Three logos. These two from Jupitermedia (formerly Mecklermedia):

This from CNN:

You might think that I’m simply going to point out that CNN has apparently copied Jupitermedia’s design. But I’m not.

I’m going to blow my own horn. See, I’m the one who designed the internetnews.com logo, back in 1995 or ‘96. The company colors were red and black, and I thought it was kind of a cool use of the Courier typewriter typeface — a juxtaposition of high-tech with low-tech.

So I did a mockup for the company and said, “I was thinking of something like this.” And the powers that were said, “Cool, we’ll just use these” (much to the annoyance of the graphic designer).

I was kinda surprised because I thought it was a crude idea that needed some fleshing out, but now I think I was wrong. It’s certainly held up through time, and it was good enough for CNN to steal use.

So every time I see either the Jupitermedia or CNN Student News logos, I think of them with pride. It’s the only graphic design I’ve ever done (aside for a few things for friends) that ever went anywhere.

[sniff] It’s like seeing your babies all grown up.

“Hi, I’m here to pick up my grandfather’s ashes.”

“Well, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is that we can’t give you the ashes. The good news is you didn’t slip on the ice on the way in.”

Yikes! The same day I put up the entry about the woman with a CATMOB licence plate, it shows up as the number two entry when you Google the word. Wow. I didn’t think Google worked quite so fast.

Yay!

I can be such a perfectionist sometimes. Until about 10 minutes ago, when you went to make a comment on a blog entry, there was already a single space in the “Name” box. It drove me crazy because I had to erase that space so Firefox would fill in “Andrew” (because my name is “Andrew,” not ” Andrew.”

Finally I found the stupid piece of code and fixed it.

I doubt anyone else noticed it, but it irked me something fierce.

Sometimes there’s a fun and easy way to deal with idiot drivers. Case in point:

I was driving from my home the other day, and had just crossed an intersection into a narrow street. Coming the other way was a woman in an Audi. My side of the street was full of parallel-parked cars, but there was a gap on hers. I moved forward so I was across from that gap and she could zip around me.

But no. She wasn’t smart enough to do that. Instead, with a grimace on her face, she came right at me and stopped right in front of me, blocking both of us from going anywhere. Then she motioned for me to get out of her way.

The only way to do this was to back up into the intersection. So no way. I shook my head, and she indicated that she wasn’t going to move. Genius, I tell you. I indicated the same. So we sat there, me refusing to back up into an intersection, she refusing to use the space to her right to go around me. Incredible.

So I broke the stalemate. I reached over, grabbed my camera, and started shooting. I made sure she saw me shoot her license plate — CATMOB — as well as her face. When you’re a moron and someone can prove it, it tends to spur you into action.

Making faces that looked like she was either constipated or the reverse, she proceeded to make a big deal about ’squeezing’ by. Of course, had she not been an idiot and come over to my side of the road in the first place, there would have been plenty of room.

Here’s what it looked like. There’s empty space in front of the white Nissan on her side. (Click for larger.)

And here’s CATMOB’s lovely face. Hope she finds a bathroom soon.

Glesians. That’s what they’d be. I can live with that. (Better than “ETs” or “Alfs.”)

Update: Maybe not. My spell checker doesn’t like the word and suggests “lesbians.”

I was amused to find a book of mine listed for sale at Amazon.ca — Amazon’s Canadian operation. It’s Internet World’s Elements of the Internet fro, 1990-something.

Problem: I never wrote the book. It was a proposal that we were talking about, but all I have is an old Word file laying around.

Yet there it is, selling for — HUH? — selling for $790 bucks? (Well, Canadian bucks, but still.)

And there’s a copy? Let’s click:

So Frobisher Books of Oregon is selling a non-existent book for CDN$790.22 and is specific enough to say it’s in “Very Good” condition. Wild. Absolutely wild.

So Money magazine came out with a list last week, “Best Places to Retire Young.” It listed 10 cities:

Coeur d’Alene, ID
Charlottesville, VA
Logan, UT
Blacksburg, VA
Burlington, VT
Anacortes, WA
Sarasota, FL
Hanover, NH
Manhattan, KS
Ames, IA

Yahoo, which has a content deal with CNN/Money, then featured the same list on its site, even citing CNNMoney.com as the source. It was published on April 13, the day before the Virginia Tech shootings. There was one crucial difference. Here’s Yahoo’s nine city list:

Coeur d’Alene, ID
Charlottesville, VA
Logan, UT
Burlington, VT
Anacortes, WA
Sarasota, FL
Hanover, NH
Manhattan, KS
Ames, IA

Somehow, between CNN and Yahoo, Blacksburg was taken off the list. Odd, huh? Is the logic that after last week’s shootings on the Virginia Tech campus Blacksburg is no longer as good a place to live? Or did someone at Yahoo think it was a way of showing respect?

