Land of Oz

Mickey D'less

As part of our vacation this year, we drove from Saginaw up to Sault Ste. Marie and then using Highway 17 towards Sudbury and then down Highway 69 to Toronto. It was quite a nice trip really. There's some really nice scenery along the way. Most of 17 is pine trees and water and a few small towns (populations well under 900) many miles apart. The geography around Highway 69 turns into a lot of rock and pine. The rock is right up on the surface for almost the entire distance from Sudbury to within a few dozen miles of Toronto when it changes to Highway 400.

The interesting part of this trip was the complete lack of Macdonalds. From Sault Ste. Marie nearly to Toronto (about 400 miles) there was a complete absence of Macdonalds resteraunts. I will admit that we did pass 3 Wendys/Tim Hortons and one KFC in that distance, but no Macdonalds. It was kind of refreshing in a way. There were quite a few local eateries along the way - just about every small town had one or two on the highway. Unfortunately, when we did pass one of the name-brands it was crowded - more so than the local places. The last Wendys we stopped at was packed. I guess it was the only place for a couple of hundred miles where people felt comfortable to stop. And yeah, so did we. I also managed to pay $1.15 a liter for gasoline there!

War on Terror

Here's some random news blurbs from online news I read today. Nice to know we're having an effect.

The United States plans to put sensors on oil rigs and weather buoys to spot security threats at sea and may use satellites, unmanned planes and commercial jets to monitor ships as far as 2,000 nautical miles away...

Conservative U.S. evangelist and [the founder of the Christian Coalition], Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez...

Afghanistan - Taliban rebels are emptying Islamic boarding schools of students in a desperate drive to recruit fighters, including teenage boys, before next month's legislative elections...

Anticipating an increase in insurgent attacks, the United States plans to send more troops to Iraq in advance of an Oct. 15 referendum on a new Iraqi constitution...

Washington -- Asking for increased vigilance in the wake of the London bombings, the government is warning that terrorists may pose as vagrants to conduct surveillance of buildings and mass transit stations...

// posted by Jim-of-oz @ 8/24/2005 12:36:00 AM

Sheehan vrs. Fonda

Several entries ago I mentioned Jane Fonda and that I considered her a treasonous traitor because of her actions during the Vietnam war. I suppose you might wonder what I think about Cindy Sheehan and her protest in "Camp Casey." I don't see how the two actions can even be compared - contrasted is more like it. Fonda went to North Vietnam and posed on anti-aircraft guns that were actively shooting down United States airmen and aircraft and cheered them on. She posed with very soldiers who were killing United States citizens in the midst of semi-undeclared war.

Sheehan has camped out in front of the President's ranch where in the midst of another war he is taking a 5 week vacation. She hasn't denounced our soldiers or our country only a semi-declared war based on reasons none of which were true. In fact, the president is once again reiterating the fact the war in Iraq is because of 9/11. Sheehan lost her son over there and while I think her anguish may be over the top, I think it is none-the-less, real. Unless Sheehan goes over to Iraq and helps place some bombs or poses with jihad members, I can't see any comparison at all.

In my eye, the troops are doing a helluva job over there - it's the reasons they're over there is what I have problems with.

Gun Control

First, let me say that what I think of when I hear about gun control is that you hit what you aim at. Secondly, a gun won't hit it what it isn't aimed at. I have been around guns all my life and have owned them since I was old enough to earn enough to buy one. In all that time and after all those rounds fired, I've never shot anyone and haven't met anyone who did - and I've met some guys who have shot a lot of ammo (Bill, you out there?).

If I thought there was the smallest possibility that political gun control/confiscation would work, I'd be all for it. It hasn't yet and it won't in the future. Contrary to what many seem to understand, most bad acts (if not all) that hurt people are already illegal. If Dickhead One is going to rob and rape someone (robbery and rape being illegal you know), why is he going to rob and rape without a gun simply because owning a gun is also illegal? If Husband Two can blow away Dickhead One before the act is accomplished, at least we can be sure Dickhead One won't be a repeat offender.

This is what I don't get. Why add more laws? Murder, assault, robbery, rape, and stuff like that is already against the law and people assholes still do it. Why is adding an extra law about guns going to help? People are knifed, bludgeoned, beat-up, and run over now - would having an extra law on the books help? I doubt it. How about adding one law? You commit a crime using a knife or a gun (and I don't care if it the gun is a three dollar .22 car antenna zip gun or a three thousand dollar .50 Barrett sniper rifle) you go to jail for life or get a death sentence (your choice).

