Googlism is one more reason to like Google, although I'm not sure Googlism is connected to Google in any way. But who cares? My favorite Bush Googlism: "george bush is a twinkie".

Out of curiosity, I visited halloween.com, hoping to find a little extra holiday cheer. I must say, though, that I was very disappointed. Apart from the fact that their Halloween countdown widget is all fubared ("There are approximately 0 days until Halloween 2003"?), the most prominent link on the site is to the Free State Project. My more God-fearing friends always told me that Halloween was all about Satanism. As it turns out, it seems to be all about radical Libertarianism. Now that's scary.

Halloween Update: Unfortunately, I'm still as old and cynical now as when the day started. I had to work late, and by the time I got home, all the little goblins had long since gone back to their lairs to eat way too much candy and have a hard time getting to sleep because of the sugar high. Oh well, it's the sacrifice I make securing America's future for all our families.

New York Times: S.E.C. Orders Investigation Into Webster Appointment. It looks like this story will have legs. Good.

Slashdot has a really interesting interview with Dan Gillmor, a technology writer for the San Jose Mercury News. I've been reading Gillmor's stuff for a while now, and he is one of the few people out there who I think "gets it". He knows enough to get excited about new technologies and new ideas, but he also has a talent for recognizing unsubstantial hype when he sees it.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is definitely one of my favorite holidays. Not because I like to dress up in costumes (I do, but that's another story), not because I'm all goth and like spooky stuff (I don't, really), and not because it's a day off from work (it isn't). I like Halloween because the few children that come to my door seem so happy and excited, and I remember being that way when I was out trick-or-treating as a kid. Seeing all the ghosts and goblins stumbling around the neighborhood with giant bags of candy just makes this cynical old man feel a little less old and cynical.

New York Times: Oversight Chief Told Pitt of Job and a Red Flag. On the one hand, Pitt should be fired because he is clearly an idiot. On the other hand, as long as Pitt keeps his job, it makes Bush look (more) like an idiot for not firing him, which is better.

I hate the new MSN ads, both those on TV and the flash animations that have taken over the front page of the Washington Post. I hate the latter for the obvious reason, but I hate former because they're just, well, lame.

Washington Post: In Minn., Mondale Joins Race For Senate. I'm not the fastest off the line relaying this story, I know, but this is still good news. Go Fritz!

Kuro5hin: Portrait of a Blogger. I'm not sure which one I am. Friend Julie suggests "Techie Blogger", but I don't know crap about the Linux kernel, and really don't want to. Unless it helps me get sound working on my laptop. Oh wait, maybe…

Dan Gillmor: RealNetworks, U.S. government recognize power of open source.

Washington Post: Uncivil Fights. A pretty damning indictment of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, now frozen into inactivity by the partisan bickering of its 8 members.

I think the Create an Account functionality is now, er, functioning. I've migrated over all the user accounts from the old site, so if you are one of these lucky few, log in and enjoy the very few privileges of membership!

I'm not sure when Blogdex launched their redesigned site, but I like the look — it's much easier on the eyes than before. However, I'm curious why there wasn't an attempt made to write better markup. The W3C validator hates the html (although I don't understand some of the problems the validator is having — the head looks fine, for example), and they're still using HTML 4.0 Transitional with deprecated tags like center. Still, they've made good use of CSS (even if the site is still laid out with tables), and progress is just that, so congrats on the new site.

It sounds like a good idea: raise $370 to buy Bush a Playstation2 with a couple of violent miltary-themed games (and an extra controller for Dick), and hope that the President gets it all out of his system in a virtual way instead of actually invading anybody. Yeah, it's a good idea, but I'm not holding my breath.

Nicholas Kristof: The Greatest Threat. That it is North Korea should come as no suprise, given the events of the last two weeks. And the possible scenarios that Kristof lays out are fairly frightening.

Paul Krugman: "In an age of fake populists, Paul Wellstone was the real thing. Now he's gone. Will others have the courage to carry on?"

A quick correction: I apparently still have a little work to do on my stylesheet, so if you are using a standards-compliant browser, and this site still looks out of whack, that's probably me, not you. Still, it looks great in Mozilla, so…

Mark the time: the first Christmas ad of the season.

I Christen Thee…

…CommaBlog, at least until someone who ownes the copyright to the word "blog" decides to drop the hammer.

