How To Sue Somebody on Trumped Up Charges

Search engines are funny things. They sometimes return amusingly irrelevent results.

A couple of days ago, someone searched Google for:
how to sue somebody on trumped up charges

My business blog at tropicalwebworks.org turned up #4 in that search. The person actually clicked through to the page, even though it's clearly not about suing somebody on trumped-up charges.

Even Swamp Critters Get to Vote

I voted. Had to hold my nose on some of my choices, but I did it.

Unbeknownst to me, my precinct moved since the last time I voted. I went to where I used to vote, but there was nothing there. Then I drove around aimlessly for a bit until I spotted the blue "Precinct 30" sign.

We used old-fashioned pieces of paper and had to color in little ovals with a pen. I hate that -- I never could color inside the lines.

The election workers were, as always, pleasant and helpful. Around here, they're always old, too. When I get old maybe I'll have time to work elections.

When they asked for my picture ID (yay Florida!), I had a little trouble locating it. I could have used my state-issued CCW, but I didn't want to scare anyone. It probably wouldn't have bothered anyone (this is Florida, after all, plenty of people have carry permits), but it just didn't seem appropriate. There's the soap box, the ballot box, and the ammo box -- and by voting, I guess I've admitted that it's not time for the ammo box just yet. A couple more seconds digging located my driver license, so it wasn't a problem anyway.

Daylight Throwing-Away Time

Every year at this time of year, I'm reminded of how much I hate the switch back to "standard time." That might make sense in the rest of the country, but I live in Florida, and things are different here.

I've always thought that we here in Florida should be on a Daylight Saving Time/Standard Time schedule exactly the opposite of the rest of the country. We should have DST during the winter months, and ST during the summer.

All summer, the hot sun is blazing away until late into the evening, causing us to hide indoors and run our air conditioners. If we were on Standard Time during those hot months, it would cool off -- at least tiny bit -- an hour earlier in the evening, and we might have some time in the late afternoon when it would be pleasant to be outdoors.

All winter, when we have wonderful weather and want to be out of doors as much as possible, the sun sets early and it's full dark by 6pm. Most people have little or no daylight time after work to spend outdoors. It gets dark too early.

My husband and I went sailing in our kayaks yesterday. We hauled the kayaks down to Pine Island Marina and sailed fro there out to our friend's fish shack, one of those old-timey fishing huts on pilings out in Pine Island Sound. It was a beautiful day -- sunny, but not too hot, and just a delight to be outside, especially on the water. That's the kind of weather we have from October through March. But with a 2 1/2 hour sail from the fish shack back to the marina, we had to leave by 3:30 to make sure we got back before dark. Since going back to standard time last night, we'll have to leave by 2:30 for that same trip.

When told the reason for Daylight Saving time, the old Indian said "Only a white man would believe that you could cut a foot off the top of a blanket and sew it to the bottom of the blanket and have a longer blanket."

Judge Orders Seizure of Domain Names to Protect Horseracing

The headline in the KYPost.com reads:
Ky. Seizes Domain Names Of Web Gambling Sites

The KYPost.com reports, "A Franklin County Circuit judge last week ordered the transfer of the domain names of 141 illegal Internet gambling sites to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in an effort to stop illegal and unregulated online gaming."

The article quotes Gov. Steve Beshear maundering about the dangers of gambling, saying,“Unlicensed, unregulated, illegal Internet gambling poses a tremendous threat to the citizens of the Commonwealth because of its ease, availability and anonymity,” and “The owners and operators of these illegal sites prey on Kentucky citizens, including our youth, and deprive the Commonwealth of millions of dollars in revenue. It’s an underworld wrought with scams and schemes.”

But further down, we get to the meat of the matter: "Unlicensed Internet gambling significantly undermines and threatens horseracing, Kentucky's signature industry and a key tourism industry, by creating unregulated and untaxed competition."

There's no concern here about the citizens of Kentucky being scammed out of their money, or the dangers to the youth of Kentucky. It's all about the money -- the money that Kentucky scams out of its citizens from the lavishly taxed horseracing industry.

This judge is so overstepping his bounds -- he's not only ordering the seizure of domain names prior to a hearing; he's ordering the seizure of domain names that aren't even based in Kentucky. Supposedly, he wants online gaming establishments to block access to their sites by Kentuckians.

Judges who have no clue about the internet should not be permitted to hear cases relating to the internet. There is no reliable way to block access by Kentuckians, and even if there were, I'm sure that the good citizens of Kentucky would have no trouble finding proxy servers they can use to disguise their location. Further, I can't imagine how this judge thinks Kentucky has any authority over domains belonging to sites that have no nexus in Kentucky.

