Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

On This Day: Sep 16

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 23 posts previously published on September 16th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2020
    • Barbados will remove Queen Elizabeth as its head of state (this is mostly symbolic at this point, as they’ve been independent since 1966). However, this doesn’t mean that the sun will finally set on the British Empire — that doesn’t happen until they lose the Pitcairn Islands. ➡
    • Scientific American Endorses Joe Biden Scientific American has never endorsed a presidential candidate in its 175-year history. This year we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly. ➡
    • On This Day: Sep 16 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from September 16 ➡
  • 2017
    • Taking our nieces to the fair today! ➡
  • 2016
    • Got a fist bump of solidarity from a fellow kilted gent at lunch today (at Kiku-Chan, the little Japanese place near campus…because where else would you find kilted men in Ellensburg than at a Japanese restaurant?). :) (260/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • I seem to have been slacking on my photo a day project. Gotta get back in the swing of things. ➡
    • First-world problems: my new Apple Extreme router is tall enough that I had to move the gigabit Ethernet switch two spaces higher on the rack in my home’s networking closet. ➡
  • 2009
    • Pre-makes Three trailers for movies you didn't know were remakes (probably because they weren't really...). ➡
  • 2008
    • Say Cheese! Y'know, I probably shouldn't have posted anything about that textbook I popped up in the other day. After months of quiet, as soon as that goes up, the Washington Post includes me in a list of twelve photos that should never have been posted online. ➡
  • 2005
    • Yet More Tweaks A few more tweaks and oddments. ➡
    • …has a posse There's more and more posses out there these days. Andre the Giant had the first, Charles Darwin has one, Darth Vader, even Tony Danza...and I _know_ there's more. But there was only one problem. _I_ didn't have a posse. So I had to take care of that. ➡
  • 2003
    • JetBlue and CAPPS II I don't know anything about what area of the country they serve, as I've never heard of them before, but it seems like the JetBlue airline is going to be the testbed for the blatantly invasive CAPPS II program. ➡
    • PCs are Voodoo Well, that was entertaining. In roughly the same way that playing rugby against a team of rabid hyenas is entertaining, but entertaining none the less. ➡
    • Notable me And while it's really, really geeky, I love the fact that she complimented me on my source code (hey, like I said, it's really geeky). ➡
    • Cauliflower of love It doesn't get any more serious than a Rhinocerus about to charge your ass. ➡
  • 2002
  • 2001
    • A good weekend for movies In the midst of more and more news about the continuing aftermath of the WTC and Pentagon attacks, and in a world where it looks more and more like the U.S. may soon be declaring war, I decided it was a good time to take a bit of a vacation and head out to the movies. ➡

On This Day: Sep 15

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 27 posts previously published on September 15th

