Checksum Arcanius

Check out the live comment previewing I just installed. Not only was this the easiest Wordpres Plugin I have ever installed, it is also one of the coolest!

I highly suggest it to users of WordPress, to avoid whoopsie’s like half on my comment disappearing over at Passive Digressive, and shots in the dark like my recent comment at Bernie Zimmermann’s blog (even though that one worked).

Today at work, I made a bar code that when scanned, logs me into my computer.

Also, after work, we bade farewell to Mark “The Prophet” Holton. Microvision will miss you.

If all goes well, this will change to include Biology 200…
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I’ve talked about Factcheck.org before, and thanks to the new “Blasts from the past” section on the left, I went and checked it out again today. There I found this detailed event-by-event log of the unfolding of the disaster in New Orleans.

What I get from reading it is the gross incompetence of government in general: State Officials blocking Red Cross, Federal Officials “just finding out” about the 40,000 people in the convention center, Local Officials ordering the evacuation well after it would have been effective and the failure to follow disaster plans at all levels – if that would have even helped.

Take from it what you will, but here is what I take from it: Government generally does not work very well. I an no anarchist, but I believe as Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” In the Wake of Katrina, we see again and again government at its intolerable best, wallowing gloriously in its own incompetence.

Those that rely on government to protect them will never be safe.
Those that trust government to save them will be left alone in their time of need.
Those that believe that government is the answer will only end up with more questions.

This weekend, I took a real stab at Gallery2. It has an immense yet well-managed feature set, it is spectacularly modular, and it is highly configurable. Unfortunately, underneath its glossy exterior, it is depressingly slow, and, if I dare demean a feat that I in no way consider myself capable of accomplishing, the software is very poorly done under the hood.
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Glorious News From the Front: Not All Cops Are Jerks!

While driving to Portland in a rented vehicle that I wasn’t even supposed to be driving, I got pulled over for doing 80 in a 70 that had moments ago been a 75. Amazingly, the cop who pulled me over checked my records quickly, told me he wasn’t giving me a ticket, advised me to use cruise control, and sent me on my way. He never once threatened to arrest me, he didn’t call me names, and he never went into psycho-cop-power-trip mode. It was actually a pleasant experience, except for the initial realization that he was coming after me.

The corallary to all of this is I am now in Portland, on my second ever business trip.

While overhauling a one-page-wonder website for my mom’s business tonight, I came across what may be a new IE bug. At least cursory glances at Position is Everything‘s list of IE bugs, and a couple of Google searches didn’t turn up anything descriptions of what I saw.

If you happen to have IE6 installed, start it up (I assume my readership is smart enough to not be running IE normally) and head on over to the page in question. The problem is disappearing borders. To replicate it, simply scroll to the bottom of the page, then back up. At the place where the top of the browser pane was, down for maybe a hundred pixels (the size of one scroll increment?), the border on the left and right side of the content pane are missing. This seems to result from the fact that the bulleted lists there are floated divs, as the problem doesn’t appear around any of the other parts of the page.

Firefox, of course, works marvelously.

Can anyone else confirm the bug? How about in different versions of IE? Has anyone seen this before? Is this reported somewhere on the web that I didn’t find? Or did I truly find something new? After all, with the amount of scrutiny the #1 browser is under, I would be mightily surprised if this hasn’t been seen before.