If I have the right to vote, then I also have the right to tell politicians how they can earn my vote. I’m politically independent, and will remain that way until the day I die. What do I ask for? Nothing unreasonable.

1. No negative campaigning, ever. I don’t mind a healthy debate, but when it comes to mudslinging - there’s no easier way for you to earn my non-vote. You’re trying to prove that you’re more trustworthy than your competitor by illustrating how your competitor is less trustworthy. Are you REALLY THAT STUPID (or is the population of my country RELALY THAT STUPID to reinforce this kind of behavior)?!
2. Avoid hardline affiliation. So, you’re running on the Democratic ticket? You don’t have to remind me of that every time you open your mouth. Ultimately, it’s what you do in office and with your peers that matters. For whatever it’s worth, today’s conservatives make Barry Goldwater look like a liberal - and even Goldwater (himself) predicted that would eventually happen.
3. Share your true passions. The “issues” are going to change over time, so don’t try to win me over by guessing what I want to hear. Tell me what you think, and I’ll decide whether or not I like the way you tell me. I don’t want to see what you’re doing on the campaign trail - what were you doing before you hit the campaign trail? Stand by your own convictions, not the convictions someone tells you to stand by.
4. Stay out of my personal life. Do you pay my bills? Do you decide how I should spend my hard-earned money? Do you tell me which non-profit organizations I should support? Do you live with me? Do you drive across town to get me a Peet’s every morning? Then please, don’t try to make other personal decisions for me.
5. Consider a new public relations team. I can’t think of anybody more out of touch with reality than someone in “PR” (seriously). If you need good advice, listen to your parents and/or your closest friends. If you want help getting the word out or lining up engagements, just ask the blogosphere. “We” really believe in you - even though we’re not on your payroll.

I’m not throwing my vote away - the system is. These are just personal pet peeves, not necessarily political ones. Hey, this *IS* a personal blog!

Teresa Valdez Klein (of TeresaCentric) sent out the gin recepes we tasted at a Blog Business Summit dinner last week. “The first recorded dry martini recipe, in 1896, called for Plymouth Gin, dry vermouth and orange bitters, which add delicacy and fragrance to the cocktail.”

• 1 oz. Plymouth Gin
• Splash dry vermouth
• 2 drops orange bitters

Pour vermouth into a mixing glass over ice cubes and swirl or stir, making sure the ice is coated with the vermouth. Strain off excess vermouth, leaving only as much vermouth is desired for the level of dryness (the less vermouth in the drink, the drier it is). Add Plymouth Gin and bitters to the mixing glass and stir until extremely chilled. Strain into a chilled martini glass and garnish with a lemon twist or unwashed olive.

• 1 oz. Plymouth Gin
• 1 oz. lemon juice
• 2 bar spoons simple sugar syrup
• Top with champagne (or sparkling wine)

Shake Plymouth Gin, lemon juice and simple sugar with ice and strain into a chilled champagne flute. Top with champagne and garnish with a lemon twist. [Created around 1925 at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris]

• 1 oz. Plymouth Gin
• Raspberry puree
• ½ oz.fresh lemon juice
• 1 bar spoon simple syrup
• Top with soda water

Measure the width of one finger of raspberry puree into a Boston-style shaker glass. Add the remaining ingredients�except for the soda�then shake with ice and strain into a tall glass filled with ice cubes. Top with soda and garnish with a lemon slice and two raspberries. [A fruity variation created by Cairbury Hill at London’s Met Bar]

• 1 ounce pumpkin butter
• 1 ounce Plymouth Gin
• 1.5 ounces fresh lemon juice
• 1.5 ounces simple syrup
• Champagne
• Blend of cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg for rim

Mix all ingredients except champagne in a pint glass filled with ice, shake. Strain into champagne flute, top with champagne. [Uncovered by Kim for those in more of a Halloween mood]

We didn’t move this weekend. We were going to move, but didn’t - and I can’t tell you why we didn’t move until I know more. We thought we were moving, had prepared for the move, but didn’t actually move because of a major (read: pivotal) snag. Our house was prepared for the move, too. This was the second last minute change in plans - with the first last minute change shifting our track and direction just as dramatically. We have effectively, as movers, moved moving again. Would someone please stop this merry-go-round?

