DanHagen.com

Wow. Just wow.

How long have I been troubleshooting my website? I’ve been facing the debacle of trying to get my domain name fully functional ever since I moved to a new web host. When was that? Over a week ago. A week.

And yet, that whole wait wasn’t even necessary. My domain name has still not been transferred over to my new service - perhaps because the guys over at the 1&1 transfer department are difficult to cooperate with (I almost called them douchebags) - but fortunately, before I had canceled my old hosting account, I had set up a DNS with the domain name to work with my new service, and I simply just had to tinker with some of the settings with my new host to get things working. Once my domain expires, I will reregister it with NFSN.

…NFSN, that is, NearlyFreeSpeech.net. They are my new web hosting provider. There are multiple reasons why I switched, which I will sort into an easy-to-comprehend bulleted list:

• Customer service. 1and1.com really isn’t too bad of a host… but they aren’t too good either. While they settle with outsourced tech support in India, NearlyFreeSpeech actually really cares about their customers.
• Pricing. What really struck me about NFSN is the way the payment works. You only pay for what you use. It can be equated to a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan: You pay one cent per megabyte per month, one dollar per gigabyte of data transfer, etc. At this rate, I am only paying about one dollar a month for hosting. I need to be careful, though; obviously I don’t want to store gigabytes of data on my server for the sake of not paying a ton more money.
• SQL. 1&1’s MySQL service was pretty slow. Thanks to NFSN, my site loads a couple seconds faster. This may not seem like much, but since Wordpress relies on SQL for dynamically generating pages then it can really mean a lot.

I think that’s all I’m really going to say for now. There are plenty of other things I could write about, but at the moment I’m just sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I’ll conclude by recommending NearlyFreeSpeech.net as a great web host. There’s just two things I want to emphasize if you’re considering using it: If you’re a newbie to web administration, or if you plan on using it for storing large files, then I suggest you go somewhere else.

This is going to be exciting. Really.

Today, I am having a guest post by my friend Kristie. She is twelve years old, and is currently in the seventh grade, along with her many peers. She says that her interests are “Friends, talking, texting, shopping, dancing, and sleepovers”. As of now, she resides with her siblings in a nice house up on the mountain, and her mom drives a huge friggin’ SUV.

That’s enough introduction for now. I’ll hand the time over to Kristie.

hi guys!!! so umm… this is kristie. lol. Dan wanted me to write about cellphones, hahah i dunno why, dan is kind of an INTERSTING kid but hes kinda cool, so thats why i’m doing it. So umm… ya. hahah.

So ya, I have a friend named Krista (our names sound same!!! hahah) and we both have history class together w/ mrs. jensen. It is really kinda boring but whats greatest is because me and krista have cell phones so we getto text each other during class! ITS AWSOME!!!!1 its funny cause mrs. jensen doesn’t really notice and there is like some rule of like not having cells in class i dunno, but it’s funny lol. i would run out of texts but i told my mom about it and NOW I HAVE UNLIMITED TEXTS!!!!~~ heheh

Umm then me and krista and sarah and jamie sit together at lunch and its fun. we sit next 2 each other and we text eachother for like the whole lunch. my phon is so cool because it’s purple(I LOVE purple) and it has hello kitty on it cause hello kitty is so cute!! lol umm… ya so what’s also funny about my phone is it has this wierd hole in the bottom, its like this tiny hole and i think back in 4th grade when i got my first cell my dad called it a mouthpiece or a micrphone or something but umm whatev. i dunno what your mouth has to do with a cell

so ya me and my friends text eachother alot, and somtimes we’ll have these dance partys at my house and stuff and we listen to like this cool music and stuff, its really cool. hahah last night me and krista were screaming SO HARD hahah it was funny, really then she turned the lights off and i was laughing and screaming so hard hahah but we gotta watch a movie too. hahah then we talked about boys, omg YA!! there’s like this really cute guy at school, his name is jared and he can do like anything! but ya i guess i kinda am spposed to talk about cell phones. oopps.

ya thats about it. my cell is so cool, i like it better than a computer cause there is not as many buttons on a cell phone!! like with a keybord theres tons of keys to worry ab out but cell phones are so much easier. well see ya!!!!1~~

I appreciate Kristie for taking the time to elaborate on the progression of technology and how it has changed our lives. Thank you.

