Sure, Why Not?

Yesterday around 10am I got into my car and headed out. Got gas at the nearby station, stopped by the Starbucks near it and got me a blueberry muffin and a venti white mocha (I flipped off the Dunkin Donuts in the same shopping center while walking back to my car with it). Realized I needed cash, so drove a bit to my credit union. Finally, around 10:45am, got on the damn road!

Good ride up I-95. Got to around Baltimore, following my Google Maps directions. At first thought I was going the wrong way since I’ve been by Baltimore zillions of times but the road seemed different. Well, I was still on course anyway, just got caught in a small backup. Went under Fort McHenry tunnel and paid a toll. Five dollars! Grrr.
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January

Lots of car research and test drove the Mazda 3. Finally narrowed down my car choices to that, the Ford Focus, and the Hyundai Elantra, the last of which I hadn’t test driven yet. On one unusually warm day, went to anti-war rally to table for NYRA with Alex and Scott, where my NYRA bumper stickers made their inaugural tabling appearance. I also saw our new NYRA office for the first time. I believe our forum raiding also began that month. At work, lots of changes were made, making stuff follow stricter protocols in order to follow federal guidelines. If only the guy organizing all this wasn’t an idiot, wouldn’t have meant quite so much more work for me. Oh, well. Was getting quite addicted to the Weatherscan channel by then as well. It’s the Weather Channel derivative on Comcast that just shows local forecast over and over. At this point, I’d memorized the order of the different background music. Haha.
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It started innocently enough when Kathleen visited the NYRA forums for the first time in two years. Quickly disgusted, she left me a note on my Facebook profile that she found she didn’t miss the forums that much and was amazed that I could put up with the idiocy all the time. I told her it was a legitimate concern, that I’ve either gotten used to it, or I just have to rely on my coping methods which, as I put it, consisted mostly of abuse of moderator powers whenever Alex wasn’t looking. She replied, amazed that I’d be able to do anything without Alex looking, wondering if he wasn’t as dictatorial as he once was. I responded saying that, no, he still watches my every moderatory move (and threw in a comment of “and to think he thinks I’M the one stalking HIM, but that’s another stupid story entirely…”).

Alex then saw the Wall-to-Wall between me and Kathleen, so saw this back and forth, so he left a comment on her profile saying he’s always watching. Then the following ensued, read it from the bottom up to get it in the right order: alexkathfacebook.png

So, naturally, I posted that screen cap on the NYRA forums in a thread I’d made not too long ago specifically for memorable conversations.

And just today, I realized that’s true. Alex is ceiling cat. He is Ceiling Alex. And here’s what he does: Ceiling Alex

And here’s what I do: Ceiling Alex and Me

Good times.

We awoke yesterday morning to learn that one of our beloved Washington Redskins had died. Rest in peace, Sean Taylor.

But under the Washington Post pages about the fallen #21 of our hallowed NFL team, news which has shaken the DC area quite a bit (seriously, those of you who don’t live around here wouldn’t understand, the Redskins are serious business!), is a profile article in the Style section meant to give hope to us all, especially our young friends.

It’s called Age Is Just a Number: Youth Rights Advocate Tries to Break Down Barriers to Adulthood. And it is featuring our very own NYRA and our very own Alex Koroknay-Palicz!

Click that link and read it. Then come back here for more comments. I’ll wait.
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We’ve gone another round, right up until today, for today is…

As these 100 Days of Summer draw to a close, I marvel at what this seventh round has brought. This round was special, since 2007 days all land on the same days of the week as 2001 days, meaning all of these 100 days were the same days of the week as they were in the original. And I must say, with all that has happened since May 24, this one just about rivals the original in all that has gone on.
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And now, for a furious, data-loss induced edition of…

YOU SUCK!

I refer to web host, UN Site Solutions. They don’t host this site, but they host NYRA. You know, it’s always a damn problem with them! We keep having major server issues, lots and lots of downtime, and occasional lost data. Then today I get on to find we lost EVERYTHING since January 8!

They don’t back things up as often as they should. This is not acceptable! We lost important e-mails. Important message board posts. Important member information. Everything!

Not to mention they are really fussy about CPU usage crap that other hosts don’t care about. It’s irritating as all hell.

Plus, lately we’ve been having a problem of threads disappearing on the NYRA forums. No idea why. None of our tech staff knows why. UNSS certainly doesn’t know why. Despicable.

And they tend to lock IPs out of being able to access their hosted sites, for no reason.

Just sick of it. We pay them ridiculous amounts of money to host us, and they do this crap all the time. Sad thing is, they’re still better than the host we had before.

