So I called, waited in the queue, and the rep can’t help me. Transfers me to the abuse department. Abuse? I run a low-volume blog and some email.

The abuse rep finally comes on the line. Heather is her name. Her tone clearly says she thinks I’m scum. She informs me with McCainish contempt that I am in violation of the terms of service because I have “stored files” in my account. Apparently, they changed their TOS back in April to say any file has to be served as part of a website and they crawled all my sites and couldn’t find a way to get to those files.

I log in through ssh after she reactivates that part and find that the “offending files” are about 90G worth of music and picture backups from when I was upgrading to Leopard. I just forgot to delete them. She says she can’t reactivate my email and sites until the files are gone.

I type rm -rf * inside the directory and ask her to wait for it to complete. She has other customers and says I have to call back. Can’t she see the files going away? Sorry, can’t wait. I ask for a supervisor. Without even missing a beat “she’s in a meeting.” Yeah, right. I ask her how much of the data remains to be deleted. She doesn’t answer or even say goodbye — just hags up on me. The rm finishes.

My files may have been a violation of the TOS, but I didn’t know that. There was no urgent reason to deactivate my account when they could have sent an email.

I have sent email to their CEO since their support department no longer accepts email. You have to call them.

You know, maybe Heather is just a bad apple who needs to be fired and Bluehost made a bad hiring decision, but deactivating my account unnecessarily is the big crime here as far as I’m concerned.

My advice would be to avoid any company that treats your data with so little care. Based on my experience with them, Bluehost.com is definitely one to avoid on that score.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio):

Rep. Peter Defazio (D-Oregon):

If the government is going to provide capital to financial firms, it should get what people who provide capital are entitled to — a share in ownership, so that all the gains if the rescue plan works don’t go to the people who made the mess in the first place.

That’s what happened in the savings and loan crisis: the feds took over ownership of the bad banks, not just their bad assets. It’s also what happened with Fannie and Freddie. (And by the way, that rescue has done what it was supposed to. Mortgage interest rates have come down sharply since the federal takeover.)

But Mr. Paulson insists that he wants a “clean” plan. “Clean,” in this context, means a taxpayer-financed bailout with no strings attached — no quid pro quo on the part of those being bailed out. Why is that a good thing? Add to this the fact that Mr. Paulson is also demanding dictatorial authority, plus immunity from review “by any court of law or any administrative agency,” and this adds up to an unacceptable proposal.

Write your newspaper editors, congressmen and senators, people. This is a $700 BILLION mistake that our grandchildren will be paying off. Here is a sample letter.

I found this talk very enlightening and if, like me, you have ever wondered why conservatives just “don’t get it,” have a look! (hint: they do)

Thanks to Nick for the link.

Here’s a corroborating experiment:

Interestingly, a Seattle driver has arrived at the same conclusion, and has thoughts on how to be an un-jammer:

Breaking Up a Traffic Jam!

Ah, Wikipedia. Is there anything you don’t know?

Lawrence Lessig on McCain on Technology

Crows can make tools? Yikes!

(Via John Hodgman.)

We have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle—as we did in the OJ trial—or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina—or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”

The US has passed China as the worlds leading jailer.

I guess the prosecution was wise to boot me from the jury after all.

[via NYT]

This evening Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as expected, refused to prosecute the contempt of Congress resolutions against Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers for their refusal to testify in the U.S. attorneys scandal.

[via TPM]

After the judge told us what was going to happen, she explained the likely trial schedule and dismissed people who had conflicts which would cost them significantly. Next, she asked us questions to ferret out biases for or against the legal system itself (example: “have you had a bad experience with law enforcement officers that might influence your interpretation of police testimony?”). After about 20 such questions, she turned things over to the lawyers for voir dire.

In turn, each side had two 15 minute periods to talk to the jury and ask questions to help their side identify who would be good jurors for them. This was a domestic violence case, so there were questions like “why might a victim lie on the stand?” and “if you had to deliberate right now, what would your verdict HAVE to be?” As they asked questions, they’d watch for general reaction (heads nodding, etc) and sometimes would ask an individual juror to comment. I was never asked a question directly, and didn’t volunteer an answer to any questions as I’d just have been duplicating other jurors.

Then, the lawyers began to dismiss jurors from the box. As they left, those of us sitting in the gallery would fill in the box as our numbers were called. When my number was called, I was dismissed by the prosecutor, using her 6th challenge.

I’ve been thinking about why I was dismissed. The prosecutor had only two things to go on to dismiss me. The first was my demeanor in the court. Maybe I didn’t nod my head enough. Maybe I didn’t seem severe enough. Hard to know. The second thing the prosecutor had was my biography, a sheet of paper listing my name, city, age, how long I’ve lived in King County, the city and state of my birth, the number and ages of my children, my occupation, and my experience as a juror (none), a felon (none), and a litigant (none). Oh, and my years of education (17). I should think all of that would make me a good juror for the prosecution, but maybe what she was really looking for was swayability, and she decided I wasn’t easily convinced.

I suppose that, as with the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-roll pop, the world will never know.

[thanks, Nick!]

[thanks, Nick]

We were directed to report at 8am, and I was here at 7:55. After checking in, I found a seat. At 8:45, they started the introductory video (didn’t have one of those two years ago). It’s really quite informative, and was complete without being tiresome. 20 minutes.

Jurors have to be residents of King County, US citizens, fluent in English, and non-felons (or felons with fully-restored rights).

So here we sit in the jury selection room. I got selected to a jury two years ago, but the defendant plead guilty before Voir Dire was complete. Of course, one thing that hasn’t changed is that there’s a lot of waiting involved (the wifi makes that much more tolerable). I hope they haven’t called too many more people than they need. I think they’re trying to do better.

Feels great to be participating in the process.

The voodoo economics the Bushies have sold America obscure their systematic fleecing of the nation’s public wealth.

Excellent, if true. Can’t wait to try this out.

Anyway, I learned from the podcast, that this guy I’ve been hearing on the radio for 25 years is 91 years old now, was hired by CBS after the New York Times declined to hire another jew, and that the guy who hire him at CBS was: Edward R. Murrow. He’s the last of Murrow’s guys still active in journalism.

My favorite tidbit: Schorr was reporting on the Nixon enemies list on live TV, got a copy of the list while on the air and started reading down it only to find his own name there.

Really interesting interview.

When we returned, I turned the gas back on, and the hot water heater and our fireplaces came back to life, but the main heat for the house did not. As a result, we got to spend the night in a very cold house. We ran the fireplace overnight, but the temperature continued to fall until it was just 58 in the house (and that’s pretty good for sub-freezing temperatures outside).

It’s fixed now, but is a good reminder of how fortunate we are to be able to afford to stay warm in the winter.