Sunday, April 30, 2000

N.Y. Times: Elian and the Law. Anthony Lewis answers critics of Attorney General Janet Reno. [Free one-time registration required.]

Thomas Lipscomb: The U.S. Press Sells Out. "With the Elian Gonzalez case the formerly free press of the United States has finally become a full-time propaganda agent of the Clinton administration." Although somewhat inflammatory in choice of language, Lipscomb's column presents some thought-provoking issues: Fourth Amendment rights, the willingness of the press to overlook abuses by the authorities against its own members, burying or killing news stories, and the overall propaganda tactics accompanying the raid to seize Elian Gonzalez.

Washington Post: AIDS is Declared Threat to Security. "Convinced that the global spread of AIDS is reaching catastrophic dimensions, the Clinton administration has formally designated the disease for the first time as a threat to U.S. national security that could topple foreign governments, touch off ethnic wars and undo decades of work in building free-market democracies abroad."

The government has upped its 2001 budget request to $254,000,000 (less than the price of a single drone aircraft). What the government had previously been spending to combat AIDS internationally is likened to a "rounding error" in the budgets of Fairfax or Montgomery counties.

Saturday, April 29, 2000

Is it time to ban guns?

Five Dead in Pittsburgh Area Shootings [Reuters]. Richard Baumhammers allegedly shot people in several suburbs after setting his own home ablaze. This comes within 24 hours of a shooting spree near Salt Lake City, Utah, in which two people died.

Or not?

On the other side of the pond, the saga of Tony Martin continues. Martin is the middle-aged British eccentric who killed a burglar in his rural home. He was convicted of murder and has been sentenced to life in prison. His case is being appealed.

Friday, April 28, 2000

Associated Press backs down on legal threats over the parody featuring doctored Elian photos. David Tomlin, assistant to the president at AP, had written to the creators of the parody, stating ""We'll go for whatever it takes to get our material out of your hands." Subsequently, the parody appeared on dozens of web sites around the world, and Tomlin and AP were inundated with negative responses from the public.

Free speech?

ACLU defends student's writing [Boston Globe]. In an English-class assignment that backfired, a student was suspended for writing an assigned short story in the horror genre which was perceived by the school as a threat.

Teen gets four months in Columbine threat [Reuters]. An 18-year-old in Florida was sentenced to four months in jail following a "threat" on an Internet chat room.

CNN: Turk not guilty of cyber-sedition in e-mail to self. Gee, I guess.... "`Provoking hatred' is a catch-all charge in Turkey widely used against intellectuals, politicians and journalists. The law has been criticized as an obstacle to freedom of expression."

Copyright law and the digital culture --

CNN: ''An animated parody of the Budweiser `Whazzup?' commercial using the principal parties of the Elian Gonzalez saga has disappeared from the Internet due to legal threats from The Associated Press.''

The U.S. government's Forecast Systems Laboratory has unveiled a Linux-based supercomputer capable of processing 5 trillion calculations per second.

The Justice Department and U.S. states will present today their proposal to split up Microsoft following the recent findings of anti-trust violations.

Reuters: Wolf Killed After Attack on Alaska Boy, "the first incident of its kind in recent Alaska history.... Since 1940, 38 people in Alaska have died from dog attacks and 32 from bear attacks, according to reports."

The IRS has threatened liens against a Roswell businessman whose 1999 tax payment was one cent short. Apparently he now owes the IRS $286.51 in interest and penalties.

Thursday, April 27, 2000

CNN/AP: Scientists report apparent gene therapy success. "The procedure restored an apparently normal immune system to two babies born with a rare, life-threatening immune disease", SCID (severe combined immunodeficiency disease).

Reuters: "The Clinton administration said on Thursday it would call child survivors of gun rampages as opening witnesses in a looming court showdown with most gun makers." Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo and several state and local governments were recently sued by seven gun makers who allege "conspiracy in restraint of trade to force police to buy guns that meet standards opposed by most manufacturers."

Salon: Images of Columbine terror for sale. "Stung by mounting criticism, lawsuits and now judicial rulings against a yearlong policy of selective silence about the Columbine High School tragedy, the Jefferson County sheriff's department abruptly reversed course Wednesday and began distributing a bloody, music-backed video tour of the massacre site directly to the public at $25 a pop."