In this little tutorial, I will show you an example of how stupidly complicated it is to find a song I like. In all seriousness, my tastes in music are fairly obscure - I’ve probably already told you this - so it makes it that much harder to get my hands on the tracks I want. At most, I can buy a pricy album from Amazon. Or, I can download the song from some other online store that I’ve never heard of. Great.

Ready for this? Ok. Here is how I go about finding my music.

1. Go onto di.fm and find a radio station of the genre I like.
2. Listen and wait for a particular song that I might want.
3. If something especially awesome comes up, I look at my media player to see the title of the song.
4. Dang! It doesn’t actually show the name. The song is really just part of a bigger mix.
5. Go onto Google and search for the mix with the song in it.
6. Well, eventually I find out where I can download it on the internet. (But I just want the one song!)
7. This stupid thing doesn’t even have a track listing. I have a seventy-minute MP3 file of songs and I don’t know the titles of any of them.
8. Perhaps this thread has what I’m looking for?
9. Yes, it does. It has a track listing. The song I really want is “Mirage of Hope” by Hemstock & Jennings.
10. Huh? I can’t even find a friggin’ official website for this artist…
11. …however, I am able to get some results on Amazon. I would probably want this album.
12. “Import”? Twenty-seven bucks?! F#@%!
13. For the record, I don’t even have a credit card or anything like that. (And to think that the album only comes from a different country.)
14. The file-sharing networks don’t have it. I wonder why I’m not surprised.
15. I’m not even going to try to find a torrent.

That’s all it takes, folks. My life is so hard.

Let me start off by saying this: I like to make fun of the musical Wicked for the same reason that I like to make fun of Harry Potter. Why? Because they are popular. It’s great to make fun of something everyone likes, right? Right.

Say No to Crack has me laughing again with their Breakin’ it Down, volume 2. In this case, they’re attacking one of the songs from Wicked because of it’s “flaws”.

So, this Wicked play. It’s pretty much teh lamezorz, right? Now, I know a lot of people like it, so I won’t say I think it’s musically stunted or lyrically cancerous, or that Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel sound identical in the sountdrack, or that the concept of a “revamped” Oz plot is ridiculous, but I will say, that stowed away in the score is one of the most fantastic jokes I’ve ever heard…

The song I’ll be breaking down for you today is “For Good.” And I call this song a joke because it’s done something funny: it seems to have convinced everone it is actually contains a positive message.

Here is a section of the lyrics:

I’ve heard it said
That people come into our lives for a reason
Bringing something we must learn
And we are led
To those who help us most to grow
If we let them
And we help them in return
Well, I don’t know if I believe that’s true
But I know I’m who I am today
Because I knew you

Whoooahhhh…snap!! Kristen (or Idina? I can’t tell!) starts off with this lovely philosophy: people come into our lives to help us grow, and become better…but then she throws it out the window by saying, yeah she doesn’t believe that. Idina (or Kristen?) has changed her somehow, but not necessarily by helping her grow.

To elaborate, the character is contradicting herself. She admits how people can change her.. and then, meh, who knows if that’s how it really works. As a side-note, you don’t have to point out the over-analyzation in this post. Because that’s probably what this is.

Like a comet pulled from orbit
As it passes a sun
Like a stream that meets a boulder
Halfway through the wood
Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?
But because I knew you
I have been changed for good

Hmm. A comet being deliberately thrown from it’s path of orbit… a stream being obstructed in the woods… what kind of message is this giving me?

This, I think, is what loses people. I think that this is what fools everyone, and so I’m not going to go farther into the song than this (thank me later). Let me translate these lyrics (I even tried to set them up so you could sing along!):

Like a really insulting similie, about getting burned
Or another insulting similie, about being broken
I’m not sure I’m made a better person
But, you have changed me
And that change is permanent.

