4 Years Later

They say Time heals all wounds. I suppose that’s true; the pain 9/11 caused me is not as sharp as it used to be. But still, 9/11/01 was the worst day of my life.

God bless you, Kath, wherever you are.

UPDATE: Read Pete Hamill today.

Not The Best Comparisons

In his weekly radio adddress, President Bush said that Americans would come together and make the Gulf Coast “more vibrant than ever,” just as they rebuilt after the devastation brought by terrorist attacks four years ago this weekend.

Last I checked, Ground Zero was still a big gaping hole, and plans for what’s going to eventually go there are still very much in flux.

Oh, and Charles Krauthammer is a jerk.

In less enlightened times, there was no catastrophe independent of human agency. When the plague or some other natural disaster struck, witches were burned, Jews were massacred and all felt better (except the witches and Jews). A few centuries later, our progressive thinkers have progressed not an inch. No fall of a sparrow on this planet is not attributed to sin and human perfidy.

The three current favorites are: (1) global warming, (2) the war in Iraq and (3) tax cuts. Katrina hits and the unholy trinity is immediately invoked to damn sinner-in-chief George W. Bush.

Cricitism of the President is in no way, shape, or form even remotely similar to the slaughter of unknown thousands of innocent victims. It’s an odious comparison and Krauthammer ought to be ashamed of himself for making it.

My Last Palm PDA?

As the semester has started to pick up steam, my calender has started to fill up with classes and study group meetings, due dates and reminders, as well as regular non-school stuff. Normally I’d be loading all of this into my trusty Tungsten C, but this semester I’ve been strangely reluctant to do so. In fact, for the first time in about a decade, I found myself yearning for a simple paper calender to write my appointments down in.

Then today, I found out that PalmSource, makers of the PalmOS, has been acquired by a Japanese software company. What exactly that means for people who care about PalmOS-based PDAs is unclear right now, but my guess is it doesn’t bode well.

My Tungsten C is a couple of years old now. It’s still chugging along quite nicely, but eventually it will need to be replaced. What’s going to still be on the market when I go to replace it? And will what’s out there meet my needs?

I’ve pretty effectively reduced my dependence on Microsoft products over the past year. Thunderbird has been working well as my e-mail client, and the Palm Desktop as the PC side of my PIM. In addition, Firefox has replaced Internet Explorer as my browser of choice, and iTunes does a fine job of managing my MP3s, although those apps are not going to be affected by my choice of PDA. If I were to buy a Microsoft-based PDA, I’d have to switch back to Outlook, and I never liked Outlook. I used it because I felt that I had to.

Microsoft’s PDA OS has improved significantly from what I saw when I used it back in 2000, but I’m just not very enthusiastic about the idea. Given the choice of getting an MS-based PDA and going back to Outlook, or going to a paper solution, paper looks like a much better choice.

There are other alternatives. By the time my Tungsten finally rolls over and dies, Apple may well have come out with an iPod capable of being an effective PIM as well as a music storage device. Or other new devices may come out that work for me. We’ll have to see.

UPDATE: Amid a bunch of self-congratulatory “I told you so’s”, David Berlind at ZDNet agrees that this is definitely not good news for the PalmOS.

How Not To Get Blogrolled

So here’s an e-mail I received today:

Hoping you’ll host a link to my blog on your site — and not too proud to beg! 😉

[links redacted]

Lots more original art and commentary that pulls no punches. All a solo effort.

peace,
[name redacted]

After checking the blog in question out, I decided that there was nothing wrong with it, but that I didn’t want to add it to my blogroll. So I sent the following response:

Thanks but no thanks.

Maybe I could have been nicer about it, but hey, it was an unsolicited e-mail. A bit later in the day I get this back:

Wow, nice snotty reply.

I’m sure your “blog” will do well with more nice widdow kitty pix…

LOL

At which point I got annoyed. Talk about being unable to handle rejection!

So here was my response:

You know something? You need to check your attitude.

YOU sent ME an unsolicited e-mail asking for a blogroll link. I could
have just ignored your request but instead I took the time to visit
your blog, read your most recent posts, and decide not to blogroll
you. I then sent you a short and somewhat flip, but not impolite,
e-mail telling you so.

Your response is to call me snotty and make fun of the fact that I
post photos of the work I do for the SF SPCA on my blog. That kind of
response does not incline me to change my mind. It makes me think I
made the right decision in the first place.

One of us has a problem, but somehow I don’t think it is me.

It takes a lot of nerve to turn around and insult someone that you’d just asked for a favor.