Tuesday, April 25, 2000

Fearing dissent, Myanmar's rulers block Internet. 'Networking between [local] computers and the outside world is still forbidden. A 1996 law imposes a 7- to 15-year jail term for the unauthorized ownership of a modem" [Nando/AP]. Myanmar, also known as Burma, will likely ultimately follow the example of China, which severely filters incoming network traffic and has a special Internet police unit. In the interim, access is restricted to a select handful of government officials.

Monday, April 24, 2000

For the birds...

It being Spring, and the willows having leafed out, I heard familiar sounds while downing the morning coffee out on the front porch. They can only be described as a 1960s vintage Moog synthesizer in short-circuit mode. Very eerie, very electronic, quite loud, with many variations. The owner of this amazing vocal repertoire finally became visible in the umbrella willow opposite the porch.

The dogs took note and headed in that direction with great interest; the bird, no fool, beat a retreat to a different, taller willow, and continued his calls. Having seen this fellow last Spring, after our arrival here, I had wondered if it was some type of grackle. A search on Google turned up some bird links, including a great site hosted by the USGS.

Besides a wealth of information on all manner of birds, the site also has quite a collection bird calls and songs, in .WAV format. Unfortunately, the great-tailed grackle is not among those, so I can't 100% confirm that's who he is.

Sunday, April 23, 2000

As antidote to one of the strangest Saturdays ever, this morning we visited Africa. Then we mowed the lawn. ;-)

Bearing the Smoke is an interesting interview with Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher, two photographers who spent 10 years compiling a pictorial record of various tribal ceremonies throughout Africa. Some of the groups they photographed have since disappeared.

African Ceremonies is a review of the beautiful two-volume photographic account that was the end-product of their decade-long endeavor.

Finally, a fascinating 1998 excerpt from Another Africa, by Chinua Achebe (with photgraphs by Robert Lyons). Notable is the discussion of European attitudes about Africa and Africans, stereotypes which were used as rationalization for the slave trade, including some pentrating comments about Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness.

The riding mower, happily, started right up after being in storage since late last Fall. I am glad that Elian is with his dad, hopefully no longer being used as a pawn. I'm sunburned. Happy Easter, Happy Passover.

Saturday, April 22, 2000

In all the hubbub of the "Elián abduction", we lost track of the fact that today was the 30th anniversay of Earth Day. Clinton blamed the Republicans in Congress for failing to recognize the threat of global warming and spoke about various proactive initiatives -- from tax credits for energy conservation to electric government vehicles.

On a deeper and less political note, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund O. Wilson talks in a fascinating, lengthy interview about spiritualizing the environmental movement. "Wilson's belief that the hope of humanity lies in traditional religionists adopting more science and environmentalists appealing more to humankind's spiritual impulses comes at a crucial moment for the environmental movement. The hard truth is that the condition of the environment is far worse on Earth Day 2000 than it was on the first Earth Day in 1970." [Salon]

Bruce Shapiro: Reno's Redemption? The Attorney General may have finally exorcised the ghosts of Waco.

Salon: A Tale of Two Photos. "The latest battle of images proves that the Elián saga had to be resolved by means of law, not propaganda."

Elian snatched from relatives' home in pre-dawn raid. "Agents battered down the door and charged into the home of the relatives who defied government orders to give up custody of the boy. They then whisked Elian away in a white van, setting off chaos in the streets outside the house where Cuban American protesters have been keeping vigil".

"An armed and helmeted agent grabbed the boy from the arms of Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who rescued Elian from the Atlantic Ocean five months ago, as the two huddled in a closet." [Reuters]

Janet Reno defends force in taking Elian. The Miami relatives of Elian left the government with no choice, according to Reno; and she stated that the government had received information that there might be guns. Queried about the inflammatory photo of the armed federal agent seizing the boy, Reno said the gun 'was pointed to the side' and the agent's 'finger was not on the trigger.'" [AP].

President Clinton defends Reno and the use of force. "This was in the end about a little boy who lost his mother and has not seen his father in more than five months."

John Derbyshire: Still Useful, and Idiotic - The Left Remains Itself. "The sad, depressing affair of Elián González has brought to light the following unpleasant truth, among many others: that so long as Communism is with us, so also will be the Useful Idiotsóthose members of Western intellectual elites who can find nothing bad to say about the totalitarian order." [National Review]

Friday, April 21, 2000

Reuters: U.S. Prison Population Exceeds 1.86 Million. "...Private experts have said the United States [is] followed by China with an estimated 1.2 million inmates and Russia with about 1 million inmates." If the trend continues, the U.S. prison population may reach 2 million by the end of 2001.

