My old domain name officially expires today. If for some strange reason you are still using Qangaroo.com to get here, or are still emailing me using a Qangaroo.com email address, it isn’t going to work anymore. From now on you’ll have to use JoeyDay.com.

A lot of my Internet account names used to be Qangaroo. Now I’m in the process of switching them over to variants of my name. If you have me on your Instant Messenger program, you should only send messages to my new identity and delete the old one (I won’t be using the old ones anyway so you shouldn’t ever see them online). If you are interested in adding me to your IM list, email me your contact info, and I’ll reply with mine (assuming I know who you are). Those of you who are already on my list should have received the new address by now through your IM program.

Have you heard of the new “Do Not Call” list that has been created by the FTC? President Bush kicked it off on Friday, and since then over 10 million people have signed up.

Here are a few good articles:
Anti-Telemarketing List Opens for Registration
Thousands Sign Up for Anti-Telemarketing List
10 Million Sign Up for ‘Do Not Call’ List

Now, I know this all sounds great. No more dinner-time interruptions, no more people mispronouncing your name when you answer the phone, and no more people wasting your cell phone minutes to sell you something you don’t need. However, does anyone agree with me that this is a violation of first amendment rights?

It looks like the government has gone to great lengths to keep charities and non-profit organizations off the list, but according to a recent survey, many people are saying they’d like the list to cover all telemarketers and that they’d like similar programs instituted for spam email.

The problem happens when you try to draw the line between what is telemarketing and what isn’t. Could girl scouts get fined for calling people to sell cookies? Could I get fined someday for sending my friend an email? I think door-to-door salesmen are even more annoying than telemarketers. Will the government stop allowing those people to do their jobs, too?

The fact is, we all have to make a living somehow, and telemarketing (as strange as this seems) is an inexpensive and effective way for businesses to find customers. What would you do if the government made laws against the way you make your living? 

Every weekend, Janene and I visit with Granny (Janene’s mother’s mother). Granny has some health issues (she’s been using oxygen on and off for the past several weeks) and she doesn’t have many visitors, so it is a good time to keep her company and dispell the loneliness that creeps its way in during the week. Granny always has a jigsaw puzzle on hand, and we have probably helped her put together three or four of them (most over 700 pieces, and one that had 1000). Jigsaw puzzling has sortof become our weekend tradition.

All that changed last night. Janene had never seen Princess Bride, so I decided it would be fun if we watched it with Granny. We took the movie over there and had pizza and soft drinks—sortof a little pizza party. After Princess Bride Granny suggested we pop in The King and I. Stuart and Shilo recently invited Janene and me to see the musical live at Hale Center Theatre. We both thought it would be interesting to see the video, so we went ahead and watched the first half. As it was playing, I thought about how fun it would be to watch all the classic movies: The Sound of Music, The Music Man, Fiddler on the Roof, Gone with the Wind, etc. When I suggested that to Granny, she seemed delighted.

It’s fun to see her get excited about all of that. She couldn’t stop commenting during The King and I. She really was familiar with the story and reminisced about how much cleaner movies were back then. I’ve always looked forward to our weekends with Granny, but even more now that we’ve started a new tradition. 

I’ve finally recreated the Friends section. It was lost when I moved from Hosting Matters over to Onsmart. Nobody seems to have thrown a big stink about it being gone, but I’m glad it’s back up.

The only complaint I did receive was an automatic message sent by a bot that was trying to traverse the site. I guess the bot was programmed to send a message when it encountered a broken link, which I suppose is kindof polite. I already knew about the problem though, so it wasn’t very helpful. 

I was just chatting with a friend over AOL Instant Messenger. It was the most whacked out conversation I’ve ever had in my life. Neither of us realized for the first half an hour that the entire conversation was being delayed by about ten minutes. I was trying to respond intelligently to his comments and questions, but little did I realize he had made them five minutes ago and wouldn’t receive my answers for another five minutes. He kept saying things that just didn’t make any sense. I really worried that he was smoking crack or something.

Later I was able to piece the whole conversation back together and realized that he wasn’t just acting crazy. He was really trying hard to reply to my comments, but he probably thought I was smoking something too. We’re talking now over MSN Messenger and it seems to be working fine, but that was sure weird.