Posted 9:37 AM by Floyd

Something appears to be wrong with my archives. I should have an archive for every week, going back to when I started this blog in August. But the archive list is only from August to early October.

This appears to be a Blogger problem as it was working earlier. I use Blogger to publish to my own web page, but pretty soon I am going to give up on Blogger and use something like Moveable Type.

Anyway, if you have a burning need to see my archives, you can generate your own links by plugging the date of a Sunday into this format: http://floyd.best.vwh.net/weblog/year_month_day_archive.html. For instance, here is an archive from early March:

http://floyd.best.vwh.net/weblog/2003_03_02_archive.html

Posted 8:14 PM by Floyd

I have a little routine each morning when I get up. I brew up some coffee, make some toast or cereal, and turn on the computer. Then I play SimCity 4 for 12 hours.

No, really what I do is to read the blogs. I start with InstaPundit and then branch out. I check Tim Blair, Andrew Sullivan, Damian Penny, and several others who are in time zones ahead of me and who have posted while I slept. During the war I have also been reading the Command Post.

Then I read James Donald's Usenet postings from the last 24 hours, and skim the San Jose Mercury News.

On some days I check content that is updated weekly. For instance, the Onion is published late on Tuesday afternoon. The New York Press does mass updates Monday and Tuesday, but it's been much less fun since Chris Caldwell left. And I use the Drudge Report to find links to two Washington Post columns every week: Michael Kelly on Wednesdays and Charles Krauthammer on Fridays.

But now my Wednesday is no different than my Monday or Thursday. Kelly has been killed while reporting in Iraq.

Posted 8:06 PM by Floyd

Juan Gato, whom I have just dubbed King and Tyrant, offers to burp truth to power:

At least 19 states are either considering plans to boost beer taxes or have already done it. This calls for protest!

Everyone dress up as indians and dump a bunch of beer into me.

Posted 5:12 AM by Floyd

InstantMan blogged that some Columbia alumni were so upset by professor DeGenova's infamous "Million Mogadishus" comment that they are threatening to withhold donations. This paragraph caught my eye:

Frank Cicero, CC '92 and Senior Vice President of Investment Banking at Lehman Brothers, told Bollinger that he felt De Genova's presence on campus "pollutes the educational atmosphere."

A 1992 graduate is senior VP of investment banking at Lehman?! That makes this 1989 graduate -- currently interviewing for a software engineering position -- feel pretty small.

But then I told myself that Cicero probably didn't get 50 hits yesterday, and I felt better.

Posted 11:31 PM by Floyd

Today when driving to and from my interview I got a chance for more Commie radio -- KPFA in Berkeley. I can't give very accurate descriptions of the programs that I listen to because I get disgusted with them and turn them off. For instance, I was listening to some whiny announcer quizzing a stooge about military affairs:

"So you think that uranium is in these bunker buster bombs that the US is dropping on the Iraqi people?"

Must ... control ... finger of death!

On the way out I think I heard Dina the Iraqi again. Dina had worked herself up into a lather over the issue of depleted uranium. Dina helpfully told us that uranium would not go away for five billion years. (Imagine Lisa Kudrow explaining Post-It's in Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion.)

I was struck by Dina's complete lack of understanding of how alpha decay works in high-atomic number radioactive elements. What does Dina think uranium decays to, feathers? It decays to thorium. A whole new vista of pseudoscience for the pea-brained leftist!

On the way back: More uranium! This time they had an expert explaining the use of depleted uranium in army munitions. He said that uranium was used because it "kills and destroys everything in its path."

As opposed to normal steel shot, which as we all know can be deflected by a stovepipe bent into a U shape.

Posted 12:09 PM by Floyd

Instapundit and Hit and Run have both linked to the news that a federal prosecutor is siccing the Patriot Act on PayPal for its support of transactions between Americans and offshore gambling companies.

As James Donald said, you need only hear the name of the Patriot Act to know that it is an abomination. I support what Bush is doing outside America's borders, but everything he has done domestically irritates and alienates me. Everything Bush has done expands the spending and power of the federal government. I support tax cuts, but they are best used as a device to force Congress to cut back on spending. Bush has never seen a spending measure he didn't like, so what is the point of his tax relief except to run up huge deficits?

