David Broder: Looking for the Edge in a 'Tough Fight'. "Whatever benefits the vice president may derive from the dramatic moves he announced yesterday, his actions confirm the stark reality that despite all the points he gained as the designated heir to the first two-term Democratic president since FDR, Gore finds himself just four months from the first primary facing the real possibility of being repudiated by his party."

Washington Post: Democratic Money Race Getting Closer. Gore and Bradley are about even now. Who would have thunk it?

Well, I had to back out of my server upgrade. Which is too bad because I was going to introduce some new features here, which happens to be a rather special day for all the folks here at Nomadder Heavy Industries. But more about that later. In the meantime, everything seems back to normal server-side, so enjoy.

Roll Call: House Leaders Plan Ad Blitz on Budget Strategy. Speaker Hastert is in trouble, and key Republicans are now saying that their situation could "quickly go from bad to unfixable". (Roll Call recycles links, so this one will break soon).

The server woes continue, as does the testing. Hopefully, this won't be a long process.

I just watched The Last Days of Disco. All the boys looked alike, and it was hard for me to keep track of who was giving the clap to whom. But it did end on a good note, with everyone joining in on the "Love Train".

I'm having some problems with my server today, and I working to debug them. In the meantime, images aren't being served very well, and you will probably see some broken ones. Still digging…

After the event that was the DNC meeting, running from Thursday through Saturday, it feels really good to just sit down, relax, and watch some Ryder Cup action.

Belated but… Happy Birthday, Tiff!

College Football Wrap-up

USC continues to have a terrible season, losing to Mississippi State yesterday 17-0. The Gamecocks have yet to notch a victory all year; they are 0-4, and have now lost 14 straight. UMass also lost yesterday to Toledo, 24-3. They are now 1-2 for the season. Cornell is doing better, though, moving to 2-0 for the year with a 42-14 win over Fordham.

New York Times: Bradley and Gore Take Their Messages to Powerful Democrats. I missed the speeches, but I've had the song "Love Train" in my head for 2 days now.

Washington Post: Quayle to Pull Out of GOP Race. It was only a matter of time.

Washington Post: Hill GOP Leaders Try to Avoid Shutdown. The not-so-funny thing here — much of this battling over budget line items could have been avoided had the GOP not remained committed to its absurd tax cut bill.

I just watched The West Wing. I'm not sure whether to be disappointed of excited. Disappointed because it's not a great show. Excited because the President is a Democrat and reams the Christian Right in the first episode. Disappointed again because it runs at the same time as Star Trek: Voyager.

The Onion: Bill Bradley Denies Being Into Spin Doctors In Early '90s. This could mean the beginning of the end to his Cinderella candidacy…

Joe Conason: Reformers From Hell. "For pure entertainment value, the Reform Party simply has no competition in American politics today."

New York Times: House Passes Bill With New Limits on Campaign Gifts. Once again, the House leads the way in campaign finance reform. And even though there is a majority in the Senate that supports this reform proposal, in the Senate a majority isn't enough — you need 60 votes to kill a filibuster, and the Republican minority will definitely try this tactic this year as they did (successfully) last year.

Suck: Reverso Converso.

Wired: Foes With Grudge Sludge Drudge. Drudge's website was hacked! Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy…

Seen this afternoon in the Safeway parking lot: a youngish Hispanic man in full C&W singer/faux-cowboy costume, with a cellphone on his hip and two bottles of Coke Classic in his hand. Which horseman of the apocalypse is he? Tacky??

More trouble today working out some webserver bugs. It seems that some people (at least one :) with slow connections are getting broken images. I just tried to upgrade to some new beta software, and that only made things worse. Apologies while we here at Nomadder Heavy Industries try to set things right.

More subtle website design changes. Can you tell?

You read it every time you remember to look in that weekly given away free in bars and bookstores; now you can read it every time you remember to visit the website: News of the Weird.

College Football Wrap-up

It's September, so that means that my college footballs teams are rising to new levels of mediocrity. Wait, that was last season — this is next year! It is for UMass anyways, cruising to a win over New Hampshire, 34-19, to start the season 1-0. Unfortunately, it is more of last year for my beloved Gamecocks. USC lost its season opener to NC State last week, and Saturday dropped to 0-2 with a loss to Georgia, 24-9. That's 12 straight losses for South Carolina, for those of you playing along at home.

