I’ve been working on writing my first Movable Type plugin. So…
qqq|If this shows up in a ‘quote’ box…|qqq
ccc|And this shows up in a ‘code’ box…|ccc
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And this shows up in a centered div…|ppp
Then it is working! Cool!
Plugged In
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Monthly Archives: November 2004
Watching God
While wandering the Library on Election Night I came across a book that I felt like I should have read ages ago, aaa|Their Eyes Were Watching God|0060931418|aaa by Zora Neale Hurston. I’m not sure why I’ve never read it, having heard it recommened several times. I thought to myself, “today’s the day,” and checked it out.
It was a quick read, only a couple commutes on the train, but it’s one of those stories that will stay with me. I found it difficult to get into at first. Hurston writes in the black vernacular and it took me a while to get used to Ah=I and ken=can, but once it clicked, it clicked.
Janie was a free spirit caught in a world of practical and sober people. Her first two husbands were not love matches, although they offered her the security that she and her grandmother thought she needed. Only after the death of her second husband does she gain the freedom that she truly wants…only to have it… (well, I guess I don’t want to give the whole story away!)
Told from the black perspective in 1930’s Florida, aaa|Their Eyes Were Watching God|0060931418|aaa offers the readers an inside look at what being black was like in the beginning of the 20th century. Entertaining, funny, and though provoking, it is no wonder that so many schools include this book on their reading lists.
Movable Type Upgrade
If you’re reading this, it means that the upgrade to Movable Type 3.121 was a success! I discovered that if I signed up for the free Six Apart Professional Network, I could ge a full-fledged five-user commercial license at no charge! This works great for our setup, and being a member of the Professional Network will be very helpful with my work on this site. I’ll have access to online support, documentation, and a library of resources. I might even end up writing some cool software to enhance Movable Type – namely plugins. Plugins are typically written in Perl, which is my “native” programming language, and though I haven’t worked on any yet, I’ve looked over the documentation and it seems pretty easy! All in all, this upgrade should make life easier and more productive for the bloggers hosted at prwdot.org.
Quotis House
Becky was quoted in an Associated Press article on the Otis House. Also quoted in the article was our friend Jackie Way! You go, girls!
Cheap Meds
As I’ve mentioned before, I am a nasal allergy sufferer. Without my meds, I get sinus headaches, stuffy nose, and on worse days, runny nose, sneezing, and really bad headaches. I take rhinocort, which is a prescription medicine that runs $25 for about a month’s supply. I also take Alavert D-12, a 12-hour medicine which combines loratadine, the active ingredient in Claritin, and pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in Sudafed. Loratadine controls most allergy symptoms, while pseudoephedrine controls sinus congestion.
Alavert D-12 runs $15.99 for a 24-dose pack, or $0.67 per dose. Each dose has the equivalent day of two 30mg Sudafed tablets and one 5mg Loratadine tablet. For a while, I thought this was the best deal I could get, combining two medicines I needed into one pill. That is, until my last doctor’s appointment, where I found out that I could get generic pseudoephedrine and generic loratadine for much cheaper than even the cheapest store brands, at the medical center’s in-house pharmacy. How much cheaper?
Well, today I picked up a bottle of 100 “SudoGest” tablets, equivalent to Sudafed, for $1.77. Yep. Not a typo. One dollar and seventy-seven cents. That works out to $0.02 per pill. Compare that to name-brand Sudafed, which, at best is $7.99 for a 48 pill pack or $0.17 per pill. Even Walgreens’ store brand, Wal-phed, is at best $8.99 for a 96 pill pack, or $0.09 per pill. Dag, yo! And I picked up two boxes of generic 24-hour loratadine, $4.99 for each 30-pill pack, or $0.16 per pill. Compare that to name-brand Claritin, 30 pills for $23.99 or $0.79 each, or Walgreens’ brand Wal-itin, 90 pills for $19.99 or $0.22 per pill. Boo-yah! In addition to the price advantage, separating the two medicines means that I can take the allergy medicine every day, and then take the nasal congestion medicine only when I need it.
Is it sad that I get so excited about things like this?
Musical Degrees of Separation
On the drive to work this morning, I let the iPod choose the music. Here are the songs that it picked on my ride in, in the order they were played:
qqq|”Three Doors” by VAST from Visual Audio Sensory Theater
“20th Century Fox Fanfare” from Star Wars: A New Hope
“Little Drummer Boy” from the Christianbook.com 2003 Christmas commemorative CD
“Hey Now Everybody” by They Might Be Giants from Apollo 18
“Elysium” from the Gladiator motion picture soundtrack
“Santa Evita” from the Evita motion picture soundtrack
“Bad” by U2 from The Best of 1980-1990|qqq
I thought that a fun game to play might be to attempt to connect each randomly-selected song together in some way, sort of like playing the Kevin Bacon game, but not really. So, any takers? Can you connect all of the above songs together in some way? For example, did any of the composers or musicians collaborate on any projects, or appear in television or movies together? Or did any of the composers make reference to any of the other music, movies, etc? I haven’t tried figuring it out myself yet, but I’ll keep you posted if I get anywhere.
