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Legal Notice

Serious First

The opinions and other statements contained herein are not the beliefs of any organization, entity, or any other group other than my own. They do not reflect the official position of any group which I belong to, am affiliated with, or in any other way am involved with. These opinions are mine, and mine alone (well, if you consider "alone" to include the myriad voices that trot through my head on a random basis). IMAGES on these pages come from a variety of sources. Some have been borrowed from elsewhere on the internet; I have attempted to avoid the use of copywritten work whenever possible. Those images that have been "borrowed" from elsewhere have been lifted from a variety of sources. Some are quite old, possibly even five or more years. Some of the images have been created by me using a variety of tools, including Microsoft PhotoDraw, FrontPage, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, and my always favorite tool, Paint. These images are frankly free for anyone to use (Good Lord knows I'm not a graphics designer of any stripe). Link to me or not as you will. However, DO NOT link to the image location here - while I may be bloody slow, I wouldn't count on the images ALWAYS being in the same spots. All text has been written by me, and me alone, and just to make sure we're all clear on this , these opinions expressed herein are mine, alone, and therefore my fault.

After the obligatory vapid and useless vague promises, we are legally required to add in the also-obligatory disclaimers; far as I know, this web page isn't optimized for any specific browser.  Then again, I'm using some microsoft tools to create the page, so I'm fully aware that this page might not work well with my old friends the Netscape browsers.  As we all know, the race is not always to the swiftest or the strongest, but that's where to place the big bets.  Thus, browse with caution.  Wear Gloves, and a surgical mask.  Better yet, put down the mouse and read a good book.

Gratuitious Noise Follows...

I have said, in previous small-print disclaimers, that I believe that there are a higher class of people who read this page. Of course, previously, I believed that the internet attracted highly intelligent persons as a general rule, because it required a significant amount of intellectual capacity to just figure out how to hook a damned modem to the computer in the first place, let alone get the thing to run. This has all changed, with the advent of such things as "internet appliances" and the iMac. And let us not forget AOL.

Before the rabid pack of you break off and become bloodthirsty in the hunt for my vital fluids for including the Apple iMac along with those damned internet appliances, sit your behind down. I've been working on Apple computers pretty well non-stop for the last three years, and the bottom line is that Apple computers have almost every advantage but two over the various PC/Intel/Windows incarnations. Those two advantages are as follows - There are far more PC-compatible computers than Macintosh machines that have been sold, and that leads to more software available for PCs than Macintosh machines. The second advantage is that Microsoft is fully aware of the necessity for training.

Before you run off and prepare to beat me with a fork or something similar, let's review a wee bit. I am a person who absolutely hates not having options - that is, I want to have the potential for choosing other solutions other than the canned one you shove down my throat. I'm very much of the belief that competition breeds better software. In the Macintosh world, there's precious little competition. In fact, there's almost encouragement not to compete.

I've watched and worked in the computer industry for a couple years now, and fed myself and my family from it since 1989. While I'm no great genius, I do know that Apple, like every other company, person, or anything else in the world, is cyclical. They do good things, they get cocky, they do bad things, they suffer. Personally, I lack the confidence that Steve Jobs has - were I head of a major corporation like Apple, I don't know that I would completely change every part of the product line that produces 80% of my corporate hardware revenues (roughly, my guess). And I don't think I'd do all of it in a couple weeks while people are screaming for more.

Let's just say that while some day I hope to own both an iMac and a digital video camera to make my own home movies, I sure as hell will not own Apple stock. I infinitely prefer to have both confidence in a company and confidence in a leadership. Steve Jobs does not inspire my confidence. We'll leave it at that.

I've seen it claimed elsewhere that I have a bias against AOL. While that's not entirely untrue, I'd like to take a moment to defend AOL. Let's see. Where should we start. Let me think a minute... Oh, yeah. They do make it easy for people to hook to the internet. And...

Well, couldn't think of anything else. Why do I hate AOL? Let me count the ways... Last year I started collecting CDs. Not good ones, usable ones, but just what I call "Junk CDs". At my daughter's Daycare, they hang them from the ceiling to create an atmosphere. I held on to the AOL CDs in one stack. Over the course of about nine months, I'd managed to collect over THREE HUNDRED CDs. Of that, TWO HUNDRED AND SEVEN of them were AOL in some various versions. Now, let's do a little math...

Nine Months

9
Times Thirty Days in a Month

270
Divided By Seven Days in a Week

38.5
Equals the number of Sundays
(There's no mail delivery on Sundays in the US)

38.5
Since these were at work, add another 38.5
(I don't usually work Saturdays)

77
270 Days minus 77 Days is

193
193 days divided by 207 CDs is

0.93
Which means I got an AOL CD every

0.93 DAYS
Or every

22:22:36
HH:MM:SS

Is there any reason that a company has to carpet-bomb the nation in order to hopefully attract a clientele? I mean, come on. I'm guessing that the costs to AOL are perhaps in the dollar-apiece range, when you get through the whole marketing costs, production, materials, and of course, postage. AOL got exactly ZERO DOLLARS from me.

