Five days ago I did laund-r-y
It was Sunday, I did laund-r-y
Alas, the tank-top planned for rogue-er-y
(slam, slam, slam)

The clothes were piled high-er-ly
Five loads of clothes I did painstaking-ly
But Strange female suit-items engaged in conspiracy
(slam, slam, slam)

In an effective coup of clothes-ery
An obviously scripted tank-top escape-ery
Has resulted in an unwarranted 6:00AM inquiry.
(slam, slam, slam)

Little appreciation was given from she
- The owner of the tank-top-ery
For late night Invisible-Man marathon-er-y
(slam, slam, slam)

Four hours of rest had he
When whole house illumination-ry
Removed him from sleep-er-y
(slam, slam, slam)

When engaged in tank-top search and rescue-ry
Somewhere in the rules you’ll see
Each drawer must be opened excessively
(salm, slam, slam)

Which is why I’m writing bad poet-ry
From work at seven thir-ty
And plotting revenge via white-trash tank-top tee.
(slam, slam, slam)

Recently I cashed in five years of company incentive points for an IPod 60 Gig Video.

Positives:
The interface is nice.
Good size - not too small, not too large.
Control is nice - simple, intuitive, and comfortable.
Screen resolution and quality is excellent.
ITunes management system is nice - metatagging management is good, automated free podcast subscription is great.
Up to 20 hours of battery life for audio playback is great.
60 gigs is a huge amount of space.
Video playback (h.264 mp4) is smooth, responsive, and high quality.
Nice little features - it automatically pauses when the headphone jack is unplugged, will sync and display Outlook calendar and contact data.

Negatives:
The interface doesn’t give me as many options as I’d like. For instance - search video by genre.
The screen is rather small - forget watching any movies with subtitles.
Apple’s DRM and other locking down of features is annoying. For instance:
- Apple doesn’t want you to be able to copy your content - even legal non-DRM’d files - back off the IPod.
- Apple links your IPod with just one computer. If you want to access it from another computer, ITunes helpfully suggests that you delete all content off it.
- Apple has locked down your metainfo options. For instance, you can’t tag video with the format of “TV Show” which means you can’t use the nice sorting configuration built into the IPod interface.

Overall, I enjoy and use it regularly. The ability to get my NPR top news podcast every morning automatically is something that I could get dependant on. I think what’s really needed is some competition on tools and applettes to bring back the functionality that Apple chose to leave out.

Rob Weatherly has weekly reefkeeping podcasts here.

A patent for this item was originally filed on Christmas eve 1912 by the German pharmaceutical company Merck, and granted two years later (to the day). At the time,it was not known to be a drug in its own right; rather, it was patented as an intermediate chemical used in the synthesis of a styptic (a drug intended to control bleeding from wounds.)

It was was first brought to public attention in the 1960s by a physician who recommended it for use in certain therapy sessions, naming the drug ‘window’ (he discovered it while searching for compounds that might have a similar psychoactive effect as other compounds contained in nutmeg). It was widely used therapeutically by US psychotherapists (especially on the West Coast) because of its empathogenic effects until its criminalization in the late 1980s. The drug was hailed as a miracle by therapists and counselors who claimed couples could have six months worth of progress in one use of the drug, and soldiers returning from the Vietnam war could overcome their PTSD sometimes more effectively than talk or group therapy. A small number of therapists continue to use it in their practices today.

Research at the University of Manchester indicates that this drug dramatically reduces tremors in patients receiving L-DOPA treatment for Parkinson’s Disease.

If he’s still around somewhere.

From Wikepedia, ” Mike Vallely, a.k.a. Mike V, (born June 29, 1970 in Edison, New Jersey) is a professional skateboarder who resides in Long Beach, California. His career began in 1986. He was first featured on the cover of Thrasher Magazine performing a Sad Ho-Ho Plant. Lance Mountain recognized Mike’s talent and upon his recommendation, he was sponsored by Powell Peralta.”

From the internets, Mike is a badass (link is SFW, but some ads on the site may not be).

Pirate broadcasters in Brooklyn and Queens are rebroadcasting Howard Stern’s satellite radio show on Pirate conventional FM frequencies, and the irony on this one is sweet.

Will the FCC, which chased Stern off the public airwaves, now crack down on the pirates? The agency needs a complaint to begin an investigation. Will Stern or Sirius be the complainer?

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/01/great_irony_her.html

Steve: And so, you know, because I’m a developer when I’m not being a hacker, I wanted to understand - oh, and the other thing is, I want to write a robust testing application, you know, that always works all the time. So I wanted to know, like, okay, what bytes have to be set which way, what matters, what doesn’t. Because, you know, that’s the way you get something that is as solid as, you know, the code that I put out from GRC. So what I found was that, when I deliberately lied about the size of this record and set the size to one and no other value, and I gave this particular byte sequence that makes no sense for a metafile, then Windows created a thread and jumped into my code, began executing my code. Okay, Leo? This was not a mistake. This is not buggy code. This was put into Windows by someone. We are never going to know who. We’re never going to know - well, actually I’m going to find out when because we’re going to know when this appeared because this appeared - I’m guessing this is not in older versions of Windows, which is why this function - or if it is in older versions of Windows, it’s done slightly differently. I’m still on the hunt.So this is not my last report on this. I expect to have a much better sense for this a week from now. But the only conclusion I can draw is that there has been code from at least Windows 2000 on, and in all current versions, and even, you know, future versions, until it was discovered, which was deliberately put in there by some group, we don’t know at what level or how large in Microsoft, that gave them the ability that they who knew how to get their Windows systems to silently and secretly run code contained in an image, those people would be able to do that on remotely located Windows machines…

Steve: Yes.

http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-022.htm

Maryland lawmakers yesterday approved legislation that would effectively require Wal-Mart to boost spending on health care, a direct legislative thrust against a corporate giant that is already on the defensive on many fronts nationwide.

“We’re looking for responsible businesses to ante up . . . and provide adequate health care,” said Sen. Thomas M. Middleton (D-Charles), the Finance Committee chairman, as the Senate approved the measure with a majority wide enough to survive an anticipated veto. A similar bill has cleared the House of Delegates, and legislators expect to reconcile their differences easily.

Lawmakers said they did not set out to single out Wal-Mart when they drafted a bill requiring organizations with more than 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health benefits — or put the money directly into the state’s health program for the poor.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28219-2005Apr5.html

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It’s about friggin’ time.

Pretty interesting stuff, you can check it out here.