This is such a horrendously bad idea

that I’m even posting about it on Super Sunday.

AOL and Yahoo! want to charge postage for e-mail.

Um, no thanks. And as much as I’ve enjoyed being used by Yahoo over the years, I will dump it like a hot potato if they ask for money for “preferential treatment” for any message I may wish to send.

They say they want to help fight spam (uh-huh) but AOL and Yahoo basically revolutionized the sending of spam, by making it so damn easy to get an e-mail address that even a robot could do it.

Now they want to blackmail users: Pay up, or our spam filters might block your message (oops!) since we can’t tell the difference between a legit message and a bogus one. My bad, but you have to pay!

Since they are using the USPS analogy, I guess they don’t mind oversight by the US government to regulate their rates, either.

(yes, this has struck a nerve; soon I’ll rant about the efforts to take the internet private, led by – you guessed it – the phone companies, who also don’t want our government meddling)

Feeling the breeze

This morning we went to practice, and it was going to be just me and my son (who is, you know, practicing). At the words “time to leave” the baby grabbed her shoes and claimed a car seat – referencing No Child Left Behind. So off we went.

Moments after we arrived, I knew something was wrong. Not with my son, he was busy learning advanced techniques and such, but with my daughter. Specifically, every two steps she had to reach down and pull up her pull-up.

She was wearing this dress, so it (the pull-up) kept falling down.

To her ankles.

Being the well-prepared father that I am, I of course did not bring a diaper bag or even a spare pullup. Or panties, for that matter. It quickly became clear that this thing was coming off – whether I was ready or not.

You have never seen a child so happy as one that can run around a gymnasium, flashing all of our friends and neighbors and more than a couple of my co-workers. She did everything but shout “I’m free!“