Election 2006: important information about every race

Based off an idea at MyDD.

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert

one message with one received fax

One of the things that surprised me in this job is our telephone system is smart enough to detect an incoming FAX and save it. Then it can print it to wherever you want it to go.

However, it will still let you listen to the FAX message if you want, which is about like volunteering to hear shreiking metal bits grinding against each other. YES, SIGN ME UP FOR THAT.

(Somewhere along the line my work phone was a FAX line, so I get to listen to this all the time. And all of the messages are FAX spam, which strikes me as an even worse spam market than e-mail...)

The reason I mention this is that it's one of those features that SOUNDS cool but ends up not being all that spiffy. For example, downloading ringtones for your mobile phone. Perhaps it's better in other parts of the world, but when my choices are some pop song I've never heard of or a selection of spiritual songs I never want to hear, that's not really a choice at all.

There's a new feature in iTunes that lets you browse the album covers of your playlist. This is... um... theoretically good for something. However, if you do not have hardware acceleration or up-to-date video drivers, all you get is an incredibly cryptic message how iTunes cannot display album covers on your computer. At least on Windows.

How this got out of development is a mystery to me. It adds nothing at the expense of taking away useful (to me) functionality, such as hotkeys for the equalizer (which were in just one revision ago) and display of the number of people currently sharing your playlist.

Those features, I would have used. Instead, it's incomplete and broken pawing through album covers. Yeah, that was time well spent.

from the maker of MUFFIN FILMS

You may or may not remember Muffin Films, films about one of the most important foodstuffs known to man: muffins.

The same creator has a couple of other projects: Big Bunny Films and Making Fiends.

I am particularly fond of Making Fiends, the terrifying tale of Charlotte, friend-maker extraordinare and Vendetta, the witch-child who terrifies the rest of the school. We have started to ask, "Your family, do they have all their limbs?" around the house. (You can find the source of this in Episode 4.

I may have chosen the wrong career path

At no point does my job involve writing about sick vests, chronicling the life of cartoon cats, or building an orrery out of LEGO.

Of course, the first two are right out because I can't draw for crap.

The latter is probably right out since my math is still the crap and science requires a little bit of that kinda stuff.

I've been preoccupied with work and family visits, so I'm not even caught up on Battlestar Galactica from last week. I somehow doubt I can sit through three hours of unrelenting darkness this weekend, but I might be able to with the help of my friend sweet booze.

National Novel Writing Month approaches again. I've had two years in a row where I've missed completing the thing. Not sure if I want to chance it again this year, but it might distract me a bit from other things. There are at least three ideas in my head about what to tackle--not sure which is the most interesting to do.

To hell with work, this is SCIENCE

One of my favorite early sketches from Late Nite with David Letterman involved Paul wandering around the NBC studio, wondering where Dave had gone to.

Then he wanders near Letterman's dressing room, and pops out with his hair full of shampoo lather.

"Dave, what about the show?" asks Paul.
Dave replies, "The right side is tingling. IT IS TINGLING!"
"But Dave, the show?"
"To hell with the show, this is SCIENCE!" shouts Letterman, and closes the door.

I'm having a similar moment today, as scientists have evidently made breakthroughs in teleportation while I was sleeping...

The mind boggles at the implications for quantum computing. Deep Thought is maybe not far off anymore...