"This is what being president of the United States is all about. It's these tough, huge, monumental decisions… It's in a time of crisis making these executive decisions. It's just like our job… It's the same thing as being president of the United States."
— "Fox and Friends" co-host Gretchen Carlson
Boy, talk about an inflated sense of self-worth!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Oxymoron: Microsoft Works
Is anyone else irritated by Microsoft's unbridled arrogance? After the latest "in-between" operating system upgrade on Tuesday, 22 June 2010, Microsoft had the unmitigated gall to change my default home page in Internet Explorer from Google search to Microsoft's own Bing search engine. They have no business changing user preferences!
This is not the only instance of Microsoft's audacity:
Unfortunately, Apple and Steve Jobs are just as prententious as Microsoft in their own distinctly offensive way. A pox on both their houses.
Long live Linux/Ubuntu!
This is not the only instance of Microsoft's audacity:
- After almost every second-Tuesday-of-the-month operating system upgrade that includes an update to Outlook, the process changes my default email from Mozilla's Thunderbird to Microsoft's Outlook.
- Long ago and far away, I once made the mistake of setting my default bitmap file association to one of Microsoft's image software packages. I don't remember if it was Paint or the old Photo Editor, but whatever it was, it automatically established itself as the default file association not just for bitmap files but for all other image types as well: .gif, .jpg, .png, and others. I guess Microsoft thinks that if you want their product for one item, you will certainly want it for everything else as well.
Unfortunately, Apple and Steve Jobs are just as prententious as Microsoft in their own distinctly offensive way. A pox on both their houses.
Long live Linux/Ubuntu!
Friday, June 11, 2010
Journalistic Excess
In an article in the 9 June 2010 edition the Chester [Virginia] Village News, sports columnist John Hall wrote the following:
It turns out that Sam Bowie averaged a solid 7.5 rebounds and 10.9 points per game over a ten-year NBA career. Those statistics certainly do not rise to the level of a superstar like Michael Jordan, but they far exceed any reasonable person's definition of a "lottery bust." I would also contend that surviving the rigors of the NBA for ten years hardly qualifies as being "quickly out of basketball."
This is rhetorical excess at best, and shoddy journalism at worst. Mr. Hall's apparent ignorance led him to mistakenly disparage a solid if not spectacular player. Mr. Hall's basic premise—that number 1 draft selections do not always meet expectations—might be correct, but that does not in any way justify denigrating a decent player in such harsh terms.
Mr. Hall has never before come across as a mean-spirited person. In this case, however, he has clearly dropped the ball. Or perhaps he merely stepped out of bounds. Feel free to choose your own sports metaphor.
The NBA is famous for its lottery busts, as well. Sam Bowie was quickly out of basketball, but not before the Portland Trailblazers chose him over the great Michael Jordan in 1984.I was mildly surprised by that example because I vaguely recalled Sam Bowie as a fairly adequate big man for several years, so I looked up his career statistics on Basketball-Reference.com.
It turns out that Sam Bowie averaged a solid 7.5 rebounds and 10.9 points per game over a ten-year NBA career. Those statistics certainly do not rise to the level of a superstar like Michael Jordan, but they far exceed any reasonable person's definition of a "lottery bust." I would also contend that surviving the rigors of the NBA for ten years hardly qualifies as being "quickly out of basketball."
This is rhetorical excess at best, and shoddy journalism at worst. Mr. Hall's apparent ignorance led him to mistakenly disparage a solid if not spectacular player. Mr. Hall's basic premise—that number 1 draft selections do not always meet expectations—might be correct, but that does not in any way justify denigrating a decent player in such harsh terms.
Mr. Hall has never before come across as a mean-spirited person. In this case, however, he has clearly dropped the ball. Or perhaps he merely stepped out of bounds. Feel free to choose your own sports metaphor.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Hard Link Headslapper
Once again, I don't know where I have been lately (I'll resist the urge to say I was out in left field because in my younger days I was actually a good-field-no-hit center fielder), but I just recently discovered the virtues of hard links.
I have long wanted a way to allow my screen saver programs to access selected image files without actually copying those files to a separate folder, a process which would quickly gobble up disk space. For example, in baseball season I might want to include some baseball art, some player action photos, and some stadium scenes in my screen saver. I have folders containing photos of each category, but the photos are of mixed quality. I want to include only the better images. I currently face three unpleasant choices: display all of the images in a folder, including the inferior ones; display none of the images in a folder, thus excluding some outstanding ones; or selectively copy all of the desired files into a separate folder—and waste an inordinate amount disk space with duplicate versions of the same large image files.
