The mysterious sensatious computer

For the past several months every time I got up from my computer and walked away it would play the Windows sound "Device Disconnect," sometimes called the "XP Hardware Remove.wav." I found it disconcerting that the computer sensed my departure and that it considered me "hardware."

This didn't happen 100% of the time, but it happened a lot--maybe 80% of the time. So much so and over so long a period of time that coincidence is out of the question. This was both spooky and reassuring in an odd way, like my computer was actually tracking my presence. I never mentioned this to anyone, too many people already consider me crazy--this was just over the top.

But I'm posting about it today because I finally figured out the connection. Probably capacitance, but more simply put the sound was triggered by a static electricity charge--my body and my keyboard represented a different electromagnetic potential.

This was confirmed this morning when I noticed a tiny spark jump from my finger to the keyboard when I sat down, which triggered the sound.
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Bloggingheads.tv

Maybe cancelling DirecTV was the best thing that has happened to me. I've rediscovered Bloggingheads.tv and have decided that even with some annoying verbal quirks (y'know) the diavlogs have a higher signal to noise ratio than the shoutfests on Cable. And it's possible to just listen and do other tasks on the compter while the video is running.

And again I'm devoting more time to my Start Page. It is getting more traffic since I began tweaking it earlier this month so this is creating positive feedback for me and a happy endless loop. I'm still making it for myself though and there is still some cryptic anchor text. This does make it possible to cram more links onto one screen and once you've figured out my abbreviations the page gets ever more valuable.

Fake Websites

I've been finding a lot of parked domains registered to New Ventures Services, Corp. which may have a special relationship to Network Solutions and is an offshore corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands. Their ad server, at least on those I checked, is Yahoo.

I find this disturbing because the parked domain page is not trying to sell the domain but is strictly a vehicle for ads yet has the appearance of a real website. And that's only a problem because it makes the Internet a labyrinthine puzzle for newbies and children. Perhaps it does make my own straightforward directory presentation more valuable but I hate to be made more valuable because the internet itself is degraded.

Jeans, Casual, Lingerie, Sleepwear

This is why microblogging is not for me. I'll be spending the entire weekend updating these pages and won't have any time to twitter.

Twitter? That was quick

My investigation of microblogging is over and I won't be twittering. I don't particularly need to let anyone know what I'm doing since I'm always working on my web site. Except when I'm out buying stuff and that needs no reportage in real time. There are already too many shopping blogs.

So maybe I'll be left behind as the world twitters on, we can't all be on all the time. I think I can be happy here just adding stuff to my web site, how 1990's...

iList, social classifieds.

iList sends social classifieds across Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, and Pownce as reported by TechCrunch. That's great if you're a flea-market kind of person who is constantly selling and buying second-hand stuff. I once was, and it was fun. I have considered getting into the second-hand and liquidation business but rejected it finally as a part of my self-definition process over the last decade or so. I'm more of a wholesale person, I don't like retail. I do like Vintage Clothing and Vintage Jewelry though. Time consuming hobbies again.

Commerce over social networks intrigues me more than the social networks themselves do but just like eBay, I think the scammers and the crooks may have a field-day with this. My experience with eBay was unfortunate, if everyone had my experience there would be no eBay.

Streaming Social

I am going to spend a little time familiarizing myself with this new phenomenon. Yes, I know that in Internet time it isn't exactly new, but OTOH as someone who first sent an IM and first entered a chatroom in 1993 and spent a good part of the '90's in chatrooms and sending IMs I think I am capable of seeing Twitter, Friendfeed, Seesmic, and the other streams as more of the same, just better and faster. I have resisted this trend for the same reason that I abandoned chatrooms around the turn of the century. I began feeling that although chatrooms and IMs were very exciting and occasionally tuned me into things much sooner than I otherwise might have learned, they were also highly time consuming and sometimes obligated me to friends and strangers in ways that I would have preferred to avoid.

