So, to do my part for king and country (okay, just country), here's my poem:

There once was a man from Kentucker,
who's car was a really old chukker.
He'd wash it each day,
and often he's say,
"If my car was a girl I'd give her a lube and oil change every 3,000 miles."

Sorry about that.

Ever wonder what would happen if an AI program got loose on America Online? Welcome to fury.com's latest project: AOLiza is absolutely, positively, a must see. Check it out before you hear about it from a co-worker!

Wouldn't quizzes be more challenging if they didn't make the answers so obvious?

Those of you who've been reading for a little while are familiar with Project Cameo. I started it in October of 1998 and, after an 18 month hiatus, I began phase II, sending out 20 more cameras, just about three weeks ago.

A couple weeks ago a reader, Ian, with his own weblog, traded a few emails with me about the Cameo project, talking about overcoming international postage problems and the like, and then he writes me back, telling me he's adapting the project for his own use, and he'll be sending out a bunch of cameras in Australia and all over the world. He then writes it up on his site.

On one hand, I feel a sense of ownership over the idea, and I'm defensive that someone else is taking my idea. I thought of it, I worked on it, it's just coming together and someone sees it and wants to do one just like it because it's cool.

Of course, on the other hand, this is exactly how the web works, and if it didn't, we wouldn't have weblogs and so many cool things, many of which have fostered their own communities and bettered the web immensely. In that light, I'm just a greedy pig.

Then of course there's a third site, Photo Trust, which just started up a few days ago. I have no idea if this person heard about mine directly, via word of mouth, or is just a case of great minds.

I'm not writing here to lambast anyone or to squash any creativity. I'm writing this entry, as the title says, to ask for you to lend me your perspective. I wrote a letter to both folks, quasi-expressing my feelings, and mentioned hopes of banding together, keeping the projects distinctly seperate, but recognising their unity as a new kind of web project, and thus could help gain attention to our efforts.

I'm still working on why I'm so stressed about this, but I really would love to hear your thoughts. Send your comments to me at hello@fury.com and I'll summarize the opinions here, for better or worse.

Thanks for helping out.

-Kevin

And I am stupid.

The last two months of this weblog are gone, due to a one character stupid, stupid typo.

After much searching, I believe I've come up with most of the content, and at some point I'll see about putting it back into the database, entry by entry if I have to.

So what happened? Well, having worked at Dantz, makers of fine backup products, many years ago, I have a healthy respect for backing up data. I hadn't done it for two months, so I thought now might be a good time to do it again.

Simply put, when backing up your mysql directory, there's a substantial difference between:

#> tar cvf mysql.tar mysql

and

#> tar xvf mysql.tar mysql

The kicker is I didn't even notice for almost five hours.

Do you feel my pain? Share with me. Tell me your backup horror story.

I'm bringing this one up again for those who missed it months ago. This short story pretty much epitomises how I feel right now, though not exactly for the same reasons.

This story was written by Laura "Learn to be God in 21 Days" LeMay. If she asks me, I'll take the mirror down, but I think she's cooler than that (and her site has a really slow connection).

After taking an hour and a half just to drive through San Francisco from the Golden Gate to 280, I really wish they'd consider a Big Dig here. For those who don't know, the Big Dig is Boston's massive engineering project to put a large portion of it's primary central freeway underground.

Right now San Francisco doesn't even have a primary central freeway. Only 80 that skirts the southern edge and goes to the East Bay. In fact, SF may be the only major metropolitan area to be demolishing freeways faster than its building them, considering the tearing down of the Embarcadero Freeway in '90 and the demolition of the Central Freeway last year.

I think a big tunnel is just what SF needs. Actually, it could probably use a bunch.

weblogs.com lets people with weblogs put up a small banner into the rotation on their site, so I whipped something up last night. Go ahead and use it if you like, though I'd prefer if you just link the graphic from my site instead of download it, so I can see where people have it.

It's at http://207.104.1.206/images/weblog/bigbrother.gif.

I can't be the only person bothered by CNN's 'unoffical' polls. They typically give two or three non-exclusive poll options, some of which overlap, or more frequently, go to extremes leaving gaps between responses. For example, tonight's poll is:

Was Texas right to execute a convicted killer said to be mentally retarded?

• No. All executions are wrong.
• No. I'm pro-death penalty [sic], but mentally disadvantaged inmates should be spared.
• Yes. All convicted killers should be executed.

So basically anyone who doesn't fall 100% one way or the other, but whos basis for judgement is other than mental capacity is hosed in this survey.

An even better example is:

Have you ever read a romance novel?

• Yes, but I'd never tell anyone.
• No.

Hello?

There are obviously far too many of me.

I'd like to see the version where you try to link from the Kevin Fox you know to all the other Kevin Foxes out there.

Malcovich. Malcovich-malcovich-malcovich!