Archives Troll

I've switched

2005-10-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

I have gone over to the other side.

No, I am not a Democrat voting Windows user now.

I have switched to Live Journal for my blogging activity.

The new address is:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/anachronus/

Pax,
Anachronus

I.D.

2005-09-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

Great Link:

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/shouts/050926sh_shouts

Pax,
Anachronus

My theory on the flood walls was right!

2005-09-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

Right again. I don't think that should surprise anyone.

From the BR Advocate 0509.22

An LSU hurricane expert said Wednesday that faulty levees are to blame for the massive flooding in New Orleans. Ivor Van Heerden of LSU's Hurricane Center said several of the levees that failed were tall enough, but not structurally sound.

Van Heerden and a team of LSU researchers spent days examining the levee systems that did not hold back Katrina's surge. Van Heerden said while the flood waters were much deeper than predicted, the waters were still three feet from the tops of the levees on the western side of New Orleans, but faulty design or inadequate construction caused those seawalls to fail.

"The individual segments on these walls weren't locked together, there was no cap on top to try to lock them together, there was no foundation," he said.

Van Heerden said if those two levees had done their jobs, 60 percent of the New Orleans area that flooded would have been dry. He suggests the city put in a series of floodgates to keep hurricane surges out of the canals.

Pax,
Anachronus

Katrina....the drink

2005-09-20T15:37:00.000-07:00

And lawyers wonder why they have a bad reputation.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0920051katrina1.html

New job responsibility?

2005-09-20T12:48:00.001-07:00

Here's a new one. Did you know that libraries are supposed to fix parking tickets? Neither did I. But the person who left one here today seems to be under that impression*. I checked with the director and the alumni office. They have no idea what to do with the thing. I am sending it to the Bursar's office so they can deal with it. The guy may still have to pay the ticket but at least I have saved him 37 cents for the stamp.

Pax,
Anachronus

*Of course he arrived when I was busy with two other patrons.

Hydrodynamics

2005-09-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

The Minister Reverand Louis Farrakhan is on record saying that he heard from a reliable source that there is a 25 foot crater under the floodwalls in New Orleans and this shows that they blew up the floodwall so that only black areas would be underwater. There are many problems with this statement.

1. How did he see this hole under the very opaque waters? Perhaps he used the scanners on his orbiting mother ship or perhaps he just made it up.

2. How was this explosion manage when no one reported hearing one? Is it some form of new silent high explosive?

Here is a good guess as to what happened.

The point of failure was not a levee, but a flood wall. Floodwalls are concrete barriers that typically rest upon the ground. Normally the footing for these walls would be quite deep but this being New Orleans I would bet they were rather shallow and the money that should have made them deeper was skimmed off. This sort of structure usually fails because water begins to seep under it. The water at the bottom of the wall is under quite high pressure and a small leak will soon become a large one. This large leak will rapidly erode what could appear to be a crater.

Now if you are a demogogue or an idiot you will then think "A HA! Bush was trying to bomb the area to flood the blacks out" when in reality what is being observed is perfectly normal erosion or rather the after effects there of.

Of course the concept of Occam's Razor is probably unknown to Minister Farrakhan.

Pax,
Anachronus

Katrina

2005-08-31T10:19:00.000-07:00

I weathered the storm fairly well. I lost power for all of 8 minutes on Monday morning, but more troubling I also lost my broadband connection Monday and it has still not been restored. Dialup access is available but until I came into work I was having withdrawal symptoms.

The archives on New Orleans, especially the Historic New Orleans collection are in grave danger. The Jefferson Davis presidential museum in Mississippi *Just hearing on the radio that the water is no longer rising in New Orleans* has suffered severe damage however.

I have not been able to contact my friend Derrek in Hammond. I am some what concerned by this. Richard and Windi have been granted sanctuary in lovely WadeManor. Could be weeks or months for them to get back to N.O.

Pax,
Anachronus

Open Source

2005-08-10T19:27:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting tidbit for today. As you may know the fuck ups in this town* never got around to approving the Law School Budget for the year. This has had two effects. One is that my justly deserved pay increase has not materialized (though I may get it retroactively applied to July 1 when it does materialize). The other is that all our Micro$oft site licenses have expired. As part of orientation the new students were promised a copy of M$ Office they will be getting OpenOffice**. This will undoubtedly make them unhappy (awww). It should also cause confusion among some of our faculty luddites (awww) and of course amusement for yours truly.

Pax,

Anachronus

*Also know as The Louisiana State Legislature

**Which I might give a try as some of our Faculty Luddites still insist on using Word Perfect (the last Mac version of which was released in 1997 and does not run under Classic very well) and Open Office is supposed to be fully compatible with. Of course we still have 1 faculty member who does not use a word processor at all.

Another one

2005-08-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

This time I am........

Take the Star Trek Quiz

Pax,
Anachronus

A Furor

2005-08-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

The big furor on the radio this morning is over the fact that Baton Rouge is going to have a gay film festival in the Manship Theater in the new Shaw Center for the Arts.

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL!!! People always complain about why Baton Rouge is nothing like Austin and then when they try to start something new they pitch a fit. People were calling in saying they would cancel their Chase accounts (one of the sponsors) and never attend events at the Shaw Center again (or at least something that they want to see comes there). These are also the ones who complain that there are these huge government funded facilities that never make money. Hypocrites.
One brilliant thinker called in saying that homosexuality was an abomination, ignoring the fact that the same source also said that eating shrimp or cheeseburgers are equally abominations. Not to mention wearing clothes of mixed fabrics.

