I was visiting my sister in her hotel room last night and picked up a copy of TV Guide. In it I learned that Mr. Jerry Seinfeld & Co. are finally coming to DVD, with Jerry supervising the addition of extras such as outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage. This must mean they’ve finally wrung out enough cash from syndication deals that have it on four times daily or more in some markets.

If you’re like me, you’ll find this news bittersweet. Seinfeld was a hell of a show, and most of the re-runs are still eminently watchable. But what we really need is some new material.

Side note: I wanted to mentioned this immediately when I got back last night, but my Internet was down. As it was when I awakened this morning. And after lunch. When I finally got ahold of my providers (they hung up the first time), they made noise about a “virus,” which is computerspeak for, “We fucked up but don’t know how to fix it yet.” (Not to be confused with “That’s technically impossible,” which as Dilbert tells us, often means “I don’t feel like doing that right now.”)

David Beckham has been “sold” to Real Madrid for £25 million, which is huge news, unless 1) you live in the United States and 2) you’re using it as a pretense to put his picture on your Web site.

On the drive down, I was listening to mindless radio and this Train song “Calling All Angels” came on. Here’s a section of the lyrics. See if you can spot the line that confuses me:

When children have to play inside so they don’t disappear
While private eyes solve marriage lies cause we don’t talk for years
And football teams are kissing queens and losing sight of having dreams
In a world where all we want is only what we want until it’s ours

I know the best bet is just not to listen to this stuff, and that’s usually what I do. But… huh?

Josh looked like shit, so there went my payoff for seeing this. Oh, sure, there were a few laughs (courtesy Harrison Ford) but for the most part, so slow I thought the projector must have been running in reverse*.

* I’m sure I must be borrowing this line from somewhere, but damned if I can remember where.

Consider for a moment: how much of your medical information do you store on your computer? If we exempt your browser’s cache (from that last time you tried self-diagnosis), I’ll bet it’s close to zero. I know there’s nothing on mine.

So what the hell is Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) talking about? In a hearing, the Honorable Mr. Smith said that “in tapping into [P2P networks], [users] expose their own private materials–health information–into the public domain.”

Whaa? It seems Gordie also has a porn fixation:

Smith suggested that “grossly pornographic” files on P2P networks are a “deceptive trade practice which seems to be under the FTC’s jurisdiction.” Under the Federal Trade Commission Act, the agency has power to punish “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.”

Smith asked the FTC what actions it was taking to protect “young people from what is clearly deception when it comes under the heading Harry Potter and is clearly pornography.” — News.com

I’m not sure how free P2P networks classify as trade, but that’s okay because the problem solves itself: keep your kids off the computer.

After all, you don’t want them finding your medical records.

Oh god help us. I’d heard about it, but I didn’t think it got off the ground.

Let us take a moment, dear friends, to quietly appreciate the humble dollar theater. For it is at this second-run palace that we may indulge our discomfiting urge to see movies which we know, in every crevice of our bodies, will suck with a mighty force.

And after 100 minutes of schlocky rogue-cop-seeks-vengeance cliché nearly as tired as our poor buttcheeks, we can remind ourselves that it only cost a dollar.

This morning’s e-mail brought an amusing little spam (identifying information withheld):

Hi,

My wife is a wonderful cook. I am of a mind to believe that she has the best recipe for chocolate chip cookies that there is. Colleagues, friends, and neighbors,(especially neighbor kids) all want to know every time she is planning a batch so they can sample the tasty morsels. If you would like a copy of this great recipe, send $2.00 along with your email address to the following address.

S C--
Box --
--, Montana --

The amusing part was that it seemed so homemade: cutesy copy with a return e-mail address that was likely valid. Conveniently, the named post office box was also used by a legit business owned by the couple (sayeth Google). With just a few minutes of research, I had home and work numbers, addresses, ISP, and even pictures of the couple.

The question was what to do with this information. Usually my spam gets filtered into a folder which I rarely open. When I do, it’s to scan for false positives or, when I get particularly annoyed, to forward some off to abuse@ addresses. But this one was so homey it had evaded the filter.

For the first time, I had concrete information linking a spammer to the act. I immediately thought of Mark Eckenwiler’s success using a small claims court to get $500 against a telemarketer. Yet the TCPA, the statue under which he sued, has no provision for spam.

So I went to SpamLaws.com and discovered that Montana has no anti-spam statute. But Iowa does. The law specifies that the mere act of transmission to/through Iowa is enough to constitute a (civil) offense, provided the e-mail breaks certain rules (see ¶3).

I believed the e-mail broke subparagraphs (c) and (d) because it had no mechanism to request removal, and the headers were incomplete. So I took a trip down to 6th & Kellogg and spoke with the clerk. She gave me forms for filing a small (i.e., less than $5k) claim and told me the fees: $50 to file, and about $8 for service by certified mail. (It costs more if you use the sheriff as process server, but I couldn’t do that for Montana.)

Now things were seeming less cool. I didn’t want to spend nearly $60 for something that could be easily derailed if they are at all suspicious of certified mail. Worse, if I got a judgment, the Iowa court couldn’t garnish wages or dip into bank accounts in Montana. (It is possible to transfer judgments, but that’s additional time and expense.)