  • 2023
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • Book fifty of 2019: Conjure Wife, by Fritz Leiber. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1944 Retro Hugo Best Novel I enjoyed this one more than I expected when I started it. There’s an entertaining story in here, you just have to deal with the very mid-40s gender stereotypes. ➡
    • Today, on my dad’s birthday, I’ll be seeing the 40th anniversary theatrical screening of Star Trek: TMP. Two-year-old me sat on his lap watching TOS, exclaiming “speesh!” and pointing somewhere over my shoulder as the Enterprise whooshed across the screen…. 🖖 ➡
  • 2018
    • E.T. phone home! E.T. phone home! If you ever get the chance to see E.T. in the theater, with a crowd full of kids who have never seen it before, I highly recommend it. I’ll admit that I got kinda choked up at the resurrection scene, and I think a large part of that wasn’t even the movie itself, but from ... Read more ➡
    • Book thirty-four of 2018: Flash Gordon: The Lion Men of Mongo, by Alex Raymond and Con Steffanson ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2016
    • I got a name tag today! I guess this means that after five years, I’m official now? ;) (All the COTS secretaries got them at this morning’s meeting.) (259/366) ➡
    • Book forty-one of 2016: Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead, by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver. ⭐️⭐️ (258/366) (Yesterday’s photo that I forgot to post.) ➡
  • 2009
  • 2008
    • Do Bats Tweet? I found the Joker through a Wired article yesterday (I think). Today Rachel started following me, and I found most of the rest directly and indirectly through her, except for Edward, who added me while I was exploring. ➡
    • Links for September 12th through September 15th Sometime between September 12th and September 15th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! ➡
  • 2006
  • 2005
    • Happy Birthday Dad! Hi dad -- happy birthday! From your boy in Seattle. :) ➡
    • LiveJournal/OpenID Authenticated Commenting Thanks to Mark Paschal's OpenId Comments plugin, visitors can now authenticate themselves when leaving comments using a LiveJournal or OpenID account in addition to TypeKey authentication (or no authentication at all). ➡
  • 2003
    • New PowerBooks! Well, it finally happened — Apple has finally updated their PowerBook line. Since the keynote is still in progress, details are a bit sketchy, but here's some key points of what MacRumors has posted so far… ➡
    • Hurricane Isabel Seems like every time the human race starts to get a little egotistical, good ol' Mother Nature comes along to show us who's really in charge around here. Good for her. ➡
    • Just another day of lies The Powers That Be that run this country (into the ground, apparently) don't seem to be physically or psychologically capable of telling the truth anymore. The Nation's David Corn takes a look at 'The Latest Bush Gang Whoppers' today. ➡
    • A question for Windows experts Why can't I delete a partition from within the Windows 2000 setup utility? ➡
    • Updates, updates, updates Windows Update has just notified me that I have 33 'critical updates' to install to my copy of Windows 2000 SP 2. ➡
    • Pinocchio Something else to add to my ever-growing reading list, thanks to Cory Doctorow: a beautiful new edition of the original Pinocchio fairy tale. ➡
    • Dean Seattle flashmob Last week I mentioned the Doonesbury-inspired flashmob at the Space Needle. I didn't go (to be honest, I remembered it exactly when it was scheduled to happen), but pictures and a quick account have been posted by Harvey Wallbanger. ➡
    • Happy birthday Dad! Today's my dad's birthday! Feel free to stop by and wish him the best. :) ➡
    • Just needed a break Sometimes, a weekend staying away from the 'puter is just what one needs to keep one's sanity. ➡
  • 2002

On This Day: Sep 14

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 15 posts previously published on September 14th

  • 2024
    • Murder Mystery 2 🎥: ⭐️⭐️⭐️: Adam Sandler always makes my skin crawl, but Jennifer Aniston makes up for it. ➡
    • The Fall Guy 🎥: ⭐️⭐️: An uninteresting, occasionally slightly amusing mess, with one great split-screen scene. ➡
  • 2023
  • 2020
    • Rise Up. Show Up. Unite! We believe one of the most important things we can do right now…is to get more people showing visible support for the candidates. We hope you’ll join us in spreading this message of unity and loudly proclaim your support for the Biden/Harris campaign! ➡
    • On This Day: Sep 14 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from September 14 ➡
  • 2018
    • “If you actually care about reducing or eliminating the number of abortions in our country, simply HOLD MEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS. ALL unwanted pregnancies are caused by the irresponsible ejaculations of men. Period. Don’t believe me? Let me walk you through it.” ➡
  • 2010
  • 2009
    • Geek Appreciation This is my first year getting involved with Norwescon beyond showing up and snapping pictures, and I think it's going to be a fun experience. ➡
  • 2005
    • Transitioned There are a _few_ benefits to being unemployed for a little bit. One of those is having more available hours in the day to spend tinkering around with some of my neverending PROJECTs. I've just (mostly) finished converting all of my pages over to the new template styles provided by Movable Type 3.2. ➡
    • Pussy Power! Story No. 1: 'A German inventor has angered animal rights activists with his answer to fighting the soaring cost of fuel -- dead cats.' Story No. 2: 'A German inventor said he has developed a method to produce crude oil products from waste that he believes can be an answer the soaring costs of fuel, but denied a German newspaper story implying he also used dead cats.' ➡
  • 2004
    • Mid-trip notes (updated) Just jotting some stuff down for the moment — while I'm technically not entirely cut off from the 'net while I'm visiting, I'm not spending a ton of time online. ➡
  • 2002
    • Bush Good Bush / Bad Bush ➡
    • …says God And it came to pass that God visited the earth, and He did behold a series of billboard ads attributing to Him utterances of such banality that they would never pass His lips in a billion years. ➡
    • iCal questions It's been out for a couple days now, but I just donwloaded iCal, Apple's new calendar/scheduling application. I haven't even got it installed yet, and I'm coming up with curiosities. ➡
    • I don’t ‘forward’! I get a lot of things sent to me by the people I know, and that have my e-mail address. Some (many) annoy me, but at times I get sent stuff that I actually like, or find amusing, or some such. ➡

