This seems about right

You can tell a lot about a President by how they choose to spend their retirement.

Although he wasn't the most effective President, Jimmy Carter has widely thought to have been one of the best ex-presidents, using his influence, fame and connections for a variety of good causes, most notably working (literally hammer-in-hand working) with Habitat for Humanity to build homes for needy folks.

Bill Clinton was not only a great President, he's been a great ex-President. His Clinton Foundation works tirelessly on a variety of good projects around the world, with a special emphasis on eradicating preventable diseases, like malaria.

And our most recent chief exec, George W. Bush? Ahh, Boy George never lets you down.

Probably the worst president in the last 100 years, he left his successor an economy in the crapper and two ongoing Middle East wars, what's he doing with his cachet as one of the most famous and well-connected men in the world? Surely something positive to try to make amends for his disastrous tenure.

He's going to fucking ballgames and taking part in a Guinness World Records stunt.

How about Most Seamless Transition from Worst President to Worst Ex-President, do they have that category?

Awww

The Democratic candidate won the special election in NY-26, the FIRST time a Dem has ever won that district, one of the most conservative congressional districts in New York State.

It's one of only 4 districts in New York that voted for McCain over Obama. It's an area where the Republicans have a 7-point voter registration advantage. It was a race in which right-wing special interest operations, like Karl Rove's thuggish group, outspent the Dems 2:1 in advertising.

And, ooops, they still lost.

Paul Ryan fail. Obama wins again.

Now we know why food prices went up

New York magazine has a fascinating behind the scenes look this week at the general sleaziness of Roger Ailes and his Fox News Channel, but one anecdote stands out.

It's a description of how Ailes was trying to recruit N.J. governor Chris Christie to enter the 2012 GOP Presidential race. (Because, you know, news channel chiefs do things like that.)

A few months ago, Ailes called Chris Christie and encouraged him to jump into the race. Last summer, he'd invited Christie to dinner at his upstate compound along with Rush Limbaugh, and like much of the GOP Establishment, he fell hard for Christie, who nevertheless politely turned down Ailes's calls to run.

Holy shit. Ailes, Limbaugh and Christie at one dinner table?

Can you imagine the poor chef and wait staff who had to serve that herd of lardasses.

Finally I get my miles

Only a mere EIGHT freakin' months after placing an order for Omaha Steaks through the Continental OnePass shopping site, I finally got the miles I was supposed to get.

Well, correction - half the miles. The bonus double points apparently won't be added for another 30 days.

It apparently takes 9 months for those.

And I loved how Continental tried to throw Omaha under the bus, saying the steakies had awarded the miles to another account. Hmmm, yeah, I don't think so. Omaha is always great to deal with. Continental, not so much.

But hey, the airline is merging with United. I'm sure becoming twice as big will make it much more responsive.

Couldn't resist

My favorite picture of Trump ever.

I really hope he throws his hat into the ring.

If only to keep that rat's nest on his head from doing that again.

Namecheap is making me nervous

There was a slight hiccup for a few days there as Too Saucy went off line. Ok, I haven't been posting to the blog as much as I used to, but, still, I'd sort of like it to be there whenever I go to it.

It happened when I switched domain registrars last week from GoDaddy (which is just sort of automatically assigned when you purchase a domain through Google Blogger and checkout) to Namecheap. The switch was because of the whole GoDaddy elephant slaughter thing.

Well, it turns out transferring is not as easy as they make it sound. In addition to having to jump through hoops to find the authentication code to release the domain to Namecheap, apparently you have to configure some things in the inner workings of the site too.

When I realized it was offline, I emailed Namecheap alerting them to this and trying to figure out what was wrong. Their first response was this beauty:

"Unfortunately, there are no host records for your domain at the server.

Please contact your hosting provider in order to resolve this issue.

In case you have been using your previous registrar's nameservers before the transfer of your domain to us, please do the following to switch domain to our default nameservers:

- Login to your Namecheap account;
- Click Domains -> manage domains;
- Click on the domain itself;
- In the left-hand menu click Transfer DNS To Web Host;
- Check "Use Namecheap Default DNS Servers";
- Click Save changes."

What the fuck?

Well, I actually managed to figure out how to get the DNS (whatever that is) transferred, but Too Saucy still wasn't online, so I emailed again, only to get this gem in reply:

"the reason for this is that the DNS assigned to godaddy does not allow us to have any control of the zone records. I see that the domain is now using our Dns however have you configured the domain to point where you once had it pointing?"

What the fuck?

Hey guys, the whole point of using the Blogger template is I don't need to know any of that tech stuff, and, frankly, I don't want to know any of that tech stuff.

Well, after a few emails and exasperated Twitter postings, a tech at Namecheap finally did the necessary changes for me, but, really people, if you're going to offer your service to people disgusted with GoDaddy, at least make it customer-friendly.

Why wasn't any of this stuff explained at the beginning of the transfer process? And surely you must know, a lot of bloggers don't deal with any of the tech stuff. Do you really think a lot of folks know about "DNS" and "zone records"?