This way, if you're just some dude who wants a GAU-12 25mm on the front porch or a 17 year-old punk with a MAC-10, you're covered. If you want to rob a 7-11 of $40 you're going away for life, whether you do it with the MAC-10 or the GAU-12. On the other hand if you just want to admire the workmanship of the six revolving barrels of the GAU-12 or the stamped steel manufacturing of the MAC-10, you're also covered - you can sit on your front porch and enjoy.

We don't need new useless laws, we just need to enforce the current useless laws already on the books.

2fers: National Rifle Association and Ruger .22s

More Proof of god

"Rader was a one-time Boy Scout leader and before his arrest earlier this year was lay president of the congregation at Wichita's Christ Lutheran Church where he was a regular Sunday worshiper."

Assuming you've not read any news for the last couple of months, you'll know that Rader, aka BTK, was a slightly odd guy who lived in Wichita, Kansas and very cold-bloodedly beat, tortured and killed (hence the BTK) a bunch of men, women and children. Stangely, I lived there from 1977 to 1980 and don't remember hearing about him. Anyway, it's nice to know that god thought enough of this creature to allow him the honor of being the "lay president of Christ Lutheran Church - hallelujah!

Online Readability

Here's a rather unusual gripe for this blog. Why is it that so much effort it placed into online documents without taking into consideration the online presentation. Often, a document designed for print is simply converted to an online document, and if lucky a few links tossed in, then it's published online with no further work. It often seems, and I've seen this even in organizations dedicated to technical writing, that no consideration of what a reader sees is kept in mind. Following are a few of the most common things I've seen.

This low level stuff is thankfully not too common (common enough however) with professionally produced material. Colors and contrasts - many a document has dark print that fades into a multicolored background to the point where the letters can hardly be made out. Font size - while I can read pretty small print, some stuff is almost literally too small to be seen. Not all of your readers are under thirty. On the other hand, too large isn't good either. Format overload - just because you can bold, underline, emphasize, italicize, multicolorize and multisize, doesn't mean you should.

Overall page layout is what really gripes me though. I just read an article about publishing online on a site about good service and the width isn't adjustable. The space for text is 600 pixels across. If you narrow your window, the right-hand side is hidden, and if you expand your window the right-hand side is whitespace. What is even worse is when the right margin isn't there. I've seen text that was 255 characters wide or more - not good. Newspapers have multiple narrow columns for a reason - it makes the text easier to read. Too wide isn't good. It slows a reader down by making them take multiple scans across a page.

However some layouts try to fix this by making multiple columns on a page. While this is fine for a newspaper, it sucks online. I think what normally happens is that someone writes a paper doc, then makes it into a PDF and pushes it online without giving a thought to how it will appear on screen. Very rarely can you get a whole page on screen at once. Because of banners, ads, logos, links and what-have-you, the bottom part of the page is usually off-screen. Which means that you have to read, scroll the page, and when the bottom of the column is reached, scroll back up the top and start again. The International Herald Tribune is an online document that does handle multiple columns extremely well. The Society for Technical Communications of all organizations is one who doesn't handle multiple columns well, as this document shows.

If you have a multisection article that has links that go to the next section - make the links all appear in the same place. That way I can read, click and continue, without having to spend time looking for where the "next" link is. And if that's not possible, at least make sure the link appear in the same horizontal location. That way while I have to scroll (mouse scroll wheels are great for online reading) down, I can at least leave the mouse in the same place to click.

Underline links and don't underline nonlinks. <U> </U> has no place in online writing unless it links to something. If you really need an additional layer of emphasis, try using a different font size or face or color. I am too conditioned to see as a link online to change now.

Obviously, there's more but this will help me a lot when trying to read your online documents. And no, this blog doesn't always follow a lot of this - this is my fun writing venue with minimal editing and few worries about formatting.

Priorities

(or why I love the church)
(BBC News)Nun stages Da Vinci Code protest. Sister Mary believes The Da Vinci Code is blasphemous. A Roman Catholic nun has staged a protest over the filming of the Da Vinci Code at Lincoln Cathedral. Sister Mary Michael knelt in prayer outside the building for 12 hours to object to the production of the film, which stars Tom Hanks.

