I swore for the longest time that I wouldn’t get one. Didn’t want to be that accessible. Didn’t want to be “that guy” at the poker table. Didn’t want to have to answer email in traffic. I had myriad reasons not to get one of these little things.

Yet, here I sit, tapping away on the wee little keycaps, holding the little thing in my hands, looking like a devout high priest of technology. Sigh.

I can just hear the cackling of some of my friends, likely holding their own little oracles over their heads, shouting maniacally, “ONE OF US! ONE OF US!” while dancing around the fire. This town is run by them, their little cult of availability, and I feel that I’ll just have to play along a little more.

* This post sent from my CrackBerry wireless handheld *

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

That’s right, it’s an epic battle of foes, on skates. Who knew that DC had their own Rollergirls?

I know I didn’t, not before today anyway. Thanks to our friends in the know, though, check out these skatin’ ladies!

We’re hoping that the Rollergirls will return our email, because damn if hot chicks on skates smashing the crap out of other women on skates from other cities isn’t something we could absolutely get behind.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan is bowing out of the Governor’s Race, citing chronic depression that’s been recently diagnosed. The matchup for the fall will be Bob Ehrlich, fresh off his acting role in the new “Leave Early, Stay Late, Get an EZ-Pass, goddammit” ad campaign from the Eastern Shore, versus Baltimore Mayor “No, really, I’m NOT committing adultery” Martin O’Malley.

This promises to be a heated race with national consequences. We promise to cover all the prurient bits. Or something.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It’s that time of the week again, when the Post’s Barry Svrluga (said sver-loo-ga) takes questions from the masses. These chats often make for some funny moments, and today’s chat was no disappointment. Today’s Highlight? Priceless…

Washington, D.C.: What a great time to be a Nationals fan! Zimmerman making a run at rookie of the year, Vidro rebounding nicely, Cordero, Patterson, some of the other young pitchers and a new park in a few years!

But of course, the big question is whether to trade Soriano. I was wondering what people involved in baseball think. Any chance you will be bringing in someone who knows the game so we can ask their opinion?

Thanks.

Barry Svrluga: I am trying not to take this as an insult.

Still trying. Not working.

Nope, not going to work. Okay. Moving on.

Nice, Barry.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

A while back, I hailed Jon Stewart a hero for berating Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala live on CNN, which ended with Crossfire being cancelled. Today, I hail Ze Frank.

Normally, I have a dislike for podcasting and vlogging, simply because you’re suddenly on the author’s timetable for material, their speech pattern, their interpolated graphics, all the trappings that put you on anything other than your own reading pace. However, Ze Frank seems to capture brilliantly the zeitgeist of the good podcast with his “The Show”. Yesterday’s episode marks a new high for the League of Awesomeness, especially when it comes to hitting the nail on the head when it comes to American Politics.

DC is the capital of American Politics, and so we’re often the focal point of every stupid bullshit posturing vote, every lame attempt at an amendment to a bill, every move and counter move that shows just how mean-spirited and evil your opponents are, and every pandering attempt to “send a message to your base that you’re fighting for them!” This morass that we’ve found ourselves in is boundless, it appears.

Today, Ze’s got the goods on the whole thing, and he’s unafraid to call it what it is: a clusterfuck.

Thank you Ze for getting that out there. Remember, support your local clusterfuckers this Fall!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It’s not really any consolation that I’m not the only one under water, or that this hell is one of my own making. The real pain, however, is that while I’m up in Philly shilling my wares at the Manayunk Art Festival one of my favorite events of the year will be going on here at home: The Old Dominion Beerfest.

If you don’t care for beer, you may as well skip it. If you like the bubbly stuff in any or all of its incarnations, this is a great event. The non-beer vendors are usually fun – I have a nice fisherman’s hat with a logo that says simply “beer” that I treasure – and the food is excellent. At $1 per 6oz sample it’s very affordable to try an array of beers you might not normally have access to – the array of drafts you’ll be able to try far outstrips what you can find even at RFD. If you don’t live out in the wilds of Herndon/Reston/Sterling as I do it’s a bit of a drive but I think it’s well worth it.

And if you’re the designated driver you get free Old Dominion Root Beer and Ginger Ale free!

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Ever since my darling wife taught me to take Memorial Bridge into DC instead of 395, I have been grateful. Aside from some backups getting onto Route 50 itself, the whole thing is fairly painless, and I’ll definitely take one long zipper merge to the godawful hell that is 395 during morning rush.

Well, most of the time.

Meet 19th St. NW and Constitution Avenue NW.

Where you see that fancy green arrow is right about where some asshat decided that he could fit his tiny escort into the turning radius of the Maryland Commuter Bus. This, of course, blocked the right three lanes of Constitution Ave. During Morning Rush. All traffic inbound on I-66 and Route 50 ends up on Constitution.