Okay, so… let me see if I can help the rumor mill along:

1. We’re moving this weekend
2. Our new residence is NOT in the Bay Area
3. It’s definitely not Web 2.0 related
4. November 6th is the earliest I can say anything
5. Geeks can take advantage of it
6. Non-geeks will definitely love it
7. It’s bigger than a breadbox
8. If there is a scoop, it will be shared equally
9. Even when you find out, you won’t believe it
10. We’ve been planning to move for a while

Go ahead - guess what’s happening.

Josh from TinyScreenfuls just posted TinyScreenfuls.com“>a mouthful:

I want to start some conversation. I’m not officially authorized to speak for Intel on any matter (see my “Caveat Lector� disclaimer over there in the sidebar), but there are a ton of things that I can talk about. I’m just a guy, a blogger, who works at a very large company that makes the most complex things ever made by humans. It’s a fascinating place, and I know there are lots of you that would like to know more about Intel. Or maybe you have something you’d like to vent. Or perhaps you just want to say how much you love something Intel has done (wouldn’t that be nice?).

Wow. That’s pretty bold. I’ve known Josh for a while now (after first meeting him at a geek dinner in Portland). He’s about as “geek” as they come. I guess the ball’s in Intel’s court now? It’s happening anyway.

I never, ever respond to link requests. However, I think I’m making my first exception with Mike Layden. “I’ve been linking to your site for maybe two years now… any chance you could return the favor someday?” Mike, I’m only doing this because (a) you have a creative domain name, and (b) your site disclaimer cracked me up. For posterity:

Batteries not included. Some assembly may be required. WARNING: NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE. REFER SERVICING TO QUALIFIED PERSONNEL! Contents may settle during shipment. Drink before date on carton. Use only as directed. You’re soaking in it now. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Use only in well-ventilated area. Keep away from fire or flame. Keep away from children. Viewer discretion advised. May be too intense for some viewers. No bottles, knives, guns, or attitudes. Keep out of direct sunlight. Apply only to affected area. If condition persists, consult your physician. All models over 18 years of age, affidavits on file. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Contestants have been briefed on some questions before the show. List each check separately by bank number. No other warranty expressed or implied. Void where prohibited. Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. For recreational use only. Slippery when wet. Sanitized for your protection. Delivered fresh every day. For off-road use only. Your mileage may vary. Edited for television. Post office will not deliver without proper postage. For office use only. List was current at time of printing. This product is meant for educational purposes only. Penalty for private use. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Lost ticket pays maximum rate. Your cancelled check is your receipt. Add toner. Place stamp here. First pull up, then pull down. Avoid contact with skin. Beware of dog. Limited time offer, call now to insure prompt delivery. If you are calling from a touch-tone telephone please press one now. To ensure quality service, this call may be recorded. You must be present to win. No purchase necessary. You must be 18 to win. Employees and their families are not eligible. No passes accepted for this engagement. List at least two alternate dates. I want my MTV. Some equipment shown is optional. No Canadian coins. Not recommended for children. Prerecorded for this time zone. Reproduction strictly prohibited. Not for resale. Keep dog on leash. Please stand behind yellow line. Driver carries less than $20 cash. Driver does not make change. Many suitcases look alike. This is not an offer to sell securities. NO ANCHOVIES UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. When a problem comes along, you must whip it. Whip it good. The Internet will change the way we live, work, and learn, yada, yada, yada. He who dies with the most toys, wins. I wish I had bought Microsoft a long time ago. Personal goal: to outlive the milk mustache commercials. And rap music. Isn’t everyone bored yet? Please return your tray table to its’ full upright and locked position and remain seated until we have come to a complete stop. We’re all special because we’re all different– just like everyone else. Do not mark in this space. WARNING! Severe tire damage will result! Are your turn signals on? Happy Hour is from 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM. Buy one, get one free! We are closed on Wednesdays. Film at eleven. This vehicle not responsible for rocks thrown from tires. Tank you veddy much. No, really.

I can’t think of a single catchphrase that might be missing.

Brandon says:

Vista’s Photo Import tool, in my opinion, (aside from Tag support) is a complete step backward from what we’ve got in Windows XP. In XP, I can pick and choose which photos I want to import at a specific time. With Vista, I get no choice what-so-ever. It just imports all photos and creates a directory for me. Vista’s Photo Import tool does give me some neat options on auto-naming folders when do imports but that doesn’t go far enough - its still far too constricting.

Robert says:

I echo Brandon’s hope that this is one of the “surprises” Microsoft has planned for RTM. But at this point, if you’re copying photos from your computer in Vista, I wouldn’t even bother with the Photo Import Wizard. Better to use the new thumbnail features in Windows Explorer to do the copying instead.