I know that I am going to give $100.00 to the film festival.

Pax,
Anachronus

A brave experiment update

2005-07-17T12:42:00.000-07:00

I have been at AALL two days now. I have not smashed the Alienware machine as of yet. The flakey DVD Rom drive has been well behaved and the machine has not gotten too hot to use yet. The only downsides of the trip have not been computer related at all. They have been traffic/weather related. I drove from Lake Charles to Houston at greatly reduced speeds cause either by road work or torrential downpours...or a combination of both. Also the food has not been agreeing with me. I suspect I will be slimmer when I get back.

But back to the topic at hand. I do miss my iApps. I also miss the consistancy that is Apple.

Pax,
Anachronus

Is this surprising?

2005-07-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

A brave experiment

2005-07-12T14:35:00.000-07:00

The Archives Troll is about to embark on an excursion to the wilds of Texas on a mixture of business and pleasure. The business being the annual convention of the American Association of Law Libraries and the pleasure being a visit to my brother and family in Austin. As part of my drive to simplify my life I am trying to avoid bringing 2 laptops. Normally I would carry my trusty Powerbook G4 and my not so trusty (the optical drive stops working after a while) Alienware laptop. I can probably do every thing I need to do on the virus trap (Alienware) and it does have all the games that I will need, but I don't trust it. When I transitioned back to Apple it was through the Powerbook line and I have become very used to the fact that they are simple and utterly reliable machines. The flakyness of the windows world is what pushed me fully into the apple camp. But I will be brave and take only the Alienware machine with me. Wish me luck I think I will need it.

Pax,
Anachronus

God Save the Queen II

2005-07-07T12:49:00.000-07:00

We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools and we will finish the job.
Sir Winston Churchill, Radio speech, 1941

Why I am not worried about the U.K. in this day of bad tidings.

Pax,
Anachronus

God Save the Queen

2005-07-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

Well the brave warriors of Islam have struck again. Once again they have attacked a completely undefended place. They do this because they are weak pathetic creatures trying to convince themselves that they are strong. In Klingon terms they are khesterex, a dying culture. Islam peaked over 500 years ago and it has been slowly dying. They cannot accept this since the Islamic view is a very static one.

As it is my sympathies go out to all those affected by this in the great city of London. I am flying my Union Jack today.

Pax,
Anachronus

Its raiding time or delicate negotiations....

2005-07-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

I am having a bit of a quandry with the library's annual inventorying. I have a long list of Rare Books Materials that have been checked out to faculty members. Much of this happened when the faculty had the right to take anything that they wanted back to their offices. Missing and damaged (Prof. B YOU DO NOT WRITE IN EARLY 19TH CENTURY BOOKS WITH RED INK PENS!!!!!!!) materials are par for the course.
In the past I have been able to retrieve some materials in the name of "mold removal", which was not just an excuse in this instance but now I am faced with the choice of just removing them or asking that they be returned. I discussed this with the director and head of access services and they decided that we should negotiate. In a good faith effort I am only demanding the return of 17th and 18th century materials. With a few exceptions for some very rare 19th century material.
But dealing with Law Faculty is about the same as dealing with a 2 year old. They understand the need for restricted access but not in their case. They don't understand that THEY are replaceable the materials are not.

Pax,
Anachronus

End of line....

2005-06-23T12:14:00.000-07:00

I have today just finished setting up what will, in all probability, be my last ever PPC based Macintosh. I decided to move up to a G5 iMac for my work computer, replacing my old mirror drive door G4. I am as impressed with the hardware design as ever. I pumped it up to 2 gig 'o ram. The case is quite easy to open for ram installation, and the innards of the machine are quite lovely.
One note, the setup assistant was unable to transfer the settings from the old mac, but that was an issue of the old one having Tiger on it and the new machine was still running Panther. I updated and all was well. I will admit that I was surprised that the old desktop machine could boot in firewire disk mode. That just made everything all too easy.
Now for my comments on the MacTel machines of the future. I have no problem with it at all. My love for mac has been its functionality, which has been a software thing for the past several years. The fact that early reports are saying that the Intel based macs will load and run Windoze will actually make my life easier. I will not have to buy a windows machine just to run a game or some such. VirtualPC or just WinXP for mac (or what ever Micro$oft comes up with) will not entail the major performance lags caused by emulating x86 with PPC.

Pax,
Anachronus.

P.S. This 20" iMac is fantastic!!!!!

Its the little things

2005-06-02T07:48:00.000-07:00

I have been rummaging around in the library's junk room for the past couple of days, an area that is officially known as the "Louisiana Lockup". The room is one of the old library stack levels from the 1936 building. At any rate I have been rummaging with intent. That intent was to find historical materials to include in the archives. So far I have found 2 different obsolete video formats with tapes of student and faculty activites that the alumni office should worship me for finding. The gem thus far is a 1955 audio tape of Dean Hebert speaking on Legal Ethics. I am very curious about this since I have been doing alot of work on his Nuremberg files but I have no idea what the man sounded like.

I will say this. As much of a technogeek as I am, I can still read a 400 year old book but I can not play or listen to 50 year old audio tapes or 30 year old videos.

Pax,
Anachronus

The Dark Day

2005-05-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

Last week I celebrated the 11th anniversary of my 29th birthday. The party was a blast, a 5 washer load, 3 garbage can variety! Many photos were taken and I was extremely flattered by the things said about me to my face. (Behind my back I can not say).

Here are two versions of the events:

Mine

Jeffreaka's

Pax,
Anachronus

The appearance of snow...

