As you may or may not know, September 17th in the USA is Citizenship Day. It's funny, I don't know a single other person who knows anything about the holiday, let alone what days it occurs on.
A little background: Citizenship Day was established in February of 1952 by President Truman signed a bill establishing September 17th as Citizenship Day. The significance of the date is that September 17th is when the US Constitution was signed.
Anyway, the real focus of Citizenship Day is to celebrate those who became citizens during the prior year. Yet, not even the recent citizens of the US seem to know about today. When I mentioned it to some friends last year, I was greeted with a harsh, anti-immigration retort. Rather sad, really.
So, for anyone reading this who recently became a citizen of the US, I hope you knew what today was. Your natural-born neighbors most likely didn't.
As I noted in earlier entries, VeriSign put their domain finder service into effect on Monday. Today, ICS & BIND completely invalidated VeriSign's efforts. And I smiled greatly.
Really, it's a very clever solution to the problem. By declaring .net and .com zones as delegation only, they essentially force only NXDOMAIN records to be returned in the case of something other than a NS record coming back (namely, an A record).
Of course, I'm wondering if VeriSign is going to escalate this. They very well might, since money is involved, and they technically could get around this (and it would be pretty easy for them to do so as well). Things would only get worse at that point, and then ICANN would potentially have to get involved...ugh. Let's see what happens from this point onward, but I applaud ICS for making such a wonderfully elegant solution to this problem.
As a final note, djbdns also has released a patch for this.
<rant>
Everything today has gone wrong.
I didn't get to bed until far later than I wanted to, so I was exhausted when I woke up; I kept snoozing the alarm, and finally jumped out of bed 15 minutes before I had to leave.
I ran out to the car, jumped in it, and drove like crazy to get onto the expressway. Of course, since I was late, I didn't bother doing my normal morning routine of listening to the traffic report. From where I got on the expressway to about 5 miles up the road, no traffic whatsoever, and it was so great. I thought to myself "Oh, sweet, I'll get to work on time, no problem."
Just as I passed an off ramp, the traffic report came on, and suddenly I came to a dead stop. Turns out a horrible accident happened at around 3:30 AM, and it was still being cleared even at 8:00 AM. The driver of the truck died, unfortunately, which makes this whole rant seem not so bad. But still, I'll continue with it.
It took me 90 minutes to move the 1 1/2 miles up the road to the next offramp so I could take backroads. Of course, the backroads weren't much better at all. So, by the time I made it to work, it was half past 10. Yep, 2 1/2 hours to get to work. I got to work too late for morning breakfast and the break carts, so nothing to eat either. No cereal, bagels, muffins, donuts, pancakes, nothing. I'm starving at this point.
Server problems all morning, fantastic. Not a good way to start.
By the time lunch rolled around, I felt sick from not eating. I wanted a salad, so I got one from the cafeteria, but all the lettuce was going bad, and it made me feel even sicker. Plus someone had rudely used the scoop for the peanuts to grab ground up bacon; I sprinkled peanuts on my salad, only to wind up having a piece of bacon in my mouth. The second it hit my taste buds, I almost threw up.
I felt sick all afternoon, and I didn't get nearly enough done either. I also wanted to leave at 6 and go to the driving range to blow off some steam, but there were more server problems, so I wound up staying until 7, and then it was too late to go to the range.
I arrived home safely after a relatively easy ride. The cable modem had apparently been going up and down all day, and it still won't stay connected. My rental movies showed up in the mail today, except that the DVD had a huge scratch running straight across it, and wouldn't play in any of my 4 DVD players. It also nearly got stuck in my laptop. Great.
I figured instead I'll relax with food and my new Chris Rock DVD. The food winds up making me feel even sicker than I did earlier, and the Chris Rock DVD won't play in the DVD player in my living room; the other 3, no problem. Of course, I want to watch it in my living room though. Fantastic!
Last but not least, the cat went nuts tonight and clawed at me, so now I'm bleeding. That's it, I've had enough. I'm going to bed right now, and when I wake up, this awful day will be over. Good night.
</rant>
P.S. Yes, I know a lot of people in the world had worse days than me, I just needed to vent.
