wildyams

Ok, while I've got a second here, I figured I'd make an entry. Last night Dave, Jen, Rebecca, Bob, Becky, Steve-o, Jon, Koga and Edrich all came over for my little New Year's Eve party. Dave and Jen brought a ton of food (thanks you guys!), and Bob and Becky brought some wine (thanks you two). Basically we just ate and drank and talked all night. At around midnight we all went outside where we saw a couple fireworks here and there and we wished each other a Happy New Year's. Then Dave and Jen and Bob and Becky and Rebecca all took off, and the rest of us went inside and listened to music and talked some more. Jon and Koga took off after a bit, then Edrich left at about 3. Steve-o stayed the night here on my inflatable bed in the guest room, and woke me up today at noon. I had set my alarm to go off at 6:45 so I could get up and watch the Stealth Bomber, but when it went off I was so tired I switched it off and was back fast asleep shortly thereafter. I was so asleep that I didn't hear when the bomber flew over, although Steve-o said he did. When Steve-o woke me up at noon, we drove the parade route for a little bit and went to Pie N Burger, but since that was closed we went to Lucky Boy instead. Then he dropped me off here and went home to clean up and change and should be coming back out here tonight. Jon is on his way over here now, and tonight Steve-o, Jon and myself are probably gonna go meet up with Dave and Jen and Jen's friend Carrie (Cary? whatever) and we're probably gonna get dinner or something. Anyway, that was my New Years for you. I've got literally 200 pictures or so, but being at my Dad's place, I can't put them online from here, so you'll have to wait for pics, but I'll put this whole week's stuff up this weekend. Happy New Years everyone, I have a good feeling about this year, don't you?

ACHTUNG! ACHTUNG! This is NOT Will, this is Jon, and it is now January 1st, 2003, and Jon (a.k.a. Spidey a.k.a. Jon The Bomb) is now entering the www. Gee, now I can get that "WWW" sticker and put it on the back of my truck, right? Or maybe I'll just start with the t-shirts with funny logos...anyway, you will soon find me relocated to http://www.mamazboy.com (within the next week, hopefully)...for all you webhermits and socal tech geeks out there, bear with me, I am getting help and learning quickly!

Well, last night I was over at Dave and Jen's and Steve-o, Jon, Edrich and Carrie all showed up and we ended up hanging out and talking till 4 am or so. We had a great time and a great discussion, but the late night (combined with getting up early for work today) definitely has taken its toll. I'm beat and I'm calling it a night. Thank god tomorrow's Friday lol

I've blogged before about my fears, about my desire to do something, ANYTHING different. To take the road less travelled and see if it really does make all the difference. I have now, tonight, resolved to take my first steps towards doing that. Call it a New Year's resolution if you want to, call it whatever you want. I would call it an experiment. What I plan to do is see if I can live, feasibly, without a car.

I hate my car. And its not because its a bad car, or because it breaks down on me, or its a money pit, or because its ugly or slow or whatever. I hate it because its so fucking UNNECCESARY. Most days out of the week, probably somewhere between 5 and 6 days on average, I never go anywhere. I go to work, I come home. That's it. There are many weekends where I never leave the house at all. I am fine with this. I don't do it because I have no other choice, I do it because its what I want to do. And yet, here I have this car, this major expense, and I use it because I have it.

Let me break it down for you:

I have 4 remaining payments on my car. It will be paid off by May. My current car insurance expires at the end of June. I have been paying $230 a month for my car in car payments for the last couple years, and I pay about $1800 a year in insurance. Not to mention gas, maintenance, registration, and of course there's the pollution it causes, the potential to get in an accident, the possibility that it will break down, that it will get stolen, and all the while the car is losing value just by being there. It is a WASTE. I hate it, I want to get rid of it, I want to live car-free.

But I've got a problem.

I live in Los Angeles, maybe the world's largest city that grew up AFTER the invention of the automobile. This city is build around, and laid out in anticipation that people will be driving their cars everywhere. Way back when, car manufacturers bought out the trains in the area and destroyed them, then implemented freeways so that people would buy cars and drive them. My dilema is this: I want to get rid of my car, but I live in a city that virtually everyone who lives here would tell you is a place where a car is an absolute necessity.

But then again people would probably say the same thing about cell phones in this city, and I'm MUCH happier ever since I got rid of my cell phone about 2 years ago.

So here I am, and here is my plan. Its an experiment: I am going to find out if it is possible for me to live in LA without a car, and I'm going to find this out by June. If it is possible for me to live without a car, then I will sell my car, use the money to clear my debts, and begin saving the cash I had been using to paying off my debts and spending on my car, and with that savings I hope to buy a house, or maybe even (if I'm REALLY ballsy) a boat by the time I'm 30 or so.

I plan to execute my experiment in small steps. See, I know if I just swore off the car tomorrow, I probably would not be able to do it. No, I need to learn to adapt to life without a car, and see if I can actually do that first. So this is my proposal: beginning Monday (and for every Monday from here till June) I will reset the odometer on my car when I get in it, and for every week in January I will limit myself to 50 miles of driving a week. I will not allow myself to go over that unless there is some DIRE emergency. 50 miles a week, that's it. That's for January. For February I will reduce that number to 40 miles a week. For March, 30 miles a week, for April 20 miles a week, and for May, 10 miles a week. That is all IF I can do it. To put this in perspective, I am proposing essentially driving somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 miles between now and June 1st, maybe less (HOPEFULLY less). If I get through May and I am fine, then I'm gonna be looking to sell my car. PERIOD. I plan to post the miles on my weekly odometer every day if there is a change when I make my blog entries, just so I can be held accountable and so you all can see the results of my experiment.

