Changelog

When I was in school in Colorado I enjoyed about five snow days. Only one that I can think of at CU (stupid school power station).

Now, I’ve lived in NC for 4 months. Local schools will be closed for the second day in a row tomorrow. How is that fair?

Well, I guess we did just get hit with the worst ice storm in a decade… No power right now. I’m hanging out with the Biology grad students at Duke :)

Had fun watching the extended version of LoTR, now surfing while Erica works on her paper.

CNN: Winter reaches Carolinas two weeks early – Dec. 4, 2002

Just took me two hours to drive home… A grand total of five miles! I miss nice fluffy Colorado snow.

Geoff Gasior at The Tech Report has an article up where he explains why he thinks Microsoft doesn’t charge too much for Windows. He has some good points, and some bad, but most importantly doesn’t even touch on the biggest issue (in my mind). I can’t afford Windows right now, and (as far as I know) have never been able to afford Windows. Ok, maybe Windows 98 or ME, but 98 sucked (and they charged for the patch to make it not suck), and I could never get ME to install correctly on my computer. Windows 200 and Windows XP were both priced waaay outside what I could afford, even with student prices (since CU didn’t have one of those super cushy deals that made everything dirt cheap).

I’ve graduated, but I’m having a hell of a time finding a job right now, so it doesn’t look like MS is gonna get any Windows money from me anytime soon.

Anyways, I think the price of Windows is absurd. I know it was expensive to make, but as a student whose trying to build a set of skills for the marketplace but can’t afford the OS everyone will expect him to know I’m not going to be paying MSRP anytime soon.

Thanksgiving went well. Erica’s and my parents were both in town, so we had a lot of people to cram into our apartment, but we managed. Brined and roasted a turkey, which turned out quite well. Made wild rice and apricot dressing, which also turned out well. The cranberry sauce with pear was too sweet unfortunately…

Also had sweet potatoes, asparagus, green beans, and mashed potatoes (with homemade gravy). We all hurt too much for pie afterwards, but eventually attacked the apple and pumpkin pies. Guests are leaving soon, so things are slowly settling down now.

Tom Tomorrow’s comments on the Eli Lilly provisions in the Homeland Security bill do a pretty good job of summing up the situation.

Bottom line; doesn’t this seem just a little sleazy?

Judging from these portfolios you’d think everyone in Scandinavia knows Flash and does design work for a living. Hm, maybe they do…

Anyways, I like this one.

A tool called Net Snippets allows you to copy web pages, or merely clippings from them, and add comments, keyword, remarks, etc. and then file then like bookmarks. This is what bookmarks should have been from the beginning!

Seriously, we have massive amounts of hard disk space, its not like we can’t quickly spider a page and download linked images, then copy it to the hard drive so we can annotate it. I can see how this could be a really nice tool for blogs, since it integrates directly into the browser. For instance, I could keep my bookmarks in folders (with annotations), and then mark specific bookmarks to get posted to my blog to share with my readers (if I actually had any).

It frustrates me that the various means by which I record my web browsing don’t integrate well. In particular, it bugs me that my bookmarks and blog don’t have much of a connection. I really would like the ability to annotate pages as I bookmark them, which NetSnippets allows me to do. Since annotated links are one of the core foundations of blogs, it makes sense for thse things to work together. Currently, I have to do each seperately, using two different interfaces.

If I could get this all integrated into some kind of mass informational repository like LM Orchard’s wiki, well then I would be in infogeek nirvana.

Doug Bandow at the Cato Institute presents a very rational and reasonable article on why Bush’s agresiveness towards Iraq should be opposed. [via Tom Tomorrow and Joe Conason]

So I have a Compaq iPaq which I never use. The biggest problem for me is that its just not very portable. So I really like the looks of this new Zaurus and this two-piece combo. In the mean time, I really wish I could afford a Danger HipTop.

No matter what the device, I really like the idea of wireless connectivity in a PDA. Anything with cool applications like this needs to be explored more. Of course, we still need to think about the dangers of blog walking. Isn’t it great what we can do with new toys?

The problem I see is that these cool applications basically need always-on internet connections, and I’m afraid that per-minute or similar charges are inevitable. [edit] Gizmodo is great for stuff like this.

It looks like an appeals court has overturned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinion theat the Patriot Act violated the 4th amendment. Well, this wouldn’t be terrible, except that since only the government presented arguments, there isn’t anyone to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. [via Anil]

So I just reinstalled Gentoo and finally got Straw to build. I’m impressed so far. Does an excellent job of finding feeds from URLs (RSS autodetection), clean UI, easy to get working and configure. I can think of two things I still need though… Drag’n drop subscription from the browser (drag a URL into Straw and it will try to subscribe), and visual indication of recently updated feeds. I’ve been using AmphetaDesk with AmphetaOutlines in Windows, and I like having a way to distinguish blogs with new posts. I’d like to see an option in Straw to sort the list by last-update and possibly indicated those blogs without updates in another color. I’ve also liked being able to subscribe to a site without leaving the browser (using a bookmarklet).

Looks like the Reublicans managed to squeek past the Democrats again. I’m afraid the next two years are going to be very painful to watch. Hopefully the Republicans won’t become the rubber-stamp brigade, but I’m not getting my hopes up. I just hope they don’t start going on about “revolutions” and “mandates” and other crap. Look at the numbers. This country is split right down the middle. Most races look like they’ll be decided by a rather small majority.

Next question: What the hell can the Left do to get some respect in this country?

Normaly I’m a pretty big gadget freak. Normally I disagree with Glenn Reynolds (aka InstaPundit). But this article is right on. Also note a similar Salon article.

I have now ordered pizza online a total of three times. Every time I do I feel like a complete geek. Yet, there is something strangely intriguing about the act itself. Normally when I purchase things (from Amazon for example) they appear at my doorstop a few days later. There is a disconnection between the purchase and delivery. There is no instant gratification. Yet, when I order a pizza that thing will be at my doorstep in less than an hour (I hope). There is (nearly) instant gratification. Maybe those who live in the Big City have been down this road before (do any of those companies still exist?). But I think its cool.