For those who prefer the visual, here’s the CNN-list entry for Blacksburg on CNN (click any image to enlarge):

And here it is on AOL:

But here’s the relevant portion of the Yahoo page:

So that’s how it works.

(Thanks, Eric!)

Wayne Chiang, who was already misidentified as the Virginia Tech killer once — by bloggers and by Geraldo, although journalists didn’t do so — finally cleared his name. He’s even become sort of a reluctant celebrity because of it.

That was a few days ago, though. But someone needs to send the memo to the folks at CTV, the big Canadian TV station. They ran a story about the killer that included pictures and videos of him — but interspersed were pictures of Wayne.

As he put on his blog, “To be misidentified once as a homicidal shooter was hell. To be labeled again within three days? That is UNACCEPTABLE. CTV will have you to believe that Asians with guns ALL LOOK [THE] SAME.”

He appears twice — with 41 and 20 seconds remaining.

NOT the killer, folks:

Kudos to my friend Eric on his first published book!

I just got off the phone with Wayne Chiang, the guy who had been accused (incorrectly, obviously) of being the Virginia Tech shooter.

What a great guy. Honestly. On the phone he’s exactly the opposite of what you’d expect from seeing his LiveJournal site – lighthearted, friendly, cool.

Anyway, because I’m going to be quoting him in a story for the Times I won’t say any more now. But Wayne — and every Hokie, honestly — gets a big thumbs up.

I will share one exchange, though.

Me: So, are you a gun nut?

Wayne, laughing: I think the politically correct term is “shooting enthusiast.” But I won’t fight the stereotype. I am a gun nut. I don’t apologize for it.

(For the record, he collects higher-end guns — ones used for sport and target shooting, not mowing down random people.)

Left- and right-wingers are coming out of the woodwork, either claiming that Monday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech was caused by too much or too little gun control.

Both arguments are stupid. You can’t consider a broad policy based on one unlikely day.

Would stricter gun control in this country have made a difference? Maybe. Maybe it would have been harder for Cho Seung-hui to get the guns he used. But experience has shown us that people are pretty much able to get whatever illegal stuff they want. Outlaws would still have guns.

On the other side, the argument that it was the banning of guns on campus that allowed this to happen is just as foolish. It’s an incredibly narrow perspective that completely ignores the fact that there are 364 other days of the year.

You can’t say, “having armed students would have been good today, therefore it would be good every day.” You have to weigh the effects of having students armed every day — during stressful finals week, at weekend parties, while arguing over a grade, during a painful breakup.

Yes, it’s possible that an armed student populace would have stopped Monday’s tragedy in its tracks. From that perspective it would have been good had other students been armed and been able to use their weapons appropriately.

That’s only looking at a single, terrible, unlikely day, however. And those students would also come armed other days; they’d be carrying guns all the time.

That would obviously have effects — unknown effects — yet people ignore them. They ignore the all-too-real possibilities of drunken fights ending with gunshots, or professors and TAs threatened with violence, or troubled relationships having violent endings.

People tend to use the tools they’re given.

You can’t compare a known (what happened on 4/16) with an unknown (what having students armed every day would mean). Yet both sides are oh-so-sure they know what it would be like.

Robert Heinlein, I believe, quipped that “an armed society is a polite society,” and it’s a quote that people have used to explain what they think the effects would be. But there’s a problem with that sentiment.

An armed society would be polite out of fear, not out of respect. It’s a very important distinction. Living every day with respect for others is fine. But living in fear of your neighbors, the people on the road, the students in your class, the guy dancing with your girlfriend — that’s not good.

When the Soviets were in charge, the Moscow subways were among the cleanest in the world, because people there knew that Very Bad Things would happen if they were caught defacing it. So yeah, a society living in fear has some advantages.

So the bottom-line debate is this: On one side, hundreds of 18 to 21 year olds walking around campuses armed with guns, and all the danger that entails. On the other side, the potential to prevent a massacre like Monday’s from every happening.

No easy answers, despite what the pundits say.

Meet Joe Parker. He’s registered vtmurders.com and vtmurders.info, which, according to his Web site, he’s selling for $250,000.

He also grabbed vtkillings.com — same price. And choseung-hui.com? He’ll take a cool $1 million for that, thanks.