To help execute my plan, I am no longer going to take my car to work. I live 2 and a half blocks from the subway station, and there is a subway station roughly the equivalent of between 3 and 5 blocks from my office. This will be my new commute every work day. It will take me considerably longer to get to work, just because as of now it takes me between 5 and 10 minutes to get to work, and to walk 8 to 10 blocks, plus wait for a train and ride on it will take me more like 35-45 minutes (I know cause I've done it before). I am going to get a MetroRail monthly pass (which is like $30 I think), and this will get me to and from work every day.

Let me say it is quite possible I may find that what everyone says is true, that in this city a car is an absolute necessity, and if that's the case, then this experiment will end in failure and I will be very upset by it. However, at least I will KNOW for sure why I am tied to this damn contraption. I will not be doing it because that's what everyone else does, because its what I'm "supposed to do". I'm going to find this one out the hard way, as I should. I need to stop being afraid and start being active about going after the things I want and making the changes in my life that I desire. For me, this is my first step to doing just that.

I've got my first problem in my quest to ditch my car. When I wrote out my plans last night, I forgot that Monday I am meeting Mario at work, and he is bringing for me (hopefully) a new CD burner and a hard drive, and I was going to bring my Mac, and go from work right to Dave's house so that I could install my new hardware and have Dave help me set up OS X on my Mac, as well as a couple other goodies. Anyway, all of this will obviously be very difficult if I don't take my car, so I will be taking my car to work on the first fucking day of my effort to get rid of my car :( Nonetheless, I will still be counting all those miles towards my first week and it will just put more pressure on me to drive less this coming week.

I just talked to Mario (who called here while I was out running errands), and I can probably pick up my stuff from him either tonight or tomorrow, probably tomorrow. He was cooking when I called him back, so he couldn't really talk, but I'll figure that out later when he calls back. Since I last blogged, I ran out and bought my MTA pass ($42 per month, meaning that will cost me around $500 for the year for those, since they only sell monthly passes). I also ran to Ralphs and Ross and bought some clothes and food. Those stores are just across the street from the subway station, so they're very close, easy walking distance, so I won't need my car for those in the future either. Also, being that Ralphs is right there across the street from the station, I'll probably stop in there for bagels for breakfast from time to time. So my plan, hopefully, is to take my Mac over to Dave's tomorrow and do my big switch, but that's only if he's around and able to do it, of course. Otherwise, I'll just have to drive out there on Monday and use my weekly miles.

I've been thinking about my plan (or experiement) and wanted to clarify something: I am not going to let my experiment get in the way of common decency or courtesy. If a friend needs a lift, or if I become too much of a leech bumming rides and it becomes my turn to drive, then if that means I go over my miles, then I will do it. Hopefully these things will not happen, or if they do it will be on rare occasions. If they happen fairly frequently, then essentially that will mean my experiment is a failure and will mean that I do need my car.

I also want to say that whether I find I need my car or not, I am going to be looking for some kind of replacement vehicle. My plan is to drastically reduce the use of my car, and there is no sense having something that expensive (both in upkeep costs and just in value in general) if I'm rarely going to use it. It would be like having an $8,000 TV and paying around $200 to $300 a month to use it, even though you only had it around for emergencies because you almost never used it. Its just wasteful.

I've been looking for replacements for a while, however, and I am kind of at a loss there. A bike is one possibility, but a bike is not practical if I want to go visit my friends (they all live far distances away, and with the urban congestion between they and I it makes the prospect of biking through that rather ugly). A bike would not be practical otherwise because I rarely go anywhere in my neighborhood that isn't within easy walking distance. A motorcycle or a Vespa is another possibility, but where I live riding either of those would be EXTREMELY unsafe, and I don't want to risk my life for this. A skateboard or rollerblades are out just like a bike would be, and I don't want just another car. The new Segways are maybe a possibility, although they're very hard to get right now, and even so they're about $5,000, which is still WAY expensive and especially considering the thing is basically like a motorized skateboard. I've been looking at commuter cars and electric cars and things of that nature, but even though they're really perfect, I would need a place to plug them in (I don't have something like that), and they're still about as expensive as a normal car (like in the $15,000 to $20,000 range). So I don't have another solution, because if I did, I would have already put it into action instead of trying this experiment; but I am not going to give up. Anyway, I'm hungry so I'm gonna go eat. I'll probably post some pics later.

Ok, well like I said I had a couple hundred pics from the last week to go through since I couldn't get them into my computer from my Dad's place. So, now that I'm back home I went through them all and have a whole bunch of pics for anyone who's interested. In going through them I found they kind of naturally broke down into a few categories.