Am I the only one who thinks that in this situation, the asshole whose fault it was belong either up on charges or on the sharp end of a pointy fine?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

What is it with people in the elevator in my building? First there was the guy who made a crack about the jewelry store bag I was carrying, and when I explained that it held our wedding rings, said that June 11th is a great day to get married- his father died on that date. WTF?

This morning, a guy held the elevator door for me, and after I entered and thanked him for the courtesy, he tilted his head, looked at me, and said, “4’11”?”

I raised my eyebrow but said nothing other than, “5’0″.”

“No you’re not.”

What the hell? Should I have given him the same look and said, “Two inches?”

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

There are few things quite as peculiar about working downtown than the giant inflatable rat that a few of the unions use to protest places of employment in DC. You can’t miss it, it’s at least two stories tall, is shaped like a rat, and has been in front of a few buildings this spring/summer already.

Of course, one has to wonder, giant rats? Really? For serious?

Also, what’s up with union workers not being part of the protests themselves?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

“Whatever happened to Jenn,” you muse, perusing these pages in vain, “One minute she was slurping down mussels preparing for a Parisian adventure, the next she’s MIA, some 29 days since. What gives?”

Well, dear readers, contrary to desire, I did not get whisked away by some Gallic patron to a Loire chateau. No, I returned to DC to be sucked in to that dreaded vortex known as the Ultimate Circle of Hell, or the Gauntlet of Doom. I mean of course, the DC convention.

For those of us who work in DC for national associations, this means frantic weeks of progressively stressful organization, mired in impossible logistics, in fearful preparation for the week when your loving members descend on you from all corners of the USA, to burrow down in the depths of a soulless downtown hotel, to be force-fed endless rounds of policy, politics, and cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs Continue reading →

Generally I try not to shamlessly recycle DailyCandy’s content, but this one is too good to pass up:

Through Knitting for Our Neighbors — the new weekly knitting classes run by Food & Friends, which donates every sock, scarf, and sweater made to those living with HIV/AIDS and other grave illnesses — that’s how.

The lessons cost nothing (save a $5 materials fee, unless you bring your own) and instruction is for beginners as well as advanced students. You learn a little something new and those in need get lovingly made necessities.

There’s no mention of it on the Food and Friends site, but classes are Tuesday nights at 6:30, and you can sign up by calling 202-269-2277.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

With power prices starting to rise, isn’t it nice to think that maybe the power companies

aren’t entirely soul-sucking profiteers? Today Pepco announced a new program that will put “smart meters” into over 2,000 DC homes, and about half of those folks will get a brand new smart thermostat that will display the power rates for cooling to specific temperature. More intriguing, though, would be the new pricing option for customers. The new Hourly power rates will change throughout the day, making power cheaper at night when demand is low, and more expensive during the day, when demand is high. Better yet, these new prices will be displayed live on the new advanced thermostat.

No word on how widely this will be deployed after the test, though, but I dig it simply because it sounds cool, and could help a lot of people save on their bills.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

If you’re one of 13,000 people employed by the District of Columbia, chances are that your personal information, including identifiers such as your social security number, were stolen on Monday, when an ING employee (they run the retirement program) took home a laptop, which was promptly stolen. What’s worse, the laptop wasn’t protected by a password, and the data contained on the laptop wasn’t encrypted, so anyone with physical access to the laptop will have fairly immediate access to the identity data.

DC Police and ING suggest that it’s entirely possible the thief wasn’t after the data, but the hardware, and sold it quickly and cheaply. However, that doesn’t guarantee that whoever bought it hasn’t just stumbled on to some kind of gold mine.

What’s really infuriating about all of this is that it comes so quickly on the heels of the VA laptop being stolen as well. Why aren’t companies taking steps to protect that kind of data? Why are they still checking it out on laptops with no password protections? Why are they still checking it out on computers at all? Why isn’t this sort of thing something you work on only in the confines of the office, over a local data link?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Beer + lime + ice in ice buckets, served poolside.

If you’re sweating through this weekend’s hot and humid heat, do head the brilliance of those in other lands. Specifically, I’m talking the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Last weekend, chilling with my beer + lime + ice in the Peninsula Hotel, I met Imedla Marcos(!), who beside her fabulos shoes, was drinking my favorite mix – beer + lime + ice. Impressed, I was in awe when I arrived in Sri Lanka.

Here, far away from DC, but suffering through similar oppressive heat, every one drinks beer + lime + ice in ice buckets.

As you can tell, working from Colombo is a rough life.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I’d like to thank all the members of the Grand Jury today who failed to indict Cynthia McKinney for assaulting a Capitol Police Officer with her cell phone a month or so ago. You have made it totally okay for people to hit cops, get away with it, and come off looking like the victim. Way to go. Here’s hoping someone clocks you this weekend, so you can see just how badly you fucked up.