On This Day: Sep 13

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 17 posts previously published on September 13th

  • 2023
  • 2020
    • 📚 thirty-six of 2020: Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus by Isaac Asimov ⭐️⭐️⭐️ It’s ‘50s pulp young-adult space adventure. Quality? Accurate? Progressive? Nope. But for what it is, it serves just fine. Plus, you know, telepathic Venusian frogs. ➡
    • Difficult Listening Hour 2020.09.12 Week twenty-eight of my unplanned, unrehearsed, seat-of-the-pants goofing around. ➡
    • On This Day: Sep 13 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from September 13 ➡
  • 2016
    • A better shot of both #goth #lego #minifigures (plus a couple of their friends — the #zombie #cheerleader and a #ghost — in the background). ➡
    • It was totally worth paying the premium to order this adorable little #lego #goth girl #minifigure to keep the goth boy from the current series company. She even has a cute little bear! (257/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Gorgeous day today; nice view from the hotel as we plot and scheme for #nwc38! ➡
  • 2013
    • Difficult Listening Hour 11 Something new! No particular theme or idea behind this one, this was just me goofing around with the recently released djay 2 upgrade while prepping for tomorrow's Rodeo City Rollergirls double header. ➡
  • 2010
    • Regarding Facebook 'Facebook should not be a timesink where you slowly drown in all the half-remembered named of your youth. It's a community like any other. What makes it great is that you control every member of your own community.' ➡
  • 2005
    • Goodbye FedEx Kinko’s Right, so, following up on a previous post...I'm no longer working for FedEx Kinko's. The full, long, sordid story can be sent to friends and family. ➡
    • You’ve gotta be kidding me So...when did CNN start hiring The Onion's writers? Oh, wait. They're _serious_? ➡
  • 2002
    • Wag the dog, Bushie I know Dick Cheney finds it 'reprehensible' that anyone could think the White House's timing on Iraq is politically inspired, but the administration has exhibited a pattern of behavior that (as Cheney rightly warns with Saddam) creates a context that raises extra concerns. What else should reasonable people make of these facts? ➡
    • Even cops get to play sometimes The next officer, already starting to ride down the stairs on his bike, managed to both avoid the one who'd just fallen off his bike and was laughing and trying to disentangle himself from the spokes, and keep going down without taking a spill. ➡
    • :-) I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways. ➡
    • Good kitty…nice kitty… Long story short — after two weeks of waiting, and a good few hours of 'puter work, I've just upgraded my main mac (and webserver) to the newest version of Mac OS X, 'Jaguar' (v10.2). ➡
  • 2001
    • Hollywood Squares funnies Peter Marshall: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body -- what is it? Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused but it certainly isn't neglected! ➡

On This Day: Sep 12

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 26 posts previously published on September 12th

