U.S. Adopts Aggressive Tactics on Iraqi Fighters (washingtonpost.com)

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

Uhm, hold on a minute.. isn’t that basically kidnapping/hostage taking and VERY ILLEGAL not only civilly and morally but also against the Geneva Convention? AND the rules of war? Why isn’t this guy in the brig facing a war crimes tribunal? Or a Court Martial? WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I just noticed the gave us a new channel - FUSE. (ch. 399)

It happily apps to be a music video channel that does not in fact suck! In fact, it seems to be ONLY alternative/punk (et al) music. NO rap! NO Celine! Right now I’m watching a Jane’s Addiction video! SWEET!

Reason #1947 for you to go Direct TV.

A note to my PixelDécor! users:

PLEASE READ THIS!!!!

This month I have had a constant battle with bandwidth skyrocketing. Seems a there is a number of users sending spiders to come and basically rape & pillage PixelDecor.

I have taken all I can take!

This month this site’s traffic has reached 15 GIGABYTES. A normal month is about 5, a busy month is about 10. I have raised bandwidth FOUR times in FOUR days, I was even at one time off line for several hours unil I found a fix. 15 GB is 3/4 of my bandwidth I share with 6 other sites! UNACCEPTABLE!

I can’t afford more bandwidth, and I refuse to pay for the opportunity for people to act immorally.

Some of these ***khead offenders have been grabbing as much 65MB (sometimes more) in a single visit, that’s half the site damn near (A normal visit is under 1MB).

So, to close these rapists down, I have put a password on my files directory (where *all* the downloadables are stored). This should cut the spiders off. I hope.

As of now I will post the password in the left side top box, on every page (for now), but in the future if this abuse continues I might require you to send a email to an account I will set up to recieve a autoresponder with a regularly changing password. Or I might require everyone join the mailing list or register on the forums to get the password. I haven’t decided I will decide when I get there. I am really too frustrated and angry to think clly right now.

I hate to have to do this, but many site have had to take this step due to such asshats.

I want to keep pixeldecor free, but such abuse of my generosity (which in web terms is $$$$) is absolutly intolerable.

If it continues PixelDecor will HAVE to go subscription only, or go offline completely. The site makes me no money to speak of, and no one ever donates to support it, if it’s the only way, it’s the only way. I do this for fun, and when it stops becoming fun it’s gone. End of story.

I go on vacation on August 8th and I don’t want to have to wonder what is happening to my site, if it’s online or not. Wondering who is being a piggie and who isn’t (I’ll be camping (without electricity) an not exactly in a position to DO anything about it anyway) I want to make sure it will still be available to people to use, and not be subject to such blatant disregard for others. This IS the only way I can save myself from just giving the whole thing up entirely.

I also will be IP banning anyone who downloads more than 10MB. (FYI thats a lot of files for PixelDecor, folks, just spread your love out, okay?) Don’t do all your pig-like bingeing in one sitting. It’s not going anywhere, hopefully, it’ll be here when you come back.

Thanks for your understanding, and if you don’t understand, BITE ME.

Jen
Your Pixel Hostess (which a lessening love of humanity)

My dogs make these!

His parents are suing as the international mockfest has taken it’s toll on the kid.

For $40,000 your little princess can sleep in Cinderella’s Carriage. At that price it better come with a team of white horses a Prince that looks like Aragorn.

Next to that, the Fairytale Cottage for $5,000 seems like a steal!

Or with all the pirate mania… maybe they’d like this pirate’s ship for a mere $25,000? Low on funds? This paupers pirate-themed ones is just $4,000.

Not into all the European legend junk?
Or maybe a tee pee for $3,066? Or a vintage race car for $25,000.

And there’s even more is you want to torture yourself.

This guy wrote m tonight, and I checked out his blog, this story makes me laugh hard.

I released MT2Safari 1.2 last night, for you safari users it adds the ability to do text selections from the page you want to blog. Just highlight, and hit it!

Thanks to Jay Allen for the tip to make it happen.