Now I don't want to begin psychoanalyzing myself and my social connections here on my blog, let's just say I'm not close enough to anyone using these services to make it worthwhile getting involved with them. But the phenomenon is getting big and while I don't want to make this my entire life the way IM's and chatrooms almost became, I don't want to be left behind not knowing what's going on either. So I'm going to research this some more and grab ahold of some of the vision that I left behind when I largely abandoned this type of communications eight years ago.

No, I don't think I'll begin Twittering and tweeting. Call me old fashioned if you like, I don't think I like that pace. I have complete control of my own life and answer to no one, and though some might find that lonely I call the open options empowering. I'm fine, just curious. :)

The Start Page

Once again I am working on the Start Page. I added some text at the bottom suggesting that others copy the source code and create their own version, building from scratch will always be better than using the one-size-fits-all templates given by the big portals. Yes, mine is just another template if you will, I know that and no I don't fancy myself another Google or Yahoo...

I'm going to be spending a lot more time on the Start Page and on the site in general because of DirecTV. They began billing me for things I hadn't ordered so I called to complain. Their automated voice-jail got me so frustrated and angry that instead of complaining and asking for a refund I just cancelled. I was very abrupt with the customer service rep and began by telling him that if he started into a sales pitch trying to persuade me not to cancel that I would scream obscenities at him until he got back to the cancellation process. I wouldn't be surprised if the tape of that call got played at their next sales meeting.

So all I'm left with is the free basic cable that comes with Comcast's broadband which is extremely basic. There are 22 channels, but half are Spanish language, three are shopping channels so all there is left are the local broadcast channels plus C-SPAN. I'll probably order a premium Comcast package eventually but until then I'll get a lot more done on the Andilinks site.

Britney Spears

Many years ago I made a series of pages on pop stars, there were about thirty. Britney was the first, and while the pages did get a lot of traffic they were a lot of work to maintain and this was cutting into the time I could devote to the rest of the site. So I removed those pages but about a year later I accidentally uploaded the Britney page. It began getting traffic again so I left it.

Now that Brit is back in the news in a good way (mostly) the page began getting traffic again so I revamped it.

I like Britney, I enjoy her work and I wish her well.

Green-eco-organic-vegan-etc

I've collected two or four pages of Green-Eco Apparel retailers and these will be on the site in a few days. They range from the mildly green, having just added a new line of organic fabrics, to the stridently vegan. I'm not trying to grade them, I'll just throw them all together.

I've also found that there are a huge number of green directories and I may add a page or two just for those. Either they all list nearly the same sites or I could expand the Green Apparel section to six pages. But I don't think these will draw much traffic so I'll settle for two and see how that goes. I just can't predict which pages Google will like but anything having to do with shoes or size seems to go over big. So maybe I'll expand shoes again soon.

Men's Shoes

I have added two pages of Men's Shoes (89 listings) and a page of "About Shoes (36 listings)," which are blogs, information sites and videos about shoes. Since the shoe section is doing extremely well I'll be adding to it and refining it more than any other section. I expect that not only will I be adding to the "About Shoes" page I will be using it a lot too.

Just like last year, the Sunday after Black Friday is the best day of November and may well be the best day of the year. I am hoping that more people are shopping online this year.

The case for reparation payments to descendants of slaves.

Under most economic situations large cash payments to huge segments of lower income people would be highly disruptive and extremely inflationary, but our current and unique situation is not likely to repeat during our lifetimes and would be ideal for such payments.

Paying reparations to the descendants of former slaves would be a good way to effect an economic stimulus and get the reparations issue off the table. President-elect Obama did say he wanted to do something very big quickly as a stimulus and likely he and his team will.

I'd have some trouble seeing Michael Jordan and Oprah collecting reparations, but if there were a means test, say a net worth under 300,000, I'm all for reparations to slave descendants but it would have to be done quickly to be a stimulus package. It would also bailout the big three automakers and a lot better than just dumping $25B on them. Just throw a Chevy Ford or Chrysler into each reparations package.

Reparations payments unfortunately would precipitate the "mother of all inflationary spikes" and some recipients would claim the inflation was a conspiracy to rob them of their money. So I think including a new Big Three car as part of the deal would soften the blow of the inevitable inflation and incidentally bail out the big three. The inflation would also solve the mortgage crisis because all the homes now underwater would emerge, wet but above water.

