A word of thanks
Today we honor those who serve and served in our nation's armed forces. Though the original day of remembrance was Armistice Day, noting the end of World War I, it became Veterans' Day, where we honor those who have served throughout out nation's history. I think it is quite appropriate that a day to thank and honor our veterans falls within the same month as the Thanksgiving holiday. Each citizen of this country, whether they want to admit it or not, owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to those who wear and have worn the uniforms of our armed forces. Having been, at one time, in the process of becoming one of those in uniform, I hold a special place in my heart for our servicemen and women. In addition to all veterans, there are a few people I would like to thank. From within my family: Dad, Uncle J.D., Granddaddy, and Uncle Richard. Friends: Will, Wally, Damion M., Brian, Dan, Larry, John A., and Gary R. From Detachment 310, 1988-92: Liz, John, Craig, Cathy & Michael, Kristin, Greg, Russ, and Colonel Hendrickson. I miss you guys.
But there is no media bias, part 6
Federalist Patriot 05-44 Digest:
The Big Three nightly newscasts have become nothing more than anti-war activists with a national platform. The Media Research Center recently released a review of over 1,300 news stories on Iraq from January through September. Among their findings was the following: 61 percent of the stories were negative or pessimistic, while only 15 percent were positive. The gap became even worse in August and September with negative stories nearing 75 percent; positive stories at seven percent. Stories about heroic actions by the troops were outnumbered eight to one by stories of abuse or other misconduct. Two of every five news stories covered bombings, kidnappings and other mayhem. Election stories also trended negative, as if things truly were better under Saddam Hussein. We think most Patriot readers will agree--the words that come to mind are "aiding and abetting."
Go to vote, get a ticket
Alternative title: My Moron Moment of the Day Of course, I have no one to blame but myself. Each election cycle, Denton County, in its infinite wisdom, changes the polling place for our precinct, and apparently for all precincts in the county. This election was no different. So after finding out we would be voting at Bridlewood Elementary, I set off to vote. I have passed by the Bridlewood development several times, but have never been inside. There is a golf club as part of the development, and part of the fairway parallels Bridlewood Boulevard. I followed my Yahoo! Maps directions, and turned off the main road to get to the school. After navigating a couple of turns, I find myself on Remington Park Drive, the street the school is on. I'm doing about 30, and slow to 20 when I hit the school zone, which starts near the top of a rise. As I begin to crest the rise, I see the school on my left, and a red sign with "Vote Here" in black and a large white arrow directing me in to the school's parking lot. I come down the rise, put on my blinker, and turn left in to the school parking lot. Then I hear the "Whoop!" of the motorcycle's cop siren. He does a single blast, and that's enough to get my attention. I pull over to one side of the aisle I'm on, wondering what I'm getting stopped for. It couldn't be the school zone speed limit. I was doing twenty. I know I was doing twenty, because I'm fastidious about keeping it at twenty while in a school zone. Did I bump up to 22, maybe, coming down the rise? He's going to give me a citation for that? These are the thoughts running through my head as he walks up to the window. Driver's license, insurance, I hand them over. He checks to make sure the insurance is current and hands the paper back. Then he asks if I know why he stopped me, and I tell him, no, I don't. "You missed a stop sign back there, Mr. Turner." I did what? Yep, never saw it. Sure enough, as I was leaving the school after I voted, there it was. Just on the down slope of that rise. I allowed my attention to laser-focus on the school and that "Vote Here" sign, and I totally missed the stop sign. (Stupid developer, putting a cul-de-sac right there in the middle of a down slope...) So now I get to do the payment + defensive driving course (hopefully I can do the video version) thing, to keep this off my record and from affecting my insurance. It's not good to be unemployed and broke, and have to cough up money because you were stupid. So again, totally my fault for not paying attention, and this voting experience could have been better. On the totally geeky side of things, the officer had a handheld computer which allowed him to scan in my license info--thanks to the handy magnetic strip on the back--then punch in the violation, then I signed on the screen a la signing for a package from UPS or FedEx. He punched another button, and a paper version of the citation rolled out of the top. Nice to see the Town saving a little money by doing away with cases of duplicate/triplicate citations. I'm sure there's a time savings, too, for the officer when he turns in the citations at the end of his shift. If I had to get a ticket, pretty nifty way to have done so.
