On a lark, I stuck the names of various Blizzard executives into Google. Without any effort, I found the political contribution history and satellite photos of their various private homes online. I now know how much one of the Blizzard founders paid for their rather nice family residence, and know which schools their children go to. They have a nice swimming pool out back.

How easy to find? Trivial. Click here, for example. A major figure from Blizzard Entertainment lives somewhere on that photo, but I won’t say who or where exactly. All that from a trivial public records search, and all done in less than two minutes. Why does Blizzard want to expose all their players this way?

If this goes through, the moment a single player is hurt “in real life” because of it, I can pretty much guarantee that some zealous fan will post all the information I didn’t here about basically all the Blizzard staff in payback. Who wins if this goes through? More proof this is a bad idea: video game fanatic stabs other player in real life after hunting them. Blizzard is stupidly playing with fire here.

Next morning update:

Apparently, any mention of this USA Today story is being excised from the Warcraft forums, that confirms Blizzard now has some sort of contracted financial deal to integrate Battle.net into Facebook.

The main complaint thread on Warcraft is now 21,000+ posts long, with duplicates and repostings (and who knows what else) being trimmed off. It’s over 1,000 pages long. There are similar threads in all the major non-English language Warcraft threads. I suppose that’s what happens when you piss off 12,000,000 players, and let the media dictate the discussion. It’s also now hit Facebook.

Amazing failure of management.

Coulter has said all terrorists are Muslims and has suggested all Muslims be barred from airlines and use flying carpets.

When the student said she didn’t have a flying carpet, Coulter told her to “take a camel.”

Or how about?

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.

Or my personal favorite, about widows of men killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York (and she’s said as much as well on national television, for which Matt Lauer on the Today Show cut her off and ended her segment):

These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis… These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them… I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.

How do you defend that, even slightly? It IS hateful, completely unChristian–all of it–and uncharitable. Why don’t you other self-professed Christians run this lady out of every venue on rails? I’m asking after seeing that she’s filed a human rights violation complaint (!!) after a speech she was to give at a Canadian university was cancelled.

Last week, state Attorney General Rob McKenna editorialized on the Seattle Times op-ed page against planned state employee raises, co-writing (along with three other state GOP leaders): “Taxpayers should … be spared from funding $83 million in planned pay raises for 21,000 state workers.”

He was referring to a state employee incentive program known as “step increases.”

But last year, according to a recent report from the state’s Department of Personnel, McKenna himself gave nearly $600,000 in performance-based incentives (part of the step increase program) to 901 of his 1321 employees. That’s 68 percent of his staff.

Odds that someone in the mainstream media calls this out? 10:1? 10,000:1?

“This sounds to me like open borders advocates exercising the Rahm Emanuel axiom: ‘Never let a crisis go to waste,’” Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said in an e-mail message to ABCNews. “Illegal immigrants from Haiti have no reason to fear deportation but if they are deported, Haiti is in great need of relief workers and many of them could be a big help to their fellow Haitians.”

There’s no better time to play up the political douchebaggery than when an entire society hangs on the needle’s edge of total human suffering with the streets literally piled with the bodies of their dead family members.

In other words, the tenets of Objectivism are complete hedonistic bullshit and a license for deeply selfish people to piss upon their neighbors. Her teachings if you strip out all the crap that is strategically designed to make it look ‘good’ boils literally down to survival of the fittest and the belief that sheer unadulterated selfishness is a virtue. If Scientology’s belief system is basically a shitty Doctor Who plot from 1971, then Objectivism is basing society’s moral code on Survivor’s All-Star Season. Also, fuck John Galt.

For some reason, this daffy politician from way down South, in the completely opposite direction 88 miles away, is against the idea. His bill boils down to:

A light rail system or any other rail fixed guideway system may not be constructed or operated on the Interstate 90 floating bridge.

Why is this laughably clueless? As my first link points out, the construction and transit work is already paid for by the Federal government to the tune of $900,000,000. It’s apparently important enough that this massive expansion was paid for by the US Government as an important need. We’d also have to pay back the money with interest and a loss if we don’t build the train system. Stupid and harmful to Washington state? Very much so. Thankfully, it will probably be dead on arrival in Olympia.

Replace Federal paper currency in Washington with gold and silver coins:

…restore gold and silver money in accordance with the Constitution, then phasing out the Federal Reserve System and its inflationary paper money, the Federal Reserve Note.

And my favorite, get into a shooting war (?) with the Federal government if they try to take and use any Federal tax funds taken from Washingtonians:

…all federal taxes be remitted to the state, and held in escrow, and includes the rather startling threat that any action by the feds against a WA citizen for complying with the act (you know, like not paying the IRS your taxes) would be considered a “hostile and unconstitutional action against Washington state and its citizens,” against which the state would take “all necessary measures.”

Yes, let’s start a second Civil War. Sounds like a brilliant plan.

At ten years old, delighted sight. At thirty-three, glee stupidity.

Doritos “Tangy Cheese”

Apparently, according to the bag, this is flavored with the well known traditional British cheese known as “Traditional cheese flavour,” whatever that is. The texture, shape and crunch are vintage American Doritos. I think they just mass-produce these chips by the trillions. The cheese flavor tastes… Latin. Kind of. And cheesy. And Doritos-y. I can’t really place what “Traditional cheese flavour” is, but it tastes like slightly exotic Doritos.

