Behind the Orange Curtain

We've spent a few pleasant days in Orange County at my mother-in-law's for Thanksgiving. The weather's been great, and yesterday we saw Harry Potter in IMAX, which was excellent; I wish we had an IMAX theater closer than San Francisco. We may just make the trip down there for Superman Returns in IMAX next summer; they showed the teaser trailer before the movie yesterday, and it looked pretty good.

It's always instructive to read the letters to the editor in the Orange County Register, the local rag. Always known for its conservatism, the Register's readers can be really over the top. In the letters section today, the headline is "Baseless allegations against Bush" (regarding the Administration's lies to get us into the Iraq war). At the bottom of the page, there's a much smaller section of letters headlined "A huge presidential misadventure." Those people, at least, made sense.

Some examples of the insanity of the conservative Register readers: One guy refers to the "...overanalyzed and trivial question of Saddam Hussain's WMD threat." Guess that it was the main excuse to drag the US to war is irrelevant. In fact, he says so: "We in the US will most likely continue to incrementally lose our freedom to creeping socialism [and therefore] the most fertile ground for spreading freedom" is outside the US. Glad to know this guy prefers to waste American soldier's lives to make Iraq more free. Another letter claims, in the face of all actual evidence to the contrary, "I believe the WMDs were there as reported. There was plenty of time for Saddam to spirit all offensive material out of Iraq." Of course, the reader doesn't and can't explain why Saddam didn't just use the WMDs against attacking US forces; he was facing a final threat to his regime, and even US commanders expected chemical attacks if Iraq was backed into a corner. The attacks didn't happen, the weapons weren't found, therefore the weapons didn't exist.

These readers, along with many of Bush's other diehard supporters, are simply indulging in magical thinking. They believe that the right solution to the disaster Bush has brought us to is to just clap louder and wish real hard that everything works out OK. What the hell is wrong with these people? How many more brave soldiers will die before they're satisfied? How many more life-shattering wounds will be inflicted? How much more of our treasures will be lost before this international nightmare ends?

How To Get Our Business

We're down south in Orange County, staying at my mom's. Right now, we're in a coffee house checking email for the first time in a couple of days. Our initial plan was to go to Starbucks, which is a couple of blocks away from her house on the left.

Instead, we're at Diedrich Coffee, which is also a couple of blocks away, on the right. Why are they getting our money for these delicious caffeinated beverages? Because they have free Wi-Fi, and Starbucks doesn't.

Browser Tab Dump

We're about to leave town for the holiday, and I've got way too many tabs open in my browser. Obviously, it's time to dump them on y'all so that you have something to keep you busy while we're gone.

• Sandman annotations: The annotated Sandman. If you don't know why this is cool, you should.

• Open Web Design is "a community of designers and site owners sharing free web design templates as well as web design information. Helping to make the internet a prettier place!" Looks useful for the design-impaired (i.e., us).

• Cheap and Tiny: A weblog on small and affordable gadgets. AKA a way for me to go broke, slowly. Lots of cool stuff.

• More Web design resources than you can imagine: Web Design References from the University of Minnesota, and the Web Developer's Handbook.

• I sometimes find myself mentioned in the strangest places. Gordon Worley, the designer of the WTA Death Widget for Dashboard, gave me a shoutout in its Apple download page. Sadly, the ElectionWATCH Status widget didn't give me a shoutout, although one was promised.

• Are we in another bubble? I don't know. What I do know is that there are actual tech companies within ten miles of me, and that's gotta mean something. Turns out that BJ Fogg, CEO of YackPack, is actually a FOAF (well, actually a FOAFOAF). We've got to get together and chat after we get back into town. OTOH, the tech environment appears to at least be some of the same old-same old, because while these folks claim to be hiring, they don't go so far as to actually answer their email.

• A Better Finder Rename shipped version 7. Tom loves it, I just swear at it. I wonder if the new version has fixed the spelling errors.