Not the war in Iraq, or the genocide in Rwanda, or the bombings in London, or the North/South Korean problem, or Indian/Pakistan nuke issues, or cancer, or snakeheads smuggling immigrants, or Chechnya terrorists, or starving in Africa, or the crystal meth addicts, or global warming, or mountainous piles of toxic landfill garbage, or holy wars, or industrial dioxin pollution, or avian flu, or Middle Eastern women's rights, or child abuse, or 13 year-olds murdering 11 year-olds, or AIDS, or unwanted orphans around the world, or tsunamis in Asia, or hurricanes in Central America, or coal mines in China, or heart disease - no these don't warrant a 12 hour prayer fest - but a movie being filmed, now that's another story.

Boxing

Or hockey without the skates... This is what set this off, "The New York State Athletic Commission suspended the 42-year-old Holyfield's boxing license because of his 'diminished skills and poor performance...'" His record is 2-5-2 since 1999. It goes on to say that after medical test Evander doesn't show any signs of brain damage or other medical problems

Whenever you have a sport where brain damage isn't unusual, I think you need to look into this as a sport. Boxing seems to be one of the very few sports where physically damaging your opponent is the desired outcome. Yes, I know there's points and all that, but the real goal is knocking out your opponent. Except for those aberrant events like Ultimate Fighting or whatever, the vast majority of martial arts require your opponent to be subdued, not beaten to a pulp.

Compare this to American football - which is probably one of the more violent sports around. A quarterback wearing full pads gets hit in the head (albeit by a 6 foot 6 inch, 350 pound mound of charging muscle) and ends up with a career ending concussion. A boxer takes several dozen hits to the head - unprotected by any helmet or pads - by a 200 pound mass of muscle (or flab in local fights) and comes back to fight over and over again. A twenty-year old can probably recover from hits like this - for awhile. A forty-year old isn't going to.

It is so sad to see some forty-year old fighter making a "comeback." Go back, I'd say. It's really unlikely you're going to win. And it's really likely you're going to do more permanent damage to yourself. Sure, you may end up like George Foreman hawking everything under the sun, but you're more likely to end up like Ali - punch drunk and old before your days. You have ugly sights like Tyson and Hollyfield trading their name with little hope of any glory for a few minutes of pummeling in the ring by some young up and comer.

And as far as fighting being part of hockey - bullshit! Yes, violence is part of that game - as it is in American football. However, throwing a punch in football is probably going to get you thrown out of the game and fined - in hockey, it means a few seconds in a penalty box and highlight films on the night's news. You could end hockey violence in a couple of weeks worth of games, by kicking out for a game, then a season, anyone who throws a punch - first or followup. In a very few games, I'm sure the players would get the point and could practice skating and scoring points not brawling and mayhem.

2fers: Boxing 1 and Boxing 2

A Week Gone

Wow - a whole week gone. Me and the wife had a cold, she first and then me. Didn't feel like doing much except sleeping and watching some TV. So let me see if I can catch up on all my bitching for the last week in one easy entry.

The usual crap is still going on in the world. Our, Bush's anyway, war in Iraq hasn't increased safety there - dozens of GIs have bit the big one over the last week - Ohio and Pennsylvania have paid some pretty big prices in life. Gas prices have hit all new highs - $67 or so a barrel. I paid $2.74 a gallon last night for my bug. This week we, Bush anyway, has started to rattle sabers at Iran, China and Russia have held joint exercises and planes seem to be falling out of the sky at a pretty good clip. Toronto lucked out and 309 folks bailed from a burning aircraft in 3 minutes and Europe hasn't lucked out with Greece and Italy losing a couple of hundred of passengers.

There's been another pit bull attack down in Detroit and some more big auto-related companies are looking to bail on Mid-Michigan. I am happy to say that no one seemed to be murdered this week in Saginaw - people run over, camels stolen, burglarized folks beat up with golf clubs, and foxy teachers (why no ugly ones) having sex with their students, but thankfully no murders.

The idiots on the road haven't changed. There's a crowded intersection near me with new construction that gives all the idiots a new excuse for driving like idiots. Merge, flashing bars, arrows, and lane closed signs, actually do mean the lane is close up ahead and don't wait until the last second to merge - because me, being a driver just as bad and impolite as you, ain't gonna let you in at the last minute, even if I have to get within a bumper sticker's thickness behind the car ahead of me. Others of you - don't pull out right in front of me and then slow down to 5 mph under the limit, if you're driving a tiny, itsy-bitsy scooter, the dayglow flag doesn't give you the right to drive 15 mph under the speed limit in the middle of the road, yellow lines in parking lots are there for a reason and it's OK to drive a Buick and be gray-hired and still drive the speed limit.

