reedmaniac.com

Link. Mac app that allows you to create Site Specific Browsers for web applications and treat them like a regular old application. Uses WebKit and is pretty damn handy.

Link. Simply the best opinion piece about the debates I have seen.

Link. "Customers of WaMu, based in Seattle, are unlikely to be affected, although shareholders and some bondholders will be wiped out. WaMu account holders are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation up to $100,000, and additional deposits will be backed by JPMorgan Chase."

A few friends have commented in the last couple days on my lack of entry about the financial crisis, as they know my intense interest in such deeply political and financial manners. Last night I started on quite the entry about it, as one has been brewing in my mind for days. Frankly, it was so laced with profanity, expletives, anger, and frustration that it served no productive purpose except for me venting once again on the mediocrity available wholesale in our political system.

Yes, it is a clusterfuck of historic proportions. As usual I beg that if you have any personal or financial investment in the country that is the United States that you become informed. The NY Times and The Economist would be an excellent start. The Daily Show could not hurt either.

At the same time, I feel I am wasting my effort even saying that. I am tired of being angry and frustrated about the state of things. I donate fairly large sums of money to organizations that I believe will work to improve things; fight the fights needing to be fought. I write letters and send emails to my Representatives and Senators. I educate people when I can. I practice what I preach.

For what? I try to be an optimist. Things are gradually improving in many areas. Racism. Sexism. Environmental awareness. Gay rights.

Look at all of the failures of the past eight years though, and I am not just pointing at the Bush Administration either. Congress was aware of what they were allowing to happen under their tenure. The current financial mess is just another in a long line of America's political system and government royally failing at their job. And, holy cow, look at the solution they are presenting. $700 billion, at the minimum, to purchase distressed securities from banks, mortgage companies, and other financial firms with no guarantee of earning even half of that back. Guys, that is a decade of Universal Healthcare! Let's not even talk about our National Debt and its effect on inflation and the dollar abroad. Or, the fact that the original proposal gave absolute power to the Secretary of the Treasury with no oversight whatsoever.

::deep breath:: Not going to get worked up, not going to get worked up...

There are politicians I respect and support. My own Representative, Earl Blumenauer, is one of those. Yet, as an American I have lost faith in what my government can do. I get bile in my throat knowing what it has done or not done. Examine your conscience, can you continue paying your taxes when you know what the government has done with your money? If things continue much longer, I cannot.

"A country is not only what it does - it is also what it puts up with, what it tolerates." - Kurt Tucholsky

If you do not act, you are complicit. If you do not vote, you are complicit. If you do not become informed and change your habits, you are complicit.

I am a fanatic about personal responsibility. And so, I try not to be complicit. I refuse. Yet, like Kurt I see a trend happening in my native country that I am alarmed at and by staying here I am feeling more and more like I am being complicit by still supporting my government in any form.

There comes a time when one should decide whether to cry revolution or leave. We're not there yet. Let's hope it does not come to that. If it does, I am more likely to choose the latter than the former.

Link. Using a new SVN server today with a new version of BBEdit and a new version of SVN locally, the command line worked fine but BBEdit choked complaining that my client version was too old for the SVN Repository. Unlikely since my client version is newer than the version on the server. This thread helped me override the default SVN client that BBEdit uses. Everything works swimmingly now.

Link. Really hope so, because I am working on Amelia's website right now, which requires such snazziness.

Link. The default PHP module that Apple has made available with Leopard is extremely limited in what it has configured in, which has been bumming me out for a while. Thankfully, some blessed genius has figured out how to make Mark's package work with Apache 2 on Leopard. I am ecstatic. I am overjoyed. This rocks.

NOTE: If you created an /etc/my.cnf to get MySQL working with the socket specified in Apple's PHP package, delete the contents of the my.cnf file, and restart you machine to revert back. That should get MySQL working with Mark's PHP package.

Link. I agree with Heather, this video is a damn good litmus tests for a relationship. By my second viewing, I was wiping small tears away from the corners of my eyes. Could use a little finessing with the build up though, then it would be really great.

This makes me happy. This makes me depressed.

While hanging out with Cameron the other day, I picked up his copy of Cormac McCarthy's The Road he had on his table. One of the great things about Reedies is they always seem to have new books hanging around their living space, just waiting to be picked up. In true Paul fashion, I started reading smack in the middle of the book and kept on reading until I finished. I can see why it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last year; it is exceptional. I really cannot wait to read the first half and see how it starts. However, I want to finish Roughing It by Mark Twain first, and then I also bought four more books from Powell's this past weekend. Perhaps I will just make a point of visiting Cameron again soon.

This was my first book by Cormac McCarthy too. Like the Harry Potter books when they first came out, I have been resisting his works because they seem to popular recently. One of these days I will learn that not all that is popular is lacking in worth.

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Once you have used Subversion for any manner of development, you surely have no desire to ever return to that previous lifestyle of simply sharing your files via email. And no matter how good Project Management software has become in the last couple years, I still find most of it wretched, cumbersome, and hardly worth the 1's and 0's it is made of. Give me Commits or give me Death!

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Beating myself up a bit over the lost house. The place was nice. Located in my favorite neighborhood in Portland. Just Dan was being a bit iffy about renting again and the price was a little bit higher than I thought it should be. I tried negotiating down, but they did not seem to understand that I would have accepted a higher rent than what I suggested. You know, I was kind of expecting them to, I dunno, negotiate? Realistically, I could have afforded the original rent too as I am not exactly short on cash in the bank or work right now. Alas, it has been rented to someone else and the search continues on. For every five emails out, on average only a single email returned. Kind of infuriating. Juvenile pranks have never seemed so inviting.

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Thanks to a little module for ExpressionEngine, I am able to see many of the referrers that come into the site. It really befuddles me that there are people out there who repeatedly do a search for 'reedmaniac' to come to this site, instead of typing in the domain. Then again, I have heard tales of people who search Google for 'Google'. Just more curious behavior by odd homo sapiens.