With the exception of the “memo” layout (or the lemon one, depending on the browser you were viewing the site with), everything should be back to normal. Sort of.

A few of the plugins I had before do not want to cooperate, and I would rather ring in the new year with my lovely wife.

I will finish things up tomorrow.

If things seem a bit wonky here today, it’s because I decided to make a few changes behind the giant curtain. Things should be back to normal shortly.

Update: I am still tweaking some things, but I am sure we will all like it in the end.

Another Update: I upgraded WordPress to 1.5 beta 1 (nightly build) and of course, it hosed my existing layout… That’s what I get for being on the bleeding edge. The site SHOULD be functional, although little things are missing at the moment, like grins, etc. I will work on it throughout the day to get things back to normal.

If you are using Internet Explorer to view this site. Click here to reset the skin of the site so you can actually read the content. :???:

Then again, maybe you cannot even read this post!?!

Update: Okay, so I fixed it. It would have been nice if the question was showing right? haha…

Vinny noticed that something was amiss with the vote results this evening, so I took a look, and wouldn’t ya know it. Someone was trying to pad the vote. So… A fix has been put in place that records your IP address, instead of just setting a cookie.

Have fun, and vote often! :lol:

I, like many others, have experienced a sometimes severe memory leak with Firefox 1.0, and being the diligent person that I am, I decided today to put an end to it.

NO. I am not switching browsers.

Earlier today I came across this following tip and I thought I would try it. I have had a minimum of 7 tabs and a maximum of 31 tabs open at one time with no significant drag on system resources. When I cooked dinner this evening, I decided to leave Firefox on the screen with 20 tabs open. If I had done this before I would notice a significant decline in system performance, including my system clock. Well, it has been about 12 hours and I have not had to restart Firefox to clear up memory. This tip seems to have done the trick. I hope it helps you.

From the Secrets of Firefox 1.0:

Firefox is supposed to dynamically release memory from its RAM cache to other Windows applications as needed. Unfortunately, Firefox 1.0 seems to consume more memory than it should, which hurts performance, when set to the default of 51200 KB (51 MB).

To solve this, Firefox power users recommend limiting the memory cache using the Configuration Console. This frees up memory for other apps, speeding up everything to a greater or a lesser extent, depending on your machine and the applications you run. Here’s how the trick works:

Step 1. Type about:config into Firefox’s Address Bar and press Enter.

Step 2. Right-click any row, then click New, Integer. Type or paste the following preference name into the dialog box that appears (this is a hidden preference that doesn’t exist in the Configuration Console until you create it):

browser.cache.memory.capacity

Step 3. Click OK, then enter the following integer number into the next dialog box, representing 16 MB of RAM for the cache:

16000

Step 4. Click OK to close the dialog box, then close all instances of Firefox and restart it.

If you have a WordPress blog and you have not tried JustBlogIt, you should.

I will wait.

Really. I will. Go try it. Now.

(By the way, this post was done with it).

Go visit Day By Day!

For those of you wondering what the little soapbox guy has been up too, I hear he is traveling around the world.

I hear he is planning to stop by here again sometime and share his thoughts.

Jerry Orbach had a gift for charming audiences — first as a song-and-dance man starring in musicals on and off Broadway, then for 12 years as a sharp-tongued cop on TV’s “Law & Order.”

Along the way, he made films as varied as the gritty crime drama “The Prince of the City” and the smash romance “Dirty Dancing.”

Orbach, who died of prostate cancer Tuesday at a New York City hospital, was beginning another chapter at age 69: He had taken his signature role as Detective Lennie Briscoe, the street-smart, wisecracking quintessential New Yorker, to NBC’s upcoming spinoff, “Law & Order: Trial By Jury.” He is expected to appear in early episodes when the show premieres in March.

On Wednesday, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called him “a friend to all New Yorkers” and “a devoted ambassador of the city.”

…

Orbach is survived by his wife, Elaine Cancialla, whom he married in 1979, as well as sons Chris and Tony from his first marriage.

Rest In Peace, Jerry.

It’s been four days and I am sick and tired of it already.

I am sick of hearing how the United States needs to “buck up” and contribute more to the relief effort. I am tired of hearing that President Bush needs to “be out there” speaking to the Indonesian people about their “pain” and what we plan to do to help them. I am sick of the media trying to spin the additional $20 million in aid as a response to criticism that we were not doing enough. I am tired of people thinking we need to prove our benevolence to “Muslim nations”.

The Bush administration more than doubled its financial commitment yesterday to provide relief to nations suffering from the Indian Ocean tsunami, amid complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.

…

Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums — as well as Bush’s decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy — showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia.