Paul says:

Let’s talk photo import. It’s broken in Windows Vista, horribly broken. Here’s why. In Windows XP, you could preview the pictures on the attached camera and select exactly which photos to download. That way, if you had several events captured on the memory card, you could download them separately be stepping through the wizard once for each event. In Vista, you can’t choose. You get all these great file naming and tagging options, but you have to download the entire contents of the camera in one giant whack. That, friends, is just stupid. It’s less useful than photo import in XP.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this but… I don’t think it’s broken at all. In fact, I think this is a huge step forward for the photo import tool. Why? Because I’ve seen Ponzi plant her damn camera images all over her damn hard drive and then give me a hard time when she couldn’t find the damn things again.

Forcing a destination? Thank you, Microsoft. Forcing people to apply tags (even though they should be called keywords) to individual photos? Thank you, Microsoft. Forcing a complete download? Thank you, Microsoft. Seriously. If you don’t like it, you’re likely a “control freak” geek - and you can do whatever you wanna do with the damn things through the Windows Explorer.

McLaws just IM’ed me to say that Vista only tags photos en masse, which is completely asinine. Then again, what can you expect from a half-baked operating system that will ship with more bugs than actual features?!

Busy week. Going crazy. Can’t say why yet. Writing sentence fragments. Ignoring style. Washing clothes. Running errands. Not drinking Peet’s coffee because Ponzi took off in my car and didn’t leave her alarm fob behind even though it probably doesn’t work anyway I really don’t care to wake up the neighborhood if it’s still set properly. Wow. That was a long sentence fragment. That was not a sentence fragment. Neither was that. Must do a million things before this weekend. Still not sure how I’m going to survive. Must get measured for tuxedo. Must decide where going on honeymoon. Must talk less like caveman. Worried about piles of paper multiplying. Worried about making the right decisions. Worried about making the wrong decisions. Worried about the baggage retreival system they’ve got at Heathrow. Worried that many people simply don’t understand my obscure Monty Python references. Have great news to share. Can’t share great news yet. Going crazy. Buzy week.

Do you remember the first JibJab cartoon you ever saw? They’re crazy.

JibJab has been making people laugh for the past seven years with quirky comedy shorts and clever political cartoons. During the last Presidential election, they made headlines with a cartoon duo of John Kerry and George Bush taking political shots at each other to the tune of This Land is Your Land. A trip to The Tonight Show and several great political comedies later, the founding brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis and their team of JibJabbers in Santa Monica concocted a plan to introduce unknown comedy writing talent to one of the funniest directors in Hollywood, John Landis. The Great Sketch Experiment puts John Landis directing 6 talented teams in 6 police themed shorts. Viewers get to vote on their favorite, with the winning short getting an endowment from JibJab to do a bigger project (as if working with John Landis isn’t enough). Here Chris speaks with Gregg Spiridellis about the history of JibJab, being funny on the Internet and gets the lowdown on the six short films that in The Great Sketch Experiment.

Subject line: Mail server report.
Attachment: Update-KB####-x86 (EXE or ZIP)

Mail server report.

Our firewall determined the e-mails containing worm copies are being sent from your computer.

Nowadays it happens from many computers, because this is a new virus type (Network Worms).

Using the new bug in the Windows, these viruses infect the computer unnoticeably.
After the penetrating into the computer the virus harvests all the e-mail addresses and sends the copies of itself to these e-mail
addresses

Please install updates for worm elimination and your computer restoring.

Best regards,
Customers support service

Be on the lookout - and do not open this attachment. Never accept software updates through email - EVER.

Three times in the past week, I’ve unwillingly opened the door to young solicitors. Actually, the number is closer to five (but I only responded to three, with tonight’s salesman mistaken for the pizza guy). Some are peddling magazines, while others are selling books - doesn’t matter (they’re all annoying). Each and every time, as soon as I push back the dogs and fling open the front door, they ask:

“Is your mom or dad home?”

To keep from bursting out in pants-peeing laughter, I have to bite my bottom lip and tell the knock-knock-nerd that my parents be out of the country for at least three months. There’s going to come a time when I’m actually going to look like an adult - so I’m enjoying this defense while I still can. Of course, I get different questions from phone spammers:

“Hello, Mrs. Pirillo?”

