Category Archives: Musings

I’m on several mailing lists for computer book authors. Exchanges like this one are not uncommon; fortunately, I didn’t have a diet Coke in hand or I would probably have sprayed it all over my monitor.
One person wrote:

I guess this all begs the question – do we need a 12 step program? How to get away from the addiction? Is there some equivalent to methadone for the high we get after writing the 70th page of the week?

To which the immediate response was:

You get HIGH? I’m writing the wrong stuff. I get nauseated.

Heh.

About 4:45, we were all minding our own business when the local tornado sirens started blowing. This seemed odd, since our weather radio hadn’t gone off (turns out it was unplugged; oops!) We turned on the TV to find that the NWS geniuses had called away a tornado warning for Wood County until 7:05pm– about two hours longer than a typical warning. Of the five local stations, none of them were doing a good, Huntsville-quality job of coverage. The WB and UPN affiliates were continuing their normal programming; NBC had their weatherman on a phone link (with a static mugshot– gee, that tells me a lot about the weather); CBS and ABC both had their radars on line. However, the storm was well to the south and east of us. Wood County covers 617 square miles, so I guess I can understand firing a warning when there’s no storm activity near the northern third, but it was still kinda funny to contrast the high-coverage (and generally well-done) tornado coverage in Huntsville to what passes for TV weather here in Toledoland. One common thread: they both lie like dogs about snow.
Update: I was flat-out wrong. Turns out that the storm system we were being warned about was deadly. I still like what Ambrose Bierce said about weather forecasters, though:

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be —
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incadescent youth,
From the coals that he’d preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote —
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
“Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow.”

In Huntsville, Veterans’ Day is a big deal: there’s a parade downtown, schools are out, banks close– the whole nine yards. Here in Ohio, the holiday seems to be largely unobserved. Toledo’s having a parade (its first in 10 years), but that appears to be the extent of local observence. I think that’s pretty doggone sorry. The Perrysburg schools observe a total of 6 holidays: Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Martin Luther King Day, Presidents’ Day, and Memorial Day. That seems pretty stingy by school standards, at least from what I remember back in the day. Maybe we can trade Presidents’ Day for Veterans’ Day. Why, I’m gonna write a letter….
In the meantime, drop by the DAV and give them some money. They, and the veterans they serve, can use it, and you can specify that you don’t want them to send you any crap, err, gifts.

Over on Scripting News, Dave says:

An idea is in the air in blogging land, a global identity system so you don’t have to re-enter your name, email address and weblog url in every comment system you visit.

Wow. Now why didn’t I think of that? Sure, Microsoft’s implementation is prohibitively expensive for Joe and Jane Blogger, but wouldn’t it be cool if Microsoft chose to make a less-expensive version for noncommercial sites? This would have some immediate benefits for Microsoft. First of all, it would help lessen the sting of their almost-total victory in the antitrust case. Second, and more importantly, it would help increase adoption and penetration of Passport, which is critical to their .NET Services strategy. The way to get people to sign up for an authentication system is to give them content they want; the porn-meisters figured this out a long time ago. It would also help push adoption of the Passport API in advance of the Liberty Alliance folks actually shipping products.
What’s the downside for Microsoft? Well, some people would just complain that it was all some kind of monopolistic trick. It’s possible that some of the pricing advantage of a flat yearly all-you-can-eat fee would be diluted by a cheap, low-transaction-count version. However, on balance I think opening the Passport sevice, as opposed to just the APIs, has the potential to be a win-win.

These people are hilarious.

The Blade is usually good for a laugh. Today’s example: a headline reading “Smoker seeks treatment for substance abuse.” See if you can figure out what the story is about before you read it.

www.typera.net has a nifty Java-based typing speed tester. I can’t use it from my primary desktop, because its Java configuration is hosed. When running it from my Exchange server, I got a respectable 377 characters/minute (~ 62wpm), but I blame that on the crappy USB ports on the motherboard of that machine. On my trusty ThinkPad, I scored a slightly better 412 characters/minute. I’m not sure which is more fun: racing the clock or enjoying the random phrases that the TyperA applet splits out. So, give it a try and post a comment with your score.

Ooh, look, the other services are back to complaining about each other. It looks like the Daily Pundit fired the first shot by pointing to a Washington Times article in which some USAF wankers complain about the poor living conditions at the Bagram expeditionary airbase. Then people started piling on, including an Army officer and the renowned Sgt Stryker.
I was going to write a long, point-by-point rebuttal to Paul’s piece, because I think that he has single-handedly reinforced the stereotype of the USAF prima donna better than any number of Marines, sailors, or grunts could have. Saying things like “the philosophy, principles and mindset of the Air Force reflects the character of its mission and how it performs that mission” — in other words, that the precious and highly intelligent USAF needs those hot showers and ice cream to get the job done– is insulting to the blue suiters. I’ll leave aside all his bologna about how the Army (and, I guess, the Corps, although so far no one’s brought them up in this discussion) are a bunch of knuckle-draggers who are too brainwashed to complain, because I think that does them an equal disservice.
It didn’t help that I just got done reading Mark Bowden’s piece in this month’s Atlantic; reading his description of the living quarters, ice cream, porno movies, and gym facilities available to the the pilots flying over Afghanistan, it’s hard to imagine that the TACPs that Paul is so (justly) proud of are happy about their own crappy accomodations.

Here’s a unique idea: commercials designed to convince people not to buy or drive SUVs. I already sent a donation.

I now have a working photo gallery up; the first album contains pictures from Debbie & Chris’ wedding. The color scheme and formatting don’t match these pages, and they won’t for a while. (Arlene has some great pictures that I have to scan and post, too.)

According to the WaPo, this was the lowest-rated World Series ever:

The seven-game series between the Anaheim Angels and San Francisco Giants suffered a 24 percent drop from the 2001 Series, when the Arizona Diamondbacks won in seven games over the New York Yankees. This year’s 11.9 average rating represented a 4 percent drop from the previous lowest-rated Series, the Yankees’ five-game victory over the New York Mets in 2000.

I say, good. Major League Baseball, as currently practiced, is an abomination. The players, by and large, don’t seem to care about The Game; they care about The Paycheck. The owners are greedy even by contemporary American standards, and the league management… well, this says it all. Maybe it’s because I didn’t watch baseball growing up (South Louisiana is football territory), but if I never saw another major-league game it would be OK with me. I’d rather go watch minor-league teams like the Mud Hens or the Stars: the players play harder, and they evidence joy and respect for the game in a way that most major leaguers haven’t for some time now.

The new season of Fox’s 24 starts on October 29th. As a bonus, there won’t be any commercials (of course, since I usually TiVo it, this is nothing new). It does raise an interesting question, though: since the show ostensibly takes place in real time, the writers are used to using the occasional 5-minute commercial break to let something (like part of a car trip) happen off-camera. Now they have an extra 16 minutes to fill. I can’t wait!