Update:
I did “Shuffle Songs” again on the way home. Here’s what I got this time:
qqq|”High Speed” by Coldplay from Parachutes
“Airbag” by Radiohead from OK Computer
“Subway Fight” by James Newton Howard from The Fugitive motion picture soundtrack
“Darkwood V: Passage” by David Darling from Darkwood
“When You’re Gone” by The Cranberries from To The Faithful Departed|qqq
Still haven’t made any connections, but then I haven’t put much thought into it…
Four More Years
Since John Kerry has conceded the election, we now know we’ll be getting four more years of George W. Bush as the United States’ President. At best, it probably won’t be much worse than the past four years. At worst, it could be bad, especially if he makes even more bad decisions than he has in the past four years. At the same time, I don’t think electing Kerry would have been better; we would simply have been exchanging one president with his problems, who only about half of the voters wanted, for another president with his own set of problems, who was also only wanted by about half of the voters. I wasn’t excited about Bush or Gore in the 2000 election, and I wasn’t excited about Bush or Kerry in the 2004 election. I sincerely hope that the 2008 election will bring some more interesting (and more worthy) challengers.
In the meantime, I offer a bit of levity: Mena Trott posted today about Canada 2.0. It’s funny. Laugh. Please?
With love from “New America”…
The Results Are In
Well, for Beverly at least:
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(Data courtesy of CNN)
Beverly’s population was 39,862 as of the 2000 Census. There was a 4.36 increase in population between 1990 and 2000, so I’ll project the same from 2000 to 2010 (I’ve seen a lot of people moving to Beverly and a lot of new housing). So in the last four years, a 1.6% increase would give us 40,500 citizens. As of the 2000 census, 78.49% of the population was of legal voting age, and I’ll assume the same for this year. So that’s roughly 31,788 who should be able to vote. Out of those, I don’t know how many are registered, but let’s be generous and assume that all of them are. So there were a total of 19,480 votes cast for President, which means that about 61.3% of those who were able to vote turned out. Not the greatest, but not terrible either.
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Those of you who are statisticians are probably cringing. I apologize.
We voted.
After all the hoopla about voting machines and pregnant chads and turning away voters that is going on all over the country our voting experiences was a bit of a letdown. We entered the basement room of the Beverly Library and were greeted by several elderly volunteers who checked us off their list. We received our ballots and were ushered to the “voting booth” (a row of rickety, sectioned, counters.)
I took my stubby golf pencil and began to fill in the little ovals. But what to answer? A..? B…? C…? oh wait… Kerry..? Bush…? Legalize Marijuana…? I had a hard time staying inside the lines due to Peter’s vigorous coloring.
All in all we went, we voted, we checked out some library books. What more is there to say?
Wild Swans
Are you tired of all the politalk that you’ve been seeing on tv, the web and this site? Are you anxiously awaiting the end of election day. Do the words, “Hanging Chad” send you into convusions? I have the solution for you. Communism. Well, maybe not as an option for the United States, but it made great reading material for me the last couple weeks.
My most recent read, aaa|Wild Swans|0385425473|aaa by Yung Chang, opened my eyes to life in Communist China. Being a history buff I have studied Communism and the theories and policies of Chairman Mao Zedong but had yet to understand the effects on the Chinese people.
Chang walks the reader through China’s history in conjunction with her own family’s history. We learn about her Great Grandmother, ‘Wu’ Er-ya-tuo (which means, Number Two Girl), her Grandmother, concubine to a War-Lord, and her Mother, an enthusiastic Communist leader and how these women affected the life of the author. The men in these women’s lives make appearences, but are hardly the focus of the book.
The adventures of Chang and her family sometimes border on the unbelievable, but are put into context with the discriptions of Mao’s regulations and the tortures that were carried out by his followers.
This very personal look into Communist China really gives those of us in the capitalist west a unique perspective. The research done by the author along with the fact that she grew up the child of two middle ranking Communist officials, makes this book a logical companion to texts and historical documents regarding the Communist reign. Despite needing to refer to the family tree at the front of the book, and the author’s tendency to go back and forth from story to story, this was a very enlightening read. I’d reccomend it to anyone looking to hear another side of the story.