BillSaysThis

I installed it, played with it. Seems okay, on the right track. My big issue is tabs and so far the desired functionality isn’t quite there. I’m looking for Save All Open Tabs as a Group, especially, and can’t seem to make that happen. Also, the help is less than inspiring, I don’t want to have to go searching through forums and FAQs for every little answer. Still, worth the time to keep under inspection and I will easily admit that I might just not understand how to do some of the things I say are “not there yet.”

Since LittleBush fancies himself Raygun’s heir, this decision by his USDA should hardly be surprising considering how well they go with ketchup.

Not comprehensive at all, but two pages I want to consider for a wee bit of understanding:

Jewish Diversity: The Chart

A Comparative Chart of Christian Beliefs

Then there’s this guy, with samples, who’s had a thing or two to say on the topic.

Speaking of pre-emption, some spammer has gone and done what I dreaded for awhile: He (or she) is simply making up addresses at my domain and sending more or less the same email several times per hour. The only saving grace I can see so far is the sender seems to be resource constrained on how frequently the messages can be sent, or something like that, because I’ve only received about 40 in the 10 hours since they first arrived.

Another piece I’ve written for the Intransa website: Atempo Customer Success Story (PDF, webpage). This is the first of several such whitepapers I’m preparing. I also wrote, or substantially rewrote, all the datasheets linked on the lefthand side of the IP SAN page, and more of those will be posted soon. Plus a new design for the page hosting them so you can better understand what you’re clicking.

Rack one up for the Sweet One, this was not a movie I would have chosen on my own. Shrek 2 is moderately amusing but nowhere near the revelation the original was. The whole scheming Fairy Godmother bit put me off though it drove the plot and I generally find Jennifer Saunders quite inventive. Eddi Murphy thumbs up, Mike Myers mostly good, Cameron Diaz okay, John Cleese walked through it. High quality animation is no longer anything more than the ante required to sit at the table–Katzenberg and company had better come up with much more for the third and fourth installments. But my wife really enjoyed it and that’s good enough for my Sunday afternoon.

mildly amusing

Unbelievable! England is leading 1-0 going into injury time when Emile Heskey commits a foul on the edge of the box, then David James brings down Zinedane Zidane in the box and Zidane converts both into goals to give France a 2-1 win in their Euro2004 opener. Once again, one has to wonder why Erickson brought on Heskey even as a sub late.

The US, on the other hand, really had no trouble taking a 3-0 victory over Grenada in the first leg of a home and home World Cup 2006 qualifier. Of course, Grenada’s total national population is barely greater than the city of Mountain View (where I live) and the only surprise was that the score wasn’t 3-0 at the half. Jovan Kirovsky, man, even as a sub I don’t like him. Landon: Brilliant!

Garret: Restoring Dignity

Watched parts of both Chasing Papi and Thirteen Conversations About One Thing today but couldn’t get my head into either; surprisingly both were efforts from women directors. The first was mainly about showing off the feminine assets of Roselyn Sanchez, Sofia Vergara (my favorite) and Jaci Velasquez. The latter was some kind of babble featuring Matthew McConaughey, John Turturro, Amy Irving, Alan Arkin and a boatload of others in a film that was all about talking and never about doing, as far as I could tell; I turned it off to watch this week’s season premiere of Reno 911.

Springsteen–Troubadour of the Highway, oh yeah!

Wow, huge upset in the first match of the 2004 European Championship! Hosts Portugal go down 2-1 to Greece, barely avoiding a clean sheet on an injury time goal by Manchester United’s Christian Ronaldo. As Soccernet’s anonymous Gamecast commentary pointed out, only one team has lost their opener and gone on to win the trophy.

Bummer that the tournament is on pay per view, I would love to watch the England-France match that begins shortly. FSW will be showing some of the other first round matches this week, though not this one, and I will grab them as I can.

“Thanks to PocketPC#, now you can build Window.Forms C# applications for PocketPC without submitting to Microsoft’s exhorbitant SDK licensing fees.” [via /.]

TS1 wanted this new CD a few weeks back when we were at Fry’s, and so you know how that goes. This morning she went off to the gym without me–the right knee’s lightly inflamed, so no workouts for a couple of weeks–and I decided to throw this in the spinner to hear the three lovelies attack the music that made their parents famous. Though it’s not, say, quite as good as a new Springsteen or Page release, I have to admit it’s catchy and enjoyable and I’ve listened to it several times while writing this up though ultimately unsatisfying due to a tendency towards the bland.

For their first album in a dozen years, Chynna Phillips, Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson have put together a collection of cover tunes that more or less epitomize the Southern California sounds of the mid-’60s through the mid-’70s. Chynna’s mom and dad were John and Michelle Phillips of the Mommas and Poppas and from that group we get Monday Monday, while the other two are daughters of Brian Wilson and his hits Dance Dance Dance and In My Room.

You’re No Good was made famous by Linda Ronstadt, the interesting thing on this version is a fuzzed out bassline from David Rolfe. Not sure I see the point of including Neil Young’s Old Man because it certainly doesn’t fit the overall theme nor does it suit the women’s voices.

California from Blue by Joni Mitchell is new to me but very decent. Russ Kunkel, one of the old vets of this California studio scene, played drums on both Mitchell’s original and this version. The Eagles’ Already Gone shows the threesome can really harmonize but the song’s story doesn’t play as well from an I Am Woman perspective–how many men, even in the pre-Internet days of the early ’70s wrote letters to girlfriends? Victory song, don’t think so.