Tonight, I made a few purchases. They include:
That last one is what really excites me. I now have every episode on DVD, which means I can get rid of my shitty Realplayer versions. Nothing like replacing several crappy-quality episodes with high-quality DVDs complete with audio commentary!
Mark Pilgrim of DiveIntoMark.org now has google ads running on his site. *sigh*
"I think I shall never see
A billboard as beautiful as a tree
Indeed unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all" - Ogden Nash
"Every day in America's schools, 8 million students in 12,000 classrooms watch Channel One television, a news and advertising program. Instructional time lost to the ads alone? One entire day per year." - Michael Moore
Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?"
Fry: "Well sure, but not in our dreams! Only on tv and radio...and in magazines...and movies. And at ball games, on buses, and milk cartons, and t-shirts, and bananas, and written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree."
People always ask me at work, "You drive all the way here from downtown Philadelphia? Doesn't that trip bother you?!"
I respond "Not really, there aren't any billboards on the roads I drive on."
I'd really hate to be a famous John right now.
First, Johnny Cash died at age 71, which made me unbelievably upset. However, immediately after I heard that news, I found out that John Ritter, the lovable star of "Three's Company", also died, at age 54.
As we all know, death comes in threes, so I'm just waiting for some other famous John to kick the bucket and complete the trifecta.
Pope John Paul II, I'm looking in your direction...
Two years ago today, the world trade centers fell in front of the eyes of millions, and my country was in mourning.
One year ago today, my roommate greeted me in the morning by saying "Happy 'Bring Your Airplane To Work' Day!". I snorted milk out of my nose.
Today, I'm reading Salon.com's Forbidden thoughts about 9/11, and wondering why we as a country still have no answers to what truly happened that day.
I get rather disgusted at the mention of certain days of the year, because they bring with them what I like to call "Injected Patriotism". A day that is supposed to have some sort of reverence attached to it rolls around, and everyone buys miniature American flags to slap on their homes or cars, red white and blue ribbons to wear on their shirts, shirts with Mickey Mouse holding an American flag...you get the idea. What bothers me so much about this, aside from the obvious capitalistic explotation of selling overpriced red, white, and blue items, is that a large majority of people who go out of their way to show off their patriotism on those days usually don't give a shit about this country. These are, by and large, the same people who don't vote, don't pay attention to politics, don't get involved in their communities, etc. However, when those couple of days each year roll around, they will be the most nationalistic, flag-waving people in sight. These are generally the same people who come up with terribly jingoistic ideas like "Freedom Fries".
9/11 has now become one of those days. GW Bush didn't help matters much when he renamed it to "Patriot Day". It has now become yet another day like July 4th or Veterans day, where people attempt to sell me a red white and blue ribbon for $3.00, and suddenly everyone sports buttons that read "I love America" or "GO USA!", etc. The next day, those buttons and ribbons are gone.
Just like hearts on valentines day, patriotism has become a commodity, to be bought and sold as necessary. I'm sure someone out there is loving the fact that they have yet another "holiday" which they can use to sell their wares in record numbers. 9/11 is the new Love Day. Today, I received over a dozen pieces of spam with titles like: "Buy your 9/11 Commemorative Flag TODAY!" I'm half expecting to get one entitled "The Freedom Kit - 12 different sized flags!" (David Cross fans will pick up the reference).
At my office on Wednesday, while in line for a grilled cheese sandwich in the cafeteria, a coworker asked me "Hey, where's your ribbon!? Aren't you going to show your patriotism?". I replied "Out of curiosity, did you vote in the last presidential election?". His answer? "No...", followed by a blank stare. I turned my back and ignored him.
I'll remember 9/11 in my own ways, by reflecting on my life, appreciating those I have in my life while they are still here, telling my family that I love them dearly. I'll remember how scared everyone was two years ago, and how no one quite knew what was going on, but we all collectively knew everything was suddenly different. I'll remember that quiet drive home in the early afternoon, with the sky completely emptied, and state troopers looking exceptionally frightened. I'll remember seeing electronic road signs that read "All roads to New York closed."
I won't remember it by purchasing an American flag window cling.
My roommate's cat peed all over my open package of new rolls of toilet paper. The irony of that is just sickening.
Yes, I threw the horribly stenchy rolls away.