Thursday, July 1, 2010

Italy is Beautiful...

...but I miss my wife...so much!  Her here would make this just about perfect...

Love you Shawna!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Italia Bound

So I'm heading to Italy for a conference.  I'm gonna have a few days to do some sightseeing while I'm there, though, so my plan is to use my new iPhone 4 (with it's incredible 5 megapixel camera) to photoblog the trip.

Stay tuned! 

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Southpark

I'm not a fan of Southpark; I don't have a television, so it'd be difficult to watch even if I wanted to, but the humor (while funny) is usually just a little too off-color for prudish me.

Nevertheless, I'm a little disgruntled.  I guess (you Southpark watchers out there, tell me if I've got this wrong) that the writers, in their typical sacrilegious style, included references to the prophet Mohammad in a recent episode.  I guess that there's this aversion amongst Muslims to pictorial portrayals of Mohammad so the Southpark writers cloaked the prophet in a bear costume (I'm thinking this might've been their cheeky way of poking fun at this admittedly strange Muslim custom).

Muslims have apparently not yet grown up.  They got really upset and threatened to kill the Southpark writers.  Which is kinda childish, you know?  I mean, really.  A stupid (not said disparagingly at all, Southpark fans) TV show pokes fun at your prophet.  So you want to kill them?

That's just absurd.  In fact, as I sit here thinking about it, it just makes me angry.  Don't get me wrong; I think there are some things that are kinda sacred.  I'm a religious guy and, I admit, it kinda bothers me when people debase something that I view as sacred.  I've never threatened to kill anyone over it though.  In fact, as I think about it, I recall that Southpark once aired a show in which Jesus battled Santa Claus in hand-to-hand combat; seems equally as sacrilegious as Mohammad in a bear costume.  Yet I don't recall any Christians threatening to kill the Southpark people.

And I DEFINITELY don't recall Comedy Central (the network that airs the show) censoring the Jesus vs. Santa Claus episode as they did with the Bear Mohammad episode.  Which gets me almost as much as a bunch of petulant (and, frankly, arrogant) Muslims threatening to kill someone.

Seems like such a double standard: Jesus vs. Santa Claus is funny; the Bear Mohammad is just too inappropriate.  To be clear, I don't think the Jesus vs. Santa Claus episode should have been censored.  I DO think, on the other hand, that there's something wrong with someone who threatens to kill another human being because they air a television show construed by the would-be killer as sacrilegious.  I further think it's pathetic that the network would crater to the pressure from an extremist group.

I'm going to stop ranting while I'm still ahead.  (I am still ahead, aren't I?).

As always, don't frequent www.acquirethisname.com.  They're the scumbags who stole my domain name, and tried to screw me over when I wanted it back.  They're the lowest form of entrepreneurs, the pond scum of capitalism, business people who ADD NO VALUE WHATSOEVER to the economy; rather, they suck the last dregs of life from those who've had the misfortune of failing to renew their domain name.  They are extortioners of creativity, and I hope to see them out of business someday soon.

Friday, February 26, 2010

The Crooks that run www.acquirethisname.com

So my email address has changed since I originally purchased the "MyndFood" url.  And thus, when the domain name registration came up for renewal, I didn't know, and eventually, GoDaddy.com canceled my domain. 

So I called them, explained to them what happened, and they offered to help me buy the domain back out of this virtual limbo (where nobody really owns it).  So I said, "Sure".  And they proceeded to go through the list of fees I'd have to pay to get the domain back during this "limbo" (basically, they were going to charge me about $150 to get the domain that I'd paid $9 for originally back). 

Frankly, that's just crooked.  I've thought a lot about this, and they've built a significant stream of income on taking advantage of people in distress. 

Scumbags.

So I told them no.  I figured that domain name limbo only lasts three months; I'll just wait until limbo is over, then hop back on and buy the domain again for the $9.99 price.

Wrong.

Turns out that there are crooked scavengers out there who are even more scumbag-ish than GoDaddy!  Apparently there are these people out there who don't have a creative idea of their own, so they wait for folks to forget to renew their domain, they buy it out from under them, then they try to resell it!

Yep; some other jerk decided to buy MyndFood.com!  He's at www.acquirethisname.com, by the way.  I would STRONGLY urge you to NEVER go to acquirethisname.com to acquire a name because they will, without question, rape you. 

The site asks me how much I'm willing to pay to get my url back; so I put in $35 (a fair premium, I think).  They email me back telling me that they'll sell it to me for $3,000!

Insane!  $3,000 for a url that, in its heyday, got like 60 hits per day?  So I sent him a very kindly worded email, informing him (Blake, his name is) that he's nuts, and that, since I made up the word "MyndFood" in the first place, it'd be WAY cheaper for me to put on my creative cap again, and make up a different word than it would be to give him three grand for his crummy url.

So, my friends (if you can read this), MyndFood is dead.  Which is OK. 

Just wanted to vent a little!