Go Your Own Way, the first single, is terrible. Sorry. The Fleetwood Mac megahit used powerful instrumentation to deliver on the lyric’s emotion and the slow, ultra-harmonic vocal arrangement completely misses that. I really wonder who thought up this startlingly different vision of the song, which has a real Sting/pseudo-North African feel. Turn! Turn! Turn! has a similar percussion track to the previous tune, though at faster tempo, while the pretty, sweet harmonies, as with Old Man completely clash with the song’s intent.

Monday Monday truly succeeds with, of course, Chynna featured vocally; one has to wonder if she hears this in her sleep. The arrangement is very reminiscent of the Bangles, bouncy guitar, pleading tone and backing vocals joining in on the chorus. This would have been my first single selection.

Get Together is pretty but bland, little else to say except that no one will be forgetting the Young Rascals after hearing Wilson Phillips. Jackson Browne’s early hit Doctor My Eyes gets a more energetic reading with lead vocals from Wendy. Dance Dance Dance is a bright poppy update, switching the lyric’s gender without losing the Beach Boys’ verve and featuring a party chorus of the group’s friends and family including mama Michelle. I can see a fun, sunny video matching well with this one and certainly also a better choice for a first single.

Daddy Brian provides piano accompaniment and vocals in a fairly sweet, spare arrangement of In My Room, interesting, worthy of inclusion though this doesn’t come close to the Beach Boys’ achingly beautiful original.

Bonus/otherwise unmentioned track at the end is a simple version of Already Gone featuring the trio’s harmony and only acoustic guitar for backing, probably better than the ‘official’ take.

Kunkel is one of several recognizable names from the original recordings, along with producer Peter Asher, bassist Lee Sklar (I will never forget his huge beard from back in the day, such as the time I saw him backing James Taylor in concert at Harvard Stadium in 1978) and pedal steel guitarist Dan Dugmore. In fact Sklar played with Linda Ronstadt on several of her records though not the Heart Like a Wheel sessions that produced You’re No Good. Kunkel and Sklar both also played on Browne’s original release of Doctor My Eyes. Another featured musician on the CD is guitarist Rob Bonfiglio, who married Carnie a few years ago; Rob has his own band, called The Better Days.

Liner notes are nicely done by Mitchell Cohen, who made his name as a rock journalist back in the day but quickly moved into the money side of the world and is now a Senior A&R VP at Sony Records, explaining the way the collection of songs fit together.

Strange how it is that in PHP class methods cannot call independent functions which instantiate a member of the class and then try and call that method, which tries to call the independent function, and so forth. Guess this is that rabbit hole and PHP is tuned not to let you fall in. But the runtime engine also does not throw an error that would lead you to this answer either. Yummy!

The Boss, usually one to avoid explicit public political activity, agrees so strongly with the very pointed speech Al Gore made recently that he posted it to his own website with the following introduction:

“A few weeks ago at N.Y.U. Al Gore gave one of the most important speeches I’ve heard in a long time. The issues it raises need to be considered by every American concerned with the direction our country is headed in. It’s my pleasure to reprint it here for my fans.”

I know Ronald Reagan was a hero to many Americans. Though I disagree, their attitude is no problem, this is the Land of the Free blah blah blah. Talk about adding his visage to Mount Rushmore, fine. Put his picture on the $10 or $20 bill or the dime, well, okay, not a big deal to me.

The California and Federal governments will be spending millions of dollars on security, travel and other arrangements while the ex-President lies in state. Even that seems reasonable.

But the California and Federal governments are running huge deficits and on top of all this will be giving an extra vacation day Friday to all “non-essential” personnel? WTF? How in the world do they justify this huge expense? We don’t have enough money to properly fund education and healthcare, to name two massively more important government functions, but the State of California (haven’t seen the comparable number for the Feds) is going to spend $60 million on a 15th day off for people, at least 95% of whom will not even spend two minutes remembering the Gipper on this bonus holiday? I repeat WTF?!?!?!

Give me a fucking break!

One of my ‘in your dreams’ dreams has long been to join Springsteen’s band as YANGP (Yet Another guitar Player, since now there are already four). Another has been to create and lead an equity group that takes private a sizable public company. With Fender Musical Instruments–makers of the guitar Bruce plays–now up for sale, I could combine both in one exciting impossible swoop!

* YADTWNCT: Yet Another Dream That Will Not Come True

Frederick Reiken grew up in the same town as me, I guess five years behind me in school so I never knew him, but he set his second novel The Lost Legends of New Jersey there and uses all the landmarks from his side of town (Silvermans, Eppes Essen, the Bagel Box) but surprisingly for a novel about teenagers leaves out the Livingston Mall–everyone I know spent plenty of time there in high school but I guess a more or less generic shopping center just doesn’t give the same sense of place.

So, the book: Reiken has a great skill with words, I really just enjoyed reading this book independent of the characters or their stories. And while he creates interesting characters–how could I not be engaged by a teenage Jewish boy from Livingston in the late ’70s and early ’80s?–I should say that this book is more a series of vignettes than a standard novel with plot twists and conclusions. Anthony Rubin, the main character, does come to a bit of maturity over the pages, that’s the closest thing to plot here, but I wouldn’t want to discourage your interest over this.

This is definitely Literature and I expect there is ample opportunity for applying critical theory and the like though I have no intention of doing so. I’ll just point out that while others disagree, I felt his use of instant, no look transitions all through the volume was quite interesting.

recommended

MikeG writes: Compaq Loses Another Customer Due To Lousy Customer Service

Two major sports disappointments the last couple of days, one in America and one in Canada. Neither of much interest to me, I was more plonkered by the Earthquakes loss to Canada.