No offense to my Twitter-using friends, but I just don’t get it. I understand Facebook. I understood MySpace (though it was poorly implemented and annoying, and thus rightfully lost its leadership position). Blogger and LiveJournal each made sense to me in their days. Even when I didn’t use these systems, or when I drug my feet on joining, I at least understood the appeal.

The whole micro-blogging idea has some value, I suppose, but Twitter’s big flaw (in my humble opinion) is that it is just a micro-blogging platform. It does absolutely nothing else. Facebook’s success lies in that it is a micro-blogging platform, a regular blogging platform, a photo sharing platform, a social network, and more all rolled into one in a relatively usable and integrated system. You can use it for almost anything you want.

Twitter seems oriented entirely toward pointlessness (hence, I have deemed it The Land of Twits). People who use it a lot post multiple tweets per day that don’t even approach the usefulness of a normal blog post. Even if these Tweets had value, a recent study has determined that only about 21% of Twits are ‘true users’ (users with at least 10 followers, who follow at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times). Really, all I use Twitter for these days (aside from posting links to my site) is reading Conan O’Brien’s tweets; that’s about all there is going on out there.

Stick a fork it in; it’s done. I’ve said it all along: Twitter is a fad, and will disappear as quickly as it arrived…probably fairly soon.

Well, we now have a winner: washed-up former child star Lindsay Lohan has emerged from rehab long enough to file the Stupid Lawsuit of the Month. You may know the E*Trade advertisements with the talking baby. In one of these ads, the talking baby is chatting with his talking baby girlfriend about why he hadn’t called the night before. The girlfriend asks, suspiciously, “And that milkaholic Lindsay wasn’t over?” Another talking baby girl, presumably Lindsay, pops her head into the frame and says “Milk-a-what?”

It’s somewhat funny, I suppose, and I don’t think anybody thought this was a reference to any particular celebrity. The ad apparently hit a little too close to home for Lindsay Lohan though; she is suing E*Trade for improperly using her “likeness, name, characterization, and personality” without permission. She wants $100 million in damages and the ad taken off the air.

First and foremost, the ad was not apparently about Lindsay Lohan. It was talking babies selling online trading services. I don’t think any viewers saw the ad and thought, “Ha, they’re making fun of Lindsay Lohan.” Secondly, even if it was supposed to be Lindsay Lohan, I really doubt her career has been harmed in any way whatsoever by the ad. If there’s no harm, there’s no damages, and no winning the lawsuit. Finally, even if there had been some sort of harm to Lohan, parody and celebrity impersonation is a time-honored and perfectly acceptable form of advertising, as long as it doesn’t imply endorsement by the celebrity. Nothing about a talking milkaholic baby who happens to be named Lindsay implies that Lindsay Lohan endorses E*Trade.

For most of the last decade I lived in Fairfax County, VA…and for most of that time, Fairfax County was ranked as the richest county in the United States (even with folks like me dragging down the averages ;-)). Last year, Melissa and I moved to neighboring Loudoun County, VA and now, no thanks to us, Loudoun County now ranks as the richest in the country. I think the rich people are following me.

According to Forbes Magazine, the median family income in my new home county is a whopping $110,643/year.

That sounds great and all, and Melissa and I are actually slowly creeping up toward that number, but this ranking does not (apparently) take cost of living into consideration. As I often have to point out to my friends from southern Virginia, everything costs a lot more up here. In SoVA you can get a decent apartment for well under $1,000/month; up here in NoVA, almost anything under $1,400 is a roach-infested dump. It all evens out.

If you measure by quality of life, or use cost-of-living adjusted values, I’d bet the relative ‘richness’ of Loudoun, Fairfax, and the other local counties on the Forbes list would be a bit above-average, but probably not at the very top of the list.

I was at Target today picking up a number of random things, and Melissa dragged me to the shoe aisle where I noticed…this.

I’ve noticed that many of my female friends have been complaining lately that the clothing styles are really bad this year, and I’m starting to understand what they mean. I cannot think of any reason whatsoever that any sentient human being would buy a pair of shoes like this.

It seems like some sort of jewel-encrusted starfish carcass, which I doubt is a flattering look. So what’s the verdict, lady readers? Would you wear these shoes?

Even in gun-friendly Virginia, where it is perfectly legal to carry a holstered firearm openly, it is a crime to ‘brandish’ that firearm in the hand except when there is a serious reason (like, for example, to deter an attack by a violent criminal). In Washington, D.C., it’s not even legal for a normal citizen to carry a firearm at all…so all the gang-bangers and criminals carry anyway because they don’t care, and we law-abiding citizens get to be totally defenseless when we face them. Nice.

