The social network?

Well, when Google+ launches I will be annoying you again live, from the comfort of my living room. 'bout time FB had a competitor.

~Nic

Google: I <3 you.

I've been an outspoken lover of Google for a long time. I easily saw past the "scandal" of collecting information when driving around for street view (just fucking google it). Their explanation made a shitload of sense, and they were recording APs they found for location information. S.L. at work is just a paranoid libertarian. I've blogged before about how I cautiously love Google, and their pushing of open source for the good of the internet community is in itself a good goal (and lucrative. One day I will explore the link between socialism, capitalism, mixed economies and the open source "movement".) But anyhow, I wanted to mention this a while ago and forgot:
Technology-Driven Philanthropy. It came up on NPR today, and that reminded me.

Oh, and,

~Nic

It won't be long now...

I give it a year tops. The republicans will be howling how the liberals never wanted gay people to get married, and the libs hate gays. On we march.

~Nic

"You may say that I’m a dreamer..."

Yeah, well fuck you.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the state's marriage equality bill hours after it passed the Republican-controlled Senate on Friday night, making it the sixth state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.

I stand by my naive stance that we'll just keep chugging forward, "progressively". Of course, there will be setbacks. So what?

~Nic

**Edit: fixed a subjective quote.

The International Space Station

I just watched the ISS flyby.. from the NW. I've watched it many times. Every time I watch it it makes me smile a really big smile. I think to myself "WE did that". Not the "Nic and X" we (obviously I really had nothing to do with it), but the collective we. "There's so much more we can and will do". I remind myself of this every time I hear the Palins and Gingrichs talk. Keep your faith in god. I have faith in us.

~Nic

I know, I am not a real programmer anymore

So some of you may recall my diatribe regarding frameworks. I've done a full flop, and am completely behind Ruby on Rails (and jQuery). I love them. However, some of my reasons for not using them are starting to come true in my everyday experience with RoR: Every FUCKING time I upgrade, or change ANYthing on any of my servers that has to do with RoR, or Ruby in general EVERYTHING GETS ALL KINDS OF FUCKED UP! It's getting obnoxious.. I have hours into tracking down stupid shit problems that are NOT documented any-fucking-where. RoR 3.1 is coming out, with some anticipated (at least for me) changes. I went to install the "edge" version (beta of 3.1), and I couldn't even get it off the ground, so I reverted back, but I had reverted back to 3.09 (coming from 3.03) and that got all kinds of fucked up, but not because I installed the 3.1rc gem, but because my 3.03 shit wanted to install mysql2 v 0.3.x which is apparently not compatible with any RoR v3.x.. so TWO FUCKING HOURS LATER, after finally reverting back to 3.03, and THAT NOT WORKING EITHER, I canned the entire fucking install, re-installed.. and NOTHING! FUCK YOU ROR! And then I solved it.. a workaround I was using for 3.03 was fucking fixed when some gem got updated, and removing that workaround allowed 3.03 AND 3.09 to work. Apparently I won't need mysql2 anymore with 3.1, but I wouldn't know that from my SHIT experience today.

BUT for every hour I spend tracking down these OBNOXIOUS problems, I save 5 in raw development time. Tradeoffs. Sorry for the long drawn out shit that you don't care about. This is really just so I have a record of what I did when I end up having to do it again.

~Nic

Failin' with Palin 2.0

So Bristol's "memoir" came out yesterday. I have no desire to read it, but I had to do a little bit of research to pacify my curiosity of what in the fuck that person could possibly write about. Well, of course, denial, victim-hood, and other staples of the conservative American:

Bristol starts off her story with the night her virginity was "stolen" by Johnston, saying she had succumbed for the first time in her life to the "woozy charms" of wine coolers while on a camping trip with friends. She woke up the following morning next to Johnston's empty sleeping bag in a tent and found out that the two had slept together–an event, she writes, she couldn't recall.

OK - a few things I have to point out here: wine coolers don't actually contain alcohol. They just piggyback the placebo effect. At least - the few times I've drank them, I couldn't even get a headache. Also, at that age I couldn't blackout if I tried, that apparently comes later. I was forced to remember, in vivid detail, every drunk-beyond-imagination stupidity I found myself doing. This -- Palin 2.0 -- is pure bullshit, and a dodge of responsibility. If it's true, it sounds like rape, but since the [nice young woman] already claimed she can't remember anything, she'd find herself hard-pressed to prove that she didn't actually say "fuck me please" the whole night.

Bristol writes, concluding that she immediately felt obligated to marry Johnston, a boy she had a crush on since the seventh grade.

Now, it's not my place to say this, but this is, after all, the internet; sounds like dude was set-up. ..just sayin'.

"Let's just say Track was an 'abstinence only' advocate when it came to his sisters, and he was ready to enforce that philosophy with his fists," Bristol writes, although she doesn't fully disclose what happened at Johnston's house.

The book describes Johnston as a disloyal boyfriend who had "occasional romps with other girls."

This family has no credibility. They stand for all the hypocrisy that is conservative America. No wonder they're stars -- 50% or so of the population sees themselves on TV, and riding across the country in a goddamn bus, only to bail when no one pays attention.

It'll be fun watching her/them self destruct in the coming years.

~Nic