Buffy gets financial advice

In honor of Tom turning in the final chapter for Quicken 2003 for Mac: VQS (and to let me test MT), here's a link: Helping Buffy slay her financial demons. Financial planners help Buffy figure out her finances (and boy, could she use the help!).

MT Plugins are cool

One of the things that I like best about moving to Movable Type are plugins, which are little bits of code by multiple developers which expand MT's capabilities. Here's another one: MTAmazon, which allows Tom or I to easily set up links to Amazon. Sweet.

WorldCon Metablog

I don't know enough about how MT TrackBack works (I can't even get it to work on this site), but if you want more Con info, check out The WorldCon MetaBlog.

WorldCon Palm apps

Useful ConJosé info, via More Like This (both are Palm Pilot apps):

• Program Schedule DB
• Party List DB

And for those of you wondering what ConJosé is, it's the 2002 World Science Fiction Convention, and it's next weekend (Labor Day weekend) in San José. And for those of you who are going to be there, let us know. Those LiveJournal folks shouldn't be the only ones having a get-together!

Good health insurance

Meg and Dave can't find good individual health insurance. If you're in the same boat, we've used AAQHC and CIGNA for years, and we've been very happy with them over all. And we especially like that they have all their rates online.

KeySpan USB + Firewire Card

Oh, cool. Keyspan has just announced a new PCI USB2 + FireWire Card. For $99, you get 3 external and 1 internal USB 2.0 ports and 2 external and 1 internal FireWire ports. I gotta remember to mention this in my Building a Cheap, Ugly Mac session at the O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference.

Twisted Cat Pix

Many people say that the Web is all about people posting pictures of their cats. And some people say it as if that's a bad thing. This site is for just those people.

Buffy OMWF Soundtrack

Sing along with me: I want this.

Jeez, doesn't this guy have a real job or something? Now it's the NightNurse blog, at NurseBlog.com.

Well, the article title Link found between autism and hacking sounds promising, but the article just says more of the usual:

[T]here does not appear to be any in-depth research linking illegal hacking and the syndrome, but the link between Asperger's and computers is well known.

Well-known, entirely anecdotal, and without any research whatsoever. So, where's the story? Or is it just fun to write about hackers? Via Tara at ResearchBuzz.

As you may or may not be able to tell, I've made a few changes around here. For the most part, they should be transparent. If you run into any troubles, though, let me know on the comments to this post.

"Hi, my name is Astrid Storm. I'm an Episcopal priest. A switcher to Macintosh from Windows. And I'm a freaking idiot that thinks she doesn't have to learn how to use a new computer." I understand why Salon prints drivel like this, but I have no sympathy for dear Astrid. She doesn't do anything unusual with her computer (some Office stuff, email, etc.) and all of the problems she's having are easily solvable (or could have been avoided altogether if she had just bought one more software package and maybe a book). Some people are just too dumb to use computers.

Early election returns from Georgia look as though we won't have Bob Barr, psycho-conservative Clinton-hating Congressman, to kick around anymore. I always thought that he looked like a low-rent Snidely Whiplash. It appears that Barr has lost his primary race, where he was forced due to reapportionment into a battle with another conservative Republican incumbent, Linder. The interesting thing about this is that Barr represents the social conservative wing of the GOP, and Linder the country-club Republicans. I've been thinking that the social right has been losing steam over the past couple of election cycles, and Barr's defeat (if it happens) bolsters that.

If you're looking for The Great Mountain Dew Conspiracy, (and thanks for the link, Cam!), click here.

New word for the day: steatopygia. Don't ask.

It's August 19^th, and back to school shopping is done. That's my personal best (so far), so I'm bragging about it. Yay me!

Every so often, I think about starting a "Stupid JavaScript Errors" site. If I ever do, the screenshot from this page will take a place of pride.

I'm working on a proposal/outline for an upcoming project for which I'll need help from some super-savvy Javascript/DHTML/CSS wizards. I did a quick spin through my Entourage address book and immediately came up with 40 names.

As I've said before, the thing that I like best about my life is that I get to know some amazingly smart people. This experience just reminded me of it.

And if you think that you ought to be on that list, I'm still adding to it, so let me know.

Via More Like This, a list from the Science Fiction Writers of America site of online SF, broken down by author.