All of this could be recouped, of course, because I’m entitled to “costs and reasonable attorney fees.” Still, I began to feel some doubt about my “case” and my motivations. I imagined my spammer couple, living (as they do, according to the census) in a small town, trying to supplement their income…

Then I thought: wait, what am I thinking? I’ve never heard of these guys, so they must have bought a list and/or software to do this. They took that additional step of paying money to annoy me. No, this would not stand.

So I called them.

(To be continued…)

I have a number of credit cards, though I really don’t use most of them. My favorite is my ISU credit card, which I got a few years ago. It features a nice, crisp version of the Cyclones logo on a strong red background. I’ve always liked it (inasmuch as you can “like” a credit card.)

Anyway, the issuer upgraded me to a gold card some time ago and sent me a new one. This one was much uglier: the whole face was gold, with no contrast other than a dark outline of Cy. I kept it, but since my original card had plenty of room before expiration, I rarely used it.

Today, I got another copy of the gold card. Since there were years left before the other’s expiration, and the new had the same account number, limit, and all that, I can only conclude the bank is saying “Seriously, dude, use this one.”

You have to be a true nerd to remember, but there once was a command-line program called pkunzip.exe. When you wanted to get the files out from those big .ZIP files, pkunzip — named for the creator of the ZIP file, Phil Katz — was the biggest game in town. (Though there were those who dabbled in others such as .RAR, .LZH, and .ARJ — ahh, how I remember my utility belt of decompressors…)

Anyway, the reason you probably haven’t heard of PKZip (which still exists, some ten years after its zenith at version 2.04g) is that another company stole the crown: Nico Mak Computing, now renamed after its flagship product. WinZip.

It seems that nobody wanted to type pkunzip -e filename.zip in the brave new world of Windows. Through the use of a better interface (still going strong nine versions later), WinZip handily beat the inventors of the format.

I think there’s a lesson for the Linux team in there somewhere.

Tire pressure: a vitally important contributor to vehicle handling, safety, and fuel economy — and not just for Explorer owners.

Why, then, does everything surrounding its maintenance seem so stone-age stupid? Put this little stick on, watch where it pops up. Okay, now some air — not too much now — now do the stick again. Is it enough? Wait — have you been driving this? Are you using the “at rest” psi or the warm one?

True, there are some lovely cars that will show you their tire pressure right on the dash, which some hope to make even more practical.

Which is great, but what about when you have to fill the damn thing? Where are the advances in air compressors? Why can’t I drive up, right now, in any car and find a pump that lets me type in the pressure? I could attach the head, and the pump would then alternately fill and measure until the tire was correctly inflated. In future, this could be done with even less work as the car wirelessly told the pump the appropriate pressure based upon data.

But even now, I don’t see why I should ever have to bend down and use a gauge. That shit may have been cool in the days of full service fill-ups, but that time has passed.

I had an opportunity to speak with a member of law enforcement the other day, as we discussed whether I really needed to be exceeding the posted limit by 14mph. As luck would have it, we both essentially agreed I could: he said he was going to be nice and “give me a warning.” Had I been 15mph over, he said, a citation would have been issued. (Amusingly, the words “give me a warning” were as close as he ever came to one; he gave me nothing written, never mentioned my speed again, and after returning from his cruiser said only “You’re free to go.”)

I mention this in part to praise the fine officers in (whatever the hell Illinois county I was in) but also, of course, to bitch. When the dude asked me for proof of insurance, I discovered mine expired something like 01 Feb 03. Not the insurance, mind you, but the proof. (The cop said it was fine — if we had it into ’03, it was extremely likely to be renewed.)

Yet it got me to thinking: what do we need these documents for, anyway? Why don’t the law enforcement guys, tricked out as they are with shiny little laptops, just pull up the car or driver license and check for an insurance company endorsement? Forget the (easily forged) printed slip — have the carriers do data exchange. After all, if all these privacy violations are inevitable in the networked future, we might as well get some convenience out of it.

A friend said she thought this was good, so I caught it at the dollar theater — and I had to disagree. True, I didn’t hate it, but at times I got close: the movie had a fundamental dishonesty, offering up boatloads of “twists” that made no sense.

Actually, it’s not accurate to say I got close to hating it, that would entail much more emotion than I actually felt. I simply didn’t care about it.

Yep, I went to see it, just as I’ve seen every other release (in theaters) from one of the most reliable studios in the business. And as with all the rest, I thought it looked great and was clever and funny. It’s also fun to try to identify the actors from their voices — especially when you don’t know their names, as with My Cousin Vinny‘s friend’s stuttering lawer guy.

(Though I still can’t believe some people actually protested because Ellen DeGeneres was a voice.)

I’ve been doing some evaluation of used cars the last few days, and I’ve discovered there’s a perfect tool to use for testing car stereos: what I call “the newlywed mix CD.” I found a disc from a Jan. ’03 wedding and it had a great variety of tunes — from “Low Rider” to U2, Celine Dion to some jazzy arrangements — that I just played portions from to get a feel for the systems.

Plus, in most cases it’s no big deal if you forget to eject it.