Day: September 24, 2003

Linkapalooza

Lots of stuff today while I was at work shipping internal products:

  • Tony Pierce talks about the show that I should have gone to when it was in Seattle…White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. All rock goodness, it sounds like.
  • Weblogs Inc., dedicated to producing niche “blogs” dedicated to aggregating industry focused content and hosting discussion groups. Sounds kinda like CNET, but Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin posted the link without busting it; maybe they’re on the up and up.
  • The Apple Computer History group blog has really taken off; just look at the story list. Current fave: engineer tells Jean-Louis Gassee that releasing the new high performance IIci will break all the NuBus cards currently being made. Jean-Louis says, “OK, that is problem number one. Are there any more?” Apple goes forward with the IIci, they work out a software patch with all existing NuBus card makers prior to release, and it becomes one of the coolest Macs ever released.
  • Mail-to-weblog is now released for Manila. If I ever get email working on my mobile phone, I will be taking advantage of this feature.
  • A Mac user was improperly caught up in the RIAA’s dragnet, accused of using a KaZaA client that isn’t available for the Mac to download music. The 66-year-old grandmother was accused in the lawsuit of downloading lots of hip hop including works by Snoop Dogg. The suit has been dropped. (NYT.)

QTN™: Buffalo Bill Pumpkin Ale

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these; seems like the seasonal beers are easier to make notes about. This is probably because a lot of seasonals, particularly winter beers but also some autumnal varieties, rely on a lot of spices to provide their flavor, and it’s easier to say “nutmeg up front” than “vague aromas of bananas.”

And Buffalo Bill’s Pumpkin Ale is definitely nutmeg up front. Big big taste of nutmeg with just a little cinnamon and allspice, that fades into a well balanced hop bitterness that fades into with a lot of malt behind. The pumpkin is there, but as anyone who’s tasted pumpkin in anything but pie would guess, it’s mostly providing malty balance rather than a distinct flavor. But it’s a better balanced pumpkin ale than most I’ve tried.

Foggy Notion

Like a switch had been flipped: today is the first day of fall, and the Lake Sammamish valley in which downtown Redmond sits was shrouded in fog as I drove in this morning. Good metaphor for how I felt all yesterday. Today is looking up, though.

I got a call from Esta last night, and again this morning. Though things have been extremely busy, she is doing well. Their power returned today, for the first time since Thursday; she says that some of the smaller rural areas east of Richmond might not see power until sometime in October. She is also discovering, I think, that there is as much to be learned outside the classroom in her program as inside. I certainly found that to be true in my MBA, and I suspect the same is true for most graduate programs.

The GOP’s nakedly partisan explanation of the recall

I’ve been on the fence about this whole California recall thing. While California is clearly a state in the toilet right now, its voters re-elected Gray Davis fair and square even after he had screwed the state up. If someone wanted to prevent him from doing future harm, the best way would seem to be to invest in voter turnout programs.

Then I read today’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle, which quotes GOP congressman Darrell Issa, whose $1.6 million expenditure funded the effort to get signatures for the recall petition, as saying that voters should vote against the recall if the GOP ticket remains split. “”If two major Republicans remain on the ballot, I’d advise you to vote ‘no’ on the recall…It would absolutely guarantee that (Democratic Lt. Gov.) Cruz Bustamante will be the governor, even though a majority of voters are asking for a no-tax solution…”

Hmm. I thought the purpose of a recall was to state that the office holder was so awful that no matter who replaced him, the state would be better off. Did Issa really not think that the Democrats stood a chance of doing that? Issa’s statement totally recasts the recall for me. It’s all just another cynical attempt to rewrite the results of a fair and legitimate election in favor of the GOP.