it really surprising to learn she released a new book, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, on October 2nd of this year? No, it’s not. She has discovered the cheapest, and easiest, way to promote her drivel is to go out and say things no sane person would.

And yes, I fully admit I fall in to her little trap, but notice, I don’t Amazon-link her book, and I don’t even link to her site, only Wikipedia. I refuse to be that large a part of her little marketing machine.

Luis asked a good question on Saturday.

Are there any conservatives out there who see Coulter as anything other than a joke? Seriously, I’d like to know.

At what point does this woman finally get written off, not as a conservative, but nothing more than a despicable, self-promotion machine? She adds NOTHING to the political dialog in this country, and even if she does say anything remotely relevant, the signal-to-noise ratio is so low on her, it gets completely lost in her inane ramblings.

Oh, by the way, I neglected to mention this was her second fun comment of the month. Her first was her dusting off one of her “greatest hits” about how women shouldn’t have the right to vote. She first brought that gem up in a 2003 interview, and she went back to the well to drag it out for another interview (also, post-book release). The first time was in a May 2003 magazine interview, just before she released her book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. There’s that ODD timing again… imagine that.

On a parting note, I noted when I talked about the Elizabeth Edwards vs Ann Coulter debacle a few months back, that it seemed Ann didn’t know how to handle someone confronting her over one of her comments. (In this case, calling John Edwards a “faggot”) It seems Donny Deutsch noted the same in an interview that followed Coulter’s anti-Jew comment.

In an interview published in Adweek three days after the interview, Deutsch noted that when he challenged her comments, Coulter appeared “to back off” and “seemed a little upset”, adding, “I think she got frightened that maybe she had crossed a line, that this was maybe a faux pas of great proportions. I mean, did it show ignorance? Anti-Semitism? It wasn’t just one of those silly things.”

I think if anything shows that she says these things just to say them, it’s her inability to defend herself when confronted over them. A trait common amongst Internet trolls.

Let me end this the same way I end all my Ann Coulter rants: please don’t feed the Coulter troll.

Looks like Gmail may be bumping those free accounts to 4GB by the end of the month, and rumors are 6GB in January.

Remember when I talked about a Firefox extension that turns Gmail accounts in to virtual storage drives?  Heh.  It’ll be like having a 4GB hard drive added to all your computers.  (and 6GB later on)

A lot of folks go “But Yahoo has unlimited space already!”  This is true… and they have a lousy interface.  I can hardly ever load my old emails on Yahoo, but with Google they always pop right up.  Gee… what a shock.

This really leads me to something I’ve noticed lately that Yahoo is just sucking for the most part.  None of their technology is updating, it’s beginning to look dated, and if they want any hope of keeping up with Google, they need to invest in some new tech, and they need to do it soon.  I honestly can’t remember the last time I thought to go to Yahoo first, and that used to be a multiple times a day stop for me.

Oh woe must be many a music executive right now as big name acts are jumping in to the fray of leaving the old system behind. Add to the names I mentioned the other day Nine Inch Nails and Madonna.

Yes… that Madonna.

Madonna’s deal is a bit different than the others in that she won’t be self-selling, but instead selling through a concert promoter, Live Nation. The deal is for her next three studio albums, the first one’s ever without Warner Music Group behind her. She will get $120 million in cash and stock options, and retain 90% of gross concert revenues. Considering that her last tour, Confessions, brought in $192 million, she should be quite happy with her pay. The material girl has one more album to deliver for Warner’s, and then it’s on to new grounds for her.

So, what does this say for the music industry as a whole? Talking with my friend, M, today, a rabid follower of music, she fears more “The Donnas’ scenarios.” The Donnas started off as almost a female-version of The Ramones, even following a similar naming system where they were all named “Donna”, and built a small, but extremely loyal, following of fans. They were on Lookout! Records for their first four albums, and then moved up to Atlantic Records… and it all fell apart. The sound of the band changed completely, turning in to a packaged, pop sound. They dropped the “Donna” names, changed their looks… basically they were a shell of their former selves.

And, I have to agree with M, the record labels are going to be desperate for acts. You will start seeing minor bands signed in a hurry to fill holes in release schedules, and the bands, happy to finally be noticed, will do whatever the labels ask of them, including disregarding their true fans. The music landscape will be littered with “Donna-like” instances as the labels try desperately to cling to an out-dated business model.

Instead of trying to change with the times, and realize that the old model, which heavily favored the label over the artists, should go the way of the dinosaur, they will fight tooth-and-nail to preserve it. This will end up disenchanting listeners even further than already have been, bands will get thrown quickly by the wayside when they don’t pan out, and the labels will damage themselves even further.

It’s time for the industry to realize they’ve messed up, and if they stand any chance of surviving, they need to change with the times, and do it now. Otherwise, ten years from now we’ll be saying “Remember when their actually used to be record companies? How quaint!”

Oh how I love having allergies, I especially love my mold allergy.  I’ve missed the past two days of work due to them.  I’ve woken up feeling like death warmed over as drainage flowed like a river.  I was able to get my writing work done, but the “day job” was skipped for a couple of days.

I’m heading to the doctor today to see if I can get my flu shot, but my guess is he’s going to make me wait a week before I get mine.  (And by the by, for those who debate the use of flu shots, this is my 15th year of getting one, and I have not had the flu once during that time)

The point of this post?  I really, really hate allergies.

Oh the RIAA must be loving this.

