If the Mayan calendar cultists are right, the world’s going to end while Rebecca Black figures out where to sit in her friend’s car. It will also be 30 days before the next presidential inauguration, which if the candidate I support ends up getting elected the month before, I’m going to be pissed.
Years ago I applied the time-of-birth listed on my birth certificate to the fact that the year is actually 365¼ days long, and discovered that in leap years the anniversary of my birth actually falls on the day before my legal birthday. If such an occasion had occurred the year I turned 21, I would have been pissed.
What do you suppose a temporal refugee from pre-imperial Rome would think upon arriving in the modern era and discovering that December was the 12th month? I mean, after he got past the self-propelled chariots and the talking boxes people carry around with them.
The politics, on the other hand, would look all too familiar…
I wonder how many of us will be disappointed to wake up on December 22, 2012 and find that the world is still here?
So this morning I’m using the bugbook in my mother-in-law’s living room and it occurs to me it would be nice if I could have things on this machine work like so many things do on my iPhone, giving me information based on where I actually am.
Geosense is a software solution using Windows 7’s location sensor—which relies on network router information rather than GPS because most laptops don’t include GPS hardware—that is limited mainly by the limited number of “location aware” applications available for Windows 7. Still, it gives the little “locate me” button in Google Maps on your browser, something to work with just like the little crosshairs button on many iPhone apps. Surprisingly, the Google Earth app for Windows doesn’t have the option of accessing Windows’ locator.
What’s that? You don’t know where the “locate me” button is when you’re browsing Google Maps? Well, it’s the little square with rounded corners with the gray dot in it, just above the man icon that gets you into Street View. With Geosense installed and enabled you can click that and the gray dot turns blue when it shows your location.
Also the silly desktop weather gadget that still comes with Windows 7 can, once installed, be set to use your current location instead of requiring you to type it in.
If you use Geosense and find more ways to put the locator to use, the usual privacy caveats apply; what those other vendors do with your location information is between you and them.
Many people write material in order to demonstrate how much they know, or to put forth a point of view they feel strongly about. But they sometimes forget who the reader is, and what the reader needs to know… So the one piece of advice I’d give people is to look at their material through the eyes of the reader who doesn’t know you, who doesn’t care who you are, and who needs to be given a reason to read the next sentence of your posting and continue all the way through.
What? What!? Pander to the mob!!?? See that first paragraph, above.
The mail server kept resurrecting deleted folders and misfiling messages, so I had to stop using that email address.
My wife and I use Google calendar, which Apple’s calendar system doesn’t play well with; Chris uses multiple individual calendars to color-code her appointments, but when we try to integrate her calendar account from Google to the iPhone only one of those calendars displays.
The only two things I found to work reasonably well with iCloud were Notes and Contacts—but the iCloud web interface doesn’t permit editing Notes, whereas the workaround I had before, using two nice little apps, allows me to edit notes from any computer with access to the server they’re stored on.
As for Contacts, as long as I’m using Thunderbird what I want is to be able to sync my Thunderbird address book with my iPhone contact list without having to go through a CSV file or using Google Contacts. Neither go-between is satisfactory.
There is a thing called BirdieSync that seems to do it, but the developer wants €20 for the part that works on the desktop. Considering that I don’t use my contact list for commercial purposes that’s way out of line.
I really don’t know who to be madder at, Apple or Mozilla. Either way it’s pure unadulterated bullshit.
Update: BirdieSync offers a 21-day free trial, but it doesn’t work worth shit. And they want that much for it? Fucking Europeans.
I’m just sitting in my living room, composing a blog post on my TV. Why do you ask?
My wife got fed up with her old 32-bit laptop so she got a new one, very similar in specifications to my bugbook, and so the old one is now set up in here to serve as host for a magicJack doohickey we got so we could stop paying $25 a month to Vonage for what has essentially become a message line.
Personally I would have preferred to port the number over to Google Voice, which costs nothing (except for the porting, that is), but GV only ports numbers from cellular phone companies. I suggested using a cheap prepay company as a go-between but…
It’s not easy to read what’s on the monitor from across the room, though, so this won’t be a frequent thing.
Therefore, even though it appears that some people are abstaining, in fact everyone is already making an “affirmative” active economic choice to purchase health insurance or to self-insure. The Affordable Care Act regulates this economic activity by imposing a penalty on those who choose to self-insure in order to create a system in which all can have access to the healthcare system.
I may choose to buy a car for cash, or borrow, or lease…
Likewise, I may buy healthcare for cash as and when the need arises, or else I may level out the cost for a fixed premium PLUS the cost of my risk aversion. And if I do insure, I insist the cost reflect my own risks, and are not a mere scheme to hide subsidies.
Of course no one supporting ObamaCare has made any bones about this—it’s always been about nothing less than declaring intolerable the act of paying for your own health care as you make use of it. Other people not only have a “right” to health care, they also have a right to loot your paycheck to get it—and the authority to make that happen is “obviously” in the Constitution.
Any politician who supports such a system, whether at the federal level or state, must be removed from whatever office he now holds, and prevented from holding any office in the future—down to and including speed bump. Nor are there degrees of acceptability, making a politician who opposes it as a federal program but claims credit for one exactly like it enacted while he was a state governor, more acceptable than one who has pushed it on the federal level. The difference in hazard between the two is insufficient to justify making a distinction.
The Supreme Court must strike down ObamaCare’s individual mandate at the very least, and preferably all of it. With prejudice. The legitimacy of the federal government derives solely and directly from its adherence to the processes set forth in the Constitution. Failure to reassert limits on the power of Congress in this matter would leave the American people with no reason to pretend there is even a shred of legitimacy left.
After all these years, we are again debating the definition of unwanted sexual advances and parsing the question of whether a dirty joke in the office is a crime. Conservatives have mocked the seriousness of sexual harassment; liberal and mainstream pundits have largely reverted to the pieties of the early ’90s, with the addition of some bloggy irony about irrelevant old men just not getting it.
The truth is, our Puritan country loves the language of sexual harassment: it lets us be enlightened and sexually conservative, modern and judgmental, sensitive and disapproving, voyeuristic and correct all at the same time.
Recent conservative parodies of the concept of sexual harassment hinge on a certain weakness or blurriness in the definition. The problem is, as it always was, the capaciousness of the concept, the umbrellalike nature of the charge: sexual harassment includes both demanding sex in exchange for a job or a comment about someone’s dress. The words used in workshops — “uncomfortable,” “inappropriate,” “hostile” — are vague, subjective, slippery.
And that’s exactly the problem—sexual harassment has been defined to effectively give the intellectual equivalent of a couple of cartoon dunderheads control of the topic, and consequently of the fates of people who had no inappropriate intent.
And what dunderheads can control, so can those not of good faith—like at least two of Herman Cain’s accusers (not coincidentally, the same two who have come forward, the only two we know for sure exist).
The first time I ever watched Boise State play was in a bowl game two seasons ago against TCU, which the Broncos won. Back then Boise was in the Western Athletic Conference, but this season they began play in the Mountain West, which was TCU’s turf (they’re moving on next season to the Big 12).
Having watched Boise play this season I can understand why a tough team like TCU is moving to a more challenging conference; the Broncos would have benefited from more challenging opponents, especially in preparation for today’s game.
As it is, their undefeated season has ended, and their rivalry with the Horned Frogs will outlast their MWC coexistence.
Either team would have had to earn the win today on Boise’s blue turf. TCU did.