And also use proper punctuation in your emails.

Another movie ruined

Why did Mel Gibson have to turn out to be such a wild-eyed, anti-semitic, racist, misogynist asshole? I was flipping through the channels and one of the movie stations was airing "Conspiracy Theory," a fun movie I haven't seen in a while (with Jean Luc Picard as a bad guy no less!) and would have liked to watch again. But I can't bear it now that this clown stars in it.

These right-wingers always ruin popular entertainment for me. I can't watch Frasier reruns now (and sometimes they're the only decent thing on at 2 am) because Kelsey Grammer is a right-wing wackjob.

Luckily I have always hated Chuck Norris and Donald Trump, so yeah, no loss there.

GoDaddy sucks

I'm in the process of changing the Too Saucy domain registrar from GoDaddy to Namecheap because the fuckhead who owns GoDaddy, an oh-so-brave fellow by the name of Bob Parsons, likes to go on elephant slaughters in Africa.

Wonkette has the story (as well as a disturbing video) and I'm switching the blog domain over to the registrar they use, Namecheap, which is doing it for half price for the next 24 hours.

Since I got the domain through Google apps and not directly from GoDaddy, I had to jump through a few hoops to get all the passwords and authorization codes, but it's worth it to send a message to this cretin.

Now, how do I get to boycott Donald Trump?

Where's a geek when you need him?

I really need my own IT department.

I'm fairly tech savvy. I can usually figure out the basics of smart phones and operating systems and wifi and all that good stuff. But there are so many choices now when it comes to phones it can get mind-boggling.

Part of the problem, of course, is the phone companies don't make it easy to compare, er, apples to apples - so to speak.

I'm a big fan of Google's Android operating system, which is now, by the way, the fastest growing phone OS in the world. I have the Motorola Droid, the OG Droid as it's called on the phone fan boards. I like it a lot, love the whole Google experience, the free GPS, ease of syncing contacts and calendar and documents with my desktop PC, etc.

But my two-year contract expires later this year so I want to upgrade. I'm staying with Verizon as they really do have the best network.

I'm eying the Motorola Droid Bionic. (Which, as an extra bonus, will run on Verizon's new 4G network.)

But do I really need 4G, which is faster, but more expensive. Is 3G enough anymore?

And now Verizon will sell the iPhone. I never would have considered the iPhone on the AT&T network, but I've played with it and it's a nice phone, but I really do like the Droid experience, so want to stay with it.

Except, here come the tablets, just to add more indecision into the mix. Is it worth getting one of them instead of a new phone? Keeping the OG, which works just fine, but doesnt have all the latest bells and whistles and probably won't be getting too many more Android system updates from Google? Two years is a lifetime for these smart phones.

And no doubt making me want it more than I already do, Motorola is supposedly airing a Super Bowl ad introducing their new XOOM tablet, which will run on the newest Android system which is dubbed Honeycomb. (Google calls its OS after desserts, each new version going up a letter in the alphabet. My Droid is on the version dubbed Frozen Yogurt. The Bionic will be on Gingerbread.)

Some tech sites are saying - gasp - the XOOM is much better than the iPad.

Do I get a new phone and a new tablet? And if I get a tablet, do I get wifi only or get it with a data plan? I'm already paying for a data plan on the damn phone. How much money do the bastards want!!! Sorry, Snapped for a moment there.

It would all be so much simpler if I had an unlimited budget to get everything.

That is a martini...

...painfully dry.

Omaha Steaks rocks! Continental Airlines not so much.

Why does Continental Airlines like to be so difficult?

I usually like them, I really do. They are one of my favorite airlines - probably second only to Virgin America, which I think has way better first class amenities but is more expensive, at least to Vegas.

But Continental seems to go out of its way to annoy.

I ordered some Omaha Steak several months ago and did it through the Continental OnePass shopping portal. The promo deal was 20 miles on my frequent flier account per dollar spent.

Naturally, Continental is disputing the points. Four months of repeated emails to investigate the missing points - nothing. Finally a vague email yesterday that they might not be valid. Sigh.

So today I contacted Omaha Steaks customer service department (which is always great) and they immediately sprang into action and said they would make it right. And I mean they responded within an hour of receiving my email, not weeks later like Continental usually does.

THAT'S how you take care of a loyal customer.

Omaha Steaks rocks! Continental - meh. (And I can only imagine it getting worse when the United merger goes through and they are bigger and even less responsive.)

Hey, Virgin America, how's your NY to Vegas schedule looking in February?

Blah

It is really, realllly hard to come back to a cold, snowy NYC after a week of tropical temperatures in Cancun.

Really hard.

That is all.

Gov. Christie is back in Jersey

Lardass is back in New Jersey after sitting out the big snow storm of '10 in Florida.

And, of course, in good right-wing, tea bagger fashion is blaming everybody but himself for the thousands of state residents being snowed under.

These people really disgust me, have you noticed?