NSLog();

I was going to say something clever about this, but I think the image below says it all for me.

Soon as I see Quality News, I'll pay for it. Until then…

Question: If polls showed Bush and Kerry dead even, and terrorists threatened to disrupt the elections, who do you think would win?

My Answer: I think that Republicans tend to have a bit more of a "stick it to them" attitude and would thus not be as easily scared away from the polling stations. Of course, I have no polling information. I do find it rather interesting that Florida was called for Gore and voters were told that the polls had closed an hour before the election was done (8pm, not 7pm), but how people can estimate that such happenings cost Bush 6,000 or more votes is beyond me.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Josh says that my TrackBacks aren't working. I recently updated the blog to MT 3.0.1D, and if TrackBacks aren't working, well that's just disappointing.

I'm also using MT-Blacklist, so, perhaps the issue is a compounding one. Please attempt to TrackBack this article (feel free to TrackBack asking or ruminating about MT-Blacklist if you'd like) so that I may test this out.

Thanks.

Update: A new version of MT-Blacklist has resolved the issues (I think).

Question: How many bookmarks do you have?

My Answer: I've got about twenty in my bookmarks bar in Safari (naming them "1" and "3" and "R4" and "Int" and so on saves a lot of space). I almost never look at my actual bookmarks… so I effectively have only twenty.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Chris' entry at decaffeinated.org led me to create this, my own blogging output infographic:

Can you guess which entry accounted for that large spike in early June, 2004? 😛 I've got 1895 entries totalling 345,307 words so far. The template used to generate this for importing into Excel is quite simple:

<pre><MTEntries lastn="10000">
<MTEntryDate format="%Y-%m-%d">	,<MTWordCount>
</MTEntries></pre>

There you have it. Works great in MovableType 3.01D, anyway.

Justin points us here. Funny stuff. 🙂

Who gives a flying fuck? Seriously!?!

The democrats have nice teeth. Y'know, except when it comes to fighting a war, during which they seem to have none.

Must be dentures.

I'm so sick of politics being "this." Where is a chart depicting the top 100 issues affecting Americans these days, and a sentence or two explaining each candidate's stance on them? Kerry and Edwards have yet to take any stance whatsoever, and the few they've taken they change nearly every day.

This election is quickly becoming two things: 1) a joke and 2) voting for the evil we know rather than the evil we don't know.

I'll be voting for Bush come November, it seems.

Snippets from Florida's "Justifiable Use of Force" laws:

776.06 Deadly force.--
(1) The term "deadly force" means force that is likely to cause death or great bodily harm and includes, but is not limited to:
(a) The firing of a firearm in the direction of the person to be arrested, even though no intent exists to kill or inflict great bodily harm; and
(b) The firing of a firearm at a vehicle in which the person to be arrested is riding.

For whatever it's worth, we now know what "deadly force" is. Another subsection deals with LEOs (law-enforcement officers) and wouldn't apply to civilians. Next we move into the two main ways in which a civilian may use deadly force: to protect themselves or others (emphasis is mine):

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 642); »

Question: How far off were you?

My Answer: Apple sold its 100,000,000th iTune to Kevin Britten of Hays, Kansas at approximately 1:30am EST on July 12th, making Paul Mayne the winner (I believe). I was personally off by about four days. At 10:15 when Carey called me tonight, the counter read 99,854,889. Aaron Linville finished in second, and I won't disqualify Paul for guessing twice: I'm just counting his first and only guess within the allowable dates.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Yesterday, I attended a class required for licensure by the state of Florida for a CCW (Concealed/Carry Weapons) permit. Though I do not plan to carry my gun at any time (outside of standard conveyance allowances), I wanted to take the class to learn more about the laws surrounding firearms in Florida. Why else?

1. To support my second amendment rights by adding another "CCW permit holder" to the list.
2. To allow me to take home a gun I might purchase in the future without a waiting period.
3. A permit grants a bit more freedom from the stricter non-permit laws.
4. Better to have it and need it than not to have it and need it, eh?

An article from Arizona talks about the success of that state's CCW program. Florida's requirements are somewhat more lax than Arizona's and my class consisted of three parts:

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 536); »

Kati the Dame and I went to the Shania Twain concert last night. I'm absolutely kicking myself for leaving my camera in the car last night because we were 50 feet from the stage. Absolutely kicking myself.

The opening band, Emerson Drive, was pretty good. I like country music in their style: more rock than twang. They played U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" to perfection. A great warmup act.

This concert was originally scheduled for April 6, but was moved to July 10 for reasons I've forgotten, making this the last stop on her Up! Tour. A long touring schedule seemed to show when she started off rather poorly - the first song ("Man! I Feel Like a Woman!") was as much spoken as it was sung. After the first song, however, she seemed to find her groove (and Shania's groove is an incredible place :-D)

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 521); »

Question: What did Edwards add to the Democratic ticket?

My Answer: Nothing but another scheisty trial lawyer who looks a little younger than 51. If we care about how a potential vice president looks as much as the news has lately led me to believe we do, I'm seriously tempted to move to Canada. Edwards has abandoned North Carolinians, missed countless votes, and served less than one term. Before that, he made millions suing for malpractice with emotions and questionable science as his basic argument. But he sure looks young an vibrant, doesn't he!!! Politics is bullshit, and I'm reminded of Reagan's quote: "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I've come to realize there is a very close resemblance to the first."

The voting booth is not the champagne room, people!

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Both of these books are now available: Mac OS X Panther Hacks and CSS Cookbook from O'Reilly (and Barnes & Noble, etc.). I served as the Technical Editor for both, and both now sit on my shelves as valuable references.

The CSS Cookbook will come in handy enough when Tiger's Dashboard widgets (constructed in HTML, CSS, etc.) come to the front, as well as with your blog, personal site, etc. Panther Hacks is another in the hacks series and is rather well-encompassing.

Question: How do you stack up in the Presidency Match Quiz?

My Answer: I'm 50% Joe Lieberman, with Cheney and Bush a close second and third. John Kerry got 18% and John Edwards 22%. Thanks Josh.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I seem to have misplaced my targets from day three, so here we move on to day four.

Misses tend to be down and to the left. Occasionally I'll catch myself worrying about the down and left, or reacting to a flinch, and I'll get a flier up and to the right. I've even got a few misses showing here, but overall, the groups are tighter.

Every mistake - every shot outside of the black - I can easily trace to a mistake on my part. A mental lapse, a flinch. It's very difficult to not flinch - or at least to blink - when you're firing a weapon. This will be tough to overcome.

The target images were created in OmniGraffle. It took entirely too long to create and entirely too long to mark up. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any software available for doing this type of thing.