Archive for the 'Politics' Category

As those of us in the United States settle into our extended weekend this Memorial Day, I think it’s important not to forget that it’s not just a day off from work.  It’s a time to remember those who’ve paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country.

Thank you to everyone who’s served, from the Revolution to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  You have my deepest respect and appreciation.

And a quick note to my colleagues at Mozilla (whether employees or contributors): have a good weekend, but be careful out there!

Yesterday, the Tennessee state legislature passed a bill banning smoking in most workplaces, with the only exceptions being those that do not admit people under the age of 21, businesses with 3 or fewer employees, or nursing homes (figuring that the dying deserve to smoke if they want to, I guess).

This is wonderful news, and I’m very happy about it.  The governor intends to sign it, and from what I understand, enforcement will begin on October 1.

Finally I’ll be able to come home from taking my 2-year-old daughter out with me to a restaurant without her coming home reeking of smoke.

Sarah’s iMac is up and running again and now I’m in the process of reinstalling all her software. I’m not sure yet when the enclosure so we can try to recover some of her data will be here, but hopefully it’ll be here soon enough. We have to return the original drive within 10 days or they charge us for the replacement.

I’ve got the basic productivity type apps reinstalled: Microsoft Office, iWork, iLife, that kind of thing. I’ve got Firefox installed and her bookmarks are all happily synced up. Her email is working.

Still need to get her favorite games reinstalled, plus fonts and assorted other apps and utilities. And I need to get it configured to do backups, because right after a scare like this is the best time to configure to do backups (well, before it is better, but it’s a lot less common).

I’ve got a few more hours worth of installing and configuring to go through. It’s all kinds of good fun.

In about an hour, we head for the airport to send me on my way to California for the MoCo Q1 onsite meeting. In theory the developer relations team is getting together to meet over breakfast tomorrow or Wednesday, but realistically I know that we have a history of not managing to pull it off. Shaver’s a popular guy (or at least has a lot of demands on his time), so getting everyone together in one place to actually discuss things is tricky.

Once again, the meeting has been scheduled at a time that I have to leave early — I’ll be heading home Thursday morning. Our season tickets for the theater have just happened to coincide with the past three of these quarterly onsite meetings. Sure not interested in skipping it after spending all that money to buy the tickets.

Today I fly through Atlanta. As they say down here, “If you’re flying Delta, the road to hell goes through Atlanta.” I get to spend a couple of hours there to chill out, but would prefer if it were somewhere more mid-journey. Oh well…

So the North Koreans tested a nuke. What do we do now? I certainly don’t like the idea of a country run by a loon like Kim Jong-Il having nuclear weapons. In my ideal world, we’d test one of our own in their country. Maybe two or three. You know, until they learn that nuclear weapons aren’t very nice at all.

Of course, in an ideal world, nobody would have them — or, more to the point, feel the need to have them.

In reality, I don’t know what to do, although something has to be done. The problem is that once a country has them, the options of ways to take care of the problem get pretty slim.

What a mess.