Events

I can't believe I forgot to post about the Weather Now Beta launch Tuesday evening. I'll have more details later, including a list of why the new application is so much cooler than the current one, but right now I'm trying to figure out why a client's server keeps horking every day.

Josh Marshall has a new blog-within-a-blog: GrandOldDocket.com, which lists which Republicans have been indicted, convicted, or pled guilty to various corruption charges.

It's Groundhog Day! And it's official: Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, meaning another six weeks of winter. And he wrote a little poem about it, which is pretty impressive for a marmot. (You'll have to read the poem on the official Groundhog Day site.) Also impressive, this rodent has been around for 120 years, as the FAQ explains: How many "Phils" have there been over the years? There has only been one Punxsutawney Phil. He has been making predictions for over 120 years! Punxsutawney Phil gets his...

We were dark for over 6 hours today because someone at SBC did something, though no one seems to know who or what. The result was that the Inner Drive Technology World Headquarters had no phone or Internet service from 9:15 am CT/15:15 UTC until 3:30 pm CT/21:30 UTC. Sadly, this came on the first day of our Weather Now beta launch, which shows off some of our coolest stuff ever. (At this writing it's still a few hours behind, with weather from lunchtime today, but it's catching up as fast as it can.)...

The latest NBC/WSJ poll finds only 39% of Americans think the President is doing a good job. I can't remember a President with lower approval ratings, ever. And still this one believes he has a mandate. Incredible. A related item: Journalist Josh Marshall finds the State of the Union address "unwatchable" in general. I think if it weren't on a Tuesday and one could make a serious drinking game out of it, perhaps it could be more fun, but alas. I'll probably watch it anyway, though Anne might want to...

Not that anyone is surprised, but Samuel Alito got confirmed an Associate Justice of the U.S. today. Civil-rights activist Corretta Scott King died this morning. Exxon reported a $36 billion profit in 2005, the largest corporate profit ever, making Exxon shareholders the largest beneficiaries in history of the ongoing environmental degradation of our planet. And today is Alan Greenspan's last day as Federal Reserve Chairman, which actually may be good news for our children, since it's unlikely that...

Genius Boy here just spent ten minutes debugging a class because I used the private field directly inside the class, instead of the property accessor method. Here's what the property looked like: public string FileSpec { get { return _fileSpec; } } private string _fileSpec; Notice there's no set method. The file spec is set only in the constructor, and is immutable at runtime. That means that throughout the class I had code like this: if (File.Exists(_fileSpec)) { _cache.Load(_fileSpec); } The problem?...

Imagine you're a fisherman in an English village sometime in the 10th century. You notice, on the horizon, some longboats. You get worried, because you know the Norse have raped and pillaged from Dover to York for many years, which always ends badly for those raped and pillaged. You mention it to the lord of the manor, who asks, "how many boats?" You say you don't know; it could be two, it could be four, they're still a ways away. "Come back when you know for sure," he tells you. Another villager runs...

"Several great minds were asked to help think up interview questions for George W. Bush. I liked, 'Are you the worst president since James Buchanan, or have you never heard of him?'" Ivins' homepage

Not that anyone who reads a newspaper will be surprised, but Abramoff didn't give money to Democrats, only Republicans: A new and extensive analysis of campaign donations from all of Jack Abramoff’s tribal clients, done by a nonpartisan research firm, shows that a great majority of contributions made by those clients went to Republicans. The analysis undercuts the claim that Abramoff directed sums to Democrats at anywhere near the same rate. It's the corruption, stupid.