Holiday cards without the fuss

Now this is handy: the USPS holiday card store. You pick out the design, write the greeting, upload your addresses, and poof! they send out the cards to everyone on your list. And to answer the question that they made me dig around for: between 20-99 cards is $2.02 each for cards sent to California and $1.86 for cards sent to anywhere else in the US. They have some nice designs, or you can upload your own to make a completely custom card. Via Brig.

Another for the someday list

With all the OS X machines we have around the house and office, and the amount of speaking I'm doing lately on running OS X as a web server, it's really ridiculous that I'm not doing it myself. And unfortunately, our current bandwidth setup means that I won't be doing it for the foreseeable future, either. But someday when I do, knowing how to serve Movable Type from OS X will be useful.

End of an era

It's the end of an era: the Dangerous Visions bookstore in Sherman Oaks is closing. They just can't make a go of having a brick and mortar storefront anymore, and are shifting to totally online sales. I wish I could make it to their final booksigning, which features Harlan Ellison on Nov. 23.

Lacking in posts, but not in fodder

Damien pointed to MacBullshit today, which made me realize that while that site had its first birthday last week, we've never done a darn thing with it besides brainstorm. So, we're still looking for contributors with ideas. Barring that, we'd be willing to sell the domain. And most likely, we'll just point it towards Crazy Apple Rumors. But if you're interested, read the original plan and let us know what you think.

Halloween candy followup

A quick followup to Wednesday's post on Halloween candy: the three tons of candy was not sufficient, and I had to run out at 7:30 pm to get more. We now do have some left over (because we skimped at one point to avoid running out while I was shopping), but we had an amazing number of little visitors. As a reminder to myself for next year, we went through about two big bags and four little bags; if we had had sufficient candy to start with, two big bags and six little bags would have been just about perfect.

Your tax dollars at work

NASA fighting back to confirm that U.S. really flew to moon. Personally, I think that we should just take the skeptics, line 'em up, and punch 'em out one by one.

GOP - still racist

Just in case you thought that things had changed in the era of "compassionate conservatism," this article from The New Republic should set you straight. It's about the efforts of the GOP to depress black voter turnout through racially charged ads attacking Democrats, and by intimidating voters and the media with fake charges of election fraud. I'm expecting Republican brownshirts at polling places next Tuesday; we've already seen some of that during early voting, where GOP "voting monitors" have had to be escorted away by police because of their strongarm tactics. Because the demographic trend in this country is helping the Democrats (see The Coming Democratic Dominance), it's sad, but not too surprising, that the party that identified itself in the South as the "white party" in the 60's, and who brought us Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, is still racist after all these years.

A trick for him, treats for me

While Tom mentioned his bad experience trying to buy a ReplayTV below, he neglected to mention that the Good Guys was right next to the local CompUSA. He may have come home empty-handed, but I now own both a Kensington Expert Mouse Pro and a Belkin USB 4-Port Hub. What I really needed in the latter case was two USB extension cables (my keyboard and mouse are a long ways from my computer), but for some reason it's cheaper to buy a hub than two extension cables. Oh well).

So, Tom got tricked, but I got treats!

Searching for ReplayTV

We're looking to buy a new ReplayTV 5080, to replace our old ReplayTV model. It's Thursday, and I was told that the local (Santa Rosa, CA) BestBuy gets their trucks in on Wednesday night, so I called first thing this morning. Spoke to a sales drone:

"Hi, I'm looking for a new unit called the ReplayTV 5080. Do you have any in stock yet?"

"Let me check. [pause] Yes, we have them in."

"Are you sure that they're the 5080 model? You've had the 5040's in for a week now."

"Yeah, I'm looking at two of them."

"Great, see you soon."

So Dori and I drive the 20 miles to the store, and they have three 5000 series. The display model is not plugged in to anything. The two boxed units...are 5040's. No other boxes in stock. Much bitching and moaning ensued. The tag on the shelf was for the 5080. Their computer listed a solid string of goose eggs in the on order, in stock, and every other category.

Apologetic sales drone: "Check back on Saturday!"

Yeah, when it's Saturday in hell, pal.

Cruised over to The Good Guys. Their computer shows that they expect warehouse stock on 11/1, and store stock some time shortly thereafter.

The search continues.

Another birthday!

For those keeping track of such things, yes, Backup Brain will be three years old on Monday. In Internet years, I guess that makes us, well, ancient.

Warren Zevon tonight

As others have noted, Warren Zevon will be the sole guest on tonight's Late Show with David Letterman. We'll be recording it on the Replay.

IE/Mac CSS Bugs

This is linked here because I know I'll be referring to it a bunch in the future: CSS Bugs in Internet Explorer 5 (Mac) on Apple's Internet Developer site. My only complaint is that I wish they included the author's names on the articles in this area. They've got some great contributors writing these pieces, and they ought to get full credit. This particular article was written by Peter-Paul Koch.

Grocery Thoughts

Notes to self after a visit to the grocery store;

• Tom and I going shopping together two days before Halloween before we've eaten dinner is a big mistake. Either that, or we'd better hope that lots of kids come around, because we've got three tons of candy.
• Now that I buy bottles of Mountain Dew instead of cans (see The Great Mountain Dew Conspiracy), I have to put them in a different part of the fridge because they're taller than the cans were. They now lie down on a shelf just above the fridge light. So, when I open the door, there's a very cool radioactive green glow coming out of that corner, where the light shines through the bottles. It's a small thing, but it amuses me.

Their peculiar institution

Lynn pointed to John Scalzi's recent piece, The Confederacy was E-V-I-L. As with her, I find it hard to disagree with what he wrote, except for one little quibble. I agree with him that the South fought for slavery, but Lincoln expressly said that his main goal was not to free the slaves, but to preserve the union, and that he would allow slavery to continue if it would hold the union together. But outside of that quibble, everything else Scalzi said is golden.

What part of *Mac* isn't clear?

Want some fun? Try going to http://macworldexpo.com. Unless you remember the leading "www," you'll end up at some other site.

Want some more fun? If you're surfing from a Mac (and you most likely are, if you're interested in Macworld Expo, right?), try filling out any of their forms. Nope, sorry-- you can't do that with a Mac. Or at least I couldn't with IE 5.2.2/Mac, the latest version for OS X. I had to use my Wintel box to make our hotel reservations. Sheesh.

Anyhow, we're now set to stay at the W. See you there?

Check this out!

Oh, this is soooo coool: PodNews from Cliché Software. Headlines, weather, lyrics, and notes... on your iPod. It's only a beta version now, but if the final does what this site says, there goes any use I have for a Palm Pilot.

Hey Sweetie!

Happy Birthday, Tom!

and a Good Bear Day to everyone else.