So I added two whole items to my “Things I Hate” page. I figured I’d be able to populate that area pretty quickly, but it’s a matter of getting photos of all the things I hate. I need a bigger memory stick.

Like a lot of people with my problem, admitting you have a problem is the first step. For me the second step is firing up pairNIC.com and seeing if the URL is already taken. Usually it is. That’s the thing about ideas…few are new. Which is good, since another axiom is there is only so much time in a day. I already have more sites than I can currently work on, more hobbies than I can find time for, and less money than I would like to spend on both.

I was driving home from work the other day and thought of weareb.org (“we are borg” for you URL dyslexic out there, a trekkie reference for those of you people with lives). Got to my computer, fired it up, and yep. Taken. I did learn something about Wegeners disease, but the website was definitely taken. 60bpm.com was taken. And not being used for web services at all. I sent the owner an email, but it will bounce. They always do. With this site I just wanted to put up a flash project I’d created of a heart that, you guessed it, beats at 60 BPM. And to be fair, one thing a lot of non-techie people don’t understand is there is a lot that can be done with a domain name besides web services. There is ftp and email to name the obvious ones. Sometime people, gasp, don’t even want a website. Let’s see, then there was crap4sale.com, which seems to be owned by Yahoo! (who have a little more money than me). This site was expiring last month, so I made a calendar event to try to snag it for myself, nope! Crap! Renewed. Probably automatically, since they’re still doing nothing with it (that I can tell). Oh well, will check again next year.

Usually, I send email to these admins, but it always bounces, which sucks, since you are supposed to be required to keep your contact info current. I hate the idea of people parking their asses on a domain and doing nothing with it probably more than I hate front running or squatters. Take any word in the dictionary and put a .com after it and it’s most likely taken. Take any two or three word combo, or letter combo, and you run a good chance. Test your url at some of the unethical registrars and it will be registered immediately, forcing you to buy it from them if you really want it, which is one of the reasons I support pairNIC.com.

I’m not asking for much here, just throw up a simple graphic like we do over at sandbenders.net (a good example of what I was talking about when I said you don’t really have to have a website. We use that server for email, as a test box for technologies we want to test out, offsite storage and backups (oh the irony!), and as an ftp server. It’s never really had much more of a web presence beyond that splash screen (I made the melted motherboard graphic!). And I registered somedarkplace.com even though it will be a long time before I get around to messing with it, but I obviously do have plans for it. A simple graphic and countdown script (thanks, Jim!) let people know I am not just some hooplehead keeping others from a site.

To prove my point: squatters.com, frontrunning.com, and saggyfunbags.com are all taken. Ok, so saggyfunbags is only taken because I just checked it’s availability through Network Solutions (that unethical registrar I was talking about above), which causes it to immediately become unavailable. You know what’s worse than being an unethical fucktard? It’s when you don’t know you are an unethical fucktard. These guys espouse the laughable position that they are doing clients a service, since if you have an idea, and check its availability, you’ll probably want to come back later and buy it at their inflated prices (remember kiddies, when it’s in print it’s not slander, it’s libel). In theory, this would be a nice practice, but in usage, companies will register 1,000s of URLs (like in my first two examples) and put up ads and links, they then check their web log files to see how much traffic the site gets. If it gets enough, it’s kept. If not, they ask for a refund. And as already mentioned some unethical registrars lock up and whois searches or buy the most frequently searched ones.

This means that the majority of sites out there aren’t even sites! They are just URLs tied up, when the intent behind the refund period was for people to return and reregister a URL that was registered with a typo. Personally, I feel if you can’t at least spell the name of the site you want, then you should have to pay for the mistake. You get several chances to confirm before buying. Idiots.

Anyway, I have a lot of sites I would like to own, but I know I have too many already. But on the bright side, if you’re wanting saggyfunbags.com it should be open soon!

I was finally used to the last hour changes. Now they come around again! I have to go to sleep when I am not tired, have to get up in the dark again, which feels way too early, and I have to drive into the sun on my way to work and again on the way home. I think my retinas are burned out. Either that or I’ve done something else to make myself go blind.

Because this was what I cleverly call a “mortgage check” (the check my mortgage payment comes out of) I was unable to pay back the money I borrowed from my reserve fund. Well, yesterday I got a check from my flex spending expenses from 2007, so now I am able to do this, and am feeling a bit flush! I wasn’t in the boat of wondering how I would make it to next payday, but I was looking at a lean couple of weeks. No fun!

And I like fun.

I’m not going to run out and buy a nano or anything, but I do get to put some extra away, have operating funds until next payday, and maybe get to pay a bit extra on my credit cards. Oh yeah, and I have enough to finally get that pony. The check isn’t huge (Elliot Spitzer pays ten times as much for an hour with a hooker), but it is enough to make me happy for the day. I’m such a simple man.

I was trying to clean space off my .mac account so I could have some place to back up files to. I was going through old crap that I don’t need anymore or that I know I already have in several places. I threw out nearly a gig of stuff, but while I was doing so I came across a few photos I thought I would share.

This one my niece took at a park across the street from my place. I think she was six or so at the time and she did a great job. I trusted her with my camera. She never treated it like a toy. I never felt like it was in any danger. The file name was supposed to be me at park, but as I look at it now it says meatpark. Oh well. Not going to bother renaming it.

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