This ruling is wrongheaded and boneheaded on so many levels. The judge should be tossed out on his ear.

When Is A Con Not A Con? When It's a Boggs Con

I once had the opportunity to play a friendly penny-ante game of poker with the currency artist JSG Boggs. Boggs had been trying all afternoon to get up a poker game, but the only people who wanted to play were Boggs, myself, my brother-in-law Jim, and our friend Al. This was during a party at our property over a Memorial Day week-end; there were probably 40 or 50 people there for the week-end, so it was surprising there weren't more players. But it was just the 4 of us.

Let me say right upfront that I'm not a particularly good poker player -- I play only very occasionally, and then only in very casual games with friends with extremely low betting (nickels, dimes and quarters). Boggs, I learned during the game, is accustomed to higher-stakes games in which players risk many thousands of dollars. But I enjoy a friendly game of poker; I said I'd play, but it had to be low antes and betting, and I wouldn't play with more than $20.

So after dinner we played poker. We each started with $20, and we scrounged in my big coin jar to break everyone's $20 bill into nickels, dimes and quarters. I think the ante was a quarter, and betting was mostly nickels and dimes, with occasional hands bringing out crazed bets of a quarter or even (gasp!) 50 cents.

During the course of the game, Al went bust, followed shortly by Jim, so that it was just Boggs and me remaining. At one point I had a fairly sizable pile of coins in front of me; I think Boggs was down to less than a dollar. But then things turned around, and soon all my coins migrated over to Boggs. I busted out as well. I swept all the coins back into my coin jar, and the four $20 bills were now sitting in front of Boggs.

While Boggs and I played, Jim and Al, having nothing better to do, stayed in their seats on the other side of the table, talking to each other and paying little attention to the game. They weren't even aware of when the game ended; they just sat over there continuing their conversation. After the game, Boggs told me that I was actually a better poker player than I thought I was. He told me that I needed to have more confidence in my own playing skills.

He also told me that I needed to control my "tells." "Tells" are the behaviors, expressions or habits by way of which we unconsciously signal to the other players what kind of hand we have or what a bet really means. Nervous eyes, slumping posture, sitting upright, glancing at your chips, glancing at the deck in the dealer's hand, glancing at your hole card, a frown, a half smile, a raised eyebrow, scratching one's nose or chin: these can signal to the other players whether I have a good hand and I expect to win, or I'm bluffing, or I have crap but if I get the right card on the next draw I'll have a winning hand.

Boggs described my tells to me. By golly, I always thought I had a decent poker face, but to someone who is good at reading tells, I was apparently an open book. I was giving away the quality of my hand with every bet!

Anyway, Boggs tried and tried to convince me that I was actually a pretty good poker player. Finally told me he wanted us to play another poker game. He asked me if I had any more money. Well, here's the gist of that conversation:

Boggs: Do you have any more money?

Me: Well, yeah, I think so, up in the house.

Boggs: How much?

Me: About $60.

Boggs: Go get it.

Me: What? Are you crazy? You just took my $20. I can afford to lose $20, but I'm not going to lose another $60 to you.

Boggs: Go get it.

Me: No! I told you, $20 is what I can afford to lose, and I already lost it.

Boggs (in a harder voice): I'm not joking. Go get your money.

Me: No. I may be drunk, but I'm not stupid.

Boggs (sounding somewhat annoyed): What, you think I'm just trying to take your money? I'm not trying to take your money. I don't need your money. I'm trying to prove a point here. Go get your money.

Me: No, I'm not getting my money.

Boggs (sounding angry): Look. I'm not fucking around here. I don't want your money. If I just wanted your money, would I do this?

At this point, Boggs picked up one of the $20 bills sitting on the table in front him, grabbed someone's lighter from the table, and lit the $20 bill.

I'm sure my eyes went as big as saucers at that. I'd never seen someone set fire to money before! As Boggs held the burning bill over an ashtray, Jim and Al, who had been deep in conversation and paying no attention to us, caught sight of the burning bill in their peripheral vision, and they swung around to stare, first at Boggs, then at me, then back at Boggs again, their conversation forgotten and their mouths hanging open.

Boggs now has our full attention. He tells Jim and Al what the burning money is all about, and they agree they'll play another game of poker. The three of them gang up on me and convince me to go get the $60 I have in the house. By now it didn't take a lot of convincing. I think I was convinced when Boggs set the $20 bill afire.

So we started another game. Quite by coincidence, the money I have in the house is exactly $60, which is what Boggs has left from his winnings in the first game, after burning the $20. Jim and Al dig up $60 each, and we're off in our second game. This time the ante is $1, and bets are ranging from a quarter to $5 and even $10.