Washington Post: Dole Struggles to Be Top Bush Alternative. As the saying goes, though, unless Bush is found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy, he will be the nominee. I don't think second place gets you anything in this race.

One more thing I can check off my to-do list: I have all my windows machines at home talking to each other. I don't know why I didn't do this earlier. I guess I'm just a TCP/IP snob, and wanted to build a working system with only that protocol. But I need to print from my laptop, and the printer is connected to a desktop box, so….

CNN: Hurricane Floyd Gaining Strength. Here we go again…

For those of you who celebrate this day, Happy New Year!

ZDTV: Army Switches to Apple. Is no remote login capability a bug or a feature?

Washington Post: Nuns Describe Slaughter in Timor. "The militiamen had lined up outside the old wooden church filled with refugees in the East Timorese town of Suai on Monday afternoon, and parishioners watched as the young Indonesian Jesuit priest stepped out dressed in his clerical robes to meet the trouble. A burst of gunfire cut him down." Meanwhile: Jakarta Attempts To Mute Criticism.

Washington Post: Gore Goes on the Offensive in Rhode Island. Bush has evinced an annoying habit of passing up civic events to raise even more campaign cash, and I'm glad the VPOTUS was able to capitalize on it this time.

Washington Post: Indonesian Soldiers Rampage in E. Timor City. "Since East Timor voted overwhelmingly on Aug. 30 to become an independent state, the Indonesian army and police force — now marauding openly alongside anti-independence militia gangs — seem to have adopted a strategy of letting East Timor secede, but only after emptying the province of its population, killing off its political leadership and destroying its basic infrastructure." What then must we do?

Lingua Franca: The Importance Of Being Jacques, or How to be a French Philosopher. A must-read for me, should I ever go back to grad school and finish my Ph.D.

Monica Lewinsky is selling purses online. What next?

Wired News: US: 9-9-99 a Piece of Cake. And according to CNN: No 9-9-99 Glitches. If you had problems, let me know.

Washington Post: Clinton-Weary Public Has Doubts About Gore. "Gore must convince skeptical voters that he has the attributes they want in the next president while defending the administration at a time when there are signs the public is ready for a change in the White House." Tough road ahead…

Joe Conason: Get Over It, David!. Why David Horowitz should quit whining about that column in Time Magazine.

MSNBC: Bradley Launches Presidential Bid. It's now official.

American Scientist: Computional Creationism. Is the universe a giant computer, or the product of some giant computation?

Happy Labor Day, everybody!

CNN: Indonesia Declares Martial Law In East Timor. "Witnesses said that Indonesian troops — who previously stood idle while the militias ran a campaign of death and destruction through the city — had begun to take an active role in the rampage."

George W. Bush spent a few moments in Chapin, SC today, marching in a Labor Day parade. He was just a stone's throw away from where I spent my holiday. Yuck.

Wired: Debate Flares Over MS 'Spy Key'. Who should we believe here?

Washington Post: Relaxed Bradley Invokes Myth, Magic. A good profile of Bill Bradley.

CNN: East Timor Chooses Independence From Indonesia. But before the real work of building an independent East Timor can begin, Indonesia and the anti-independence groups it supports have to lay down their arms and accept the will of the people.

The Center for Democracy and Technology released a study a few days ago on the privacy policies of Presidential campaign websites. Gore gets an "A", Bush gets an "F".

Robert X. Cringley: Tactics Versus Strategy: Why Microsoft and Intel Both Lost Ground This Week to the Open Source Movement. Cringley sees doom and gloom for Microsoft in the near future in both the server and user markets. I doubt it's that bad for Bill, but we can dream, can't we?

Almost randomly, I stumbled across the website of my first candidate, now SC Superintendent of Education, Inez Tenenbaum. Go Inez!

Slate: Booze You Can Use. Geeks rate beer, with interesting results. Personally, I love Grolsch, but I also buy Busch a lot.