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August 7, 2003
Rick Klau writes:
I had an interesting validation of grassroots involvement and the Dean campaign tonight. My visibility to the campaign is solely due to my campaign blog (which led to helping them out on their campaign blog, which led to Joe Trippi knowing me).
We’re so used to being treated like dumb consumers by campaigns, the fact that the Net’s given us a way to participate and be heard is shocking…
For those who, seemingly reasonably, told me during my Computer Troubles that I should have bought my computer from a reputable dealer like Dell in order to avoid problems…
My friend Carol bought a Dell computer on my advice a week ago. For under $500 she got a fast, capacious new machine, sans monitor. It arrived a few days ago and yesterday she set it up. (The fact that Carol was able to wait a few days before uncrating it tells you that she is not the technofanatic most of us are.) She plugged in her old monitor, a Sony, flipped the switch with the confidence of someone who has bought a pre-built, pre-loaded, pre-configured machine … and watched it fail. As soon as Windows XP Home loaded, the monitor displayed three images of the desktop in horizontal bands.
After assuring her that this was not some new UI scheme from Microsoft, I walked her through some of the basics over the phone, although the fact that each of the images was cut off at the bottom made it rather difficult. After 45 minutes, I was ready for her to reinstall Windows but decided that this would be a good time to call Dell. Perhaps they’ve run into this before. Perhaps something on their utilities CD would fix it. After all, because the monitor worked fine before Windows booted, it was pretty clearly a driver issue.
Carol spent four hours with Dell Support going through jumping jacks until the support guy finally decided it was a driver issue. He gave her the URL to download a new driver and hung up because Carol connects via dial-up on her single phone line. The URL led to a 404.
Carol called me. We searched for the driver on Dell’s site, and sure enough, the page was down. We found the driver on Intel’s page (it’s an Intel graphics card) and she downloaded it. She installed it. Unreadable display.
After arguing for half an hour with Dell Support that she needs to talk with a supervisor and not do more jumping jacks, she finally was connected. They’re sending someone to her house. So, presumably this will end happily quickly unlike my own protracted struggle. At least, let’s hope so.
August 6, 2003
Greg “LinuxMan” Cavanagh points out — apropos to my blogging about not being held responsible for what linked sites say — that there’s a discussion on slashdot about a boy who linked to a bad site.
Mike O’Dell points us to the Crash Bonsai art of John Rooney … bonsai trees and model cars brought together the way you always wanted to see them.
August 5, 2003
The PayDemocracy.com site may turn out to be a good idea, but the page that lets supporters aggregate their small contributions to Howard Dean is at this moment the very definition of optimistic:
Goal: $1,000,000,000.00
Needed: $999.999,995.00
Hurry up, folks, only 4 months, 28 days, 11 hours to go!
Ed Cone runs an email-based exclusive interview with Sen. John Edwards.
Dan Gillmor puts well what’s different and right about the Dean campaign’s approach to the Internet.
Surely a bear that watches a great blue heron admires its gawky beauty.
The fish the heron eats probably has a different aesthetic judgment. That’s the problem with being an insider.
(Ok, time to go back indoors.)
The Boston Globe reports that Gene Robinson, under consideration to become the first openly gay Episcopelian bishop is “affiliated” with an organization called Outright that has links on pages that “can lead users to webistes that some consider pornographic.”
Is there anything we can do to squelch this particular purity test right now? Forget the fact that Robinson hasn’t had anything to do with Outright for five or six years, according to The Globe. Forget that the branch he was affiliated with had nothing to do with that particular web site. The point is that when we link to a site (not to a particular page within that site), we can’t be hung for everything that site might choose to put up.
Let me be more specific: I happily link to, say, Halley in my blogroll. This doesn’t mean that I agree with everything Halley says. Lord knows what Halley is going to say! And Lord bless her for it!
And let me be more specifically specific: the Howard Dean blog has a blogroll. It is a 100% stone certainty that some of those linked blogs are going to say things that will turn the Governor’s stomach. It’s just bound to happen. And Lord love him for it.
I am just waiting for the first media report — prompted by Republican “oppo” research — about some outrageous claim made by someone the Dean weblog links to. And then we’ll have a choice. Either we Americans will teach ourselves that links are just links or we’ll shut down the conversation. And which way makes our democracy stronger? I think I actually know the answer to that one.
From the Presidential Debates of 2004:
President Bush: And isn’t it a fact, Governor Dean, that your web page that you’re so proud of linked to a web site that is in favor of legalizing marijuana and that called the underage Olsen Twins “hot pre-babes”?
Governor Dean: George, have you ever in your life used a browser?
August 4, 2003
While I’m on vacation, I like to break up the reading of sleazy entice-and-disappoint tabloids (Angelina Jolie’s Lesbian Lover refers to an affair she had in 1996, the proof that Kobe is innocent is that a college student says that his accuser sometimes had sex) with the Real Stuff: The Weekly World News.
Is the WWN the funniest weekly publication in America? “Stars Are Holes in a Tin Roof,” a scientific group maintains. “Women’s Hot Flashes Cause Global Warming!” a scientific group maintains. “Granny Builds a Super Bicep Playing Slots,” complete with a photo that still bears the stamp of PhotoShop. “Military Doplhins Turn Traitor!: Uncle Sam Wants to Execute Them!” “All-New Predictions from Nostradamus’ Idiot Brother (NostraDUMBas).”
Ok, it’s no Jon Stewart, but it sure beats reading the news. Or maybe I’m just weak from living with an AOLousy connection for a week…
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