Month: <span>July 2001</span>

Eric Soros’ Wiredfool is now running on Frontier for MacOS X.
10:09:51 PM  

Stan Krute: “I need a fast little outline editor that can talk OPML
and text (where tabs indicate outline levels) and other formats. I
would love to have the time to write one from scratch, but haha
i yam the man wit no time, so I looked for existing stuff, and found several, one especially that I like a bunch so far [24 hours in]: Java Outline Editor.”

I browsed around the SourceForge pages for Java Outline Editor, and found that support for OPML was added in v1.2, released 5/5/2001.
9:37:10 PM  

AP: Attorney Barry Levin Found Dead. “High-profile criminal attorney Barry Levin, who helped handle Erik Menendez’s murder defense and more recently represented actor Robert Blake, was found dead Saturday of a single gunshot wound to the head at a veterans cemetery…”
8:17:50 PM  

Nando (AP): U.S. rejects bill from China for keeping Navy plane. “The United States has no plans to pay a $1 million bill China has submitted for the three months a Navy reconnaissance plane spent on Chinese soil…”
3:21:21 PM  

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Plutonium Contest. “So you want to design a facility where all the world’s plutonium can be safely stored for all eternity (or 24,000 years, whichever comes first)? Where tourists can visit and acknowledge the folly of creating as much explosive plutonium as humanly possible? Something that’s beautiful and grand and awe inspiring? And you want to win cash and prizes, too?”
3:17:52 PM  

Dictionary.com Word of the Day: aright.
3:14:57 PM  

CNN: Aunt: Missing ex-intern described Condit affair. “The aunt of missing 24-year-old former intern Chandra Levy says her niece told her she was ‘involved in an intimate relationship’ with Congressman Gary Condit… The aunt also said the Levy family was ‘frustrated and outraged’ that Condit would mischaracterize the relationship and that they felt his ‘lack of candor is hindering efforts to find Chandra.'”
3:23:01 PM  

CNET: Apple recalls power adapters. Apple is recalling the PowerBook G3 ‘brick’ adaptors due to a potential fire hazard, based on only six reports of them overheating.

I can personally attest to the fact that these things can get really hot. While I’m not dumb enough to stuff one of these things between my couch cushions, which might actually start a fire, I have two other design complaints:

First, the wire they chose to run from the power brick to the plug that goes in the back of your PowerBook gets frayed really easily, with average daily use, and then the $90 brick becomes essentially useless. In the 1 1/2 years I’ve had my PowerBook, I’ve repaired one brick only to have it fail again. I replaced it, and then had to replace the replacement. Yeesch.

My other complaint is actually about the jack on the back of the computer itself. It’s mounted onto a small circuit board, held on by nothing but a bit of flow-solder. It’s not attached to any other part of the computer in any way, and doesn’t even have little twisty-tabs to hold it firmly in place on the circuit board. The arrangement is such that if the plug gets even a small jolt, while connected to the computer, the jack comes right off of the circuit board, and then you’ve got until your batteries die, before having to replace the board itself. I’ve repaired one of these things myself, but it’s a pain in the ass to do because you have to take the whole computer apart to even get to the stupid thing. It’s definitely not an activity for the novice.

Most people would have to get an authorized dealer to do the work. Estimated cost of that design error for the average user: $275 per occurrence.

Now, having said all that, at least I’m not working with the 8100/8500/9500 desktop machines anymore. Taking one of those apart to do something as simple as install some RAM, is likely to precipitate a visit to the emergency room, to get your knuckles stitched up. Boy would I love to give the guy who designed those form factors a piece of my mind…
3:20:08 PM  

Robert Pear: Bush Plan Allows States to Give ‘Unborn Child’ Medical Coverage. “Federal officials said the change would [allow] states to cover pregnant women who are not eligible for Medicaid or the children’s health program… But critics said the change was a backdoor effort to advance the administration’s anti-abortion agenda and to establish a legal precedent for recognizing the fetus as a person.”
2:42:50 PM  

CNET: Amazon ends free-shipping deal. “The e-tailer halts free shipping for multiple orders of books, CDs, videos and DVDs after a two-week promotion that the company said was a test run.”
2:40:21 PM  

BBC: China ‘outstrips world’ on executions. “China executed more people in the last three months than the rest of the world did in the past three years, the human rights group Amnesty International says.”
2:38:19 PM  

Sheila: “One of the very best July 4th’s was in 1976, when we celebrated the bicentennial. I had just turned eight years old and I was all over the bicentennial.”

I remember the bicentennial well.

I had looked forward to it for months, and was fortunate to have seen what must have been the biggest fireworks display to date, from the bank of the East River in Brooklyn.

I think we were only able to see about a third of the show from where we were, and yet I was completely overwhelmed, not only by the show itself, but also by the millions of people in attendence.

See, I grew up in a quiet suburb of Kansas City. I remember thinking to myself as the shells exploded, “Gee, I’ve never seen anything like this before.” I think that was the moment that I decided I should live in a city, instead of in the suburbs. It seemed that life in the suburbs could never reach that level of excitement…
3:21:22 AM  

CNN: Fireworks barge burns off Jersey shore. Whoops! Thank goodness nobody was hurt.
3:08:53 AM  

Dictionary.com Word of the Day: cudgel. If accosted by drunken 4th of July revelers, it might be handy to have one of these.
2:57:50 AM