  • 2023
  • 2021
    • 📚 32/2021: Head On by John Scalzi ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
  • 2020
    • A new program in Denver that sends a paramedic and a mental health expert to 911 calls instead of police launched amid calls for alternatives to policing. So far, the van has taken more than 350 calls without once having to call in police backup. ➡
    • Conspiracy vs. Democracy How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping the 2020 Election This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not ... Read more ➡
    • Why Goodreads is bad for books After years of complaints from users, Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end.  ➡
    • Everything is the wrong color. Happy to not actually have fires near us, but we’re definitely getting hit by the smoke. ➡
    • On This Day: Sep 12 Recognizing 20 years of blogging, here are my past posts from September 12 ➡
  • 2018
    • Study finds no link between transgender rights law and bathroom crimes. Well, now. And in other shocking and entirely unforeseeable news, water is wet. ➡
    • Well, crud. I was worried this would happen, but hoped it wouldn’t: Apple has discontinued the iPhone SE. While it doesn’t affect me directly, it does make it probable that when it’s time to upgrade, my wife will move away from Apple in order to get a comfortably sized phone. ➡
    • In a perfect world, I’d have Apple’s iPhone X photo processing capabilities attached to a full-frame sensor in a Nikon f-mount compatible body. ➡
    • Listening to whatever’s playing on Apple’s livestream, with less than ten minutes before the event should start. Gotta see the new goodies (new iPhone X, Apple Watch) and then wait for the usual round of post-event dueling “Apple is the messiah/is clueless and doomed” roundups! ➡
  • 2016
    • Apparently, feeling tired and a bit worn out is good inspiration for moody album cover style photos. (256/366) ➡
  • 2014
    • Looking particularly scruffy this pleasant Friday evening. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2006
    • Boy Meets Dragon I love, love, _love_ this shot -- possibly my favorite from yesterday's trip to the zoo. ➡
    • Keith Olbermann to Bush While skimming over my LiveJournal Friends Page, sirriamnis led me to this 'Special Comment' by Keith Olbermann. It's one of the few things I've found worth using YouTube's embed feature for -- this is good. For the bandwidth challenged, the transcript is under the jump. ➡
  • 2005
  • 2003
    • Namedropper ;) You lucky bastard. ➡
    • Twenty Questions Why don't we have answers to these 9/11 questions? ➡
    • Persistance of Mouse Thanks to some of today's Disney animators, Destino has been completed, and will likely be shown in theaters next year before a Disney film, and eventually end up on DVD. I'm really looking forward to seeing this. ➡
    • The Man in Black Johnny Cash has left the building. ➡
  • 2002
  • 2001
    • It all keeps getting scarier Anytime a noice like a plane is heard everyone instantly starts looking up, trying to figure out where it's coming from, where it might be going, and whether it's friendly or not. The speed that something as familiar as an airplane engine can become a trigger for paranoia and fright is just staggering. ➡
    • Fascinating, frightening, and touching: eyewitness accounts Blogs from ground zero. I wouldn't have had time to search all these out, many thanks to Big Pink Cookie for originally posting most of them. ➡
    • Political cartoons There's a feature over at Slate with a lot of different political cartoons responding to yesterday's tragic attacks. Most share a few obvious common themes, but there's one theme that struck me as I kept seeing it come from the pen of so many different artists. ➡

On This Day: Sep 11

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 22 posts previously published on September 11th

  • 2023
  • 2022
  • 2020
  • 2016
    • I hope your weekend was good, and that the week ahead is pleasant for you. (255/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Yup. Won that round. #cah #cardsagainsthumanity ➡
    • Bringing out the vintage 1960s silver shrimp cocktail serving dish that Prairie inherited. It was originally her grandmother’s, and is inscribed to her grandmother from the “Connie wives”, when Prairie’s grandfather was 2nd in command of the USS Constellation aircraft carrier. ➡
  • 2008
    • I’m a Case Study I'm a case study in a textbook -- and, contrary to what might be believed, it's _not_ a psychological textbook. Rather, it's the latest repercussion from my fifteen minutes of fame way back when. ➡
    • Links for September 10th through September 11th Sometime between September 10th and September 11th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too! ➡
  • 2006
    • Me and a Cockatiel Spent a very nice day at the Woodland Park Zoo today. I've got the photos sorted out and almost ready to upload, but that'll come tomorrow. In the meantime, I've uploaded four taken today of either Prairie or me. Consider it something of a 'teaser'. ➡
  • 2005
    • In Transition Along with upgrading the backend of the site to Movable Type 3.2, which I did last week sometime, I've decided to upgrade my templates to the new MT3.2 styles. For now, though...things might be a bit odd. Bear with me, hopefully this won't last _too_ long. ➡
    • Basic HTML tag cheatsheet After a friend asked me a few questions about the basic HTML tags while trying to clear up some confusion, I went Googling for some sort of cheat sheet listing just the most basic tags. I couldn't find one -- just came up with a lot of full-blown tutorials or cheat sheets listing every tag in the book -- so I tossed this together. Hopefully it helps. ➡
  • 2003
    • Can't it wait? Why in God's name do people find it acceptable to stand at the urinal and talk on their cell phone at the same time? ➡
    • Who's on stage? Okay, this is it — the last one. Mostly because it's the last version that I know of, but hey, that's okay. This one comes from one of the best TV shows of all time, the Animaniacs. ➡
    • Hu's on first? Seeing as how something tells me this is a good day for a little levity, and I keep getting laughs out of these, I'm continuing on a theme here. Hopefully nobody minds too terribly much! I actually had this posted on another blog a while ago, but here it is again. ➡
    • Who's on first? I gave a copy of the 'Who's on first' takeoff that I posted earlier to the guys I work with, and one of them was completely confused. He's originally from Britain, and had never heard of the original Abbott and Costello routine! ➡
    • Abbott and Costello in Computerland Okay, one last thing before I head off to work. Dad sent me this today, and I damn near fell off my chair laughing at it… ➡
    • Print-friendly pages with CSS Printing often seems to be the bane of web publishing doesn't it? Thankfully, CSS allows a remarkably simple way to avoid having to deal with all these frustrations. With a little bit of coding time, you can create a special 'print stylesheet' that will determine exactly how your page looks when it's printed out. ➡
  • 2002
    • Oingo Boingo Y'know, I wish I had an excuse for not discovering Oingo Boingo years ago...but I don't. ➡
    • So it’s been a year One year ago, something huge and immensely terrifying happened. In the year since then, however, a multitude of other, smaller, less immediately noticeable things have happened (usually in the name of 'patriotism'), that added up scare me as much as (and quite possibly more than) the attacks themselves. ➡
    • Portland protest All the best things about this nation are under assault, and we have lost a great deal of ground already. We have mostly lost it through shortsightedness, internal bickering, and an annoying habit of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need to stop acting as though 'smash the state, stick it to the Man' is anything other than a child's point of view. ➡
  • 2001
    • Still can’t really believe it All and all, it's been an absolutely incredible and tragic day. The single biggest terrorist attack the world has ever seen, with repercussions that can only be speculated about at this early stage, and only the weeks to come will show where things go from here. ➡
    • How far is this going to go? My thoughts and prayers certainly go out today -- not just for the unfortunate victims and families of victims of the attacks this morning, but for an, if not peaceful, than at least less-than-cataclysmic resolution to this entire affair. ➡