Will look like this

I’m hungry already.

Day-late Anniversary/ly-birthday Dim Sum party tomorrow (Sunday) for lunch. Anyone in the Cinci area want to go with us? Email me for details. You’ll love it, trust the fat chic. I didn’t get this butt by eating bad stuff.

scriptygoddess has a BIG report on how the buymusic.com process works sucks.

Basically the rule is, where there is sucking there is Microsoft, and such is the case here.

Sledge talked about this today, but I was planning on touching on it too.

Buy.com’s music site, BuyMusic.com is a OS racist. That’s right I said racist.

When a mac user loads up the page, you get:

Thank you for visiting BuyMusic.com.

In order to take full advantage of BuyMusic.com’s offerings you must be on a Windows Operating System using Internet Explorer version 5.0 or higher.

Download Internet Explorer Here.

Now, keep in mind, Mac users NOT using OSX can’t access the iTunes store, and there is still a significant number of mac users still in OS9.

To add insult to injury, if you go there they flash the site at you, you can see it and it loads, then they redirect you to the “No way Jose” page. Which says, yes it DOES work in Safari, and on Mac thank you very much, but “We don’t want your graphite ass here”.

Then they rip off the ipod/itunes ads using a tagline that has usually been attached the the mac platform, “music downloads, for the rest of us.

So, Buy.com is shunning mac users, that’s fine, I used to buy stuff from buy.com from time to time. Used to. I know where I’m not wanted.

Helvetica vs. Arial

Just to let people know, I won’t be doing blogathon. July 26th is my anniversary (Chris you see that?) and we have stuff to do that day an the next so you’ll have to do someone else.

I still haven’t done this yet, and want to, but I keep meaning to, never a good day for me. But if someone is looking for a cause to blog for: I wrote about one last year Beads for Education

So many of these “blog memes” I see are obviously written by 18 year olds. “Cutest TV Twin: Mary-Kate or Ashley Olsen?” Oh please.

So, since everyone else has one… Thought I’d try one too.

1: Communards: totally cool, or totally gay?
2: I remember when ____artist name___ was a genius not a washed out joke.
3: Morrisey: Better alone or with the band?
4: How high exactly was your hair?
5: Your music collection then: Cassette or Vinyl? Many 12″ EPs?

Forgot to blog about our seeing Dave Attell perform.

We got good seats “on the rail” being the back, but elevated, front along the counter with the mic being straight ahead, bathroom 6 steps away too. Really great seats.

Well Soon we realized how bad they were, I was sitting 3 seats from the worlds drunkest blind butthead.

Being blind, and liberally medicated, began to talk very loudly in reponse to Dave’s act.

Also just so happened they were a miss placed three some that were with the table in front of Dave on stage so he was talking loud so THEY could hear him. His buddys with him kept going “Lenny, shut the hell up!” over and over but no one ‘had the talk’ with him, so Lenny kept talking. And talking and talking… eventually the entire act was all about Lenny. Dave couldn’t shut him up, so Dave made fun of him. Dave was irritated, so were we as Lenny was 6 feet away on my good side so ALL I could hear half way through was him and his friends pleading for him to shut up.

I cornered a waitress and begged her to help “before I steal another of his senses by shoving these F***ing golf pencils on the tables up his nose”.

Everyone around him kept going SHHH, I finally started flinging said golf pencils (they are there to fill out comment cards) at Lenny.

After the show I cornered Lenny, and I had a few choice words and a bit of name calling and guesses at the size of his ‘danglies’. Of course he was all “what? I didn’t do nothing”.

Maybe no one told him it was a small club and not a BIG theater, because he sure spoke loud enough to wake the dead. We were as far from the stage as you can get and Dave hd every half assed comment, and he was ALL I could hear and there was someone with a microphone and speakers behind my head.

Dave was lampooning him with Polish-based pokes and evidentially Lenny was polish because he got really fiesty then. I was REALLY hoping the management would have come over, but no, so I complained on the way out. As did a bunch of others.