Radiohead has released a new album entitled In Rainbows, and you can buy it only from their website.  And then the kicker is that you get to set the price.  Not only that, but the download is DRM free.  I just went over there and played with the pricing, I offered them a $1 for the album, and the site accepted it.  Wacky.  They do offer a premium set for fans, which is obviously what they are hoping people will take them up on, but for the casual listener, this is a bargain and a half.  (There is a minimum £0.45 fee for credit card usage)

Jamiroquai and Oasis, both which currently do not have record company contracts, are rumored to be considering the same path.  And even shakier rumor is that Madness, one of my personal fave bands to come out of the 1980’s Two Tone movement, is considering giveing their next album away for free.

The whole reason behind this is the bands make so little money on record sales, but they make all their big money on concert tickets, merchandise and so on.  So if they release an album for little or nothing, they gain more fans, conceivably sell more tickets and more merchandise… they come out ahead in the long run.

So, gee, on one hand you have record companies telling us that if we rip a song from a CD we purchased to our iPod, that’s piracy.  Is it still piracy if the album is given away for free?  What if the music is then put on the peer-to-peer networks?  And what if the band ENDORSES you sharing it over peer-to-peer networks?

The band Throwdown has done just that.  They request that their fans acquire their music by any means, and then you can truly support them by buying a shirt at the concert.  Dave Peters, the frontman of the band, says he does not view downloading as theft because “I have a hard time seeing it as stealing…when I don’t see any money from cd sales to begin with.”

The record companies best be rethinking their priorities.  Instead of suing a woman, and winning, how about you make sure your artists are also on board with what you’re doing?

One thing I always find annoying when visiting a blog is seeing a feature I would like to add to my own, but then the blogger won’t tell me which plugin they used! So, that got me to thinking I would share with all of you which one’s I’m using, and a brief comment on why I’m using it.

Akismet – I actually use multiple anti-spam plugins, and only finally integrated this one recently.

Click Tracking – This was a recent addition. It gives me a “heat map” in my admin area that shows me which portions of the page people click on. The more clicks an area gets, the redder the dot. Gives me a much better idea of what on the site is working.

Drop-down Archive Widget – Does just what it says, makes the archives in to a drop-down menu to conserve physical space on the page.

Enforce www. Preference – This is a SEO tool. The search engines will index you better if everyone comes in to one address. So even if you just enter “seanpaune.com”, the system adds the WWW for you.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Helps add the Feedburner feed to my RSS settings.

Google Adsense widget – This is a tool for managing your Google AdSense in the sidebar.

Google Analyticator – Google Analytics requires you to embed some code in your PHP files, this plugin helps assure it gets placed in the right place, even if you change themes.

Google Search widget – I don’t think this one is available anymore, but it adds a Google search box to your sidebar.

Google XML Sitemaps – Finally updated for WP 2.3! Creates a sitemap searchbots can read.

MyBlogLog Widget – Adds the widget to the side that shows those with MyBlogLog accounts who surf in. Kind of pointless, but fun.

OneClick Installer – I just installed this one and love it. Download a plugin or theme as a zip file, go to your admin, point it to the zip file and it will install your new item for you with no fuss. Lot faster than FTPing it in.

On this day – I’ve been debating this one for awhile, then I saw Luis use it, and decided it really is necessary for those of us who blog daily. Shows on the sidebar posts from the same day for past years.

SEO_Wordpress – This one is pretty geeky, but is just about cleaning up the SEO of your WordPress install.

Share This – Adds that little green box at the end of each entry that says “Share This”. Quick way to add emailing an entry to people.

Shylock Adsense – Another recent addition, allows you to set a date to add Google Ads to older posts. As soon as a post turns 30-days old, this plugin inserts ads in to it.

Simple Recent Comments Widget – Shows the last few comments you received in your sidebar.

Sociable – Adds all those social bookmarking links to the bottoms of my posts.

Spam Karma 2 – Another comment spam killer.

Subscribe me – I really don’t need this one since I have Feedburner, but it was a simple way to add the RSS button since people understand that better sometimes.

Subscribe To Comments – Allows you to have a checkbox to let readers opt-in to being notified via email when there is a follow-up comment on a post they read.

WordPress Database Backup – I love the most recent update to this plugin! It has always backed up your blog for you, but now you can set it to do it automatically once a day and have the file emailed to you. I have this done every afternoon and emailed to my Gmail account.

WordPress Mobile Edition – Jo was the one to let me know about this one. It allows your blog to be stripped down to the bare essentials to be read on mobile devices such as BlackBerrys.

Any you want to suggest? Let me know!

Welcome to the third annual posting of this entry! I will probably post this every Columbus Day for as long as I blog. Couple of small revisions this year (spelling), but otherwise, it’s the same as the past two years.

Ah, Columbus Day, the day we set aside each year to celebrate a lie. It always warms my heart.

People tend to forget that Christopher Columbus wasn’t looking for North America when he landed here, he was looking for the West Indies. Quite the navigator there. He also believed, until his death, that the entire time he was in this area that he was exploring the Eastern coast of Asia.

Never mind the fact that he also took the indigenous people as slaves and shipped them back to Spain, against the Crowns wishes. Never mind that colonists he brought over here rebelled against him when the New World didn’t come close to what he described. No, no, all those things are just a-ok for a man we should honor with a governmental and banking holiday.

The biggest offense to me is that he was far from the first person to “discover” the Americas. (how does one “discover” a place that is already inhabited?) The Siberians crossed the land bridge with Alaska as early as 70,000 BC, and it was those crossings that gave us the Native Americans. There were numerous other occurrences of people coming to the Americas, but one of the most well documented was Leifur Eircksson in 1005 when he sailed from Iceland to North America and traveled down the coast. Gee… does that come before 1492?

Yet, history textbooks still hail him as the man who “discovered” America. Why is beyond me, but a friend pointed me to a wonderful book called “Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong“that spends an entire chapter delving into this very matter. Fascinating stuff.

If you want to credit Columbus with something, just say that he brought the America’s to the attention of Europe, but leave it at that.