Microsoft announces cessation of Windows XP development

You'll never believe this!

Mark Steyn on Arthur Miller

I'm on a Mark Steyn kick lately. And since he really knows theatre, I figured his piece on Arthur Miller would be interesting. Here's what I thought was the highlight of the article (which you do need to register to read in its entirety if you are so inclined):

"It was a marvellous inspiration to recast the communist ‘hysteria’ of the 1950s as the Salem witch trials of the 1690s. Many people have pointed out the obvious flaw — that there were no witches, whereas there were certainly communists. For one thing, they were gobbling up a lot of real estate: they seized Poland in 1945, Bulgaria in ’46, Hungary and Romania in ’47, Czechoslavakia [sic] in ’48, China in ’49; they very nearly grabbed Greece and Italy; they were the main influence on the nationalist movements of Africa and Asia. Imagine the Massachusetts witch trials if the witches were running Virginia, New York and New Hampshire, and you might have a working allegory. As it is, Miller’s play is an early example of the distinguishing characteristic of the modern Western Left: its hermetically sealed parochialism. His genius was to give his fellow lefties what’s become their most cherished article of faith — that any kind of urgent national defence is, by definition, paranoid and hysterical. It was untrue in the Fifties and it’s untrue today. Indeed, the hysteria about hysteria — the ‘criminalisation’ of ‘dissent’ — is far more hysterical than the hysteria about Reds."

He has a point about The Crucible being inapt. I go back and forth on that last statement, though. I hear some pretty big hysteria about the Reds, but then again the Communist advancement was some cause for alarm. HUAC was way before my time, but I get the sense it was a worthwhile endeavor that got way out of hand.

That is to say, the fact that Shirley Temple was not a security risk does not mean there was never anything to worry about anywhere. Anyway, Mark Steyn says it better than I could, so stick with him and you'll be okay. I'll try not to link to him again for at least a week.

Blogging The Apprentice

I'm going to keep a log of the silly business metaphors used by contestants on The Apprentice. Some real potential for hilarity. And yes, I should be reading right now.

9:08 - The first occurrence of "I'm going to step up to the plate," spoken by a prospective project manager. We can anticipate hearing more instances of this trite baseball metaphor.

9:11 - What may prove to be the funniest and only original idea of the evening. Erin, my favorite contestant, said of another that he is "the laziest man in show business." This is only funny, of course, if you know that James Brown is known as the "hardest-working man in show business." Erin is witty.

9:15 - "I wanted to think outside the box," yippee! My question is, can you possibly be thinking outside of the box if you use the expression "think outside the box"?

9:16 - "There's no reason to reinvent the wheel if you don't have to." Indeed. Translation: "Why bother saying anything original when you can more easily draw from your bottomless well of hackneyed corporate jargon?"

9:20 - This isn't a business metaphor, but it's hilarious. Someone just referred to the famous actress Uma Thurma. She must be spectacularly memorable.

A little lull here as the tasks, which are decently interesting this week, get underway. I'm sure it will pick up in the boardroom, though. It always does. They really dig into the nonsense bag when their thumbs get under the screws...and here we go!

9:42 - Another classic: "Michael doesn't give 110%." Sigh... This one is a personal annoyance of mine, so I won't elaborate on it; I'd miss the rest of the episode if I got started.

9:44 - Another zinger from Erin, who offered up the gem, "Michael has become a boardroom cliche." Trump even loved it, saying "You have some great lines of crap!" But then...

9:45 - She had to fall back on a cliche of her own: "Michael just doesn't have that fire in his belly." Really? I would have guessed there's nothing that dude doesn't have in his belly.

Now the contestants go out and only the ones who are really at risk go back in for the final session. It promises to be good.

...

Well, it was good. But not because there were any more trite aphorisms. It was good because Trump totally killed the Laziest Man in Show Business, as only Trump can. The soon-to-be-fired Michael interrupted the project manager, who was busy telling Trump why the other contestant should be fired. Trump was incredulous: "How stupid could you be? He's killing her! Why would you interrupt that? Why would you stop him from telling me to fire your competition? Michael, you're fired."

A good end to a good episode. And it ended up sending the biggest moron to see Katie and Matt in the morning. Poor guy. Even a Boardroom Cliche doesn't deserve that.

Apartment in Rochester

It just occurred to me that I should post this in my blog. If you're local to Rochester, NY, or better yet are about to move here, this could be of interest to you. We have a vacancy in our multi-family home. Here are the details:

Spacious 1-bedroom apartment in a Victorian home in the Neighborhood of the Arts, right on the ArtWalk.
Hardwood floors
Cool retro bathroom with stained glass window
Large porch
Great neighbors (of course)
Laundry included!
Broadband WiFi included!