No offense to the HTML::Mason folks, but I know the Comma Guys, and it really is their software that got this puppy off the ground, so they get the proper props.

I've decided that the software that "powers" this site is something I plan on releasing at some point, although it is far from ready at the moment. The reason: coding for a specific function is easy; coding for the abstract is hard.

That, and lots of stuff needs to still be built. Like reporting, better browser editing, a calendar navigation system, and a feature yet-to-be-named, no doubt stolen from another blogging system, until the lawyers… well, I've said that already.

If you're the curious sort, contact me and we can talk in greater depth about what I'm doing. If you're not that type, then you've probably already clicked off to another site, so I guess I'm done.

I just checked out my name numerology. Apparently, I'm a bit of a loner (very true), dependable (more or less true), and an expert at dealing with people (completely false). I'm glad this numerology stuff didn't peg me right, because if it did, I'd have had to waste a few brain cycles re-examining my habitual distinction between science and crap.

Apparently, the next major Linux kernel release (2.6) will happen next summer. I get dizzy reading about the new features that are being added; all I really want to know is, when can I get sound and power management running on my crappy Toshiba Satellite 5005?

College Football Wrap-up

USC had a bad week, losing to LSU 38-14. The Gamecocks are now 5-3, so still hope for a bowl. UMass did better, beating James Madion 14-7, moving up to 6-2. And Cornell continued its two steps back, one step forward season by beating Brown in double overtime 10-7. The Big Red are a not-so-big 2-4.

A New Beginning

For the last few days, I've been working fast and furious on this new website. While I've been relatively happy with my old site, I decided I needed a new project to work on some things I've been meaning to learn. Hence… folley.net.

To help me learn CSS, I've opted for a table-free layout, handling all the positioning with stylesheets. If this site looks like crap in your browser, take the message at the top of the page to heart and upgrade.

For scripting, I went with HTML::Mason, and for the database I chose XML::Comma, which are the tools I use at my day job.

While I still have a lot of work left to do, I've decided that the only way I'll really know what features I've forgotten to build into this site is to start using it. So away we go…

End of An Era

With this post, Nomadder.com officially moves into the dustbin of history. It has served me well for many years, but it's time to move on.

For most of the time I've had a website, I've managed it with Userland's Frontier, an integrated database, scripting environment, and web development platform. Frontier's been good to me, but it's no longer the environment I find myself working in day-to-day. At my day job, I work 12 hours a day with Apache, mod-perl, Mason, MySQL, and XML::Comma. I figured it was time I leveraged my vocation in my avocation, so I built a new site.

For the moment, it looks a lot like this one, only without some of the functionality you have probably not known existed behind the scenes. There is still a lot of building to do, but enough about all that. Without further ado, I proudly present: folley.net.

I'm a long-time reader of Goats, one of my favorite online comics. So imagine my thrill when I find out the Goats guys are attempting to engage in one of the most important political statements that an "Average American" can make: that's right, they want to moon the White House.

Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and his family have been killed in a plane crash. CNN has a developing story.

Washington Post: For Bush, Facts Are Malleable. Actually, this isn't news, in the sense of being new. But it's good to see Bush actually getting called on it.

Back up after my scheduled power outage, but it looks like one of my battery backups is dead. Not sure why, but looks like I need to take a trip to CompUSA this weekend.

Washington Post: N. Korea Reveals Nuclear Program. This is huge. All of a sudden, whatever threat Iraq might have posed seems to pale in comparison. The Bush Administration says they are seeking a "peaceful resolution." Funny, based on all that axis of evil stuff, I expected a more Reagan-esque, "the bombs begin falling in five minutes" kind of response. What's worse, the administration has apparently known about this for almost two weeks, yet has said nothing. Bush gives a major speech, practically accuses Democrats of being traitors if they don't support a war on Iraq, all the while knowing that Iraq is way behind the curve in the "weapons of mass destruction" business.

I just saw an ad on TV for Computer Associates. It's been on for a while, but I always get a kick out of seeing it again. It shows two staffers knocking themselves unconscious on the way to an important meeting — you know the one I'm talking about. I like this ad for two reasons: 1) it's very funny, and 2) I often wish I could be knocked unconscious on the way to some of the meetings I have to go to. And if I could be at least stunned before taking certain phone calls, that would be cool, too.