2005-05-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday morning we had a line of thunderstorms move through Baton Rouge. These were preceeded by strong gusty winds. The white blossoms of the crepe mrytles that surround my house were being blown around in a very good approximation of a blizzard. Lovely and surreal at the same time....just the way I like it.

Pax,
Anachronus

A good day

2005-05-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

Well, today has been fun. Sort of, and only in the way that work can be fun. When I came in I was greeted with a chocolate cake in honor of that dark day that is coming up on Saturday. I then got my new office scanner and had fun playing around setting that up. The only problem was that Canon did not include an OSX native installation program. This thing dates from 2003 and was an OS9 booter? Get with it Canon. The scanner works well and is almost as stylish as my dearly departed HP4670.

I then got an interesting reference question from the Legislative Librarian. One of our legislators is interested in a slew (a dozen or so) of cases from England dating from the early 18th century to mid 19th century with a couple of Canadian cases from the mid 19th to early 20th centuries thrown in for good measure. Why this legislator wanted this is beyond me. Perhaps he was to stupid to realize that these are common law cases and Louisiana is a civil law state. Given our legislature, this seems a most reasonable assumption. He was probably trying to sound erudite and learned. Of course people can usually tell unless they be less learned than he. (50% odds for the legislature). At any rate I seem to have made my fellow librarian very happy since we had most of the material she was looking for. A good thing.

Pax,
Anachronus

Hello darkness my old friend....

2005-05-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

I came into work today to find the building in darkness. I told my coworkers that as I medievalist I am prepared to work by candle light, which I would do, but there are issues with soot and rare books. I personally think it would be interesting to process some rare books materials working only with candles for illumination. I would probably hum Gregorian chant just to stay in character.

In other news my HP 4670 has died. I really like this scanner for digitizing large objects as it is clear and you can see the scanning area through the scanner. It also is a one piece unit so that I can scan a large object by moving the scanner not the material being scanned. The point is that the power supply is dead. HP says they can possibly send me another one. I have a sneaking susupicion that the power supplies that shipped with the 4670 are not the best. The power supply that came with my 4600 has held up beautifully. The sad news is that HP has discontinued the 4600 and may be about to nix the 4670. A pity since they have a great design and unique functionality.

Pax,
Anachronus

Not nine lives

2005-04-29T08:10:00.001-07:00

My Kit Cat Clock has died. New batteries do not help it. It just hangs on the wall, completely inert. :( It was only 3 years old. But then again with the massive dust ingestion it must have experienced during the renovations here at the law center I guess it is amazing that it surivived at all.

Pax,
Anachronus

Tiger, tiger....

2005-04-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when I got home I found my copy of OS-X 10.4 waiting on my doorstep. Not fearing an attack of RDF weilding Steve-truppen I promptly took it upstairs and installed it on my G5. First impressions follow. It installed fairly quickly compared to Panther, around 30 minutes I would guess. The auto-update for my .Mac information stalled when trying to update my credit card info. Server was unavailable. I also had a server unavailable error when using the flight tracker widget. This could be due to the fact that I was installing early. I will check this out again later today to see if the servers are available. One glaring error in the flight tracker is the inability to simply type in the source and destination airports. The scroll window is not a vaiable option in my book. Casual play with the stock and weather widgets found them to be some what better and both of them worked properly.

It seems peppier overall, though I had some trouble with mail this morning when it would not let me click the "send" button until I had cycled through some applications. Odd that.

I like the new iTunes album cover screen saver. It was certainly worth the $69.00 (educational discount).

Pax,
Anachronus

Viva Roma!

2005-04-21T15:33:00.000-07:00

On this day on 753 B.C. (just after lunch according to Dr. Meade) Romulus founded the city of Rome.

A truly great day!

Pax
Anachronus

What a drag!

2005-04-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

The latest ranking of Law Schools is out. We have slipped from 89 to 90, though this is hard to tell since Newsweek uses some odd numbering system that allows multiple schools to have the same score. Now the latest ACRL survey of Law Libraries put us at #19. It should be clear to all that the Law School is just a drag on the performance of the law library and we should be rid of it so that our score would rise. ;)

We in the Law Library clearly know how to perform our jobs better than the faculty. But just try and make them understand that. They all think that the JD after their names means "Junior Deity" and they debate the junior part. I sometimes wonder if the Chancellor's office does not have a Goa'uld sarcophagus hidden away in it some where. Then again probably not. The faculty tends to be nuttier and more egomaniacal than even the worst of the System Lords. ;)

Pax,
Anachronus

Just one more thing....

2005-04-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

James McHenry Wade's Aliases

Your movie star name: Crackers Carl

Your fashion designer name is James Rome

Your socialite name is Beau James New Orleans

Your fly girl / guy name is J Wad

Your detective name is Cat St. Georges

Your barfly name is Grapefruit Wine

Your soap opera name is McHenry Fairview

Your rock star name is Hershey Special Dark Porsche

Your star wars name is Jammax Wadchr

Your punk rock band name is The Ambivalent Tofu

The Amazing Meganame Generator

I do English gooder than yew!

2005-04-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

Your Linguistic Profile:

50% General American English

30% Dixie

15% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

I was frankly suprised by this. Of course the quiz did not include a percentage of the Queen's English so that probably skewwed things a bit

Pax,
Anachronus

Virtual Annoyance II

2005-04-15T07:38:00.000-07:00

Okay, Virtual PC may be a neccessity for my job but that does not make in any less of an annoyance. While VPC7 is an advance over VPC6 it still is a resource hog especially when starting up or shutting down. It also has the annoying habit of disconnecting any windows shared drives mounted on your mac's desktop. The only answer is that windows does not even play nicely with windows. You poor blind fools. It almost makes me pity windows users. Almost, not quite. As I have always said, stupidity is its own reward.

