Milwaukee Eating Liberally eats this week — Wed. Oct. 1 ‘08 @ Beans & Barley

Eating Liberally, which one astute blogger (ignore the first two smarmy comments) described as Drinking Liberally’s solid cousin, meets on the first Wednesday of the month. Tomorrow, Wednesday Oct. 1, we will be eating at Beans and Barley, 1901 E. North Avenue, at 6 PM. Join us! Moderates, conservatives, and in-between are quite welcome as well. A good time is guaranteed for all.

Go Brewers!

This is what happens when you I to Chicago for the day — the Brewers head to the playoffs for the first time since I’ve lived in Wisconsin! While I had nothing to do with it, it’s a great day for Milwaukee and the Brewers anyway. This year the team played like I’d never seen ‘em do, and they show no sign of letting up. I hope we make it far!

A Detailed Analysis of the Economic Meltdown in Cartoon Form

One of the first and only things I’ve seen that make any sense of the financial wreck we’re in is this cartoon from funny man Lee Camp. I’m not sure if he made it explicitly for Laughing Liberally (sister group of Drinking Liberally and Eating Liberally), but that doesn’t matter. That’s where I found it. Enjoy. [Link.]

Issue 2 of the Milwaukee Anthropologist is online

My friend and colleague Mike Timm has released the second issue of his new journal Milwaukee Anthropologist.

The journal is described “[as] an experimental publication that seeks to unite voices of enlightened authority from disparate disciplines, engaging a conversation about themes of human import.” In other words, may I say that it brings insightful voices from bright people on subjects not often given much direct attention, in this case, death.

Enjoy!

Link: Milwaukee Anthropologist

Was iPhoto causing data corruption and permissions errors?

A while ago, prior to my MacBook’s hard drive being replacd, I noticed that something was occasionally eating pictures. Some photos would come through looking like they’d been run through a circular saw and then sloppily glued back together. Others would cause iPhoto to take its sweet time while opening a picture. Weeks later, while trying to look at some pictures in the Finder, I noticed picture files in the iPhoto Library that had a size of 0K (zero kilobytes). The corresponding picture in iPhoto would cause grief in iPhoto, sometimes crashing the program. (Thankfully in this day of Mac OS X, one crashing program does not the whole computer bring down.)

So, is it iPhoto? Is it the Samsung camera? Could it have been that one time I accidentally unplugged the camera before unmounting it via iPhoto or Finder caused a cascading stream of data corruption and bad blocks on the hard disk that were later diagnosed at the Apple Store? I never had problems with any other files, only those in the iPhoto Library. Inquiring minds want to know!

P.S. — Hello MacSurfer.com!

LA Times: Letterman chides McCain for suspending his campaign

Yeah, Dave’s just a little annoyed. His giving the absent McCain a piece of his mind about canceling tonight’s apperance can already be found on YouTube, before the show has aired. You can find it at the bottom of this LA Times article.

A clear thought on Walker’s cronyism

My dear almost-wife Stacie said, “This is the equivalent of the parents eating steak while giving the kids oatmeal, all the while claiming ‘Sorry, kids, we don’t have the money for proper food for you.’”

A recall most certainly is in order. If CRG doesn’t start it, I just might have to.

Why isn’t there a recall against Scott Walker?

This is unbelievable. Slightly old news at this point, next to McCain suspending his campaign at this point. But seriously, why isn’t there a recall against Scott Walker? First he’s driving the county government into a Stygian abyss. Now he’s trying to sneak raises to his cronies.

JSOnline: Walker issues hefty raises to top Milwaukee County aides

Meanwhile, the parks, transit, the jails, and the county infrastructure are all suffering and crumbling. But Walkers aides are living large off the backs of county taxpayers! How’s that for “reform”?

James Rowen hit the nail on the head twice in his post.

A great experience at the Apple Store

After making two previous trips to the Apple Store at Bayshore Mall, I’d had enough. I was even ready to be assertive with my demands for service. (How un-liberal, pshaw!) But they went above and beyond my expectations. At first, it didn’t look that good. When the words “replace the hard drive” passed the store Genius’ lips, I was preparing myself to days, if not a week, without a working computer. But then he said, “let me check to see if we have one in stock.” They did, so he went in back to find the service technician. A moment later he came back and said “We can have it done in a few hours.” 

I can find a way to deal with that!

So he’s typing stuff in, and then he asks, “You’re Jason Haas… of LinuxPPC?”

Astonished — dare I say delighted? — he shook my hand.

For the first time in history, I was recognized in an Apple Store for my old school tech cred and previous Slashdot fame. That feels pretty good on the ol’ ego.

And my MacBook® will be ready in a short time. That’s not too shabby!

A brief break from blogging

(Know what’s cool? The iPod Touch somehow recognized my mis-tapping of “blogging,” and its non-intrusive spelling suggestion corrected it for me. Nice.)

Anyhow, school has suddenly taken on much greater significance in my life than blogging (hah, got it a second time), so I’ll be taking a brief hiatus from blogging while getting very deep into the works of Homer and analyzing the Third Reich. Among other things. Let me just say that after reading The Odyssey, the music of both Nick Cave and The Church (who once shared the title of favorite band in the world with Ministry…) makes a lot more sense now. Damn literate rockers… getting all literary on us…

I’ll be around still, just a touch less profane profuse with my posts.

Update: I got my computer back. Disregard the above.