Obviously there was the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Years Day, followed by the Rose Bowl. I didn't watch either of them. However, I did happen to get a couple pics of the Rose Bowl the night before New Year's Eve, and I got a bunch of pics of the parade route a couple hours after the parade when it was littered with garbage from all the people out there the night before. There's also a shot in there of the Goodyear Blimp as seen from my Dad's back yard as it was circling the Rose Bowl. Check em out:

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While I was waiting for everyone to come over on New Year's Eve I didn't have much to do, and the sunset was particularly magnificent. As a result I periodically went outside and snapped off a bunch of pics of it, and figured it was kinda cool to have all these pics of the last time the sun was seen here in California in the year 2002:

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I've found that some people tend to really mug for the camera when they know pictures are being taken. I tend to just give the camera two thumbs up, which is my form of mugging I suppose. Dave here is constantly mugging for the camera:

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Jon's another guy who mugs for the camera. The difference between him and Dave is that Jon usually takes self-pics and mugs for the camera then, while Dave just mugs when people are taking his pic. You'll notice that Steve-o and others showed up in some of these pics, and they didn't get their own little sections like this just because they don't mug for the camera. I didn't get my own section either, so shaddap lol. Heeeeeeeere's Jon:

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And of course there are just the random pics that didn't really fit in to any category. They're mainly us hanging out New Year's Eve and the following day. I actually probably only took about half of these since my camera was being passed around quite a bit (which I like, cause you never know what pics you'll get). Enjoy:

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Miles on the odometer: 0

So I made it through my first day without even looking at my car. I got up about 45 minutes earlier than I usually would and was out the door at 8 this morning. I timed myself and it took me almost 35 minutes exactly to get to work, and that was with me stopping at the ATM for some cash and with having to wait for the train for a bit at the station, so I suppose if everything was timed right I could maybe make it there in 25 minutes or so. Anyway, it wasn't a bad way at all to get to work, and I don't think I'll mind doing that every day at all. I do need to pick up some kind of portable CD player though, cause I do like music, of course.

Anyway, I had a couple discussions with people today about my experiment, and got a bunch of different opinions, and (more importantly) got a couple suggestions and ideas for solutions in case the experiment fails. Let me first say, I'm almost sure the experiment will fail. I don't think I'll realistically be able to survive in LA without some kind of transportation. I've always wanted something that just makes more sense then what I have. I checked the blue book value of my car today, and its a little over $6,500, and for me for a car I feel like I hardly use (or hardly need to use), that's money that could probably be put to better use elsewhere. I mean, I don't have any better ideas, but just the idea of a car is becoming more and more ridiculous to me the more I think about it. Its a mode of transportation, that's it. It gets you from one point to the other, and that's all. So why are they so ridiculously expensive? I mean, some people have needs where they have to cart around a lot of stuff, or drive as a job, or I dunno, are really concerned about how cool they look in their car or something, but certainly there must be a cheaper alternative for those of us who don't care about anything other than getting from point A to point B with as little expense and as little headache as possible, and its my goal to find out what the best solution is!

Today, the best suggestions I got were these: sell my car and rent one when I need to, sell my car and buy some kind of scooter like a Vespa or something, or talk to my insurance about seeing if they'll lower my rates significantly if I tell them I am only going to drive say, between 3,000 and 5,000 miles a year (or less, hopefully, but I'm being conservative). Well anyway, for starters I'm going to call my insurance and try to get my rates lowered, cause I don't plan on doing much driving between now and June already. But between now and June I will continue exploring my options, and hopefully I'll come up with something. Anyway, I'm gonna go screw around with my new Mac setup (Dave installed OS X for me yesterday, and did a great job, cause I brought it home and it worked on the first try, which is unbelievably rare for me with computers, trust me lol).

The experiment continues lol. I'm still at 0 miles on my odometer, and once again didn't even look at my car today. I rode the subway to work again, this time was about 10 minutes quicker cause I showed up at the train station right as it got there. I didn't walk home tonight though cause Jon showed up at work and we went to dinner at Hollywood and Highland and hung out for a bit. Jon was nice enough to get me a portable CD player/MP3 player from the Sony Store, so he brought that by and I'll be using that during my walks/rides to work from now on (thanks Jon!). That's all the developments of my little experiment for you.

When I got home I started playing around more with OS X, specifically I've been ripping a bunch of CDs to iTunes so that when I go get new blank CDs with Mario tomorrow I'll be able to burn a bunch of stuff on a disc and make that my to and from work disc. I must say, OS X really does kick ass, even though I haven't nearly begun to use it to its potential. I am so happy to have my Mac at where I've been wanting it to be for a while :-) Now I just need to upgrade my PC and I'll be set! lol

Well I did look at my car today, even opened the door, but it was just to grab some CDs out of it, I didn't start it up or anything, so the odometer is still sitting at 0. Not bad eh? 3 days without my car and its been business as usual except for walking to the subway instead of driving to work like a lazy ass. This weekend I'm going over to my Dad's place, and will probably stop by Dave and Jen's while I'm there cause Dave got Jaguar today and told me that I could install that on my Mac, so it looks like I'm taking my Mac back to Dave's place for the second Sunday in a row lol. The main reason to get Jaguar is because Dave informed me that Jaguar has the ability to do Windows and Mac file sharing (bout fucking time somebody made that easy), and that just kicks ass if you ask me. There's other goodies that come with having Jaguar too, like Safari, so I'm psyched to check those out.