On This Day: Sep 10

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 24 posts previously published on September 10th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • 📚 31/2021: The Star to Every Wandering by David R. George III ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 🖖🏻 ➡
  • 2020
  • 2018
    • Summer Vacation Part One As noted before, I posted these backwards, but here are the photos from the first part of our summer vacation. We spent four nights at Seaquest State Park (and had two of our nieces and their mom join us for two of those nights), wandering the woods and driving up to visit Mount St. Helens. ➡
  • 2017
    • At the Seattle Center to see a play, and happened upon their Hawaiian festival. Now sitting by the International Fountain and watching kids play. ➡
  • 2016
    • When clearance sales mean you can get a #batman onesie for $9, you don’t pass up on the opportunity. (254/366) ➡
    • More #Lego #minifig success! Got the #penguin costume, #icequeen, #boxer, and #babysitter (#bigsister? #mom?) with the cutest lil’ baby Lego! ➡
  • 2014
    • Halfway through the week. So far, so good. ➡
    • Oh, yum. Came home to still warm fresh baked bread, with the homemade fireweed jelly we got from my friend Thumper (AnnaMaria) when we were in Anchorage. So good! ➡
    • Bird, meet window. Window, meet bird. (The bird was fine, flew right away. I just couldn’t help but be amused at the almost cartoon-like near perfection of the smudge.) ➡
  • 2009
  • 2008
    • Jazzy Genius Here's a playlist my iPod just put together (pulling only from songs that happened to be loaded at the time), seeding off of Tony Bennett's take on 'Steppin' Out With My Baby'. ➡
  • 2004
    • Bush vs. Jesus If George W. Bush were running against Jesus H. Christ... ➡
    • North to Alaska On the off chance there's anyone in Anchorage who might have nothing better to do tonight than hang out at the airport, I'll be arriving on Continental flight 1587, scheduled to show up at 11:40pm Ak time tonight. ➡
    • Ten Tech Items Inspired by Science Fiction I WAS going to ask you to research whether or not there have been any women in Sci-Fi but I have answered that myself, having found Flash Gordon's moll. However it is a Sci-Fi question. Can you list 10 real technological 'things' that have reputedly come out of Sci-Fi stuff written in the 20th Century? ➡
  • 2003
    • www.michaelhanscom.com Eclecticism is now residing at www.michaelhanscom.com! Even better, the old address of djwudi.typepad.com will still work as a backup, so any links out there pointing my way will still work, without any issues whatsoever. ➡
    • Dean 'near-perfect' in latest debate The thought of that lying, hedging, mealymouthed stumblebum of a president trying to go up against the confidence, poise, and fire that Dean so often shows (and is apparently getting much better at as things progress) is incredibly amusing. ➡
  • 2002
    • Search re-enabled I know that the majority of my posts lately have been site-oriented, and are probably insanely boring, but...well...from time to time, I fall into full-on-'geek mode'. Just bear with me. ➡
    • 9-11 tributes Several sites across the 'net are altering their front pages as a tribute to the 9-11 attacks. Some aren't bad, some seem to be pretty ridiculous (to me, at least). ➡
    • The Height of Ambition But when the band played the Mexican hat dance, the construction workers started stomping in unison, and Endler -- standing next to Jack Kyle, the Port Authority's chief engineer -- began to feel odd vibrations in the structure. The floor did not seem steady. ➡
  • 2001
    • Nano-nano! In The Diamond Age, Stephenson does for nanotechnology what he did for the internet and virtual reality in Snow Crash -- takes today's best existing ideas and theories and extrapolates them forward into the future to explore where the technologies can take us. ➡

