Island Passage

So I go in to my customer's site last week to find that they have reorganized again. They have shifted to Santa Rosa, California the managment responsibility for the product that I was documenting. Now I am out on the streets again, prowling for a gig. The economic climate is far better today than it was four years ago, or even last year, so I'm not despondant. Yet, there is the duty of re-examining the resumé, dusting off cover letters, and finding them rather dated, like pleated kahki pants. (Or are pleat fronts back in style? I can't quite keep up.) I have a couple of months of invoices in the payment pipeline, so no cash crunch, but I do enjoy being with the grown-ups. I imagine I'll have to eventually post a link to my resumé. Sigh.

Over at TPMCafe, David Gelber looks to 2008 and sees 1968: I’m beginning to think the Democratic Convention in 2008 could end up looking and sounding a lot like Chicago, 1968. If the leadership of the Democratic Party (other than Ted Kennedy) continues to resist setting a firm date for withdrawal from Iraq, you can be sure that a Gene McCarthy/Bobby Kennedy will emerge to mobilize a peace bloc determined to get us out. And, quite obviously, we’re not talking about a fringe group. You’ve probably heard by now that the Republican Congressman whose district includes Camp Lejeune came out today for setting a withdrawal date. The other day, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer asked its readers if it’s “time to begin the careful but quick withdrawal of American forces from Iraq”. 2,600 readers responded, and more than 90 percent answered in the affirmative. And, of course, polls are already saying that a majority of Americans think the war isn’t worth it. I can’t imagine those numbers turning th...

I was sitting in the restaurant, a straggler of the lunch crowd. As she brought me my check, my waitress leaned over and confided, "Michael Jackson has just been found innocent on all counts." Seeing the puzzled look on my face, she nodded her head to the TV set in the bar. CNN was running footage of crowds surging around the courthouse. I shrugged, "There's a mile of difference between 'innocent' and 'not proven guilty.' The people who should have been on trial are the parents who pimped their children for a chance to stand next to wealth and fame." She nodded in an agreeable way and walked away with my Visa. The reason that I had looked puzzled was that I haven't given two minutes of thought to the Michael Jackson case since it started. At he only got those two minutes because that's the cumulative time I spent switching channels away from television shows that popped his mug on the screen. So I don't have any opinion of the verdict...

Or not paranoid enough? Cringley says: Apple and Intel are going to merge, and it's Intel's Idea devised to screw Microsoft! Shape of Days says: Apple has provided to developers an unlocked, Intel-compiled version of Mac OS 10.4 knowing that it would leak to warz sites to screw Microsoft! I'm not saying that I believe either of these viewpoints, but they do follow the money trail. In the words of Jake Gittes , "You can follow the action, which gets you good pictures. You can follow your instincts, which'll probably get you in trouble. Or, you can follow the money, which nine times out of ten will get you closer to the truth." It's remarkable that in a business based on rather cool, abstract logic, passions run so high. Instant karma's gonna get yah.

Darth Vader: The Exclusive Interview DV:...The Emperor wasn't an Emperor, the Rebellion wasn't a Rebellion. It was all politics. Palpatine won a closely contested election, and the Jedi got ticked. The Sith may have controlled the Chancellorship and the Senate, but the Jedi had the damned media behind them. And the academics, and they're the ones who write the history books. The truth is, I started out with the Jedi, and Palpatine ultimately converted me to the Sith. The Sith political party, not some scary cult that went around lopping off people's hands.... MY: Wait a minute, wait a minute—are you saying that the Sith and Jedi are only political parties? Lots of funny. Check it out.

Know why I laugh when I hear leaders of the Democratic party give stern warnings about how Republicans are goose-stepping in unison to rule the country? Stuff like this: Here's Geoffrey Norman in the American Spectator reacting to the nauseating (so to speak) comments by Bush's 'Drug Czar' on Raich: "You would think a man with $35 billion to spend would have more important things on his agenda than doing an end-zone dance over the bodies of a few cancer patients looking for a little relief from the side-effects of chemo." Ouch. It's good to see some attention being focussed on the administration's role in this miserable fiasco. Yes, the court ruled in the way it did, but the case was pursued by Bush's administration, and the president should take responsibility for it. Reduce his efforts to their essence and you are left with two things: (1) a message to the sick that says 'drop dead, painfully'; and (2) the information that federalism is...

The engineer who is creating the GUI for the product I am documenting responded to my questions with, "You not documenting that!? I'm rewriting the interface!" Time to go home and play with my new grill.

David Brooks starts a piece on the new Exurbia phenomena with a howlingly funny vingnette: I DON'T KNOW if you've ever noticed the expression of a man who is about to buy a first-class barbecue grill. He walks into a Home Depot or Lowe's or one of the other mega hardware complexes and his eyes are glistening with a faraway visionary zeal, like one of those old prophets gazing into the promised land. His lips are parted and twitching slightly. Inside the megastore, the grills are just past the racks of affordable-house plan books, in the yard-machinery section. They are arrayed magnificently next to the vehicles that used to be known as rider mowers but are now known as lawn tractors, because to call them rider mowers doesn't really convey the steroid-enhanced M-1 tank power of the things. The man approaches the barbecue grills and his face bears a trance-like expression, suggesting that he has cast aside all the pains and imperfections of this world and is approaching ...

David Freddoso in National Review Online: Republicans, Dean said this week in San Francisco, are “pretty much a monolithic party. They all behave the same. They all look the same. It’s pretty much a white Christian party.” If you belong to the GOP, he said in Washington last week, then you “are all about suppressing votes: two voting machines if you live in a black district, ten voting machines if you live in a white district.” If you are a Republican, Dr. Dean says you offer a “dark, difficult and dishonest vision…for America.” But Dean assures us, “We’re not going to stoop to the kind of divisiveness that the Republicans are doing.” Quite a relief! There is much legitimate debate over what makes for a good party chairman, but one criterion that nearly everyone can agree on is that he should not be his party’s greatest liability. On that score, Howard Dean is really getting out of hand. The only questions that I have are: How long until mainstream Democrats say, "Enough is enoug...

I choose to revise and extend my remarks: Taleena expresses herself on the stumbles on the road to European Unification: I have been watching the march to European Unification with an uncomprehending disbelief. The premise seems nice enough, being bound by common goals and needs a partnership to strengthen nations put into writ. The execution turning into a welter of over regulation and bureaucracy that replaces national identity with the faceless form. If in fact the French and Dutch people reject the bloated nightmare of the EU Constitutional Treaty, how could a governing body ignore them? "It is ok little ducklings," croons Chirac and his cronies, "You must not be allowed to speak. Let us tell you what you really want." If that is what indeed happens the people will not need this they will need the American Method. For a nation in the EU to rise up in it's hind legs and try "The American Method" (a code word for bloody revolution), several conditi...