samuraipanda.com

Years ago, I owned the domain MySquash.com after trying to find something interesting (I started with apricot). That domain lasted for about 2 years and then I abandoned it for samuraipanda.com because I realized it sounded pretty strange. Samuraipanda was a unique, mish-mash of cultures (Japanese and Chinese, respectively) that could create an image in peoples minds. It also had 12 characters in it, an intimidating domain length and one not easily fitted to most forms. But I stuck with it. Lately, though, I’ve been furstrated by it’s length. I’m using tools to auto-complete it for me on computers (AHK and TextExpander), but that still means I have to spell it out for others (“No, not …uri, …urAi. Yes, as in the sword guy. Panda…P.A.N.D.A…Panda. Yes, one word. .com… .COM”). And often it doesn’t fit in space afforded me on various forms (nothing like getting to the Panda and realizing you’re at the end of the page. “I’ll just put the .com underneath”). It’s a bit unwieldy.

So I started looking for smaller domains. Ideally it would be a word, but squatters have used dictionaries to grab all the good english names. I tried other languages. Most of the western languages that are easy for Americans to pronounce (much less spell) are also taken. Inspired by Ubuntu, I went African, but that’s like going Indian. There’s dozens of African languages and dialects. I did snag babayetu.com (Our Father, in Swahili), but it didn’t quite click (though it might still). It is 8 characters long though. A couple months ago I was reading up on Taoism and stumbled across the three virtues: Kindness, Simplicity, and Modesty. Taking the first two letters from each word, I snagged KiSiMo.com (.org, and .net). It was only 6 letters. I would have preferred humor instead of modesty, but kisiHo doesn’t sound right. Then today I was writing my status report and couldn’t remember my team name, so I put weoni (what ever our name is) as a place holder and thought “hmm, that’s an interesting domain possibility”. A quick jump to godaddy and I saw it was free. I promptly requested weoni .com, .org, and .net. A 5 letter domain name is a pretty good find, especially when you can say it out (We-Oh-Ni) and it sounds almost Native American. I could say it meant anything (“It’s Swahili for Great Lover. The Oh is for Oooohhhhh”). But I knew what it actually meant. And being the grammatical person that I am, it didn’t feel right. Was “What Ever” one or two words. I’d seen both (and generally used the singular version). A quick check of the web found this rule on bartleby.com:

"You can use either whatever or what ever in sentences"

I thought, cool, I’d gotten it right. But I continued reading to this line:

"However, you must use the one-word form when whatever is used as an adjective"

Damn.

I’d used it wrong. “What ever our name is” is incorrect. “Our Name” is the noun, “Whatever” is the adjective. The correct way to write it is “whatever our name is”, woni. And of course, like any pronounceable 4-letter domain, woni.com is taken. I doubt I’d want it. Is it pronounced Woo-Ni, Whan-I? The first is easly confused with who-ni and I don’t want to be clarifying it all the time (“Woo, not Who. No, not as in Doctor Who, Woo as in Woooo, like a ghost would make”). It’s the same reason I don’t use the word “chains” in a domain. It sounds too much like “change”.

I hate domain names. I’ll stick with samuraipanda.com for now. Twelve letter and all.

I received an email today from Lars Larson (I’m on his mailing list. I really shouldn’t listen to him when I work from home and send in email comments). Anyway, it was his endorsement of Mitt Romney for president. Actually it wasn’t so much an endorsement of the qualities of Romeny as the things he doesn’t like about McCain (who he calls Juan McCain). Among the things he hings he holds against McCain is limits on getting information to protect the US, e.g. not allowing torture. This got me a little irritated. Torture is a bit of a pet peev of mine, given that it only really works as a plot device in movies and TV shows. You put anyone under enough torture and you can get them to say anything. Drop Lars on a water board and in 5 minutes he’ll be praising Allah and the Gay Marriage Movement in the same, sputtered, breath.

So I sent him an email (which I completely bungled in editing of the first part so it doesn’t read well), which he responded with:

Yep. I do. if we have to torture a thousand terrorists to protect this country, it’s worth it

Of course this just pushes my buttons even more. A “thousand terrorists” could easily be 999 innocent people and 1 terrorist, but people like Lars Larson assume that those they believe are terrorists are going to be terrorists because they couldn’t be wrong. When you watch shows like 24, the protaganist is always doing what needs to be done on the people who have the information. They are never wrong about their assumptions, so their actions are justified (though I haven’t watch 24 in a couple of seasons). In the real world, people are wrong, so if even one innocent is tortured in the name of “protecting the country”, you have to ask yourself if you really want to live like that.

So I responded to his message with my stock response. How far was he willing to take the torture? We know that he’d physically torture, I’m sure he’d emotionally do it. I asked him if he was willing to play Russian Roulette with the kid of someone he labeled terrorist to get the information he “needed to protect this country”. Once you start down this path, it’s easy to take just one more step each time a “terrorist” is put in front of you. But it’s people like Lars Larson who don’t understand this. They sit there behind their microphone and call for any action necessary to protect this country not realizing that some of those actions are going to destroy what makes this country great.