"Action figures" from cartoons are nothing new. But this Peter and Lois Griffin two-pack from Family Guy really takes the cake. Actually, that site's got a bunch of amusing ones. Wonder Woman Barbie, Christmas Story figurines, porn stars (with removable clothes, naturally)... Well, shuck mah cornpone, they've got NASCAR dolls! (Gee, why are those so much cheaper than all the others?) Order both of them, and receive a mullet extension absolutely free!

Well, there goes the last shred of respect I had for Ben Stein. I know he worked for Nixon and all, but to praise him as a hero for "fighting for peace" (in other countries), while completely ignoring that Nixon and his staff were committing crimes in order to subvert the basis of democracy in our own country — and, of course, to paint Mark Felt as a traitor for divulging classified information (as though the commission of crimes by our elected officials and their appointees should be protected as classified information ) — demonstrates a remarkable lack of integrity, honor and conscience.

I wondered how long it would be before someone moved to repeal the 22nd Amendment. (You know... the one that limits Presidents to only two terms?)

There's this piece of software I had a frustrating experience with today; let's call it Program X. Here is what I imagine to be part of the design process for Program X:

"Hey, when the user types in numeric values to be used in a calculation, should we do any checking to see whether or not the values are within the legal range, or even numbers at all?"

"Nah, that's too much work. We'll just plug the values straight into the calculation, and if they're not what the program's expecting, let's just let it crash to the desktop without any sort of helpful error message at all! It'll be fun!"

"But what if somebody mistypes something?"

"Well, then, that's their problem, not ours!"

Three smegging hours I spent trying to solve a persistent crashing today, time which I really needed to be spending on something else. My only remaining dilemma is just how sarcastic to be when reporting the bug. First-year computer science students learn about range-checking input values; how is it that purportedly experienced, professional programmers seem to feel it's unnecessary?

Of course, even if I do report it, there's no hope that the programmers will actually fix it, as reporting a crash caused by invalid user input is the computer equivalent of "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!" — especially when they're focused on pushing a final release out the door so they can wash their hands of it and move on to the next thing.

(I was going to use the "Faces of Insanity" icon for this post, but then Squelch would go away until the post had scrolled off the page.

TV, VCR, DVD player, PVR, cable box, stereo... too many damn remotes! I gave up on universal remotes years ago; as extensive as their device lists were, they never seemed to have the ones I owned, and the ones that learned from my existing remotes would have to be programmed all over again whenever I changed the batteries. And even then, they never had the right buttons; for example, if I wanted to pause a DVD and zoom in on something, which I did often, I had to haul out the original DVD remote, because the universal ones only provided the basic controls.

But once Karen mentioned how unwieldy the remotes had become, I knew I had to do something. Rather than using cable ties to strap all the remotes into a giant control panel, like someone I know, I decided to give the world of universal remotes one last try.

Thanks to the magic of the Intarweb, I was able to research the available options and come up with one that might fit the bill. It's got a pretty extensive device list, it's got a built-in modem so you can update the device list, it can learn from existing remotes, has permanent memory retention for when the batteries die, and it's got enough buttons that I can stuff my entire 44-button DVD remote in there with room to spare, and keep the button mappings relatively consistent across all six devices (with room for two more). And not even all that expensive if you know where to look.

Now only time will tell if it'll work as advertised, or if it'll collect dust like all the other "universal" remotes I've bought.

I have to admit, I really like the look of the modern Mac GUI. Not that that's much of an admission, given the Playskool-like design of the default Windows XP interface. The OSX Tiger "Brushed Metal" look is especially nifty.

But I'm not about to give up the PC world just because the interface looks like ass. At the rate I go through hardware upgrades, I'd put myself in the poorhouse if I Switched; hooray for open standards which drive the price down through competition. Not to mention I'd have to spend at least a couple thousand dollars to buy the Mac equivalents of the commercial software I use (although I use freeware whenever possible, sometimes it just doesn't measure up to the pricey stuff).

But... with the right software, the XP interface can be made to look a bit better:

Click for the whole thing. Well, half of it, at any rate.

Ahhh. Much better, though after years of the taskbar being at the bottom, having it at the top is kind of disconcerting. Though that's where it was in OS/2, so I should be able to get used to it again.

Ha, which reminds me of a funny story. Once upon a time, back at my previous place of employment, I replaced some of the graphic resources in my Windows 9x machine's system files to make it look as much like OS/2 Warp 4 as I could, and replaced the boot screen with the Warp one. The computer had to go in for service — it was randomly crashing, even when sitting idle, and it was (as far as I could tell) free of viruses and other nasties. The technician didn't even try to diagnose the problem, as "You've got some weird hybrid of Windows and OS/2 on there, and I have no idea where to even start with it." The kicker is that he tried to charge us for service he didn't even attempt to perform. But if there's one thing I can say about my old boss, it's that he was more tenacious than a pit bull when it came to money, so we didn't have to pay for it.