If you wonder why people don’t think DC should have its own representation in Congress, or any of the other myriad things that I’m sure some community activists will claim the Man is doing to Hold Them Down, look no further than this paragraph from the Post:

The grand jury found “no probable cause” after an “extensive and thorough” investigation, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

What, exactly, was the grand jury examining in an extensive and thorough manner? The insides of their eyelids while evidence was presented? Were they reading off the Jesse Jackson crib sheet? Or was it more like, “well, she didn’t give him a black eye, and besides, racism.”?

What a fucked up world we live in. If I’d done this, they’d have slammed my ass in jail so fast my head would still be spinning. If it had been Patrick Kennedy, he’d have admitted it, claimed to be on prescription sleeping meds and in a hurry to go vote. If it’d been one of the guys at Wonkette, we’d be reading on their blog about who else they saw inside the DC jail, and how their Facebook profiles were doing.

But that’s not what happened. What happened was a black woman hit a cop with her cellphone, when they had the audacity to stop her from jumping the security line. When she came under fire, clearly it was the guard’s fault for stopping her, forcing her hand to her cellphone and her cellphone to the cop’s face. Clearly, the guard was a racist. Clearly, she had to act.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is just how fucked up DC can be sometimes.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

There’s an issue lurking out there, and chances are, if you’re reading this weblog, you could be affected. Blaine Zuver is the City Captain for Metroblogging Miami, and he’s got an excellent post about Net Neutrality and what’s at stake. Everywhere I go, I see ads by the cable companies conveniently placed on their own network about how this is about content providers paying for appropriate bandwidth, that’s a load of bull, pure and simple.

Content providers pay for their internet access the same as you pay for your home access, except they tend to pay a lot more for the big pipes that they need to send large amounts of data through. Most of these groups would raise their rates, which would seem like the obvious solution, except that these large companies would then seek other providers of fast internet access and could potentially lose their contract. So, instead, they’re seeking to double bill content providers. This is a load of crap. It’s like the power company charging you not just for the power that they use, but also for the convenience of having it most of the time, too. This is a load of crap.

As the internet is about freely available speech, I don’t want to have to pay the monopolies just so I can get my site on the “approved list” for available bandwidth. If Cox is blocking Craigslist because they have their own ad service, how long is it going to be before your site is replaced by one that your ISP prefers? Giving the Telcos the power to decide what is important and when is unacceptable to a free-thinking society. Tell your Senator “No!”

The bill comes before a vote in the Commerce Committee on Tuesday, and it needs to pass. Contact any of the members of the commerce committee, but in specific, Sen. George Allen is on that list and he’s up for re-election this Fall. Drop him a note and tell him to vote FOR the Net Neutrality Bill on Tuesday.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Or, so said Gov. Ehrlich to Metro Board Member Robert Smith after Smith called homosexuality “sexual deviance” on public television. Generally there’s this thing we have in society called “manners” and it’s clear to me that Smith ought to pick up a copy of Emily Post for posterity. You don’t have to believe being gay is okay, you don’t have to believe that being gay is acceptable, but what you have to do is treat other people with common decency and respect in order to get by in this town. And that means not calling a group of people “sexual deviants” on public television.

Failure to do so will get you lots of press, but it’s the kind of press that shows up at the top of Google when HR departments, reporters, and friends go searching for information about you. It’s not in your best interest to come out swinging with words, on recorded television no less, that will look badly to other people when they hear them. Sure, some in the community might agree with you, but I don’t necessarily think that coming off as a bigot or a discriminator is going to be in your best interest, no matter what the cause is. Next time, Think Twice.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Ah, the TSA. No one likes them, no one trusts them, and they can’t even find a bomb when it’s passed through their own X-Ray detectors. I hear that their image is so bad that even Apco won’t take them. It seems that the crowd out at Dulles is fairly nonchalant about being impersonated, even if the rules for being selected for security, or even to whom you must show your identification.

I just can’t wait for the day when you have to swear fealty to someone in order to get on a plane. Then, and only then, will we be truly safe.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Stuck in Sri Lanka for work, I am enjoying my time as best I can. Best I can without my quiver of Washington supermodels that usually keep me warm in pairs.

How do I cope with their absence? Besides copious amounts of booze, I live by Fashion TV. Not for the actual fashion, mind you, for I am straight, but for the great slow-mo soft porn.

Almost as good as Computex Sales Girl Soft Porn, Fashion TV takes a very close and sensuous look at supermodels. Easy on the eyes, it is the best supermodel substitute in the developing world

I only wish I could watch it in DC. Comcast & RCN- anyone know if they carry it?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Dubya. Tee. Eff?!

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

Yeah yeah yeah, I know I’m supposed to be out honeymooning and stuff, but I just have to ask.

Maryland readers, what does SWAT team mean in your state that is so different than what it means to the rest of us?

And if it’s not different, perhaps you can explain why your churches and rotary clubs have them?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs