I am making my way out to the College Democrats of America convention today in Denver. Which is going to be cool.

They want me to dress up in ‘business attire’ during this weekend.

Why? I’m not running for anything and I don’t represent anyone. I’m only going because I have fun at these things and having fun doesn’t involve me getting decked out with 4 layers of clothing.

Basically, it’s vacation. I’m all for taking this seriously, and other people can have a great time doing that, but I’m wearing t-shirts. I have a suit that is coming along, but it’s going to be t-shirts.

I think I have said this exactly same thing for the last 2 years. And not once has not dressing up come back to bite me.

Should be a fun time though. I always look forward to these things.

Michael Phelps is 23, I’m 21. He likes a myriad of music from Lil Wayne to Outcast along with the random techno music. That basically describes my playlist.

Of course, I’m not blessed with physical characteristics that make me a 11-time gold winning swimmer, and unlike Phelps I have a hard time not gaining weight compared to him having a hard time keeping weight on. (although I’m down like 20 lbs from my peak last year, which is nice)

I was intending on swimming more this semester. I lost a reasonable amount of weight back in high school when I was in the pool all the time. It doesn’t involve as much impact, like running, which is good for me at the moment. Although going to the pool during the Olympics would seem like I was part of some new Phelps movement, when in actuality I was intending on doing it anyways.

Which reminds me, I haven’t told a few important people I’m back. Would be kinda weird walking into the pool area and people thinking “What the fuck is he doing here”

Alright, I’ll be vague today because I don’t want to ruffle any major feathers.

This dude was trying to mess around with his computer. He asks a friend of mine “if I change the size of a partition I’m not going to loose my data”… to which I sorta butt in and say “uhh.. no”

This guy seemed like he knew what he was doing. He was booting into Linux and the easiest way to partition things is using a program called Gparted. There is also the hard way, which is using a command line and using fdisk.

I say “You should use gparted”… he comes back to me like an ass and says “Uhh, I’ll use FDISK”… “uhh… but gparted is easier”… “but I’m still going to use fdisk”

Fine… be an ass

5 minutes later… “Aww fuck”

Goodbye data!

Now, this isn’t just a general end user. This is a student paid hourly to provide support to other students.

And it is a school computer, so I don’t really care what happens to it and nothing he did would have devalued anything other than his ego.

Nevertheless, I try to be sympathetic: “do you have a LiveCD?”

This started something of a shouting match… In retrospect it was hilarious.

Back to the Olympics

Considering there is no chance that I will ever work for Barack Obama’s campaign (again) I’ll start my disagreement.

Did the surge work? Well, yes and no. When you put more people in a location to ’secure’ a place, obviously things are going to get more ’secure.’ If there is a solider walking down every street every six hours instead of once every two days the street is going to be a bit safer, because you simply will not have time to do anything malicious. Did the ’surge’ bring ‘peace’, yes, I think that was pretty inevitable.

Now, the question should be: Was it necessary to put more American lives on the line? That is a matter for debate. Obviously it seems to have at least helped our situation somewhat, but there is no proof that the progress that was made was due to an increase in troops. It would take a political solution to slow violence and insurgency, which was made before and during the ’surge.’

So did it work? Well, it obviously did help.
Was it necessary? I don’t really know, and I don’t think anyone really can say for sure what would happen had we not gone in with more troops.

What is the correct, real, non BS talking point? “Any time we put troops into battle they are going to do the job we ask them to, and in this case we asked them to increase the peace in Baghdad and they did that job. Was that increase necessary is a matter for debate, and I feel we would be at the same place today without that ’surge’, but the discussion now should not be what worked and what did not, the discussion should be focused on how we move forward. And, ultimately, how we leave Iraq.”

Simple.
Never going to be said.
But simple.

I was a Netflix subscriber many a year ago and signed up for this class action lawsuit that somebody filed against them. The lawsuit was for changing the queue length (or ‘throttling’) so it would take longer to recieve new DVDs for those who rented a lot of DVDs in a month (and thus cost Netflix more money in postage than they made in the monthly subscription payment.) This would have been OK, and they still do it, but at the time they didn’t actually tell anybody they did it. Instead, they advertised “One Day Delivery” and “Unlimited Rentals” when, in reality, you could not get “One Day Delivery” and “Unlimited Rentals” if you had already rented x number of movies in a month. Pretty simple false advertising.

Oops.

So, as a long-since-discontinued subscriber I still qualified for part of the settlement awarded to early subscribers. That settlement: A free month of Netflix, without having to actively cancel my subscription afterwards.

This got stuck in the appeals process for a few years and just yesterday I got the email I had been waiting for:

Dear Nick,

As a member of the Chavez vs. Netflix settlement class, you are eligible for a free month of Netflix on your choice of the 1, 2, or 3 out at-a-time plans.

Only plans with up to 3 out at-a-time are eligible for the free month. If you choose the 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 out at-a-time plan you will receive a discount equal to the cost of the 3 out at-a-time plan (currently $16.99).

At the end of your free or discounted month, your account will be automatically cancelled and you will need to return all Netflix DVDs.

To claim this benefit please click on the following link:
http://www.netflix.com/remedy

To claim this benefit, you need to:

[1] Choose a plan
[2] Verify your information
[3] Start your free or discounted month

This benefit will expire one year from today.

Learn more about this settlement at:
http://www.netflix.com/settlement

-The Netflix Team

SRC: 20080717IFSETL
(c)1997-2008 Netflix, Inc. 100 Winchester Circle, Los Gatos, CA 95032
This message was mailed to [xxxxxx@gmail.com].

The moral of the story? Don’t advertise what you know you don’t provide and then not tell your customers you are withholding service.