Category: General

As is the case every year, there are a number of ballot questions in the MA election. The one that is getting the most press and is #1. Basically, it proposes allowing food stores to sell wine. The interesting thing is that there is strong promotion on both sides. The pro side talks about the additional availability of wine and the fact that it will reduce wine prices and remove liquor store monopolies. The con side says that it will lead to more underage drinking and will negatively impact drunk driving statistics. Below are the links to the two sites:

1. For #1
2. Against #1

This is a tough one to judge. Both positions seem to have valid points. Of course, they are both trying to make the other position look bad and are quoting all kind of statistics showing why the other option is terrible. The truth is probably somewhere between the two positions, but it is hard to discern where the reality lies.

During a recent perusal of the Internet I ran into the two stories below. These are positive and uplifting stories.

The first is Scott Adams Blog. It is the story by Scott Adams, the author of Dilbert, who lost his voice due to an illness. His illness is one that is irreversible, and only affects his conversations within small groups. It is an interesting story and is a good read.

The second story is about a woman who was born cross eyed. The condition was not fixed soon enough and so she lived her life without stereo vision. It is an uplifting story talking about how she overcome this problem, and how her life changed when she recovered her vision.

Mozilla just released version 2 of the Firefox browser. I downloaded and installed it today. My initial feedback is mixed. The product is good and works just like the previous version, which IMO is the problem. I have a hard time noticing the difference in the new version. Sure, the new rev has snazzier icons and a close box on each tab, but that seems to be about it. The change release notes talk about a number of new changes, but frequently, the mostly look incremental. This release strikes me as a dot release rather than a whole new version. (e.g. 1.7 vs. 2.0) I expect more changes for a full new release and did not get it with this version. Don’t get me wrong, I am still a Firefox fan and will continue to use the product as my primary browser, but I find this version underwhelming in its new features and functions. I would expect more from a major new release rather than some minor feature additions.

Who knows, hopefully V3 will be more dramatic.

I am playing around with various skin options for b2e. My knowledge of CSS and web development is a bit rusty and so I am still exploring various options for the layout. My general strategy is to choose a canned one and then customize it to make it fit my needs. I like the one I chose, but found that I did not like the way it handled the blog title and so I adjusted it. The new design is okay, but I need spend more time tweaking it. Oh well, I think that it is good enough for now.

I ran across this link on slashdot. It is a very cool gathering of historical advertisements for computers. Included are adds for my first computer, the Commodore Vic 20. It is very interesting to see how these first computers were positioned to the public. Things have changed so much since then.