Today I got to take a ride in a Hummer Limo, and you didn’t. So there.

I must of course deplore this egregious waste of petroleum.

Then again, it was kinda cool.

Yeah, I know. Kindof an over-reaction there, I suppose. It’s just one more example of death by a thousand bureaucratic paper cuts that’s been going on down there. (Here’s one more, by the way.)

Here’s a photo essay taken by a Nicaraguan who was living and working in New Orleans at the time, that documents the scene before, during, and after the hurricane. I’m not finished looking at it all – it’s almost 200 pictures with captions, and I’m on dial-up. But it’s well worth a look. Thanks to Edith Frost for posting it on her blog.

Yes, I know. There are far, far bigger reasons to suspect FEMA of being next to thoroughly useless. But here’s one that sticks in my craw, and it’s not going to make the 6:00 news:

FEMA’s disaster assistance claim web site only works on Windows computers running Internet Explorer 6.

First of all, this is blatantly dumb.

Second of all, it hardly takes any work to make a web site which is standards compliant and works with nearly every browser made. There is absolutely no reason why a web site should only work on one browser. Ever.

This is insanely stupid.

It means that relief workers have had to spend extra cash purchasing Windows XP licences and wasting time setting up Microsoft’s buggy shitware just to access the web site.

This is blitheringly insane.

Oh, and by the way, the site also therefore happens to be in violation of the U.S. government’s Section 508 Accessibility Standards, which are in fact mentioned on FEMA’s own goddamned web site.

This kind of fucking crap pisses me off when it happens on just an average, boring e-commerce site. For it to happen on this site, it’s just… well…

There are surely even better adjectives and invectives I could use, but it’s late and I can’t think of them.

Now annoying the neighbors via rumbling bass Playing:

Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever – Explosions in the Sky

America’s Boy – Broadcast

Inspired by, well, my own comment in this Straight Dope thread, I took upon the task of making our newly appointed U.N. ambassador smile about something. He does seem ever so dour.

Maybe if he was somewhere sunny…

Ahh… much better.

[EDIT 8/9/05] My old man has called into question whether this is a genuine photograph of John Bolton, or perhaps a Photoshop or an imposter. Take a quick Google Image Search on ‘john bolton’ and see. (I’ll leave it up to you whether to leave ‘SafeSearch’ on or not. Let’s just say the trip could be somewhat more interesting with it off.) Anyway, the gentleman above shows up a few times, but his hair is darker and parted in the opposite direction. No other picture of him looks quite like this one.

The part direction’s no big problem (photos can get flipped easily) The bushy mustache may be trimmed slightly differently, but the chin’s right on:

But even allowing for those something’s not quite right, either with the color or the way it hangs over his forehead.

With all the shadowing and the blue background, what this photo looks like is a bad passport/driver’s license photo. And perhaps it was taken on a day when the future ambassador was in the midst of an unfortunate experiment with a bottle of Grecian Formula. Who knows? ‘Tis a mystery.

Use tables for layout. Yeah, I know. Tables Baaaad.

Personally I’ll just wait until W3C figures out a non-hackish sort of way to make web site columns with style sheets.

Sunday, July 17, and the air conditioner is broken for the fourth time in seven days. Luckly the couch is directly underneath the ceiling fan. Luckly Mac OS X 10.4.2 has stabilized wireless Internet Sharing between my desktop and the mighty iBook. Luckily I have enough caramel for a couple batches of ice coffee. I just finished a big geek project for the web site at work, and am now seriously considering changing the design of this site.

Oh yeah, I forgot. ‘Never tell anyone about your unfinished plans because then you’ll never actually finish them.’ Forget I said anything.

I know, I know. I’ve been away again. My apologies to my legions of fans who are daily hanging on my every word. Uhh. yeah. But my last post promised that I’d come back to explain my feelings on the end of Enterprise. That task seemed pretty daunting, and I never got to the point where I felt like doing it just right now. And soon enough, the job had already been done by everyone else far better than I could, so in the end it seemed utterly pointless.

In the meantime lots of other things I could have potentially written about have come and gone, but dang it, first in the queue was that pending Enterprise post. And I hate to leave unfinished business.

So I’m just going to take a shortcut and get me back in sync with the rest of the world: Here’s some of what I might have been writing about recently were I not of the lazy sort.

• Enterprise finale: Yuck. A grand insult to all Trek fans.
• End of Star Trek: Hopefully temporary. Sad, but needed to be done.
• Mac OS X on Intel: Hopefully non-sucky. Sad, but needed to be done.
• Supreme Court ruling on Eminent Domain: stupid
• Resurrection of flag-burning amendment: Don’t we have anything better to do? Very stupid.
• Superman: is a dick.
• 10,000 Southern Baptists in Nashville: All failed to knock on my door, thankfully.
• Result of buying and consuming most of a “large” (i.e. unexpectedly huge) chocolate milkshake at Fat Mo’s: insomnia.

There we go. Back on track. See you in a few months.

Listen up, world, ’cause I’m only going to say this once. If you’re female, astoundingly cute, roughly my age, are chatty and funny, and just in general flirty as hell with me, would you please do me the favor of NOT BEING ALREADY HAPPILY MARRIED? I mean come on, already.

Jeez.

Actually I bought this intending to come here and complain that they weren’t actually dark, evil Cheez-its. But in fact this batch has some sort of hideously nasty chemical aftertaste. Indeed, the dark side is with these baked snack crackers.