So last night I got a surprise email from one of my best friends in college, Jeff Rudnick. A friend of his Googled his name and found my site and showed it to him, and as a result he emailed me (pretty cool huh?). Jeff sent me a long email telling me everything that's been going on in his life for the last couple years and I sent him back an email telling him what's been going on in my life the last couple years. Its always nice to hear from old friends :-)

There wasn't a whole lot that happened today other than the usual. It rained on me this morning for the first time on my new commute to work, and I was using my new CD player for the trip today as well. Other than that, work was pretty laid back, and there weren't any real big stories to report.

Now I'm off to continue ripping and burning CDs. I'm gonna give Mario copies of "Movement in Still Life" and "ESCM" by BT tomorrow, along with "Dubnobasswithmyheadman" by Underworld. And I'm gonna make myself a compilation CD with MP3s I've been ripping so that I only need to take one disc with me for my walks to work. So that's it, good night :-)

Ok, I haven't blogged in a day or so, and figured I should make an entry while I've got a chance. I'm over at Dave's place right now with he and Koga, and they're watching "The Beach" in the next room. I should first of all say that yesterday was the first day in my experiment that I drove my car. My friend Jen came over and we went out to eat, and there was a perfect parking space right in front of my place (a TOTAL rarity), so she parked and I drove. My odometer now stands at one mile and halfway between 5 and 6 tenths, all from last night (we went to the Spaghetti Factory).

Today I took the subway to work again as usual, and at about 5:30 tonight Dave called and asked if I'd like to come out for dinner tonight because Koga was at his place. If Koga hadn't been there, I probably would have just gone home cause I have only slept something like 10 hours in the last 3 days (don't really have a reason for it, just didn't go to bed till after 3 am for 3 days in a row). But since Koga was there and I don't see him too often, I figured fuck it, I'd go home, get my car and drive over. But I told them that I didn't get off work till 6 or shortly thereafter, then it would take me between an hour and an hour and a half for me to walk to the subway, ride it home, walk home, get my car, and drive through Hollywood traffic on a Friday night to get to Pasadena for dinner. Realizing we probably wouldn't be eating till maybe 8 or so (like I said, this was at 5:30), they decided to just come pick me up at work at 6 and we went for seafood in Glendale, then came back here, where we've been fucking around ever since.

The biggest news I've got is that JON HAS A BLOG!! Lets hear it for Jon :-) Go check out Jon's blog: Mamazboy.com. Jon is one of my closest friends, and has been since we met in college back in 1993. Jon is one cool motherfucker, so be a sport and give his blog a look-see. There's not much there yet, just a couple entries, but give him time, he looks like he's got the blogging bug judging by one of his entries lol. I'm glad to see him with a blog. Personally, I wish more people would get blogs. Its a great way to follow what is going on in your friends lives if you have hectic schedules and don't talk every day.

Anyway, enough of this, I'm gonna go watch "The Beach" with Koga and Dave. Laettner :-)

Well, 36 and 4 tenths, but close enough. In any event, I made it under my allowable limit. Below I've got a couple pics from the week, some during my walks to work, so enjoy those. I had a nice relaxing weekend, slept in very late both days this weekend and was just a lazy ass in general, just like I like it :-) Today I went over to my Dad's place for dinner (we had probably the best king salmon I've ever had), and I had a great talk with my sister Rebecca. Rebecca's great, she is a surprisingly open-minded person for her age (moreso than I was when I was 22), and I think she has a great outlook on things. I really look forward to hanging out with her because we have such great talks. Anyway, after dinner, I went over to Dave's place where he installed Jaguar on my Mac (once again, Dave is the man, I came home and it worked great right away, and Jaguar definitely runs better than OS X was). Dave also hooked me up with Toast so I can now burn audio CDs, although I probably won't be doing too much of that, but its still nice to have :-) Anyway, I'm going to bed, but here's some pics from last week to check out. Enjoy:

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So its the start of a new week and the odometer is back to 0. I didn't look at my car today (once again), but I did walk to and from work and I stopped at Ralphs for groceries on my way home. Work was definitely just an average day, although at various times I felt like I was sidestepping landmines that I left for myself in the mad rush of the holiday season (a thing or two was evidently missed here and there on a couple projects I worked on, so believe me, I felt like an ass for that, but it may all get waived anyway, which would be very nice for me). I don't have much to blog about other than my new OS for my Mac, so I'm gonna take a second to gush about it: Jaguar fucking RULES! Suddenly my Windows box seems... superfluous. Safari is a better browser than IE on the PC. Its just that simple. And that is especially amazing because 90% of websites (or more) are specifically designed to run on Internet Explorer for Windows. Now I'm sure if and when I get my new processor (2.4 GHz at least, but I'm kinda hoping for a P4 3+ GHz) and Windows XP here at home then maybe that will tip things back in favor of my Windows box when it comes to surfing the web (honestly about the only thing it actually was better at, well that and gaming). But for now, I'm just blown away that Safari surfs so damn well. Macs have traditionally been great at lots of things, but surfing the web was not one of them. So anyway, I'm finally starting to feel like my setup here is coming around. Just need my new box w/ processor for my PC (and a copy of XP), and a switcher so I can have dual monitors for both systems and I'll be set. Well anyway, enough boring tech talk, I'm off to bed :-)

"So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.I really believe that." - Charles Everett Decker

I think Charlie may have been onto something there.