The inflation spike wouldn't begin when payments are made though, it would begin much sooner. The moment they looked likely people and governments worldwide would immediately start dumping dollars so it would have to be sprung as a surprise so those getting the payments would get the greatest benefits. Double reparations should be offered to those who commit to three years in the military or Peace Corps.

However, springing a full-blown reparations plan on the nation without selling the idea first would be a very bad first move for Obama, he would immediately be perceived as governing as a black man and not a President of all the people. The reaction from the public would be worse than the initial reaction to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s $700 bln bailout for the banks. So it probably won’t happen, even though it would solve many problems, it would create others and perhaps bring out the worst in some people.

On a related subject that would be thrown into the reparations debate I have heard it said that blacks are not capable of racism or its corollary group-think because they do not control the means of production. This is nonsense and nothing but a carefully crafted fraud designed to keep blacks in the status of a perpetually victimized class. By establishing that various concepts like group-think and racism can only be practiced by one race and not the other it is possible to perpetuate a race-based privilege. That is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment ironically designed to protect blacks from such discrimination, but by establishing that there can be race based concepts even the election of an African American President cannot shake the idea that this group is oppressed.

Reparations would blow that argument off the table, but that is not likely a motivation Barak Obama would consider for the payments so that could not be used as an argument to sell the idea to the American public. Probably a hard sell even as an economic stimulus package, and selling the idea would raise awareness around the world that the value of the dollar would be diluted. Dilution would occur with any stimulus, and a Paul Volker type of clamping down on the money supply will occur rather quickly after a recovery begins in any case so reparations as a stimulus package would cause more problems for a new Obama Administration that their likely to want.

So, even though this may be a perfect moment for reparations in some respects it would cause huge political problems for the new President. Probably worse than the gays-in-the-military thing was for Clinton.

Honesty, Racial Politics, and the "About Shoes" Page

I recently engaged in a discussion on the forum linked in this post's title. I want to archive my thoughts here and not there so I will synopsize and paraphrase the other participant's posts so as not to violate any copyrights or moral rights, but I am including their thoughts only in as much as they are needed to give credit where credit is due and provide coherence to my own words which I will also rewrite, but for the purpose of improvement, not copyright.

I have been editing and rewiting this material between running personal errands and doing my daily exercise and workout and it is turning into a larger task than I had anticipated . But I do plan to work more on this today as well as finishing up a new directory category, "About Shoes"

Housing bubbles

The failures that have occurred are partly the fault of those responsible for teaching history. Housing bubbles collapse with disastrous results often, this has been happening for a very long time. It happened in Southern California in 1990, I was there.

The current crisis is the most massive that has ever occurred but it is a well worn and familiar pattern to anyone who takes the trouble to read the history of land speculation and speculative bubbles in general. No one person or group of people engineered the crisis. Certainly many saw it occurring and allowed it to happen but most who were benefiting did not realize they were climbing out on a very dangerous limb.

Executives in the failed firms who made many millions over the past several years have strong ties to both political parties and will get away with their crimes with the possible exception of an unlucky scapegoat or two. Indeed they will not even be villified and in some cases will be called upon to perform heroic deeds to save us from our "plight." Which they knowingly caused. Trying to blame one person, party, or group is futile because so many were involved.

The accounting structures used to hide toxic assets before this crisis were very similar to those used in the Enron scandal so if you need to spill someone's blood (a metaphor) over this I suggest following the money. Where did it go?

If any crime in recent history deserves harsh punishment destroying the world economy should qualify.

Handcrafted Jewelry

I have found a large number of new (to me) Handcrafted Jewelry sites and will be incorporating these into my listings very soon. It's sad that I didn't find these sooner because so many are independant artists depending on Christmas sales.

Obama again

It was not an intellectual decision, if we had only their resumes before us and couldn't take the measure of the two men while they were before us thinking on their feet, McCain would have won. The strong desire for the more articulate and bright candidate is certainly a lingering effect of the embarrassment we have suffered with GWB for the last eight years.

