Joint Chiefs object to dissent

Posted on 2006-02-07 by Jim Vanderveen

Apparently the Joint Chiefs of Staff object to this cartoon:

Political cartoon

Perhaps they didn’t bother to read the name on the end of the bed, “U.S. ARMY”. Obviously this isn’t intended to represent a maimed veteran; rather, it’s a reflection on the current state of our armed forces.

The real “problem” with this particular cartoon is that it’s so damnably effective, much to the chagrin of the Joint Chiefs and the Bush administration. Recruiting is getting tougher, “stop-loss” is hitting its limit, and every day more people are realizing that Bush got us into this Iraq mess without a plan.

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I am Ironman

Posted on 2006-02-06 by Jim Vanderveen

Intro to Black Sabbath’s “Ironman” should be played here…
Ironman

Check out the Superhero quiz and see who you are! (Hat tip to Joseph for pointing this out.)

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Cat blogging

Posted on 2006-02-05 by Jim Vanderveen

Quick! Can you spot the camouflaged cat in this picture?

Camouflaged cat

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Problem with Mac OSX Dock not “unhiding”

Posted on 2006-02-04 by Jim Vanderveen

I had a strange problem with my Mac (OSX 10.4.4) this morning–the Dock wouldn’t “unhide”. Normally I keep the Dock hidden to save screen real estate, and when I need to fire up one of my usual applications I just drag the mouse down to the bottom edge of the screen and voilà, the Dock pops up with all of my favorite apps. But this morning the Dock was being shy and wouldn’t reveal itself. I tried toggling all the preferences, but nothing helped. I finally found this suggestion on Apple’s Finder, Dock & Dashboard discussion site (registration required, or read my version of it here):

Delete (or move/rename) the com.apple.dock.plist in your ~Library/Preferences Folder, then log out and log back in. This worked for me, but I lost my Dock settings, in particular the applications that were in my dock! It seems obvious in hindsight, but I suggest that you make a list of your docked applications before you whack the preferences file, so you won’t have to repopulate your Dock from memory.

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Superbowl #40

Posted on 2006-02-03 by Jim Vanderveen

Normally I couldn’t care less about major media sport events. The only reason I know the date of the Superbowl is:

  1. It’s the best day to go skiing (because everybody’s in the lodge watching the game, the slopes are practically deserted).
  2. It’s the date of the River City Beemer‘s annual motorcycle maintenance (and Superbowl) party.

But this year, I even managed to find out what citys’ teams were playing:
Superbowl 40-Pittsburgh vs Seattle
Gee, I wonder who the artist favors?

Thanks for the ‘toon, Punk!

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19 Democratic turncoats

Posted on 2006-02-03 by Jim Vanderveen

Nineteen of the 43 Democratic senators voted with Republicans to end debate on the nomination of Samual Alito to the Supreme Court. We, the people, will bear the brunt of their lack of spine for years, if not decades, as this radical member of the highest court in the United States subverts Congressional authority in favor of a “unitary executive“. (Our founding fathers simply called them “kings”.)

The wall of shame (by state):

I honestly expected no better from some of these people. Lieberman, the Republican in Democrat’s clothing, is obviously the first to come to mind. But Robert Byrd‘s vote shocked me. Another of my heroes struck down before my eyes…

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How to eat sushi

Posted on 2006-02-02 by Jim Vanderveen

I came across an interesting page: How to eat sushi. I knew quite a bit of this etiquette and information already, but there were a few surprises for me.

Hat tip to John at Uneasy Rhetoric for pointing this out!

Update 2006-02-03 19:09 Yuji-san (Eugene Ciurana), author of the Sushi Eating HOWTO, dropped by and gave us the scoop on the origin of walmartdotcomaki. Thanks, Eugene!

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New Year’s resolutions, part 2

Posted on 2006-02-01 by Jim Vanderveen

Last month I wrote about my thoughts on the pitfalls of New Year’s resolutions. I thought I might try 12 monthly mini-resolutions instead a single big annual one. For January, I started with something fairly small–I resolved to floss my teeth every day. So today is the first of February, and I’m happy to say that I managed to floss 30 days in January. Okay, technically I didn’t achieve my goal of flossing every day, but I’m satisfied with 30 out of 31 days.

Now I need to keep up my January resolution and come up with something for February. I haven’t decided on this month’s change, but I’ll post about how I did next month.

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Is Sacramento a bike-friendly town?

Posted on 2006-01-31 by Jim Vanderveen

(NB: I read about Uneasy Rhetoric in today’s Sacramento Bee, and the site turned up when I was searching for Sacramento bicycling information, so I decided to check out the post. I started to leave a comment, but it got long enough that I wanted to post it here on my own site and pingback to the original article.)

Uneasy Rhetoric faults Bicycling Magazine for failing to include Sacramento on its list of “best bicycling cities”. I’m a bicycle commuter, and I’m afraid I have to agree with Bicycling Magazine–Sacramento has a long ways to go before we become a “top town” for biking.

The rating criteria included:

  • “Cycling-friendly” statistics
  • Bike culture
  • Climate/geography
  • Surveys of experts and Bicycling Magazine readers

I’d say that Sacramento gets top marks for climate and geography. Our topography is almost absolutely flat, and the weather is very mild. In any given year we only get a few rain storms (real storms) and the temperature just barely gets below freezing a couple of days. (I don’t think they care about how hot it gets, since Phoenix got an honorable mention.)

I think Sacramento lost points for lack of bike racks and city bike projects. The article doesn’t mention it, so I’m guessing they didn’t give any points for Regional Transit’s bicycle-friendly operation. We also probably lost on “Bike culture (number of bike commuters, popular clubs, cool cycling events, renowned bike shops)”. (Emphasis mine.) Talk about some subjective measurements! (Except for number of bike commuters.) I’ve heard that approximately 1% of commute trips in Sacramento are via bicycle, but I can’t find documentation or references to support (or refute) that claim. As for bike culture in Sac, honestly we could use some more buzz. Anybody want to help with a Sacramento bicycling podcast?

More bike-related posts, articles about Sacramento, or specifically Sacramento bicycling posts are available.

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Apologies to commenting readers

Posted on 2006-01-28 by Jim Vanderveen

Due to spam-pollution I have had to increase my defenses here. Unfortunately, this means that humans (cf spammers, i.e. sub-humans) wishing to comment here now have to answer a simple challenge in order to post. Not a big deal for the occasional comment, but regulars may want to know that there is a way around this–Register for this blog and you will be able to bypass the challenge. This assumes that you have cookies enabled, and you only use one computer. If you use multiple computers, you will need to log in the first time you use a different computer.

I’m really sorry about this. I wish there was another way to handle it, but this was the only solution I could come up with.

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