Quick question for you domain-registration junkies: There’s a domain I really, really want. For the purposes of this post, let’s call it Acme.com.
For the last 10 years, it’s been owned by a company called Acme Corp. It made sense for them to own it. But about five years ago, Acme Corp. changed its name and brand to something new. Since then, Acme.com has just been a placeholder page, with a few lines saying “Acme Corp. is now Blahblah Corp. Visit our new web site at Blahblah.com.”
Did I mention I really want to own this Acme.com?
So today, on a whim, I go to Acme.com. There’s nothing there. Not a 404 error — just IE’s standard “We can’t find www.acme.com” error, the one it throws off when you go to an unregistered domain.
So I ran a quick whois to see what’s up. Turns out that Acme Corp. — on purpose or by mistake — has let Acme.com expire. It expired on June 3.
I immediately try to register it. But alas, my registrar (Dotster) tells me the domain name is taken! I try another couple registrars, and they tell me the same thing — it’s taken. But the whois entry (verified at several whois servers) clearly says Acme Corp.’s claim on the domain has expired, and the site is clearly gone.
What can I do? Is there some sort of rule on a window of time after a domain expires when someone can renew? Do I need to jump through any special hoops to get this domain? Help me out, people, I’m dying over here! I need this domain!
Anyone who can help me get this domain gets $20 and a six-pack of beer.
Category: Uncategorized
chandawatch, wimbledon 04
The return of ChandaWatch! Chanda Rubin — professional tennis star and one-time high school classmate of your proprietor — is getting ready to start another run at Wimbledon. You may remember from recent ChandaWatches that Our Hero is having knee problems, which has dropped her down to the 17th seed — the lowest she’s faced in a major in recent years. But she’s fared well on grass in the past (winning Wimbledon in juniors, winning the Eastbourne tuneup the last two years), so there’s hope as long as her various hinges remain operational.
Anyway, she’ll face Francophile Marion Bartoli in the first, with Maria Elena Camerin and Ai Sugiyama likely to follow. If the knee is holding up, she can beat the higher-seeded Ai, no problem. Then would come Dementieva and probably some trouble.
slimecon 2004
Hey, children of the ’80s! Did you while away childhood hours watching You Can’t Do That On Television, Canada’s greatest export south of the 49th parallel? Did you ever, even once, in elementary school giggle when someone said “I don’t know” because your youthful imagination pictured a bucket of green slime pouring down on his/her head?
Well, if you’re still living in the first Reagan administration — and after this month’s hagiography, who isn’t? — SlimeCon 2004 is for you! Yes, you can finally (a) have an excuse to fly to scenic Ottawa, (b) see what comedic genius Les Lye looks like with white hair, or (c) ask Christine “Moose” McGlade what her motivation was in some random 1983 episode.
Hey, I loved YCDTOTV as much as the next kid. But it’s been 20 years. Perhaps it might be time for some people to move on. Check out this clip of the “best” of SlimeCon 2002. Gotta love the awkward intros of past cast members, particularly the guy who you can tell is thinking: “I wonder if anyone will notice I’ve gotten enormous in the last 25 years.”
research labs story
Just because I never linked to it, here’s my story from Thursday’s paper, about network security problems in Texas’ research labs.
kris cox rox
Can I give a shout out to Kris Cox? Kris and I went to school together, he two years ahead of me. Now he’s two shots off the lead at the U.S. Open.
I’m telling you — between him and women’s tennis star Chanda Rubin, my small town Louisiana high school (enrollment 240, grades 6-12) has produced more than its share of athletic talent.
long winters tour diary
John Roderick’s tour diary:
This version of American history is very popular among high-school sophomores who love Jim Morrison, Antioch dialectics-majors, Germans with “Crazy Horse” tattoos, and New York fashion models whose boyfriends’ friends read “Dude, Where
no french speakers in la
The MLA Language Map tracks the linguistic makeup of American places. In other words, it is a database, derived from census data, of who speaks what languages where.