Inquiring minds want to know
Please explain to me how our children have had no school yesterday and today so that the Teachers Unions can go out and organize for Democratic candidates -- but the schools will be open on Friday when the federal Government and most offices will be closed to commemorate our nation's war heroes? This must be an East Coast (West, too?) thing, or perhaps confined to Shirley's home state (Virginia?). The kids were in school yesterday and are today in DFW.
No such thing
Memo to Brendan Miniter: Marines don't like being called "former Marines." "Once a Marine, always a Marine" is how they view it. Having known a few Marines in my time, perhaps "retired Marine" would be a better term in the future.
Project Valour-IT
Soldiers' Angels has started Project Valour-IT, an endeavor to get voice-activated laptops to our wounded servicemen. To help with raising money for the project, a friendly competition has been set up between four teams, one for each of the service branches. Holly Aho is running the USMC team, which Hugh and Glenn are a part of. Sign up with one of the teams and donate to help out our wounded personnel.
No more VW style for the Passat?
I guess I didn't pay much attention to autoblog coverage of the new Volkswagen Passat, but I've seen a few of them on the road now, and I have to wonder: what was VW thinking? While the new Jettas retain the lines and design of a Volkswagen, the new Passats appear much more bland, more like an Accord or Camry than a VW.
Always a bridesmaid...
Today was the last game of the fall softball season. We went in to our game tied for first with our opponent, Trietsch Memorial UMC. It was a disaster, and we lost 12-2, finishing second--again--and in a tie with Flower Mound UMC, who won the game before ours to also finish 7-3. For reasons she failed to explain to anyone, our coach decided to shift half the team to positions they hadn't played all season. (For some of us, ever.) Due to the overabundance of male personnel, I split time with Eric at first base. I have never played first base. I've played a little second, done time behind the plate, but mostly I've always played shortstop and my mainstay, third base. I don't do the outfield, and I don't pitch. But today, I'm put at first. And at third? One of our ladies, who usually pitches or plays first. Our left fielder got moved to right. My first inning on defense, I noted to the coach that the baseline was on the wrong side. How prophetic this would prove to be later in the game. Hitter puts a shot down the line, right to our girl on third. She corrals it and fires it toward first, but she's wide to my left. I'm used to playing the bag with my right foot on it, because usually I'm at third and throws are coming from short or the outfield. So, being a creature of habit, where's my right foot? On the bag. Stretching and shifting to try to make the catch, and keeping my right foot on the bag, I move in to the baseline and collide with the runner. Yeah, my bad. Sue me for not thinking more about the position I've never played in before. The runner gets an extra bag, they score a run, and I get a bruised knee and take myself out for the rest of the inning. Our lady at third had problems throwing to first the entire game. I don't blame her; she was in a position she had never played in before. Only two at bats for yours truly, and I was .500 today, with a single. It was an extremely frustrating game. This is not to say that if none of these changes would have been made that the outcome would have been different. Trietsch was hitting well, and our hitters kept putting them out to their talented left fielder. But you have to wonder how this sudden change, for what amounts to the championship game, had on our collective subconscious. Uncomfortable players don't play well. I, for one, was uncomfortable. We'll see what happens in the spring.
Speed Test!
Erik links to the Speakeasy Speed Test, so I figured I would give the Verizon fiber connection a go.
Using the Dallas server:
Download Speed: 7400 kbps (925 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1634 kbps (204.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Los Angeles:
Download Speed: 6301 kbps (787.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1599 kbps (199.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
New York City:
Download Speed: 7928 kbps (991 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1637 kbps (204.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Seattle:
Download Speed: 4436 kbps (554.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1540 kbps (192.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
(What is it about sucky connections from the Dallas area to the Seattle metroplex?)
Chicago:
Download Speed: 8227 kbps (1028.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1633 kbps (204.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
(Faster to Chicago than across town!)
Washington, D.C.
Download Speed: 8870 kbps (1108.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1650 kbps (206.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
San Francisco
Download Speed: 5354 kbps (669.3 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1577 kbps (197.1 KB/sec transfer rate)
(Silicon Valley sucking off the bandwidth?)