The rent is $495/month plus gas and electric.

If you or someone you know are interested, please let me know!

Do you remember Mike Greenwell? Yeah, me either.

Mike Greenwell can't be serious. ESPN.com reports that Greenwell, the now-forgotten leftfielder for the Red Sox in the late 80s, told a Florida newspaper he thinks he deserves the 1988 MVP award:

"'Where's my MVP?' Greenwell told the Fort Myers News-Press. '[Canseco's] an admitted steroid user. I was clean. If they're going to start putting asterisks by things, let's put one by the MVP'"

Uh...no thanks, Mike. Canseco is a big-headed tool who cheated, but he went 40-40 that season and you had a nice Don Johnson beard going. You weren't MVP quality.

Who's to say what Canseco would have done clean? It probably wouldn't have been 124-42-40, but my guess is it would have been better than 119-22-16. But that's not the point. Performance-enhancing drugs were not banned in 1988. What are you going to take away from him? His dignity?

Peggy Noonan on blogging

In today's column (free registration might be required; I can't remember), Peggy Noonan analyzes political blogging.

Mostly it's the standard "MSM is dead" line (which is interesting but soooo 2004), but anything sounds better in her prose, so it's worth reading. I link it primarily for her predictions about the future of blogging, which appear at the end of the column. A couple of them were quite insightful, I thought.

Interactive Blog Game II

OK, so it's not that interactive, and it's not really a game per se, but it is in my blog! And there was enough response to the first one that I'm going to try it again. If it works well this time, maybe I'll even try to give it a name.

For those who missed the first installment, check it out here.

I'll name two; you name the third. Pearl Jam, Nirvana, and... ???

(See, this one is more interesting to me. I'm not sure I'll like any answer...but go ahead, because I am anxious to hear your thoughts.)

Mark Steyn, funny and poignant

Mark Steyn (rhymes with "fine") is a great writer. He is at turns funny and poignant. His politics are conservative, and I know some of my readers are not, but he's not a windbag like some conservatives, so you may be able to get through it. He has an interesting perspective, having ties to both the U.S. and Britain.

His latest compares Bush's approach to that of Europe and the U.N.:

"This week's U.N. report on the Sudan nicely captures the alternative to Bush-style climate change. After months of expressing deep concern, grave concern, deep concern over the graves and deep grave concern over whether the graves were deep enough, Kofi Annan managed to persuade the U.N. to set up a committee to look into what's going on in Darfur. They've just reported back that it's not genocide. Phew, thank goodness for that. It turns out it's just 70,000 corpses who all happen to be from the same ethnic group; could happen anywhere. But it's not genocide, so don't worry about it."

And on Social Security, U.S. and European style:

"For purposes of comparison, by 2050 public pensions expenditures are expected to be 6.5 percent of GDP in the United States, 16.9 percent in Germany, 17.3 percent in Spain and 24.8 percent in Greece. In Europe, we're talking not about the prospect of having to reduce benefits but of total societal collapse. With a death-spiral fertility rate of 1.46 children per couple, the EU will have to increase mainly Muslim immigration to a rate that will transform those societies out of all recognition. American reformers like to say that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. The EU has a vastly greater problem: The entire modern European welfare state is a Ponzi scheme. And the political establishments in Paris, Berlin, Brussels et al. show no sign of producing their own plain-spoken EuroBush to confront it."

I like writers like this. If anyone can suggest a liberal columnist who writes this well and argues reasonably and uses humor, not vitriol, to make his or her points against the other side, I'd gladly read regularly.

Incidentally, if you like Mark Steyn, you can find more of his work at www.steynonline.com. He's nothing short of prolific; there's always a boatload of content available.

Get on with it, already

ESPN.com reports that the NHL might be close to announcing the cancellation of the season:

"Earlier Monday, the Canadian Press, citing an unidentified source, said NHL commissioner Gary Bettman would cancel the season possibly as early as Tuesday."

Is it just me, or is this something like the fifteenth time they've threatened to cancel the season on an upcoming date?

Just get on with it and cancel it. The NHL is useless anyway, and no one really cares. Hey NHL: what kind of reaction do you think the NFL would have received if it initiated this process? It would never happen, because people care and the product is excellent. Even hockey fans know the NHL sucks, so there hasn't exactly been an outpouring of pressure to get this thing straight.

