The Diary of A Simple Man

I've been trying to put different topics into separate entries just to keep things neat. But there are a bunch of small items that aren't worth splitting up...so here they are.

Water and Smoke
The light was dim as I left the house this morning at 6AM; the sun had risen, I guess, but it wasn't visible.
As I drove by the falls, I was surprised to see huge columns of mist boiling upward over the sides of the bridge. The entire basin was filled with vapor. Further down the road, I passed a large pond; there were strange structures of mist there, almost like a forest of mist: "trees" of thick, almost opaque columns and branches of whiteness surrounded by translucent grey fog. It was quite beautiful, actually.

I guess it's getting colder. For the first time in months my breath turned to steam in the morning.

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Boston.com Sucks
Boy does the online Boston Globe suck! I posted an email I wrote to them about it here a while ago, I think, and got the usual no-answer answer ("So sorry you don't like the site, (signed) Your friends at Boston.com"). I've been checking it much less often, but looked in on it this morning - and to my surprise, they still really suck. Half the articles I clicked on have no working "Print" version - you get a broken link if you try for it. Way to wipe yourselves out as a credible online news source, guys!

Idiots.

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Ad-Aware 6.0
I haven't updated any of my software in a long time. In part that's a bad habit that I can honestly blame on Microsoft. Every time I get one of those damned "crucial system upgrades" for Windows or IE my system is totally screwed up for weeks - blue screen after blue screen, or freezing solid, or any number of incredibly annoying things that Bill Gates has devised to torment me.

(You know one of the things I hate most about Windows? You're running your system normally, when all of a sudden it freezes solid. No matter what you do, it's totally unresponsive. Not even Ctrl-Alt-Del has any effect. So you do the only thing you can do: wait for ten or fifteen minutes, and then do a hard shutdown. Give it thirty seconds off to let it clear, then restart.

And the first thing it does is go into a long, LONG scandisk and give you the incredibly obnoxious %$#@ing message "Scandisk is running because the system was not properly shut down. To avoid seeing this message in the future, shut down your computer
properly."

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! I TRIED, YOU CHICKEN-NECKED BASTARD!!

God, I hate Bill Gates.)

Anyway, I installed Ad-Aware 6.0, and I have to say that it's great. They finally made it possible to install a new ad signature file; not being able to was one of the annoying things about the old version. And the updating works really smoothly. I ran it and it caught a bunch of stuff, including some compromised Registry keys. What a great program...as soon as I have some extra money, I'm buying the professional version.

Of course, by that time they'll probably be selling Ad-Aware 27.0. :(

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The Dems Debate
Teri put on the Democratic debate last night; I kept ducking into the other room to play Diablo, but I saw several snippets. A few tips and comments for the contenders:

1. Shut up about your parents and your humble origins and all that crap. Nobody cares, and it makes you sound condescending. You're all wealthy now, prosperous and successful, so for you to go on and on about how poor your family was just makes you sound like rich people (which you are) trying to trick poor people into thinking that you're one of us. You're not.
   
   (This does remind me of one of the few great lines from non-first-cast Saturday Night Live, the one where Jon Lovitz played Michael Dukakis in a debate: "My parents were little people. Little swarthy people." For the record, though, the modern SNL and Lorne Michaels are thoroughly awful and suck more than human tongue can express.)
   
   
2. John Edwards is better than I thought, but comes off as slightly manipulative and slightly smarmy. He's sort of puppyish, despite the fact that he's about my age, and I think in four to twelve years he might have Presidental potential. But not this time, it's too early. But I thanked god when he mentioned that Bush was giving billions of our taxpayer dollars to Halliburton. That's exactly the kind of thing that the Democrats need to mention.
   
   
3. I want Lieberman's head to implode, Scanners-style, from the black hole of holier-than-thou-ness in his skull. Now.
   
   
4. I'm not particularly a Dean fan, but he spoke pretty well today - better than I expected, to tell you the truth. And he gets HUGE props from me for finishing his closing remarks before the bell rang. I cringe when some jackass (like Lieberman) goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and ^%#$ing ON after the bell has rung.
   
   
5. Speaking of which, if any of you ever has the guts to speak concisely enough to never run over your time or require the bell, you'll make national headlines. Limit yourselves to two intelligent, short, responsive sentences for every reply and you'll almost certainly win the White House.
   

That is all.