Atlanta
Download Speed: 7676 kbps (959.5 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 1619 kbps (202.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Widgets smidgets
So Leander posits Apple is prepping a WYSIWYG widget-creation app. TUAW's David Chartier whines "what took so long?" I can't help but think, "So what?" I know I'm not alone in minimal widget use. I see the myriad widgets being created and updated daily fly through my RSS feeds, and I can easily imagine users with 20-30 of these things flying around at once, bogging down their system's background process time. At least now to create a widget you have to have some Javascript and HTML knowledge, and it helps if you're design savvy. God help us if "Dashcode" is for real; it will unleash untold useless and ugly widgets on the Mac-using populace. I do see a lot of widgets where I think, "Hey, that would be cool/convenient to have." Then I realize that a particular widget wouldn't be one I would want running all of the time. Then I realize that in the time it takes me to activate Dashboard, go in and make the widget active in the Dashboard environment, and have it refresh, I could just as quickly pull up my web browser and point it to whatever page I needed for the same information. Ah, you say, but what happens when you're using your PhischBook some place where you don't have 'net access? Granted, this is an instance when widgets would be useful, provided the widget itself doesn't require an Internet connection to load its information. For my own use, there's not a non-Internet-using widget out there that I cannot live without. A scenario where such a widget would come in handy when I am without Internet access has not arisen, and even if it had, I believe it would be for something that could just as well keep until I had access again. I probably activate Dashboard between eight and a dozen times a day. For the record, the widgets I run: + Dictionary, Phone Book, Stocks, and Weather, all widgets that come with Mac OS X Tiger + SysStat + Backpack + BibleSearch + DailyVerse + Scoreboard, during baseball season I had been using iCal Events, but I'm giving MenuCalendarClock for iCal a try, and am attempting to determine which one I like better for everyday use. Your thoughts on widgets? What are you running? Drop a note in the comments.
Yeah, about those oil company profits
So, Exxon Mobil broke corporate records last week, posting a $9 billion profit on $100 billion in revenue in the third quarter. Right on cue, Democrats demanded that Washington confiscate some of those profits. Are they predictable or what?
[...]
Want to know who is making a bigger windfall than oil companies are making from the prices paid by the poor gasoline consumer? It’s good old Uncle Sam and his 51 little brothers.
Refining costs and profits combined make up about 15 percent of the cost of a gallon of gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Department. State and local taxes make up almost double that, about 27 percent. (New Hampshire’s 18 cents per gallon fuel tax accounted for 7.2 percent of last week’s average gas price of $2.49 a gallon.)
State and local gas tax collections exceed oil industry profits by a large margin, according to a Tax Foundation study released last week. Since 1977, consumers have paid $1.34 trillion in gas taxes — more than twice the profits of all major U.S. oil companies combined during that same period. Last year, state and federal gas taxes took in $58.4 billion. Major U.S. oil company profits last year totaled $42.6 billion.
Want to make an immediate dent in gas prices? Cut gas taxes. But of course cutting the fat from local, state, and federal bureaucracies isn't the answer. It's confiscation of private industry profits! [Emphasis added. --R]
Lying about the war non-lie
Harry Reid pulled the Senate into closed session Tuesday, claiming that "The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq." But the Minority Leader's statement was as demonstrably false as his stunt was transparently political.
What Mr. Reid's pose is "really all about" is the emergence of the Clare Boothe Luce Democrats. We're referring to the 20th-century playwright, and wife of Time magazine founder Henry Luce, who was most famous for declaring that Franklin D. Roosevelt had "lied us into war" with the Nazis and Tojo. So intense was the hatred of FDR among some Republicans that they held fast to this slander for years, with many taking their paranoia to their graves.
We are now seeing the spectacle of Bush-hating Democrats adopting a similar slander against the current President regarding the Iraq War. The indictment by Patrick Fitzgerald of Vice Presidential aide I. Lewis Libby has become their latest opening to promote this fiction, notwithstanding the mountains of contrary evidence. Excellent article, with point-by-point facts which rebuff the "Bush lied" crowd, as well as exposing the outright hypocrisy of leading Democrats.
