The 35th Annual World Pillow

The 35th Annual World Pillow Fighting Championships, just a few miles down the road from us.

Sean finished 7th grade on

Sean finished 7th grade on Thursday. Today, I gave him a copy of RealBasic and Matt's book. The sky's the limit.

Here's an accurate analysis of

Here's an accurate analysis of Bush's character and actions over the past few months. In short: lip service to opponents, followed by phony displays of concern, then blind adherence to his preconceived notions.

Thank you, Jeffrey! For some

Thank you, Jeffrey!

For some reason, I thought taxes were due January, April, July and October--it's really January, April, June, and September. Why, I have no idea, but I would have blown it without your reminder. And I've put October and January's due dates on my calendar.

Of course the thermometer makes

Of course the thermometer makes a difference. It provides actual evidence that it's really damn hot.

It's common for Tom and

It's common for Tom and I to be sitting in a room together, and for me to complain about how cold it is at the exact moment that he complains about how hot it is.

To settle these "discussions," Tom bought a little thermometer for the office, so that we can see what the temperature actually is in here. Not as if that would settle how we each feel, but he seems to think it makes a difference.

Right now, it's 5:40 pm, the windows are open, both fans (tabletop and ceiling) are running on high, and the office thermometer says that it's 93.0 degrees. I feel like my brains are melting and running out my ears.

The whole reason I like

The whole reason I like "the $250 programmable touchscreen remote control," btw, is because it has single "turn system on" and "turn system off" buttons. Which, of course, could have been done with a system that cost considerably less than that which Tom bought.



It shouldn't be too much to ask to just have a single on/off button if I want to watch TV.

Dori often makes fun of

Dori often makes fun of me for the time and effort I've put into my audio/video system, but she doesn't realize just how bad it can get. I'm way saner than some of these folks. Hell, I'm way saner than all of these folks. And I do notice how she eventually comes around on most of the stuff I've bought. Even the $250 programmable touchscreen remote control.

Signs o' the times... some

Signs o' the times... some of the real classics here.

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots.

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots.

One of the fun things

One of the fun things about living in a small town is the local flavor. The local paper, The Healdsburg Tribune, publishes the Police Log every week, and there's often some humorous stuff there. This week's examples:

Thursday, June 7, 7:21 PM. A man on Hemlock Drive with a cell phone in his pocket accidentally hit the 'emergency' button. He was unaware that his pants had called 911.

Saturday, June 9, 9:36 AM. An exploding squirrel caused a power outage on Alta Vista Drive.

I just finished reading Passage,

I just finished reading Passage, by Connie Willis. I can't recommend this book too highly, unless you have things that you're trying to get accomplished. And if you haven't read anything she's written, start.

A word of warning: do not read the reviews on Amazon--several of them have spoilers, which will ruin much of the first half of the book (yes, there are surprising plot twists that early on).

jean is blogging again--yay!

jean is blogging again--yay!

Tom asked me to blog

Tom asked me to blog Glenn Fleishman's 802.11b Networking News to remind him to visit it.

It's a nice feeling to

It's a nice feeling to set goals and then achieve them.

I promised myself that I'd get all my wedding thank you notes done within a month of getting back from our honeymoon, and today, 3 weeks after our return, I got the last of them in the mail. Yay!

If you don't get yours within the next few days, it's because you're on Tom's to-do list, which is not my responsibility.

Ev, Brad: the body tag

Ev, Brad: the body tag has an attribute called bgcolor. You can't always assume that the user has it set to white in their preferences, and designs that make that assumption look pretty darn odd when a user (such as me) doesn't.

Try adding either bgcolor='white' or bgcolor='#FFFFFF' to your body tag, or body {background-color: #FFFFFF} to your stylesheet.

We've been doing more thinking

We've been doing more thinking about education lately, mainly because of the possibility of a charter high school here in town. So it was interesting to read Reform School in The New Republic, which talks about how special ed is a mess, and why a fair amount of the blame goes to the Democrats latest saint, Senator Jim Jeffords.

Via Zeldman: The Lynx Viewer.

Via Zeldman: The Lynx Viewer. Useful for when you want to know what your site looks like in Lynx, the all-text viewer. Thankfully, our sites didn't come off too bad.

Wireless hacking at O'Reilly. They're

Wireless hacking at O'Reilly. They're attempting to get a 11 Mbps 802.11b wireless link (that's the same technology used by the Airport card in my iBook; it usually has a range of about 300 feet) to connect from the O'Reilly offices in Sebastopol to a group of homes 21 miles away. No amplifiers for the signal, just some dish antennas and ingenuity.

I love the sight of

I love the sight of an empty errata page. It's like newly fallen snow before anyone has walked on it. It's like a freshly changed litter box before... well, let's not go there.


In other words, the book site for JavaScript for the WWW, 4th edition: Visual QuickStart Guide is finally up.

New link here: I Really

New link here: I Really Must Insist You Leave. And to everyone who sent private notes of love and appreciation re: Friday's post--thanks!

Thanks to those who've bugged

Thanks to those who've bugged me (you know who you are), we finally have an RSS feed (or at least, I think we do). Check out the XML button to the right, and let me know if you have any trouble with it.

And if you have no idea what the last paragraph meant, don't worry about it.