Found this article suggesting that the video depicting the decapitation of Nick Berg is fake while poking around at www.aztlan.net.

Link courtesy Impolitic Politics.

Here’s a link to the WordPress Wiki explaining the different WordPress User Levels.

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Tuesday morning I was witness to a particularly weird case of “road rage” on my way to work. It was raining cats and dogs (as it’s been doing pretty much all week). I had a half-assed shot at getting to work by 9AM that morning despite the weather. As I drove up Capitol, the last 8-block haul before turning onto Caroline toward my building, I came up behind a man in a white pick-up truck. On his cell phone. Going 20 miles an hour … MAYBE.

So I make the “traveling” signal with both my hands, in a rolling motion. He continues his convo and holds steady at 20 MPH. So I do what any red-blooded Houstonian would do: I whipped around him. I also gave him the single digit salute as I sped past. I made the yellow light at the next intersection. Great, I didn’t lose too much time.

What do I spy in my rear-view mirror? Why, it’s none other than Mr. twenty-miles-an-hour-on-my-cellphone. He whips beside me on my right as I slow down to make a left-hand turn onto Caroline. Abruptly, and from the middle lane, I might add, he turns in front of me and I have to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting the left front of his truck, which is catty-corner across my path and halfway in the intersection.

Next, this fool exits his truck, one hand waving his cell phone and the other in a fist, beating on the hood of my car, the A-pillar, and the windshield. He was barking some inanities about me not giving him enough time to do whatever it is he thought I thought he should do, and then right before getting back into his car, exclaimed that I was crazy.

Okay, let’s review: I’m stopped at an intersection on my way to work, sitting, warm, dry and cozy, in the comfort of my vehicle and he’s in the middle of the road, in the rain, practically jumping up and down on the hood of my car like Yosemite Sam. And I’m the crazy one. M’kay.

So he finally gets back in the car and proceeds down Caroline, with me right behind him (I was going that way anyway, remember?). And of course, he’s playing that stupid little game, “Slam on the brakes to make the person in back rear-end you.” Since I had a nice clear view of the back end of his truck, I memorized his license plate number. I then noticed that he turned into the loading dock of my building!

“I have you now,” I thought to myself. What I really thought was, “Oh, great. This nut is loose in my building!” So when I pulled into the garage, I told the security guard about it, and I also did not leave out the part about my flipping him the bird. But honestly, I don’t think it warranted his reaction. If he’s gonna come unglued over that, he’s got serious anger issues. More so than me, at least.

Simply put, if he’s gonna be intimidated by a fat chick in a Honda, then I sure am glad I’m not his girlfriend, wife or dog. Yeesh.

Well, it’s official. The Dallas Z Car Club won the bid for the 2006 International ZCCA Convention. I would have loved to see the Z Club of Houston pull it off. Chartered in 1974, we are the third-oldest Z Car Club in the U.S., behind Group Z (1971), this year’s Convention hosts, and ZONC (1972). And we are the oldest Z Club in Texas!

But, as die-hard Astros fans have been proclaiming for years, Wait until next year! Or in our case, Wait until 2010!

I guess it’s too much to ask that the sonofabitches cluttering my e-mail inbox with spam should know how to spell. After all, if they had a modicum of intelligence, they wouldn’t have to resort to this, would they?

Not if it’s a photo of a beheading or other war atrocity. I just don’t buy into the theory that you MUST VIEW such an image to comprehend its savagery. Anyone with a fundamental sense of decency knows that it’s just plain wrong.

I do not need to see photos of bodies piled sky high awaiting their turn in the ovens at Dachau, et al. or the unblinking eyes of Cambodian or Viet Namese children, bodies ravaged by effects of napalm, to comprehend that what happened to them is wrong. I don’t need to see photos of twisted metal and flesh to know that to get behind the wheel of a car impaired in ANY way is to ask for just such a disaster.

Is it just me?

Still waiting to hear from our members out in Long Beach, California this week whether the Z Club of Houston won the bid to host the 2006 Z Car Club Association Convention. We heard from our presenter by e-mail Wednesday night and he seemed confident that we outshone the competition. Let’s hope so. I can’t wait to start planning this party.

The recent kerfuffle involving the weblogs.com blogs gone wild should remind everyone that anything can happen so it’s best to have a backup of your work. Believe me, I learned the hard way, having lost some data a couple of years ago when a hard disk died (would you trust your data to the equivalent of a rusty old pie plate?).

Here are links to backup procedures for most of the popular blogging tools out there:

Blogger

MovableType … This is an article from the Learning Movable Type blog, and it is instructions on surviving a web server move, but it’s basically the steps you’d want to take to secure not only your data (the entries themselves), but your templates also.

WordPress … this is a hack for 1.0 and below. WP 1.2 users will have to manually backup their templates and MySQL database, as far as I can tell.

pMachine … this just backs up the MySQL database, so you’ll want to go to your Admin control panel and copy and paste all of your templates (if you have modified them). Just save them in Notepad or your favorite HTML editor.

Any program running on a MySQL database can be exported to a *.sql file and saved to your hard drive or removable media for safekeeping, via the PHPAdmin Panel, found on most CPanel consoles.

If anyone needs help with this, just drop me a line.

Dave Winer apparently yanked the rug out from under some bloggers recently. He’s offered them copies of their blogs so that they can find hosting elsewhere.

To that I say, don’t forget:

I offer web hosting at my web design site. The features are very generous; see for yourself.

I can also heartily recommend AffordableHOST; it’s been around since 1997 (which is ancient for a web hosting company!).

I haven’t been posting much lately because I’ve been intensely involved with my car club, the Z Club of Houston. Yes, they still love me even though I no longer drive a Z Car, but have a lowly Honda Accord instead. They love me so much they even let me hold some dangerously powerful positions on the board of directors.

The Club is throwing its hat into the ring to host the 2006 ZCCA convention. Houston already has a Super Bowl under its belt and will be hosting the MLB All-Stars Series in July. We’re more than ready. So I learned PowerPoint over the weekend and helped put together a 23-slide presentation for some of our Club members to present at this year’s Convention in Long Beach, California.

I hope we win, but even if we don’t, this past couple of weeks of intense brainstorming has taught me all over again what I love about this group of people and how great it is to get out of the house (and out from in front of the monitor). And even if we don’t win the bid, I’ve soldered some new friendships that aren’t likely to go away any time soon. Well worth the price of admission.

We should know something by the end of next week. I am keeping my fingers crossed.