01/05/26 Class action suit filed against Microsoft
01/05/24 Independents Day
01/05/22 Kaycee Nicole (3)
01/05/21 Kaycee Nicole (2)
01/05/20 Kaycee Nicole (1)
01/05/18 Flying lessons
01/05/13 Douglas Adams dead
01/05/11 Time flies...
01/05/03 Ageless
Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, P.L.L.C., ("Cohen Milstein"), known for taking on some of the nation's most powerful corporations, and Johnnie Cochran of Cochran, Cherry, Givens, and Smith, P.C. have filed a Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle against Microsoft Corporation alleging a pattern and practice of race and sex discrimination against African Americans and female salaried employees in violation of the federal civil rights laws.
Cohen Milstein - Microsoft Race and Sex Discrimination
INDEPENDENTS DAY is a worldwide event celebrating independent content and design on the web. It's supported by an informal network of designers, artists, writers, editors, developers, and producers who create content primarily to enrich the web rather than their bank accounts.
The Kaycee Nicole (Swenson) FAQ
Kuro5hin - good summary
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There are stories making the rounds on the Internet, on web pages, on message boards and in e-mails. Child takes saved nickles and dimes and goes to shop with grandmother to buy present for Mama. Child sees wonderful present but fears it will be too expensive. Child hands over saved pocket money to shop assistant. Child doesn't have enough money to pay for the present, but grandmother pays the rest without the child noticing. Present is taken home, and presented to Mama. It's the last present child can give her, because a week later she's died of a debilitating illness. Child is grateful for having been able to give the present and see Mama happy.
There's a pattern to these stories. There's always a twist at the end, where all pieces of the puzzle suddenly fall in place. And the twist is always used to help the message, the moral lesson, hit home. Sometimes the message is explicitly christian; in all cases it propagates traditional family values. And the stories never mention any names, dates or places.
Maybe this sounds like I dislike these stories, but I don't. They're often quite well-written, and I appreciate the time and energy these people expend on posting something positive and uplifting to the Internet. But I wouldn't for a moment take these stories seriously.
These stories were what the earliest entries in Kaycee Nicole's weblog reminded me of. There were even one or two stories that I vaguely remembered seeing elsewhere.
The latest entries reminded me of something an art critic once wrote about the forgeries of Han van Meegeren. Han van Meegeren was a mid-twentieth century painter, who made a number of paintings that were supposed to be by Vermeer. The art critic wrote that one reason the forgeries were discovered was that the paintings looked too perfectly like what an audience in that period would expect a Vermeer to look like. I had the same feeling about this weblog.
Well, it seems like something resembling the thruth has begun to emerge.
Originally there were two weblogs, one by Kaycee Nicole and one by her mother. Last night, her mother posted in her weblog: Her name was not Kaycee and she was not my daughter, but I loved her as if she had been. And I grieve her loss. The blog was about the lives of three people who suffered, one with breast cancer, one with leukemia, and one with Liver cancer. Each were strong, vibrant, and loving individuals. Each were real. Each died much too soon.
Which still leaves many questions unanswered. There are several web pages, supposedly built by Kaycee. Kaycee was a presence on more than one message board, and people claim to have met her there, exchanged e-mails with her, and to have received presents from her. The owner of the site were both weblogs were located claims to have spoken to both Kaycee and her mother on the phone.
Over the past two days I've watched the Kaycee Nicole discussions unfold on Metafilter, and it's been fascinating. I'm sure these discussions have been a deciding factor in bringing about the confession. If that's what it was - the truth may still be out there.
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During the day I saw this Metafilter thread go from twenty-odd posts to more than eighty. I had never heard of Kaycee Nicole until someone posted about her death in a weblog that I read regularly. Apparently she was a 19-year old suffering from leukemia, whose weblog many people found inspirational.
Metafilter 7819
01/05/18 Flying lessons (journal)
I feel strangely affected by the death of someone I've never met in my life. I re-read the Hitchiker and Dirk Gently books every once in a while, and I laugh at all the jokes even if, by now, I see them coming a page in advance. 49 is way too young. The world is an emptier place without him.
H2G2
H2G2/U42
Author Douglas Adams dies
OK, I've been busy - mainly not doing things that I should have been doing. That can take up amazing amounts of time and I'm getting really good at it.
This site has been online for more than two years now, the weblog for more than one year, and I'm thinking about where to go from here. One idea I'm toying with is to try something new in the web log: discussing one site at the time, writing an in-depth review and including a screen shot.
Talking about screen shots, here's some site history. Perhaps I've actually learned something.
Site history
It's my birthday tomorrow. And I'm ageless.
Ageless
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