Pearl Harbor

Pearl Harbor was a defining moment for my parents. My Dad had worked for a year to be able to attend the University of Michigan, and my Mom had just started, as well. She is a year younger. My parents were radio people, and they may have shaped my life along those lines, as well. I grew up listening to the radio, which was constantly on, before we had television. We lived in a trailer (temporary housing for veterans) when I was very small. I can remember hearing the radio, that a P-51 had been shot down over Korea (that's what I rememeber, at least). In any case, my parents heard the news about Pearl Harbor on the radio. My dad enlisted in the navy the next day. My mom attended school for a while longer, but it was stressful for her. She finally worked as a draftsman at Willow Run, working on radio-related work on the B-24 built there by Ford. Being a veteran, my Dad was able to finish college and almost finish a Master's degree, at Government expense (GI Bill). My Mom and Dad were both better prepared for life by the experiences they had during the war. And it was not only them, but a whole generation who had this common experience. Everywhere my Dad would go, he would meet another veteran. There was the PT boat sailor, and there was the P-51 pilot. My Uncle Chet was wounded at Guadalcanal, as a Marine. My Uncle Joe was a Tech Sargeant, whose weapon was a typewriter.

Tavis Smiley is leaving NPR

I was actually sorry to read that Tavis Smiley was leaving NPR. I must admit that I like his usual guest host better than I like him. One problem with NPR is that they look like the Kerry campaign: Northeast leftist white people. Tavis Smiley and our friend Juan Williams are some of the few exceptions.

I may yet be reduced to blogging with IE6

I keep having strange things happen with Mozilla Firefox. The lastest was that the text editor form had not data, when there was obviously text there that I had entered. (I notice that User Friendly has stopped touting Mozilla, in recent months).

Discounts on medical care and prescriptions for people without health insurance

In the Dallas area, PrimaCare and a network of pharmacies (largely grocery-store related) are giving discounted medical care and prescriptions to people without health insurance. I would be shocked if this is not a wide-spread phenomenon. There are too many people caught by the economic downturn and left, for a period, without health insurance. This is a way for health care providers to get their business. It is a practice that they can tout, and it helps people who are in need.

Peter Beinart on the Democrat problem

Peter Beinart is one of the liberal Democrats who is generally worth reading. There was a period of time during the campaign (in fact, until after the election), that he had become tiresome, reciting the campaign talking points. Since then, he has gone back to thinking and speaking on his own, to his benefit. He has his critique in the Sunday New York Post. My expectation is that the Democrats will not pay any attention to this argument. The conventional wisdom was that they were not loud and shrill enough to be heard, so they lost. At most, they might blame the loss on the evil Carl Rove playing the "values" card against them.

Mozilla Firefox and Favorites Icons

I found another minor issue with Mozilla Firefox. For "Favorites Icons" that are 32x32 pixels, you only see the upper left corner in the bookmarks manager. You do get to see the entire icon in the upper URL field, for some reason. Part of the issue is that the bookmarks manager and the browser are two separate applications. On the other hand, IE6, up to the latest updates and SP2 isn't showing 32x32 icons, so I guess I shouldn't complain. Examples are Tim's Toys and Scribbling.net.

Being sick is a waste of time

The worst thing about being sick is that it is a poor use of time. For example, on a day where I would be able to work 8 hours, I am home sick, instead. I would much rather be earning 8 hours pay. The culprit is bronchitis. My wife brought the bug home from school. She must have built up some resistance, through long-term exposure, as she is not really sick. I have not been living at home for most of the last three years, so I had not built up any resistance. In the face of a bad IT job market in Dallas, I had been off working in Minneapolis.

Once we had made the decision that I would only take a job in the Dallas area, then I waited 5 months until I found a position with a small software company (about 40 miles from home). The Dallas area is radically different from Minneapolis. I had a 14 mile commute on three different contracts in that time. In the Dallas area, the shortest commute that I have had in the last 16 years was 16 miles. That didn't last very long. After that, I was typically driving 25 miles each way. To do anything in the Dallas area, you can very quickly run up 20 miles. Fortunately, in the last 4 years, they have finally done the road work to improve the situation. Back in the early 1990's, a 37 mile drive to work was a nightmare. With the "High Five" project, they have radically improved a key choke point.

I find Ann Althouse's being nominated as the best conservative blog pretty ironic

I like Ann Althouse, and I visit her blog multiple times a day. She is a law professor at the University of Wisconsin, and she has voted Democratic in the past. Her sons reportedly voted Democratic in the last election. For her to be nominated as the best conservative blog seems strange, as she is more like the other law professors (Glenn Reynolds and Eugene Volokh, to name a few), who in may ways are more libertarian and socially liberal than the normal conservative. When I read her stories about Madison and the goofy happenings there before the election, I could see that she had moved to the right.

Software geeks: Java 5.0 autoboxing and unboxing

Yesterday afternoon, I tried my hand at some of the simple autoboxing and unboxing examples with JDK 1.5 (a.k.a. Java 5.0). Java has base types and then the boxed equivalent: for example, float and Float. In JDK 1.5, you should be able to write: Float x = 2.5; and it should automatically do the "new Float(2.5)" behind the scenes. If you do something like float x = new Float(2.5);, it should do the (new Float(2.5)).floatValue() behind the scenes. This is a nonsensical example, but it illustrates the point. I am using JDK 1.5.0 and the Eclipse 3.1m3 IDE. When I tried the simple autoboxing and unboxing, they failed. I'm running on a Windows 2000 machine. So the natural question is: "what's wrong?".

More Mozilla Firefox irritants

When I am replying to a Yahoo mail message, and type a "/", Firefox opens the "Find" field in the lower left corner and gives it focus. I have to hit the red "X" to close the field. When I try to type a URL, Firefox then opens the field, which is a bother, as I frequently type URL's. I had thought that the problem I had been seeing was unique to Gmail, but that is not the case. On the other hand, where I am working, they picked up a nasty virus/spyware from IE that Norton didn't catch and anti-spyware software couldn't clean up (that indicates to me that this was probably a virus). Certainly, anti-spyware software will not know about all the lastest bad things, especially if you aren't frequently updating. I guess I will stay with Firefox.