Pax
Anachronus

Self Reference

2005-04-02T20:25:00.000-08:00

This is a blog about this blog. When I create this blog using Safari the number of editing tools available to me is considerable fewer than when I use Mozilla. (2 instead of 5).

I find this odd and annoying. I bet Windoze users don't have this problem. Of course they have enough other problems with their OS that I guess I don't mind being an oppressed minority just because I happen to use a superior OS.

No I do mind. I am obviously a discrimination computer user who wants functionality with out security holes*. That is why I use Macintosh. Why should lesser systems have useful functions that are not allowed to me just because I don't run XP and IE?

Pax,
Anachronus

*Holes is not the right word. Chasms seems more apt.

And then there was one.

2005-04-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

Of the three greats of the latter half of the 20th century now only Lady Thatcher remains.

Ioannes Paulus Secundus Pontifex Maximus was not only one of the great personages of the modern age but he will be one of the great Popes of all time. Maybe one of the greatest of the PONTIFICES MAXIMII which is a considerably more ancient and august title than mere pope.

Though I am not Catholic in this life, I am a medievalist and retain an affection for the Church. JPII would have made a wonderful medieval pontiff. I am not sure which one he would be most like. I have a fondness for Gregory the Great and so I think that JPII might have been one of the Doctors of the Church, much in the mold of Gregory, had he reigned some 1500 years ago.

A great man and a true Cleric has moved on to his well earned reward. More than that, he was a Roman, despite the country of his birth.

Pax Vobiscum,
Anachronus

Madness

2005-03-29T13:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, I am officially sick of the Schiavo case. The salient fact is that there is no EEG activity. There is no one home in that case. I think that the people who say she is responding are anthropomorphising random nerve firings and seeing signs of cognition that are not really there*.

I think the actions of Congress in this matter are appalling. How conservatives can say this is a good thing that Congress has done are completely loopy. Of course, the modern incarnation of conservatism does not believe in reducing the influence of government. The theo-cons have no problem with using government to impose their theology. For all of the reverence of the founders they have no idea what they are talking about.

I personally think that there is something fishy about the whole case. I also think that for all the wailing moaning and gnashing of teeth about how cruel the death is, what is crueler than removing the feeding tube, then reinserting it then removing it again.

I also think that some people really need to learn to THINK about issues and take account of the consequences of their actions. I would start by looking up the meaning of the term "pyrrhic victory".

Pax,
Anachronus

*Of course the Christian fundies who want to keep feeding the body are probably not people who have any experience with roleplaying games. If they were they would be familiar with the concept of "soul departure". The body may live but the person is gone.

Why I love Apple

2005-03-18T16:20:00.000-08:00

It is well known among my devoted readers that I am a fan of the products of Apple Computer. I have been for a long time, 20+ years at this point, with a brief detour into the darkside from about 1993 to 1997 (which oddly allowed me to miss most of Apples most dubious years. Be that as it may I have many many macs ranging from a 1986 vintage Mac Plus to a brand new 15" Powerbook G4 and a new blue iPod mini.

I love Apple's industrial design. This started in 1989 with the Macintosh IIcx (I still have my Macintosh IIcx) with is easy opening case and modular design (this actually started with the II in 1987). Apple's funky industrial design came to the forefront in 1998 with the soon to be imitated Bondi Blue iMac (still have mine) and started the wireless revolution with the iBook (got my blueberry still to this day). The G5 tower is a beauty to behold and the Mac Mini is the heir to the wonderful G4 Cube.*

Apple does not only do execellent industrial design on their products. The boxes the products come in are wonderful as well. It sometimes seems to me that Apple spends more on the design of the boxes their computers come in than some companies do on their computers.

What started this rant is that today when I was using the new Pages software for some work related items. I was browsing the template for a brochure depicting a cycling tour of Italy (not North Cornwall unfortunately) and the text was in Latin!

That is the degree of coolness that I would expect from Apple but sometimes it surprises me none the less!

Pax,
Anachronus

*I own or have owned all the Apples mentioned in this post.

A revelation

2005-03-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

As a well rounded Archives Troll, I think that it is incumbent on me to read the views of those with opposite political views than the (correct) ones that I hold. As such I read The Daily Kos, well daily, and some what more infrequently do I read the Democratic Underground site. While there I always read the comments and today something struck me. The posters remind me of the character Rick from "The Young Ones." It is possible that some of them are even less stable than Rick, but that is unlikely.

If you think about it you know its true.

Pax,
Anachronus

Trash and treasure

2005-03-16T13:36:00.000-08:00

Back in the fall a local judge donated (dumped) a bunch of "rare law books" on the law library. I have been sifting through them today and found a bit of treasure in the trash. An imaculate copy of a supplement to the French Civil code that if WorldCat is correct makes us one of 6 libraries to own a copy. If Eureaka is correct we are one of two libraries. I suspect the WorldCat verdict is the more accurate as their description of the book more accurately describes what I hold in my hands. Oddly enough, another copy of this book is held by the Historic New Orleans Collection.

Its a small world after all.

Pax,
Anachronus

Waterproof iPod Cases

2005-03-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

In response to my own post script. Yes they do.

Music, winter, and why South Louisiana may be the wrong place for me.