I can't think of anything more boring than the NHL lockout. Well, maybe the paper I should be writing right now...

UPDATE: ESPN.com had a poll about what people will miss most about hockey. The results are quite telling.

Feeling old?

The Bodyguard (the Whitney Houston/Kevin Costner movie with that insufferable version of "I Will Always Love You") was released in 1992 - that was 13 years ago.

Nirvana's Nevermind record (with the anthemic song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" that sent alternative music mainstream) was released in 1991 - that was 14 years ago.

Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" made it to the Billboard Top 10 (#3, to be exact) in 1989 - that was 15 years ago.

The Breakfast Club and its classic hit song "Don't You Forget About Me" (by Simple Minds and not appearing on the soundtrack) was 1985 - that was no less than twenty years ago.

A new interactive blog game!

My friends and I developed this fun game at work when it got slow one day. And since some of those friends now work elsewhere (rubystheory.blogspot.com, I'm posting in your direction...), I figured I'd move it online.

(Brief interstitial complaint: Can people please stop saying "I bought it offline" when what they really mean is "I bought it online"? Seriously, this was acceptable in 1996 if you were over 50. But now there is no excuse, no matter what age you are. Unless you purchased something directly from an assembly line, I can't imagine any scenario where that expression would be appropriate. There.)

Anyway, it's a fun pop culture game. If people are willing to participate, I'll name it and make it a recurring feature. (Here's the post where I find out I only have 2 readers, and one of them is me, proofreading.)

The gist of the game is that I name two pop culture phenomena—movies, bands, songs, books, etc.—and you all debate what the third would be. So if I said (and I would NEVER say this), "N*Sync, Backstreet Boys, and...?" you would all debate whether 98 degrees or some other useless poppy boy band from the late 90s was the proper culmination.

Sound like fun? I think it could be, especially if you leave your answer in the comments and banter back and forth with others who have commented. If everyone thinks it would be boring, you can ignore me and we'll all pretend this post never happened.

So without further ado, here is the first challenge:

The Breakfast Club, Ferris Beuller's Day Off, AND... ???

Post away!

Twizzlers and crappy DVD "special" features

A wise man once said to Homer Simpson,

A Mounds Bar is not a sprinkle. A Twizzler is not a sprinkle. A Jolly Rancher is not a sprinkle, sir. Perhaps in Shangri-la they are, but not here.

I am a firm believer that there is a Simpsons quotation for every occasion. What occasion fits this particular quotation? I'll tell you.

I'm watching a DVD that I borrowed from a friend at work. And God Spoke, not very good. As is my tradition, I scanned the box as I watched the first few scenes. (I like to see who's in it, what the running time is, how they're hyping it, etc.) At the top of the box are listed the "special features." Want to know what they are? Full screen version, English subtitles, 2.0 Dolby Surround, and the extremely rare and spectacular "scene selections." That's it.

I would like to tell the fine people at Artisan Home Entertainment: Full screen version is not a feature. English subtitles are not a feature. 2.0 surround sound is not a feature. Scene selections are not a feature.

We'd all be okay with it if production companies just released bare-bones DVDs with no features. But don't try to pass off basic functionality as "special" features.

Abel's stats

Abel had his six-month appointment with the pediatrician yesterday. (Dr. Mayer says he's one of the most exceptional 6-month olds in the country, and you know he wouldn't say THAT about just any old baby.)

21 pounds (well, 20 pounds 15.5 ounces, so we say 21)
28 3/4 inches long
over 18 inches of head circumference

That's a big boy!

Everything else is progressing just fine, and the doctor was especially impressed with Abel's happy demeanor. Then, of course, they gave him two shots. He handled that fine, but wasn't what anyone would call "happy." Thankfully, it hasn't affected his mood or body temperature so far this time.

OK, enough about "real life." Back to my quest to bring my readers a neverending stream of Apple-specific nerd news, social and political commentary, occasional stories about lasers, and of course, ranting.

iPod RAID array

I seriously doubt I will ever reach the point where I would think to do something like this, but I do find it kinda interesting...if a bit weird.

Hat tip to Pauley over at digitalbrainwaves.com.

The PowerBook saga continues...

Unbelievably, this isn't over yet.

For those new to the story, here's a brief recap: I was having problems with my optical drive. Twice I sent it to the repair center, and both times it came back unchanged due to inability to duplicate the problem. Both times the problem persisted, however. A senior customer service rep told me to send it in again, and she would put a note in the file insisting they replace the drive, no tests required. She assured me they would fix the problem and asked me to call her directly if anything was wrong when it came back.