I tried creating shortcuts to each specific image and consolidating those shortcuts into a single folder, but to no avail: none of the many screen saver programs I tried seem to recognize shortcuts. No matter: it turns out that hard links are the perfect solution. To make a long story short, use hard file links where you need multiple copies of a file but wish to save disk space by keeping only one physical copy on disk.
In Windows XP, create hard links using the following command line entry:
In Windows Vista and Windows 7, the equivalent command is:
Only then I noticed the "disk free space" value. It had remained unchanged when I created my hard links. As a test, I deleted my newly-created links and instead copied the corresponding files to that same folder. The disk free space declined markedly. Next, I deleted the duplicate files, after which the disk free space increased again back to its original value. Finally, I re-established my hard links. Lo and behold: the disk free space remained the same. That experiment showed clearly that the hard links were in fact not consuming any extra disk space despite initial indications to the contrary.
Beyond that discovery, I found much to my delight that my screen saver program could now successfully read the hard file links where it previously had failed to read shortcuts. Similarly, my image viewer could fully read and edit the hard links in the same manner as if those hard links were the original images. Bingo! Exactly what I wanted.
This is one of those forehead-slapping moments where I find myself thinking, "If I had only known about this years ago!"
I have long wanted a way to allow my screen saver programs to access selected image files without actually copying those files to a separate folder, a process which would quickly gobble up disk space. For example, in baseball season I might want to include some baseball art, some player action photos, and some stadium scenes in my screen saver. I have folders containing photos of each category, but the photos are of mixed quality. I want to include only the better images. I currently face three unpleasant choices: display all of the images in a folder, including the inferior ones; display none of the images in a folder, thus excluding some outstanding ones; or selectively copy all of the desired files into a separate folder—and waste an inordinate amount disk space with duplicate versions of the same large image files.
I tried creating shortcuts to each specific image and consolidating those shortcuts into a single folder, but to no avail: none of the many screen saver programs I tried seem to recognize shortcuts. No matter: it turns out that hard links are the perfect solution. To make a long story short, use hard file links where you need multiple copies of a file but wish to save disk space by keeping only one physical copy on disk.
In Windows XP, create hard links using the following command line entry:
fsutil hardlink create [NewFilename] [ExistingFilename](Click the following link to view Microsoft's own documentation for creating hard links as well as some other uses for the fsutil command line utility.)
In Windows Vista and Windows 7, the equivalent command is:
mklink /H [NewFilename] [ExistingFilename]I admit to being skeptical when I initially created my hard links. In Windows Explorer, the file sizes displayed in bytes for my new links duplicated those of the original files, and the total disk space reported for the folder containing my hard links showed a large number consistent with the sum of those individual figures. It first appeared that I was still consuming duplicate disk space just as if I had copied the files.
Only then I noticed the "disk free space" value. It had remained unchanged when I created my hard links. As a test, I deleted my newly-created links and instead copied the corresponding files to that same folder. The disk free space declined markedly. Next, I deleted the duplicate files, after which the disk free space increased again back to its original value. Finally, I re-established my hard links. Lo and behold: the disk free space remained the same. That experiment showed clearly that the hard links were in fact not consuming any extra disk space despite initial indications to the contrary.
Beyond that discovery, I found much to my delight that my screen saver program could now successfully read the hard file links where it previously had failed to read shortcuts. Similarly, my image viewer could fully read and edit the hard links in the same manner as if those hard links were the original images. Bingo! Exactly what I wanted.
This is one of those forehead-slapping moments where I find myself thinking, "If I had only known about this years ago!"
Begone, Human Element
The world of baseball is still buzzing over the bad call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce that cost pitcher Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers a perfect game on 2 June 2010. We should all commend Mr. Joyce for his forthright honesty in quickly admitting his monumental mistake. Even more noteworthy is the exemplary class and dignity with which Mr. Galarraga responded.
What trips my chain, however, is the reason cited by numerous players and managers to explain why major league baseball (MLB) should not expand instant replay beyond present guidelines (i.e., determining if a fly ball is a home run or not). Almost to a man, they invariably state that the "human element" is an inextricable part of baseball.
Oh, please. Results on the field should be determined by player performance, not officiating blunders. On the day in question, the pitcher was perfect, but the umpire was not. There is no justice in penalizing players for the mistakes of umpires.