2005-03-06T19:30:00.000-08:00

This evening I have been sitting listening to music. Music that I have not listened to in ages and music that filled a void in my soul. I had forgotten how evocative the music from "Twin Peaks" was. Or how impressive the first Enigma disk was. The amount of relaxation that comes from the Pachebel Canon in D. Sarah Brightman's voice.

As I was soaking in the hot tub wishing it were cooler and mistier I thought how much I like that kind of weather. It was as if my genetic Anglo-Saxon heritage was overwhelming my truly Roman soul. There is just not enough winter here in Baton Rouge, I think I need to live in a colder climate, with some topography. Perhaps Vermont or some such or even my old stomping grounds in Newport as the sea is a lovely thing. Definately part of my genetic make up...Romans liked roads too much and were never great seafarers...Marcus Vipsania Agrippa excluded.

Oddly enough Italy does not call me today but Ireland or Wales does. Perhaps it was that job posting that I read about last week from the Royal Monuments Commission in Wales...sadly it requires Welsh fluency and the pay sucked. Worse than I have now if you can believe that...still the hours were a lot better. Still working for Her Majesty does hold an attraction to an old Monarchist like myself. There is so much of the stuff of history to be found there.

Nothing will probably come of it. I really do love my work here. I think the working conditions are a good fit for my personality and I love my house. I would hate to leave it now that I am getting perfected. But if the right opportunity presented itself I could leave, though building a new support network would be hard, I am just getting that perfected too and that would be a great deal of bother to move as well.

Pax,
Anachronus

p.s. Do waterproof iPods exist?

The new toy

2005-02-21T19:37:00.000-08:00

My new toy arrived at work at 5:20 pm on Friday, long after I had left for a weekend with my parents. So, on my way home on Sunday the first thing I did on returning to town was run by the office. The big brown box was waiting in my office. Pausing only to check the temperature and humidity in the rare books room, I grabbed the box and fled the building. I went home and opened it. Inside was wrapping paper and a smaller brown box that enclosed the actual box containing the powerbook. First of all I am still enraptured with Apple's industrial design. They spend more effort on the boxes their products come in than some companies (cough DELL, cough cough Micro$oft) do on product development. I lifted the cover to remove the parts that I needed (power supply, long power supply cable and of course the laptop) and closed the box again.

I was struck by how large it was. My last 15" PBG4 had been gifted away some time before and I had become accustomed to the small form factor of my 12" iBook and my little 12" Aluminum G4. My second impression is that it felt more sturdy than did my old Titanium book, it seemed to flex less and felt lighter as well. I was also impressed with the new "import" section of the first run screens. I hooked my old iBook up via a firewire cable and the new book pulled all my settings over to the new machine. It did take a while (I had a lot of stuff on the old book) and the only glitch was the icon for iMovie was trashed. This is probably because the new machine comes with iMovieHD. It took about an hour to pull over everything and I was ready to go.

The new machine is quite cool. My previous PBG4's were too warm to use in my lap with out some form of thermal protection. This one does not even get as warm as the iBook G3. I love the keyboard back lighting. I am not sure when I will use it but it is very neat. It is so peppy I may not upgrade the memory. 512meg is a little light in that regards for my normal usage but it seems okay at the moment. THANK YOU APPLE. Shipping machines with only 256MEG was so 2001 of you.

I highly recommend the new Powerbooks...at least the 15" models.

Pax,
Anachronus

A new toy

2005-02-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

After almost a year and a half I have decided that I need a new laptop. My faithful iBook G3/900 is beginning to show signs of the dreaded mother board failure that seems to be common with that breed. (GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER APPLE!!!! POWERBOOKS AND IBOOKS USED TO BE RENOWNED FOR STURDINESS!!!!) I have been trying to decide if I wanted to continue with the nice 12" model (the same as my iBook) or go with the 15"er. I used to have a 15" Titanium unit that still functions (according to all reports). I love the compact size of the 12" but in this case I decided that size does matter from time to time and I think that it will take 15 inches to satisfy me this time. I guess I am a screen size queen after all. That and I love the backlit keyboard...I am a geek too you know! :)

Pax,
Anachronus

S.O.P. Idiocy

2005-02-14T16:24:00.000-08:00

As you may have guessed by the title of this blog, I am in the archival field. One of the first things that you learn is that good climate control is important for the preservation of old and rare books. Where I work the concept of climate control is an oxymoron.

Let me explain. The renovations that are on going here for the past 3 years allowed for the creation of a rare books area with an independant climate control system. This is all well and good. We consulted with the main campus when doing this and they told us what system to get and use. Fine and dandy. This system uses two different water systems to condition the air, a cold water system and a hot water system. The cold water cools the air and then the cold air is warmed again by the hot water then sent along the ventilation conduits to where it needs to go. In order for all this to work the water in the hot water system needs to be 140 degrees. The problem lies in the fact that the people on campus who told us to use this system presumably knew the system requirements. These are also the people who put regulators on the hot water system that prevent it from reaching 140 degrees.

Then end result is a system that never knows what it is supposed to be doing and has been observed to fluctuate wildly. Who would have thought in Louisiana it would be necessary for one to buy a humidifier for example? Would you believe that in a four hour period the temperature in the climate controlled rare books room would rise from 72 degrees to 75 degrees then fall to 69 degrees? Consistency is a virtue when it comes to preservation of these old and fragile materials. It does not hurt the sanity of a certain archives troll either.

