Was driving my elderly father around, doing errands, and I got to use his disabled parking permit and it was AWESOME and I can’t wait until I’m disabled.
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
Your Daily Devotional for October 17, 2014
After I’m dead, my headstone will listen very carefully as you explain your gluten allergy. I promise. Right now, I have to be somewhere.
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
Your Daily Devotional for October 16, 2014
Solar Home Inc uses domain speculation and cybersquatting to support its business
Solar Home Inc has not only supported its business with four years of comment spam, it also engages in domain speculation and cybersquatting on other companies’ trademarks.
Solar Home
In the process of investigating Solar Home Inc’s comment spamming, I came across dozens of websites that were all linked to Solar Home, either in the copyright notices on individual pages or on the About/Contact Us pages. Since most businesses don’t bother to maintain more than a handful of websites, the fact that Solar Home seemed to have dozens caught my attention. When I broadened my investigation into Solar Home’s websites, I found that Ron Winton (as “Ronwiserinvestor”), an acknowledged employee of Solar Home, admitted in a Motley Fool comment that Solar Home controlled “800 active websites” as of April 2014.
I also found that the 800 acknowledged websites actually represented a small fraction of the nearly 6,300 solar-related websites registered by Solar Home. Of those 6,300 websites I personally verified that over a hundred of them were explicitly tied to Solar Home and that, by offering several of those websites for sale, Solar Home is engaged in domain speculation. I also identified a few websites that contained the trademarks of other companies, including one that could be a Solar Home competitor, indicating that Solar Home also engages in cybersquatting. Continue reading
Four. A woodchuck could chuck four wood. Please stop asking.
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
Your Daily Devotional for October 15, 2014
Solar Home Inc’s business supported by comment spam, domain speculation, and sockpuppetry
Solar Home Inc controls over 6000 websites, cybersquats on other companies’ trademarks, posts hundreds of cut-and-paste comments on news, technology, and investing sites, and posts those comments using at least eight separate usernames.
Solar Home
On my first Renewable Journal post, a commenter by the name of Ray Boggs dropped a list of reasons not to go with a solar energy lease like the one I have with SolarCity. I briefly looked into his points and found that some were valid while others were not. In addition, I discovered that Boggs is the founder of Solar Home Inc, a Victorville California solar system reseller. This makes SolarCity and other solar lease providers Boggs’ competitors. So I responded in the comment thread, pointed out that Boggs was a biased commenter, and left it at that.
On July 16, National Public Radio (NPR) ran a story about solar leases and how they might not be all they’re cracked up to be, and when I glanced at the comments on NPR’s website, I noticed that the very same Ray Boggs had posted another comment attacking solar leases. But the fact that his comment at NPR was nearly identical to the comment he posted at S&R got me wondering if Boggs was more than just a businessman trying to undercut his competition. It got me wondering whether or not Boggs was essentially a spammer. So I did some digging.
What I discovered is that there are hundreds of nearly identical comments posted on solar articles and websites going back to September 2010. I discovered nine distinct usernames and/or individuals responsible for posting those comments, usually without acknowledging their connection to Solar Home. And I discovered a network of literally thousands of nearly identical websites controlled by Solar Home that serve the dual purpose of attacking solar leasing companies while also promoting Solar Home’s products. Continue reading
Life is a gift. A really crappy, thoughtless gift, grabbed in haste from a cheap display next to the cash register.
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
Your Daily Devotional for October 14, 2014
Even you like Hip-Hop
volume three
Jin – Angels
You know I gotta say something;
The beginning and the end, what’s the difference between the two? Continue reading
I am a diamond head ghost…
…filling the shadow and the room,
walking in this morning’s sunshine,
depriving it of you…
(Picture taken in Brisbane, California on October 12th, 2014)
God has a plan? Does it include unlimited free messaging? I’m thinking of switching over from T-Mobile.
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
Your Daily Devotional for October 10, 2014
Craft
Taken at Boneyard Beer in bend, OR.
OK. What if cats, when we’re not looking, travel in time? Maybe Hitler wonders why cats are always appearing and disappearing around him. (Cats are woefully under-equipped to kill Hitler. But that doesn’t stop them from trying.) Anyway, the next time you can’t find your cat and then, mysteriously, there it is? “Failed again, eh, Mr. Whiskers?”