I always affirm this kind of telemarketer greeting, knowing that I’m quickly going to lead our conversation into uncomfortable feminine subjects. As far as I’m concerned, telemarketing, junk mail, junk email, and door-to-door sales should be outlawed and punishable by death. It’s to the point where I don’t even wanna check or answer anything. The offers are certainly amazing:

“We can help raise your credit score!”

No, you can’t - that’s my personal responsibility, and I’m certainly not going to give business to anybody who says otherwise. You lose, you’re a loser, and you’re going to burn in hell. I don’t remember giving you permission to spam my snail mailbox, either. I’m sure it was buried in some privacy policy somewhere that I missed. Your wasting more than just paper, man - you’re wasting my air. God hates you. At least your crap gives me the giggles at times:

“Extra Income Online (corrected)”

Thank you for sending me a corrected version. Seriously. There are no virgins waiting for you in the afterlife, so give it up. If I want to make extra income online, I’ll just rent more body parts - body parts that can’t be enlarged with your so-called viaGaGRa. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone. Die, die, die, die. You make pacifists bloodthirsty, don’t you know?

We received an email this morning from Brooke Tessman, Director of Advertising Sales for StumbleUpon.com. At first, I thought it was a “normal” sales call. Then, I started to think about what she was saying:

StumbleUpon offers a unique opportunity to reach the targeted audience you’re searching for. Discover great websites, videos, pictures and more-all according to your interests. Send your website or video directly to people who want to see your content. StumbleUpon shows your website or video directly to interested web surfers who have already expressed a strong interest in similar content.

Target the exact audience you want. Target visitors by category, location, age, and gender. Get valuable feedback from real people. See how many people rated your content “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down”. Interested in learning more about StumbleUpon advertising opportunities?

What I’m interested in learning more about is… do StumbleUpon users realize they may be stumbling upon paid placements?

Are you getting paid what you’re worth? Most of us would probably answer that question ‘No’ even if we spend our days running out the clock surfing YouTube. Seattle-based company PayScale is attempting to help answer the question of whether you’re getting paid what you’re worth, along with a number of other important questions you should be asking anytime you are actively seeking a new job. While most companies frown on sharing what you’re getting paid with the guy in the next cube, it’s natural to be curious if your efforts are being compensated in line with what other people get for performing similar functions. PayScale is taking a fairly unique approach to this problem by collecting data from both employers and employees (published as part of an anonymous whole) to get a better sense of the overall market across many job categories. By signing up for their service, you can keep track of movements in pay in your field and get useful data for negotiating your next pay raise. Employers get better access to data about what positions are worth in the global marketplace, which theoretically drives expectations to something of a market price in a large enough pool of data. Here Chris talks with Joe Giordano, founder of PayScale, about how the service works, how it benefits both employees and employers, and why a service like PayScale provides better information about the job market than previous methodologies.

In a matter of hours, DNS should be resolving for UndoTV.com. Before you rush the site (as I’m sure you will), please note that we’re only letting vetted talent in at first. Submit your email address to be added to the queue for invitation codes - which will start going out mid-November. You’ll see our temporary “about” page soon enough, but here’s what Leo and I have written:

Today, the idea of a tech-centric TV network has disappeared from the minds of Hollywood’s elite. Par for the course! Passionate communities are often kept an arm’s length away from their favorite broadcasted content in traditional media circles.

It’s time to undo that way of thinking, don’t you think?

TechTV alumni just wanted a place where we could all come together and funnel our independent efforts. “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” keeps ringing through my head - not just our existing content, but NEW stuff (and NEW faces) as well. Leo Laporte and I have done our best to set the stage for UndoTV.

The blogger Steve Borsch commented in a previous thread: “So, who decides what gets ‘on’ UndoTV? Who the talent is? What emerges?” The UndoTV talent base is starting with the former ZDTV / TechTV staff, previous show guests, and vetted friends. Without a base of quality content, we’d be nothing more than a video portal clone.

Everybody is welcome here - and everybody retains 100% ownership of their own content.

The community (you) will determine the direction of our efforts. Certainly, some former TechTV talent has gone on to do fantastic productions far outside the realm of the tech industry. Everybody is welcome to help us undo the idea of television - helping reinvent the way community can influence the active development of a site, its content, and its superstars.

You are tomorrow’s network. You control the horizontal - and the vertical, too. As such, we only want to see your own creations here. If you want to upload someone else’s content, please do so elsewhere? It’s the community’s job to keep this community clean, cool, and collected. We hope you take that responsibility to heart.

Expect, in short time, new features and functionality, new ways to interact, and new ways to find a passionate audience for your own talents.