Pax,
Anachronus

Dean-o

2005-02-11T10:08:00.000-08:00

I am pleased with the prospect of Howard Dean becoming the head of the DNC. You may ask yourself why would a staunch GOP'er like yours truly would care? Well I do and here are some of the reasons why I do care and why I think Dean is actually a good choice.

One reason is that I have a tie to Governor Dean. We both went to the same school. Not only that his signature is on my diploma!

Another is that I think he would actually be good for the DNC, if for no other reason than he actually seems to believe in things. This last campaign is proof of that. About the only thing the Kerry campaign was consistant on was "We aren't Bush". All other factors varied.

Dean is also something of a Democrat version of Barry Goldwater. Few, if any, of my readers are old enough to remember that one of the central themes of Goldwater's campaign was the slogan "a choice not an echo". The DNC has to offer an option. Being Republican-lite is not going to get them anywhere.

Plus I think that Dean will assure the GOP will retain the White House and Congress for many years to come! (You really didn't think this wasn't one of my thoughts)

Seriously, the DNC needs some good leadership if I am to stay entertained by the political process. The current leaders are either slimy worms (McAuliffe/Clinton), boring (Reid), insane (Pelosi/Boxer) or just senile (Kennedy). They no longer entertain me so they need to be pushed into the background.

Pax,
Anachronus

Successes

2005-01-30T09:38:00.000-08:00

Two items of note in today's news.

1. It seems to me that the elections in Iraq have succeeded. Voter turn out of just over 60% and only 32 casualties. Not all that I could have hoped for but much better than some were predicting or hoping for, eh Sen. Kennedy? I shall speak no more about the senior senator from Massachusetts, he is past it and not worth the effort.

2. Apple is #1 in brand identity in both the US and global surveys. If that would only translate in to better market share and a higher stock price I would be a very happy archives troll. I am, after all, one with the Dow.

Pax,
Anachronus

Virtual Annoyance

2005-01-27T08:36:00.000-08:00

I just upgraded my version of Virtual PC from VPC6 to VPC7.

The new version is quicker than the old version on my Dual 1.25 Mhz G4, could it actually be dual processor aware? I am not sure but there are a couple of things that do annoy me.

1. The whole thing feels a lot more like a Micro$oft product. Obviously the emulated Windows XP feels like windows, it is. But the Macintosh end of things is more Microsofty. All those little annoyances that we know better how to configure your system than you do touches that Windows users probably are used to but are a pain for the rest of us.

2. Mac installs do not need to restart the whole machine to settle the registry but VPC does it anyway.

3. The attitude that you do not need to leave the Windows window easily. In VPC6 you just move the mouse out of the window to the finder. VPC7 does not allow you to do this with out an extra step. The attitude being, "Why would you want to use that crappy old OS X when you could be using a superiour Microsoft virus breeder", whoops I mean operating system.

4. The packaging is really crappy. It is hard to open with out destroying it and you have to work through a couple of layers of PLASTIC to get to the disk box. I mean is this really enviro friendly? I think not.

Pax,
Anachronus

Idiots

2005-01-23T11:21:00.000-08:00

Annoyance of today: People who park in two parking spaces, presumably so that no one can open thier door against the idiot's new vehicle.

Apart from the sheer thoughtlessness and total self absorbtion that this shows it also tells me that the people who park thusly are living beyond their means as they can not spare the change to fix a scratch on their car door.

Today I left a note on one such vehicle saying. You obviously can not afford this vehicle since you can afford to have it scratched. Get rid of it and drive something more in your price range. Try a Kia.

Pax,
Anachronus

Faux pas

2005-01-20T13:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Laura,

Didn't your mother tell you not to wear white after Labor Day?

Pax,
Anachronus

Linear Time

2005-01-19T08:46:00.000-08:00

It is clear now that liberal Democrats or at least their elected officials and spokesmen have absolutely no understanding of the concept of linear time. Just in case any of the afore mentioned are reading this (yea, right) the concept of linear time means that you can not know a thing before it is knowable. There are three possible explanations for the Democrats failure of understanding of this simple principle.

1. They are Bajoran Prophets: Unlikely and if true Bajor is majorly screwed.

2. They are simply idiots: Possible based on all the evidence but some what insulting and something they would never admit to.

3. They are acting like they are idiots but in reality the are bitter political hacks doing it all for political advantage: Most likely based on the same evidence as in point #2. But they will never admit it because they are enlightened progressives from the intellectually superior blue states who are never wrong and if the blinkered philistines of the red states would only understand this and surrender their opinions to the enlightened ones all would be alot more pleasant.

Now it is clear that Sen. Boxer, Sen. Kerry, et. al. know in actuality the truth is #3.

Pax,
Anachronus

p.s. For a good explanation of the concept of linear time watch the pilot episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Keynotable

2005-01-12T08:15:00.000-08:00

This years Macworld Keynote address by his Steve-nes was just as rumoured about as many of his previous outings. This year's event was a bit more edgy with no streaming and Apple's round of law suits against the various Mac rumour sites. Would there be a headless iMac? What of an iTunes phone? Every one agreed that there would be a flash based iPod but no one could say how it would look. I for one just wanted some new software and I was not disappointed.

I think the new Mac Mini is a fantastic machine. I see it as the Cube of 2005. The original PowerMac G4 Cube was a fantastic machine, but it was a head of its time. The Mac Mini is a worthy successor. I for one am awaiting the first case mod that puts the guts of a Mac Mini into a Cube enclosure. This will probably not present much of a problem as the innards of a G4 Cube look bulky and ponderous next to the Mini.