Regular readers of this site know I’m a proud Cajun and very interested in all things related to language persistence. Just a few decades ago — until World War II — Cajuns were almost entirely Francophone. (Some spoke English, too, but only to talk to those damned Anglos.) The rise of a national popular culture and a host of economic factors have since pushed French to the sidelines.
(To put this in my family’s context, my great-grandmother, Oureline Dugas Mouton, died in 1988 without knowing a word of English. My grandmother Mazie grew up speaking only French and didn’t learn English until grade school — but she barely spoke any French in her last few years. My mother knows enough French to get by, but hasn’t used it in conversation for years. And by the time I was a kid, French was the language the old people spoke when they didn’t want you to understand what they were saying. So while I took French class in school, my language skills are mediocre.)
Anyway, I used the MLA site to run a few numbers for Louisiana. This is the sad result.
You’ll notice that there are still 194,314 French speakers in Louisiana — the largest total of any state and more than one-tenth of all French speakers nationally. That’s still a lot more than the second-largest minority language in Louisiana — Spanish, which has 105,189 speakers.
But look at the age breakdown on that chart. Among children aged 5 to 17, there are 16,395 who speak French at home. But there are 20,689 who speak Spanish at home.
In other words, among today’s children, French isn’t even Louisiana’s secondmost popular language. And this is in a state with a relatively tiny Hispanic population.
Depressing — particularly with all the evidence out there about the benefits of being bilingual. At some point, folks Zachary Richard — who tie concepts of Cajun identity with the persistence of the language — are going to have to realize that battle is already lost. If a Cajun identity is going to persist, it’ll have to do so separate from the language.
random links post mazie
Just because I have to get back to regular posting someday:
– Announcing Mumkin, the newest addition to the clipfile.org family of weblogs. It’s run by the lovely and talented Abby Wood — Harvard Law student, crabwalk.com reader, ex-Dallasite, and one-time-long-ago blind date of mine. Abby is working at USAID in Egypt this summer. Remember that sunscreen, Ab!
– JustConcerts.com, the CBC‘s online catalog of recent Canadian concerts. Mostly indie rock, including crabwalk.com faves like Calexico, the Decemberists, and the Weakerthans. (By the way, the Weakerthans‘ Left and Leaving is absolutely wonderful. Couldn’t stop listening to it last week. Track 11, in particular.)
Anyway, combine the RealAudio streams from JustConcerts.com and something like Audio Hijack and you’ve got lots of new good material for your iPod. (Audio Hijack rocks. Great for recording This American Life or other NPR shows for a long drive, too.)
– Sorority Girls From Hell, a fast-talking blast from the 1980s and the 1950s — at the same time!
– Pitchformula.com, in which a data network engineer tries to algorithmically determine what Pitchforkmedia.com wants in an album.
– My column from last Monday, since I didn’t get a chance to link to it then.
– Beulah is breaking up. Glad I caught them a couple weeks ago.
back in dallas
I’m back in Dallas. Thanks again to all of you who have called or emailed. I really appreciate it. Something approaching regular crabwalk.com life will return soon.
howard swindle dies
A thousand thank yous to those of you who’ve called, emailed, sent flowers, or in some way let me know you were thinking of Mazie and me. I’m doing about as well as I could be, I imagine. Funeral’s tomorrow. Tomorrow night will hopefully bring a long night’s sleep.
Hopefully I’ll be up to writing more about Mazie sometime soon. But in the meantime, I want to point out that Howard Swindle died a few hours after Mazie. From 2000 until he entered hospice care a couple months ago, Howard sat across the aisle from me at the Morning News. Let me tell you, that man was a hell of a journalist. Overhearing his phone calls was a journalistic education — he could get anybody to tell him anything. And he was an honest man with an underdog’s spirit. These three grafs in the DMN obit tell the story:
“One of his secrets to getting information was that he was so likeable,” said Eric Miller, a former colleague. Mr. Miller, now an investigator in Washington, said he learned from Mr. Swindle that the soft-sell works. “He never talked down to people, and treated everyone with respect, whether they lived in trailer parks or mansions. I marveled at how he could get anyone to talk.”
[Managing editor Stu] Wilk said he, too, was struck by Mr. Swindle