State of politics

I was pretty bummed to hear, shortly after our return to the US, that Joe Biden’s candidacy for the presidency was at an end. I am no longer “sidin’ with Biden” as he has lost his “Mo-Joe” and wasn’t able to keep up his “Joe-mentum.” (these are all real taglines – dude, I can’t make up stuff that is so cheesy. Apologies to Lieberman for the requisitioning of “Joe-mentum”).

While Biden was a long shot, I am now placing all my hopes on my man, McCain – I am hopeful as he is still on top of the Republican polls in New Hampshire, tho not by a lot.

Finally, I am very disappointed with all y’all’s lack of support for Dennis Kucinich and Alan Keyes in my poll to the right. If we do not support our fringe candidates, who is going to tell us (with a straight face) to abolish the income tax or withdraw from NAFTA and the WTO??

Dell support

I just got off the phone with Dell support. They told me to call their credit card verification line and gave me the following phone number: 866-477-3355. Imagine my surprise when I called the line and got… sex chat!!

Turns out I missed a digit, the real number is 866-447-3355

Thoughts on the presidential primary debates

I recorded the Democrat’s debate at UNLV a couple of weeks back and the Republican’s debate in Iowa a couple of days back and finally got around to watching them both.

There is no doubt in my mind that Joe Biden is my lead candidate. Unlike all the other Democrats he was direct, honest, took a position and god forbid, answered the question asked.

My view of Hillary/Obama (Hillabama? Clintarak?) has sunk to a new low. All they did was dance. Not only did they refuse to answer most questions, they would not take a position on anything, and they tried to be all things to all people. Grow a goddamn backbone and tell me WHAT DO YOU STAND FOR?? Not having the balls to take a position on the debate floor leaves me worried what will happen when they have to make these decisions for *real*.

I don’t want to blame the candidates entirely because the moderator *was* pretty bad, but *MAN* the Republicans are boring people! I am less familiar with their lineup, but I had some distinct impressions coming out of it. Mitt came off much the same way that Edwards comes off – too slick for his own good. My lead man McCain didn’t impress me that much but I had a good impression of Mike Huckaby.

You do have to wonder what Dennis Kuinich and Alan Keyes were doing there. Both were summarily ignored for most of the questions and both were (understandably) visibly irritated by the end.

I have been paying closer attention to the Republican side lately because I am soo disillusioned with the poor selection on the Democratic side. In the very likely case that Biden does not win the nomination, I really have NO IDEA who I will vote for…

The new look

Ok, as you can see, I have been working on a wholesale revamp of the main page of the site. The initial motivation was to use blogger as the publishing mechanism so I didn’t have to hand code HTML each time I wanted to make a new post.

However, I didn’t want this site take on that generic “blogger look,” so I have spent a fair amount of time bludgeoning blogger (say that 10 times fast) into emulating the look and feel of the original Salim’s World (we’ll call it Salim’s World Classic). Having to take a really close look made me realize that Salim’s World Classic well, kinds sucks. Sure it was passable in 2000 when the web was a much nerdier domain and engineers regularly designed web sites, but now the world has moved on and Salim’s World remains stuck in the time of hanging chads and Battlefield Earth. People look in pity as they drive past Salim’s World, the cool kids laugh at him behind his back, the jerks laugh at him to his face. He was in sore need of an overhaul.

Well, “Salim’s World Classic” is no more, today I roll out, “New Salim’s World.”

In the spirit of what I normally subject you to, instead of waiting another couple of weeks and rolling out the site when it is done, I’ll throw it out there and let you watch the annoying process of me tweaking it. The great thing is, blogger now give me commenting functionality so you can let me know what you think.

New look coming

Am working on a wholesale revamp of the main page. The initial motivation was to add a blogger front-end for me so I didn’t have to hand code HTML each time I wanted to make a new post. And while bludgeoning blogger into emulating my look and feel has been a challenge, it *has* make me realize that my current look kind of sucks and shouldn’t be emulated entirely, so I am trying to improve on it.

Should be done in another week or so (make that ‘month or so’ if it pushes into the holidays).

Vista sucks redux

Also see, Windows Vista Sucks!

Some more things that have come to mind:

  • While not as bad as Win2K, the startup and shutdown times are really long in Vista (much longer than in XP)
  • My attempt to burn a DVD was a miserable failure. After wasting several disks, I decided to buy a portable hard disk and wait till my Win2K machine came out of storage
  • I still have programs that have compatibility problems. This is just annoying
  • The suspend/sleep/hibernate is flaky
  • It takes forever for the wireless to resume when coming out of the suspended state
  • Is much harder to get details from Windows Update about what the update actually does. The top level description generally is “update for windows” – you know, because when I launch an application called Windows Update, I am still confused as to what it might contain. Moreover, after you click down a level you still only get a really high level description and have to click again (and hit the internet) to get a real description of what the update actually does. I wouldn’t be so angry at this except for the fact that I have had so many MS updates make things worse that I don’t like to just apply them willy-nilly
  • The mouse/touchpad “sticks” when it hits the edge of a window. This is freaking annoying, almost anytime your mouse path happens to cross a window boundary, the mouse stops whether you intended to or not. This took me forever to figure out how to disable (admittedly because I was being dumb)

Big move

Started work today – am excited to once again be a productive member of society but it does kinda suck to have to once again deal with that whole “reality” thing.

And now that Salim’s World has moved to Texas, we are rockin’ a new look.

More odd news from around the world

2 articles from the July 21st issue of the China Daily:

  1. A special training course requiring its male participants to wear only underpants and females underpants and bras as they walk in public is sparking controversy among locals in the city of Huizhou, Guangdong Province. The trainers said the goal is to get participants, especially young people, to be gutsier and improve their teamwork. But many local residents argued that the special training insulted the participants.
  2. True love: A motorist threatened to kill himself in front of his girlfriend by lying on a road. Fortunately, the first vehicle passing the spot was an ambulance. The 27 year old man, surnamed Chan, was driving his girlfriend home at about 2:40am on Sunday. A quarrel led to the girlfriend’s declaring she wanted to break up with him. Agitated, Chan stopped the car on a road in Mid-Level, Hong Kong. He lay on the road, ignoring his girlfriend’s pleas. The driver of a passing ambulance thought there had been an accident and got out to help. Police arrived at the scene and made Chan leave.
    • It is not known whether Chan and his girlfriend went home alone or separately…