So . . . it’s like Netflix . . . but more expensive . . . with just TV and no movies . . . and you have to pay extra for apps to play it on your devices . . . and it still has advertisments. That warrants an extra unmotivated “Meh.”

There’s not one word about whether or not this new service will improve the quality of the service, namely the whisper-quiet audio on the shows and the ear-splitting volume of the advertising. We tolerate that on Hulu because it’s free. I really doubt users are going to be super stoked about parting with hard-earned cash to pay for repetitive noisy ads and TV shows that need to be put through a nuclear-powered amplifier to be heard.

Hulu Plus will probably feature TV shows sooner than Netflix, which has to wait for a show to come out on DVD before it can stream the content or ship it to your house on a disc. So what? There’s so much good stuff to catch up on that I don’t feel the need to keep up on shows as they come out. When TV was a one-shot deal, you had to tune in at the prescribed time. On-demand digital content has changed all of that. I don’t need to conform my schedule to the gods of the TV network. Like curling up with a good book, I can watch whatever I want, without ads to damage the narrative. Watching on-demand ad-free television has made an enormous change in my ability to enjoy a show. I can be ready to enjoy it, pause it when I need to, and can follow the development of plot and characters without having to listen to anybody pimp toothpaste and tampons every five minutes. I’m more likely to notice if a show is good or bad. I can disregard inferior content and save my valuable time by only watching the good stuff.

My standards for entertainment are raised. I’m not at the mercy of whatever happens to be on, and I can choose a service that doesn’t subject me to advertising. Hulu Plus, you will not get my cash for the service you are currently offering, and I suspect others will be similarly nonplussed. Hulu Plus isn’t offering anything I can’t get better and cheaper from Netflix. To put it more clearly: I’d torrent TV shows before I would pay ten bucks to watch ads. Hulu isn’t a bad deal, but it needs to decide what it wants to be. Hulu is currently the bargain bin of legal online entertainment. What’s on there is somewhat limited, but it’s free so we overlook its shortcomings. But if it wants to be a premium service, it shouldn’t half-ass the transition.

Hey, Hulu: drop the ads, offer a giant movie catalog, fix the audio issues and make your premium service truly premium by offering 1020p HD video. Oh, and knock three bucks off the price. Then maybe I’ll come back around to you.

So if I’m gonna pick somebody to turn things around, shouldn’t they show a reasonable grasp of 21st century technology? Our kids are lagging in math, science and technology. If a candidate really gets where we need to be, here’s what I want to see, beginning with what’s the most important:

1. A website with a non-stupid domain name (i.e. votenorm.com and not nomranpfleegmanforoffice2010.com)
2. Clear, easily discoverable information about the candidate, their stance on major issues, and who endorses them
3. Strong advocacy for the Internet and technology as part of classroom instruction
4. A site that isn’t static like a printed flyer; dynamic content like a blog and twitter feeds to provide constant updates.
5. HTML 5, competent use of css, adherence to open web standards and use of open source software
6. Community presence and a place for voters to interact and communicate with the candidate and one another
7. Sans-serif fonts that improve the reading experience
8. A site that doesn’t look like a canned site purchased from a third-rate webmaster
9. Even better, a site built and maintained by the candidate themself

Basically, if I can’t tell that the candidate knows what the Internet is for, they’re not getting my vote. And so my impressions of the prospective future Superintendents of Public Instruction:

Larry Aceves has a decent website. The color scheme isn’t the greatest and the css isn’t the most sophisticated, but it’s functional and not buggy and I was able to find what I was looking for quickly. There’s the obligatory links to Twitter and Facebook, which no marketing person or candidate for office The dude’s from the Bay Area, so maybe being surrounded by techies and not rednecks from Barstow pays off when it comes to communicating effectively online. Its main weak spot is lack of any dynamic content. A blog would have taken this site from static but useful to a truly twenty-first century campaign hub.

Karen Blake’s site looks like a bad parody of 1996. From the horrible rotating cube in the right corner to the broken flash links to the graph from PowerPoint hell, everything about this site screams “I do not understand the power of the web nor its importance in our society.” This chick instills no trust in me whatsoever, but then she does have the disadvantage of coming from Bakersfield, which ranks pretty low on quality of life. With this kind of a presence, I just don’t trust her to understand how to guide kids toward the future.

Alexia L. Deligianni only has a Facebook page. I want somebody to guide kids, not to want to be back in junior high with them. Pass.

The website of Lydia Gutierrez kept timing out due to being tapped out on bandwidth. Somebody who understands tech infrastructure so little as to not purchase enough bandwidth to handle election traffic has no business governing the infrastructure of our schools. Insufficient bandwidth = visitors can’t get information. Something tells me she’d also give teachers insufficient resources and then wonder why kids aren’t reading.

