Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

I like this picture I took Friday evening from Dave C”s hotel room.

Where were we?

I”m pretty fascinated by the fact that a huge stash of Paris Hilton”s private photos, videos, diaries, etc. have been turned into a gawker/porn site after being auctioned off to settle a mini-storage bill. Talk about the perfect marriage of celebrity obsession and technology.

And surely lots will be written about all this. But what interested me - ok, it”s not the only thing that interested me - was reading through the site”s terms of service. I suppose it”s somewhat standard at adult sites to have to agree to things like:

“I VOLUNTARILY CHOOSE TO ENTER THIS WEBSITE BECAUSE I WANT TO VIEW, READ AND/OR HEAR THE VARIOUS MATERIALS WHICH ARE AVAILABLE, FOR MY OWN PERSONAL ENJOYMENT, INFORMATION AND/OR EDUCATION. MY CHOICE IS A MANIFESTATION OF MY INTEREST IN SEXUAL MATTERS WHICH, I BELIEVE, IS BOTH HEALTHY AND NORMAL AND WHICH, IN MY EXPERIENCE, IS GENERALLY SHARED BY AVERAGE ADULTS IN MY COMMUNITY. I AM FAMILIAR WITH THE STANDARDS IN MY COMMUNITY REGARDING THE ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH SEXUALLY ORIENTED MATERIALS, AND THE MATERIALS I EXPECT TO ENCOUNTER ARE WITHIN THOSE STANDARDS. IN MY JUDGMENT, THE AVERAGE ADULT IN MY COMMUNITY ACCEPTS THE CONSUMPTION OF SUCH MATERIALS BY WILLING ADULTS IN CIRCUMSTANCES SUCH AS THIS WHICH TAKE REASONABLE AND PRUDENT MEASURES TO INSULATE THE MATERIALS FROM MINORS AND UNWILLING ADULTS, AND WILL NOT FIND SUCH MATERIALS TO APPEAL TO A PRURIENT INTEREST OR TO BE PATENTLY OFFENSIVE.”

Sure.

But what I figure is fairly unique to this particular site is this piece of the TOS:

PROHIBITED ACCESS AREAS
All of the following areas constitute PROHIBITED AREAS from which no part of the website may be accessed, viewed, downloaded or otherwise received:

A. All parts of the United States of America;

B. All parts of the following countries: Afghanistan, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, The Republic of China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Syria, The United Arab Emirates; and

C. All parts of every other geophysical place corresponding to a political entity or part thereof in which the access, viewing, downloading or other use of materials at the website would, or could reasonably, constitute a violation of any law, regulation, rule or custom. YOU shall at no time access, view, download, receive or otherwise use, or cause or enable any other person or entity to access, view, download, receive or make use of any portion of said Content, directly or indirectly in places where COMPANY does not authorize such access, viewing, downloading, receipt or other use, including but not limited to “Restricted Areas.” As used herein, “Restricted Areas” means the following geographical areas: any nation, state or province or portion thereof where the access, viewing, downloading or any other use of the Content would, or could reasonably, be a violation of any civil or criminal law, governmental regulation or court decision.

That”s right. You agree not to access the site from the United States - or what sounds like the rest of the civilized world.

I have to assume this is an attempt to deflect liability from the people who bought Paris” tittie pictures by “prohibiting” anybody from accessing the site from any jurisdiction that might lend some rights to Paris to not have her tittie pictures sold by somebody else.

But I wonder how well this kind of shielding attempt will work - especially considering the default country shown in the signup form is, in fact, the United States. I”ll be interested to see how this thing plays out.

For the sake of those fine Googlefied folks who view the Wisdom as an Acura TL blog, I wanted to post my suggestion on how to get Sirius into an Acura TL (which also happens to be the way I put Sirius in my TL). Biggest upside of my install - no brackets or other attachment apparatus required. Cool.

I put my Sirius Starmate in the lower center console tray to see how it would look, and I discovered it sat really nicely there with no kind of permanent attachment:

The power plug on the right (I shaved down the top a little to get a good fit) creates a good backstop for that side, and the plugs on the left rest nicely against the edge of the tray there. All of the wires (antenna, power, cassette adapter) live happily behind the unit in the tray:

The best thing about this approach is that if I want to hide the unit for some reason, I can just unplug the wires, push them back in the bottom tray and put the unit in the top tray:

I happened to already have a Starmate, so this worked perfect for me. They sell a different unit that”s the same size but dark grey, which would look real nice in the ebony interior.

As for the stereo interface, I was going to go with the FM modulator, but it was a real hassle to get to the antenna connector … and I have this cassette player for some reason, so I decided to use it. It”s a short hop between the cassette slot and the trim covering the console, so just a little dab of tape holds the wire down nicely (looks better outside of the harsh light of a flash):

Lastly, I decided to try an interior-mount for the satellite antenna, and so far so good. I live in the city, so I have a really strong terrestrial signal, but I”ll see how reception is out in the middle of nowhere on a trip this weekend. In most instances, I think it”ll work fine:

The benefit of this is that by putting the antenna on the dash inside the windshield, I got to keep 100% of the install within the console and the dash. I drilled one hole in the side of the bottom trays for the wires, but otherwise it”s a quick and easy uninstall. And the only break-down I had to do was the side of the console and driver”s under-dash parts (which you have to take off to get to the side of the console, anyway).

Hope this helps anybody thinking of a Sirius rig in a TL. Pardon the interruption, regular Wisdom readers.

The big news in EAV today is that the Homeless Hovel - aka 462 Flat Shoals Avenue - owned by Inman Park Properties has finally been torn down. Just six short years after buying one of the biggest eyesores in East Atlanta - rivaled by the John B. Gordon School, of course (another Inman Park Properties property) - and several months after first promising to tear it down (in the wake of some code violation citations), Jeff Notrica has finally taken the building down. Here”s the excavator finishing up the work today:

So well done. Mr. Notrica. Now just send that big claw machine down to the East Atlanta Lock & Key and B&W markets (now claiming the No. 2 and No. 3 spots in the “worst Inman Park Properties in East Atlanta” category) if you don”t mind.

Of course, it”ll be interesting to see how long the former hovel sits there undeveloped. Notrica owns the lot its on and the lot next to it, so there”s a lot of potential - another six years down the road?

Coupled with the pretty decent clean-up job Inman Park has begun to do on its East Atlanta properties, the action happening to open at least one restaurant in Inman Park”s Glenwood strip and small hints that something might actually happen with the old Tucker Automotive on Flat Shoals, Mr. Notrica is starting to improve his image in East Atlanta. But he has a long way to go.

I don”t know if it”s community pressure or the realization that his recent investments - more than $4.5 million for the Ace Hardware property and the Glenwood strip spaces in the last year - are harmed by neglectful landlords (see mirror, Jeff), but Inman Park Properties is doing better by East Atlanta these days. I hope they continue to do so. I know an old Atlanta school building that could use some love …

I have to agree with the fine folks at TigerSmack that it”s pretty troubling that Les Miles was either lying about knowing what”s up with Ryan Perrilloux or is actually that clueless about what”s going on in his program.

We’re also a bit puzzled/irritated by LSU Head Football Coach Les Miles’ blatantly lying about his level of knowledge at yesterday’s press conference. As they say, we were born at night but not last night. Either a) Les Miles lied about how much he knew about the situation, or b) the man is even more clueless than his worst detractors claim he is and is wholly unqualified to be running a program of LSU’s stature. (Note that a and b are not mutually exclusive, but that’s a subject for another post.) Seems to us the man in the ridiculous hat could’ve simply said “I’m not going to comment on that situation at this time” and been done with it. We’re used to Miles and his staff lying about player injuries, and you can make an argument for that, but this isn’t the same thing.

I”m not sure which would be the worse reality here.