"Her favorite meal was Fiesta Salad with grilled children"

Ooo... that's an unfortunate typo from the Charlotte Observer. They did fix the article before it hit the web.

So the Spread Firefox campaign to raise money for an ad in the New York Times appears to have been a raging success, with $250,000 in donations. That's impressive by any standard. Let me also say that I harbor no illusions that my meager software offerings will make anywhere near the difference of Firefox. But at the same time, let's look at what you get for your donating dollar.

"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands."

I've been saying that for three years. It is simply not the responsibility of the government to protect us in every circumstance. There will be events that are not foreseen, and there will be times when we must face the truth that the world we live in isn't always pretty and there may be difficult choices for us to make regarding those truths. No matter how hard they try to worm their way into every facet of our lives, there will be times when the government isn't around to offer their "help".

The varied departments of the government don't do one thing to make me feel secure, much less offer me any actual security. When someone is committed to their cause, it doesn't matter if they are carrying a knife, a box opener, a corkscrew or a pointy nail file. Serious damage can be done with something as mundane as a ring of keys or a ball-point pen, yet they don't (yet) prevent you from carrying these things on board with you. It's simply ridiculous to think that they can throw more and more legislation at the problem, remove more and more liberties in the process, and think that it will all just go away.

The quote? That was Osama bin Laden, though I suspect that he may have meant it a little differently than I do.

In North Carolina, we have "no excuse" early voting. Essentially it means that we have a time period (I think it's a couple weeks) prior to election day, and at any time during that time period, we can go in and vote, no questions asked. This year, somewhere around 1 million people have used the system.

Frankly, I think it's cool. Why in the world would we want to strap ourselves to the single-day method? It's not like there's anything special about the first Tuesday in November, and if someone decides that there is, how about ending the two-week period on that day? If nothing else, it should save schools from having to schedule teacher workdays to handle everyone's voting on a single day. It should also greatly reduce stress on any counting of the votes. They could even be reviewed in that time.

Of course, one worry would be the condition of the voter. Namely, if you have a couple weeks to vote, what happens if you cast a vote a week before they votes are tallied, and then die? Hey, it could happen. It has happened. I'm sure it happens more frequently than we might suspect. But the same thing could happen in a single-day voting period. There are going to be people who vote on the way to work in the morning and get in a wreck on their way home in the afternoon.

I can't imagine that this number is statistically significant.

So I've felt a certain tug to try del.icio.us. There's a similar tug for flickr, but I've been able to keep that one at bay for the time being.

For del.icio.us, I even wrote a quick extension because I didn't like the way their bookmarks worked in Firefox and I didn't like the existing del.icio.us extension. Too much stuff for my tastes. Perhaps I just don't know how to use the service, and that's where I get stuck.

I think I have some more insight into the number line mystery. While browsing books at the thrift store today, it came to me quite suddenly that I had some idea about the extra numbers found on this line in some books.

Not that it matters, but this particular line came from a Harry Potter book - specifically, The Prisoner of Azkaban.

Like Scoble and half a dozen others that have blogged about it recently, I now have the Audiovox SMT 5600 from AT&T Wireless. Their price on the phone is listed as $199 with a two-year agreement, but I only have a one-year agreement and it was $199.

Actually $149 after an online user rebate of $50. I ordered the phone late Tuesday, it arrived yesterday afternoon via Fedex and I just received a text message that my number was transferred successfully from Sprint PCS. I'm impressed at the speed.

Everyone knows about the Ashlee Simpson stink. Some may be too young to remember Milli Vanilli. Now even The Donald is getting into the act. Viewers of the second season of The Apprentice should have no problem hearing his voiceovers, most obviously in the boardroom. Last night's show had one in the scene where Trump spoke to the candidates from the "plane" that obviously had some extra work added.

Haven't noticed yet? Pay extra attention while the camera is not focused on Trump, yet he is speaking. Close your eyes if you have to. It's quite apparent that tracks are added after the fact. Or before the fact perhaps. Let's just say that they are not quite live.

In my never-ending quest to (attempt to) present things in a more organized fashion, I've decided that it's time for another category.

I originally created Linkedelica (then called Geeks Only or something similar) as a catch-all category for links that I happened to find now and again.

But I've noticed an increasing amount of entries on television. Most specifically The Amazing Race, but there are some others in there too. While most of these ended up in Linkedelica, they didn't fit particularly well. I do like to try and keep topics grouped together, and while these entries included links, they were about television, not just miscellaneous links that I happened to find.

I'm also closing in on my next birthday (number 35, about 6 weeks, plenty of time to send gifts), and it adds up to one more factor. Namely, I don't want to be any more un-cool than I already am. I need to get jiggy with it. Or something.

And with that, I introduce the newest category to Don't Back Down: Televizzle.

We just saw an advertisement while watching Survivor - the new season of The Amazing Race starts November 16 with a two hour special. I don't think it showed a time, so I'm not sure if it's 8 to 10 or 9 to 11. The site shows that it's on Tuesdays at 9, so I'd assume it will run 9 to 11, and that it will be on Tuesday for the duration.

I don't know if anyone else notices, but at least two companies - Home Depot and Wal-Mart - established a sort of branding with their plastic shopping bags. You know, those cheap ones into which your stuff goes when you visit the checkout counter.

Home Depot's have always (at least in recent memory) been a sort of brownish color. I think orange might be better, but perhaps the added expense isn't worth it. Wal-Mart's have always (again, in recent memory) been blue.

So I went to Wal-Mart yesterday and it took me until I was back in the car before I noticed that their bags had changed! They are now white, which as you may know is probably the most common color for this sort of bag, providing no differentiation at all.

Now it's entirely possible that these companies never looked at their plastic bags as advertisment in the first place. But if that's the case, why did they ever color them, much less put their names across the bags? No, I think they are an advertising tool.

We can look at our collection of saved bags and tell where we've been recently - an overwhelming amount of blue would mean we had been to Wal-Mart far too often, while a lot of brown would say that we had been engaged on many home projects. The bags could also serve as a reminder of needing to return to make yet another purchase.

So assuming these are advertising tools, why did Wal-Mart switch? Perhaps they want Wal-Mart to be associated with the generic bag market - figuring that if they associate white with Wal-Mart, they'll see way more people thinking Wal-Mart when they see white bags. I don't think that will work. They won't stand out any longer.

Maybe the motivation was instead due to cost. I have no idea of the cost of producing blug bags, but I can see that if it costs one hundred thousandth of a cent less to product the white bags, a giant like Wal-Mart will save millions.

Is it worth the trade off? Dunno. Maybe I'm the only one who ever notices things like this. But if Wal-Mart starts losing sales, you heard it here first.