Nevermind me, just kinda having a flashback to last summer. I dunno, lets just say I'm having trouble filling the hours today lol.

You know what sucks? With me scaling back the use of my car, the amount I have to spend on it doesn't change, and now it just makes me feel like my car is even MORE of a waste (which is, of course, sort of the point of my whole experiment). So this is the time of year that I end up having to spend the most cash on my car, more than any other point. In the next couple weeks I've got a car payment due ($230) a car insurance payment due ($300) and car registration due ($100). All that for something I plan to spend maybe 2 or 3 hours using in the next month or so? This is why I'd rather spend my cash on some new computer equipment, cause I KNOW I'm gonna use that a lot lol.

Ok, back to whatever.

I don't know what it was, but I know that it was one of three things:

1.) My alarm didn't go off as scheduled

2.) I never set my alarm

3.) I got up, walked across the room and turned my alarm off and went back to sleep and forgot about it

Whatever it was, I got a phone call this morning at 10:30 from my boss who gave me a line from "Office Space": "Its not a half day today." lol So I showed up at work at 11 am ready to begin my day. I stayed about 2 and a half to 3 hours later than I normally do to make up for it though, so I guess its all good. I feel like a fucking idiot for oversleeping nonetheless. Its not something I do very often (I think this is the second time in the year and a half I've been with my current company), but it still makes me feel like a knucklehead. So anyway, my day mainly consisted just of working (Bond, Bond and more Bond).

Crap, I need to find something more interesting to blog about soon, cause this shit is boring.

How different our thinking is now than it was when our country was founded! It seems more and more that everywhere I look I see examples of the fine ideals that the founding fathers of our country had in mind, and how far away from those ideals we as a society have ventured. There are two things in particular that bug me presently, and both are matters for the Supreme Court.

The first is the decision that was handed down yesterday in the Aschroft vs Eldred case. For those not familiar with the case, here is a little background for you: a couple years ago (1998 I believe) Congress passed The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (named after the late Congressman and entertainer). What this Act did was extend the term of copyrights by an additional 20 to 50 years or so (for all the specifics on it, please investigate it yourself, its definitely worth your while). For those who aren't sure what this exactly means, or aren't sure what copyright laws mean, it essentially means that published works that have been copyrighted ensure that their authors and/or creators retain the rights to them for whatever the duration of the copyright law states. When Copyright Law was first introduced in America, that length of time was 14 years. Now, however, that length of time is generally more than anyone's lifetime, thanks to the most recent extension (I believe its up over 100 years or more). The reason the Sonny Bono Act was passed was because the copyright terms for such famously published works as some early films was getting set to expire. The biggest example of this was that Mickey Mouse (who first debuted and was copyrighted in the film "Steamboat Willie" in 1928) was about to no longer be copyrighted. So big business (in this case, Disney and the entertainment industry) lobbied to have Congress extend the copyright term so that Mickey Mouse, and soon after such works of art like "Casablanca" and "The Wizard of Oz" would stay under copyright for another 20 years plus. In speaking to some people, its clear they are in favor of this. They feel that sure, those companies own those movies, and they should continue to be compensated for any and all profits generated by them because they made them (or bought them off of whoever made them). They own the rights, they should reap the profits. Isn't that what copyright laws are all about?

Maybe they are now, but it is clear this is not how they were intended by our founding fathers when they introduced copyright law.

The Supreme Court upheld the Sonny Bono Act by Congress with a 7-2 ruling, with the general feeling of the Supreme Court being that while Congress clearly was wrong to extend the copyright term, it was not unconstitutional, and therefore the Supreme Court could not overturn the Act. In reading the statements from one of the two Supreme Court members who dissented (in other words, one of the guys who did think what Congress did was unconstitutional), I came across numerous quotes from the founding fathers, and I was just struck by how much we (our government and our society) have twisted and warped what the whole point of copyright laws was in the first place:

"Under the U. S. Constitution, the primary objective of copyright law is not to reward the author, but rather to secure for the public the benefits derived from the authors labors. By giving authors an incentive to create, the public benefits in two ways: when the original expression is created and . . . when the limited term . . . expires and the creation is added to the public domain." (link)

Isn't that a much more benevolent and pure goal to strive for? Think about that: copyright law was created as a small reward to ensure that people would have a reason to contribute to improving life for EVERYONE with their inventions and art. It was there to make sure that if people would not work towards improving life for everyone just out of altruism, then they could also get a nice short-lived personal benefit out of coming up with beneficial inventions and enjoyable artwork. But it was clear that the goal was to make things better for US, for everyone.

Now copyright has been twisted into making things better for ME. It has tipped way into the direction the founders did not want it to go into. Copyright now makes things WORSE for everyone by bestowing ALL benefits of any good invention or artwork upon whomever holds the rights to it, and it does so indefinitely almost. Copyright is no longer a small carrot dangling in front of the horse that is invention and artistic expression. Copyright is now a business endeavor designed to drive people with greed rather than a sense of contributing to humanity and society. It has become about lining our own pockets at the expense of everyone else rather than contributing to the greater good at the expense of a few individuals.

