The Pardons & the Press

The Pardons & the Press has a lot of detailed reporting on the amazing amount of errors of fact and slanted reporting from virtually all of the major news outlets during the Clinton pardon "scandal." Good reading if you're interested in media bias. It makes me wonder what happened to that liberal media the right-wingers are forever ranting about.

Bush's Conservative Lineup details the

Bush's Conservative Lineup details the extent to which Bush is stocking his administration with right-wing zealots, "surpassing even Ronald Reagan in the ideological commitment of his appointments." Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I've been using Mac OS

I've been using Mac OS X on and off for about two weeks now, and there's a few things that I've learned about it. First, it didn't like my Adaptec 2906 SCSI card; I had to pull the card before I could install the OS, because the installer would hang with the card in the machine. I won't be able to use the card (and therefore, my CD-R drive) until Adaptec comes out with new drivers, or until I get pissed off enough to buy a FireWire-to-SCSI converter. I've experienced some interesting software crashes, but for the most part, they just bring down the offending program, and everything else keeps running. I did have one crash that wiped out all of the running applications, including the Finder; the whole screen blanked out, with just the desktop pattern remaining. Then, after a short pause, the Finder restarted itself, and I was back in business. I've never had the machine freeze up, a daily occurence with OS 9.

The Classic environment works pretty well; I have it running all the time, because I use the non-Carbonized Outlook Express for email. I've experienced a variety of problems with Word under Classic, with weird screen redraws and crashes being the most common. I've run all sorts of Classic programs. As a precautionary measure, I've been restarting Classic about once a day, but I admit that I have no real reason to do so.

When I reboot into Mac OS 9 (or reboot back to OS X), I have to reenter my Conflict Catcher serial number every time, which is annoying, but that might be because I'm still using the final candidate version of OS X. I'm finding that I'm getting more productive with the new OS all the time. I've been downloading updated apps like crazy; I've got DragThing, GraphicConverter, SoundJam, OmniWeb, and a bunch of others. Many of them are pre-release, so they are not the most reliable things in the world.

Things I miss the most:
QuicKeys
SpellCatcher (though it works fine in any Classic app)
The Application menu in the upper-right corner of the screen; I haven't retrained myself to using the Dock to switch between apps yet.
I can't print to our networked Epson Stylus Color 740 (using the Axis 1440 Print Server).

Overall, it's been a pretty good transition; I'll reboot back to OS 9 when I need to (like when I need to sync my Palm), but otherwise I'm planning on using Mac OS X full-time.

Wanna learn JavaScript? Yep, that's

Wanna learn JavaScript? Yep, that's me teaching at Lynda Weinman's tres' cool Ojai facility. I don't push my teaching much here, because while I think that I give good value for the dollar, I have my doubts about how much JavaScript you can really learn in one hour's talk. This class, otoh, is an entire hands-on week, and I promise that you'll leave knowing how to write JavaScript.

Deborah Branscum writes about (among

Deborah Branscum writes about (among other things)

Freelancers, an underutilized & underappreciated resource in the tech publishing arena

Aw, bite me.

Aw, bite me.

I got one more $%^*

I got one more $%^* email today about how wonderful home schooling is for all kids, and how all good parents who really love their kids and have their best interests at heart home school. This particular one even quoted Joseph Farah writing about homeschooling. I thought that I'd take the opportunity to write up my Thoughts on Home Schooling.

Ummm... for those who didn't

Ummm... for those who didn't get it, the previous post about Jane Austin is simply a Jane Austen joke. I guess we were a little too obscure there.

This page is dedicated to

This page is dedicated to the famous "Calamity Jane" Austin, early 19th Century Texan author, frontierswoman, and proto-feminist.

In Dubya's Dictionary by Jacob

In Dubya's Dictionary by Jacob Weisberg, "...Bushspeak is a calculated redefinition of terms, which has as its goal making the president's policies more popular." He includes a handy guide, with definitions.

Taco Bell adds a Space

Taco Bell adds a Space Age meaning to "Drop the Chalupa."

Praise the Lord and pass

Praise the Lord and pass the 7.62 caliber NATO-standard ammunition: The Christian Guide to Small Arms. Hoo-doggie. Via BuzzFlash Report (the relatively new left-wing alternative to the Drudge Report).

Microsoft announced this new thing

Microsoft announced this new thing called Hailstorm today. The idea is that Hailstorm will be the techno-glue that will tie together all the parts of your digital life, such as your calendar, your phone and address books, email, and so on. It's tied into things like Hotmail and MSN Messenger, as well as their Passport authentication service.

Now, I have a Hotmail account. I've never used it to send mail, and when I opened it, I was careful to make sure that I was not listed in the Hotmail Member Directory. A few days after I opened it, the first piece of spam arrived. In the header of the spam, I found the address of the account. Where did the spammer get the address? I can only imagine that it was from a breach in Microsoft's security. When I access the account (not often), I find hundreds of pieces of spam. So here's my question about Hailstorm: I already know that I can't trust these guys to do something as simple as keep spam away from a disposable email account. What makes them think that I would trust them with any of my important data?

The Tryane II is a

The Tryane II is a 3-wheeled car made of wood. Yes, really.

Here's an interesting example of

Here's an interesting example of using Flash to mess about with the UI. Very cool.

Imagine a legal case in

Imagine a legal case in which liberal Laurence Tribe and conservative Kenneth Starr are lawyers for the same side. Then imagine that they have their hands in my pocket. I don't have to imagine it; it's happening next week.

That's gotta hurt. Yeesh.

That's gotta hurt. Yeesh.

The good news: 21st century

The good news: 21st century schizoid d u m b m o n k e y . . . links here. The bad news: that site crashes IE5/Mac so hard that I have to reboot my computer. How much longer must I wait for an operating system that won't crash?

Bushonics speakers strike back. Snicker.

Bushonics speakers strike back. Snicker.

Dori isn't really heartless, but

Dori isn't really heartless, but she plays a throw-em-in-the-snow libertarian on TV. In my role as the fuzzy-headed liberal, I embrace (with gusto!) the idea of single-payer universal coverage healthcare. Hell, I'm even willing to pay more taxes (gasp!) to pay for it. Here's a funny and excellent illustration of the problem in America. Thanks to our wonderful Canadian friend Ginny for the link.

For some years now, the

For some years now, the US has been donating aid to Russia to keep that country's nuclear scientists employed, for two purposes. The first is to have those scientists working on making sure that Russia's remaining nuclear stockpile is kept safe, and to assist Russia in disarming the part of that stockpile that they've already agreed to get rid of, under treaty. The second reason for the aid is to keep those scientists from going off and finding gainful employment outside of Russia, like, say, in Iraq or Iran.

It cost the US about $30 million last year to keep these people in Russia, and therefore under some sort of control. It's a cheap price to pay for nuclear nonproliferation. Now President Doofus wants to cut that amount down to $6 million. I can only hope that Americans don't have to pay for that stupid decision by being on the wrong end of a surplus nuclear warhead, or one that gets built with the expertise of expatriate Russian techs.