One of my sites did something its never done before.  It exceeded its bandwidth cap.  The KC Clay Guild is a great non-profit ceramics studio that my wife and I are involved in (she more than I.  Mostly I provide hosting space and lug chairs out during fundraisers).  The new web master has done a great job of putting useful and timely stuff on the site and with the last Raku fundraiser we actually got enough traffic that I had to up the bandwidth quota.

Wait to grow the product Joe!

In my state early voting started on the 21st. Since I’m convinced that election day will be a national zoo I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to get my ballot taken care of this week.

Wednesday after work I stopped by only to see a few hundred people waiting in line. So after work wasn’t an option. Thursday I went at lunchtime and encountered over 300 folks waiting patiently. Today I showed up an hour before the polls opened and there are only 30 people in front of me. The ballot will be cast today.

The turnout is staggering. In Florida, they have already tallied 800,000 votes. Other states are reporting similar numbers. Overall, it is estimated that 10% of the votes cast in 2004 have already been entered.

Nice to see America on the votng bandwagon. Make sure you cast your ballot.

The Greenspeed GT3 trike

Yes, its expensive for a bike.  No I couldn’t use it to commute.  But man that looks like one very comfortable way to exercise and see the scenery.

This trike is ideal for weekend riders, commuters or even assisted touring. Made in a small and standard size, you should find one to suit you.
There is a weight limit of 265lbs for this trike, so if you’re on the solid side, but still want a compactable trike, please check out the GTO. Pics shown with optional alloy rack and SPD combination pedals.

This is too rich for me to pass up.  The McCain campaign has complained to YouTube that it acted hastily in removing many videos produced and uploaded after YouTube received DMCA takedown notices.

The campaign’s solution?  YouTube needs to make an exemption for political ads.  YouTube’s response is perfectly framed:

…citing the DMCA, a controversial copyright law that McCain voted to approve a decade ago, Levine pointed out that YouTube risks being sued itself if it doesn’t respond promptly to takedown notices.

…”YouTube does not possess the requisite information about the content in user-uploaded videos to make a determination as to whether a particular takedown notice includes a valid claim of infringement,” Levine wrote. “The claimant and the uploader, not YouTube, hold all of the relevant information in this regard, including the source of any content used, the ownership rights to the content, and any licensing arrangements in place between the parties.”

YouTube to McCain: You Made Your DMCA Bed, Lie in It | Threat Level from Wired.com.

This all puts me in mind of the story from a few years ago about Sen. Ted Stevens recieving an iPod as a gift and gaining a sudden appreciation for the issues surrounding fair use and the entertainment industry’s draconian anti-consumer goals.

And when Stevens asked whether with the audio flag in place he would be able to record from the radio and put the shows onto his iPod: that’s when the RIAA’s Mitch Bainwol really began to sweat.

With that simple question, the octogenarian Senator encapsulated arguments about place-shifting, interoperability, and fair use that would have taken whole federal dockets to explain a few years ago.

If you would like to help Congresional leaders further appreciate the plight of the forgotten consumer, check out the IPac iPod for Seantors Campiagn.

Watching the final debate tonight and I had an odd thought.

I would love to see a poll that was broken down along workplace roles. What percentage of hiring managers would hire the candidate? Which candidate would an upper level manager want running part of their company?

I have come into a geek windfall.  Work was getting rid of their old HP Laserjet 8000 N.  They just wanted it to go away and I wanted something the size of a refrigerator to sit in the home office and make me feel manly.

This is what geeks do.  If I were a car guy I would be excited about aluminum headers even though the car was already totally functional and then some.  Since I’m a tech nut I like uneeded tech.  So now I have a networked clydesdale level printer that has a rated duty cycle of 130,000 pages per month.  Why do I need this?  I don’t.  But I like the office immensely more with the Beast sitting on the table.

I am still plugging away at the weight loss campaign and I am getting to the point where I may need some professional assitance to understand the way my body works.

I got down to 190 pounds and was excited.  This was going pretty well!  Now its time to really kick it up.  So without changing the diet at all I started working out at a stronger clip.  45 minutes on the machine instead of 30.  4 times a week instead of three.  Of course, a week of this brought exactly zero additional weight loss.

Discouraged I decided to take a break from working out.  Started eating a bit more.  Naturally, I dropped two and a half pounds in the next three days.  I’m confused.

I think this week I may try to ease back into a moderate workout schedule.  Couple times a week for 30 minutes.  I have learned however, that those who argue against weight being simply a calories in/calories out equation definitely have a point.

Bill Simmons is one of my favorite sports columnists.  Mostly because he is about my age and writes about things I find more fascinating than sports stats.  His fandom is more extreme than mine but he has a love for pop culture and movies that he blends well with sports.

A lot of his stuff is schtick I enjoy which makes it easy to forget that under the schtick is a really good writer.  When a topic catches his eye that deserves serious words he has no problem reaching down and finding just the right angle to approach it from.

His column this week about Elgin Baylor is one such example.  Despite the fact that Baylor has been the butt end of many of Simmons’s jokes while he was running the LA Clippers, there is a great deal of respect evident and a sense of historical perspective that is pointed out all the more by the author’s normally light hearted tone.

After reading the column, I have learned something new and been reminded of how far we have come as a country and how far we still have to go.

We might elect our first black president in four weeks; this wouldn’t have a chance of happening without the strength of people like Elgin once upon a time. If you’re younger than 40, when you think of Elgin, you probably remember him wearing one of those Bill Cosby sweaters and wincing because the Clippers’ lottery number came too soon. That’s the wrong memory. You should think about him creating hang time from scratch in 1958. Think of him putting up a 38-19 in his spare time in 1962. Think of him dropping 71 on the Dipper. Think of his eyes narrowing as they passed along his owner’s condescending message during that snowy day in Boston. Think of him retiring with dignity because he didn’t want to hang on for a ring. Think of him telling Hundley that he couldn’t play that exhibition game in West Virginia, not because he was trying to prove a point, but because it would have made him feel like less of a human being.

ESPN Page 2 – Simmons: The forgotten pioneer.

The remote to the TV in the living room is gone.  I mean all the way gone.  Normally I am the one who finds all things lost in the world but apparently I was the last one to have the remote and now it has vanished into that place where ink pens and socks go to become wire coat hangars.

I’ll be buying a new remote today and spending some time questioning the nature of the universe.  If e = mc squared then how much energy was released when the remote spontaneously converted to ether?