The other case before the Supreme Court that I think clearly displays how different our thinking is as compared to what the founding fathers had envisioned is the case of Marc Kasky vs. Nike. Here is a little history into that case for those who are unfamiliar with it: Nike has been sued by a "human rights activist" named Marc Kasky, citing that Nike lied to the public a couple years ago when they said they did not use sweatshops in the manufacturing of their products. Under a somewhat infrequently-used law, Kasky sued Nike essentially for lying to the American public (which is illegal). In court, Nike decided that rather than try to defend the accusations they would say that because of the First Amendment which protects freedom of speech they had the right to lie. This, of course, is contrary to the laws governing truth in advertising, so Nike lost their case in the California Supreme Court, and as such they appealed it to the US Supreme Court, which I understand is going to hear the case in June. At the center of this case is whether the Constitution is there to protect the rights of corporations as though they were people. This case has drawn attention to a ruling by the US Supreme Court back in the late 1800s in which corporations were supposedly granted personhood, giving them the rights of average citizens. However, under recent scrutiny it was determined that the case in question back in 1886 never did in fact rule that corporations should be granted personhood and should not get those rights, and that it has been a misconception for over a hundred years now, and that corporations have been enjoying unfair rights as though they were people, the main benefit of which are lobbyists and the ability to contribute to political campaigns and to politicians. Once again, this is not what our founding fathers had in mind. Look at the following:

'Jefferson and Madison proposed an 11th Amendment to the Constitution that would "ban monopolies in commerce," making it illegal for corporations to own other corporations, banning them from giving money to politicians or trying to influence elections in any way, restricting corporations to a single business purpose, limiting the lifetime of a corporation to something roughly similar to that of productive humans (20 to 40 years back then), and requiring that the first purpose for which all corporations were created be "to serve the public good." '

However, the amendment didn't pass back then because it was considered common sense. Back then all states already had their own laws preventing this sort of activity from corporations, specifically saying no corporations could make any kind of political contributions. Back then people DID strive to do things for the common good, and not just because it would turn them a profit at the expense of everyone else. But in 1886 in the case of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad changed all of that. I have made this entry long enough, but I strongly encourage any of you reading this to look into these issues, and educate yourself on just how far off the path our founding fathers laid before us we have traveled. I want to close with a quote from President Abraham Lincoln that he wrote in a letter to a friend back in 1864, and let it hopefully resonate in you how unfortunately accurate his vision of the future has become:

"As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

Links:
Copyright Law and Roasted Pig
Now Corporations Claim the "Right to Lie"
Lawrence Lessig's Articles

Don't you love long weekends? Its great knowing that even though I slept all damn day (and will consequently be up all night most likely) I still don't have to go to work tomorrow :-)

I've been spending a lot of time this weekend ripping every CD I own to mp3s so I can just play everything off my Mac. I gotta say, iTunes is fucking fantastic. There is certainly no better way to keep all your music organized, and its so easy to make cool playlists. Soon I'm gonna have to start making mixes and burning them to CDs for when I walk to work.

Speaking of walking to work, here's my update on my car for you: I only drove it once this whole week, and it was today. I drove it to Ralphs, which is about 2 blocks away, bringing my weekly total of miles to 1.1 this week (last week I was wrong, I only drove 32 miles total, not 36). So in the last two weeks I've put less than 35 miles on my car. Not bad, huh? I drove to Ralphs today instead of walking (because its so close) because I knew I was going to be buying a lot of things. I got 2 gallons of milk and 2 cases of soda, as well as some other items I needed and just did not want to try to cart all that crap back without something to carry it all.

Last Friday at work I decided that I am going to start bringing my lunch with me from now on. Without a car I realized that if people decide to go eat somewhere that I don't want to go, I don't have a choice other than to eat at the excessively bland Back-Lot Cafe, so I figure I will bring food just in case. While at Ralphs I got myself a couple containers to carry food in that will ensure I don't squish all my food in my backpack on my way to work.

When I got home tonight from Ralphs I made myself two sandwiches, and got about 2 bites into one of the sandwiches before I realize that the ham I'd used was starting to not taste the way it should. I don't know what ham gone bad does taste like, but this was definitely a little more sour than usual (although it wasn't really awful, just a little bit off). So now I'm a little worried that the ham was bad and I'll have some bad sickness coming or something, but hopefully it wasn't that bad (it didn't smell bad at all or anything, just tasted a little off), and I only had 2 bites, but still its a little worrisome. That was about 3 hours ago though and I feel ok now. Needless to say I threw the rest of that sandwich away with the rest of the ham and just made myself a mortadella sandwich instead. Ok, enough blabbering. I'll try to post some pics or something tomorrow. Happy MLK Day everyone :-)

I had a weird day today. I was not sleepy at all last night so I stayed awake. I didn't finally get sleepy till around noon today, and actually went to sleep at 1! lol But I made myself get up at 6 only to discover that Dave had been trying to call me for the last couple hours cause he had two tickets to the Laker game today, and he couldn't use them (Jen was sick). So I missed out on going to the Laker game, but Jon got to go instead with his brother (who's in from out of town), and that was probably the better thing to do. Besides, I was kinda in the mood to just hang here and relax and watch the game on TV, so that's what I did. Other than that, I've just been messing around with my computers all day. Its back to work tomorrow, but here were some pics from last week for you:

Click for Pics

Man, staying up till all those weird hours this past weekend definitely screwed me up this week. When I woke up Tuesday morning, I could feel that I had a little bit of a cold coming on, like a tickling in the back of my throat. So I took some Advil Cold and Sinus and went to work, but I felt kinda crappy all day, and by the time 6 o'clock rolled around I felt absolutely exhausted, so I went home and went right to bed (I took some NyQuil first though). The next morning when I woke up, I still felt all groggy, even though I'd slept about 11 hours or more, but I figured it was just that the NyQuil hadn't worn off yet. So I went to work anyway, and just kinda felt groggy all day. When I got home last night I still felt like I had that drugged drowsy feeling that you get from NyQuil, but it had been almost 24 hours since I had taken it. Last night I didn't do anything either, and I went to bed at about 9 or so. So today I woke up at about 6:45 or so, and I feel pretty well rested, and I don't have that drugged drowsiness today, but I still do feel a little sick. Anyway, I'm gonna take a lunch to work again today (I did that on Tuesday), so after I finish this I'm gonna go make it. I haven't had hardly any apetite the last couple days, presumably because I've been feeling sick. I haven't had dinner in two days, and I've had a fairly small amount of food for lunch the last two days. Anyway, that's enough for now, I gotta get ready for work. Laettner :-)

Wasn't the Super Bowl today? Thank god football season is over. I didn't watch the Super Bowl at all today. Well, maybe I saw 3 minutes of it or so. I just didn't care. I didn't go to a Super Bowl party and I didn't watch the damn commercials. In my opinion, getting all excited for some COMMERCIALS of all things is about as stupid as it gets. It was like those stupid BMW commercials that everyone was all excited about because they were directed by Guy Richie and starred Madonna or whatever, or that John Woo directed soccer commercial a few years ago. Lets face it, commercials blow. They're advertisements, they're trying to get you to buy some shitty product. Advertising is up there as one of the biggest evils in the world (for me anyway). Isn't it generally a good thing to watch something on TV without having to have it constantly interrupted with a bunch of sales pitches?

I'm almost done with my current book, "The Fugitive Game" (I'll finish it tonight I'm sure), and I now feel I can understand where the whole "Free Kevin" movement came from. While I was reading "Cyberpunk" I didn't really understand that whole movement because it sounded like Kevin Mitnick was an asshole and that from the sound of it we'd all probably be better off if he stayed in jail forever. But evidently the author of "Cyberpunk" (one of the co-authors, actually, John Markoff) had a personal beef with Kevin because Mitnick wanted cash to talk to him for that book, and Markoff didn't want to pay him, so he just portrayed him as this "dark side hacker". But the more I read about Markoff and Mitnick the more sympathy I have for Kevin and everything that happened to him. Maybe when I finish the book I'll have more insight into what really happened, but its sure sounding a lot like Kevin was the victim of a witch hunt and was sacrificed by Markoff so that he could make a lot of money writing a second book about the guy and by selling the movie rights to that book. Anyway, after reading these books I'm glad to know that as of last week Kevin Mitnick finally is free to use the web, I'm just sorry that the guy had to go through everything he did, and I think its a bad thing that he was really deprived of being online while the whole "internet revolution" took place (how sad is it to have computers be your life and to be banned from using computers or the web from 1995 through 2003?). This is not to say that Mitnick never did anything, cause surely he was doing illegal stuff and was a hacker, but he served an awful lot of jail time and time on the run as a fugitive for someone who never really harmed anyone or made any cash off of his hacking. Its like Kevin said "I'm not innocent, but I'm not evil either."

Anyway, I've got some pics for you from last week, check em out:

Click for Pics

Man, what a weird day. Yesterday I slept in till like 4:30 or so in the afternoon, and as a result I couldn't fall asleep until something like 5 or 5:30 am this morning (and when I did fall asleep it wasn't very fast asleep cause I still wasn't that tired). But I got up at 7:45 when my alarm went off and I didn't really feel that sleepy right away, although after about 10 minutes or so it started to settle in. But I was up and went to work, did my normal walk and train thing. I gotta say, when I first started this taking the train thing a couple weeks back, the walking was a little bit painful. I mean, since I quit working retail (which was 3 years ago) I've been working these jobs where I just sit in a chair in front of a computer all day, and since I don't work out at all the only exercise at all I've been doing is whatever walking I do during the course of my normal day, which is usually just walking from my apartment to the car, then from the car to the office once I park (these were both VERY short distances, like 50 paces or something lol). So I discovered with my walking to the train and then from the train to work that I was so unused to walking that the 20 or so minutes of walking each way I was doing each day was actually making some muscles in my legs kinda sore (gives you an idea of what a lazy ass I am lol). But sure enough that's been fading away and today I realized without even noticing it at first that its gone completely.