If there were a cost-free system that could guarantee correct calls 100% of the time, you can bet that MLB would adopt such a system in a heartbeat, and rightfully so. The human element involving players is indeed unavoidable and sometimes even grimly fascinating. However, the fate of players should not be determined by unrelated external forces like umpiring foibles. The human element with regard to umpiring should be minimized or eliminated altogether whenever possible. Expanded instant replay is a reasonable means to that end.
The only legitimate issue is what price people are willing to pay to make the correct calls, particularly if they might affect the outcome of a playoff or a World Series game. Mr. Joyce has been circumspect in his public statements about leaving it up to the commissioner's office to decide on any rule changes governing instant replay. However, given his obvious distress at having made the wrong call, I strongly suspect that Mr. Joyce would have welcomed the opportunity to pause an additional 60 or 90 seconds to review TV replays and insure the correct call.
You know that Mr. Galarraga would have welcomed that.
What trips my chain, however, is the reason cited by numerous players and managers to explain why major league baseball (MLB) should not expand instant replay beyond present guidelines (i.e., determining if a fly ball is a home run or not). Almost to a man, they invariably state that the "human element" is an inextricable part of baseball.
Oh, please. Results on the field should be determined by player performance, not officiating blunders. On the day in question, the pitcher was perfect, but the umpire was not. There is no justice in penalizing players for the mistakes of umpires.
If there were a cost-free system that could guarantee correct calls 100% of the time, you can bet that MLB would adopt such a system in a heartbeat, and rightfully so. The human element involving players is indeed unavoidable and sometimes even grimly fascinating. However, the fate of players should not be determined by unrelated external forces like umpiring foibles. The human element with regard to umpiring should be minimized or eliminated altogether whenever possible. Expanded instant replay is a reasonable means to that end.
The only legitimate issue is what price people are willing to pay to make the correct calls, particularly if they might affect the outcome of a playoff or a World Series game. Mr. Joyce has been circumspect in his public statements about leaving it up to the commissioner's office to decide on any rule changes governing instant replay. However, given his obvious distress at having made the wrong call, I strongly suspect that Mr. Joyce would have welcomed the opportunity to pause an additional 60 or 90 seconds to review TV replays and insure the correct call.
You know that Mr. Galarraga would have welcomed that.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Mysterious Disappearing Icon
Have you ever been annoyed by the green "Safely Remove Hardware" icon that often disappears from the system tray when you go to disconnect an external USB device? There is a nice way to avoid that frustration by creating your own permanent shortcut that accomplishes the same purpose.
I found the basic idea for this tip offered by a blogger named Raymond. I have embellished his basic concept and fleshed it out a little bit.
If your green "Safely Remove Hardware" continues to disappear from your system tray even if you have it marked as "Always show" in your customized taskbar properties, then try the following steps:
One final tip: when you double-click on the shortcut to open it, be sure to check the "Display device components" box in the lower left corner. That will provide amplifying information to make an informed choice about which device to close. Otherwise, you might be stuck with multiple entries all reading "USB Mass Storage Device", making it impossible to distinguish which entry represents a large external USB hard drive and which entry indicates a small USB thumb drive.
Presto! Simply by activating this shortcut, you can now easily invoke the "Safely Remove Hardware" process even without the icon in your system tray.
I found the basic idea for this tip offered by a blogger named Raymond. I have embellished his basic concept and fleshed it out a little bit.
If your green "Safely Remove Hardware" continues to disappear from your system tray even if you have it marked as "Always show" in your customized taskbar properties, then try the following steps:
- Create a dummy shortcut (for example, copying an existing shortcut to your desktop).
- Right click on the shortcut and select the "Properties" menu option at the very bottom
- Select the "General" tab
- In the field at the top, type in some meaningful title like "Safely Remove Hardware"
- Next, select the "Shortcut" tab
- In the shortcut's "Target:" field, type the following *CaSe SeNsItIvE* entry:
rundll32 shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll - In the "Start in:" field, enter "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\" (without the quotations)
- Optional: In the "Comment:" field, add a descriptive comment something like:
Use when Safely Remove Hardware icon does not appear in system tray - Optional: Set the green icon by clicking the "Change Icon..." button and
into the field at the top, copy and paste the following:
%SystemRoot%\SYSTEM32\hotplug.dll - Click the "OK" button at the bottom to save your work.
- Move or copy the new shortcut to your desktop, start menu, quick launch menu, or any other preferred location
One final tip: when you double-click on the shortcut to open it, be sure to check the "Display device components" box in the lower left corner. That will provide amplifying information to make an informed choice about which device to close. Otherwise, you might be stuck with multiple entries all reading "USB Mass Storage Device", making it impossible to distinguish which entry represents a large external USB hard drive and which entry indicates a small USB thumb drive.
