New version of WordPress is out apparently, and I was prompted to upgrade this morning. Doing so caused special characters to appear as unreadable. YUCK. Had to give myself a quick MySQL refresher while rolling everything back. Exporting posts before upgrading and then reimporting them into a brand new installation seems to have worked fine, … WordPress 2.2 upgrade
U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies. A supremely bad idea. In exchange for American backing, these officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on American units. [snip] Americans officers acknowledge that providing weapons to breakaway rebel groups is not new in counterinsurgency warfare, and … Fools follow rules when the set commands ya
Finally finished Original Zinn yesterday, which I highly recommend. Wanted to save this quote before I throw it on the bookshelf and forget it: What has been really one of the terrible consequences of the militarization of the country is the starving of the public sector, the starving of education, of libraries, of health, of … They rally round the family with a pocket full of shells
Project is approaching as close to a death march as I will likely see in this job. My thinking about work outside of the office is annoying. What keeps me fired up at work these days? Christina Aguilera. No joke. We saw her in February when she opened up the B2B tour, and as I … Let’s get dirrty
Submitted this for the Chronicle Viewpoints section nearly a month ago, but it was never published so it has languished in my mailbox. The Virginia Tech tragedy has been blamed partly on lax gun control laws, bad decision-making by university officials, and even loose immigration restrictions in the eyes of a few poorly-informed individuals. I … Just don’t be pointing one of them guns
Venezuela chastises U.S. for its handling of Posada. CIA-sponsored terrorist gets bail and house detention, while Arab men caught up in the eternal “war on terror” are jailed indefinitely without charges and flown secretly to other countries to be tortured. Venezuela’s ambassador to the Organization of American States accused Washington on Wednesday of protecting alleged … Fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy
Back from Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo this afternoon. Had a 3-hour delay getting out of Houston due to ridiculous amounts of fog but thankfully no problems returning. ZIH is a tiny airport where you walk out on the airfield, and checked baggage has to be inspected manually since they don’t have a huge million dollar X-ray machine at … This is for the people of the sun
Woke up at 2:30 am today. I had actually dreamt about a gargantuan nest egg, which left me thinking about all the things I have in store for the next big experiment: retirement. Books I want to write and other grand aspirations. Usually, dry itchy skin wakes me up in the middle of the night. … I got a head full of ideas that are driving me insane
Guantánamo Detainees Stage Hunger Strike. Still a disgrace to our country and the principles on which it was founded. Because reporters are prevented from speaking with detainees or visiting most of their cell blocks, it is difficult to verify the conflicting accounts. Hunger strikes have been part of life at Guantánamo almost since the detention … Immoral war
A while back, one of the credit card companies offered a small reward for switching to paperless statements. Looking forward to sparing a few trees while easily storing statements electronically instead of scanning them, I accepted the offer. Driven by that same desire to be environment-friendly, I later repeated this for my main card. Fortunately, … The danger of paperless credit card statements