What I am most excited about is actually a piece of software, Keynote2. I have been using Keynote since its inception and have gotten many envious comments from people who are forced to use another company's omnipresent product. I have had only one problem with keynote, I wanted to make a self running kiosk mode presentation and the only method I could find was to convert the whole presentation into a Quicktime movie. It worked but it lacked the elegance that I want from an Apple product.

I ordered iWorks and a Mac Mini yesterday after the Steve-note. It took a while since the AppleStore was swamped. I am looking forward to these new toys eagerly. It seems like Christmas again!

To my humble readers, I must apologize for the lack of postings. I will try to put something up on a more regular basis.

Pax,
Anachronus

Lest we forget...

2004-12-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

December 7, 1941

Diversity?

2004-12-06T18:37:00.000-08:00

I have been reading over the past few days about the lack of diversity in academia. This is nothing new of course. I have been complaining about it for years. The only diversity that counts in academia is the most superficial kind. You all know what I mean. The vast majority of academia is of the liberal or progressive (to use the new term) bent. For them diversity is only important when it comes to gender or skin color. Judging a book by its cover. Or to paraphrase an old saying "the diversity that can be easily percieved is not real diversity".

What is lacking is diversity of opinion. They just assume, by and large correctly, that every one, or at least those who matter, agree with them. This lack of intellectual diversity does not seem to trouble them, they may not even consider it. In the recent election 90% of campaign donations by academia went to the Kerry campaign. This ideological monoculture can not be healthy, and probably results in feed back loops which probably explains alot. They can not seem to understand that others may not share their views on the world. They are, after all, the enlightened and their pronouncements are not to be questioned.

I hate to be the one to break it to them, but if you think you are enlightened, you probably aren't. An inablity to accept new ideas is a trait that I find to be undesirable in one who would label himself an academic, but it is a change they will have to make in themselves. It does not look like it is going to happen any time soon however. The younger faculty members in the survey were even more heavily weighted towards the DNC than were their elders. The change will come but I am not going to hold my breath.

Pax,
Anachronus

Cultural Elitist?

2004-11-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

A fine bit of whining was posted the other day by that noted thinker Ted Rall. Where I to sink to his level of discourse my response would be on the order of "Loser says what?", but I will not do that. Instead I will limit myself to addressing some the points that he makes in his column.

In the second paragraph he writes. " Firstly, living in the sticks doesn't make you more American. Rural, urban or suburban--they're irrelevant. San Francisco's predominantly gay Castro district is every bit as red, white and blue as the Texas panhandle " This is absolutely correct. The problem is I don't think he actually believes it.

Further down he opines, " Educational achievement doesn't necessarily equal intelligence. After all, Bush holds a Harvard MBA. Still, it bears noting that Democrats are better educated than Republicans. You are 25 percent more likely to hold a college degree if you live in the Democratic northeast than in the red state south. Blue state voters are 25 percent more likely, therefore, to understand the historical and cultural ramifications of Bush's brand of bull-in-a-china-shop foreign policy." Perhaps he is unfamiliar with the term "sophmoric'? There are also a couple of logical fallicies and flawed demographic assumptions underlying this claim that should be obvious to the reader. I would also note that while if the blue state types can see the failings of the Bush foreign policy they seem to be oblivious to the more obvious failings of the Jimmy Carter/Neville Chamberlin approach advocated by Senator Kerry. I would also like to point out that a college degree is not the same as intelligence and that intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom. A good analogy is that intelligence is the paint and the brush but wisdom is what makes a da Vinci.

Rall also writes, "The best newspapers, which routinely win prizes for their in-depth local and national reporting and staffers overseas, line the coasts. So do the cable TV networks with the broadest offerings and most independent radio stations." Last time I checked Fox News was based in the very blue state of New Jersey. Of course if we want news from papers that don't know the difference between reporting and opinion or the difference between forged (clumsily at that) documents and real ones, I guess the NY Times and CBS will be fine. The one TV news source that Rall probably does approve of, CNN, is based in the very red state of Georgia.

Rall's final paragraph shows him for the enlightened being he truly believes himself to be. "So our guy lost the election. Why shouldn't those of us on the coasts feel superior? We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us. But don't demand our respect. You lost it on November 2"
It seems to me that your better salaries are consumed by higher costs of living and tax rates to support your socialist utopias. If you actually talked to people with different opinions instead of being stuck in your feed back loops you might actually learn something. But then again for a liberal, independant thought or diversity of opinion is anathema. Some of the most provincial people I have ever met have been from New York. I neither demand nor want your resepect. You have not earned mine.

Rall suffers from hubris and a lack of wisdom. Pity is appropriate but probably wasted.

Pax,
Anachronus

Its over

2004-11-05T13:20:00.000-08:00

Like many, (I would say of my readers but I am not sure that I have any yet) I find myself very much relieved that this election is over. Though I fear that there or many on both sides don't seem willing to move on with their lives. I was listening to the radio on my way to work this morning and some of the rantings by Bush supporters sounded so much like the angst being hurled in the opposite direction that I thought I had driven into a parallel universe where Kerry had won. Checking the mirror I noticed that I didn't have a goatee nor did the majority of people around me sport them, so I knew I had not shifted into the Mirror Universe. While I did not support Senator Kerry in the election, if he had won I would not have engaged in a bout of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I would have just shrugged and moved on, knowing that my side had fought the good fight and looked ahead to 2008.
It is understandable with the amount of emotional envolvement by the partisans of both candidates that the loosing side would be down, that is normal and human. But what galled me was the lack of good grace among some on my side. As they say in "Yes, Minister" today's majority is tomorrows minority, so it behooves one on the winning side to not gloat and be nice, because you can be sure that Fortuna's wheel will turn.

