Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/17/hard-core-patriotism/
“More than 155,000 American women have served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Among their ranks, the Pentagon said, are more than 16,000 single mothers.”
The Washington Post
via The Week
My hunch is that a lot of these women are reservists or National Guard, doing a true “hardship” deployment. I imagine than some became single parents while deployed–serving overseas puts a lot of strain on young families, and many families do not survive.
Anyway . . . any veteran who might read this, I say “thank you.”
And, any single parent who might read this, “thank you.”
And, any single parents who is serving or has served in a combat zone? I guess I would add “wow!” And, I suppose “I hope that life will smile upon you. I hope you come home safe.”
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/19/forget-saddam/
6.
Forget Saddam. Imagine for one moment
all the work-roughened hands
that have picked your food and sewn your clothes
and kept you alive since day one.
When we die, will there be a reckoning
of what and whom we’ve used
to pay for our lives, and how,
and will lack of imagination be allowed as an excuse?
Excerpt from Saddam Hussein is Writing Poetry in Solitary Confinement
Alison Luterman
Via “The Sun”
December 2006
Happy Holidays.
When I read the above, I was thinking “well, there is a lot that I have to give, as well.”
In that idea, the word “have” can be read as possession and as imperative.
Also “read” can function in the past-tense and the present tense.
The ambiguities of English, like the ambiguities of life, have their own beauty.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/24/aa-860/
In networking we refer to “the last mile” as the most difficult, time-consuming, expensive bit of the journey. I am waiting on a plane that has just traveled 2,000 miles across the continent. We are stuck here on the tarmac because our gate is occupied. I could get out and walk!
“Ladies and gentlemen, our ten minute wait has come and gone, and the aircraft at the gate has called for maintenance. We know there are people making connections from this aircraft and if it looks like the wait will go too long they’ll get us another gate.”
“Why don’t they just get us another gate?”
“We now have a new arrival gate: gate kilo-1. Well be starting that way shortly.”
Anyway, we call it “the last mile” because for the most part, long-haul network routes are like air travel, which moves pretty well between the hubs. It is getting from the local phone company “central office” through the copper wires on the telephone poles and neighborhood junction boxes that sometimes calls for improvisation and creativity.
We are headed toward the gate . . . but now we are stuck again, waiting on the new gate to be readied. However, the engines just started whirring and we are again rolling so . . . I should be at Grandma’s house for Christmas very soon now!
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chicago. Please enjoy the holidays . . .”
Yay!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/26/thunderbird-hotkeys/
Just thinking out loud here after some casual Googling left me unsatisfied . . .
I like Thunderbird, mostly, but while it has an extensions interface, I am finding it lacking for basic customization. For example, I like to toss e-mails in an “archive” folder . . . but as far as I can tell I have to drag messages to the folder every time I want to archive them! I dug around and found the “file” button . . . but that thing is just awful! I’d like to . . . press “a” or something, or click an icon, and get the mail archived that way. (Like, to delete a message I press “delete” . . . eh?)
Has anyone found a useful configuration option / extension / doohickey to realize this stuff? Or should I re-acquaint myself with mutt for e-mail triage?
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/29/jpeg-exif-autorotate/
My last camera had a special sensor in it so it could mark the picture it took with Exif metadata indicating the correct orientation. I set my Flickr account to “auto-rotate” the images and everything was groovy, except Windows and the Macintosh screensaver don’t know for EXIF metadata, so some pictures stay sideways when viewed on my computers.
In my new camera, I have to run through my pictures and manually set the rotation before I offload them to my computer. Again, this because the Windows explorer and picture viewer doohickey, which is otherwise pretty neat, doesn’t grok Exif metadata, so if I use Windows to rotate my photos, I will suffer generational loss on my JPEGs.
Anyway, rotating images within the camera is pretty easy, so I just do that before I offload. For Windows, I Googled and found this awesome little utility, that will go through and rotate your images, losslessly, based on the orientation set in the Exif on the camera. You just right-click on an image, or a directory of images, and it will go through and rotate all your pictures just right once and for all!
Well, until you upload the rotated images to Flickr. If you have enabled auto-rotation in Flickr, and auto-rotate your images the right way beforehand, then Flickr will rotate your images again! At least, this happened to me!
So, I turned off Flickr auto-rotate, and from now on, I’ll set my image orientation in the camera before I transfer to Windows, and on Windows, I’ll right-click and auto-rotate before uploading to Flickr.
Of course, this would all be easier if the Windows explorer supported lossless rotation. At least it warns you that it doesn’t when you try to rotate an image. You would think that if they bothered to warn you they could have just stuck a summer intern on the project. Oh well.
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2006/12/31/birthday-info/
This is not a New Year’s Resolution, simply something-I-want-to-do, and that is to keep track of everyone’s birthday, and hopefully send cards.
But, I lack data. If you are reading this, and you are a friend or acquaintance, please shoot me a quick e-mail with your birthday, birth year, and address.
Optional: Please indicate if you would like to share your information with other friends-of-dannyman, in which case I’ll dump your data in a pile with everyone else who wants to share, then I’ll forward the resulting list to the sharing types.
Thanks and Happy 2007!
Update: Please send phone numbers, as appropriate. I will not share the phone numbers. :)
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