Ok I got kinda sidetracked with that there, back to today's weirdness. So I get to work only to find out that the internet worm that pretty much crippled the web on Saturday (if you haven't heard of this, someone sent out a worm that exploited a weakness in Microsoft SQL 2000 servers or something like that, and it did a lot of temporary damage to the web: crashing severs and stuff like that, supposedly not too unlike the Code Red attacks back in the summer of 2001), anyway that worm was still messing with everything at work, so the big company had taken everyone on the lot offline completely to try to get it fixed, and they'd been working on it since Saturday. Well after about 2 hours they made the announcement that we were back online, but it proved to be fool's gold because about a half hour or less after that announcement evidently they got nailed by the worm again and it crippled everything again and forced us all offline for the remainder of the day. I still had stuff to do (one of the benefits of having all of our work projects on a totally isolated network), so the day was plenty busy for me, but it was kinda weird with emails and the internet just not there all day. My service has been up and running like a champ the whole time here at home though, so I guess the PacBell people know more than the work people or something lol. But anyway, I am crashing big time from the lack of sleep last night, so without having any dinner I'm going to bed now. Laettner :-)

We've got our connection back at work, woohoo! lol

I didn't really have much else to say, just wanted to celebrate that :-)

Oh yeah, I added a link to all my music down in the lower right hand corner of my blog here, in case you either wanted to see what kind of music I like or in case you wanted to listen to some stuff (not the fastest connection, sorry, talk to SBC or something). Anyway, its not every piece of music I own yet, I'm still ripping all my shit to MP3, but that is a somewhat significant portion of what I own I guess. I dunno, anyway, that will be constantly updating probably every day for a while. I'll let everyone know when its finished. But for those of you behind a firewall (like me here at work), you're not gonna be able to use the cool playlist feature, but you should still be able to listen to one song at a time (sucks, I know lol). Actually, I haven't tried to use the playlist feature from another computer away from home, so it may be that the connection is really too slow to listen to anything anyway. But that's ok cause I didn't really put that there so people could tune into the songs on my computer (get a radio if you want to listen to new music lol), its just there so you can see a list of stuff I listen to.

At least I'm not Windows ME lol

Which OS are You?

I can't be too upset about being this OS. After all, its what many of the phreaks and hackers I'm reading about used to use lol.

Out of all possible results, this one was my favorite:

So after putting my music collection online like that, I read this article which made me a little nervous about the whole thing. Then I talked to Dave and he confirmed that it is (or most likely is) illegal to have all those mp3s online like that, and even though I think it would be cool to let people listen to some of the music I have, I'm not risking jail time over that so I switched my setup so that all my songs and albums and whatnot are still listed there, you just can't access them. So, sorry bout that, but trust me just from listening to a few of them at work, the connection speed was not fast, and it was not at all an efficient way to download stuff. But anyway, so that is now changed. Really the main reason I put that up there was just cause I want people to be able to see what kind of music I like (cause some people can really tell a lot about a person based on what they listen to), and anyway you can still do that.

Ok what else? I came across this site the other day and wanted to share it and how it relates to me. See, when I was younger, my good friend Cella showed me how to make a potato gun. That's a gun that shoots potatoes, by the way. Anyway, as a kid stuff like that is great. You make this gun for like $20 and it launches a potato about 100-300 yards or so. And its loud as hell, so its great lol. Anyway, one summer we took the potato gun up to Big Bear to my friend Steve-o's place and decided it would be fun to launch potatoes off into the wilderness. That got old quickly though so we started launching them down the hillside at some condos (definitely NOT a good idea). Well naturally the cops came and confiscated the gun and took our names down, and I ended up getting off with a disturbing the peace infraction (it could have been a lot worse lol). So after this whole incident, we all gave up on the whole potato gun idea. But this site shows that the idea is not dead, and that its come a long way lately lol. That page is nuts, full of childish testosterone pubescent angst. Enjoy :-)

I don't have much to say about today. Same ol same ol. But I did come across this article about the menace that teens armed with potato guns in Germany have become, and since I was just talking about that, figured I'd include it. Check it out:

Safety chiefs target German craze for 'bazooka' spud guns

I saw "About Schmidt" last night, and I gotta say I really enjoyed it. I mean, I figured I would, so it wasn't a surprise or anything. I remember the first time I saw the one sheet for it, I knew I wanted to see it, even though I had no idea what it was about lol. Then seeing the trailer cemented it for me. Just took me forever to see it cause nobody would go with me. But I digress. It was definitely a cool flick. Jack Nicholson may not have been at his absolute best, but if not he was damn close. I would actually say its probably the best subtle performance I've seen him do (stuff like "The Shining" or "As Good As it Gets" were fantastic performances, but they certainly weren't subtle lol). Even still, Jack has never been a totally subtle actor, and he's still a pretty strong personality in this movie as well, but its much more toned down than what you usually see him do. As I was watching it last night I became aware that it had to be directed by the guy who did "Election" just because it was very much in the same tone as that film during stretches, and because part of it took place in Nebraska. When the guy who played the principal in Election showed up, I became certain it was the same director. So I checked when I got home and lo and behold I was right, it was Alexander Payne, the guy who did "Election", so I was kinda proud of myself that I actually picked up on his style after having only seen one of his movies. I didn't even know the director's name until I looked it up last night, but after "Election" and now "About Schmidt" I'm not going to forget it again (I should probably see "Citizen Ruth" too). The guy reminds me a bit of Wes Anderson with that rather understated type of comedy that I get the feeling a lot of people probably don't pick up on (like my friends Jon and Steve-o who don't like "Bottle Rocket", which is definitely too bad). Even though Alexander Payne has a different sense of humor than Wes Anderson, they just strike me as similar filmmakers. I dunno, I'm rambling.

Tonight I'm probably gonna just watch the Lakers-Kings game and go to bed. Exciting huh?