That’s right, folks. Today, I met NYRA forums crazy guy Chip Sinton. Also known as Sudburykid.

Chip is cool. He’s so cool that everyone else looks so not cool next to him.

It was like an early Christmas present to meet the famous Chip.

Oh, and he bought us food, which also rocks.

Chip kicks ass.

…

Okay, Chip, there’s your requested entry.

One and Four!

How about that! That Hungarian piece of crap finally got around to fixing his damn site. Good for him.

Sigh. So we have a winner. One and Four got updated sooner than Science Village. Grrr.

But Science Village has an awesome Halloween issue coming up (I hope!). So it’s coming back too.

And now, for an heroic electoral session of…

Here’s to You!

So I raise my glass and say, “Here’s to you, Jesse Hunter!”

Who is Jesse Hunter? He’s a guy in Minnesota who voted in his local primary election last month. For that, he’s being charged with a felony. That’s right, folks. He’s an American citizen, and he’s possibly a felon for participating in our democracy. That’s just insane.

Oh, did I mention Jesse is 17 years old?
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First entry in like eleven days. Of course, there’s reason for that. Judging from the last entry, you might get the impression I was about to, you know, go somewhere. And I did!

Anyway, last Wednesday, I flew out to California for the NYRA Annual Meeting. Had an awesome time. Then this past Wednesday night, I flew back on the red eye. Landed at Dulles early Thursday morning. You know, I had just barely missed all that heightened security crap. Wow. I’m still in awe at that. I did not fly out of California a second too soon.
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I hereby decree…

Get a space!

Hehehe. That’s right, folks. There’s a fundraising project going. It’s called Spell NYRA. Go to it. NOW!

It’s really simple. You donate $25 to NYRA, and you get a 50 x 10 space to link to your site and mention how wonderful you are. Seeing as only one space is taken so far, and it’s mine, it’s safe to assume that I am by far the most awesome person in the universe, and that you should bow before the mighty Eight Mine Fortress and thank all that is holy that you have the divine privilege to be viewing this page.

So you think you’re awesome, too? Prove it! Get a space!

This has been Day 19 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 6.

These days, in the National Youth Rights Association….

-It has come to our attention that Chris Batchelor has a hand moisturizer addiction. We of course wish Chris the best in overcoming this. It’ll be difficult. For a while, he will endure the constant, life-threatening torture and injury of somewhat dry hands.
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And we have yet another wondrous session of….

Here’s To You!

So I raise my glass and say: “Here’s to you, Alex, Chris, Rich, Jim, and Jason!”

On January 6, our hallowed NYRA website was ever so brutally hacked, causing an assload of malicious script in our sacred php files. Oh, it was awful. The precious forums had to go down as well as our merch store.

So it is for this I praise Alex Koroknay-Palicz, Chris Batchelor, Rich Jahn, Jason Kende, Jim Pleger, and whoever else may be involved in saving the beloved house of worship of the youth rights movement.

To the KPalicz and the Galen and the nostromo and the Yasha and the genmud… HERE’S TO YOU! *drinks*

(I wrote this up for the NYRA Blog. Enjoy!)

It’s been nearly 13 months since Alex KP, Dave Varney, Alexis Grant, Rio Samsie, and I went to this “Town Hall” meeting at Bethesda Chevy-Chase High School. The subject was a favorite of those with political power: teen driving. Although, I suppose anything related to teens is a favorite of politicians: just take more rights away from them in the name of protection, and they’ll sweep in the votes of mindless, worried parents. But, that’s a bit beside the point… or is it? Come to think of it, isn’t that the very problem? That we allow ridiculous fallacious arguments from those who are supposed to be in charge to sway the opinions of the general public? While I could go just about any direction with this, let’s stick to this town hall meeting itself.
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(The following took place on December 1, 2005.)

I walk on by this cute little Gaithersburg pet store, and what should I see on the door but an orange cardboard sign reading “Children under 16 MUST be accompanied by an adult at all times. Thank you.” So, naturally, I expect an explanation for this, what with my mental ageism detectors going off and all.

I go right into the store and wait a bit until the employees, or at least ones I could readily identify as employees, were no longer busy with customers. Got to be polite, you know. It’s rule number one. I looked at the cute puppies for a little while until the employees were behind the counter, not with a customer, and not on the phone. Good. What with waiting for them to be available (and getting my own cell phone call while waiting, so I had to leave the store to worry with that), I began to worry I’d back down. After all, I’ve never had much of a confrontational nature. Nope. I was determined now. Or, well, not so much determined. Just set on it for the moment.
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