Lee.org

I’m on the Emo mailing list (not to be confused with the EMO mailing list) and he writes that he’s playing in NYC January 18th and 19th. He’ll be in Boston in May. No date announced yet. You should go. He’s really funny.

Here’s the whole email

(more…)

This guy has put together a nice way of finding and then telling copyright violators of his website to cut-it-out. He finds plagiarism with Copyscape.com and then sends them a DCMA take-down form-letter.

This works even if your site is Creative Commons Attribution… If they don’t give you attribution, it’s still an enforcable copyright violation.

I came across this because I recently found a bunch of  spam sites using my content. Apparently webkinz are very popular among the spamming set these days. After posting about them, I’ve gotten several spam pingbacks. It’s not really worth it to me to follow up with DCMA notices to spammers because they’ll never get any Google Juice from me and I know fighting stupid Nigerian and Indian spammers just takes me down an endless hole. But there’s some info for you.

I’m now a certified forklift operator, whatever that means. Flaming Lotus Girls organized a certification class with this OSHA certified guy. This was partially in response to Todd Blair, a member of SRL, being severely injured after the conclusion of Robodock; though a forklift wasn’t specifically to blame for his injury, I think it got us all thinking about safety in general.

And it’s not as if this certification will actually help keep anyone safe.

In order to pass, you had to score a 60% on a True/False quiz and drive the forklift around the yard without killing anyone. It’s hard to fail. The next time you see a certified forklift driver, know that they might have only scored a 61% on a True/False test.

The 30 minute video told us not to let people ride around on the forks, not to lift things that exceed the rated capacity of the forklift, not to lift things that are too big, not to drive around like a crazy person with the forks at head-height, to honk the horn before you go backwards, not to service the forklift unless you are “authorized”, and to never check a fuel tank with a lighter.

The hands-on instruction was fine. As has been said before, the way to get good with the forklift is to practice. I stuck around for a while watching the beginners and he helped them figure it out. Though no one I saw had any real trouble. It’s just a matter of familiarizing ones-self with the controls.

the $100 certification is good for 1 year. In the workplace, it will help protect employers from lawsuits if something unfortunate happens. (Note that FLG is not an employer). The instructor made sure to mention that he’s had situations where OSHA came by for a workplace inspection of a company and the company called him so he could do an emergency certification class. He’d pre-date the certificates. Nice.

At least everyone found out that our forklift has a horn; it’s on the forward/reverse shifter.

If you really want a good forklift safety video, watch this and you’ll be all set. (no really, watch that video)

The best forklift training is
1 - a friend helping another friend with the controls
2 - practice

Update: This promo has passed but don’t despair! There is likely a discount available for the current month. Look on my blog here.

These coupon codes will get you 10% off your annual or bi-annual subscription to Mozy. They’re only good this month. So here’s what to do:

• First, sign up for Mozy with my referral link (and get $10-15 free money)
• Then, when signing up, there will be a box where you can type in a promotion code. “JANUARY” gets you 10% off an annual subscription to Mozy. “JANUARY2″ gets you 10% off a bi-annual subscription to Mozy. Use the code that’s appropriate for your subscription. :-)

Since this promo has passed, if you’ve found this page, look for more recent discount info on my blog. Click here.

A friend of mine has a house he’d like to rent January –> May. Ping me if you’re interested and we’ll see if it might work out.

Strong preference goes to friends.

Here’s his letter…

I’m planning on being away in NYC from approximately mid-january hrough mid-may, and I would like to sublet my house for that time.

I’d like to sublet it to someone “in the family”, so to speak. Time period and amount of furnishings are negotiable (the less stuff I have to move, the better!)

Details (please forward as appropriate):

3 bdrm, 2.5 bath townhouse condo, 1350 sq. ft. I use one bedroom for
sleeping, another for my lab, another for the library. You can use it
for 1, 2, or 3 people. If you want low rent, just let me stash my junk in the
library, then it’s effectively a two bedroom.

Tippy-tippy-tip of Hunters Point, past Box Shop and Headless and the
Haunted Barn.

KICK-ASS south-facing bay view — alameda, San Mateo, SFO, all the way
past San Bruno mountain, almost to Daly City and the ocean.

All bamboo flooring

Sunny south-facing master bedroom and living room

Beautiful garden!

off street parking,
washer/dryer,
dishwasher,
alarm system,
security camera system,
home automation,
video projector
… blah blah blah …

Rent is negotiable — it costs me about $2500, but I’d be willing to
let it go for $1200 to $1500 if the deal is right (person I trust,
mostly furnished, stash my stuff in the library, etc etc…)

Call or email me for details.

Rat Spock wished it to me (via Maura) and I wish it to you…

Happy Hanukkah!

Charlotte was interviewed by a live internet television show called Church of the Perpetual Party when we were at the Fire Arts Festival in July. Here’s the entire show.

Interesting bits:

• Gaspo’s Chakratron at 7:20
• Dance Dance Immolation at 15:20
• interview with Charlotte and Serpent Mother footage at 23:00

It might take a while for the whole 50mb show to stream onto your computer.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

I ended my job at Valley Yellow Pages a week ago. TJIC wrote to me about it and I responded…

>Did the yellow pages not end up paying that much?

Not so well. One of the clinchers happened a couple weeks ago… There was an office-wide meeting. The boss, Jesse had a bunch of numbers on the board. The first ones looked like this:
171k 91k 84k 70k 54k 53k 52k 50k… He had 13 numbers on the board in all, the last one was 40k. He told us, “I won’t say who each person is, but these are the earnings of each person in the office. Look how well you can do! I want you to do like this [pointing near the 91k] and not like this [pointing to the clump around 45k]. As he kept speaking about how much money we could make, I thought about the numbers…. 171k, That’s Tambri. She’s a Yellow Pages MACHINE. Her son had a broken arm a month ago and she told us how she was in the Emergency Room going over her Leads waiting for the bone to be set. 91k, that would be Jackie. No one knows how he gets so many contracts. No one. It’s actually a tiny bit suspicious. But hey, he’s doing well for himself.

And then there’s the rest of the pack… rather, I should say, the rest of the bell curve. You see, there are 30 salesmen in the office. First, Tambri and Jackie are the outliers. From a few seconds of mental calculations, it looked like the midpoint was about $38k. So the AVERAGE salesman in the office makes $38,000. The meeting wouldn’t have been quite so upbeat if the boss had shown the other side of the curve.

So to answer your question, no, Yellow Pages doesn’t pay that much.

What a spectacle!

(thanks Marah!)

As Grebnedlog the Pakled said to Riker in “Samaritan Snare”,

“We are smart.”