Otherwise, Dave was a RIOT, laughed so hard I thought I’d broken something. Pop out the nose, not kidding. NOT for anyone who has a ounce of offend-ability, but thats why he’s so funny to me.

The joint sold out in record time and we were easily one of the few couples above 25 years old. The rest of the crowd was a mass of african disk wing, tongue/eyebrow pierced, tattooed freak beast sluts from hell.

If you can see him, please do. He was also very cool and let people take pics with him.

Not for us though. Mr Man, after having drunk the equivalent of a two-litre with one of their bottomless mugs of pepsi, he didn’t get out of hte bathroom in time before dave scurried out of the room into the kitchen. Shoot. Oh well. It was REALLY dark anyway.

If you know Lenny, send me his number, I have some loud 3am phone calls to make.

Study: Kansas is flatter than pancake

Saw it on Sunday.

My god what a great movie. Go see it or I’ll refuse all knowledge of you. Johnny Depp alone is worth the ticket price, but to be fair, Orlando “Legolas Elf Pants” Bloom is worth the time. Both are fabulous. Depp’s Captain Jack “Keith Richards” Sparrow is just a hoot to watch, as is Orlando’s impersonation of him.

I never got into Legolas like some, but then I like my men dark, and of a slightly bohemian euro trash bent (said the woman who married a chubby man with curly blonde hair and a hobbit’s feet/appetite), but he was very yummy in this with his real dark hair. Go see it before I have to hurt you.

Speaking of Lord of the Rings hotties in other roles… Just hd about this one: “Hidalgo” with Viggo “Aragorn Boom boom” Mortensen. (Click the tabs to see more on the movie, thats the link to the trailer page.)

So weird seeing him with his natural full-blooded scandinavian blonde hair (instead of the long brown hair and bd I like so much on my euro trash), but he’s still quite serviceable for a love slave. So that’s on my “future must see ” list, it also looks like a great movie for pretty pictures of places I’ll never visit because they aren’t Las Vegas.

But it’s interesting seeing what the actors are choosing to do post-LOTR, more swashbucking and horses… good thing they don’t suck at either.

I think i have FREAK MAGNET stamped on my name on some database.
I got this mail just now:

From: sunny96@spiegel.de

Date: Wed Jul 23, 2003 11:59:54 AM US/Eastern

To:

Subject: Dimensional Warp Generator Needed hpf

Hello,

I’m a time traveler stuck here in 2003. Since nobody here seems to be able to get me what I need (safely here to me), I will have to build a simple time travel circut to get where I need myself. I am going to need an easy to follow picture diagram for a simple time travel circut, which can be built out of (readily available) parts here in 2003. Please email me any schematics you have. I will pay good money for anything you send me I can use Or if you have the rechargeable AMD dimensional warp generator wrist watch unit available, and are 100% certain you have a (secure) means of delivering it to me please also reply. Send a separate email to me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com.

Do not reply back directly to this email as it will only be bounced back to you.

Thank You

authorizationjakzjg xicjfrpywqie okhxnennier pordtwqthwx gswhvlovbntsopikahep he f bptg

I might save this one.

That being said, I switched to Mail today because of the spam controls. SO far it’s less annoying than I remember not tat I figured out how the inbox display works, I hated that it had a box for each account, which for me is a ton of little boxes. Well now I see if you click the main box it merges them all in the display, so less annoying.

I know this was fascinating.

Entourage (MS’s mac-only version of Outlook program - I just like it better than Apple’s Mail.app okay?) has been running kinda pokey… so I decide to trash the mail… get ready for this?

That’s 5 digits alright. OVER THIRTY THOUSAND EMAILS in Entourage’s trash can.

Sad part is after this finally empties (and it’s been chugging a over half hour now and not halfway done) I have to clean the sent, outbox and inbox, probably a few thousand more. I’ll end up with at least a few extra gig on the powerbook at least. I don’t know how I let it get so bad. I am so ashamed.