Yes, I know about toast. But I haven't had time to link in the proper sections. And yes, submitting articles via the "pontificate" link at the bottom doesn't seem to be working for IE users. And yes, there's no "novus ordo seclorum" anywhere yet. Trust me, there will be.

But I'm just too damn tired to care at the moment. All play and all work and no sleep makes edward a dull boy.

Rather than continue to delay, I'm going to just put the new site up and work through the bugs as they come at me. Yes, I know that means that over 50% of the new site won't work, but the old site is simply too ugly for me to let live. So here goes:

The dredwerkz is now officially under deconstruction!

So it's Jenna's last day in the district. She will be sorely missed. Fittingly, the skies are opening up, presumably because she consumed some pickles last night. And we all know what pickles cause...

It's finally warm enough for me to enjoy a perfect lunch: a good book, some tasty steak, and some wensleydale cheese to top it all off.

Blue skies and sharp knives nicely accessorize a delightful repast.

So here's the list of friends who haven't posted on their respective blogs in ages:

• Jenna
• Jill
• Deborah

Why not, with your respective free times, post here instead? Unlike the three of you, there's always fresh content at the 'werkz, even if it's boring Edwardian tales of fast food consumption, ogg vorbis, or ranting about Republicans.

I liked Frey's book. Kathleen recommended it to me. It's not written well, but it's a gripping tale. I never really thought that it was true, but more along the lines of Welsh's Trainspotting. But apparently Frey has been telling everyone it's an unvarnished mirror of reality.

He lied.

Still, give the book a read. Just borrow, don't buy it, I'd say.

Okay, a slightly geeky post born of frustration. It's 2006 and I'm a network guy and I'm still having problems like this? What about the masses who have neither the time or the experience to deal with problems of this nature? Read on, weary traveler:

At the old house, I was in control of all the utilities. Easy. Simple. Straightforward. So when moving to the new house, I decided to simplify things and take control of several of the bills, notably the phone, internet, satellite and electricity. Sounds easy, right?

Of course, moving the DSL line took some doing, but after a month of waiting, it was hooked up and ready to roll. The only issue, as I'd discover later, is that Verizon decided to continue billing me at the old address for the DSL while continuing to bill Pell for the phone service at the new address. Weird, eh?

Worst of all, when I finally added the account information to manage both accounts online, I discovered that it wouldn't allow me to pay either bill online. So the charges started adding up, especially when Verizon decided Surpriseto send me a free modem but charge me $100 for it. After fighting that back a week or so ago, I finally managed to get through last week to tell them that they needed to remove Pell's name from the bill entirely.

They said I couldn't do that.

I asked, in frustration, why they wouldn't want to let me pay the bill. I'm sure if someone wanted to pay my bill, I'd let 'em! But no, Verizon informed me that Pell would have to call in and "authorize" me to be added to the account.

Last night, conveniently, the line itself went dead.

So this morning, I called back, after confirming with Pell that she'd wasted a good two hours of her time to give them "authorization". I wait on hold for half an hour and finally get a live person, who informs me that they need to run a credit check before they'll let me pay the bill. Hence, more information. (The fact that I had been paying bills to Verizon at my previous residence for five years prior evidently wasn't noted.) After I get through telling him all my personal information, he says, "oops. it looks like there's a charge on your old bill" and sends me over to the account services.

In record time (for Verizon) the account manager puts me on hold, then takes me off to say "everything looks fine; i'm authorizing this" and then places me back on hold while he kicks me back to the sales side. Fifteen minutes later, he informs me that "somehow all the information was lost" and gives me a new sales person to talk to in order to get all my information, from scratch.

All this, merely to get my bill to say Edward and not Pell at the top of it.

So now, hopefully, I'll have one bill for DSL and phone service. And I'll be able to pay online.

Of course, that presupposes the line works. And if it doesn't, that means some more fun phone calls back to Verizon.

Why doesn't Verizon, in the year 2006, have a customer database where they can pull up information about people? Where they could see that I've been a trustworthy customer for years? Where my personal information was already stored?

I'm not concerned about privacy: I just want my time back.

Speaking of time, Brad snagged me a copy of the latest Foo Fighter's cd, "In Your Honor" for Christmas. I brought it home, prepared to rip it to my encoding standard of choice, ogg vorbis and popped it in my computer. A tiny screen emerged to ask me if I accepted a license agreement. I clicked no, and then went to rip it. The next thing I know, tons of errors showed up in the encoding process, reducing my song to mere static.

