Hooray!

We won! The new overtime rules now have a short shelf-life. I mean, it's not as if Bush will actually veto this legislation. So far...over 4 years, he has vetoed nothing that passes through the House and Senate.

My favorite Dean line applies here.

Bush lied about his service. He has been doing so for at least 5 years...

Atrios has also been all over this today. Check him out.

The Washington Post has the new memos in pdf format. Yes, one actually is titled "CYA"! Here it is:

In addition, it turns out the Bush administration had the memos all along which may mean they violated FOIA requests...funny how they keep coming up with new documents after the old ones are missing/lost/deleted by accident.

Josh Marshall is already all over this.

After a lengthy fight, I've managed to make Internet Explorer behave properly for the website? My weapons?

• The Holly Hack

• Numerous other CSS modifications

• A special "IE-only" css page.

• An unwillingness to let the still-buggy IE for XP Service Pack 2 die horribly.

Give it a shot. Go run around the site. Tell me if any images look funny. (There are a few vintage images that don't have the softer shadow applied...but I don't want to have to search through all the data to find those few outliers.) More importantly, from now on, the site should look just fine in all browsers.

I hate IE, but according to the usage logs tons of you still use it. Grr. I tested out the new version today (it has pop-up blocking) but was rather unimpressed. I mean, still no tabs! However, it now has the ability to disable those dreaded "browser helper objects" which seem to infest an unpatched system in two minutes. You know, the ones that say "click here to speed up your computer" and end up installing tons of spyware. At least m$ did something right.

On a completely unrelated note, I actually got an article posted on slashdot politics yesterday. Go look for it!

And look for any bugs on IE...

The Poor Man managed to score an advance copy of the book and has highlighted the too-hot-for-tv stories the press hasn't even had a chance to fully digest. Click over there to check them out!

Hmm. So much is going down today it's tough to keep track of it all...let's run down through the big stories.

1. Vice President Cheney said voting for Kerry would result in another terrorist attack.

2. Senator Graham claimed the Bush administration covered up Saudi connections in the 9/11 report.

3. It turns out President Bush skipped out on his National Guard duty years ago. Texans For Truth is on the case.

4. It turns out President Bush did some drugs years ago.

5. Kerry chose today to fight back on the war issue.

6. U.S. forces bombed a city we gave up on in Iraq. We have essentially ceded Fallujah to the insurgency now, at least until the "Iraqi Army" can "deal" with the "problem". Yeah, that's a lot of quotes. The DoD says things are going to get worse in the future.

Whew. Good thing CNN is obsessed with the Genesis capsule, which blew up today. It's not like anything else is more newsworthy...

Oh, one more thing. I have 6 gmail invites, if anyone wants one. Just e-mail me...

A few minor things:

1. Thanks to everyone who signed up at vote or not. I appreciate it. To those who haven't yet, please click on the link above to sign up.

2. Be sure to check out 60 minutes tomorrow night. Word on the street is that it will be very interesting...

3. Guests: keep posting articles. They look great.

4. We're tied for the first time in a week. Yay!

5. Anyone know why the words "dress up games" are being searched for so heavily? My usage logs are going through the roof for them this month.

That's all for now.

We just passed the 1,000 casualty count mark in Iraq. The question needs to be asked: what is our plan for winning the peace? It should've been asked long ago, but before another man dies, it needs to be asked again. And again.

Will bringing in more troops? Will internationalizing the force? What about holding elections? In my mind, all of these are sounds methods, but the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. This administration continues to insist things are just fine, both here and abroad. They need to wake up. Now.

Want to win $200,000? It's simple. Just go to Vote or Not and sign up. You have to be a registered voter. That's it! A great sweepstakes, in my opinion. Be sure to use my link...for the reason you'll see once you click through.

Slashdot now has a new section: Politics Slashdot. Go check it out today!

I wonder why they didn't think of this before? The usual libertarians will be there, but a surprising number of computer people are dyed-in-the-wool progressives. This can only be a good thing.

The weekend was busy. Friday afternoon, I went to First Friday, which turned out to be a bust. Just like last month, for some reason every gallery was shut down save for two. At least the nice weather made the journey from closed art show to closed art show more enjoyable.

Even better was the appearance of a couple long absent from First Friday, who are merely resting in DC for a couple of weeks before heading back to the other side of the world. In the interim they bought a house, so that when they return they'll be living inside the beltway. Hooray! Post gallery walk, we (the couple, a friend, Brad, Deborah and myself) hit Dupont Grill for some drinks before dinner. Later, when the jetset couple departed, Deborah's sister and her sig o. showed up. We ended up moving to Bistro Du Coin, enjoying a loud dinner, before seeing the sister and the sig o. depart. Deborah, Brad and I then retreated to Saint Ex for post-dinner revelry. The evening ended, late as always, but with the three of us in good spirits despite the childlike ability-level of the DJ at Gate 54. DJ Rock Chasty was rock-awful, spinning the worst transitions I'd ever seen. His musical "stylings" were only so-so, but there were enough crowd faves to swing the needle toward a fun morning.

