Author Archives: brad

I ran MacBidoiulle through Babelfish and got this gem: Japanese users who received their PowerBook 17″it dismounted to see the entrails of them. Many photographs will show you all, of the hard disk to the sensor of luminous power… I love translation software so much. Always good for a laugh. But now I’m wondering if my PowerBook has entrails, too.

CREATE, huh? Well, here’s hoping.

An online dictionary of HTML META tags. Hmmmm.

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials: Day Two. Things got even more interesting today. Did I mention my instructor has the seventeen inch TiBook? It’s beautiful in person. I got to play with some BlueTooth stuff today, for the first time. It’s very cool. It reminds me of what IrDA wanted so deparately to be when it grew up. Pairing was a snap, and sharing files was slick. We had a great roundtable about troubleshooting Mac OS X today. That followed the lesson where we all left the room, our instructor “broke” our machines, and we came back in and figured out what was wrong. The poor woman at the end of my row had a tough time. The instructor took a screen shot and set it as the desktop picture, then proceeded to hide the dock and hard drive. She couldn’t figure out why the menus worked, but the dock and hard drive didn’t respond to clicks. Mike and I did that to Dave several times. We even got him to do a clean install when he was still Mac OS 9. He thought his control strip was hosed.

Mac OS Rumors: As had been widely predicted, Apple has released a March 24, 2003 Security Update to OS X, which is available for download and install (requires a restart) via Software Update. Egads. Good show, fellas! Not really a rumor, though, is it?

Well, the Safari seeds are done, thanks some ne’er-do-wells. Gruber has a great analysis here.

Daniel Pepper: Anyone with half a brain must see that Saddam has to be taken out. It is extraordinarily ironic that the anti-war protesters are marching to defend a government which stops its people exercising that freedom.

Jar-Jaromir, the half-brother of Boromir and Faramir. Thanks to Hyatt for the link.

Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server Essentials: Day One. Fairly interesting class so far. I can’t say I learned anything new that really rocked my socks today. But, in all fairness, the instructor did say that today would be the most boring day. Today’s topics included: Installation (I’ve already done this more times than I care to remember), Network Configuration (ditto), User and Permissions (actually interesting; I may have learned a really slick trick for migrating users between boxes), File Systems (not at all what I expected), Application Environments (I may have to start respecting Java at some point; not yet, but maybe soon), and Service Discovery (the most interesting by far – now show my how to tie into Active Directory and I can retire).

I came to a decision on Friday. I simply cannot teach Microsoft Word. I just can’t. I’ve tried several times now. But whenever I go to show the class how to do hanging indents, or decimal tabs, Word decides it’s time to take over the formatting for me. I wouldn’t mind so much if it were consistent, but it’s so hopelessly inconsistent and illogical. I’ve tried so hard to like Word over the years. I was an avid user of Word 5.1 in college, until I switched to WordPerfect 3. Those two were the nirvana of word processing for me. These days, it’s AppleWorks all the way. It’s quite a capable word processor, despite its reputation, and it stays out my way. Word is just too tiring anymore; I feel like I’m fighting it the whole time, wrestling for control of my content. I don’t have time for that. It was refreshing to hear other people say that they feel the same way, though.

“I feel sorry for the customers that bought PowerSchool.” – A former employee (reportedly just laid off).

“It’s not a problem that Moore has an opinion, a point of view, and an agenda. But it’s a major problem if Moore is trying to convert people to this point of view via mistruths and deception.” – Andy Ihnatko, on Bowling for Columbine. As usual, Andy sums up my thoughts before I was barely aware of them. I was without an Internet connection for most of the day, so I didn’t pick up on Moore’s little “speech” at the Oscars until recently, but Dave covers that here, with a catchy little title to boot.

I just launched the latest nightly build of Camino and laughed out loud when I saw the “new” bookmarks manager. Don’t get me wrong – it’s great. Kudos to Pinkerton and friends. But I guess the matter of their inspiration for this particular decision isn’t exactly open to interpretation.

The Iraqis fired missiles at us. Ironically, in a strange sort of way, they may have been the banned missiles they claimed to have destroyed already.

Duck and cover. Bill, you will love this; I promise.

The full text of Tony Blair’s speech to the House of Commons on March 18.

Interesting article at Spinsanity: Myths and Misconceptions about Iraq.

One of the saddest things about this war, for me, is that I’ve realized what a hopeless Apple geek I’ve become. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve type iRaq instead of Iraq. That’s just pathetic.

Evan Coyne Maloney’s Protesting the Protesters II. Well done. Here’s part one if you missed it.

And on a lighter note, Chris Pirillo’s pictures from the Google/Blogger party. Some of the captions are really lame. Some are absolutely hilarious. My favorite is the guy staring at the giant Blogger logo.

This is it, boys; this is war.

I think that’s how it went.

I am not in favor of waging an unnecessary war. However, I believe that this war is justified. I know that many disagree with that, and that’s fine; believe what you want.

I believe that Iraq is a threat to the world, and I think it’s sad that so many other nations (and so many Americans) don’t want to see that.

I think it’s sad that innocent people will die in this war.

But I remember, right after 9/11, right after Bush declared War on Terror, one commentator said something to the effect of: “No war on terror can be complete until Saddam Hussein is dealt with.” That was in 2001, and I agreed with him at the time. I just wish I could remember who said it.

Here’s hoping and praying that the war will be over quickly, and that the rebuilding of Iraq will be a stabilizing influence in an otherwise unstable place.