collisionbend.com

Molly, Eric: instead of one of you — or both of you — going to John, let’s have John come here — to Cleveland, Ohio.

In other words, let’s move the mountain to Muhammed, not the other way around.

I’ll volunteer my house — my living room, or my dining room — for the day or two that it will take Mr. Dvorak to learn what makes CSS tick (which, for me, at least, is child’s play). I have the wireless connectivity, plus hard-wired connectivity, a decent server to experiment with, a fast (3mbps connection) DSL line, and more.

Between the three of us, we can teach Mr. Dvorak the proper way to handle CSS, the ins and outs, the good and the bad.

We can also teach him exactly where he is erring. We can show him why pushing the old methods just won’t do the trick anymore, and why we web designers/developers must separate content from presentation — just as newspaper and magazine publishers have done for the last 15 years (hey — my bride is now the Managing Editor of the News-Herald — she was promoted! — and she doesn’t worry about styles!).

In fact, it would be my pleasure to host the gathering.

What say ye? Can we find a time that is mutually agreeable?

(73.8 — 65.4 — 6.4 — a backslide!)

I’m beginning to think that Noah had the right plan: build an ark, let it rain, and get the heck out of Dodge.

I’m about 4 miles or so West of the main news in the linked CNN story. My back yard flooded, along with the back yards of several neighbors; the street behind us was impassable last night.

My garage had about 3 inches of water in it, too: the drain clogged, forcing the water to move to the driveway drain about 15 feet away. The roar from the drain kept me awake last night.

My basement, however, is bone dry.

In a previous post, I wondered about how certain types of SPAM end up in my email inbox.

I’m not really wondering how it got there, as I am fully aware of that (someone sent it to me, durrrrr…), and I’m not really wondering why.

I just find it interesting that an email with illegal characters (yes, those are illegal characters for email) can even get through the system. It just goes to demonstrate how broken the email system really is.

On a side note, those email were all sent in the year 2038. Talk about a time warp.

So I did some poking around, mostly over at Sam Spade, and a little research at places like arin.net, ripe.net and a few others, and collected some information.

No, I can’t share that information publicly here, as it will undoubtedly increase my SPAM level, already multiplied several-fold since that last post. Email me for the dirty details.

Suffice it to say that I’ve developed a nasty little blackhole for my email. It’s one of the nice things about owning your own domain. And the management console at mediatemple provides an excellent tool for accomplishing exactly this task.

I created a number of rules this afternoon that my server exercises when an email enters my inbox. If it sees one of the rules violated, it deletes the email.

And it works like a charm: from 100+ SPAM per day to zero.

Zero.

It is far more precise than the clumsy filtering tools available in Thunderbird, Mac Mail, Entourage, and Outlook, which are more like trying to kill a cockroach with a sledgehammer — you do more damage to the floor around the roach than to the roach itself (that is, if you even manage to hit the roach in the first place!)

It also means that I now don’t receive email from a couple of areas in the world, namely Taiwan, South America, and a large portion of Denmark, but this doesn’t bother me as I don’t generally receive email from these areas at all — except for the SPAM, of course.

Funny, as it won’t work on comment spam, as about half of what filters through to Akismet comes from the US…

While reading cnn.com the other day, I stumbled across these pages. You’ll need QuickTime — and you’ll have to register with the site (don’t worry — it’s free):

Beirut Panoramas

It’s about the only thing I’ve seen of any quality out of the Middle East these days, and I’m not speaking of the level of journalism: I don’t like to see war for any reason; I understand that there are instances where it is unavoidable, however.

This one makes me nervous. Perhaps it’s my Catholic upbringing combined with all of the different prophesies I’ve heard about this area of time we inhabit — and there are, as you might expect, a number of right-wing Christian groups that think the apocalypse is right around the corner.

I tend to disagree with this assessment, but I’m still nervous. I just don’t like to see war — especially in the Middle East.

(73.8 — 66.2 — 5.6)

I’m really starting to get tired of living in Euclid.

Last night, a group of about 20 very loud teenagers (perhaps early 20s) walked up and down our street, screaming and yelling, swearing, hitting each other, with at least three cars following them, for about 20 minutes or so.

The cops were called; nothing happened: the police never even bothered to show up.

The dispatcher asked about the problem; it turns out that they are keenly aware of this particular problem and are “trying to do something about it.”

Of which, this means one thing: they can’t do a thing.

Their explanation was, “we’re trying to get someone over there.”

They were probably out ignoring all of those ultra-loud motorcycles that roar through the city throughout the night, waking everyone in their path.

Looks like Euclid is on a pace to become East Cleveland in about — what? — 18 months or so?

This is sacrilege:

This was a horrifying experience, made no less so by Boot Camp not partitioning my hard drive correctly the first time.

Note to future Boot Camp users: once Boot Camp reports that it has successfully partitioned your hard drive, and you’ve burned your Mac/Win drivers disk, REBOOT without installing Windows! If you don’t, you might have a difficult time installing.

My install hung repeatedly where you have a choice to install Windows (Enter), repair the Windows install (R), or Quit without installing (F3). It wouldn’t take keyboard input, and I had to power off and power on holding the Option key to select my boot drive.

I almost borked the entire computer.

I’m lucky I had another Mac nearby to access Apple Support on the web. I’m also fortunate that since I have a lot of experience loading operating systems and programs on computers, I resisted the urge to panic.

From this experience, I’d say that this is not for the faint of heart: Windows is a gut-wrenching install to begin with; I never liked installing that OS — in any version. Perhaps it’s a throwback to the early days when Windows wasn’t the most stable of products; today it still gives me the creeps.

All in all, however, now that I have finished and installed all the programs that I need to run on the platform and then played around with it a bit, I can say this:

The Macintosh runs Windows better than any Windows-based machine can.

Figures.

I’m so glad I switched.

(73.8 — 61.8 — 12.0)

Talk about a harrowing experience: I just tried to load WinXP onto my new MacBook, the replacement for my crashed and burned PC. It failed, and I almost borked the entire Mac, giving me a heart attack in the process.

What pales me is that I’m getting to that age (according to family history) where a heart attack is almost a certainty. All I have to say to that is, well, I can’t print it here: this is a G-rated blog…

Thank God it’s a Mac; a PC would have been completely smashed with what I did.

As far as the new Mac goes: I’m loving every blessed minute of it! I’m glad I switched! Thank you! ;-)

But: I’m in the middle of a project that’s good for substantial income, and I need Windows running on this sleek new ‘puter (and I need it NOW!), so if anyone out there can help, I’d appreciate it loads.

Either comment or email me if you have my email address: I’ll get either. Just don’t leave me hanging here, OK?

Thanks in advance!