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maybe staying w/blogger

...at least for now. I haven't made much time to experiment w/the other blogging platforms I set up to try and see if I liked them better than blogger. But so far I DON'T like them better... I'm not ready to give up on them just yet because I don't think I've had enough time with them yet to consider it a fair shake, but since there's only about six days left til the May 1st deadline for blogger ftp support, I guess I better start migrating this beeyotch to their default solution for us poor ol' ftp users...

Oh, Arizona...(again?)

The state government of Arizona is infamous for their refusal to recognize MLK day as a holiday until 1992.

Now this, a new law that is an unconstitutional, anti-immigrant and racist policy that essentially makes Arizona a police state where law enforcement can detain anyone, at any time, for any reason and ask them o provide proof of citizenship.

I don't want to take the time to write up a full rant, or to source some supporting links, however, about immigration I have only to say: there is no stopping it. All of the fear and loathing that is whipped up by teabaggers, ultra-conservatives, talk radio douches, Faux newsers and all the average Joes that buy into their bullshit, is ultimately just a tempest in a teapot. Immigration is never going to stop. When people are hungry, they will migrate. When they can earn ten times or more what they currently earn (especially when what they currently earn is not a living wage) by immigrating they will immigrate. If circumstances force them, they will do it even if they don't have proper documents or permission.

Our economy is set up on purpose to depend upon cheap labor as much as possible. I'm not saying that this is right or wrong. It's just a fact. It's set up that way by big business, and the government is content to let things be run that way. Immigration to the U.S., legal or otherwise, will NEVER be stopped as long as this is the case. I'm not suggesting that this economy is sustainable in the long term, but I don't see it changing anytime soon.

IF it were to change suddenly, IF somehow all undocumented immigrants could somehow be simultaneously and magically transported back to their countries of origin, it would be a HUGE blow to the economy. I'm pretty sure all the average joes out there who bitch about illegal immigration now would be pretty upset about not being able to afford enough meat to feed their families or about having to take a wage cut or find a new job doing something they don't want to do, for less money than they'd ever imagined.

Anyway, to all of the bigots and misleaders and shortsighted and others responsible for the stupid and evil new Arizona law: FUCK YOU!

And along those lines, a blast from the past from Public Enemy:

Ok, I was wrong (again)

In the past I've written some snarky comments online (maybe not here but definitely elsewhere) about how my Spanish students at the academy (that's a flagship state university in real life, to be more precise but still non-specific) are over-privileged spoiled rich kids. To be sure, a good portion of them fall into that category, although not even all of them are as rotten as people as that might seem to imply.

This over generalization is based on all kinds of things. Some of them are obvious clues, like being poorly behaved early iphone adopters. Or about when writing a mini composition describing their parents' home they describe a literal *mansion*.

However, as I am currently reviewing my current group's (I'm only teaching one class this semester) accumulated online "workbook" homework, I can see clearly at least some of them have *very* working class parents. (In an exercise where they had to answer a question asking them where their parents work...)

Therefore, I pledge to not be so snooty and snarky when referring to these people and the fact that I am their Spanish instructor. And when I get around to it I'll erase/edit all traces of such snarkery in my online social networking profiles.

TDS does it again...

So some conservative racist anti-immigrant douche has started burning up his fifteen minutes of fame by outing Lindsey Graham because he has cooked up a conspiracy theory that Graham's secret "alternative lifestyle" is being used to blackmail him in exchange for support for immigration reform by the President and Democratic legislators...

Ok. So, nothing to say here that others didn't already say yesterday, but this is such a great example of insanity and intolerance that has become very common in the Conservative/Republican base. I know it's pure schadenfreude to speculate about this, so maybe it's kind of wrong, but no doubt the thought that Graham may be gay has probably crossed folks' minds already, given his age, and that he is a "confirmed bachelor." Since the Republican base is so strongly anti-gay, it could be interesting how this plays out...

Anyway, they did a segment on The Daily Show last night about this, and as usual: spot-on, hilarious, brilliant.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Friendly Fire - Gaywatch Edition
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

the experiment has begun

So far, I'm not terribly impressed with any of the other platforms, so who knows, maybe I *will* stick with blogger and just redirect from this page to whatever one they set me up with.

Anyway, I've decided to not make any snap decisions, since I've still got about two weeks before the May 1st deadline. So, I'm going to try to play around with them for a few days at least.

