Category: observations

This on the heels of David Pogue’s roundup of response to a Dell support parody he ran (some folks thought it was too close to reality to be parody) . . . .

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall March 2, 2006 12:10 PM:

(March 02, 2006 — 12:10 PM EDT)
After I did the post a couple days ago about my terrible experience with a new Gateway Computer (actually with the computer and the support and pretty much everything else about the experience), I got a number of emails from Mac owners basically saying, ‘Switch to Mac. We all live in computer paradise.’

So I thought I’d answer the question on the site.

I must say that from my casual experience, Mac’s always seem to work better, be more intelligently designed, have a nicer screen interface and a bunch of other stuff. And honestly, after this most recent experience, for the first time in my life I’ve seriously considered switching.

So, why haven’t I, and, probably, why won’t I?

I think it basically comes down to two reasons.

First, I’ve been using PC-based computers for about 20 years. And over the years, I’ve invested a serious amount of money in software and various gizmos, all of which are PC-based. That in itself is probably enough to keep me shackled down in the Wintel universe.

Second, I’ve got a decent amount of know-how invested in PCs. I don’t just mean that I’d have to become a computer newbie again. But I can open up my PCs and install things and actually do a certain amount of maintenance on them. Not sure one can do that with a Mac, at least not to the same degree. In the background, I guess there’s also that concern about having ones whole computer set-up and data tied to one company.

Third (okay, I said two, but it’s my site), I’ve become very dependent on using a tablet PC for a lot of my note-taking and loose-leaf type record keeping. (If you’re a journalist or anyone else who takes a lot of notes or does a lot of research, I seriously recommend checking them out. I couldn’t live without one.) And I don’t think they exist in the Mac universe.

In any case, those are the basic reasons holding me back. (I know the hardware tends to be more expensive. But I pretty much live my life online. So I don’t think the cost in itself, if not too much more, would hold me back.) But I really do sort of secretly wish I could use a Mac because they just seem like they’re better machines. So I’d be very curious to hear from readers. Not just Mac users. In fact, not even primarily Mac users. Who I’d really like to hear from are former PC users who’ve switched to Mac. What have your experiences been? Any major downsides? Either in the final experience or in the transition over — moving your data over, etc?

Let me know. I’d be much obliged.

— Josh Marshall

Clinging to Windows because you know how to fix it like keeping your horse tack after you sell the horse and buy a car.

Stupid is as stupid does…:

It had never occurred to me before how hard it must be to be stupid in a world that values information, and the ability to interpret it, above all else. It’s no wonder these people are pissed off; especially when, as Sullivan says, “It cannot be blamed away.” That these philistines, in a desperate search for validation, have retreated into theologies that celebrate ignorance, and voted ignorant people into office should come as no surprise. They have no place in the modern world, they know it, and so they’re fighting desperately to change it.

I think he hits the nail so firmly on the head as to obliterate it. The Apotheosis of the Yahoo continues.

CNN.com – Bush: Bin Laden helped me, book says – Feb 28, 2006:

“Anything that drops in at the end of a campaign that is not already decided creates all kinds of anxieties, because you’re not sure of the effect.”I thought it was going to help,” Bush said. “I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn’t want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush.”

3000 Americans died on his watch, 2200 uniformed service people have been killed, with 15,000 wounded or disabled, 10s of thousands of Iraqis have been killed: Osama bin Forgotten is still a free man, and is considered a political asset to this president, by this president.

Worst. President. Ever.

A friend, a crafter of diverse skills — sewing, knitting, quilting, leatherwork, &c. — pointed out to me that the local economy must be healthy, since some of her crafty haunts were closing up. Being nigh on 80 years old, she has some perspective on this, and says its a tried and true pattern that when the local economy skids, craft outlets do well, and when business in general is good, crafting falls out of favor.

My take on it was purely utilitarian, that people did more mending and stretching of their dollars, but her take was that people spend money on entertainment outside the house — movies, concerts, and such — when they have it and sit home by the fireside making stuff when they don’t.

What do you think?

2 out 3 people surveyed disapprove of the job the incumbent is doing. And he hasn’t yet faced a scandal along the lines of the Lewinsky witch-hunt or Watergate — yet.

CBS News | Poll: Approval Ratings Compared | November 2, 2005 22:00:08:

Both Reagan and Clinton endured scandals during their second terms. In January 1998, when facing questions about his affair with Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton’s job approval ratings actually rose, reaching the low 70s, and remained at least in the 60s throughout the rest of that year. President Reagan’s job approval rating dropped by more than 20 points to 46 percent in November 1986, just after public disclosures about the Iran-Contra scandal. During 1987 Reagan’s approval rating hovered around 50 percent, but began to rise again in 1988. President Richard Nixon’s approval rating fell as the Watergate scandal became public in the first half of 1973, and was at about 25 percent during 1974.

President Bush’s approval rating has been experiencing a slow but steady decline since 2004.

For of those to whom much is given, much is required: this wasn’t part of the Bush family catechism, it seems. More like, “what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine.”

Now playing: Seen and Not Seen by Talking Heads from the album “Remain in Light” | Get it

The Case for Impeachment (Harpers.org):

The Conyers report doesn’t lack for further instances of the administration’s misconduct, all of them noted in the press over the last three years—misuse of government funds, violation of the Geneva Conventions, holding without trial and subjecting to torture individuals arbitrarily designated as “enemy combatants,” etc.—but conspiracy to commit fraud would seem reason enough to warrant the President’s impeachment. Before reading the report, I wouldn’t have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don’t know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man. We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal—known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child’s tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?

I need to read this again, and follow all the footnotes, but it’s not a thin case, by any measurement.

[update: this is what I actually do. Try this, instead. ]

I have seen a couple of sites offer up lists of their “greatest hits” and wanted to do something similar. But groping through 4 years of apache logs wasn’t too appealing.

I hunted around for some ideas on getting apache logs into a MySQL database (lots of people log directly into MySQL, but my stuff here is a tad too brittle for that). I found this page, with a script designed to parse the logs’ lines into their constituent fields, open up a database connection with DBD, and insert all the stuff.

I didn’t find the regex featured in the script to be functional. So I ended up coming up with my own. I’m still working on what to include/exclude. I don’t want to keep track of every time my feeds were retrieved: I want to know when an actual page was requested.

I also borrowed the database schema used by the mod_log_sql project (in contrib/create_tables.sql).
Continue reading “top ten hits, &c.”

A broken tooth has me surfing on a wave of codeine, hence the flood of postings today. Fortunately, I only used one of the hydrocodone tabs I got in my bike disaster of last spring so I have some way of managing the pain. Doesn’t it figure something like this would happen over a weekend?

The tooth in question a molar (#3, for those of you who know them by numbers), and it’s broken as a result of a massive filling overwhelming the tooth’s structure. I have a few more of those lying in wait for me . . .

Continue reading “better living through opiates”

My zeitgeist page lists a few variations on searches for me:

This is just over the past 10 days. I don’t know of any creditors who would go this route . . .

Now playing: Three To Get Ready by The Dave Brubeck Quartet from the album “Time Out” | Get it

If I use the drop-down menu in Cacti’s UI to select colors, FireFox can show the colors on the menu:

Neither Safari, DeerPark (the CPU-optimized FireFox variant), or Camino can do it.

I won’t ask how hard it is — I’m sure it’s beyond my limited grasp — but perhaps the FireFox crew won’t mind sharing?

Now playing: Too Bad by Let’s Active from the album “Every Dog Has His Day” | Get it