Registrant:
   Joseph Parker
   320 Church St
   Christiansburg, Virginia 24073
   United States

   Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
   Domain Name: VTMURDERS.COM
      Created on: 16-Apr-07
      Expires on: 16-Apr-08
      Last Updated on:

   Administrative Contact:
      Parker, Joseph  joep152@aol.com
      320 Church St
      Christiansburg, Virginia 24073
      United States
      (540) 381-3888

   Technical Contact:
      Parker, Joseph  joep152@aol.com
      320 Church St
      Christiansburg, Virginia 24073
      United States
      (540) 381-3888

Jonestown. Tiananmen Square. Waco. Columbine. Oklahoma City.

Blacksburg.

Received today:

From: Devon Presant [mailto:devon@wordhampton.com]
Sent: Monday, April 16, 2007 3:47 PM
To: Fabiola Santiago
Subject: Security Tips in Response to Today’s VA Tech Shooting

How can we keep our schools safe from outside predators?
With the current tragedy at Virginia Tech University, where a gunman killed at least 30 people in the deadliest campus shooting spree in U.S. history, we are now in the day and age where more security measures need to be taken within our schools.  Keeping our children safe should be top priority.  
“Something as simple as keeping doors locked from the outside, may have prevented these incidents,” Richard L. Soloway, noted security expert and chairman of NAPCO Security Systems, Inc., a publicly traded company, “but there are more advanced security measures that have to be taken.”
Soloway has compiled a list of security measures that can be used to keep school children safe:
1.    Keep school doors closed and locked from the outside at all times during the school day.  
2.     Implement Closed Circuit TV surveillance throughout the building, including perimeter/exterior coverage.  Have the footage monitored live by security staff, and captured in a time/date-stamped recording for archival review as needed.
3.     Install metal detectors and employ a security guard and pass-thru turnstile.  Guards should make sure that people or kids that are not employed or enrolled in the school have a set appointment and should be checked for any weapons.  
4.     Teach children and teachers what to do in an emergency situation.  School shootings, fires, or natural disaster drills can be taught at the same time as fire drills are taught.  
5.     Teach evacuation routes planned and safe areas for children to go to if possible.  
6.     Maintain one main entry lobby and reception area staffed with trained personnel.  Require mandatory guest registration including the guests name, who they are meeting with and time in and out.  Some schools even have background check of each person coming in, and also screen guests to see if they come up on the sex offender registry.  
7.     Implement a temporary badging system to track ALL visitors and service people.  Whether it’s a wearable “Visitors Sticker” that literally fades out in a given time period or a physical badge which is only temporarily valid for a particular duration of time, per your access system’s scheduling program, a specific program must be in place and security staff must be trained to screen all atypical personnel in the premises.
8.     Distribute ID badge or register credentials for all permanent, official school occupants including teachers, staff and students.  These credentials can range from an ID card with mag-stripe or proximity encoding, to more sophisticated biometric entry readers which compare an entrants fingerprint, retinal scan or hand geometry to one stored on file within the access control system’s database of authorized personnel.
9.     Have open communication with local police departments.  The principal of the school can make sure that local police and fire departments have been to the school prior to any emergency to know the layout of the school.  This can be done two times in a school year to keep police and fire departments updated as per the layout.  
10.   Number all doors that enter the school building.  In an emergency, police and fire department personnel will be able to quickly locate an area and respond.
On NAPCO and Chairman Richard L. Soloway:
NAPCO Security Systems (Nasdaq listed as NSSC), is a global leader in design and manufacturing of patented electronic and mechanical security systems whose products include intrusion alarms, fire alarms, electronic locking devices and access control systems.  Chairman Richard L. Soloway’s comments on all aspects of security have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, International Herald Tribune, Business Week, Forbes, Crain’s New York Business, Newsday, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, Detroit Free Press, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Transcript and The Robb Report among others.  NAPCO grosses over $70 million in sales.  www.napcosecurity.com <http://www.napcosecurity.com>
To speak with Richard L. Soloway on how to prevent school shootings or another security topic, call WordHampton Public Relations to arrange an interview at 631-329-0050.
Best,
Devon Presant, Publicity Assistant
WordHampton Public Relations Inc.
East Hampton • Riverhead
T       (631) 329-0050      East Hampton
T       (631) 727-6204      Riverhead
E       Devon@wordhampton.com
W       www.wordhampton.com
WORDHAMPTON PUBLIC RELATIONS INC. - SINCE 1992

No need for me to write much here. Aside from the fact that I’m busy tangentially covering the story, there are plenty of other news sites covering it.

It’s now the worst single shooting in U.S. history, with 31 confirmed dead. (Technically the worst civilian shooting, with the Civil War in there and all.)

Thoughts and prayers.

Shooting at Virginia Tech. Local TV station coverage included this gem from WDBJ, the local CBS affiliate:

“We have photographers [video cameramen] there, but … it’s very windy out, which makes it difficult to send video back via microwave.”