I want a new drug

As part of my surgical recovery, I was prescribed vicodin for the first time. After trying it, I feel the need to ask:

So what?

Yes, don't get me wrong, it neutralizes physical pain, and fast. But a very low percentage of my days consist of people cutting into my flesh. A much higher percentage of my days consist of workplace stress, plus the desire to flirt with a cute waitress.

This is why they invented alcohol, people!

Then she says she needs affection while she searches for the vein

Alright -- I am tripping hardcore on some pre-surgery medications, and can barely keep my head from rolling around.

My surgery is in about a half an hour. Wish me luck, and I'll be back in a couple of days!

Fireball is coming to town

Today I used OmniOutliner productively for the first time.

I needed to come up with my preferred order of prizes in the Daring Fireball membership drive contest. So I painstakingly typed out all the prizes into OmniOutliner, split the prizes into three groups ("Stuff I Desire And Don't Have", "Stuff That Doesn't Particularly Excite Me", and "Stuff I Already Have"), and then used Ctrl-Cmd-Up and Ctrl-Cmd-Down to sort. How convenient!

I'm thinking about exporting my list into OPML format. If Dave Winer is to be believed, just storing my data in OPML will let me lose 10 pounds, balance my chakra, and gain eternal understanding. (Everybody knows plain-old XML causes constipation and gout.)

Font of knowledge

Am I the only person who didn't know there's a built-in font preview pane in the standard font panel? (An 'NSFontPanel', in Cocoa parlance.)

I only discovered it when I tried to grab the panel's title bar and missed.

Oh my god, a fifth entry!

Here are a couple of other links from my aggregator that I found interesting, but not deserving enough of their own entries:

• Not to prejudge Tom Delay or anything, but come on!
• Matthew Yglesias foolishly tries to argue with a libertarian.
• This FishbowlDC post is worth reading for the Top Ten List of Reasons I Don't Date Republicans.
• Kevin Drum discovers the only substantive argument Maggie Gallagher makes against same-sex marriage.

More hope than Scopes

The Kitzmiller panda trial continues. This week Professor Michael Behe took the stand, and there were some fun moments during his cross-examination.

Read the rest of "More hope than Scopes"

1200 sticky pages

Cosma Shalizi's review of A New Kind of Science is caustic and highly entertaining.

A meaty thought

Hmm! I'll be mulling over this thought from Kevin Drum all day!

...I sometimes feel that if the increasingly expansive view of copyright asserted today had been around a couple of centuries ago, the Supreme Court would have ruled that lending libraries were illegal....

My Rob Corddry impersonation

Who the hell plays Eleanor Rigby on the jukebox at a bar?

I mean, come on!

Preventative Godwin

An excerpt from the best weblog comment ever posted (posted, coincidentally, by the weblog's author):

...You're just posting here because you want to grouse at me, because it's fun to be the guy who takes down the know-it-all. Hey, why don't you post your reasons why you don't like Star Wars III, too, since you're here and you're showing your red little wing-patches anyways.

Here, look, I'll save you the trouble of arguing, because all internet arguments go to the same place. I'm Hitler. There, I said it. I'm Hitler. You win.

In related news, Coca-Cola will slow down your keyboard

Dave Winer, the programmer (and self-proclaimed genius), apparently didn't know until today that more RAM can make your computer faster.

Remember that next time he tries to argue from authority.

Mash

For fans of politics like myself, this glimpse into the nomination process was thrilling.

A quaint document

President George W. Bush, October 12, 2005:

People ask me why I picked Harriet Miers. They want to know Harriet Miers' background; they want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion.

...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Behe hee

It's a sad day when a university newspaper's science writing is superior to the New York Times'.

(It's also better than the Daily Show's "Evolution Schmevolution".)

[Links via Pharyngula]

Oof

Regarding the Rufus Wainwright show last night:

The opening act was local artist Khalid Hanifi. At first I thought he was a brilliant Andy-Kaufmanesque performer, skewering the entire emo genre by infuriating the audience with over-the-top lyrics and grating, pretentious stage banter.

Then I realized it wasn't a joke.

Oh well.. at least there were two Rufus encores, and a brand new song called "Low-Grade Happiness" that needs to get released ASAP. Rufus is worth the hour-long drive to Ann Arbor any night.

Poll

I'm considering quitting blogging.

If you have a feeling either way, please email me and let me know.

Don't forget the greatest band on earth

Jon Stewart made a boo-boo.

The White Stripes will perform on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" Dec. 1. "We've never had a musical performance on the show before -- not because we haven't wanted one -- but because we were holding out for a reunited Spandau Ballet," Stewart said in a statement. "This will have to suffice."

A mere working mason

David Frum on Harriet Miers, September 29, 2005:

...In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met...

When I come around

Oh crap! I'm late!

Wake up, wake up!

Go or go ahead

Okay, open invitation. I'm going to see Rufus Wainwright in Ann Arbor on Sunday. I have two tickets for the 8th row, but I personally only have one butt.

If anyone would like to attend the show with me, speak now. Email and IM are to the right.

Gulp

It's posts like these that make you question your faith in Apple software.

(Historical note: Mac system software has had so-called "alias" functionality, or "soft-linking" if you speak Unix, since System 7 in 1991. The developer in question must be very green.)

Intellectual property

The Fishbowl has a great post today on how OPML is worse than worthless.

Windows bug #177,809,378,932

Ok, this is a weird bug in Microsoft Paint. It is reproducible on every Windows XP machine I've tested in the past three days. (Some machines were pre-SP2, some were not.)

1. Get a really big bitmap on the clipboard. The easiest way is probably to hit Shift-Print Screen to take a screenshot.
2. Open up Paint and paste the bitmap.
3. Hit Esc to cancel out the selection rectangle.
4. Go to Image->Flip/Rotate... and rotate the image 90 degrees.
5. Now choose the eraser tool and do a little erasing in the top-left corner of the image. Works just like you'd expect, right?
6. Scroll down to the bottom-right corner of the image. Notice that the eraser tool will start erasing your image even though you're not holding the mouse button down.

UPDATE: My brother did some investigation and thinks he knows why this bug is happening. The bug only occurs when you move the cursor past the original image's dimensions. We think Paint is rotating the image but forgetting to flip the internal record of the image's dimensions.

My brother also notes that the image need not be large -- he encountered the same problem with a 400x300 bitmap.

Revelations

So I went out to Detroit tonight in my new Banana Republic shirt, and ended up at the Bronx Bar.

Who should show up, but a girl I had a serious crush on six months ago, and her boyfriend. She notices me, and says:

"Hey, you grew a beard! You look.... different?"