RIP

[jazzfish]

Well, it's red: "This index was designed as a first approach to the famous problem of locating a book using visual rather than textual clues." Where was this when I was working at Walden's?

Kevin Drum on The Republican Base: "It turns out that the only thing these GOP voters hated more than helping the poor was being told that it's wrong to torture people."

The InterWeb makes people lazy and stupid: I disagree, actually. People have always been split between those that ask for help when five seconds of effort on their part would solve the problem, and those that won't ask for help after banging their heads against something for three hours. Or, if you prefer, the ones that learned that asking for help results in help versus the ones that learned that asking for help results in being told to do it yourself. (I think of these groups as "the lazy ones" and "the stubborn ones." Your mileage may vary.) The Internet just provides the former with more people that they can ask for help.

the best Caesar ever, in a post devoted to improving the works of Shakespeare by replacing characters with ninjas.

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In memoriam: one 20 gig Western Digital hard drive, August 2000 - November 2007. Cause of death: power glitches and my own attempts to repair it. Outlived three motherboards, two power supplies, and two O/S reinstalls. Survived by an 850 meg Western Digital hard drive (twelve years and counting) and a laptop. To be replaced by an 80 gig Western Digital hard drive for roughly half the price.

And thank Gord for the laptop, onto which I backed up nearly everything a week before. I've lost the save state on a handful of games and seven years' worth of archived email, but it could have been infinitely worse. Plus this provides a good excuse to upgrade from Eudora 5.1. (For various reasons none of the other programs I tried would import the old email correctly. I dunno.) Moral: always back up your data, kids, you never know when distaster will strike.

Comments

[dasphios.livejournal.com]

I would point out that before the spread of the internet to the computer semi-illiterate, we never had to deal with pseudowords like 'interweb'.

[laughin.livejournal.com]

I believe the Republican base right now is a bit miffed that there is no perfect candidate to fit all their views. It is not the poor they voted low on but the illegal immigrants. You may get the same with the Democratic base.

Anything McCain will say will rate low with the base. He is a RINO to many. IMHO.

As for what you said about Interweb, I think you hit it right on.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

It's not red.

Its green and was up in the front of the store a month ago.

Or, blue and has a dragon on the cover.

[babushek.livejournal.com]

Some of the most impressive feats I witnessed when I worked at Farnes and Groble were when my fellow booksellers could actually locate the desired book based on the "It was blue and used to be a bestseller 6 months ago" inquiries. Or also the "do you all have a table for *former* bestsellers?"

[uilos.livejournal.com]

I'm personally proud of being able to find the 'blue with a dragon on the cover' one, myself. But it was at a Waldenbooks with fewer shelf-feet to have to hunt through.

Ask jazzfish about the 'Clarence' guy, though. That one was a killer.

[absolutliz.livejournal.com]

RIP hard drive. I have recently learned the importance of data backup...my hard drive did not quite make it to five years.

[jazzfish]

Zwicky actually gives a perfectly reasonable derivation for the word (makes sense, as he's a linguist).

[jazzfish]

I believe the Republican base right now is a bit miffed that there is no perfect candidate to fit all their views.

Like what? I'm serious-- what actual policy positions are there disagreements on? The White Guys Club was up there trying to outdo each other on tax-cutting, banning illegal immigrants, beefing up national security, banning Teh Ghey, and "returning abortion to the states."

Anything McCain will say will rate low with the base.

This isn't just "low," it's "about as low as it gets." And only for the one statement.

[jazzfish]

Oof. My sympathies.

I briefly considered just using the laptop as my primary (only) machine and buying an external hard drive for backup purposes. Then I remembered that I'm kind of non-gentle with my traveling electronics and would rather not be entirely without a device while I wait for the laptop replacement to come in after I drop it for the nth time.

[laughin.livejournal.com]

Fair Tax (a big one - it seems to be the reason why Huckabee is doing better now)
Abortion (past records mostly are pissing off some GOP)
Gun control
Big government

I found this (http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/hillary-edwards-tough-1928255-big-foreign) article that seems to go over it well. I disagree with him on the Democrats though. They seem to be pretty different in their Democrat party positions with perhaps Senator Obama being the most Democrat of the Democrats.

Once again this year, I feel that I may not be voting for someone so much as against. Obviously you know that I am not a Democrat, but I feel for Mark Warner. I may have voted for him, but he does not have the glamor or name recognition as the top candidates in the party - which is what we need in a good presidential candidate. No fluff. No crap.