Posted May 19, 2008 in Personal.
It's been a while since I've blogged. Life has been... well... complicated over the last few months, so I chose to retreat from some of my usual online activities and take a breather. Fury at a few groups of people has put me in the mood to blog, so I bring you a list of people I simply cannot stand. They are presented in no particular order, and I would welcome comments:
- Distributors of spam, and any other unsolicited electronic or paper junk mail.
- Racists.
- People who operate internet sockpuppets.
- Black-hat hacker scum who try to fuck around with my website, my computer and my identity.
- The voters who gave George W. Bush a second term.
- Ditto, first term.
- Media industry executives who are obsessed with restricting the rights of paying customers.
- Excessively-religious people, particularly those who insist they are somehow “better” than people who are not religious.
I have to stop now, because I have just realized that I could go on in this vein forever.
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Posted Feb 29, 2008 in Events, Family, Personal.
I've been living in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania since 2001. It really is a beautiful, village-like town about 15 minutes from Philadelphia. Since 2004, my wife and I have been putting in a tremendous effort to update and upgrade our home with new plumbing, new electrics, a new kitchen and family room, a new sun room, an enormous wraparound deck and a fancy new front porch. With new siding and extensive landscaping our house looks as superb on the outside as it does on the inside.
But now it is time for us to move on, and we are looking for a smaller house much closer to where my wife works. We are very sad about having to leave our home, especially now that it is in such good condition, but we are also a little excited about picking out a new place and making it our own.
Swarthmore is a great place to live because it is part of an excellent school district, it is close to the I-95 corridor that runs down the East Coast, and it is only a short train journey to Philadelphia. Shopping is good, and the neighborhood is quiet and safe for children. Our needs are different now that the children have grown up, so it is time for another family with young kids to enjoy our home as much as we have.
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Posted Feb 03, 2008 in Sport.
Wait... What? The New York Giants won Super Bowl XLII 17 points to 14, against the mighty New England Patriots. That's almost as bad as the Dallas Cowboys winning it. How the hell did that happen?
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Posted Jan 18, 2008 in Miscellaneous, Technology, Web Design.
DreamHost recently suffered from a well-publicized billing snafu in which thousands of customers were accidentally billed for a year or two in advance. As soon as the error was discovered, the company took steps to rectify it. Lots of people complained, and many decided to cancel their hosting plans. Despite this event, DreamHost remains one of the very best shared hosting companies available. Here are 10 reasons why:
- They said sorry. Many times, in both a jovial (their cultural norm) and serious manner.
- 500 gigabytes of storage space. This increases by a further 2 gigabytes every week.
- 5 terabytes of monthly bandwidth. This increases by a further 40 gigabytes every week.
- Unlimited MySQL databases, email aliases, hosted domains, hosted subdomains, announcement lists, discussion lists, etc.
- An ever expanding wiki-based repository of DreamHost-related knowledge that is constantly updated by staff and customers.
- A vibrant and active customer forum where “DreamHosters” can ask questions and offer sagely advice to each other.
- A no-nonsense 97-day money back guarantee.
- A friendly, accessible staff (many of whom can be found haunting the #dreamhost IRC channel).
- A constantly improving and updating service - DreamHost encourages its customers to submit service suggestions that others can vote on.
- All for a piffling $5.95 per month, with a special $50 discount if you use the promotional code of SCJESSEYTOTAL when you sign up.
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Posted Dec 28, 2007 in Music.
It is interesting how musical journeys evolve and develop over time. I remember falling in love with “Sing” from the Travis album The Invisible Band, and I went straight out and bought the CD. I liked it so much, I purchased The Man Who. Hearing that Coldplay's “Clocks” was very similar fare, I bought A Rush of Blood to the Head, Parachutes and then the absolutely awesome X&Y.
More recently, Travis released The Boy with No Name, which I bought with Keane's absolutely superb Under the Iron Sea. I've been playing the latter to death for a few months now, especially the soaring, sweeping “Atlantic” at the beginning. I specifically asked for the UK version of Keane's first album Hopes and Fears for Christmas because it featured an extra track, and I haven't been disappointed. My mother kindly bought it for me, and I've been listening to it almost continuously since then. It doesn't quite match the stellar sound of Under the Iron Sea, but it comes pretty damn close. Highly recommended.
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