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iSnark
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About Me
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Friday, May 18, 2012 ∙ 2:38 pm EDT
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Page 3 of 6 pages
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March 2012
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© 2012
McGehee
4 comments
79°
partly cloudy
Newnan, GA
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On my Kindle I’m using the alpha (Aurora) version of Firefox for Android, which is still for version 12—because the mobile version hasn’t advanced yet with the desktop version.
I started using 11 on my Windows computers while it was still in beta, because it includes add-on sync along with everything else. An add-on that performed this function, called Siphon, quit working a couple of weeks ago.
Add-on sync doesn’t seem to have arrived yet for Android—and since add-ons for mobile and desktop don’t correspond it wouldn’t matter much anyway—but I heard that an upcoming version revamped the UI to make use of Android’s native UI guts so I found the 12 alpha (which has been working quite nicely, actually, despite still being alpha) and have been using it as my primary browser on the padlet. Still, I’ve been looking forward to when it would move to beta.
Which I thought was supposed to happen yesterday.
No word on why the delay, either. I’d be more comfortable waiting if I knew why, or how long.
I’m carrying the beta version on the Kindle for when it upgrades to 12. And I’m carrying the release version too because eventually it too will upgrade to 12. With Aurora* and the native Silk browser, I’m carrying way too many of these things. I want to be able to get rid of one, dammit.
* Each Firefox browser on the Kindle has to be “paired” separately with Firefox Sync, so it’s more of a hassle to get rid of one that I know I’ll be using later, than it is to have them all installed simultaneously.
Update, Friday: Beta has gone to 12—but it still looks like 10 and 11. Meanwhile the release and alpha versions are still at 10 and 12, respectively. There is no Firefox 11 for Android, not in release or beta—but there are two 12s, which do not resemble each other on my Kindle.
I don’t think all is right at Mozilla tonight.
iThingie, etc.
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© 2012
McGehee
57°
foggy
Newnan, GA
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Investor’s Business Daily notes:
At one time, California was truly the land of opportunity. But the business climate has turned hostile.
According to Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and John Kabateck, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the state’s business tax climate is the second worst in the nation. The corporate income tax rate is 8.84%, the highest west of the Mississippi and eighth highest in the country.
California’s income tax, which is the tax many small-business owners pay, is the nation’s third highest; the 9.3% rate kicks in at $46,349 in annual income for those who file as individuals, and the 10.3% rate applies to income over $1 million a year.
Then there’s the highest sales tax (7.25%, plus local levies in some areas) in the country, the fourth-highest capital gains tax (9.3%) and the second-highest gasoline tax (an average of 65 cents a gallon).
There’s also the vicious regulatory environment that businesses have to negotiate. ► California: The Sick Man Of America
This trend has actually been going on for most of my life, and I remember seeing the signs of it back when it first began—though I was at the time only a politically aware, and still learning, middle junior-high-schooler.
In the intervening years it was not unheard of for some California pol to dismiss concerns about tax hikes or new regulation by claiming that business owners would have to be insane to quite their “economic paradise.”
Well, it’s taken a few decades, but that’s exactly what they’re doing—and if they had been willing to do it, say, 20 years ago, California and the rest of the country would certainly be in better shape today.
When did this rot first set in? I put it, believe it or not, in the mid-1970s.
Around the time Gov. Jerry Brown first assumed the office of Governor.
But nobody listens to me.
Corrupt Bastards
Theftists
So Right, It's Embarrassing
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© 2012
McGehee
67°
cloudy
Newnan, GA
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Instapundit links Popular Mechanics:
The major difference comes in the delivery of the home, forcing designers to engineer the structure for travel. “When you are picking up the house and driving it down the freeway, sheer loads are very important,” Russell says. Thus, the house, just like a car, must be built with as unified a body construction as possible, ensuring that the home stays together in the face of winds on the highway, or transfers from the production shop to the truck or from the truck to the foundation. ► Step Inside the First “Ikea House”
When I was a kid, these newfangled, innovative pre-fab houses were called “mobile homes.”
Dividing by Zero
Back in the Stone Age
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© 2012
McGehee
4 comments
62°
sunny
Newnan, GA
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On this sunny, springlike day just before we set our clocks to Daylight Saving Time, I have come to terms with the prospect that the one candidate for the GOP nomination for whom I cannot vote, will be at the top of that party’s ticket in November.
There are still those clinging to the hope that His Electable Inevitableness might still prove evitable, but I find that life is easier once you’ve embraced certain doom.
Still ain’t gonna vote for him, or any ticket that includes him. I relented in 2008 because of Sarah Palin, but it turned out to be only a ploy. And you don’t ploy this hoi polloi twice.