Diane Lenning’s site is a nightmare of digital clutter colliding with a blasé color scheme and useless sound bites of information. It reminds me of a bulletin board in a dorm hallway; too much information to absorb in reasonable amounts and too shabby in presentation to care about. Also, using comic sans for your resumé is justification for murder in geek circles. This site shows no connection with anybody under 40. No thanks.

Leonard Martin used WordPress (plus) but didn’t leverage it by employing anything as simple as widgets (minus). Too many pages clutter the header, and the long list is repeated in the sidebar. Still, the fact that this guy knows what open source software is is a mark in his favor, although he really needs to surround himself with people who can help him understand how powerful it is.

If Karen Blake is a bad parody of 1996, then Grant McMicken is a bad parody of 1997. All it needs is a Geocities banner and sparkles on that California flag graphic.

Gloria Romero has the funding and marketing power to put together a decent website, but website bugs and stupid use of generic images makes this look like a canned corporate site, not something I should take seriously. I can’t even find a page that breaks down the issues.

Henry Williams, Jr. has put up a poster where a website should be. If you don’t know what the Internet is (and no, it is not a digital telephone pole on which to staple enormous bandwidth-sucking graphics), stay the hell away from our classrooms, thankyouverymuch.

Tom Torlakson’s site is the first one that really gets it. With a blog and easily discoverable information on the issues, this site shows that the candidate grasps what the web is actually for. Candidates take note: being an out-of-touch middle aged schlub = bad. Leveraging modern, dynamic technology = good.

Daniel M. Nusbaum lives in Beverly Hills but doesn’t have a website. Neither does Faarax Dahir Sheikh-Noor. Someone who thinks so little of the Web shouldn’t be elected to any office at all, let alone one that shapes educational policy.

California’s need for a Superintendent who really understands how badly we need to move forward in science, math, and technology is probably our most critical issue. Based on that, I’d have to go with Torlakson. All the other candidates look like old fogies who haven’t bothered to keep up with the times, and won’t demonstrate the sort of forward thinking that we so desperately need.

I love my new cat Loki. I’ve only had him for three weeks and I already can’t remember what it was like not to have him. He’s a massive dork. He rolls over and falls off the bed. (Like me.) He chases after toys, leaps flailing into the air, and falls to the floor in the most ungracious manner conceivable. (Like me.) He gobbles down his grub and then passes out on the couch, unable to move for hours. (Like me.) He’s even in the Cool People With Green Eyes club. (You’re noticing a theme here.) So far the only thing he does to annoy me is his tendency to lay on my laptop to prevent me from paying more attention to it than I do to him.

I expected that I would make kissy-wissy faces at the kitteh, and that I would worry about his well-being far beyond the needs of an animal that can basically look after himself in luxury surroundings where he is lord and master of his domain. I also expected that he would be expensive, and so far I’ve dropped a good thousand bucks on toys, food, bedding, a water fountain, an automatic poop-scooping litterbox, and wand toys with feathery pom-poms on them. Something I didn’t expect when buying a cat was that it’s impossible to get reliable online reviews for any cat products online.

Typically product reviews online, like if you want to buy a drill or a pair of shoes, you see the following:

1. How well the product functions
2. How easy the product is to use
3. If the product is worth buying

Reviews about products and services written by cat owners include one or more of the following:

1. A glowing thumbs-up endorsement written from the perspective of the cat
2. An explanation that while the product is designed well and in theory should function perfectly, the cat’s psychotic behavior renders it useless
3. Psychotic ranting about how this horrible, terrible, evil, awful product or service isn’t good enough for the cat owner’s little poopykins
4. A detailed explanation of the cat’s defecation process
5. Nasty personal attacks on the designers or purveyors of the product or service

I might be crazy about my cat, but I solemnly swear not to become a crazy cat lady.

Consumerist – “It’s becoming clearer and clearer that Facebook won’t let a little thing like respect for its users get in the way of its quest for total internet domination.”

Electronic Frontier Foundation – “Since its incorporation just over five years ago, Facebook has undergone a remarkable transformation. When it started, it was a private space for communication with a group of your choice. Soon, it transformed into a platform where much of your information is public by default. Today, it has become a platform where you have no choice but to make certain information public, and this public information may be shared by Facebook with its partner websites and used to target ads.”

The Big Game, Zuckerberg, and Overplaying Your Hand – “I watched Zuckerberg screw over his users again and again in terms of privacy, and I heard about the stories of him screwing over his former employers at ConnectU and his early partners at Facebook.”

Fake Steve Jobs – “Mark Zuckerberg, I salute you. You babyfaced killah, you sociopathic bastard — do you not feel it, deep in your heart? We are one and the same. Join me, and together we can rule the Internet as father and son!”

Mark Zuckerberg – “People who trust me are dumb fucks.”