Bowling Helps the Terrorists Win

Remember those commercials that say when you use drugs 'you're helping the terrorists win.' Well, apparently you can add bowling to that list too.
Manhattan's bowling alley was sponsored by Arafat
I always thought it was a weak argument. It may be different with heroin and opium, but from what I understand most the pot in our country is home grown, I remeber this 48 Hours special where they said it was America's largest agricultural product bringing in underground revenue to the tune of 15 billion dollars, and coccaine comes from our friends south of the border.
I think if you really want to fight terrorism you should stop driving that SUV and save some oil. I for one will do my part by staying away from the evil of bowling.

Return of the C64

I saw this article in the NY Times the other day:
A Toy With a Story
It's about Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer. She like reverse engineered the commodore 64 and put it all in a joystick with 30 games. It's doing pretty well.
Makes you think about education in this country. This woman is obvioulsy brilliant but for whatever reason wasn't the type of person who could sit in a chair and be lectured at for three hours a clip. I've done ok in school, but I'm a moron and I can't do what she did. Maybe they need different ways of teaching so they don't lose out on people like this.
If you look at some of the tech sites they go between discussing the C64 and what a 'hot chick' she is.=) I used to have a C64. Remeber using ,8,1 to access the disk drive? Might be fun to pick one of these things up.

Why Newark Sucks

I sent in the $35 ticket I got the other day when my car got towed. The do street cleanings on Wednesday and Thurday in Newark and you have to have your car moved by 8am. I woke up late and ran downstairs at quater to 9 but they had already towed my car.

Had to spend an hour tracking down what happened to my car. There are three car thieves towing companies working for Newark and two of them said they weren't towing because of the Veterans Day holiday. Finally found where they took it. Had to pay $135 to get my car back and they handed me a ticket. They covered my windows with some kind of crayon that took a razor blade to get off.
Later that day, when I looked at the ticket the chick at the towing company gave me I noticed it was backdated to the day before. It also had the wrong street and the wrong time. I even had a reciept from the towing company to prove it. Probably because the person writing the ticket wasn't supposed to be doing it on the Veteran's Day holiday when the Street Cleaner's weren't running.

I was considering going and fighting the ticket. If they weren't supposed to be giving them that day they probably would have just said the sign didn't say that. If I went along the line that on the date they put on the ticket it would be perfectly legal to park my car where it was, they would have just said my car was on the other side of the street. It kinda stinks because I don't think my word should be any less valuable then theirs. After all, it's the police in Newark who sell drugs and the city who has to have the federal government monitor their elections. You would think that anything a cop in Newark says would be suspect. I'm not even sure the cops write those tickets in Newark. I got the impression the towing company does that too. Anyway, I missed the date to send it in by.
There's this site Parkingticket.com that will fight your ticket for free. They get half if they win. It's actually a legit service. Apparently if you actually fight a ticket you have a 75% chance of dismissal.
You work so hard just to make it until the end of the month. Something like this just kills you. I don't think you'd find a sane person who thinks $175 is fair for a street cleaning ticket. If the city of Newark needs money they should use the tax system, not this method of random muggings.