So - there's my last week's worth of rants all in one condensed form.

Normally Behaved??

PONTIAC, Mich. -- Family members attempted to fight off a group of pit bulls that surrounded two girls on Friday afternoon, Local 4 reported. Dominique Jacobs, 13, was visiting her 8-year-old cousin, Courtney Bridges, at a home on Going Street in Pontiac when the family's five pit bulls attacked. The dogs were removed from the home while authorities investigate the incident. "They're normally behaved. They're basically just like house pets," said Bridges [Michael Bridges, the victims' uncle].

Here we go again. I can't believe he says they're normally behaved? What kind of house do they have and what the hell do they think is normal? When is the last time you read about a Golden Lab or Beagle doing something like this? It always seems to be pit bulls or mastiffs or some other "lap dog" pet that people have.

Extra Daylight?

Where? I have never quite figured this Daylight Saving Time stuff out. I checked the weather forecast for today and they also listed: sunrise - 6:29 am / Sunset - 8:54 pm (or 14 hrs/25 min daylight). Now as I figure it, if it wasn't for DST, it would be 5:29 am / Sunset - 7:54 pm (or 14 hrs/25 min daylight). Not much difference there that I can see.

Yes, I know all about turning lights on and off. The building I work in has its lights on 24/7. There is no difference in the office between 12 noon and 12 midnight - and we aren't north of the Arctic Circle. The only way you can tell the sun isn't shining is to make an effort to walk to one of the windows and look out - or find a local realtime webcam someplace.

At home, since sunrise is later, I have to turn the lights on in the morning - which I don't do now. Do lights use less electricity when they're on in the morning than when they're on in the evening? Perhaps after being on for a long time they get tired and aren't as efficient.

I'd just as soon drop DST all together and go with GMT nationwide. Then you wouldn't have to computer what time zone you're in and if or ifn't it used DST. You'd call someone at 0230 and it's 0230 no matter what.

2fers: GMT and DST

Good ol' days

An unsolicited offer of a McDonald's senior coffee the other day got me thinking about the olden days. I know there's a lot of selective memory involved in looking back, but I can't help but have some nostalgia for the old days. Of course, there's some things I wouldn't want to give up nowadays, but really not too many. I like the idea of less pain in the dentist and the availability of DVDs and VHS is pretty cool. But what else is really that much better?

Health? Supposedly people live longer, but at what cost? Most folks in their 80s that I know of aren't really all that happy and a lot of them seem to spend more time visiting doctors and hospitals than anything else. Sure you can always read about some 90 year old setting 100 yard "dash" records or climbing some mountain, but those are the exception rather than the rule.

Computers and communications. So what? Cell phones to me are more a pain than anything else. Yeah, their nice in case of an accident or something, but otherwise who cares. How often does it really matter if the info gets there in two days instead of two minutes? Are the programs on the 200+ cable channels really that much better than what used to be on network TV? It's nice getting a DVD overnight from Netflix, but I'd survive without it. I spend most of my time listening to the radio anyway.

Of course now it really doesn't pay to get much fixed. That $40 dollar DVD player will cost you $100 to fix. Remember when a TV repair man would come out your house with his hipbox full of tubes and fix your TV in place? Our fridge lasted as long as I can remember and I'm still using some appliances my parents bought back in the 50s and 60s. Now if something lasts a couple years, it's cause to remark. Computers go out of date before they're even released. You can still play an LP released in the 40s and look at a photo taken 100 years ago. Try playing your CD in a few years or looking at the proprietary digital image in 10!

I'm suppose I'm coming across as some kind of luddite here, but it seems to me a lot of progress isn't necessarily progressing these days. I've got my Pentium powered PC at home sucking down broadband Internet and my Netflix DVDs come in every couple of days and I have a clamshell cell phone on my belt smaller than Kirk's communicator. I'm writing on a blog and drive a computer-laden turbo VW back and forth to my job at a telecom. But take it all away, and give me a hifi playing Fibber McGee and Molly, a dial phone with an operator on it, a lifetime job at some factory assembling Brownie cameras and I'd be just as happy.