• Seen all over the Mac blogs recently: How to Safe Sleep (Hibernate) Your Mac. I haven't had the guts to install this on my laptop, but I'm darn tempted.

• Top 20 geek novels. I've read 17 of them. There was actually one I'd never heard of; I'll have to check it out.

• The Grand Illusions Toy Shop. I want everything they sell. Yes, that makes me a geek.

• Sour Duck invited me to participate in The Carnival of Feminists, Issue 3. Sadly, "carnivals" are one of the things I haven't kept up with, and I have no idea what they are. I tried to read an intro to them once, and it made zero sense to me. I'm sure that it was an honor to be invited, and thank you, and sorry I was so behind on deadlines right then that I couldn't help.

• I've previously mentioned Nifty Corners, a method to display rounded corners on Web pages using JavaScript and CSS, but no images. Now, there's DomCorners, a method to display rounded corners on Web pages using JavaScript and images, but no CSS. I'm not entirely sure what the point is, but it's an interesting concept.

• Bill has been pointing out Safari Guide, which is "a Cocoa developer tool for evaluating XPath, XQuery, XSLT, and JavaScript expressions against a webpage or document in the frontmost Safari window." Something to look at in my copious free time.

• Matt wrote about The perfect cup of tea and pointed to this Mug with Infuser and this Tea Measure. More toys for me to go broke on.

• And finally, the SF Chronicle writes about Healdsburg for the holidaze: Wineries offer a break from feasting, family. Ah, perfect timing, to be reading about how wonderful it will be here this weekend right when we're about to leave. If you visit here, come back again some time when we can see you, okay?

Have a very happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

New Organizing Institute, Same Old BS

I just got an email about the New Organizing Institute and thought that it sounded really darn interesting:

The New Organizing Institute is a unique grassroots training and research program created by experienced online organizers and technology professionals in politics in conjunction with MoveOn.org.

We are seeking to fill an urgent need among progressive campaigns and organizations. Right now, they're hitting a brick wall when trying to fill new online organizer or Internet director positions. A network of talented, sophisticated and experienced operatives simply does not exist in the field of online organizing the way it does in the established areas field organizing, fundraising or campaign management. The NOI seeks to begin immediately filling this gap with an intensive training in March for online organizers geared toward electoral campaign work.

It sounded interesting, that is, until I looked at the FAQ. The part they're not mentioning on the front page: you must be young. Old farts like me? Not welcome.

If they don't want my kind participating, then they'll have to do without my money as well.

Great review of my Quicken QuickProject

My Mac.com has published a very positive review of my book Managing Your Personal Finances with Quicken: Visual QuickProject Guide. My thanks to the reviewer, Bakari Chavanu!

Not dead, really

We've been doing this blog for over six years, and I think that this last week is the longest time I've ever gone without blogging. Sorry, but the real world took precedence for the last week. The good news is, it appears that this book really is going to meet its off-to-the-printer date.

The lack of blogging hasn't been because of a lack of things to blog about. In fact, Sean saw me typing just now and asked what I was blogging about, and I said, "I have no idea; it could be any one of a number of things." Actually, I have a window open right now with about two dozen tabs, waiting for me to comment on each.

I have to pick, so here's the coolest of all the open tabs:

The upcoming Webstock Web Conference is next May in New Zealand. If I wasn't already planning on going, I'd be trying to figure out how I was going to make it. I think it's going to be an amazing gig. It's being put on by Web Standards New Zealand, and the speakers are, well, all I can say is that I'm honored to be included in their company.

As an opener, they've put one Webstock ticket up for auction including a dinner with the speakers. I'll admit it, my favorite part of this description is where we're referred to as "stars of the web" and "web royalty". I am tickled. So much so that I may just have to go find myself a tiara just so I can bring it along.

And one last bit, that's actually useful: here's a link to New Zealand Wikitravel. Lots of useful information about the country, and I want to read it all before I go. In particular, this section on Wellington, as that's where the conference is.

Yes, it's not for six months, but damn, I am so looking forward to it!