Lee.org

All 45 megs of it! [removed]

Download it with mad abandon, I now have 10 gig of bandwidth/month. [12-10-03 removed because I’ve got scads of bandwidth but limited space :-( )

I caught the trailer for MR today. I am sad to realize that the Wachowski Brothers only had one Matrix movie in them.

Cyberpunk Highlander. Ugh.

My senator wrote back to me today (via email) about how he’s co-sponsoring federal anti-spam legislation:

Dear Mr. Sonko,

Thank you for contacting me about spam. I appreciate hearing from you on this issue.

The growth of the Internet and the increased use of e-mail have led to the emergence of “spam,” or electronic junk mail. Numerous marketers have begun to send unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE) over the Internet. Because this marketing technique is easier and less costly than traditional direct marketing techniques such as direct mail solicitations, e-mail accounts worldwide have been deluged with this unsolicited correspondence.

Spam is not just a nuisance, but it can also bring consumers higher charges for the Internet as service providers are forced to continually upgrade their systems to handle the increased traffic. Spam filters built into MSN and Hotmail servers, for example, block 2.4 billion messages a day. While proponents of UCE insist it is a legitimate marketing technique that is protected by the First Amendment, Congress should enact reasonable restrictions.

Although 35 States have anti-spam laws, there is no federal law specifically concerning spam. Consequently, I have co-sponsored CAN-SPAM, the “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act” (S. 877), which would do the following: create criminal penalties for the transmission with knowledge and intent of spam messages with header information that is materially false or misleading; prohibit deceptive subject headings; require a functioning return address for the message recipient to submit a request that he or she not receive future messages; require clear identification that a message is an advertisement; and require that message recipients have an opportunity to opt-out, and for the sender to provide a valid physical mail address.

Please be assured that I will continue to support practical, sensible regulations that reduce unwanted spam while taking the concerns of legitimate, honest retailers into account.

Thanks again for contacting me.

Senator Frank Lautenberg
http://lautenberg.senate.gov/

So I keep hearing that the USDA’s food pyramid thingy and vitamin recommendations are “outdated”. Everybody who knows anything about vitamins knows that the USDA is behind on the times… So being a person with some desire to do the right thing, I tried to find out what vitamins I SHOULD take.

Nobody friggin knows.

The best I could find is listed below.

http://www4.nas.edu/iom/iomhome.nsf/WFiles/webtablevitamins/$file/webtablevitamins.pdf
biotin 30 mcg ND
Choline 550 mg 3500
Folic Acid 400 mcg 1000
niacin 16 mg 35
Pantothenic Acid 5 mg ND
Riboflavin/B2 1.3 mg ND
Thiamin/B1 1.2 mg ND
A 900 mcg 3000
B6 1.3 mg 100
B12 2.4 mcg ND
C 90 mg 2000
D 5 mcg 50
E 15 mg 1000
K 120 mcg ND

http://www4.nas.edu/iom/iomhome.nsf/WFiles/Webtableminerals/$file/Webtableminerals.pdf
calcium 1000 mg 2500
chromium 35 mcg ND
copper 900 mcg 10,000
iodine 150 mcg 1,100
iron 8 mg 45
magnesium 400 mg 400
manganese 2.3 mg 11
molybdenum 45 mcg 2000
phosphorus 700 mg 4000
selenium 55 mcg 400
zinc 11 mg 40

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vitamins.html

vitamin A is 5,000 IU. no more than 10,000
vitamin C is 90 mg
folic acid, at least 400 micrograms (women only?)
vitamin B6 1.3 to 1.7 milligrams of
B12 is 6 micrograms
vitamin D is 5 micrograms
vitamin E 22-400 IU

vitamin K is 80 micrograms

I’m just going to keep taking Centrum. And when I start to feel sick, I’ll take extra Vitamin C like my dad demands I do; At least it makes him feel better.

This month’s photo is a shot of the spot my sister will likely be married on this October!

I’m volunteering to help the Panther Valley Property Owners Association with their web site and communications in general. Should be fun.

You should try TVTonic, it’s pretty good. TVTonic is the product I worked on at my last computer job. Think of it as the next step after Tivo… First there was the TV, then VCR, then Tivo, then TVTonic. It downloads large (10-100 megabyte) video files into it’s cache on spec, so when you turn it on (it runs in Internet Explorer), it always has something ready for you. When you merge TV and computers, you can do a lot more than just watch, but this is a good super-short description. You need high speed internet, Windows and 5-10 gig free to use it. They’ve got a 2 month free trial and they won’t spam you or anything dumb.

Something is messed up that when I have to pay $270 to have someone else do my taxes (right before my eyes) and I think I’m getting a bargain. In the short-term sense, yes it -is- a bargain. My H & R Block lady found me several deductions and loopholes in a 1 1/2 hr sitting that I couldn’t have found in 10 hours of research (and then another 5 hours of filling out forms). But why are taxes so hard to do? The states and feds obviously do our taxes for us… that’s how they can send us a refund check for $41.16 instead of the expected $32.14. So if they do our taxes for us, why do I have to pay someone almost $300 to do them, and someone else at the IRS, NJ Dept of Revenue, and NY Dept of Revenue… My taxes get done twice! That’s almost $600 in work being done, for no tangible benefit!

And this is only slightly related but I have to say that when George Dubbya sent every American taxpayer a check for $300 two years ago, I got so friggin angry at him! He was obviously trying to buy us with our own money. Why doesn’t he just double our taxes and then give us a 50% discount? I would like to know exactly how much it cost the government to mail out those 150 million checks. Those costs should have come out of Dubbya’s own pocket.