If you want to see these temporary things which will not contain any important information, feel free.
wordpress
typepad
tumblr

So far, I'm disappointed with all three of them, but I expected this with wordpress and typepad. I had higher hopes for tumblr and I really *wanted* to like it. I really don't like parts of their interface, which is weird because that's supposed to be one of the strengths of tumblr. Anyway, that's why the colors are so fucked up on the tumblr experiment right now, because of some very non-intuitive stuff in the color/template customization....

thank god for coffee

I woke up early. Couldn't help it. Some weird nightmarish dreams: riding on top of a futuristic monorail in a highly populated unknown city, getting lost in the surprisingly large underground portion of a parking garage with escheresque stairways that led to a strange but harmless underground minimall. WTF.

I tried to go back to sleep, if only for an hour or so, but it just wasn't hapening.

Anyway, I do so enjoy my quiet solitude in the early mornings, when I can get it. So right now I'm chillin' in the living room after eating my breakfast, with my awesome homemade latte getting me all hyped up.

I think I've mentioned it before but the Aerobie Aeropress is the greatest coffee innovation of the last fifty years or so. Maybe of all time.



(The above image taken from the aerobie website. Gotta love the fake brown drops 'shopped onto that image. Don't judge this amazing machine by its manufacturer's shitty graphic design.)

I read about this thing in Wired, and put it on my Amazon wishlist, and got it for my birthday last year from my sister. It's awesome. Makes way better espresso then the espresso machine we got from Target for more than twice the price. I use it just about everyday, except sometimes on the weekends when I might only consume caffeinated diet soda. I swear I am not being paid for this endorsement but this coffeemaker rules.

blogging platforms

So, w/the google decision to stop supporting ftp coming up on May 1st, my time to switch is running out.

In the meantime it's occurred to me that I could just put up a blank index html file at my /model_consumer/ directory w/a refresh command to redirect to wherever I want it, so I'm actually not necessarily going to need to migrate away from Blogger, even though it kind of pisses me off that they are stopping ftp support.

Thanks to Holly and Madmonq for the feedback, both of you recommended wordpress. I've been looking into that too, and it's not my first choice but it's pretty much the most popular platform in use, so I'm definitely going to consider it.

I really want to use Tumblr, because it looks like it has a really cool interface. (I like the blogger interface a lot, which is a good reason to stick with it.) I would have to use the refresh/redirect option with this though, because to use a custom domain I'd have to have geekcore.net redirect to their IP address, and that won't work for us, partly because of the same reason that I won't be able to keep using blogger as I am now w/out ftp support, and also because it would send all traffic to geekcore.net to that IP, and since this is also Holly's domain (she started it like ten years ago, yall), that would fuck things up also.

In my extensive googling to research to help make my decision, I came accross moveable type/typepad also, and that looks like a viable candidate too. So, I've decided to experiment with all of those options. For now I'm going to keep my blogger as is since I've got a couple weeks left before they stop supporting ftp. In the meantime I'm going to experiment w/tumblr, wordpress and moveable type, at their free hosted domains (as opposed to the wordpress and moveable type self-hosted/custom domain option which would be what I'd use if I decided to switch to either of them.) Depending on which one I like best or dislike the least, I'll either stick w/google and have my geekcore.net page redirect to their stupid google hosted page, OR I'll do the same w/Tumblr, OR I'll set up either wordpress or moveable type to work on gc.n/model_consumer.

Getting stuff done...

...can be difficult when the tool you are using is the computer, since it's always connected to the internet...

my how things have changed

So, around this time last year, I was complaining about the media being so hyped about twitter, as well as the fact that I had difficulty re-activating my twitter account under the same user name that I had previously canceled. And then I got it all working again and started tweeting like a fool. The past few days I've found myself more and more enjoying twitter. I guess you could say it's like facebook, but without all that facebook crap. Which, I guess, I like. Weird.

Anyway, if you are reading this, and aren't on twitter yet, give it a try, especially if you know me, so we can follow each other on twitter.

music is the key...

...to transforming society. But remember, a boombox is not a toy.

follow up

I won't be able to use google/blogger custom domains since this blog is published not at the root of geekcore but instead at /model_consumer and google/blogger custom domains will not support this. So, fuck 'em!

thanks...advice?

Hey, thanks to the two (Adrian and Melanie!) of you who actually bothered to oblige my request for some form of response to my previous post. Since that (however meager) response does indicate to me that there are probably others lurking as well, I have decided to keep this up, for the time being at least.

I still have to migrate this to some other platform since Blogger will no longer support ftp as of May 1st. I can still use the geekcore domain instead of having a blogspot URL but I'd have to switch to Google/Blogger custom domains which I haven't figured out how to do or if I want to do it yet. Another option would be to switch to Tumblr or Word Press or some other platform. With that in mind, does anyone have any recommendation for a good blogging platform? Off the top of my head I am somewhat inclined to go to Tumblr, but I haven't decided anything just yet.