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"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act. It is a habit."
-- Aristotle

Question: Are you as physically attracted to members of other races as you are to those of your own?

My Answer: What attracts me to a woman has nothing to do with race. I'm not as attracted to blondes as I am to brunettes, for example. I've found quite a few black, Asian, etc. women attractive, but on the whole my type is "brunettes" and most black women don't have brown hair (it's… black). Nor, for that matter, do most blondes.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Casual sex: good or bad?

My Answer: I don't care for it personally, but have nothing against it. I'm a bigger fan of intimacy than just "getting off," so that doesn't leave a lot of room for picking up a chick in a bar.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I'm not resigning, but someone I know is quitting. Quitting after being at his job for around six months. Quitting after going on a two-week vacation that stretched to three weeks one week after he started. Quitting after passing up on a few hours, whining, disobeying orders, and more "fun stuff" in six months.

What's worse, the guy is trying to take people down as he goes. He's a nobody - the equivalent of the person taking your orders at McDonald's - and yet he thinks he's important enough to be worthy of discussion. A few days ago he said "I am a man of my word" and I laughed. You, lame sir, are not.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 446); »

Question: Should Puerto Rico become a state?

My Answer: That's up to them. If I lived there, I wouldn't. They've got the perks of a state without the downside (taxes). I've never been there, so I'm a bit out of my depths, but hey, let them do what they want, and they don't want to become a state. It's those Canadians that worry me… when will Québec break off?

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

This article and a comment on this entry have got me thinking again: I've been flying a bit low lately. I want to get back to being an opinionated, outgoing person here on my blog. I want to write more and I want to write longer articles that have more thought.

Lately, I've been tired, but I'm no longer going to accept that as an excuse for myself.

Question: Abortion: yay or nay?

My Answer: I'm not a fan of convenience abortions - the "oops, the condom broke" variety - but in some situations, I accept that a first-trimester abortion is the best choice.

Several years ago a friend of my mother almost had to make the choice between her own life and her unborn child's. The Catholic Church, it was explained to me then, would rather see the child born than the mother's life saved.

That makes no sense to me. I may have the story wrong, but that's how I remember it, and in a "mother vs. child" situation, I'm probably gonna side with letting the mother live every time.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Just as I arrived home to check my email, I began getting an inordinate amount of blog spam. By "inordinate" I mean nearly 100 spam comments. I immediately began clicking the links to remove the comments and add the blog spam to the MT-Blacklist, but for awhile, the rebuilding process wasn't adding the spamming domains quickly enough to stem the flow of spam. My email checked every ten minutes, and here's how the progression went:

5, 16, 13, 7, 16, 17, 17, 6, 1 = 98

Since that "1" snuck through about an hour ago, MT-Blacklist has denied over 1000 more attempts to spam my blog with the domains. Somehow, all of the attacks are coming from differing IPs:

2004.01.12 01:58:48
210.254.214.210
MT-Blacklist comment denial on NSLog();: xxxxxxxx.com

2004.01.12 01:59:04
211.22.79.221
MT-Blacklist comment denial on NSLog();: xxxxxxxx.net

2004.01.12 01:59:13
69.0.231.132
MT-Blacklist comment denial on NSLog();: xxxxxxxx.com

2004.01.12 01:59:18
218.188.8.182
MT-Blacklist comment denial on NSLog();: xxxxxxx.net

(Domains removed to prevent them from getting any exposure)

My MT-Blacklist remains here: http://nslog.com/blacklist.txt.

One of my favorite quotes from West Wing is this:

Leo: I gotta say, I love the way he did it full speed, bam. Like there's a Sam Seaborn-shaped hole in the wall.

That quote reminds me of myself. I'm not a man of inaction. I'll do something - and it may not be right - but I'll give it my all and the results will often be spectacular.

Another quote about Sam:

Don't go for the geniuses. They never want to sleep.

More on Sam (found while trying to get the wording right for the first quote).

This week I was charged with the role of leader. The primary goal was to have good, clean week, and to take care of business. A secondary goal of mine was effecting a change in someone who has proven over the course of six months to be incompetent, unable or unwilling to learn, arrogant without cause, disrespectful, lazy, and out of touch with reality. Though I don't actually think I can cause change in such a person in only one week, I can say that the experiment succeeded in teaching me a great deal.

There are a lot of kinds of people in the world. Unfortunately, you rarely get the chance to decide who you're going to lead, and so you must be able to lead them all. There remain those who are so utterly out of the loop that they're unable to follow anything but their own hallucinations, but that's neither here nor there. The normal ones, I can strive to lead those, right?

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Poker in the front. Liquor in the back.

Question: Do you have a name for your "you know what?"

My Answer: Nope. And I plan to keep it that way. The one name an ex of mine had for it was rather complimentary, but I'll keep that to myself for now.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Freshly Squeezed Software is soon going to release some freeware for iTunes and Mac OS X that acts as a "shopping cart" of sorts. This application will allow you to save links to songs or albums while also allowing you to purchase songs from your list one at a time (without having to purchase the entire shopping cart).

Thing is, we need a good name. List some in the comments! The creator of the winning name will receive a free copy of Booklet or iChem.

Question: Have you ever been kicked out of an online community (forums, etc.)?

My Answer: Nope. Most people realize that they can't actually ban you, and simply try their best to ignore you or flame you to death, but in some cases I know people who have been asked to leave.

I'm a blunt, direct person who tends not to use a lot of the emoticons most boards provide. I ask direct questions and, when given an answer, say "thanks, I'll do that." I show respect by asking the question.

This pisses some people off, and they don't want to help me. After all, I use big words, and I'm arrogant. That's their perception, anyway. So, while I've never been asked to leave, I have come close, and I have had to suck it up and "play cute" a few times to avoid being ignored by the very people from whom I respect enough to seek advice.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Now that the Freshly Squeezed Software team is four people (I won't say who was added just yet), and now that I'm moving to a management position in a way (coordination, Web design, advertisement, delegation, etc.), I'm looking at project management software.

Good timing, then, that I see this. It's called "Basecamp" and it's Web-based. I need something Web-based, as no two of us are closer than about 1800 miles. We've all got Macs, though, and iSights too, I think. Anyway, that's beside the point - Basecamp looks interesting.