I started wondering if things would get better if Bush were ousted in 2004. Given the scorn I have for Democrats, it's a pretty drastic thought for me. But any ease I might have obtained from this scenario was dispelled when I happened upon hard-core Democratic blog The Daily Kos. The Kos echoed the line that helpless little California -- whose sweet milquetoast governor has never shaken anyone down without a handshake and a smile -- was looted by energy companies. Here are some of the comments from the enthusiastic chorus:

If the Democrats were a true opposition party, they would now be advertising a couple of programs to put their enemies on the defensive:

1) Jail terms and confiscation of assets of energy firms that overbilled consumers and states and serious corruption investigation of state and federal officials who let it happen on their watches.

2) Breaking up media monopoly of the airwaves. The TV media broadcasts sleaze on _our_ airwaves, technology allows more choices with spectrum division and low power radio. Let's abolish the media monopoly.

3) Confiscation of assets obtained by bribery. Any federal give-aways that can be shown to be promoted by multi-million dollar lobbying should be returned to the people and put in a fund for Medicare.

As it stands, the big corporations that pay for politics have no incentive to invest in the Dems - and the carrot and stick of the Repubs is working to close off alternatives. Clinton showed them that there was no penalty to betting on the right. The Harry&Luise ads should have caused a simplified national insurance proposal. What you want is for people who run ClearChannel to have to at least think about what would happen to ClearChannel if a Democrat came into office in the teeth of their opposition.

Did the money stay in California - or did it get shifted to Texas? There are multiple money leaks from the blue states to the red ones. Blue states pay more taxes but red states recieve more benefits. Remember the savings and loan debacle? More money than Carl Sagen had numbers for got shifted to crooks in red states. They take our money and give the Republican Party a cut.

RICO anyone?

So the Evil Party calls any unapproved transaction "money laundering," and moves toward a world where you will need a videocamera pointed at your wallet whenever you open it to prove that you are not doing anything illegal. Meanwhile the Stupid Party, when it is not concocting bizarre conspiracy theories, wants to loot any company that has the audacity to take advantage of its legislators' economic illiteracy. (Not to mention creating a new Alien and Sedition Act to punish the press of its political opponents.) What a future I have to look forward to.

(Just to kill off any remaining hope you may have of civil liberties relief at the hands of Democrats: The most prominent anti-gambling scolds -- Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H Humphrey III and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer -- are both Democrats.)

Posted 5:14 PM by Floyd

I had my first interview today and it went very well. Soon I may be able to afford better jokes than the ones I buy from Aaron and Colby.

Posted 8:17 AM by Floyd

I seem to have a lot of readers recently. I didn't post yesterday because I was working on other projects. "Other projects" means goofing off, of course, but my most recent "project" is hard work. I'm trying to get Advanced Civilization, a game released on DOS in 1996, to work on my Windows 2000 computer.

Apparently Win2K is the worst of the Microsoft O/S's when it comes to DOS compatibility. I can get Advanced Civ to run, but the mouse is restricted to the upper left quarter of the screen. (This means that I cannot reach the "Quit" button and must reboot.) I downloaded a mouse driver from logitech.com, but to no avail.

My friend Scott can run Advanced Civ on his XP machine. Eric can run it on his Windows 98 box. I'm the only kid on the block who's left out! Naturally these difficulties make me the more eager to get the game working. Once I finally make Windows bend to my will, I'll probably play the game a few times and forget about it.

Posted 11:07 AM by Floyd

Last night my wife and I finally saw The Two Towers. We had gone to movie theaters twice in December, only to be turned away when the show sold out.

A lot of bloggers liked the movie and I guess my expectations were too high. The fight scenes and the ents were well done. Gollum was pretty good too. But there was a lot of silly stuff that could have been excised. If you're going to make a three hour movie, make sure everything is essential. Here's what should have been left on the cutting room floor:

• A long and pointless diatribe about the differences between mortality and immortality, delivered by Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley.
  
• Cate Blanchett was not electrocuted, as she appeared to be in the first movie. Sometimes I hate that special effects stuff.
  
• Any SARS cases should be sent to Liv Tyler, who will kiss them back to good health. I am a supermodel and you are so, like, not sick.
  
• People with bad hair screaming and hugging and crying. Turn the sound on! I'm paying for this movie!
  
• Betrayed -- by a bunch of trees! Are you surprised? Juan Gato isn't.
  
• We know it's a climactic moment. You don't need to beat us over the head with the soundtrack.
  

On the bright side, a whole bunch of elves showed up out of nowhere and helped me to write my blog.