Being nice to people on blogs

As many people many times in many places on the internet have pointed out, often the point of an argument is not to convince the person one is debating, but the fence sitters.

Economics is all about the margins, yeah?

To that extent, ridiculing someone for their point of view very well may be more effective than addressing their point of view, particularly if you have a hard time taking their points seriously in the first place, or if they are consistently wrong and militant about it, or demagogues of victimhood.

Some points of view are not really worth entertaining for longer than it takes to dismiss them with a "pshaw."

There's definitely a line, but calling someone on being wrong more often than not doesn't cross it in my book.

This is worth knowing about

The story of what happened in New Orleans after Katrina

Philanthropy n stuff

Presented for your titillation (snicker) serious consideration: a bunch of booby pictures A Worthy Cause.

Don't be shy...

C'mon baby, just try it once...

Catching up

Well, I got my buddy a job here, and he showed up a couple-three days ago. I've been showing him around a bit, and sort of enjoying the fresh reaction to what has now become old hat to me.

Working out my vacation schedule with my co-workers and manager. I'm working it out so one of my guys gets to take Christmas in Europe with his wife and kids, but I get New Year's Eve at home.

The weather has really let up lately. It's only about 100F during the day, and all the way to a nearly chilly 75F at night. It actually sprinkled rain the last couple days, the first moisture from the sky in over 6 months.

Blah

Okay, I'm officially sick of the Internet.

Is it too late to drop out of society and go play music?

I've been listening to a bunch of music I haven't listened to in a long while. Nothing particularly exceptional, just 80s/90s rock, and find myself listening really closely for bass lines I want to learn.

I need to find a couple peeps with compatible schedules and guitars, who don't mind wasting some time with a bassist who will never be a "rock star".

I think I'm still experiencing some ennui over my canceled vacation. I've suppressed it pretty well for the last 3 weeks, but an ugly something is rising. Like a zit you feel forming, a nagging and annoying feeling without real visible results yet.

Part of today's shitty mood comes {GEEK ALERT} from tedious, time-wasting, uber-annoying attempts for the past two days, to restore a domain controller via IP-KVM over a flaky sattellite WAN link to a remote site where power problems (that caused the damn machine to lose its config in the first place!) continued unabated every few hours, dropping me back to square one each time with no warning. {/GEEKERY}

Sometimes I really would rather do manual labour for a living.

Perserverance succeeded in the end, but I was hardly my unflappable happy-go-lucky self after about the first 6 hours. Sometimes it really is a blessing to be able to swear in more than one language.