I'm, like, umm, thirty.

Only one way to stop the birthdays from coming...and we're out of drain cleaner.

I turned thirty the other day.

I state this as fact. I'm not real proud of it (it's not due to any of my own accomplishments), but there it is. I guess I have to grow up, some, now. No, I won't stop enjoying fiery homemade explosions or bitter sarcasm or making "Yo' Mama" jokes with my white, moderately redneck friends. I DO, however, need to start cracking down on myself. Lots of little stuff can no longer be tolerated--I talk a bit like a redneck, don't enunciate proper-like. I don't manage my time very well--spend too much time reading Vox and Bane and Nate and Bill and Claire and Digg and Slashdot.

But I guess it's time to change. I have a kid on the way (October), and she'll need stuff. Diapers and shoes and tricycles and math books and gas money and a wedding (I'm only paying for one of those). I need to buckle down; I will buckle down and spend my time more wisely. I want to be self-employed, working mostly from home, so I can be here when the little tyke(s) start(s) walking and talking and playing the violin. (We WILL be home schooling.)

So any advice or links anyone feels led to share, feel free to do so in the comments.

How to calculate stupidity

Two half-wits do NOT make a whole.

From SEOmoz.org: "Oatmeal" (I'm going to make a leap of assumption here and guess that's not his given name) brutally editoralizes the web design critiquing process.

As a professional web designer I've noticed a consistent trend in the majority of the projects I've worked on: The more time that is spent dissecting, analyzing, and critiquing a design by the wrong kinds of people the worse that design gets. The same trend applies to the number of people involved in the design process.

Group intelligence is multiplicative when idiots are involved - combining a half-wit with another half-wit does not result in a full-witted person, it results in a quarter-witted person (1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4). Combining a full-witted individual with a half-wit still only yields a half-wit. The more of these "wrong kinds of people" you have involved in the process, the worse things get.

(He has graphs!)

I do some web design (by "some" I mean "I know what Dreamweaver does"), so this rings true with me. And since I live on earth, with other humans, the part about "1/2 wit X 1/2 wit = 1/4 wit" REALLY rings true.

I wish I could get a bumper sticker with that on it.

Or, my favorite: "Half the people you meet are below average."

(Blast from the past: People are Stupid)

Yahoo! (!)

Wherefore art thou?

I've used Yahoo! Mail for years--ever since I figured out what e-mail was. Yahoo! is great: It's free, you can access it from anywhere, and when you change ISPs you don't have to e-mail everyone you know and tell them to change their address books.

Well, it USED to be great.

More and more, I'm unable to access my mail for varying periods of time.

NOTE: Yes, I DO pay for it--I pay ~$15/yr for some upgrades; most important among them is the privilege of sending e-mails free of annoying little ads at the bottom.

Sustainable Freedom

Claire Wolfe at Backwoods Home outlines the reasons for disappearing freedom, and questions it's reversability:

So will freedom invariably implode? Does it always carry within it the seeds of its own destruction? Do human flaws doom us to return again and again to tyranny?

It's been so up to now. It's certainly so in America, where tattered scraps of paper meant to keep us free have become toilet paper for creatures whose mediocrity is equaled only by their ambition. Free men of character -- what few there are left -- separate themselves from the Roman orgy of spending, borrowing, controling, and killing that replaces paper-limited government. If a horse was elected to the Senate, they wouldn't be surprised. They might even consider it an improvement.

In a world of corrupt and institutionalized alphas peddling stolen goods, free men withdraw from civic life. They build computers and space rockets. They retreat to hidden backwoods gulches. They become expatriates. They defend themselves without permits. They school their own children. They deceive the tax man. They do what free men must to survive in a society that has no use for them. And they hope for a freedom that might return someday.

Nicely written article. The reasons she gives are all attributable to human tendencies--the very tendencies that need to be resisted and quelled at every turn, but mostly aren't, except for those few with the intelligence and knowledge to recognize and resist them.

Linky-poo

Updated the links, I did.

How to...

...ruin an All-Star Game

1: Have an oppressively loud female bellow out some scripted remarks prior to the game, shouting down her co-host whenever he has something relevant to say.

2: Stop the game for a meaningless ceremony celebrating the life of some guy who used to play baseball. Give that guy's wife (I guess it was) a pretty little statue for something or another.

3: Take the bullhorn-with-a-vagina from the pregame show and send her into the stands to annoy the family members of players. Neglect to give those family members cattle prods or duct tape.

Sweet merciful earplugs, someone shut that woman up.