On This Day: Sep 9

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 25 posts previously published on September 9th

  • 2023
  • 2020
  • 2018
    • Aah, the 80s. When “Nazis are bad and should have their faces melted off” wasn’t a controversial statement. ➡
    • Re-watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and wondered if the “archaeological booby traps” trope had any basis in reality. Turns out, the answer is “yes”! Neat! ➡
    • 6.16 miles on the Cedsr River Trail this morning. Not a bad morning’s walk at all! ➡
    • How naked Burt Reynolds ended up in a Native art gallery in Seattle: This is wonderful. ➡
  • 2016
    • Just a nice quiet Friday evening at home. (253/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • Really, I’m not turning into some high-fallutin’ food snob. I’m just really spoiled. :) ➡
  • 2008
  • 2005
    • Why I’m not a Hollywood casting agent Seeing as how they're both horribly typecast these days and just seem to play the same characters over and over in every movie...I think Sam Jackson and Morgan Freeman should switch agents for a few years. Shake things up a little bit. ➡
    • Humor in Tragedy It's good to know that even in the midst of devastation, some people can still hold onto their sense of humor. ➡
  • 2004
    • Hurricane Ivan This looks about right to me…Hurricane Ivan gives Florida the finger. ➡
    • Bush’s military timeline Simon Woodside has created this handy-dandy timeline of President Bush's military service, using official documents released by the White House and the military. ➡
    • Mac tattoo? Rabid Mac fan I may be, but I do have to admit that I’m not quite rabid enough to get an Apple-flavored tattoo. However. If I were to get such a tattoo, I really think that the sticker design on this Powerbook would be it. That’s just a thing of beauty. (And yeah, this is ... Read more ➡
    • Incoming Florida just can't get a break, it seems. The current five-day forecast for Hurricane Ivan, courtesy of NOAA. ➡
    • The Class of 2008 For the seventh year, Beloit College has published their Mindset List, giving a short rundown of where today's college freshmen stand in relation to the world. I've caught this list for the past couple years, and it's always fun to read…if a little frightening at times (I'm only 31, and this list can make me feel old). ➡
  • 2003
    • Nice tits A selection of beautiful pictures of Tits. ➡
    • Good God, this is frightening Planning a trip anywhere next year? It might not be a bad idea to make driving plans instead of flying — since the US is planning to start flagging and detaining travellers at the airports. ➡
    • 20 Tips for new G5 owners This one's mostly just for me — originally from Ken Tidwell and posted on MacInTouch, but as their archives can be difficult to search, I wanted to keep this around. If all goes well, it might come in handy in a couple weeks. ;) ➡
    • Apples for Alaskans When school begins Sept. 15, the Denali Borough School District will become the first in Alaska to provide a laptop computer for every student in grades 9 through 12. ➡
    • Opus is back! After eight years away from newspapers, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed is creating a new comic strip called 'Opus,' starring his beloved penguin of the same name. ➡
    • How much to ship…me? Wanting to save a few bucks, he somehow puts himself in a shipping crate, manages to survive two flights in cargo planes, then pops out of the box once he arrives at his parents house — at which point the surprised delivery man calls the police, who arrest the man on an outstanding warrant. ➡
  • 2002
    • Font tweaks and hiding links And hey presto -- a hidden link that I can use to jump directly into edit mode on any post or comment in my blog! ➡
    • So long, Webloggers Well, it's official -- the Webloggers Webring is dead. Not a big surprise, really (some sort of crash had wiped out the linking system a few months ago, and it had been in limbo as to whether or not it could be recovered), but still something of a shame. ➡
    • Kung-tunes is back! I took a little time last night to get Kung-Tunes back up and running again -- as before, there's now a 'Music of the Moment' box displaying whatever .mp3 I'm listening to, updated every 30 seconds so that it's always current. ➡

