I’m going to have nightmares tonight. Newsmax (emailout) headline:
“The Naked Truth About Nancy Pelosi”
Oh, thanks for the image, Newsmax. *shudder* Now, I just want to put my (mental) eyes out… Give anyone else the heebie-jeebies?
*heh*
Nothing New Under the Sun
Yesterday, Mostly Cajun, All American and Opinionated offered a piece of historical humor. On this day in…
“1876 – Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” and is billed $109.43 in taxes above the phone charge.”
Plus ça change… *heh*
The Secret to Longevity
Washington D.C. is engaged in the biggest education project in the history of man. It is attempting to teach 300,000,000 Americans that paranoia is a skill; a skill that is the secret to a long life.
Calling the Plays… That Have Happened
Drudge said, “Kiss of death”–“Obama predicts Colts victory in Super Bowl”
As an acquaintance on FB said,
Everyone said the Saints couldn’t win unless hell freezes over. Did you see there was a blizzard in DC over the weekend?
“Consider the Threat Level”
From the otherwise excellent and usually reliable Windows Secrets newsletter comes this guffaw from the usually serious Fred Langa responding to a reader’s question about outdated browsers (with massive security holes) being required by the “feddle gummint’s” FAFSA web site:
First of all, it appears the site has been updated since your phone call. The FAFSA help page lists all the supported browsers, which now include IE 8 and Mozilla Firefox 3.5.4.
Second, consider the threat level: most browser security features exist to protect you against hostile sites that might try to stuff malware into your system or steal information from you. Why would the government need to attack your browser? If the government wants your personal information, it can get it quite openly through legal channels.
Oh. Wait. He was serious. “Why would the government need to attack your browser?” It’s not “need” that drives a “feddle gummint” bureaucrap to do anything, Fred. They pretty much do as they want, because they can. Government of the government, by the government and, especially, for the government shall not perish from the Earth, Fred… *sigh*
Frankly, I consider “feddle gummint” websites to BE malware, unless proven differently.
I Do These Stupid Things…
…so you don’t have to. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.
Calibrating the Clear Type tuning on a Windows system with an LCD screen that’s displaying text just fine? Stupid. So, what did I do? You guessed it. The Clear Type calibration tool uses a series of displayed text images for the user to subjectively choose between in order to tune the Clear Type display. What I got recently out of playing with that was a lesson in “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
At 100% in my browser (pick any of four), here’s an example of what “tuning” Clear Type using the M$ utility resulted in:
Ugly, eh? Makes me want to poke my eyes out. At 120% or higher magnification, the effect disappears, though. Still, now I have to reverse the “tuning” or automatically CTRL+Scrollwheel to a different magnification when such artifacts appear. *sigh* Just a warning to Windows users, once again: if it ain’t broke…
Fortunately, I can always browse just as well in another OS in a VM. 🙂
Twilight Zone Stuff
Today, I finally got my desk cleaned off. Well, almost. Four times today I’ve had my keyboard drawer cleaned off down to the keyboard and mouse.
Four times.
It’s not cleaned off now.
I swear–seriously!–my desk abhors a vacuum. Clean it off? “Stuff” creeps out from some space in some interstice between universes and plops itself on my desk. Really. Today, I found some pictures–just sitting out in the open on my desk–that I HAVE NOT SEEN FOR 12 YEARS. Pictures of me that I had been SURE I’d thrown out (because, like every picture I ever had taken for a yearbook–these as a teacher–they were ugly as sin, that is, looked exactly like me. *heh*). My Wonder Woman asked me to give her one of them, because she’d never seen them before (and has the typical perceptual problem of Good Women: she is unable to see just how ugly I am :-)).
Cue Rod Serling.
As Ought to Be?
My first wind instrument, not counting of course the recorder I played as an even younger child, was a trombone. In fact, it remained my primary musical instrument–apart from voice–for many years. Hence my chuckle when I read the following in a contemporary Holmesian short story, The Adventure of the Lost World by Dominic Green
“…I consider it normal to see a man’s life taken from him by another for the pursuit of criminal gain, Watson; but it is rare indeed for him to be eaten afterwards.”
Even I, who have been in Afghanistan, was appalled. “Surely not.”
“Just so, Watson. In the past seven days, on Hampstead Heath, there have been seven attacks upon street musicians, each the player of a trombone of some description, and each attacked, if those who heard the attacks are to be believed, whilst executing the closing bars of Gustav Holst’s Thaxted [see below the fold–ed.]. In each case, the victim appears to have been attacked from above, the flesh crushed and cut, the bones splintered, the capital extremity entirely missing in many cases. Each victim’s body was also notable for the stench of corruption which hung about it, like gas gangrene.”
“Accidental death has been ruled out, then? A recurrent trombone malfunction of some order—”
“—has already been checked for… [emphasis added-ed.]
*heh* “A recurrent trombone malfunction of some order… ” There were times… (Ah, the memories!)
“No, no, Watson! Blowing one’s head off from excessive back pressure developed while playing ones instrument is much more common among oboe players!”
*ROFLKASTMAFO*
Later, when I’d given up trombone for other instruments, other musical pursuits, when I taught budding musicians, I noted that the flute players were always the most cooperative, compliant and studious of instrumentalists, while the trombone players (and drummers–not to be confused with percussionists*) were generally the clowns and “martini lifters” (and the trumpet players the “weight lifters”–the “jocks” of the band). Again, there were times… *heh*
Making Sense of The TOTUS’ Pet Parrot
A Lil Book Searching for Its Raison D’être
I guess you’d have to be me (or someone who’s tired of grading “grad” papers from subliterates) for this to bother you,
“But the Dock is so much more than just eye candy. It’s an ever-accessible venue where [sic] your frequently-used applications can call ‘home’.”
Sadly, this is typical of the writing in the otherwise excellent and useful (to newbies and those who need even more hand-holding than the Mac straight jacket already provides), “The Mac Manual” from makeuseof.com.
While there’s nothing really ground-breaking, and really nothing that someone of average intelligence cannot figure oput on their own, for those who find Windows just toooo hard and those who just want to know how to use the oh-so “intuitive” Mac interface more quickly, this is a very nice cheat sheet.
69 pages with loads of nice white space makes “The Mac Manual” from (makeuseof.com) and really quick read and even a handy enchiridion for incurious or lazy newbie Mac users.
But yeh, I have a copy of it and may even carry it with me for the next Mac user I meet who needs some help. 🙂