Traditional Britis--er, Americ--er, Mexican?

I’d go so far as to say they’re a bit better tasting than American “Nacho cheese” flavored classic Doritos. The cheese powder they use to infuse Doritos feels a bit… fluffier, than I’m used to.

The scent of the crisps is vintage Doritos: cheese, corn, nothing unique. That sums up just about every brand of Doritos ever made (except possibly that Buffalo sauce one) pretty nicely. Bland, inviting, wholesome, and the same everywhere, like a junk food home away from home.

Deformed Pac-Man

Scent: non existent, or barely cheesy at best. They look like weird hybrid Fritos/pork rinds. They feel like potato-based pork rinds. The mysterious “Traditional cheese flavour” makes another appearance, but with strong hints of onion flavoring. They are loud when you bite down. I mean, really, seriously loud for a chip or crisp. The first few have virtually no flavor, but then it begins to quickly build as your teeth, tongue, and taken over by puffed potato. They taste and feel incredibly rich, though.

I can’t see eating more than a couple handfuls without feeling sick.

Walkers “Worcester Sauce” crisps

The bag, upon opening, smells spectacular. The scent reminds me of hamburgers and steak with potatoes. It’s like a cook out in a little foil bag. Visually, they’re… crisps. Nothing special, there. The texture is odd; they seem to nearly crumble and explode as you bite down, but it’s not unpleasant. The taste: reminds me of a severely toned down salt and vinegar chip, almost, but with subtle Worcester flavors. It’s not a “strong” chip that tries to beat you in the face with flavor; it’s almost quietly flavorful. I think these would go great with a glass of cold beer. I was hoping for a much stronger Worcester flavor—I love the taste of Worcester sauce. They’re good, but a bit of a let down.

Like a face with a wart? Look close.

Emergency late game update: I wrote the above after eating about 5-6 of these crisps, and then discovered another 2-3 that all but screamed Worcester. It looks like the bag is uneven. The later crisps are much better.

So manly it seared my flesh on contact.

This is not an effeminate potato chip.

I was most looking forward to these, as I adore the smell and taste of paprika—I have to, I’m half Hungarian. They smell like barbeque flavor crisps. They look like what I suppose a good paprika crisp ought to look like, never having seen paprika crisps before. The texture is that thick, crunchy sort of ridged chip, rather than that weak girly kind of chip that feels stale half an hour after you open the bag.

Paprika, garlic, onion, and tomato are the flavors here. Oddly for this kind of junk food, I can actually taste them all. Even though my palate and breath have already been ruined by the preceding three types I’ve tried tonight, I can taste them all. This is my favorite chip of the bunch.

Conclusions

Don’t eat four wildly different types of little crisps bags, because it’s unholy and now I feel ill. This is my breath currently:

Did I ever tell you my favorite flavour was paprika?

Back in 2007, King County initiated discussions with the federal government’s Department of General Services Administration (GSA), who administers the DOTGOV domains on the Internet, regarding King County’s web address. King County wanted to register the user-friendly address “kingcounty.gov”. Simultaneously, the GSA wanted King County to relinquish the address “metrokc.gov” in order to comply with their web address policies and also due to possible confusion with the city of Kansas City, Missouri. After negotiations, it was agreed that both would occur–King County would receive use of the domain name “kingcounty.gov” and King County would relinquish control of the domain name “metrokc.gov” effective January 31, 2009.

…

We share your concern for effective and consistent service to our citizens. King County’s web site is critical to those services. It was for that reason that King County pursued the “kingcounty.gov” name. In fact, as you can see from the GSA’s policies regarding naming conventions (http://www.dotgov.gov/dnc.aspx#county), GSA policy requires us to have the web address “kingcounty.wa.gov” or “kingcounty-wa.gov”, however, in our negotiations with the GSA, we sought a very simple name to ensure that our citizens receive the benefit of the most logical and easy to remember address possible. It was for the reason of compliance with GSA policy that we surrender the legacy name, and with the impending shut-down of that old address, King County is now in compliance with that federal directive.

There’s a bit more and a tiny bit of interesting metrics on usage of the old name, but that’s the gist of the situation I mentioned.

Absolutely reasonable and absolutely understandable given the situation, but almost completely (near as I can see) unexplained until I fired off a “what is this?” e-mail that also CC’d the King County Executive’s office. From some searching around just now, I can’t easily find any reference to nor mention of the specifics behind this online. That’s the sort of stuff that should be, you know, mentioned to your users and stake holders. King County has a blog–it takes only one quick blog post or alternately a press release to communicate this out.

If they already did message this out back in 2007 or 2008, they didn’t apparently do so again almost a year later (a scale of years, in Internet Standard Time) when they finally flipped the magic switch before the old domain name goes dark for our regional government. An IT department’s job is to over-communicate. It doesn’t take much to do this. Lack of communications from IT is one of my biggest pet peeves professionally. Good on them to explaining it to me in e-mail, but now I wonder if they’ll actually post the reason behind this. At the least, it’s rather interesting for nerds. For everyone else around here, it will give people another reason to grumble about Kansas City and the Midwest. They steal our basketball team, now they steal one of our domain names…