My daughter was out sick on Friday, so she brought home a Mother’s Day thingie for me today. And it’s really very sweet.
But you know what’s even better? Look at the improvement in her handwriting. Most of y’all know my daughter is PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified) and has some fine-motor issues.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
I’d like to take a moment to be sure that you’re aware of a piece of legislation currently under consideration in the House of Representatives. It’s the “Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006” also known as the COPE Act (HR 5252). If you’re reading these words, you use the internet, and therefore this legislation will affect you.
In a nutshell, providers will be able to charge companies to provide good access to their sites. For instance, if Amazon chooses not to pony up the dough, a provider would be able to slow access to them to a crawl. Search engines might redirect you to Barnes and Noble.
That’s bad enough if you’re a large, monolithic corporation. What if you’re a small business? What if you’re a blogger? Or what if you’re an individual sending data to someone using a service that hasn’t paid a fee to your service? How long would it take for your information to get to its destination? Call me nuts, but I believe that photos of your child should get to Grandma before that child grows up.
Preserving the idea that information should be able to flow freely is a concept called “Net Neutrality.” Net neutrality understands that fees to maintain connections are required, but not selective fees that penalize the little guy or gal.
Without net neutrality, small businesses and individual users will be negatively affected. It will come as no surprise that the lobbyists for this bill are large telecom companies.
To add insult to injury, the bill also permits providers to ignore less-profitable areas when providing service. In other words, if you’re not in a densely packed residential area, you may be out of luck. Nice knowing you, Wyoming.
This bill is expected to reach the floor of the House by mid-May, so I’m writing a snail mail letter to my Representative in Congress now. If you’d like to learn more, and I certainly encourage you to do so, visit http://www.savetheinternet.com/ . They are in favor of net neutrality. They also have a petition you can sign.
For more info, check out:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.internet09may09,0,4559120.story
http://www.freepress.net/congress/billinfo.php?id=169
It’s an important issue that’s not being carried by the mainstream media. I hope you’ll take the time to learn more.
Went grocery shopping this morning at my local Harris Teeter grocery store. This store is huge, and carries many things you wouldn’t commonly find in a smaller store, like buffalo meat and flaxseed oil. I wasn’t shopping for those, mind you, as I’m not in the market for naked oiled buffalo meat wrestling.
Because they’re so big, they have a hot food bar, with Chinese and Italian food in the afternoon and breakfast in the morning. So today, going past the breakfast bar, what do I see?
Dear Dragonrealms Staff:
After a brief lull, I’m experiencing another slight Jayne hat upsurge as people get ready for the summer ‘Con season. So if you could all do me a favor and please STOP HAVING BABIES ALREADY that’d be swell.
Love,
Tvini
If we weren’t all living in such disparate places, I’d say it was something in the water.
Aaaanywho, after the Freak Flag, I felt the need to make something a little more subdued and less… flamboyant. The husband calls this a skater hat. Okay by me!
This is from my one skein Kureyon hat pattern, which I’ve modified again for more gentle decreases and a more rounded crown.
After the recent debacle with mysterious changing Noro colorways, I wanted to be sure I had some recent examples up on the site, as I think that the pic to the right, taken at least two years ago, may be from another that was reformulated/discontinued. I have a customer who’s expressed an interest in it.I don’t wanna go through the inconvenience (to them and me) of getting paid and then finding out that it’s not available.
HTML-savvy types, I have a question. How do I tell the text to STOP wrapping around a picture? Above, I’ve got the picture aligned left, then the text, but I’d like to be able to tell it to stop wrapping, then begin a new section after the lower edge of the first pic. Is there an end-tag to tell it to go back to default/normal text alignment? Does this make sense? I’m learning html here and there, but obviously there’s a long way to go.
Order on the needles for Indiana, then Norway, Massachusetts, and California.
ETA: thank you,
Sure, The Red Thread project which someone posted about in
Continuing my run of finishing longstanding UFOs (unfinished objects), I present the Freak Flag!
I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. The young man was very nice. I went out to talk to him again at about 1:20 to tell him I’d need to get out of the driveway in another 20 minutes. They were pruning the tree, and he said a lot of the limbs were dead, probably from arcing against the power lines.
They trimmed it, and I can’t tell a darned bit of difference. I am so, so grateful that this guy listened to me and was so gentle. Let’s hear it for people who are thoughtful and kind when it would be just as easy to be callous. You all know my penchant for optimism, but this just validates my belief that people are basically good.