netzooid

I hate airports. I hate how ridiculousness it has all gotten in the name of “security.” If someone is going to bring a plane down and is suicidal they’re going to do it damn it. I hate that I have to take my shoes off to go through the metal detector even though there is no metal in them and that the security gaurd will threaten to strip search you if you don’t take them off. I hate that I can’t wait at the curb more than 30 seconds. I hate that I practically have to strip naked to get to the gate. I hate that my knees hit the back of the seat in front of me coach. I hate that they treat you like crap. I hate the long long lines. I hate that I’m just one among many cattle being shoved together. I do not look forward to having 800 people on an airbus.

I look forward to the day I own my own jet and helicopter.

Tomorrow, I’m leaving to go to San Jose, California for my sister’s wedding this weekend. Should be a good time. If you need to get ahold of me I’m sure you know how.

Blogs have sprung up all over the place as marketing tools. They are a virtual soap box. People get a message and then they drive it home repeatedly. Whether it be the future of mobile phones, agile programming, or the latest invention from [insert Apple/MS/Linux/Java/other culturally cool technology here].

This is why I am probably considered a bad blogger, I have no message that I want to drive in to my readers. Life doesn’t fit in a single meme.

The single meme makes people feel comfortable. If it is all reduced to this single problem, why then a solution becomes absolutely clear! Go with brand X! Do Y instead of Z! Don’t ignore the niche markets!

Its a great marketing maneuveur, I just am sick of the itty bitty boxes today.

I’m subscribed to the del.icio.us popular feed – one of my absolute favorite feeds. However all it has is a link and someone’s short description. A lot of times these entries are blog items. Which means they are also in an RSS feed. What would be great is if there was a tool which looked at the link in the del.icio.us feed, found the original rss/atom entry, and created a new feed which was an aggregation of popular rss/atom entries.

Any ideas on how to do so?

Way to speak out Pat.

[Update: for those of you who were disgusted by Pat and told me so – Pat is a fictional character. He is a dog in a comic strip. Hence what he said was funny because of the ridiculousness of it.]

I’m now back from Paris. I have been for a few days, but I totally forgot to post the last of my pictures so here they are:

Sacre Coeur
Vaux la Vicomte (This is is the Chateaux which inspired Versailles)

I use tagging to keep lists of links that are roughly categorized for me to peruse later. Its an easy way to create a linkblog.

WISH: I wish I was able to view just a select group of users tags – say my coworker’s tags for logistics. You can kind of emulate this by tagging things as “netzooid_logistics”, but that requires everyone to be aware that they’re part of your group.

(Pictures: Paris, Versailles.)

Today, I felt like a noble in the court as I entered the opulent Versailles. Like a noble I was pushed around the court (by tourist mobs snapping photos) so I spent most of my time outside where the action is. Versailles is roughly 2000 acres of gardens a few palaces scattered here and there. Today they played Baroque music as we walked the gardens and they turned the fountains on. It was spectacular. So much better than when I was there during the winter….

On the way back I was mistakenly riding with my feet on the seat opposite me. Some french man was seriously offended by this and when he, his wife, and son sat down across the aisle from us stood up and started yelling at me. I don’t mean asking me to “take my feet down” in a loud voice. I mean screaming out words faster than you can take them in. Ridiculous.

Tonight we went to a concert at Sainte Chapelle. A string sextet and harpsicordist played Vivaldi’s four seasons, Hayden’s first symphony, and Pacabelle’s Cannon. I have never heard a violinist like the one they had there. It was simply amazing.

Yesterday the highlight was picnicing on the Champs du Mars in front of the Eiffel eating cheeses, baguettes, and drinking wine. We chatted it up with a Canadian school group for a while there as well. Then we climbed up the Eiffel (via an elevator of course) and looked at the sights at night. Beau.

All in all its been a good time so far. We’re a bit tired, but having fun.

(Requisite pictures are here.)

We flew in yesterday after quite the trip. We arrove at the Chicago airport about 1 hr before our flight was set to take off and ended up running through the airport a lot. This was only to be followed by a guy on the plane who was very very drunk behind us. He kicked our seats a lot. He talked in slurred words to us. He rubbed my hair. He grabbed my boob. We did manage to get a few hours of sleep though.

We woke up in Paris on Thursday. In the afternoon we walked around historic Paris visiting Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, etc. In the evening we discovered Pompidou – an incredible modern art museum. You’ll recognize it in the pictures as the building with all the tubing, stairs, etc on the outside. Definitely my favorite so far in the trip.

Today we went to the Louvre which was mind numbing as always. There is 12 miles of artwork there that is on the whole pretty spectacular. It was very crowded though. I made Meghan go look at the Mona Lisa herself because there were so many Japenese tourists cough I mean people… (what is the deal with the Japenese and their cameras anyway???). In the afternoon we visited the Arc d’Triumph for a scenic view of the city and strolled down the Champs Elysee.

We topped the evening off with a wonderful meal at the Vin de Pyrenees. I had some very good duck and we had a lovely bottle of wine. And now it is time to retire.. Au revoir.

Compounding the problem is that Michigan is the only state to levy a de facto value added tax on its businesses. (That’s another similarity to Old Europe.) Called the Single Business Tax (SBT), this levy is applied to production. This means that any company that loses money or just manages to break even still often pays a hefty sum to the tax man just for the privilege of operating in Michigan. Hence, many don’t.

Change the Michigan tax law, please. For now any other corporations I start are going to be based in Nevada where there is no corporate tax. As an added benefit:

Your name never needs to appear on any public record relating to a corporation over which you might exert pretty much complete control, if only as the “whisper in the ear” of the Board of Directors.