Daniel Gross: Bush League Economics. "Over the past 20 months, the administration has been by turns overly optimistic, inconsistent on fundamental approaches to economic policy, and disengaged. The foreign policy trumpets are certain, loud, and sometimes even play together. When it comes to economic policy, the horns are out of tune, and they're being played by guys who don't have the chops to be soloists." [via Camworld]

The Gallery of Unfortunate Cards. [via Bradlands]

The Onion: Bush on Economy: Saddam Must be Overthrown. The Daily Show did something like this last week, but it's still funny (and true).

Here's a fun little site. I like their take on our flash piece, but by far the funniest piece is this one.

College Football Wrap-up

USC moves to 5-2, coming from behind to beat Kentucky 16-12. UMass also notched another win, beating previously unbeaten Maine 20-10. The Minutemen are now 4-2, despite what the game recap says. Cornell, on the other hand, didn't fare so well, losing to Harvard 52-23, dropping the Big Red to 1-3 on the year. Ouch.

For the Wired guys who did the latest redesign, all I can say is, great work. Makes me want to do a little standards-compliant work on this site.

Senator Bob Graham: Misfiring in the War on Terror.

The President has been travelling all over the country telling voters that he needs Republicans in Congress to help him win the wars on terrorism and Iraq, in effect saying that voting Republican is the patriotic thing to do. Now his Christian Coalition allies have taken this one step further. Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, addressing the CC's Road to Victory conference, says that by voting Republican, "…you will be doing the Lord's work, and he will richly bless you for it." If this is what Dubya meant by changing the tone, give me the old tone back.

The hardest part about having my laptop working again, is that I now want to change a lot of stuff. I need to keep telling myself: 24 days until the election, and then I can poke and prod all I want, but until then, I need to work with what I got. OK, I'll do one thing: I'll superglue the escape key back onto my keyboard, but that's it.

Heads up to my three stalwart readers: this site will be down for most of the day next Thursday. Seems my landlord is doing an electrical system upgrade, which means power will be shutdown for part of the day, and my work schedule will keep it down for a little bit after that.

Michael Kinsley: War For Dummies. "Sending mixed signals and leaving the enemy uncertain what you might do next are valid tactics. But the cloud of confusion that surrounds Bush's Iraq policy is not tactical. It's the real thing. And the dissembling is aimed at the American citizenry, not at Saddam Hussein."

Thank god. After a week and a half of again living in a Windows world, my laptop is back in the game. I had to totally back out of my RedHat 8.0 upgrade (doesn't seem to play nice with my Toshiba Satellite 5005), so I'm back to RedHat 7.3. Which is actually progress, since before the aborted upgrade, I was running 7.2. No data loss, either, but later this weekend I get to reinstall all the software we run at the office. Since this laptop seems to be a bit quirky, I'm keeping a list of some of the things I have to do to get everything working.

Wow, a fire in my apartment complex, a couple of buildings down. It doesn't look serious (no smoke, no hoses), but the firefighters did set up a couple of huge gas-powered fans up in front of the main door to ventilate the building.

College Football Wrap-up

USC beat Mississipi State yesterday, 34-10. After a rough spot at the start of the year, the Gamecocks are a respectable 4-2. UMass rebounded from two straight losses to take down Richmond 34-13 and move to 3-2. And Cornell gets its first win of the year, sneaking by Towson 34-31 in double overtime. The Big Red are 1-2.

I missed this story when it first came out (that's happening more and more these days), but apparently the US gave Iraq the basic building blocks for a biological weapons program 20 years ago. Once again, "it's Reagan's fault!"

God, what a day. My site got hammered as the new flash ad got press from the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times (no such thing as bad publicity), CNN, AP; on TV, CNN's Inside Politics and Crossfire, C-SPAN, and MSNBC. Tomorrow, the story is on Today and Good Morning America. Wow.

Oh, I forgot to mention Drudge, the traffic from which caused my day to be very sucky. Bottom line: the system is a lot more stable than it was 24 hours ago, and ready to take on all the traffic the net can send us.

Updating my latop to RedHat 8.0, I find I have no networking. How fucking random. Apart from the misery of having to work in a Windows world, I can't get email at my prefered address. To talk to me, send your missives to my work address.

The Flash sensation that's sweeping the nation; or, the project I've been working on for the last week. No, I'm not the author, but it's on my website, and I'm pleased as a new father on the birth of this baby. Pass it on.

Shit, when did AMC start showing commercials during the movies?