California is doing its part to swell these numbers by now allowing thousands of teenagers to be taken out of the juvenile justice system (oriented towards rehabilitation) and put into the adult system (oriented towards punishment) thanks to Proposition 21.

Corporate sponsors with no plausible stake in the proposition's outcome ponied up big bucks to support Prop. 21, allegedly to ensure political favors from former governor Pete Wilson, who launched the campaign. At that time, Wilson had a whisper of a chance at a presidential nomination; when the chance vanished, so did the financial support of Chevron, P G & E, Unocal and Transamerica.

From Thursday:

Salon: Stunning New Columbine Charges.

Wednesday, April 19, 2000

U.S. Supreme Court ponders overturning the landmark 1966 Miranda ruling. You have the right to remain silent.... "The case may produce the most important criminal law ruling in decades, with the Clinton administration and civil libertarians wanting Miranda preserved to deter heavy-handed police tactics while police groups want it discarded because it sometimes allow the guilty to go free." [Reuters]

In 1999, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the Supreme Court decision, saying that it was superseded by a 1968 federal law called Section 3501. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider the court of appeals' decision and give its final word on Miranda by the end of this summer.

Last year, CNN ran a poll concluding that many Americans now favor reduction in their liberties in order to increase their feeling of safety. (I will try to find the link.)

Many years ago, Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, wrote:

So, in the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: "Enslave us, but feed us!" And they will finally understand that freedom and the assurance of daily bread for everyone are two incompatible notions that could never coexist! They will also discover that man can never be free because they are weak, corrupt, worthless, and restless. . . . They will marvel at us and worship us like gods, because, by becoming their masters, we have accepted the burden of freedom that they were too frightened to face, just because we have agreed to rule over them -- that is how terrifying freedom will have become to them finally!

Something else to ponder.

Yesterday, while I was in town doing the consult thing with the eye doctor, and later whining about Cuomo's gun buy-back plan, the bosque was ablaze from Los Lunas south to La Joya. For readers who are not local, the bosque (pronounced bos'-key) is the ribbon of trees and heavy brush that grows along the banks of the Rio Grande River. We could see huge amounts of smoke from our property, but fortunately none of the fires came close. Yesterday's exceptionally high winds did not help matters. Firefighters, many from adjacent Bernalillo County, and also from the state Forestry Dept., stayed on duty through the night to keep the fires contained. Authorities suspect arson in the three separate blazes, which started within a few hours of each other.

Tuesday, April 18, 2000

Reuters: Clinton Administration Launches Gun Buyback Plan. The plan is sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and is touted by its supporters as a major step in reducing gun violence in the U.S. "Under the buyback program, localities would be able to pay individuals for the guns they turn over, using either cash or some kind of merchandise credit voucher. The department recommended paying $50 per gun."

Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo has apparently never priced quality firearms from a licensed dealer. Again, the Administration does not realize (or conveniently ignores) the fact that most criminals are not walking into a licensed gun dealer and submitting paperwork for a background check; they are either stealing weapons or are buying them from some gang punk selling Saturday-night-specials out of the trunk of his car.

In some cases, these weapons are being purchased at gun shows, where background checks have not been required. I agree with the proposal to control sale of firearms at gun shows.

However, does Mr. Cuomo (or Mr. Clinton, for that matter) seriously think that some gang punk is going to cough up his .38 special or his 9 mm auto for $50?

The article further cites "the 30,000 gun-related child deaths a year in the nation." What is the origin of this statistic? Will a news article ever mention lives saved due to intervention of a legally armed citizen?

Monday, April 17, 2000

Clinton's high-tech plan to bridge the "digital divide." Corporations such as Novell, Hewlett-Packard, and Qualcomm have pledged large donations of software, hardware and services. On a slightly wry note, Clinton confessed to a young student that he doesn't use e-mail very much, saying ``If you work for the government, you don't use e-mail much, unless you want it all in the newspaper.''

Bill McKibben: Three cheers for the brave new activism.

Sunday, April 16, 2000

Things are getting ugly in Washington, as the police crack down in advance on anti-IMF anti-World Bank protestors, sending in ATF agents as firemen, clearing indoor gatherings on bogus fire-law-violation charges, and liberally applying batons (billy-clubs) and pepper spray to non-violent protestors. Charges of repression are flying left and right (no pun intended).