Gun owners like myself take our rights and our responsibilities with regard to firearms very, very seriously. We don’t carry guns to scare people or to hurt people, but to defend ourselves and our loved ones in the most dire of situations (situations we hope we will never have to face). We respect the police and the important work they do, but recognize that they cannot be everywhere and are unlikely to be able to help us fast enough when we’re faced with violent crime. That’s why we carry. The old saying goes, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”

Detective Mike Baylor of the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is the moronic schmuck who, in a city where responsible gun owners have to go completely unarmed, pulled out his service handgun and waved it around semi-threateningly to deter a bunch of people throwing snow-balls around in the Blizzard of 2009. This is a huge no-no in the most gun-friendly of places, and you would think that in gun-hating Washington it would be a capital offense. If I had done this on U St. & 14th NW back in December, I’d probably be in prison right now.

Baylor, however, is apparently above the law since he is the law. He will not be charged with any crime. In fact, MPD Chief Cathy Lanier has announced that Baylor’s actions, while ‘inappropriate,’ won’t even result in his termination. While he may be subject to administrative punishment, Baylor will keep his job with the MPD and will be put back on duty. “I don’t think this is a termination offense,” Lanier said.

How can it not be a termination offense for a police officer when it’s a felony for everybody else? Love to hear your thoughts on this, Chief Lanier.

Being a commercial illustrator has to be an interesting job. It has to be a strange mix of actual creativity and design-by-committee and, as countless examples in advertising demonstrate, sometimes it works well and sometimes it doesn’t.

I guess if you’ve convinced me to stop, look at an ad, and take its picture you might call it a success. This strange kitty got my attention at the grocery store for some reason. I didn’t end up buying ‘The Goodlife Recipe,’ but now their strange kitty is on my website for no apparent reason whatsoever. That has to count for something.

I’ve never known a cat with eyes that big. It looks a little crazy to me, especially since it thinks in triangular thought bubbles. I think the tongue should be picking the nose; that would have added an extra notch of crazy and matched the eyes and triangle thoughts well.

When you consider the message of this ad though, seriously, it tells you that ‘The Goodlife Recipe’—which is apparently a cat food—is either intended for strange kitties or will make otherwise-normal kitties turn into strange kitties. Excellent messaging, I think, because normal kitties are boring.

Of course, mere days after posting my in-depth review of the Palm Pre Plus and the Palm WebOS operating system, the much-anticipated WebOS 1.4 update came out. The updated operating system was released on Saturday, February 27 to Sprint customers, and Sunday, February 28 to Verizon customers like Melissa and me.

Palm’s update mechanism is dummy-proof: the phone downloads the update and installs it on its own while it’s charging (usually overnight, I’d assume). From what I’ve been reading, this is spread out over time to prevent Palm’s servers from getting overloaded. If you’re a nerd like me who can’t bear waiting for the OS to do its own thing, you can also manually initiate the update whenever you like. I did it Sunday morning, as soon as I read online that the update was available. I have no idea how long it would have taken for the phone to find out on its own.

The update probably took a half hour or so to download (over WiFi) and install. Download times likely would have been quite a bit longer over the data network, even on 3G. After completing the download the phone reset itself and installed the update (with a classy, no-frills, round progress indicator). Without any hiccups, everything was ready to go

The biggest new feature Palm brings out with WebOS 1.4 is video recording. Palm took their time bringing this feature to the platform, but they did a good job with it. It records in the MP4 format and allows for limited editing and direct sharing via YouTube, Facebook, email, and MMS. Beyond this major feature addition, WebOS 1.4 mostly offers increased polish and incremental improvement. The LED in the gesture area will now blink to indicate you have a waiting notification. When you launch an application, a ‘placeholder’ card shows up immediately which lets you know it’s doing something (and lets you preemptively close the app. if you opened it in error).

Performance seems to be slightly improved and ’snappier,’ and battery life seems to be improved. I seem to be getting about 20% better battery life so far, which is pretty significant. All-in-all, a solid improvement. Thanks, Palm! :-)

Government is a threat. Sound crazy? It didn’t to the founders of our country who, after witnessing the ostensibly-republican government of Britain’s despotism toward them, crafted a government for the new United States of America that would have strictly limited and broadly distributed powers and authorities. They saw government un-checked as a threat to liberty and did everything they could to ensure that our government would always answer to ‘we the people.’

It turns out, however, that the founders and I are preaching to the choir these days. Amid the Great Awakening in America going on now, CNN reports that 56% of Americans now rightfully view the government as a potential threat to our civil liberties. Broken down ideologically, strong majorities of both Republicans and independents (70% and 63%, respectively) see the government as a threat. 37% of Democrats are also mistrustful of the government.

I’m cautiously optimistic that the people of this great country are finally waking up.

I’m not generally a fan of medical insurance companies, but boy do I appreciate them at times like this. I just got our claim information for Melissa’s surgery in January.

The total hospital bill was $21,823.93, but we only have to pay $385.51. Not bad, huh?

Keep in mind too that this is just the hospital stuff. The surgeon’s bill is handled separately, as are some of the other things, so the real total bill amount (and the real total out-of-pocket amount) will be much higher.

But, because we have the good sense to be insured against this kind of thing, we’re certainly not at any serious financial risk. The total out-of-pocket amount will probably be less than the cost of a major car repair.