And that’s all! People have, for the duration of this song, forgotten that the phrase “for good” means “forever,” and instead take it to believe that she’s saying Krisdina has changed her for the better…despite the fact that two lines earlier she said she’s not sure if she has been changed for the better at all.

You could sing this song to the shark who bit your arm off and it would be appropriate: he changed your life (I mean, now you have no arm!), and maybe it’s not for the better…but that arm is gone for good.

But the real punchline is, that song was my graduation song. I just sat there, embarrassed for my friends in the choir who were, unknowingly I assume, singing to their friends, their teachers, their school, a song that basically says, you messed me up, and the change is permanent.

Which, in the case of my school, might be true, but still. Not exactly the theme song you want to go out on. Next time you hear this song, think of this. It’s not necessarily a positive song.

Still not as bad as the kids who got “Good Riddance” as their graduation song though. Haha, suckers.

If you would like to actually hear the song, you can listen to a recording done by my old choir class right here.

I’m going to start off by looking at two movies, both having different ratings. Alright, let’s say, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Let’s compare that movie to another one, something more obscure… like, Pi. Alright then. Respectively, these movies are rated PG-13 and R.

- Oh crap. Something here doesn’t look right.

War of the Worlds has extensive cussing, violence, and plenty of disturbing images. In spite of this, the film manages a PG-13 rating. On the other hand, Pi is decidedly rated R with only a few swear words and a couple of gruesome scenes. Oh, the irony.

I’ll admit, perhaps I’m making a sweeping generalization. I’ll also admit that I’ve never really taken a good look at the rubric or criteria for different ratings. Actually, I don’t think I need to. If the two aforementioned movies received the ratings that they did, then I think the MPAA should seriously reconsider their system. I have personally seen both of these movies, therefore I can honestly say that the age restrictions should be switched around.

Let’s flash back to last year in school. For my English class, I wrote a persuasive essay on this exact same topic: Why these rating systems are faulty. Believe it or not, comparisons like the one I just made were actually missing from my paper. Let me take one of my other arguments and put it bluntly:

Everyone matures at different rates.

Get that? I don’t receive the gift of maturity once I turn seventeen years old. Of course, when we are still growing and developing as a young child, we have a difficult time distinguishing fantasy from reality. However, soon after that, things change. And the changes certainly don’t come in predefined increments of time at thirteen and seventeen.

I find it lame that I am not allowed to simply go to the store and buy an R-rated movie or an M-rated video game. I also find it irritating that somehow the MPAA has total control over what I can and can’t see without parental consent.

That reminds me: I haven’t discussed video games enough. Let me give another argument that applies specifically to games:

There is a lack of real studies linking violent video games to violence in children.

I suppose that many of my readers will fire back at me and say that there are, indeed, “studies” that have proved the negative effects of video games on children. In my opinion, there is simply not enough proof to hold any water. A fairly recent Joystiq post links to a study done by a Texas A&M researcher, showing that there is little evidence connecting violent video games to violent behavior. In fact, ever since video games have become more widespread, violent crime rates have actually gone down.

That said, I would like to make one more point. I don’t know about other countries (please enlighten me), but here in America, most people have things backwards. Very backwards. It’s the idea that sex is worse than violence. Alright, I guess I’m going with the sweeping generalizations again, but answer me this: If you were watching a movie with your grandma, which would be more awkward? A movie with excessive violence, or a movie with excessive nudity and sex?

Hmm.. this movie isn’t so bad. There’s some mafia dude… shooting everyone on the streets, brutally killing innocent people.. mhmm… ok…

Boobs?! Turn the TV off. Now. I will not stand for filth like this. No more sex, please.

Don’t get me wrong; I love living in America. I’m grateful for having the first amendment. If it weren’t for these rights, attempts to ban mature video games wouldn’t have been shot down (after all, movies and games can be free speech, right?).

Either way, I appreciate anyone’s comments and opinions on the whole matter. Thanks. Digg This