When it arrived at my door, the optical drive indeed worked. (The fact that there had been a hard drive format/OS-reinstall was annoying but not entirely unexpected. I had backed up my data.) There was a problem, though.

The FireWire port was blocked. The metal lining/casing stuff had been bent up, and I couldn't plug in any FireWire peripherals. Needless to say, I called my rep and left an urgent voicemail.

She returned my call today, and this is the gist of it: since there has only been one true repair at the service center, the issue has not yet reached the point where Apple will replace the entire unit. At the same time, as a "gesture of good faith" and an acknowledgment of the reality that I've been without it for a week three times now, they are sending me an iPod mini. And if it comes back and isn't shipshape, they will replace the unit.

This seems somewhat symbolic of the entire ordeal. I have been quite unhappy with the ins and outs of the process, but I am a reasonable person, and I can't really say Apple hasn't done right by me. I mean, if they can't duplicate the problem, they can't fix it. Except for a hasty reassembly that damaged the FW port, they haven't done anything wrong, and they have been willing to make it right when uncontrollable factors interfered with the process.

I have certainly gotten my money's worth out of the AppleCare extended warranty, that's for sure.

There's more I could write on this whole thing, but since it's probably boring to most of my readers, I'll stop here. Here's hoping the next post you read on this topic will be the last.

Jake update

It's been 5 days without Jake now. We are still trying to figure out how we feel. For the most part, we feel very sad that he is gone, but we don't exactly miss him. By the end, we really weren't enjoying him at all, nor he us. That's how we knew it was time to make the decision we made. I still get a knot in my stomach whenever I think of that day or where he might be now.

There might be good news, however. The Humane Society website listed Jake with a picture and a nice description the next day after we dropped him off. Over the weekend, the listing was taken down. He's nowhere to be found on their site. (For the pessimists among us, they are nowhere near capacity with dogs, so euthanasia is definitely not the reason for the disappearance of the listing.) We can only assume he's already been adopted.

This is a very good thing, assuming he went to an appropriate home. (Lollypop is good with their screening process, so I think he probably did.) We pray he will be happier, as he was for the first two years with us, and that he will live out his life in his new setting without any further disruption.

Thanks again to those of you who offered your support. It meant a lot to Tracey and me.

Super Bowl prediction

Well, it's about six hours until kickoff, and here is my prediction. First, some general thoughts. I've said before that in their last two games, the Patriots have utterly demolished two very good teams from the far better conference, each time doing so on the other team's terms. (They held the offensively effusive Colts to a mere 3 points and rang up 41 on the stingy Steelers defense.)

The Eagles were a very good team with Terrell Owens. Now, they're just a good team. Add to that the fact that the NFC was substantially weaker than the AFC this year, and the fact that the Eagles are likely suffering from what I like to call a "getting over the hump hangover" after the NFC title game, and you would have the makings of a blowout...except for the fact that the Eagles' defense is extremely good.

Still, I think the line (Patriots -7) is too close, even for the Super Bowl. If they'd set the spread at 10, I'd have had a tougher time calling it that way. And I definitely pick the Patriots to win straight-up.

Patriots 23, Eagles 13
MVP: Tom Brady (Corey Dillon is the fashionable choice, and he'll play a big role, but Brady will control this game.)

Microsoft employees love their iPods

From Wired News. Hide Your IPod, Here Comes Bill:

"Microsoft's leafy corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, is beginning to look like the streets of New York, London and just about everywhere else: Wherever you go, white headphones dangle from peoples' ears."

A tip for tabbed browsers

I've recently honed a new browsing skill to add to my repertoire. I developed it to combat a website annoyance: links that open in new windows. Now, I've written on that phenomenom before, so I won't get too boring. Suffice it to say, before tabbed browsing, I thought links in new windows was a capital idea; now I think they stink because I prefer to open pages in new tabs, or occasionally, just in the window or tab I'm already viewing.

Some links won't open in tabs even if you tell them to. So what to do when confronted with a link that insists on opening in a new window? Well, drag and drop. (That seals it, I'm definitely a full-blown Mac user now.) I just click and drag the link up into the tab bar and it opens in a new tab, just like I want it to. If I want to open the link in the tab I'm already viewing, I drag it to the address bar or to the tab itself.

Two settings help this technique work best: First, it helps to have the status bar enabled so you can tell that a link wants to open in a new window just by mousing over it. Second, it helps to have the tab bar viewable at all times, so you have a place to drag the link even if you only have one tab open at the time.

