I'm proud to say I have not spent so much as a dime today. Why is it that millions of Americans got up at 5am to shop? Are they totally insane? Of all the things to do on a day off, going shopping with the hordes has to be one of the least appealing.

The other day I was trying to recreat a "London Pub" look for a website, and I wanted some squiggly little ding-bats for the sides of the name (like you see pictured here). But I couldn't find anything! So my challenge is - What's the name of these little things? By that I mean the generic name for an architectural frill that goes on the side of words on a building.... clues?

Right, so free wifi does exist in NYC after all, but it sure was hard to find it. It seems the main WiFi locator sites, or at least anything you try to do using Google lead to nothing but half-wit sites taken over by commercial spaces.

San Francisco seems to be more easy to work with, which, I supposed isn't surprising. There must be a proper map of New York WiFi spots, but someone needs to properly google-bomb it.

Bizarrely, I cannot find a single coffeeshop in New York City that offers free WiFi, with the exception of one way uptown. Plenty of Starbucks with ripoff T-Mobile abound, but that's it. Am I missing something?

Ah well, what can you do? At least we're guaranteed a better president in four years. Dave G offers some words of encouragement. It's time to learn how to talk to christian fundamentalists. Invite some Mormons over, have tea. Seriously, the only way out of this mess is to start learning to communicate with "the other side" whatever that means. There are groups of idiot extremists on both "sides" of the election, but for the most part, people have pretty reasonable reasons for why they voted one way or the other. Anil Dash writes another good piece that touches on this.

One of the main reasons Bush won is that all Kerry did was bash him. "I have a plan! bashbush bashbush bashbush..." He could never stand up and say "my plan is to find a way to communicate with everyone". It was that negativity (which was capitalized upon by Republican spinsters who kept claiming Bush was an "Optimist") which brought him down in a time when people are really uneasy and looking for hope. Of course idiots like the 'swift boat veterens' didn't help matters. But so ot goes. I'm a really poor political commentator, but I felt compelled to say something.

Time for a bike ride.

I've just read, cover to cover, the California state and SF City election guides which detail the dozens of propositions on the ballot tommorow, as well as the 35(!) candidates for my district's supervisor position including one guy who lists his occupation as "political satirist". On his statement, in capital letters, it says "DON'T VOTE FOR ME". ya.

Anyway, you know what to do. Here's my enblogment for Kerry.