May 2004 Archives

Tried my first "spinning" class today at the gym. For those who aren't hip to the lingo, Spinning (I think the term is copywrighted to Bally's but has become "Band-Aid"ified into the common term) is sort of a group fitness aerobic stationary cycle thingy. Which sounds incredibly silly, I'll admit, but then almost all gym activity involves doing things that, if examined objectively, appear quite similar to what a hamster does with his wheel, for which we laugh at him.

Just a quick link to show there are some honorable hackers left.

Hackers

And then this one (which is old news, actually, but I just found it)

M$ doesn't appreciate wordplay

so chalk one up for the bad guys too. (At least he got an X-Box)

On the front lines of the culture wars, combatants will invent any excuse to turn the clock in their preferred direction. But there can be no logical argument against allowing the same legal status to all committed couples regardless of gender, and ridiculous attacks serve no one.

A quick call to action: If you consider the RIAA's war on file sharing as dangerous and counter-technology as I do, then don't let your tax dollars support it. Visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Action Center for the new Bill proposed in Congress.

I would have posted but the port that my computer was connected to is broken and it took me a while to figure it out. I'm certain this is a global conspiracy to keep me from writing something.

And actually, I'm copping out tonight too, cause I have two longer articles I'm working on but can't find the research I want right now. So bear with me, more soon.

As you grow up, there are some things you take for granted. Like you and Steve really will be friends forever, and you'll never be without your treehouse, and the house you live in and the neighborhood will be there forever. Your parents will always be together, you really will become an astronaut, and someday you'll have it all under control. But mostly, you don't think about losing people. Captain Brian Smith was a lifelong friend of my father and someone I knew would always be around. But on Monday, like so many things I've taken for granted, that stopped being true.

In making the changes to the site, I also signed up on AllConsuming.net. It's a pretty cool site with bloggers specifically in mind. It tracks reading lists for you and provides an easy interface to display them and get recommendations from friends and such, along with comments. I think its pretty cool. ( In case you aren't particularly observent, that's it right there

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Chuck (my friend, and fellow geek, and fellow (far better than I) improv actor, and fellow etc.) put it up on his blog site and I decided to steal it. Thanks, Chuck.
It's also kind of interesting to watch how the most popular books change daily. For instance, after the recent TV version aired recently, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time has shot up to top 5.

Got a little way on redesign for the site, but am currently giving up for a moment. Did you know that MS Internet Explorer is out of date with the Standards for CSS1, which have existed since 1996? Neither did I, until a short while ago. So while my browser (Firefox and a very fine browser it is) displays my code correctly, IE goes to hell.

I thought I'd surf a little to see if I could find a good solution and figure out what I was doing wrong, and I discovered dozens of webpages devoted to solving this incredibly simple problem. The problem you want to solve is this: Wouldn't it be nice if you could have three columns that exist on a page, don't overlap, and display the same in all browsers? Does that sound like it should be difficult to you? The problems with this have been going on for several years, and even though MS updated IE to version 6, they did *not* fix this problem. As a bonus, the Mac version of IE doesn't screw this up.

So I'm going to figure out the solution, just not now, cause I want to sleep.

Google has become the primary source for Internet searching over the last few years. It upcoming Initial Public Offering is drawing a lot of buzz from Wall Street, but do the $treet types get what Google's about, and will their misunderstanding kill its public aspirations?

It turns out that I suck instead of Comcast, but it took me a day to figure it out. I'm sorry Mr. EvilCorporateMindSucker! Will you forgive me?

Anyway, things is working again. Funny story: Some dipshit backed into my car while I was stopped at a light and crunched it all to hell. I don't have collision coverage, and here in Michigan insurance is no-fault, so the best chance I have of getting any money to pay for it is by talking the dipshit's insurance company into giving me money.

Wait, that's not actually very funny. Ummm.... And then the guy says, "That wasn't my donkey!"

and thus I have no Internet access. I'm entering this message from my cell phone which necessitates a short entry. Twenty five words, for example.

I've been trying like hell every since leaving college to turn myself back into a "reader". Its been nearly 4 years, and I'm not quite there yet, but getting closer. As stated, I did finish "Time Enough For Love" which is quite long (and quite Long, as well), which is an accomplishment, but it took me over a month, which is pretty pitiful. I can remember a time of reading voraciously, but its just been very difficult to get back into the habit after college beat it out of me.

OK, I've felt incredibly awful for the past week and have spent the majority of it sleeping and being pissed off. Thus, screw the blog. But semi-officially, I'm back again to resume.