Saturday dawned foggy and cold. I was set to drive Brad back to the familial estate, using Jill's car, so that he could return to school. We made it to the country just as the sun came out, scarfed down a couple of steaks, shot some hoops and then parted ways. I was supposed to come back to town, drop Jill's car off, then snag some dinner later with her family, who was coming into town.

This particular best laid plan was ganged aft by Jill's sickness, which resulted in her running a fever for several straight days. Dinner took place at the Iron Gate, which I've always wanted to sample. The food was all-right, but the ambiance was terrific, except for Jill's obvious pain. Her mom and brother seemed quite cool, so that went well.

Sunday seemed slightly sunnier than the previous day, so I went outside to garden for the first time in weeks. The path had been completely overgrown with vines. A few bags later, I had made a serious dent in the proceedings with only a slight amount of blood spilt. Later I assisted Jill's move into her new, super-huge, super-cool room. The house was clean and ready for the cookout. I was set to hit Heidi's party in the evening for her man's birthday. I had earlier missed out on obtaining an uber-cool gift for the man in question, but I was excited to see his place, which was rumoured to be quite nice.

A brisk walk from the Ballston Metro brought me to the house in question. Just a mile, not very far at all. Sure enough, the place was amazing. Heidi herself had decorated one of the rooms, which looked incredible, and the rest of the pad , including multiple decks, a entertainment area which blew me away, and several rooms not even tackled yet were all standouts. I saw several people at the party I knew, and met many more cool folks, including a couple of Aussies and someone who worked for CNN. An eclectic mix, but all very conversational. As the evening drew to a close, I bummed a ride back to the Ballston Metro stop and hopped out. It was then that I discovered the Metro was closed. Stupidly, I had assumed that during Labor Day weekend, they would run later. Grr. It was past two in the morning. I was tired, it was lightly raining, and I knew my options were limited.

I began to walk east towards the city, because I didn't really want to call a cab. (There were none around me at the time.) On a whim, I called up Leto, who lived a few minutes away by car. She answered the phone, wide awake, and asked what was up. I explained the situation. She said she'd meet me "on the road". I walked east, she drove west. Ten minutes later she pulled up next to me, I hopped in the car, and was spirited away home. Things couldn't have worked out better had I planned it.

Monday. Labor day. More light rain. More cleaning. More fun food shopping. Armed with beverages and food, we fired up the grill in the afternoon and never looked back. Several friends from various circles joined, which was pleasant. We also got to break out the brand new copper firepit I purchased a couple weeks ago. It works like a charm.

On a sidenote, there was one incident: at one point, late in the evening, I walked into the kitchen to get a drink. I ran into Meat, who was reading a satirical book and eating something. Looking at the counter, I noticed a block of cheese had been opened. This was no ordinary cheese. It was bet cheese. That's right. Brad and Jill bet me that if one were to leave a block of cheese out for a week, that it would get moldy. I said that if the package were to remain shut, it would appear that nothing bad was happening to it. So Brad took the cheese home with him and left it on his counter.

For a month.

Then he brought it back to my house, where it has lived for the past two weeks. Unrefrigerated. Just sitting on the counter. I informed Meat that he wasn't supposed to eat the cheese. He commented that it had tasted "funky". I need to find out if he's sick today...

The good news is, I won the bet. The cheese looked normal enough for me to win whatever I bet. If I could just remember what that was I'd be set.

Read about it here. This should be updated later today, I'd imagine.

The worst part is that even as the death rate slows, the injury rate is increasing, which means that more troops are coming home minus arms and legs and eyes. We've already ceded several cities to the "insurgency". It's not a tenable situation...

I swear.

The backend is currently dog-ugly, but I don't have time to mess with it right now. On the plus side, I have been able to implement the new staff section so you can check out the results.

For all of you who haven't altered your description/image/color, please do so! It takes just a second to do and it will result in a great feeling afterwords. As I mentioned, the author admin page is fairly ugly, but my next project will be to clean it up so that it makes more sense and has less random info lying around.

For those of you who don't have a login yet...if you want one, just ask me. There are still some kinks to work out but I'd like to thank Meat and Kevin for posting and helping me iron out the bugs.

On a political note, check out this article at TNR. And yes, Brad, I've fixed the link so anyone can see it.

This is simply disgusting.

Beyond the pale.

Markdown rocks.

Lists are super easy. For instance, I think Republicans are:

• Mean
• Stupid
• Ugly

It's easy to make ordered lists too, by using numbers. For instance, I think the United States should, in order:

1. Reduce the deficit
2. Reduce the ranks of the uninsured.
3. Reduce the restrictions on freedom.

See? It's so easy. Emphasis is even easier. And you can even SHOUT if you need to.

So I've made two major changes to the backend, namely, the additional of a spell-checker and the introduction of Markdown.

Spell Checker

It's simple. Just click "Check Spelling" on any page. It's a little zealous, but works well.

Markdown

Markdown is more complex. Right now, it only can be used when adding an article, not editing an article. The syntax is very easy to pickup, and the basic details are located here. Here's a more advanced look at the entire syntax.

Hopefully the introduction of these two technologies will allow guest posters to easily add articles without having to possess a full knowledge of XHTML. Here goes!