C-Command Blog
Michael now has a dedicated blog for C-Command products. Since the illustrious Mr. Tsai has not yet posted feed links, allow me to help you out: RSS, or if you prefer, Atom. [Big wave of the phin to Lee for the pointers to the feed links.]
ATPM 11.11
The November issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available for your reading pleasure. I'm wondering if Charles Anthony's cover art will be the last to feature the Power Mac G5. Daniel Jalkut, of Red Sweater Blog, was kind enough to contribute this month's Pod People column. We are actively seeking new iPod stories each month, and if you would like to share yours, please [e-mail the editors](mailto:editor@atpm.com?Subject=Pod People). In this month's FileMaking, Chuck Ross takes a break from the usual how-to to examine the new features of FileMaker 8. Sylvester Roque sets up a Mac music server, while Matthew Glidden upgrades his Cube's video card. I've performed the latter operation myself, though instead of the Radeon Matt uses, I went with a nVidia GeForce2 MX. Lee Bennett is kind enough to share with us his photos of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis as this month's desktop pictures selection. I especially like numbers four and eight. In Cortland, Chad Wieser finds himself beginning a new phase in life, while Cortland collects the last of a client's bill. Frisky Freeware notes the return of a Classic classic: FinderPop! Turly O'Connor is porting the venerable productivity app to OS X, and I'm looking forward to putting it through its paces. I've been thinking that I wouldn't get as much use out of FinderPop now, since I use Quicksilver, but I'm also thinking of the two apps as compliments rather than competitors. For those times when you're mousing around, it's easier to activate FinderPop, rather than going to the keyboard with both hands for Quicksilver. Yours truly shares the review spotlight with my fellows this month. Lee puts the AirClick and AirClick USB from Griffin Technology through their paces, while Matthew goes behind enemy lines with the Commandos Battle Pack. Tom Bridge examines the third edition of Derrick Story's excellent Digital Photography Pocket Guide. Eric Blair gives OmniGraffle Professional 4 a workout, while I chime in with a look at RadTech's Portectorz for the 12-inch PowerBook. We still have openings on the editorial staff, and we are always looking for new writers, and need new cover art each month. If you are interested in volunteering some time to ATPM in any of these areas, please e-mail the editors.
Spam subject line of the moment
"Get a bigger bugle!" Gosh, I don't even have a bugle, and they want me to get a bigger one? Isn't a large bugle called a trumpet?
Hamilton favors a national sales tax
"It is a singular advantage of taxes on articles of consumption that they contain in their own nature a security against excess. They prescribe their own limit, which cannot be exceeded without defeating the end purposed -- that is, an extension of the revenue." -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 21 (Of course, any talk of instituting a national sales tax has to go hand-in-hand with repealing the Sixteenth Amendment, and the end of the income tax.)
No, we're just hungry
Lileks cracks me up:
Women writing about men always seems like cats writing about dogs; they just can’t believe that sitting around and waiting for supper or intruders is what it’s all about. It has to be something more. A writer of the Dowd Brigade will ask: why does he want to go have pizza after sex instead of cuddling? A man, or a married woman, will say: because he’s hungry. No, it has to be more than that. Is he using the trip to the fridge as a hedge against intimacy? No, he’s using it as a means to get pizza. Because he’s hungry. You want him to stay, put a frozen Totinos between the mattress and the box spring before you start. We men are really and truly not that complicated, ladies.
Join the Axis of Alitists!
Okay, so if I can't have Janice Rogers Brown, then Sam Alito is a fine choice. The son of an immigrant and a public school teacher is already under fire from the Dems and radical left --notice how it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the two--according to Hugh.
Don't forget your local charities
I read an article in one of the local rags that donations to CCA are down in the wake of the massive outreach for hurricane victims. CCA is one of the leading charities in north Texas, serving primarily the communities between Dallas and Denton, with most of their efforts concentrated between Lewisville, Flower Mound, and Carrollton. CCA President Ed Johnson says, "All of the merchandise that has diverted to hurricane relief leaves the 12,000 people we serve each year short--very short." (CCA takes in unwanted items and resells them in a retail environment as one way of raising funds.) I'm sure there is a similar charity in your own community, which may be seeing a shortfall in light of hurricane relief efforts. I urge you to not forget about the help they give year-round, and to continue to support them, with your time or donations.