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
Your Daily Devotional for October 9, 2014
When the cloth makes the man: J.F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban
Catholicism is darkly comic in J.F. Powers’s Morte D’Urban – would that it were more comic, less dark, in the real world…
Morte D’Urban by J.F. Powers (image courtesy Goodreads)
Well, this goes back yet again to Wufnik. He and I seem to bandy about the names of writers that we want the other to look into (often further into) on a regular basis. I did a piece a few weeks back abusing some schmuck who proclaimed “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” the greatest short story of all time. In his comment on that piece, Wufnik mentioned a couple of stories: Shirley Jackson’s widely anthologized masterpiece “The Lottery” and “Prince of Darkness” by another unjustly neglected American master of literary fiction, J. F. Powers.
I’d read Powers’s story sometime ago (in fact, I’d read his first collection of stories, of which “Prince of Darkness” was the title work). So, thinking I should read it again given Wufnik’s high opinion of it, I promptly went out to one of my favorite used book sellers and looked for a copy of that collection. In doing so I came across, in addition to the story collection, Powers’s first novel, a National Book Award winner, Morte D’Urban. So I got both books. When I came to them in my always increasing reading list, I had to make a choice. Since my own first book, a “novel-in-stories,” is called Morte D’Eden, I decided to give the Powers novel a go.
Am I glad I did. Continue reading
Why didn’t anyone tell me that “speed dating” has nothing to do with meth?
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
Your Daily Devotional for October 8, 2014
Scalia and categorical religious beliefs
Justice Antonin Scalia believes that “religious beliefs aren’t reasonable.” He is not saying that religious beliefs are not appropriate or not fair–that would be a shock, coming from him. Rather he goes on to say that “I mean, religious beliefs are categorical.” In other words, religious beliefs are unequivocal or unconditional.
Scalia made that statement yesterday during oral arguments for the case Holt v. Hobbs. The case involves a prisoner in Arkansas, Gregory Holt, who is a convert to Islam. He wishes to wear a beard in accordance with his new-found religious beliefs. The state of Arkansas is insisting on enforcing its state-law which prohibits prisoners from wearing religiously-motivated beards for security reasons (namely the threat of prisoners hiding contraband in their beards). Holt tried to be “reasonable” about his request and agreed to limit the growth to a half-inch. Scalia’s response to Holt’s request, reported in The Washington Post, is telling:
“Well, religious beliefs aren’t reasonable,” Scalia said. “I mean, religious beliefs are categorical. You know, it’s ‘God tells you.’ It’s not a matter of being reasonable. God be reasonable? He’s supposed to have a full beard.”
Say Ello to the Great Firewall
There’s a cyberwar on and we’re losing. The New York Times reports 10 financial institutions including JP Morgan Chase are compromised and we don’t know the extent of the damage. Home Depot, Target (asking for it), Ebay, P.F. Chang’s, the Montana Health Department, and Domino’s Pizza (Belgium and France), have all been attacked in 2014, more than 1,000 businesses in total.
Meanwhile the hot new social network startup Ello is capturing 20,000 users per day, despite grave warnings that their business model doesn’t make sense unless there’s something we don’t know about it. One rave review mentions the total lack of political content. Do you believe that all those creative free-thinking American citizens suddenly tacitly agreed to stop discussing politics when they joined this site? I joined up to ask them that very question. Continue reading
*takes time machine back to 1971*
“Hi, high school girls who wouldn’t go out with me. Look how cool I am now.”
“Ugh, you’re a gross old man.”
*sighs*
Your Daily Devotional for October 7, 2014
Ello: some thoughts on why there isn’t much political discussion on our controversial new social network
In the last week or so I have seen an amazing amount of energy devoted to burying Ello. Mind you, it hasn’t launched yet. Still in beta. These folks are trying to kill it before the doors officially open. What’s weird is the range of attacks I’m seeing. Business insiders patting it on the head and ‘splaining why, noble as it is, it just won’t work. (I can’t prove that these folks are pimping for Facebook, but their efforts have to be making Zuck happy.) Pro-privacy types saying it’s sold out before it gets started because the developers take venture capital money. Design junkies telling us how it’s the worse design experience since, well like ever. On and on and on and on.
[sigh]
I’m not here to tell you that it’s going to put Facebook out of business. Continue reading
Leaf owners – beware the gas station car wash! – Renewable Journal for 10/6/2014
For more posts in this series, please click here.
A couple months back, I gave my Leaf a bath in a gas station car wash. I came out of it complaining that it didn’t get all the bird poop off my pretty new car, but that happens sometimes – some car washes are just not that good. The thing that stuck with me, though, was that it was hard to get the car positioned right in the car wash, and even harder to get the car out of the wash at all. Continue reading
*decides to meditate*
*meditates for 72 seconds*
*congratulates self for being an enlightened person*
*plays with phone*
Your Daily Devotional is a lightly-edited entry from my Twitter feed. Follow me at @jefftiedrich