So here is my message to all of you:
For Supporters of Senator Kerry - (especially the 2 or 3 that I actually care about) You have lost this battle but there will be others. Try and get along with those of the opposite persuasion but not to the extent that you abandon your principles. Don't be wracked with depression or recriminations, they will not help and will only give you an ulcer, and you don't want that. Your time will come.

For Supporters of President Bush - You have won this battle but there will be others. Try and be gracious in victory and remember that the opinions of your opponents, while different are not automatically evil. Don't be gloating or arrogant for you may not be so fortunate next time. Besides, that is horrible behaviour and your mother really should have taught you better than that.

For Both Sides - These 4 year cycles of peaceful change are one of the best things about this country. Democrats and Republicans are more alike than different and both are faced with an enemy that would destroy us. The murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands this week is an example of what we face. Andrew Sullivan has been writing about this and his points are dead on.

Pax,
Anachronus

p.s. Happy Guy Fawkes Day to you all! Watch out for Papist Plots! ;)

Polls and Such

2004-11-02T13:17:00.000-08:00

As I sit in the middle of another totally pointless digital reference session, (will some one please ask me more than one question per semester!!!!!) I read the exit polls for today's election. Is it just me or have the pollsters any clue as to how they are supposed to do their jobs? The exit polls vary greatly from the pre-election polls which themselves were at odds with each other and oscillated wildly. What does it mean if anything? I for one have always wondered at the accuracy of polls that claim to state the mood of a nation of 260+ million with a sample of around 1000 or fewer. Perhaps if I could understand math it would make sense to me but for now it does not.

I have been asked to make a top 10 list as to why I though voting for Sen. Kerry is wrong. I basically came up with.
1. He is a shallow, narcissistic twit.
2. I can not disagree with him on the issues as he has taken my side of the argument at least once during the campaign.
3. He is a lawyer and I have seen how they are made and what it does to your thought process. Sophistry sums it up.

I could not think of any more funny ones. There are probably others.

One observation is that Kerry is too flexible while Bush tends to be too inflexible.

One more thing, if the situation of 2000 is repeated I think Bush is far less likely to litigate (even if he had just cause) than Kerry would be.

For the record I think that Gore was a bad loser and did serious injury to our body politic. I only hope that the wound will heal. I have already had to apologize to a dear friend because of it, and it saddens me that I was driven to such and extreme over what is inconsequential in the long run.

Pax,
Anachronus

Contra-Bush

2004-10-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

Andrew Sullivan has come out endorsing John Kerry for President. I can understand his reasoning, for in many many areas there are many problems with the Bush administration. But the conclusion that I have reached is basically that I can not trust a future Kerry Administration(if any) as being any better on the major issue of the day. I suspect that Kerry's policies on terror (what ever they may be today) will be to pull out of Iraq so fast that the dust clouds will blanket the sun for weeks. There is also no way that I can see a Kerry Administration as being more fiscally responsible. He will be so beholden to the radical left socialist wing of the Democratic party (as in DPRK) that massive government spending will and rapid tax increases will be inevitable.

The Theocratic elements of the Republican party are currently my main problem. Let me get a few points out of the way right off the bat.
1. This country was not meant to be a Christian nation. By that I mean that when the Constitution refers to seperation of church and state it means exactly that. No state sponsored religion and the corollary being that no laws should be based on purely religious grounds. The Founders were not Christians in the sense that the religious right (theo-cons) now use the term. They were Deists who believed in God et. al. but their conception of the Deity was the Celestial Clockmaker.

2. This country was not founded on the Bible or Biblical Principles. I know of nothing in the Bible that mentions a representative republic as a form of government, and I have read it in both English and Latin. Now there is an ancient book, older than the New Testament that was an inspiration to the Founders. De Res Publica by Marcus Tullius Cicero, is a much better candidate for the one book of inspiration. If you look at our government it is very much on the Roman model. The much maligned electoral college is a prime example. Consuls were chosen by a vote of the tribes, the man with the most votes became the Senior Consul, the runner up became the Junior Consul. As the electoral college was originally concieved the man with the most votes became President, the runner up Vice-President.

Now where was I? Oh yes, President Bush seems to be doing many thing to specifically appeal to the Theo-Con faction of the Republican party. His support of the patently unconstitutional and very unconservative Federal Marriage Amendment is a prime example. What conservative would or could endorse that? Conservatives are supposed to advocate less government intrusion in to private lives and it is hard to concieve of any federal act that would be more intrusive, apart from mandatory visits to the proctologist. Another annoyance is the outrageous amount of federal spending under this adminsitration. I can understand and encourage funding for the war on terror and homeland protection, and there are days when I find this inadequate. It is the massive new entitlement spending that is my source of disdain. Cut this mess out!

Still for all of those faults I am leaning towards voting for Bush. His approach to the war is the right one (well maybe insufficiently ruthless at times, but still better than Kerry). I also think that his pandering to the theocons is just a move to get himself re-elected. At which point I hope he will institute his plans to radically reform the social security and health care systems like he has promised. Tort reforms are also badly needed. Like Sullivan says sometime you just have to have faith...but not Faith of the Heart (that is another rant for another time)

Pax,
Anachronus

Welcome!

2004-10-26T10:04:00.000-07:00

I have decided to go where many have gone before. Still my take on events, while predictable to some may at least some with a glimmer of enlightenment.

Pax,
Anachronus