On This Day: Sep 8

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 31 posts previously published on September 8th

  • 2024
  • 2023
  • 2021
    • Breakthrough infection odds: 1 in 5,000 or better. In Seattle on an average recent day, about one out of every one million vaccinated residents have been admitted to a hospital with Covid symptoms. That risk is so close to zero that the human mind can’t easily process it. ➡
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • It: Chapter Two: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Not bad, but not nearly as strong as the first. Good character building and creepy scares became too much CGI and too many jump scares. In the end, the creepyness of part one becomes just another collection of loud noises and CG monsters in part two. ➡
    • Book forty-nine of 2019: Star Trek: The Official Guide to the Animated Series, by Aaron Harvey and Rich Schepis. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ TAS finally gets its behind-the-scenes episode-by-episode review. Artwork, trivia, and memories from those involved make this a must for TAS fans. 🖖 ➡
  • 2018
    • Getting set up for the first @norwescon #NWC42 meeting of the year! ➡
  • 2016
    • Really, no other choice for the evening. #startrek #startrek50 #llap #llap50 #themantrap 🖖 ➡
    • Happy birthday #StarTrek! Today’s the #StarTrek50 anniversary — 50 years since The Man Trap, the first broadcasted episode hit the air — and while I wasn’t around for that, Star Trek has been part of my life for longer than I can remember. And that’s quite literally true; there are family stories of me at ... Read more ➡
  • 2015
    • I’m going to be a little sad when Prairie’s vacation is done. I could get used to coming home to cocktails on the patio! ➡
  • 2014
    • Yum! Sausages, ginger carrots, garlic Parmesan mashed potatoes, fresh corn, and homemade rosemary bread. I am so spoiled when Prairie’s on vacation and decides to spend a day cooking! (And the rest of the time too, really.) ➡
    • Definitely think I’ve hit maximum beard for me; thanks to my curls, the right side of my face is distinctly fluffier than the left. Time to trim! ➡
  • 2010
  • 2009
    • Thoughts on the Fall 2009 TV Lineup I just peeked at TV Guide's Fall 2009 TV lineup to see what Prairie and I might be interested in using to rot our brains with in the evenings. Most of the week looks doable, with only a few potential conflicts. ➡
  • 2008
  • 2005
    • More Katrina Incompetence On August 27th, President Bush declared a State of Emergency in Louisiana due to the then-incoming Hurricane Katrina. Sounds like a good thing, and possibly one of the few things done right in this whole mess, right? Well...not quite. ➡
  • 2004
    • New toys to play with Y'know, it's really hard to get anything useful done when I run across all these nifty new toys to play with. ➡
    • Flickr This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing. ➡
    • Oh, this was just icky Last night, as part of my preparations for going on vacation for a week, I worked on straightening up the apartment a bit, primarily by utilizing the time-honored method of picking up stacks of old mail and papers, dumping them in garbage bags, and taking them out to the dumpster. This morning, while in the shower, I suddenly realized that I hadn't set my AdSense profit check from Google aside into a separate pile when I got it. ➡
    • So are all photographers terrorists now? Yet another 'photography is terrorism' incident. ➡
    • Votergasm! Finally, a campaign I can get behind. Um…so to speak. ➡
  • 2003
    • Fred Phelps needs help Somehow until now Fred Phelps had managed to slip completely under my radar, but from what I've seen this evening, this man needs some serious help. ➡
    • Updated iPods and iMacs Oh, and just in case you've been considering upgrading or switching, Apple announced bigger iPods and faster iMacs this morning. ➡
    • The Doctor is in! Real life imitates art. ➡
    • Working out the bugs Anyway, I'm quite gratified that the design seems to be fairly well received, and that any bugs that have been mentioned so far are actually fairly minor. It's about time I started exploring different ideas, and you all are helping me iron things out a lot. I'll buy you a drink next time you're in town. :) ➡
    • Two girls in my bed! You will notice, however, that I am not in my bed. ;) ➡
    • New Patriotism Newsweek asks this week if it may be time for a New Patriotism. I'd say yes. ➡
    • Feedster IM Searching Feedster is currently my favorite search engine for finding topical, up-to-the-minute information, and they just released a really nifty new feature today — the Feedbot. ➡
    • Fifteen In 15 minutes, he attempted to make up for 15 months of misleading the American people and 15 weeks of mismanaging the reconstruction. ➡

On This Day: Sep 7

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Since I’ll hit 20 years of blogging this November, this year I’m posting a daily list of anything I published on this day in the past.

