The Devil's Mileage

Out and about today, I snapped this picture of the odometer of my 1998 RAV4.

Then, tentacles shot out from under my seat and dragged me into a hell dimension. But it turned out to just be Cleveland. Glad that's over.

Windows Live: Neither Windows, Nor Live

A recent article from CNET News, Microsoft hurt by poor Live branding, says:

"Microsoft's Live branding has been tremendously confusing and has hurt the company, and it is very likely contributing to the situation they are in right now," said David Smith, an analyst at Gartner. "They've created another brand and have not differentiated it."

There's two obvious problems here:

1. The big push to move to Windows Live isn't until until after (a) IE7 ships to a lot more people and (b) Vista ships to a lot more people. That's when the numbers actually matter, not now.

2. The problem, imo, isn't "poor Live branding," it's poor Windows branding. This is a Web service — what does it have to do with Windows? The only thing that slapping the name Windows on it does is tell people like me that it's something that I can't use with my main OS.

   Hey Microsoft: take the name "Windows" off it and see how it does.

Sleepy John

Let's not be too mean. John McCain is an old man. The elderly need their rest. It was after 9 PM, and both he and Bush were up past their bedtimes.

Did you know that if John were to be elected president in 2009, he would be 72 when he took office? That would make McCain three years older than Reagan when he became the oldest elected president. And as we all remember, Reagan obviously became too old and vague to do the job. If you take a look at pictures of presidents on their inauguration day and four years later, you can easily see how the job ages the person.

The next president is going to have to clean up the horrible messes that Bush will leave behind. Entirely apart from McCain's repugnant stands on the issues, how about if we hire someone who has the stamina to do the job for all four years?