Who, exactly, would he have been speaking to? The victims in the region obviously have no electricity, and I am sure they are pre-occupied with rescue (and survival efforts). The rescuers are probably a little bit too busy trying to save people, so I doubt they will stop to listen to what President Bush would have to say in front of the camera; Images they cannot see, or hear, because they too lack electricity. As we all know, the Muslim world has made it very clear that they cannot stand President Bush, or America, so exactly who is going to feel good having their ego stroked by watching and listening to the President of the United States when everyone in the region affected will not hear those words for many days, or weeks to come?

I have heard some say that this disaster will “stick in the minds” of those in the region, like September 11th sticks in our heads here in the United States.

Are they idiots? Only a total moron would think otherwise.

The area effected by the tsunami is obviously MUCH larger, the number of people affected is obviously MUCH larger, the number of people killed is obviously MUCH larger, so doesn’t it make sense that the disaster itself will stick in the minds of those in the region? Keeping this in mind, wouldn’t the planning and execution of ANY relief effort also be MUCH larger?

There are people dead out there. There are people dying out there. So let’s stop worrying if the President of the United States decides to appear on camera or not, and get assistance where it is needed. If people fail to keep things in perspective now, they will lose all comprehension of the real situation, which is immediate relief — consisting of food, water, clothing, etc…

Bush’s deepened public involvement puts him more in line with other world figures.

Sorry. I find this statement totally asinine. “Public involvement” has absolutely nothing to do with planning a relief effort for the victims, nor does it have any relevance when expressing condolences to world leaders in the region. The world does not have to “see” President Bush to know aid is on the way. President Bush does not need to toe the line with other world leaders. Our aid will speak for itself.

In Britain, the predominant U.S. voice speaking about the disaster was not Bush but former president Bill Clinton, who in an interview with the BBC said the suffering was like something in a “horror movie,” and urged a coordinated international response.

Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling. Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: “The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn’t want to make a symbolic statement about ‘We feel your pain.’ “

Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. “Actions speak louder than words,” a top Bush aide said, describing the president’s view of his appropriate role.

Like we needed President Clinton to tell the world that we needed a “coordinated international response”. If he would have stopped primping for the cameras long enough he would have noticed a massive coordinated international response was already underway. But then again, Clinton might have a different definition for the word “response” anyway.

There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. “It’s kind of freaky,” a senior career official said.

Freaky? No. What’s freaky is that a “senior career official” would think President Bush would NEED to be seen on television when people in the region have no way of seeing or hearing him. Honestly, I don’t know if it was the shock of the event, or the media coverage, but I do NOT remember seeing any world leader live on television telling me how they felt about September 11th. I am not saying they didn’t appear on television, I am just saying that I do not remember seeing them, which brings me to my point. If President Bush took the time to appear live, make sympathetic statements, and send his condolences to the people in the region, would any of them (if they could have seen it in the first place) remember it later, when they looked back on the events of the past week?

Gelb said what appears to be a grudging increase in effort sends the wrong message, at a time when dollar totals matter less than a clear statement about U.S. intentions. Noting that the disaster occurred at a time when large numbers of people in many nations — especially Muslim ones such as Indonesia — object to U.S. policies in Iraq, he said Bush was missing an opportunity to demonstrate American benevolence.

“People do watch and see what we do,” he said. “Here’s an opportunity to remind people of the good we do, and he [Bush] can do it without changing his policy on Iraq or terrorism.”

If the Muslim people of these countries object to our policies, and question our intentions, no amount of “benevolence” is going to change that. Disaster relief will make no difference to those who have an ideological difference with the United States, like I said before, our aid will speak for itself. This is American benevolence at it’s best.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who is frequently outspoken in favor of U.S. humanitarian ventures, said he believes the initial U.S. response has been appropriate, even without a public role for Bush. “I think the world knows we’re a very generous people,” he said.

Exactly. The world already knows how generous we are, so proving our “benevolence” to Muslim nations is irrelevant. They already know what our response will be and they do not have to hear it from President Bush. No amount of humanitarian assistance will change the idealogical differences that make those countries hate us in the first place. (A good example of that is Sri Lanka’s refusal of assistance from the Israeli military).

Among the world’s two dozen wealthiest countries, the United States often is among the lowest in donors per capita for official development assistance worldwide.

Did you catch that hype? OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE. Keyword: Official. I am so tired of hearing that statement that I could scream. But I wont. I just want to point out that the United States provided 40 percent of all the relief aid given in the world last year. So what if we donate the least per capita. We pay the damn bills don’t we?

Speaking of bills we pay…

Take a look at that monstrosity of green glass in New York City that is the United Nations Building.

I think it is high time that those within the walls of that glass house refrain from throwing stones that might just come back to shatter their foundation.