There are 23 posts previously published on September 7th

  • 2023
  • 2020
  • 2019
    • Book forty-eight of 2019: How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, by Randall Munroe ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “Smart people over-thinking things to the point of absurdity” has been many of my favorite conversations with friends, and this is that, in book form. ➡
  • 2018
    • “Proposal: If you take any piece of footage of Trump in a White House meeting, and replaced Trump with a penguin, the expressions on the faces of everyone else in the room would still work.” ➡
    • Book thirty-three of 2018: Doctor to the Stars, by Murray Leinster. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ➡
    • The Propaganda of Resistance This is NOT the administration falling apart. It’s A+, live action storytelling with a controlled demolition, and it’s actually really dangerous. ➡
  • 2016
    • I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way. (251/366) ➡
  • 2015
    • And dessert! Apple crisp, right out of the oven, ice cream, and warm drinks (coffee for Prairie, cider for me). ➡
    • Dinner time…pulled pork, baked potatoes, corn, and cucumbers and tomatoes fresh picked from Prairie’s garden. Eaten on the patio, of course, with a rose also from Prairie’s garden. ➡
    • Cocktails and appetizers on the back patio on a nice late summer afternoon. ➡
  • 2014
    • Under the heading of things I probably should be embarrassed about but aren’t: I was amused enough to actually pick up a dorky souvenir Alaska shirt. :) Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Batmoose! ➡
  • 2008
    • Old Money While we were in Woodland with Prairie's dad and grandpa, Prairie took a few minutes to poke around the house and collect some old glassware to bring home. While she was exploring, she found some fun old currency, some of which we recognized, some of which we didn't. I've scanned them in and done a little Wikipedia research, and here's what we came up with. ➡
  • 2005
    • Olbermann blasts Bush Well, not so much Bush specifically, as the entire botched crisis management in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. ➡
    • White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters They're somewhat on-again/off-again, but when the Onion is on, they're _dead on_. ➡
    • A little ray of sunshine While it's never a _happy_ thing to see one of Seattle's many homeless inhabitants laboring to push a shopping cart filled to overflowing with what few items they've been able to claim for themselves up one of our many hills, I have to admit it's hard not to grin when... ➡
  • 2004
    • Personality bits and pieces I've often semi-seriously joked that one of the things I'm proudest of in my life is narrowly avoiding becoming the über-sterotypical basement-dwelling pathologically introverted 'geek' by discovering at one point that not only did I actually have a personality, but that it was apparently a rather pleasant one. This ended up putting me in the rather rare position of being a geek who can generally actually cope fairly effectively with the real world. ➡
    • Guantanamo on the Hudson A first-hand account of being jailed for protesting (even though she wasn't really protesting, and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time) in New York during the RNC. ➡
  • 2003
    • 100 most challenged books 1990-2000 The American Library Association's list of the 100 most challenged books of the last decade. Titles in bold I've read. ➡
    • Define 'gay', Arnie I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman. ➡
    • Ecstacy or meth? A greatly publicized study detailing the harmful effects of popular drug Ecstasy has been retracted after the scientist realized that instead of Ecstasy, methamphetamine had been used in the experiments. ➡
    • Validation favelets The ampersand character — & — should be coded in valid HTML as &&, and failure to do so will result in broken validation. ➡
    • You idiots can't drive We expats get to hear a lot about the Second Amendment and its application back home. 'They give guns to everyone?', my friends ask. 'Don't mind it,' I usually reply, 'they do much worse. They give cars to everyone.' ➡
  • 2001
    • Funny or frightening? Both? Amazon.com customers comment on the American Film Institute's top 20 films of the 20th century. Kind of explains why such tripe becomes so popular these days, and the movies worth seeing are so hard to find (if they even get made). ➡