Sure enough, I was a victim of Sony's boneheaded IP decisions. Essentially, even without agreeing to install the software, the program on the cd launched and was busy "protecting" content despite the fact that I had no ill intentions whatsoever. Best of all, by merely loading the cd (and having the program install silently in the background) a security vulnerability was created on my machine. That's not software: it's spyware. I don't care if Suncomm created it for a good purpose: installing software without telling the user is unethical, especially when one purposefully "declines" to agree to the EULA.

After researching the problem, I was able to apply a registry hack to get the software to uninstall, but once again, despite eventually overcoming the silly DRM placed on the cd, I had wasted hours.

Why is DRM bad? Because it prevents people from doing lawful things to content they own. If I want to listen to the song DOA, I don't want to have to track down the cd and pop it in. I should be able to just load it up in WinaMP and go to town. By making it difficult to do what is legal the proponents of DRM undermine their argument that they are hurting illegal downloaders.

When people say "why not use mp3s or windows media or aac?" I remind them that every type of music file other than ogg is ripe for lawyers to take or for companies to lock down. Ogg, on the other hand, has no restrictive DRM attached to it.

I want to live in a world where technology makes things easier. Such a place exists, if we can just stop trying to squeeze nickels and dimes out of every transaction and focus on helping people achieve their tasks.

Over the past several days I have:

• run my car door into brad's head
• kept the top down on the car for two days
• been choked by a host at a party
• sliced my hand open with a bread knife
• left my brand new credit card in the field
• read far too few books
• helped kathleen with a pesky magnum problem
• watched a movie. or two. or three and a half.
• severely minimized the effect of my raise through excessive spending
• discovered a new place with tasty, albeit slow, calzones

A good weekend, right? At least this time I didn't reduce my feet to a bloody pulp like last year. What could possibly be on tap for this week that would be as exciting? Here's what I've got planned:

• converting my desk into carbon
• desperately trying to not blow what's left of my raise that hasn't even kicked in yet, technically
• working late hours at an unenviable task
• possibly getting jenna to share her new game with some folks
• checking out pell's new shiny music player
• staying away from sharp objects
• coveting brad's oh-so-far-away xbox360

And now back to the unenviable task mentioned earlier.

As someone who used to work for a lobbying firm, I found the following exchange in today's excellent WaPo Political Chat with Dana Milbank amusing. He's actually channeling God, Pat Robertson style:

Silver Spring, Md.: In the midst of discussions of Abramoff's hat, and a fair bit of rhetoric about getting rid of all the lobbyists, I would like to point out that many lobbyists do play a significant role in our system. For example, the average citizen does not read the bills, or have much in the way of access to go over the details of them with staffers, etc.

Dana Milbank: Thank you for that excellent point, Mr. Scanlon. I am glad that you have not lost computer privileges.

On a less humorous note, lobbying itself is a strange world. Ideally, the government would be perfectly able to promote its own interests in such a way that benefited all those affected. But too often, people on the sidelines don't realize what is going on. And that's even before the GOP leadership decided to have plenty of three in the morning votes that are held open for hours while arms are twisted.

In a perfect world, the government would represent the utilitarian nature of the people: doing the most good for the greatest number of people. It would simultaneously hold dear the liberal tradition of not violating the rights of the minority in the name of the majority.

Yet lobbyists exist to remind their clients that their needs are the most important. Even lobbying for good people means that other deserving folks are shut out. If new bridges are needed in Virginia and West Virginia, and through expert lobbying only Virginia gets the funds for the bridge, that's a sad pay-off for the people in West Virginia.

What should happen, in the perfect lobbyist-free world, is that the government should act in the interests of the people. Senators and Representatives should have ample time to read bills and determine how their constituents would have them vote. That, after all, is the entire purpose of a representative democracy. (No, I'm not going to get into the classic poli-sci debate over how representation should work.) Simple majorities should carry the day, and pork should be banished forever. The Executive branch departments would provide useful information to the people so that they could make the best use of the government programs available to them.

Until that day comes, though, I hope Abramoff's sleaziness will primarily hurt the lobbyists for industries I don't support, like coal companies.