Paul's Down-Home Page

I was writing a column, and the next thing I knew, I was researching the history of nursery rhymes. How’d that happen? Well, I was writing about how to be prepared for hardware or software failures: keep your product keys handy, make sure you know where your support contracts are, and so forth. I included the well-known rhyme “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; For want of a shoe, the horse was lost…” My editor asked for a citation, and the best I could find was that it was attributed to Ben Franklin because he published it in the first edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac. Who knows what bizarre connection will arise from my current work on the Orapig?

Yeah, like the starship Enterprise. In today’s WSJ, my buddy Gary Bloom is quoted more-or-less saying that Linux is going to storm the datacenter and nip Microsoft in the bud. The article says “Big computing shops haven’t yet put a lot of Linux into their holy-of-holies data centers, says Bloom. But that could change next year, when outfits such as Veritas have their entire product lines available on Linux.”
Right. So, Veritas has mostly been unable to sell its suite of products for Windows– which are actually quite good– because a) no one’s heard of them and b) they’re quite expensive. This despite the efforts of folks like my friend Joe Hand, the world’s greatest evangelist. At the same time, they’re going to sell a ton of products in the Linux space, which is a much smaller market space that has a proven resistance to paying actual money for software.
“We bring enterprise credibility to Linux,” said Bloom, “just like we did for Sun.”
Gary, Linux already has enterprise credibility, and it has nothing to do with you (or /., for that matter.) It’s a useful tool for some applications, just like Windows, Mac OS X, and even dinosaur iron.

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From this morning’s fishwrapper. So, a guy (who just happens to be agnostic) got arrested for DUI in Perrysburg. His blood alcohol level was .297, or about three times the legal limit. The judge gave him a choice: join Alcoholics Anonymous or spend 30 days in jail. Now the Ohio ACLUis suing because they claim that the perp was unconstitutionally forced to choose between a “faith-based” treatment program and going to jail.
Now, this is so wrong I don’t even know where to begin.

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Some bloggers have been known to opine that only blogs feature good writing. I present this as a counterexample in the humor category.

So, Brandt is wondering about Ohio’s concealed-weapons bill. He wants to know when the shootouts start. Ha ha.
When I was considering moving here, I was disturbed by the fact that Ohio doesn’t allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons. This seems like a fundamental right to me, but then I grew up with guns in my home– I was taught from an early age how to handle them safely, how to hunt with them, and so on. I’m not scared of them as some fundamentally eeevil force; they’re no more inherently dangerous than my power tools or gasoline cans. I have many friends in various states that allow CCW; those that I know to carry on a daily basis range from a biker-looking 6’4″ guy with a buzz cut to a mild-mannered chain-smoking author to a very refined and elegant-looking middle-aged woman to a sweet-natured Mormon housewife with three young kids. They carry for self-protection, and I fail to see anything wrong with that.
Clearly I’m not going to change Brandt’s mind; after all, he’s admitted to being “anti-gun”, which is right up there with “pro-choice” or “pro-life” as a signal that someone’s mind is made up, thankyouverymuch. I would just point out that there’s no statistical or anecdotal evidence that having CCW increases street crime. I’m not going to bother citing John Lott or any of the other scholarly studies that prove this, because I don’t think they’ll change his mind either.
I will, however, ask this: how does a law permitting concealed weapons carry “legitimize concealed carry for everyone whether your local sheriff has given you a permit” or not? If you have a permit, you can legally carry. If you don’t have a permit, you cannot– exactly the same situation we’re in now. If you carry a concealed weapon without a permit, you go to jail (in fact, in Ohio you are assumed guilty unless proven innocent!) Passing a law to legalize something doesn’t legitimize it under other conditions– despite what all the War on Drugs folks say about medical marijuana.

HEY! If you need parts, please see this entry, which lists several sources for them.
Yes, it’s true; if you query Google for breadmaker parts, I show up. I got a nice comment yesterday, setting out the sad story of a lady who’s lost her breadmaker paddle. I can certainly sympathize, so I did a little digging and found this, which seems like the answer. It also appears that Toastmaster has an 800 number, but it’s too early to call them.
Of course, by posting this here, I am only reinforcing Google’s tendency to serve up my blog when people query for breadmaker parts. This has already happened with my post about Speakeasy’s free-Xbox offer— it shows up on the third page of a Google query for “free xbox”, and so I get lots of comments from kids looking for a freebie. Sorry, kids; Santa Claus is at the North Pole, not north Ohio.

The Bloviator is written by a doctor, but he talks like a normal human. Recommended.

Via BackupBrain, Rose Kelleher’s rant on why computer books suck. Maybe it’s because she writes about Notes.