I'd be interested to know how many of you already use this technique, or if you have any other cool tips for tabbed browsing. If you have a moment, leave a comment.

UPDATE: After reading John Gruber's quasi-review (at the bottom of the linked page) of OmniWeb, another Mac browser, in which he laments Safari's inability to drag tabs from one window to another, it occurred to me that this could be done in Safari. So another variation on my trick is to drag the link from the content of one window to the tab bar of another. And if you wanted to do so with existing tabs, you can drag the URL by clicking on the blue globe at the beginning of the address bar. (This does mean the tab has to be selected, however, which may be Gruber's annoyance with Safari. I haven't used OmniWeb, so I don't know.) Using Apple's Expose feature makes switching between windows very easy, even if you're holding a link with the mouse. But you can also use Command + ` to cycle among open windows of the same application.

Retro video games on your TV: now, even sports sims!

You may have seen this brilliant innovation already. It's a gaming system that plugs directly from the game controller into the RCA ports in your television. They store several games from old video game platforms such as Atari on one controller. So you play the game with a paddle or joystick just like the one you remember, but there's no console; it just goes straight to the TV.

Well, I'm not really into Pong or Missle Command, so this has essentially just been "neato" to me so far. But now, JAKKS Pacific has released a new version that is modeled on the Sega Genesis and plays two classic EA Sports games: Madden NFL '95 and NHL '95.

Oh man, this is cool. I loved those games in college. For $30, it would bring hours of fun. I only wish they had thought to include NBA Live '95, because that might be my all-time favorite video game.

The midwinter just got bleaker; or, Goodbye Jake

This afternoon, we loaded our hound dog Jake into the back of our station wagon and drove out to the Humane Society, where we had adopted him over two years ago. He did not come back home with us.

We've been agonizing over this decision for months now. Since we had the baby, our ability to care properly for Jake has deteriorated significantly. He needs exercise; we need sleep. He needs to jump and play; we need to put the baby to bed. He needs to go for a walk; we need to juggle the baby back and forth between us as one of us gets ready for work. He needs plenty of activity if he's not going to be a howling machine; we need quiet in our house more often than we used to.

We have known for a while that we can't care for him any longer. His behavior, which had improved so dramatically since we adopted him, has been going downhill lately. The worse it gets, the less patience we have...the worse it gets. And we don't have the time or money to do the things that would help the situation. We just couldn't bring ourselves to make the final decision until today.

And so we loaded the car up, the whole family, and drove out to Lollypop Farm. The baby cried the whole way there, and we cried the whole way back. I don't think Abel knew his buddy wasn't coming home with us, but we sure did. All we could think about was Jake nervously pacing in his pen, wondering in between howls when we were coming back to get him, trying in his canine way to reassure himself that this was just a joke, right? But no one is laughing.

And now it is done. We walked into an empty, quiet house upon our return. No happy dog greeting us, no insistence that we take him out, no clicking toenails on the hardwood floor. No Jake at all. Just a cold, silent house.

His food and water dishes are still in their usual spot. I haven't had the heart to move them yet.

Urkel writes about the NBA?!

Apparently Jaleel White, more commonly known as Steve Urkel, is now a writer. And it appears he is trying really hard to shake the nerd image, as evidenced by this little riff on Yao Ming:

"Basketball is a rhythm sport... shake, rock, pop, count it... And it is quite obvious to me at least, Yao has no rhythm whatsoever. Somebody take this man to a nightclub. Pop a bottle. Bump some Ludacris in his car, please! Or better yet, sign him up for Debbie Allen's Dance Academy. Get his feet right for crying out loud. All that bowing and politeness and reluctance to knock a brotha in the head has got no place in the NBA. Either address the problem or face the facts, Van Gundy. Confucious say he be Rik Smits and nothing more."

Well, okay. You may have a valid point there, Steve. But you're still Urkel in my book. You don't like that? Too bad; you shouldn't have taken the part. Well, actually, that probably was a good career move, since it gave you a career. And now you're writing on NBA.com, just for being Steve Urkel. Only you're not. But really you still are. And no amount of silly references to Ludacris or misspellings of the word "brother" will change that.

Safari vs. Firefox

I've been trying to figure out whether Apple's Safari or Mozilla's Firefox (too lazy to link them at the moment, sorry) is the best browser. (I start with the presumption that no Mac user would touch Internet Explorer at this point.)

I keep coming back to Safari for various reasons, and here's an article from AppleMatters that gives some reasons to support my decision.

The article is good, and the comments bat the issues back and forth nicely. There are some links for cool ways of customizing Safari, too.