Like I said, I'm not a skilled or experienced poker player. This game is the highest-stakes game I've ever played. I'm also three sheets to the wind; I had been drinking steadily all evening. If I had been stone-cold sober, I don't think I would ever have gone along with this, burning money or not.

But somehow, I was suddenly playing the best poker I've ever played. I was trying to pay attention to my tells, consciously avoiding them. And I was trying to have more confidence in my poker skills -- that was what Boggs had been trying to hammer into me.

Next thing I know, Jim's busted out of the game. Then Al. It's down to me and Boggs -- again.

And when the last hand is done and the bidding's over with, all $240 is sitting in front me.

To this day, I am still trying to figure out how this happened. I'm really not that good of a poker player, while Boggs was a regular player in $10,000 poker games. It had to have been engineered by Boggs, but how?

I'm quite sure Boggs is a good enough player that he could have engineered his loss. All he'd have to do is read my tells (I'm sure I was still giving myself away, despite my best efforts), bet big when I had a good hand, and fold quickly when I had a bad one.

But how could he manage to deliberately lose to me, even while making sure that both he and I bested Jim and Al?

Jim and Al aren't at Boggs's level, but they're both certainly more experienced than me. I'm convinced they weren't in on a scheme by Boggs -- they were only alone with him for a couple of minutes while I went into the house to get my money. And anyway I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have willingly gone along with a scheme that required that they each lose $60, either. Afterward, they both denied any sort of scheme, and found the whole thing quite amusing.

So how did Boggs deliberately lose to me, even while making sure that both he and I bested Jim and Al? If he bets big when he's sure I have a good hand -- so that I would win a big pot -- he would be taking the chance that Jim or Al would have an even better hand. If he folds when I have a good hand, it's likely they would have a better hand, and they would get my money but not his.

Or was Boggs right all along? Am I perhaps a better poker player than I realize?

Nah.... I'm convinced I was conned by Boggs. Boggs's history of cons is, when he cons you, you're better off after the con. As Ira Glass wrote of Boggs:

What I love about this is that it’s a con game, run in reverse. If the person falls for the game, they come out of it far wealthier than they went in. As Weschler puts it in his joyous little book, Boggs operates “a sort of floating aesthetical ethical crap game. Or else a sort of fairy-tale virtue test, in which the worthy agreed to sacrifice and [are] subsequently rewarded a hundredfold.”

I think that's exactly what happened here, except instead of Boggs Bills it was poker.

Cuil: Why Scrolling Divs? Why Columns?

So..... some ex-Google engineers have launched their own search engine: Cuil (pronounced "Cool").

They claim that its index is 3 times the size of Google's. Great!

They say it focuses on on-page content for relevancy. Great!

I would love to see a good solid competitor for Google. I would love to see a search engine that focuses more on on-page content and less on backlinks.

I ran a few searches on Cuil. The results were nothing to write home about. Some key search terms brought up zero results. Other searches brought up tons of spam. Some searches brought up reasonably relevant results. But the search results were inferior -- vastly inferior -- compared to Google. Cuil's index can't possibly be big as they claim, and it's obvious the algorithm needs polishing. But that's okay; I would expect a brand-new search engine to need fine-tuning.

I like the thumbnail image that Cuil displays with each result, too. Well, I would, except that the images seem to have no relationship whatsoever to the search results. What on earth are they doing, showing random, unrelated images as thumbnails next to search results?

But why oh why is Cuil using a scrolling div to display search results? I have my default text size in Firefox set big enough that the entire search result set doesn't fit on my screen, and the scrolling div means that after I perform a search I then have to click with my mouse inside the scrolling div area before I can scroll.

And, in case it's not bad enough that Cuil is using the scrolling div, they're also displaying the search resuls in columns.

Why oh why is Cuil using columns? I have a choice to use two columns or three, but honestly, there's nothing wrong with a single column. I hate hate hate scrolling down then up then down then up then down then up. A single column doesn't force all that up-and-down -- I can just scroll down through the results until I find what I'm looking for. But two or three colums forces two or three down-and-ups. It gets more annoying each time.

In Google, I have my options set to display 100 results at a time. Cuil doesn't offer this option. They may in the future -- but imagine scrolling down through 33 results, then back up all that way to the top of the second column, then down through another 33 results, then all that way to the top of the third column, then down again. Egads! This is not user friendly.

I wish Cuil the best of luck. Google has far too much power in the world of search. But for now I won't be using it.

Die, Spammer, Die!

Spammers are almost ruining e-mail and the Internet. I support the death penalty for all spammers.

This is Spammer Assassinator Cat:
Just a little more to the right, a little closer......
"Die Spammer, Die"