If executive experience were the criterion guiding our decisions we'd have gone with Sarah Palin because she has more executive experience than all three others combined. Bill Clinton was right Obama was a roll of the dice, we rolled and won.

It was a decision from the heart, not the head. Risk taking is in our DNA, we're Americans. We or our ancestors risked everything to come here. Yes, even that strong wandering stock that walked here from Asia 10,000 years ago--it's the same American risk taking heritage. We shouldn't count our chickens before they hatch though, no matter how well Obama does we'll never know what "might have been..."

There is an interesting argument to be made comparing the acheivements of the descendents of slaves vs. African Americans who are not. e.g. Barak Obama and Colin Powell vs. Condoleezza Rice and Clarence Thomas. Some say that the slave lineage carries a resentment that cannot be shaken on the left, only on the political right. Certainly immigrants from the Carribean and Africa seem to follow a different path from those descended from slaves. Who may say that I have no right to even discuss such things, it's a black thing, I just can't understand. Well no, I'm sorry. It's an American thing and I don't just have a right to discuss this I have a duty and responsibility to try to understand it.

About Shoes

After all those political posts I have to report on the progress I'm making with the site. I'm working on shoes again and the new progress won't be visible for a few days but I've found a lot of new listings. I'm thinking about three new pages, Mens Shoes, Boots and About Shoes. I need to have a separate page for shoe blogs and shoe information sites because these are crowding the regular listings.

I did create a job listings directory which is helpful for the times we're in but I thought of it because the Sample Cover Letter page is now getting a lot of traffic. No one has yet clicked through to Jobs from the Cover Letter Page but the Jobs pages have just entered the Google index yesterday and have begun getting traffic from there.

President-Elect Obama

Even though I voted for him I remained a bit apprehensive about what direction he might take once he was elected. I am much less fearful now having observed his earliest moves and having concluded that he appears vastly smarter than most of the people who voted for him. That's a refreshing change already. :) Had he persuaded me of that earlier I may have even campaigned for him.

The economic crisis will cause him to be more cautious than he would have to be if times were booming, but I suppose that's true for everyone. I'm still fearful of how deep the downturn may be and how long it may last. My own income is holding up well considering the circumstance but the poorest people in the world now face starvation and the ramifications of that concern me.

A bleeding heart concern for the suffering itself is in order but I'm even more concerned about how it affects geopolitics. The last depression caused a lot of people to follow iron-fisted dictators and we certainly have eager candidates for that role today. With Russian warships approaching the Carribean the Bidenian "test" may be at hand. Russia has much less to lose than China as a provocateur and I have no doubt that al qaida and their friends would love to have a role on the world stage to greet our incoming president. OTOH I've been wrong about these kinds of things before.

We do live in interesting times.

Unread TOS dooms earth.

As I was reading the Google Checkout refund policy it occurred to me that it is unread or poorly understood credit agreements that have recently collapsed our economy and could eventually unravel our entire civilization because instability seems rampant.

I have always felt uneasy entering agreements that I have not fully understood and virtually all service agreements are too much for the average person to read or understand. The larger the company the more insidious this problem seems. I am very worried about our future.

Click here if you agree to these terms.

Moral Hazard and our Great Depression

During the 1997 Asian crisis no banks or companies were bailed out and the economic recession there cleared up in about two years.

That is a huge difference and the bailouts create what is known as a moral hazard. The people who actually caused the problem will not suffer and will have no reason to consider their bad acts a mistake.

There is profound corruption throughout the system in both political parties which is why none of the scoundrels are being punished or even singled out as culprits. In fact they are being rewarded with billions of dollars.

Those who caused the crisis are in the best position to profit from it. Only those who knew how bad the banks were in trouble had the nerve to short them (Goldman Sachs et al) and make billions more from the suffering of others.

So it's unlikely this will clear up in a mere two years as in Asia, the new US administration has many ties to the scandal and will thus not pursue the actual guilty parties but will try to blame others (guess who) and act the savior.

