The fact that somebody would even come up with the idea of renaming a town for an advertising campaign is a sad commentary on the state of our country. But you have to cut the guy some slack; after all, he is an advertising person; certainly one of the lowest life forms on the planet. But the fact that one town is considering acceptance of this proposal, that is yet another sign that the end draws near.

I guess it was only a matter of time, in this case a very short time, before the conspiracy theories started surfacing concerning the recent death of Senator Paul Wellstone. While it's certainly true that his race was close and can easily affect the control of the senate, I really doubt that even Tonya Harding would stoop to tactics this low.

Furthermore, it now appears that Walter Mondale will be taking the place of Paul Wellstone on the ballot. I think this makes the tight race, a lot less tight. I suspect that Mondale will trounce his republican opponent in a manner that Paul Wellstone could not. While the author of the above article implies that right-wing forces are at work here, it seems that the Democrats will benefit the most from this tragedy.

As a public service, I present a link to a most important FAQ.

Last week we had our first offical snow. While that was a measurable snowfall, it was pretty wimpy; only coming out to about an inch or so. Today, it's snowing for real. So far we've got about 4-5 inches and there's no sign that it'll be letting up any time soon. It feels so rustic up here in the mountains; I've got the woodburning stove fired up and I just used it to boil water for some hot cocca. Slap me in a gunny sack and call me Laura Ingels.

This weekend, I had to pick up Jen at the airport. I called United Airlines to find out just how late the flight would be, but I found that I had the wrong flight number. Ack. At this point, I'd normally resign myself to being on hold for a long period of time. But I was pleasently surprised to find out that United has a really cool (and effective) voice recognition system for people with this sort of problem.

If you don't know the flight number for a flight, you say, "I don't know" when they ask you for the flight number. It asks you for the cities and the approximate arrival time and it then gives you your result. The two things that are impressive about this are that 1) it works, and 2) the computerized voice is really, really, good. Normally when you tell systems like this something, such as the name of a city, and they later repeat it back, it sounds really bad; the pauses are wrong, the voice sounds different in timber and tone when it hits the part that you entered. Not in this case. When the computerized vaoice is speaking, there are thoughtful pauses and intonations; it's like Stone Phillips is on the other end of the line. It's very impressive. I'd suggesting calling the number yourself (800.241.6522) just to check it out, it's quite a system.

It's always more than a little funny when politicians release adds that make them appear to think one way on an issue, when in fact they think the opposite. If they think that people will be swayed by the thinking they claim to have on an issue, shouldn't they actually support that side of the issue since they are supposed to represent the electorate? This ad certainly falls into that category. In addition, the cheesiness factor is through the roof. Somebody get me some kryptonite.

This week's column by Arianna Huffington is pretty good. She combines two subjects which both torque my nut: the Bush administration's hypocrisy on state's rights (see YABERS June 20) and the administration's hypocrisy concerning the drug war as it relates to terrorism (see YABERS Sept 03).

If you're the sort that keeps track of this sort of thing, today's offically the first snowfall of the season at my house. Yipee.

Hey, Jen's out of town so I've got an extra ticket to the Avalanche game tomorrow. They're playing the Oilers at 7pm. First comment gets to go.

This is the type of article I'd expect to see posted on April Fool's day. But not on a site like MSNBC. I'd have to imagine that O.J. Simpson is already gearing up to sue their asses off. I imagine this got there in one of two ways: 1) somebody hacked MSNBC, or 2) somebody planted a fake article somewhere (it claims to come from Newsweek) and they were dumb enough to pick it up.

I suspect that this is a fake, and as such it will get pulled. So, for the sake of posterity, I'm going to provide an unauthorized reprint...

O.J. No Longer ’100 Percent Sure’ He is Innocent
Calls Johnnie Cochran’s recent statements ‘thought provoking’

Oct. 16 — Days after former O. J. Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran said on MSNBC that he is “about 90 percent” certain that his client was innocent, Mr. Simpson today said that his attorney had planted “fresh seeds of doubt” in his own mind.

“For years, I’ve been pretty sure that I did not murder my wife,” Simpson said today at a golf course in Boca Raton, Fla., where he was taking a rare break from searching for the real killers of his wife. “But if Johnnie’s not 100 percent sure, I’m like, hey, maybe I better take another look at this.”

Simpson added that it would be “crazy” not to be swayed by Cochran’s new statements, which he called “thought provoking.”

“Look, you’re talking about a guy, Johnnie Cochran, who is a pretty smart guy,” Simpson said. “If he said maybe I did it, then maybe I did it.”

Cochran’s doubts about Simpson’s innocence may help resolve one lingering mystery for the former Heisman Trophy winner: why it has been so difficult for him to find his wife’s real killers, whom he pledged to hunt down after his acquittal in 1995.

The former NFL star said that, in light of the new revelations, he may slow down his search, which he said has occupied almost every waking moment of his life for the past seven years.

“If it turns out that I’m actually the one who did it, then looking for the real killers would be a big old waste of time,” Simpson said.

I have found what could possibly be the most entertaining site on the internet. It's the home page of Wo-Hen Nankan, a fellow who calls himself the Asian Prince. I think I'd call him the biggest egomaniac ever. Ever! I guess there's the off chance that this is a joke, but it seems like a lot of work for a joke. Plus, where do you find pictures of a guy who looks this damn cheesy. My favorite sections are the Bad Boy Life page and the Possible Dates. Damn, some of those women are coyote ugly.