Before, I was just having fun with the Get Offa My Lawn Party. Right now, the fun has just gone out of it.
Corrupt Bastards
Theftists
Twenty Twelve
The Etch-a-Sketch Candidate
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© 2012
McGehee
2 comments
58°
cloudy
Newnan, GA
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I do want Obama to lose this November.
I don’t want my party to nominate the least electable His Electableness on the primary ballot. And I won’t vote in November for the Republican who is the least different from Obama out of all those offered for nomination.
The Republican Party—the party of Lincoln and Reagan—is on a self-inflicted death spiral, as evidenced by 2012’s instant replay of 2008.
Corrupt Bastards
Theftists
Twenty Twelve
The Etch-a-Sketch Candidate
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© 2012
McGehee
68°
mostly cloudy
Newnan, GA
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Apple’s new iOS version has been released today, a couple of days before I was expecting it. The OTA download timed out so I’m using iTunes and the sync cable.
OTA iPhone sync has been pretty unreliable with 5 and 5.0.1—I wonder if 5.1 will improve that any. (Update: looks like it.)
Update, Friday: Apparently upgrading to iTunes 10.6 helps too. Wow.
iThingie, etc.
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© 2012
McGehee
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Just for the hell of it, I’m trying out Windows Live Writer to post an entry to iSnark.
I expect it to end in tears.
Update: One problem with using this software is, it doesn’t know how to handle the categories I use. It wants to do tags or something.
Another is, I don’t have the same access to my stylesheet classes that the native EE editor gives me. In fact, I can’t get into the HTML at all.
When I open this post in EE, I expect to be blinded with nausea at all the HTML-editor code it puts in…
‘Nother update: Okay, not exactly apocalyptically bad. Easily repaired, even. But otherwise pointless.
Dividing by Zero
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© 2012
McGehee
2 comments
47°
sunny
Newnan, GA
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I’ve been sleeping on one of those Sleep Number™ mattresses for years—you know the kind I mean.
In recent years my back, neck and shoulders have tended to be very unhappy in the morning, and increasingly in the middle of the night. On occasions when I’ve been able to sleep on a really firm ordinary mattress I do much better.
Just thought I’d mention that, for no apparent reason.
Also, did you know the Cleveland Cavaliers are an NBA team? Well, I hate the NBA on general principle, so there was no particular reason to bring them up. Never mind.
Update: Also, never used Carbonite. I make my offsite backups using free software working with free services—for those values of “free” that pre-account for such things as the use of upgrade revenue to subsidize free(up)loaders like me. Unlike Sandra Fluke, however, I do not accuse those who don’t subsidize my bennies of depriving me of my rights. I have no right to that which no one chooses to give me. Period.
Dividing by Zero
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February 2012
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© 2012
McGehee
2 comments
66°
rain shower
Newnan, GA
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Well, let’s see. I downloaded and installed the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on an old laptop today, and I’m leaning toward sticking with Windows 7 as long as I can. It isn’t that 8 is a bad OS, it’s just that Microsoft hasn’t really hit the target—a full-featured OS that can work as well on a desktop PC as on a tablet. As much as I was rooting for Windows to make this work, I just don’t think they’ve achieved that objective. They may have to go back to the late ‘90s when they had two flavors of Windows: 95, 98, 98SE and ME on the one track, and the various versions of NT on the other.
That is, assuming they don’t decide to declare Windows 7 to be the last desktop OS they produce. Come to think of it, I’ll bet there’s somebody out there who would be willing to “flavor” new versions of Win7 if Microsoft should choose to orphan it and go all-mobile…
I’ve also done like Bugs Bunny and grabbed a cloud. Actually, several. I’ve been using Dropbox (2 GB free) for quite a while but never found a convenient way to use Microsoft’s SkyDrive (25 GB) or Amazon’s Cloud Drive (5 GB)—until the last few days when I found GoodSync. You have to program it yourself, but it’s easy enough to do, and I’ve found it very reliable so far. It also saves to other drives on your own computer or your local network, as well as by FTP to your own website. Now I can edit an old web page and never have to open an FTP program to upload it.
The options range from simply copying files to the remote location and ignoring local deletions, to full synchronization just like Dropbox. I’ve got seven different jobs set up on my main PC and one on the Windows 8 laptop. I don’t have to pay any attention at all.
Sometimes, though, I do open the console and watch.
It turns out there’s even a sync program for users of Google Docs, which I’ve been using to let my wife keep current on my fiction writing. Now instead of using the Google Docs web interface to compose, I can do it in my local office suite and Syncdocs will upload the updated document, again in the background. I like this because in LibreOffice I have more control over the formatting as I compose, than I do in my web browser.
Yeah, I think this cloud thing just might catch on.
Dividing by Zero
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