After a very long hiatus, I've decided to start this blog back up since I once again find myself in a job with little to do. I know all you folks I've been spamming via email will appreciate this. Welcome back to my tiny bits!

you guys have been hearing about how viacom's suing left & right over people posting video of their shows to youtube? here's the latest ridiculousness (found at /.):

Chris Knight writes "I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including this one with a 'Star Wars' theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show 'Web Junk 2.0.' Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. I thought that Aries Spears's commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. I just got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on their copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!"

another tidbit from /.:

"China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. This article is both hilarious and sad, looking at the lengths to which a government will go to regulate thought through censorship. It also goes into some of the more subtle politics of the current 72-year-old Dalai Lama as he thinks about his political and spiritual successor. The Dalai Lama 'refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under Chinese control.'"

in my ever-growing desperation to control my metabolism, i've started running (again). a nytimes article suggests that i may be faster than ever as i grow older. anyone want to run with me? i'm up to being able to run for 15 whole minutes straight now. wow. goal is to reach 25 minutes in the next couple of weeks. that's about 2 miles for slow poke me. once it cools off outside, that may be 2.5 miles!

austin is being sold to california which may or may not bug you. but the response of at least one austinite is very embarrassing for me - ""California is more fast-paced. It's more about 'me,' you know, 'me, me, me, what can I get, what can I do?"" Beall said he knows all this, because he once went to California for his daughter's college graduation."