Closing Remarks Well, it's the end of what was, by and large, a pretty crappy year. It sucked for a lot of people as the economy downturn made itself felt and then after the events of September 11th. We've seen layoffs, terrorism, war, one scary-ass Attorney General, and far, far too much Brittany. As for us, we've been through two miscarriages, a layoff which, while voluntary on my part, dropped me into a stagnant job market, and whole lots more. But everyone is healthy and Jack is just a joy. We have friends who have gone way above and beyond the call of duty (you know who you are Chris) and friends who have been, well, friends (and you all know who you are -- I'd list names but I know I'd forget one of you and never hear the end of it!). Long distant friends have returned to our lives (one I just got in touch with today for the first time in... wait, let me count... 15 years) and others are still right where we left them (except that we just lost another friend to Texas, what the hell is up with that?). So, my resolutions for next year are as follows:

1. Properly thank everyone who has done so much for us and to always be sure I am being there and doing the same for them, should they need it.
2. Get going on baby #2 and have it work this time, dammit!
3. Get ourselves settled and stop the nomadic life we are living currently.
4. Get ourselves to a place where we can sit back and enjoy life. Really enjoy life.
5. loseweightstopbitingnailsyaddayadda.
6. There is no #6.
7. Play more Playstation 2 (it's my only vice, give me a break!)

Happy New Year everyone! Let 2002 be a lot better than 2001 was... PS: "Closing Remarks" does not mean I am stopping blogging. You can't get rid of me that easily...

Esquire:Humor:This Way Out:What I've Learned: God

The FBI's House Calls

ARTS & FARCES internet : Is spam killing email? Me, I just set up good filters. It's been getting worse, but I'm still able to keep ahead of the mess... but it's nearing time for me to retire my normal username at my domain and change to something else. It's also time for me to protect my email address better...

A Message from Tim Booth, lead singer of the band James:Tim Booth's Statement to James Fans After much deliberation I have decided it's time for me to leave JAMES. Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn. I'm very sad about this.

No links today. I just wanted to throw out there how much I love West Wing. Last night's episode blew me away but I was even more blown away this morning in the shower when I realized the significance of what the President gave Leo at the very end. I'd say more but my wife reads this and she hasn't seen the episode yet. Bad News: Giambi to the Yankees. Good News: Everett to the Rangers. Go see: Ocean's Eleven. Good night.

Where Did That Galaxy Go? In the "not very far future" the universe will be a darker and lonelier place, and astronomers will look to the skies to see only dimming, frozen images of distant galaxies, like the fading photographs of friends who don't call anymore. That was depressing.

The Layout Reservoir - BlueRobot: More sample layouts.

W3C CSS Validation Service: What ever child wants this Christmas.

CSS Tutorial: Looks good, but still haven't looked at it much.

WebReview.com: Style Sheet Reference Guide: More by Eric Meyer.

Guide to Cascading Style Sheets: Just found this. Looks good but I haven't delved deep yet.

css/edge One of the best sites for innovative CSS use. Designed by Eric Meyer, author of the O'Reilly guide to CSS (a must-have book if you are doing CSS work).

webgraphics: A beautiful site...

Cascading Style Sheets: CSS1, CSS2 Browser Support: what browsers support what... In case you were wondering, I use IE 5.1 for OS X most of the time and Netscape 6.2.x most of the rest. I rarely use OmniWeb anymore as it is dog slow and still has issues rendering some pages which the others do not have.

glish.com : CSS layout techniques: Excellent, basic information for doing page layouts (watch this space, I'll be redoing this very site to be 100% CSS with no tables at all soon...)

BrainJar.com: Experiments in Web Programming Some excellent tutorials. Not all of which work on the Mac, but the CSS stuff does and is invaluable.

The Web Standards Project: Fighting for Standards in our Browsers A good list of browsers and their complaince to standards. Watch out, geek zone. I'm going to be blogging some CSS sites with tutorials and info as well as some XML-RPC stuff as well. We'll get back to politics and education a bit later on :)

Oh Puhleeze: Terminator 3: Attack of the Terminatrix

Higher Ed-K12 Ed and Distance Learning. Finally! post about education and technology. I thought I'd gotten completely lost there for a bit...

Glenn Fleishman on Ashcroft: "Extremism in Opposition to Liberty is a Vice" It's time for Mr. Ashcroft to be forced out of his position and replaced with an Attorney General who is familiar with the Consitutition and statutory U.S. law. The fact that he defends arbitrary treatment of citizens and non-citizens in the U.S., separate non-standard (non-military) treatment of foreign resident or visitors, and criticizes criticism of attacks on liberty all disqualify him from the job.

Andrew Pulrang on Ashcroft Ashcroft cited an Al-Quida terrorist training manual that says, among other nasty things, that terrorists should use the rules and protections of our free society to their advantage in their attempt to destroy us. Fine, I get the irony. Does that mean that we need to stop being a free society? Nazis in the early 1930's used Germany's democratic system to gain power, then promptly used that power to dismantle democracy. Does that mean that it would have been better if Germany hadn't been democratic to begin with? Ashcroft's comment implies that in order to preserve the way we are, we need to become completely different. I disagree. You can go around in circles about this, but we also play into terrorists' hands if we dispense with our civil liberties protections. To me, the only thing to do is to continue to be who we are, authentically, and pursue criminals in a fair, agressive, and straightforward manner. Either our system is the best, most effective one, or it isn't. Personally, I'm putting my faith in our system, civil liberties and all. It will get the job done, and we don't need Ashcroft's thumb on our side of the scales.

New York Times Editorial: Confessions of a Traitor But don't count me among those who quake that Mr. Ashcroft is shredding the Constitution. He does respect some rights, after all, like that of illegal immigrants and terrorists to buy guns in the U.S. without fear of government intrusion. And he just doesn't seem clever enough to undo the Bill of Rights, even with the president's backing. You have to have more command of the law than he does to subvert it.

Dave Winer's Scripting News Weblog Dave on Ashcroft and all the inroads being made against our civil liberties: I know I keep saying this, but my grandfather, who ran from the Nazis, warned me about this when I was a kid, and I will keep passing on what he told me. It's at this point that we can do something. Later there won't be anything we can do. Dave is dead on right. If you will forgive a somewhat geeky reference, one of the major themes in Babylon 5 was the takeover of the Earth Government by something very similar. It became seditious to speak out against the government and people were being arrested and convicted for just speaking their minds. Critics of the show cited this as one of the reasons it was a bad show. How could such a thing happen? It was ludicrous. The writer of the show replied very simply: he took all of that material directly from history. He was appalled at how few people seemed to know anything about Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Commission. If you think it can't happen here, remember that it did happen here. And it can certainly happen again. Any time a populace is scared, it can happen. And, right now, we're scared.

rc3.org Daily To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil. Our efforts have been crafted carefully to avoid infringing on constitutional rights, while saving American lives. A dead on critique of Ashcroft.

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