I went to Noodles & Company for lunch today since I was in town to refinance the homestead (6.00% with no costs for a 30 year fixed. Pretty sweet!). They sell flat bread there. I'm not exactly sure what this is (looks like a thick flour tortilla), but I like the sign they used to sell the stuff. It read, "Good, wholesome, and flat. Just like the earth used to be." Nice.

I don't know about you, but after a hard day of work there's nothing more relaxing than a nice round of golf. Ha! Okay, so I don't like golfing. But putt-putt golf on the computer... now that I like.

I like to look in my web logs to see how it is that people arrived on YABERS. In most cases, they come from a search engine, typically Google. The thing that makes it fun is that when they arrive in such a manner, you can tell what they were searching for when they found your site. The post on Sept 16th concerning George Clooney and Jen Siebel has generated more than it's share of traffic. A post several months ago concerning how to hack IMVironments has also generated plenty of traffic. But today, I got a visitor who showed up after searching for "daily naked hunk". Can anybody explain to me how this page would show up with that search criteria? Of course, this bad search result did not come from Google, it came from MSN. Figures!

Here's an interesting list of absolutely crazy laws. It makes for some pretty good reading. One of my favorites comes from Connecticut, "in order for a pickle to officially be considered a pickle, it must bounce." Of course, they don't say what it must bounce off of. I'm guessing any sort of pickle wanna-be could bounce if dropped on a trampoline.

Okay, here's a shameless plug for a new site on which I've been working. I've been doing a site for our local all-volunteer fire department, the Sunshine Fire Protection District, and it's not completely done, but it is live.

If I may so say, and believe me I may, the site is pretty darn cool. Expect for the navigation stuff on the top, left, and bottom, the entire main page is dynamicaly created. The "Community News" and "Message from the Chief" sections are actually created by blogs; the schedule section is updated real-time to show the events near today's date based on a fixed file; the fire danger sign (which is an actual picture of the sign at the base of our canyon) is updated based on the fire danger published from the Forest Service; the weather is updated every five minutes; and the news headlines are also dynamic. There's a lot happening on this page. There are still some speed issues to work out, but at least it shows up.

The site currently has two public blogs, from which the latest entries show up on the main page (one of which is still waiting to be written for "real"). In the future, there will be private blogs for members of the department and the board. In the future, there will be five more link sections on the left-hand side of the page, I'm just waiting for people to get back to me with the content... you know who you are.

Overall, this has been an interesting project. I think the design and layout are pretty good for engineer-UI. It's also based on Appache with Perl CGI scripts, none of which I've used before. It's certainly been a learning experience.

If, like me, you're feeling down in light of the stupidity rampant in the world today, here's a site that will help put things in perspective. It's called Mundi, and it's full of end-of-the-world scenarios. Actually, it takes a much broader view with most of the scenarios involving the entire universe, not just our little piece of the pie.

Wow, duct tape can be used to remove warts. Or, as this guys so succinctly puts it, "In our study, duct tape occlusion therapy was shown to be more effective than cryotherapy in the treatment of verruca vulgaris, and it caused few adverse effects."

Now if it only worked on ducts!

I did something yesterday that I hadn't done in 25 years... I played kickball. As you may imagine, after such a long lay-off from the game, a couple of us were a little rusty on the rules. Not to fear though, one of the guys had looked on the internet and actually found the rules. The funny thing is where he found the rules: WAKA, the World Adult Kickball Assn.

Now granted, we're pretty cheesy for playing this game in the first place. But we're just a bunch of drunk people in a park; we're expected to be doing something stupid. The fact that an organization such as WAKA exists, now that's cheesy.

My personal favorite rule is 4.01.d which concerns player eligibility: players must not play kickball professionally. Is it possible to not meet this criteria?

Here's a pretty cool site. It's an interface to translation software. Pretty exciting, huh? The twist is this: you give it anything you like in English, it then translates it from English to French, then back to English, then to German, then to English, then to Italian, etc, etc.

The results of this can be interesting. I entered the phrase "Red herring should not be pickled." When it was all said and done, I got back "The perspective provisory of the publication would not have that to being pickeled." Um, right, I guess that's another way to phrase it.

There's a site with a pretty cool IQ test available. It seems like a decent test in that it asks a good number of questions with a variety of different question types. And it must be good, because as they explain the test is "developed by PhDs".

I got a 135 which kind of burns me up; 1.5% of the population does better than me at something. Unacceptable. Those damn verbal questions... still haunting me years after the SAT.

The company that offers this test, also offers a wide variety of other tests. Some of my favorites: Are You a Slacker?; Are You High Maintenance?; Do You Know Datespeak?; The Dot-Com Test; and Are You a Great Date?. Sharpen those pencils.

From the "truth is stranger than fiction" file, I give you the official (no, I'm not kidding) Greenpeace guide to environmentally-friendly sex. It appears that the righteous right-wingers are not the only ones who want to make sure that what goes on behind closed doors meets with their approval. At least Greenpeace isn't suggesting any legislation.

With all the time you save not reading this blog, you can spend even more time here playing this annoyingly addictive game. If you think you're a master of the English language, it's time to step up and provide some proof. A posting of high scores will determine who's buying the beer.

Some of you may have noticed thay YABERS has been a little light on new content of late. Of course, by a little light, I mean totally devoid. Sorry, I don't have a great explanation for this lack of authoring. I think it's mainly due to my complete disgust with our foreign policy; I can hardly bear to look at the news anymore.

Nonetheless, I'll try to suck it up and begin scouring the internet for tasty nuggets to keep you entertained. In the mean time, accept my apologies and a complete refund on your purchase.