Entries from October 2004 ↓

Searching for yourself is like looking for the house you stand in. How could you possibly find it? It’s everywhere. It’s all you know. And there are no other points of reference.
– D. Gildenlöw

While we’re on the subject, here’s a really great article about the candidates’ views on Supreme Court nominees and why neither of their positions are particularly coherent or compelling.

Jeremy Blachman, whose blog is one of my favorites, has posted an awesome parody of last night’s presidential debate. This is hilarious. You all must check it out. Now. I command you, go!

I’m trying to respond to an ad for a new condominium development, and I’m not having any luck. First, the voicemail system says “For Tenacity Condo Sales, press 5.” I press 5 and am told repeatedly, “I’m sorry, 5 is not a valid extension.”

So I hit 0 and get transferred to the company operator. I ask to speak to Tenacity Condo Sales and instead get transferred to some random guy’s voicemail box.

So I call back and hit 9 to get the company directory. I try to find John Fitzgerald’s extension — he was listed as a sales rep in the ad. It’s impossible to find him in the directory. All I get is somebody named DeSilva or something.

I call back and hit 9 again. This time I try to find Jeff Tait. (No, not Geoff Tate.) I find him in the directory, so I hit # for the system to transfer me. It rings once, but then I’m disconnected. It sounds like someone picked up the phone and then hung up on me.

I’m trying to buy real estate from these people and I can’t even get through their voicemail system?!?

Adobe just released a product called Adobe Premiere Elements. It’s a stripped down, easier-to-use, inexpensive version of Premiere, their video-editing software, for home and casual users users. It’s $100 by itself, or $150 in a bundle with Photoshop Elements.

I think it’s brilliant that Adobe’s producing products for the casual user, fully interoperable with their full products but a little simpler and a lot cheaper. In my mind, that’s a really great strategy. Probably because I’m their target market (a casual Photoshop wannabe).

There are a couple software programs to help combat spyware, which everyone on the Internet should download right away. The programs are Ad-Aware SE Personal and Spybot - Search and Destroy. The two programs both help clean up spyware and advertising on your computer, which has become a major problem for the majority of Internet users. I recommend downloading and installing both — they work fine together, so there’s no harm in using both programs. Together with a good anti-virus program, these applications should help you keep your computer running clean and fast.

If you really want to make your browsing more pleasant, use the new web browser Mozilla Firefox. It’s incredibly easy to use, it’s incredibly difficult for malicious advertisers to “hijack,” and it has a ton of great features that make your internet experience more productive and enjoyable.

If any of you are Java software developers, here are a couple of Java-related sites I’m fond of:

1.) James Gosling, the “father of Java,” has a blog online at http://weblogs.java.net/jag/. It’s always interesting to see what Gosling is thinking — he’s usually got some very geeky stuff on there

2.) The BileBlog is an unbelievably crude, yet hilarious, insight into one man’s struggles with J2EE. He goes on mad rants about developments in the Java community. It’s hilarious, because it’s so outrageous yet he has a kernel of truth in everything he says.

I’m going to start profiling some of my favorite websites every day, in hopes that some of you will enjoy the same writing I do. Today I’d like to mention a couple of political sites I enjoy.

The first is Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish, at http://www.andrewsullivan.com. Andrew considers himself a conservative, though these days I’d classify him as more of a “libertarian” than a “conservative”. He’s constantly chastising the Bush administration over various threats to individual freedom, and really concerned about Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I agree with a lot of it. More importantly, though, he’s really focused at debating the issues, instead of getting side-tracked over personal squabbles, ad hominem attacks, and the other “rubbish” you see from most political commentary.

Another one of my favorites is Chris Geidner’s Law Dork blog, at http://lawdork.blogspot.com. Chris is a law student at Ohio State University, and he has a lot of interesting things to say. He writes some commentary about legal issues and political issues. His viewpoint is a bit further to the left than Andrew Sullivan, but again he writes with facts and clear argumentation. Chris and I also have a wacky bunch of things in common, which makes it fun to read about what he’s thinking.

Tomorrow I’ll try and profile a couple technology sites.