Reagan RIP

Ronald Reagan passed away today at 1:09 pm Pacific. The first piece of Reagan-death-related spam I received was sent at 3:15 pm Pacific.

It's always interesting to see how various groups mark the death of their heroes, and it's not the first time I've seen spam in honor of someone's passing, but it always strikes me as deeply, deeply wrong, no matter what you think of the deceased.

Return-Path: <HeritagePR@heritage.org>
Received: (qmail 38907 invoked from network);
    5 Jun 2004 22:18:14 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO mail.townhall.com) (65.126.3.11)
  by ruis.pair.com with SMTP; 5 Jun 2004 22:18:14 -0000
Received: from thf-iis-01 ([192.168.1.3]) 
    by mail.townhall.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713);
    Sat, 5 Jun 2004 18:18:11 -0400
Message-ID: <20723327.1086473745686.JavaMail.SYSTEM@thf-iis-01>
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 18:15:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: The Heritage Foundation <HeritagePR@heritage.org>
To: Dori Smith <specific spam bait address>
Subject: Comprehensive Reagan Source
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
X-Mailer: ColdFusion MX Application Server
Return-Path: HeritagePR@heritage.org
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 05 Jun 2004 22:18:11.0065 (UTC)
    FILETIME=[FC973E90:01C44B4A]

Capitol Hill Blue

Capitol Hill Blue: Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides. We don't believe any of this, but it's a fun read anyway.

The succession to the British Throne

Way more information than probably anyone has ever really wanted: Persons eligible to succeed to the British Throne as of 1 Jan 2001. All 4583 of them.

QuickWhat?

Is it still a big secret that we're not supposed to tell anyone about if it's already findable on Amazon.com?

hrie@yahoo.com

From a quick look at Google, it's clear that I'm not the only person who's pissed off at hrie@yahoo.com. Die, comment spammers, die!

Actually, I have no idea why comment spammers bother to hit this blog. Generally, one comes in, posts something, and then realizes that as there's no link back to them on our front page, and we've told the spiders not to index our comment pages, there's no gain for them and they go away. Unfortunately, hrie@yahoo.com keeps coming back once or twice a day (with a different IP address each time) and dumping a load of crap here.

Yeah, I could look into MT-Blacklist, but if I'm going to put that kind of effort into the backend of this site I'm more likely to want to switch to WordPress instead. So now, I'm just going to point out that hrie@yahoo.com deserves all the spam and viruses that posting a live email address can get.

Dori's corollary to Godwin's Law

Dori's corollary to Godwin's Law: any attempt to seriously debate Republicans about the current presidential election will end with the Republican mentioning Clinton (in a non-relevant way) and then assuming that that means that they've won the debate.

Canon EOS 300D/Digital Rebel

I know at least a couple of people with a Canon EOS 300D/Digital Rebel (lucky ducks) so I figured I'd link to this site with a Canon EOS 300D/Digital Rebel firmware hack. Turn your camera into a 10D, for $500 less. Of course, there goes your warranty, but it could be worth it. Even more hacks are available here.

Intelli Cordless Collector

In my long-standing plan to someday get a list of all our books, movies, and music on computer, here's a new possibility: the Intelli Cordless Collector. What's nice about this vs. Booxter (another option I've looked at): it uses Bluetooth, so I can bring the scanner to the books instead of having to bring the books to the scanner; it downloads to PDAs; and it appears to catalog DVDs and CDs as well as books. Negative: Booxter costs $15 (because I already have the hardware), while the Cordless Collector costs $300.

Later note, for the sake of completeness: there's also Chronopath Library, which costs $15 but requires purchase of a scanner that isn't available for some reason. Weird, but possibly worth checking again later.

Poor Dennis

We were watching the special election in South Dakota yesterday for the vacant House seat, and we're happy that Stephanie Herseth, the Democrat, won. But I was looking at the South Dakota State Wide Election Results and saw something kind of sad. The election was also the SD primary, and both Dean and Kucinich were still on the ballot (as was Kerry, of course). Dean ended up with a surprising 6 percent of the vote, but the sad part was Kucinich's tally. He ended up with only 2%, and came in 900 votes behind perrenial candidate and wacky nutbar Lyndon Larouche. Now, whether you supported Dennis or not, he certainly deserved better than that.

Iraq on the Record Database

Because I keep trying to find this and failing, a link to Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq. Courtesy of Rep. Henry A. Waxman.

Entourage script fix

If you use Entourage for your email, as Dori and I do, you probably know how useful a few AppleScripts are to add on some features that the program lacks. We've used the "Digest Reply to List" and "Digest Reply to Author" scripts for years to extract and properly address messages from mailing list digests. These scripts need a quick modification to work in Entourage 2004, as this thread from the Entourage-Talk mailing list details. Thanks to Entourage AppleScripting god Paul Berkowitz for the answer.

Bush: Ripping Off Your Tax Dollars

Yet another case where Bush is worse than Clinton: Bush Campaigns Heavily Via Air Force One: Bush Uses Air Force One for Campaign Travel More Than Any Predecessor. He's used this perk of office more than Clinton did, and as you no doubt remember, Clinton was harshly criticized by the GOP for his trips. Yet you can hear the crickets chirping on that side of the aisle when Bush does it. It costs American taxpayers $57,000 per hour to operate Air Force One. "But of the more than $203 million Bush has raised for his re-election, less than 1 percent has gone to reimbursing the government for travel costs this year."