Blue skies Smiling at me, Nothing but blue skies Do I see... Irving Berlin 1927

Very angry about the sub-prime crisis.

Frankly I am very angry that no one is being held to account for the sub-prime crisis. It has destroyed more wealth than all the Al qaida attacks combined, even if you include the future earnings of those killed.

McCain could have won the Presidency if he had made good use of his famous anger and promised to get to the bottom of this and put the scoundrels in jail.

Unfortunately that won't happen because the perpetrators are lawmakers and their contributors. The criminality runs deep through both parties and everyone just throws up their hands and leaves solving the problem to those who created it.

I don't know if you caught the full moon rise tonight but it was stunning here in the mountain desert.

I made this page for me.

"I made this page for me. If you can use it, cool. It's free, no ads, no bs." I added this line to the very bottom of the start page after making some improvements. It is getting a lot better since I've begun using it very regularly.

A new methodology

I have been working on this directory for almost seven years now and I have been slowly improving my methods and collecting and writing software that helps me do this. But the other day I had an epiphany and figured out how to use my existing applications to double my efficiency. Now it is still a lot of work categorizing and editing all these listings but I am thrilled that the directory will be getting significantly better soon.

I think Barak Obama should be President. The downside is that his economic policies will make us all a lot poorer, especially those who are already poor. But we really must get on with this national redemption from our history as slave holders and racists even if it is painful economically.

Mass starvation in the less developed areas of the world is inevitable anyway and a world-wide depression will speed this along sadly. Better to be done with it before there are many more people born into poverty, exponential population growth is unsustainable. Malthus was right, just had the timing wrong not seeing technology's role in deferring the inevitable. I do my part, but the coming disaster is beyond anyone's capacity to avert. Pollution and global warming may make things even worse.

That's why I'll be voting for Barak on Tuesday. Well that and then I can share in the good feelings that will sweep around the world for a while.

Update update

So the fifty pages in forty categories from the Andistars site are now very neatly integrated into the Andilinks site. But most of these pages haven't been checked for bad links or updated with new links in months. So I will set a goal of getting these up-to-date in 30 days which is a little more than a category per day.

andistars.com is no more

Actually the domain and the website will continue on but will redirect to directory"k" on andilinks.com. I do worry that there was something there that caused the Google penalty and if the penalty returns I'll just give up. I can't live with the madness that is Google, I'll just quit.

I'm hoping that tonight during the debate Gov. Palin will have lots of information on the Democratic Party connections to Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, it is really disgusting me how they are trying to pin this crisis on McCain.

The Great Bailout of 2008

I thought it would be democrats that would block the Paulson plan, I sure was wrong about that. I find it exciting that some discipline is being brought to bear but am concerned that the people actually responsible for packaging the toxic paper will not be the ones to feel the sting of the discipline.

Resources for Tall People

I am beginning a resource page for tall people, and starting by updating the tall size page. If this goes well I'll go with petite and plus size resources. I hope to have the new page online by Wednesday, possibly a pilot page by the end of the weekend.

The panic of '08

In Feb. 2005 Greenspan did speak out against the lack of regulation at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so he knew this corruption would eventually boil over. But if he dialed back the corruption there by raising interest rates he'd be remembered as the guy who kept poor people oppressed and not as the hero who averted the panic of '08. Nobody remembers the panic/recession that never happens.

Save your pennies, if the Paulson plan doesn't pass cash will be king. If it does pass throw your pennies away, inflation will make them worthless...

Fashion Blogs

I removed all the blogs that hadn't been updated in 45 days and I regret there were many of them. That section has been neglected because it doesn't get a lot of traffic which is a vicious circle. Ironically this section is a lot of fun to update and yields a lot of good links so I'll have to set a goal to keep it more up to date. As soon as I finish the tall-size updates. :)

Google penalty lifted

On June 22, 2008 the traffic to the site increased fivefold and I began updating the content. The updates were not completed until the end of August and I then began adding pages and making other improvements.

Decline, Google penalty

I regret to report that I have been unable to shake this latest Google penalty and prospects do not look good.