PewPew 2.0 - Blogs about psa

Vote Swag.

I voted on Sunday - I read the pamphlet and filled out my absentee ballot while Sunday Night Football was on. Then I ate a chocolate. But there are election-day freebies to be had today:

• Starbucks - Free brewed coffee
• Ben & Jerry's - Free ice cream cone (5-8pm)
• Krispy Kreme - Free Donut
• Lifehacker has compiled a list of other election swag offers.
• Babeland - Free ...erm, ...well. Actually, it's Not Safe for Work, or kitties, or those who were old enough to vote for Reagan. So, just forget I said anything, eh?

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It's called "Pro Bono".

And it doesn't mean that I'm in favor of U2's lead singer. Ha ha ha! But seriously, folks... I maintain a website for ReFIT - a Portland area non-profit organization who rebuilds and remodels homes for folks who need it. It's like 'Extreme Home Makeover' but less extreme and more poorly funded. They do good work anyway.

ReFIT is finishing up a re branding; they were formerly known as The Remodeler's Foundation. This required new logos, and a new website. Last February, I re-designed their site from a fugly circa 1996 design that someone's cousin had done. The new design was reasonably good looking, but the design was all table-based with images as link-effects. When I started learning serious CSS, with semantic markup for accessibility, I felt rather bad about that design. It was very inaccessible to the very people it offered to help!

I seized the rebranding as an opportunity to re-do the site, and do it right. It has been a couple months, but it's done, and you can see the ReFIT demo site here. Take a stroll around. (Don't get too silly - the email and donation form are live and will hit the client.) I'm very pleased with the resulting accessible and validating design. Also, no JavaScript! Anyhow, drop me a line if you see something odd. Enjoy!

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Pervert SOBs.

Last night I didn't even use the computer when I got home from work. I played video games on the couch until very late. It was wonderful.

I was going to talk about some foolishness, but instead I'm going to talk about Perverted Justice. This post is meant to horrify, elighten and energize you, especially those parents out there. Perverted Justice is an on-line organization (started here in Portland, incidentally) where adults set up underage profiles in chat-rooms and social networking sites, and wait for perverts / child molesters to proposition them. This occurs alarmingly frequently.

A couple years ago I worked with a fellow involved working for Perverted Justice. I saw him on T.V. luring the bastards to where police would arrest them. Where are you now, JeffMo? Today, driving home from work, I was reminded of their work when founder Xavier Von Erk was interviewed by tedious podcast Life Online. A frightening tidbit from the interview: the single most populous profession of perverts fingered by the site is teachers! I went to the PeeJ site, and read some of the chat logs for these guys. It's really scary stuff - they are master manipulators.

If you have any spare time, skills, or money, these folks are worthy recipients of your volunteer / activism work. Whew. That was some tough content, huh? How about some kitten pictures?

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Constant Vigilance.

I could have been T-Boned last week. But thanks to my driving instructor and my own paranoia, the Babydoll (Subaru Forester) and I are both fine.

I was stopped at a red light waiting to go straight. There was a separate left turn lane next to me with a big red van, also waiting for the green light. We got our green, so we started rolling forward.

While doing so, I took a peek down the left and right cross street, and saw nothing. I usually do this when I'm first into an intersection. It's a good habit since so many people do run red lights. I didn't notice anything, but I did see the red van stop, so I looked left again and saw a white van barrelling though the intersection. So I stopped and didn't get hit. After Runny-McRed-Light went though, I continued on my way.

It was no big deal at the time, but it's kinda scary in retrospect. That guy was hauling ass - obviously punching it to 'make the light' from his side. If he'd hit me, I'd have been in a bad way. I guess what I'm preaching here is constant vigilance - Mad Eye Moody style. After all, it's not paranoia if they really out to get you. And they are.

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Public Service Annoucement.

Here's a public service announcement: There is a vaccine against some strains of HPV, which is a reasonably high risk factor for cervical cancer. (Article) Hooray for modern medical science!

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