Presto! Simply by activating this shortcut, you can now easily invoke the "Safely Remove Hardware" process even without the icon in your system tray.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
For Geeks Only: Favicons
Where have I been? Out in the ozone, I guess. I recently discovered four facts about creating a web page that only geeky webmasters could appreciate:
Regardless of coding technique, the real problem remains: finding images that retain any clarity of meaning when reduced to the required miniscule size of 16 x 16 pixels. Good luck with that.
- Favicons need not be named "favicon" (or more accurately, "favicon.ico")
- Favicons need not be placed in the same folder as the html page that invokes it
- Sub-pages need not have the same favicon as the parent page; similarly, …
- Individual frame pages can have their own separate and distinct favicon
Regardless of coding technique, the real problem remains: finding images that retain any clarity of meaning when reduced to the required miniscule size of 16 x 16 pixels. Good luck with that.
Distress
I can't see an end. I have no control, and I don't think there's any escape. I don't even have a home anymore.
Yes, it's definitely time for a new keyboard.
Yes, it's definitely time for a new keyboard.
Quotations in the News
Be careful what you wish for:
"Glenn's like the high school government teacher so many wish they'd had."
-- Sarah Palin
"Please, America, take this man for what he says.…Read Mein Kampf."
-- Glenn Beck on Obama
"Is this where we're headed?"
-- Beck, showing photos of Hitler, Stalin and Lenin
Who in their right mind ever wished they'd had a radical, right-wing emotional basket case for their high school government teacher???
In over his head:
"It's a relatively small leak compared to the volume of water in the Gulf.… Come on, this is America, there will be frivolous lawsuits."
-- BP CEO Tony Hayward
As Fox News anchor Shep Smith admonished, "At least act like you care."
Tone deaf:
"When do we ask the Sierra Club to pick up the tab for this leak? Everybody's focused on BP and Halliburton and Transocean.…The greeniacs have been driving our oil producers off the land."
-- Rush Limbaugh
Wasn't Rush supposed to move to Costa Rica? Whenever he goes, it won't be soon enough.
Real Americans:
"[Elena Kagan has] no clue how real Americans live."
-- Rush Limbaugh
And the loudmouth blowhard Rush Limbaugh certainly does, what with his 37-million-dollar-per-year salary and his 13-million-dollar New York City penthouse. On second thought, he has been married and divorced three times (family values, anyone?) and was addicted to prescription drugs (after speaking forcefully on his show that drug abusers should be sent to jail, no less), so maybe he does share a common bond after all.
Source for all quotations: Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose dated 15-20 May 2010
"Glenn's like the high school government teacher so many wish they'd had."
-- Sarah Palin
"Please, America, take this man for what he says.…Read Mein Kampf."
-- Glenn Beck on Obama
"Is this where we're headed?"
-- Beck, showing photos of Hitler, Stalin and Lenin
Who in their right mind ever wished they'd had a radical, right-wing emotional basket case for their high school government teacher???
In over his head:
"It's a relatively small leak compared to the volume of water in the Gulf.… Come on, this is America, there will be frivolous lawsuits."
-- BP CEO Tony Hayward
As Fox News anchor Shep Smith admonished, "At least act like you care."
Tone deaf:
"When do we ask the Sierra Club to pick up the tab for this leak? Everybody's focused on BP and Halliburton and Transocean.…The greeniacs have been driving our oil producers off the land."
-- Rush Limbaugh
Wasn't Rush supposed to move to Costa Rica? Whenever he goes, it won't be soon enough.
Real Americans:
"[Elena Kagan has] no clue how real Americans live."
-- Rush Limbaugh
And the loudmouth blowhard Rush Limbaugh certainly does, what with his 37-million-dollar-per-year salary and his 13-million-dollar New York City penthouse. On second thought, he has been married and divorced three times (family values, anyone?) and was addicted to prescription drugs (after speaking forcefully on his show that drug abusers should be sent to jail, no less), so maybe he does share a common bond after all.
Source for all quotations: Doonesbury@Slate - Daily Dose dated 15-20 May 2010
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Making the Grade, Part Deux
In the interest of fairness and full disclosure, here are Wesley's grades for the school year to date in the same manner that I posted Heather's grades a few days ago:
I consider Wesley's first marking period "C" in English as an indictment more of his teacher than of Wesley or his performance. Wesley's middle school has an on-line reporting system where teachers are required to post grades every two weeks, and parents can then log on to monitor the child's progress. That system also allows teachers to post all class assignments, but teachers are not required to do so. Regrettably, Wesley's English teacher steadfastly refused to utilize that feature.