I've used a total of four ISPs in my life... Way back in 1994, I signed up with GIZMODE DATABANK, which at the time was a basic e-mail-to-internet access point. However, I'd like to remind you that at that point, monthly internet access was about $90 a MONTH at that point. My e-mail-only access to the internet was about $35 a YEAR at that time, so it was definitely cheaper. I had access through Gizmode to an e-mail address (JDominik@Gizmode.com - I honestly don't think Gizmode's even there any more - I suppose I could do a whois lookup on gizmode, but I'm just too lazy. Maybe when God gives me a local phone company that knows what they're doing, and a cable television service that actually is willing to take my money, we'll see what I can do with broadband access) which I could use to access information on the internet. You should probably be reminded that, back then, the WWW (World Wide Web, or as the real technoweenies say, Dub-Dub-Dub) was only a very small part of the internet. But I digress.

After Gizmode, I used Frontier internet service for about 4 months. They pretty universally sucked - internet connectivity down more than up, and the connection itself was very very poor. After a total systems meltdown, I replaced Win 3.11 with Win95, and couldn't get to Frontier any more. So, I tried AOL. I got on-line once, for about 4 minutes. When I fired up my browser, it wouldn't access the net, no way, no how. And yes, I was smart enough back then (already) to know what changes to make in the settings on my browser. But, my computer locked up, and I had to reboot. And of course, after that, I couldn't get in. So, I called their humanoid customer service, and cancelled the account. Then, I switched about a month later to Goldengate. The dumbest thing I ever did was wait so long to switch. These guys are good - no busy signals, no outages (recently - they had some long ago, primarily the fault of the chimpanzees that wear US West uniforms). They're a big-time outfit now, and it's kinda funny to think of it, since I know their COO - He and I used to work together at a previous place of employment. Good guy.

Back to AOHell. Now, I suppose that the purposeful carpet-bombing of most of the world using AOL CDs (with everything from 25 free hours up to an un-heard-of-750 hours on one CD - Titanium, I think it was) would be good enough for most people. Not me. It was the purchase, and subsequent destruction, of Netscape.

You remember Netscape, don't you? At one time they had the only decent browser going. At another point they had a very good browser. However, they did discover a way to squander the vast and seemingly insurrmountable lead they had in browser technology - sit back on your laurels, invest exactly nothing in the browser, and wait.

Now, I'm still working on some day finishing my undergrad degree, but I've got enough business sense to know that there are two clear ways to get out of business - one is to put a Going-Out-Of-Business sign in your front window, and the other is to find a competitor with about a trillion dollars and no visible presence in a fast-growing market segment you completely control. I think that's pretty much the red-flag-and-pissed-off-bull equation right there.

And that's enough of that. End of Sermon #523,781, Why Steve Case is the Anti-Christ and AOL one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Back to legal mumbo-jumbo, Dominik-style.</Sermon>

You are here to discover the wit, wisdom, and devastatingly handsome good looks. Though why the heck you're looking here, I don't know.

It has been previously noted in this space, or one nearly like it, that most of the people who frequent this site are alleged livestock abusers. I would like to make it clear here and now that no livestock were abused in the creation of this page, and none were harmed as the site was tested. Those that did die during the testing died primarily from voluntary exposure to the site itself. Though I have literally no clue how a cow would manage to use a computer, let alone develop enough cognitive ability to find this site humorous. Though a cow that's died from oxygen deprivation from laughing too hard tastes just about the same as any other (Take THAT, PETA. I actually miss the old PETA site - People Eating Tasty Animals. hehehe).

Getting back to our legal diversions . . .

Back to the topic of alleged livestock abusers, actually. I happen to have signed affidavits from a number of livestock who participated voluntarily in the alleged abuse, and they actually enjoyed it. Well, all except for a heffer named "Buzz". Those of you who've participated with Buzz are hereby warned that the video of you in the pistachio pudding, herding Buzz, is most likely usable as evidence, should Buzz's bovine attorney get any sudden flash of insight (there are some of you who, I am sure, are offended by the reference to a bovine attorney - I apologize. I know livestock have feelings, but the bottom line is that if you didn't send young impressionable calves off to Moo U Law School, you wouldn't have this type of problem. Then again, every population group has it's cross to bear; ours at present seems to be a weenie who goes by the initial "Dubyah"). But, knowing Buzz and his attorney, we're pretty confident in predicting Buzz and the attorney will both end up in the barbeque before they get to hold the celebratory barbecue (spelled it both ways just in case).

However, I should also apologize to the human (and humanoid) attorneys out there as well. I know a few, and am related to a couple successful ones; they work far too hard for their money, and certainly have been helpful to me when I've needed it.

I think that's probably enough abuse heaped on top of those who believe in talking cows and bovine law schools. The rest of us back here away from the lower-left coast of this continent have better things to do. For example, those lunatics who protest the animal testing, etc. It's highly likely that the fine folks hollering at those of us who eat things with faces are beneficiaries of the actual food they protest - last I checked most of them had been babies at one point, and foetuses prior to that. I'm betting their parents ate meat. hehe.

So, anyway, we're winding down and have pretty cleanly ground our axes, sharpened our knives, and buried the hatchets here in many others - I feel fulfilled. Mostly. Though what I really want is a large pool of jello and a couple of penguins in blond wigs for a few hours... oh, never mind, it's just a joke.

TTFN!