Reuters: Washington Mayor Defends Police Tactics. ``Whenever you're dealing with a situation like this you're going to be up on the boundary line in terms of constitutional rights but our police have to do their job.''

So what are they protesting? "We've built this site because citizens wonder what causes otherwise ordinary folks to put themselves in harm's way to protest a faceless bureaucracy."

Washington Post: The Case Against the IMF and World Bank -- A live, on-line interview with Mark Weisbrot, Co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

The policies of these institutions cause enormous economic and social destruction around the world. In Russia, the Fund's program was adopted in 1992 and the country lost 40% of its income within a few years. Poverty soared from 2 million to 60 million people. The IMF also had a devastating impact in Asia, helping to cause the crisis there in 1997-98, and then making it enormously worse. I have written about these and other examples in detail elsewhere (see www.cepr.net). The Bank, of course, has its own mission and projects-- and these have been widely criticized for environmental destruction (e.g. the Chad- Cameroon pipeline), population displacement, and other abuses. But one thing everyone should know is that most of their lending is dependent on the recipient country first agreeing to IMF conditions; so the Bank must accept responsibility for the IMF's disasters as well.

Blogit has detailed coverage of events as they unfold, plus a lot of commentary. "You have the right to shut up, to consume, and to work and make money for the corporations."

A great paraody site of the World Bank...

The mainstream media is reportedly portraying the protestors (as in Seattle) as fanatic anarchist wackos. Surprise...

Thought for today: Don't believe everything you hear on the TeeVee news.

Saturday, April 15, 2000

German dreamer riding two horses around the world. [This may not be a permanent link.] "Shulze is striving to be the first person ever to ride his horses around the world, and during the past four years, has traveled many miles through different landscapes" [Valencia County News-Bulletin]. Also check out Manfred Shulze's website, Around the World With Two Horses.

Top secret after the fact? "The computer files at the heart of the case against U.S. nuclear espionage suspect Wen Ho Lee were given higher security classifications last year only after the former Los Alamos scientist was arrested, the New York Times reported on Saturday." [Reuters] Mr. Lee remains in jail, although not charged with espionage; he was also misled by federal investigators, who told him he had failed a polygraph test (which he in fact had passed).

By contrast, prosecution is unlikely in the case of ex-CIA chief John Deutch, who surfed the Internet from a potentially vulnerable home computer containing top-secret government data. Mr. Deutch is not in jail.

Friday, April 14, 2000

Wall St. carnage... (Click on images for stories.)

And here is how Wall St. billionaires fared today.

Democrats push safe haven from guns, "hoping to force Republicans to cast a politically sensitive election year gun control vote" [Reuters]. "Twenty-two states -- including Republican presidential contender Gov. George W. Bush's Texas -- let gun owners carry concealed weapons into places of worship and a number of states also allow concealed weapons at school sporting events, concerts and other gatherings."

I have to say, I don't think the people who have legally obtained concealed-carry permits from their local law enforcement jurisdiction are the ones we read about in the morning paper who have shot up a school or workplace. The timing of this, coinciding with the upcoming anniversary of the Littleton massacre, smells of political grandstanding. So what else is new....

Thursday, April 13, 2000

BBC: Gagging the net in 3 easy steps -- "You might like to think of the internet as the ultimate tool of free speech. But the law in the UK is making some people think again." In Britain, it is becoming a case of ISPs essentially taking down a web site that someone complains about. This, to me, is astonishing, given our roots in English common law; yet that is naiive on my part, since the founding fathers would not otherwise have needed to make an explicit guarantee of free speech in the United States. Australia, which we think of as a sort of clone of the UK, is worse in regard to Internet censorship.

Salon: Microsoft's hired gun -- "Were you surprised to hear that the Microsoft Corp., home of those hard-working but culturally freewheeling computer nerds up in Redmond, Wash., had hired none other than former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed to lobby George W. Bush on its behalf? You probably weren't the only one."

Also on the Redmond front, the Web Standards Project, a non-profit web developer group, says that the new MSIE browser version 5.5 "will introduce a number of new, proprietary technologies, but has yet to properly implement new standards - the codes that are used to build Web pages." WSP's Jeffrey Zeldman notes that if Microsoft does not adhere to standards, users may not be able to view some web sites. Microsoft disagrees, insisting that "users will have a great Internet experience." This further step in the direction of proprietary rather than open standards is perhaps surprising, given that it comes hard on the heels of the recent anti-trust verdict against Microsoft.