I should point out that his English teacher was not his only teacher who declined to post class assignments to the on-line site. His other teachers, though, had relatively straightforward daily assignments with an occasional project thrown in periodically.
English class was a different story. Wes had to juggle three weekly assignments due on Fridays: a vocabulary list for which he had to look up definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and etymology; a composition complete with first draft, second draft, and final draft; and answering a series of questions from a reading assignment. In addition, during each 9-week grading period, he had to complete any four projects out of nine possible choices. All four assignment types (vocabulary, composition, questions, and projects) were extracted from different scattered sections of booklets called a Partner Discussion Guide (PDG) that accompanied each book the class was assigned to read. [Much to our chagrin, we did not discover one additional unpublicized complication until later: once the class moved on to a new book/PDG, students could no longer submit projects relating to any previous book.]
Unfortunately, little of this information was made clear to Wesley, and none of it at all was communicated to me—that is, not until a knock-down, drag-out, face-to-face meeting I had with his teacher, the vice-principal, and the principal himself at the end of the first marking period. That meeting became necessary after a frequent but futile exchange of e-mails in which I repeatedly requested that assignments be posted on-line so that I as his parent could monitor Wesley's compliance.
Alas, all of this was to no avail: even after our meeting, the teacher still never posted assignments on-line in any meaningful way. However, the meeting did at least provide enough insight so that I—and more importantly, Wesley—could better determine his exact weekly and quarterly (project) assignments. From that point forward, Wesley was able to do the work and do it well, as his English grades in the second and third marking periods will attest.
I find it particularly ironic that such a marked failure in communications occurred with an English teacher, of all subjects. And I am not Don Quixote: I will not joust with windmills indefinitely. The only reason I pounded my head against the wall for as long as I did is that it feels so good when I stop.
| Subject | P1 | P2 | P3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | C | A | A |
| Mathematics | B+ | A | B+ |
| Health/Phys Ed | A+ | A+ | A |
| Social Studies | A | B+ | |
| Science | A | ||
| Computer Tech | A | ||
| Wood Shop | A+ | ||
| Art | A |
I consider Wesley's first marking period "C" in English as an indictment more of his teacher than of Wesley or his performance. Wesley's middle school has an on-line reporting system where teachers are required to post grades every two weeks, and parents can then log on to monitor the child's progress. That system also allows teachers to post all class assignments, but teachers are not required to do so. Regrettably, Wesley's English teacher steadfastly refused to utilize that feature.
I should point out that his English teacher was not his only teacher who declined to post class assignments to the on-line site. His other teachers, though, had relatively straightforward daily assignments with an occasional project thrown in periodically.
English class was a different story. Wes had to juggle three weekly assignments due on Fridays: a vocabulary list for which he had to look up definitions, synonyms, antonyms, and etymology; a composition complete with first draft, second draft, and final draft; and answering a series of questions from a reading assignment. In addition, during each 9-week grading period, he had to complete any four projects out of nine possible choices. All four assignment types (vocabulary, composition, questions, and projects) were extracted from different scattered sections of booklets called a Partner Discussion Guide (PDG) that accompanied each book the class was assigned to read. [Much to our chagrin, we did not discover one additional unpublicized complication until later: once the class moved on to a new book/PDG, students could no longer submit projects relating to any previous book.]
Unfortunately, little of this information was made clear to Wesley, and none of it at all was communicated to me—that is, not until a knock-down, drag-out, face-to-face meeting I had with his teacher, the vice-principal, and the principal himself at the end of the first marking period. That meeting became necessary after a frequent but futile exchange of e-mails in which I repeatedly requested that assignments be posted on-line so that I as his parent could monitor Wesley's compliance.
Alas, all of this was to no avail: even after our meeting, the teacher still never posted assignments on-line in any meaningful way. However, the meeting did at least provide enough insight so that I—and more importantly, Wesley—could better determine his exact weekly and quarterly (project) assignments. From that point forward, Wesley was able to do the work and do it well, as his English grades in the second and third marking periods will attest.
I find it particularly ironic that such a marked failure in communications occurred with an English teacher, of all subjects. And I am not Don Quixote: I will not joust with windmills indefinitely. The only reason I pounded my head against the wall for as long as I did is that it feels so good when I stop.
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