Overheard:

"And the hush was almost deafening"

You’re on national television »

I have no love for Chris Matthews, or the bellicosity of these “Hardball-esque” shows, but the inability of State Senator Kirk Watson to answer this seemingly simple question should be deeply chagrinning to every Obama supporter. I recognize Obama’s natural talents, but I’m still waiting to hear a truly substantive and positive example of what compromise and leadership really looks like for Obama and perhaps more importantly, why the change he wants us to believe in is even possible or desirable. And yes I know about his Senate and State Senate records and while inoffensive for the most part, his accomplishments are few and rather underwhelming, especially in relation to his soaring rhetoric.

BTW I would’ve included the video embedded, but I got stymied trying to customize the width and height of the embed code in both the “Video” and “Text” tumblr postings. I was able to do this before with my We’ve Only Just Begun post… what up tumblr?

Kindling

The hyperbole is astonishing. Businessweek: “Kindle is the iPod of Books”

Yeah… ummm.. no…

Of course, Carl Howe at Blackfriar’s Marketing has already expertly pointed out the multiple failings of this pointless device, but I can’t help putting in my two cents. I mean just look at it! Who even wants something that’s dedicated to removing the tactile pleasures of reading a good book anyhow? Not only is it unbelieveably ugly, but it’s a classic case of a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. Call me crazy (just don’t call me late for dinner), but I’m pretty sure most people are still pretty happy reading plain old printed books. And most people are the “broad and unforgiving consumer market…” that Amazon is apparently targeting and which Howe rightfully points out the Kindle “doesn’t have a chance” in.

Has no one but Apple itself learned anything from the continuing success of the iPod/iPhone platform? Anyone?… Nintendo, yup okay… Anyone else? Hello? Is this thing on?

Hanging our hats

I’m happy to report that we’ve found a new home that while not as quiet and secluded as our current rental, is still a sweet little place near two parks and even closer to downtown Petaluma. We move in December 1st, so yaaay us!

I also finally grabbed a refurbished MacBook Pro and couldn’t be happier with my choice. It’s one fast, slick machine and thus far I’m finding Leopard to be a fantastically useful and powerful upgrade. Now if I could just get Apache2 configured correctly and get our office VPN working I’ll be in web development heaven!

The joke is on me

I seem to remember something about everything being a joke and The Watchmen, and I’ll be damned if I can recall it exactly or confirm it at all, but the iconographic symobolism of The Watchmen smiley face with the blood droplet on it feels like the best metaphor for my state of mind lately.

A couple of weeks ago my trusty old TiBook 1ghz finally bit the big one, and rather dramatically at that. The hard drive ground to a sickening halt and seemingly in the same instant the backlight to the screen went permanently dark. Of course, ever since my daughter stuffed as many rolodex and business cards as she could into the slot of the DVD drive (destroying it in the process of course!) I’d been sort of used to it being on the disabled list, but I still wasn’t really fully prepared for it’s final and spectacular exit.

Although I was backing up, (albeit rather lazily on a once a week basis using Apple’s usable, but not so hot Backup 3 from when I used to have a .Mac account) I’m pretty sure that I lost about a week’s worth of data. After having it’s lifeless hard drive diagnosed (freely!) by the fine folks at MacAdvantage I decided it wasn’t worth the expense of data recovery and that I’d just have to finally bite the bullet and buy a new computer. Thankfully, it looks like one of the best new features of Leopard will help avert this scenario in the future.

On the one hand this is a good thing, because I’ve been wanting to start working from home once a week and I really need a new Intel Mac to run Parallels for Windows browser testing and after all that TiBook was four years old. On the other hand, I am a slave to the tyranny of choice. Even the relatively limited models and configurations that Apple offers have hopelessly paralyzed me thus far. MacBook, or MackBook Pro… and damn those iMacs are beautiful and so much bang for the buck!

To complicate matters futher, when my laptop died I must have missed the reminder email from my nutty, Swiss registrar, Joker.com that my domain name needed renewal, hence the dearth of activity on this blog and a few more gray hairs in my sideburns! Finally, today after only two and a half weeks of failed attempts and email exchanges, the Joker support guys told me that I should try not logging in to my account to get my credit card payment for renewing my expired domian name to actually go through. Obviously, that totally non-intuitive solution did work, but is it just me or is their entire site in need of a major usability overhaul?

While all of this silliness was transpiring, I also had to redo an entire email template campaign at work because I didn’t do my due diligence and only discovered the deep, dark absurdity of Microsoft’s decision to stop using Internet Explorer’s terrible, (but well understood, testable and slowly improving somewhat) rendering engine for html emails in Outlook and start using Microsoft Word’s simply retarded, godawful redering engine for Office/Outlook 2007! I’ve now learned the hard way. Html email is bad voodoo. Never use anything other than completely inline styles and tables for layout… Oy!

To top it all off, yesterday we got a letter form our landlords informing us that much to their “deep regret” we must move out by January 1st, 2008 so that they can have their daughter and family move in. What a Merry Goddamn Christmas I’ll be having!

On a last positive note (with a twist of cranky, New Englander vindictive, snark), the Red Sox swept the World Series again and despite the paranoia of some, I don’t believe they will turn into the new, Yankees. Unlike the Bush administration and the Yankees, the Red Sox seem to be well aware of hubris and hopefully how to avoid it!

Forging The Truth

Sidney Blumenthal writes of Dan Rather’s lawsuit vs. CBS in Salon yesterday:

“In making his case, Rather will certainly establish beyond reasonable doubt that George W. Bush never completed his required service in the Texas Air National Guard. Moreover, Rather’s suit will seek to demonstrate that the documents used in his “60 Minutes II” piece were not inauthentic and that he and his producers acted responsibly in presenting them and the information they contained — and that that information is true. Indeed, no credible source has refuted the essential facts of the story.”

Who would bother to “forge the truth” indeed?