Wednesday, April 12, 2000

IntellectualCapital: Elian: A Symbol of Freedom for Cuban Émigrés -- "Understanding the Kafkaesque life of Cubans is difficult, if not impossible, for anyone who has not lived in their shoes. Cubans leave their island nation not because of poverty... but for the chance to enjoy the breath of fresh air that freedom brings."

Jury refuses to clear Sam Sheppard in murder case. A jury on Wednesday refused to clear Dr. Sam Sheppard of the 1954 bludgeoning death of his pregnant wife, in a wrongful imprisonment suit emanating from the crime that inspired the movie and TV series 'The Fugitive.' " {Reuters]

U.S. will compensate ailing nuclear industry workers. "Any government move to offer compensation would be its first tangible acknowledgment of responsibility for decades of unsafe working conditions in dozens of nuclear bomb factories around the country." [Washington Post/Reuters]

Tuesday, April 11, 2000

Study finds doctors lie on insurance. "About four out of every 10 U.S. physicians lie to insurance companies about diagnoses and conditions so their patients will the get care the doctors feel they need, according to a study released on Tuesday" [Reuters].

Reuters: "Aetna, Inc., the No. 1 U.S. health insurer, agreed on Tuesday to stop offering financial bonuses to doctors who limit health care, in a settlement of Texas lawsuit that accused the company of saving money by denying patients proper medical treatment."

Goodbye telemarketers!! Today is the day that the new US West service should go into effect, effectively blocking all calls from solicitors and telemarketers. This has become a bad joke -- calls morning, noon and night. We do not have much legal recourse, since most of the calls are from registered charities, who are not subject to the same kinds of restrictions as commercial entities. If you are interested in how you can take control of your mail and your telephone, visit the Junkbusters web site. You may be amazed at how much and what kinds of personal information is out there "for sale" to companies.

From the Monica Redux Dept. -- Independent counsel weighs Clinton indictment. ``It is an open investigation.... There is a principle to be vindicated, and that principle is that no person is above the law, even the president of the United States. That is what we have been charged with doing.'' [Reuters]

On the home front -- Since we got lucky on the septic system and will not have to have the back of the property excavated any time soon, I have to follow up on the vision problems with my right eye. It's getting pretty aggravating.

Saturday, April 08, 2000

Yet Another Facelift™ -- Obsessive one-eyed web-master caught in site redesign frenzy. ;-) I'm hoping this layout is both more visually pleasant and loads faster. Since this isn't a gossip column, I thought that having "Tattler" as part of the name was a bit much.

Well, another kid has taken guns to school, this time in Santa Fe, Texas. This eighth-grader was tired of being picked on by the other students and planned to scare the next kid who picked on him. Way down in the article it mentions: "The boy apparently got the guns from a guardian with whom he was living because his parents were reported to be in jail...." My expectation is that the media and the White House will seize on this as yet another reason that guns should be banned, but they will not look at the story behind the story -- the kid's parents being in jail, or a presumably court-appointed guardian who may have been careless about how weapons are stored. As a friend commented recently, "There are two options: require a license to be a parent or require a license to own a gun; guess which will happen first."

Friday, April 07, 2000

Wired: Silicon Valley Will Hear No Evil. "Sun Microsystems' co-founder Bill Joy warns our exaltation of technology reveals a fundamental 'bug in scientific thinking' that prioritizes progress even at the risk of extinction. The problem, he says, is not with technology but our attitude toward it. Silicon Valley is not impressed." [See Why the Future Doesn't Need Us, March 16.]

New Microsoft ad attempts to repair their image following the recent anti-trust ruling.

Infoworld: Impressive Netscae 6 beta promises widespread appeal. I have this pre-release version installed, and it is pretty exciting stuff. It's been basically rebuilt from the ground up, it's fast, it's a relatively small download, and, best of all, it doesn't butcher your system files and think that it's part of the operating system! ;-)

Thursday, April 06, 2000

New dimensions in product liability: Woman trips on shoelaces, sues Nike for $10 million.

Biotech company Celera completes human gene sequence. "Celera has been accused of failing to keep its promise to make the human genome information widely available. But Venter told the U.S. House Energy and Environment subcommittee of the Committee on Science that he would keep that promise."

AP: "On the Internet, public records in the United States can sometimes be too public, according to some participants at a conference on computer privacy this week, even if the same documents have been available on paper for decades."

Yellowstone and Denali have been added to the 10 most endangered parks list. Also on the list, an old stomping ground of mine, Joshua Tree, which "could see its pristine desert surroundings blemished by a proposed landfill outside its gates, which the conservationists say will bring as much as 20,000 tons of garbage daily from Los Angeles for 117 years." [Reuters]

Yamaha's new $333,000 piano features a Pentium-III processor, touch screen, voice activation, etc. Will it do e-mail? ;-) A picture of the piano and its features/specifications is here.

Wednesday, April 05, 2000

A chilling wave hits schools. "North Carolina has quietly launched a program that allows students to call in anonymously or fill out a Web-based form to report on classmates who might appear depressed or angry -- or who just scare them." [Wired] Go back to April 1999 and read John Katz's The Price of Being Different. This is scary stuff, IMHO.

Computer codes protected . "Computer programs used to scramble electronic messages are protected by the First Amendment because those codes are a means of communication among programmers, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday." [AP]

FBI investigates 911 computer virus. "Computers in the Houston area may be threatened by a virus that erases hard drives and makes bogus 911 calls, according to the FBI." The virus affects computers with Windows where the system is set up to allow file sharing while connected to the Internet. [AP]

Tuesday, April 04, 2000

New species fills evolutionary gap. "British scientists said on Tuesday they had identified a new species that fills a crucial gap in the evolutionary transition from fish to land animals about 370 million years ago." [Reuters]

Arianna Huffington: The invisible poor appear. "Those who have not yet felt the 'permanent boom' of the '90s are starting to emerge on the national radar, just as the economy shows signs of slowing down."

Maryland law mandates built-in gun locks by 2003. In the interim, gun manufacturers are required to ship all new handguns with external trigger locks. "The National Rifle Association has run television ads since Friday attacking the bill. The 30-second ads feature the governor as he fumbled at a news conference trying to open a push-button combination lock on a handgun." [AP]

President Clinton will visit New Mexico on April 18. Part of his agenda will be to discuss the "digital divide" between minority and non-minority communities.

Dan Gillmor: "Microsoft's unfairly won victory over Netscape, which made more than its own share of blunders along the way, has left us with one PC browser for all practical purposes. This means Microsoft, as it intended, now controls the software on-ramp to the Internet in the most important part of the market by far."

Seattle Times: Can Microsoft change enough to quiet critics? -- Mark Anderson of Strategic News Service observes: "Microsoft has changed its way of doing business to become a better partner." On the other hand, software developer Dave Winer compares Microsoft to IBM in the early days of the PC, noting "IBM tried to clamp down on the PC and lost it all."

Microsoft will appeal anti-trust ruling.

Speaking of head gear, check out the wearable monitors from Xybernaut. (Only $5000-$7000!)

Warning issued about hands-free phone kits -- "Hands-free kits for phones, designed to protect the health of cell-phone users, can actually increase levels of radiation transmitted to the brain, Britain's Consumers' Association warned Monday." [Nando/AP]

Japan cabinet resigns. "The mass resignation was necessary to enable a successor to be named owing to the incapacitation of a prime minister." - Reuters

Hey, Spring must be nearly officially here -- I unearthed the weed-whacker out of the garage and did some trimming this morning. :-)

Monday, April 03, 2000

To our visitors in the northwest, Howdy! The site is in the midst of a reorganization and consolidation, so there may be a few things that are not working just yet -- in other words, I ain't done just yet! ;-) However, the basic nuts and bolts are up and running. Enjoy!

It is seriously starting to feel like Spring. The prairie dogs are really out in large numbers. I'll probably have to get out the weed-whacker this week or next and do some trimming. It's a nice change from several months of brown and barren.

Spent a fair part of yesterday and today digging up old stuff on the computer and organizing it here. This must be the world's most sporadic weblog. ;-)

Sunday, April 02, 2000

This pixel layout stuff gets a little mind-boggling after awhile. Interesting about the differences between Netscape and MSIE on pixel treatment -- vertical spacing issues, etc. I hate to think what this looks like in Opera.

Daylight Saving Time -- why don't we just leave the clocks alone?! The animals tend to get out of whack on their regularly scheduled feeding time.

I'm having serious template stress! ;-)

Cold last night; the manure in the corral looks glazed or frosted. Ugh. ;-)

Saturday, April 01, 2000

Getting back into Frontier after a several-month absence has been a bit of a challenge. The wildest part was finding the scripts that create the dates on the news page -- counting backward from "00" didn't seem to work after Jan. 1, 2000. :-)