Buh-Bye, SiteMeter
Sun   14 Sep 2008   11:16 by McGehee 5 comments [Asides]	As so often happens when somebody “upgrades” a service that works perfectly well, SiteMeter turned their hit-counter service into something completely unusable. I don’t get more than 150 uniques per day anyway, so it’s not as if having a count showing on the page was ever doing me any good. Scroom. Update: Now giving StatCounter a try.

Liberal Media Propaganda Backfires Again—Film at 11
Sun   14 Sep 2008   9:50 by McGehee [Humor?] [Get Offa My Lawn!] [Media Ochre]	So The Atlantic hires a certified moonbat to photograph John McCain, and although the cover shot chosen by the magazine is more or less conventional, the one she preferred is somewhat ... darker. So naturally Ace embraces the spin, and hilarity ensues. Third term of Bush? You f___ing wish.

Meh.

Sat   13 Sep 2008   20:03 by McGehee [Asides]

I stole the background image (file here in case I stop using it) from Andrea after she promised she was going to ditch it (she hates stripes). I don’t mind stripes, but I don’t care for the color. Paint can’t do a thing with the file, and I haven’t tried GIMP because, well, I really haven’t played with GIMP enough to have any idea how to use it. What I’d like is to get the colors to a variant on the solid background color I’d been using, which is the same as… ...this. I don’t know whether that color looks goldish to anyone else, but I kind of like it. Update: Still no clue how to GIMP it, so I tried just making one from scratch using Paint. Unfortunately when I converted it from BMP to GIF it came up looking like carp, so I’m stuck (for now at least) with the BMP version. It does look more like what I wanted. ‘Nother update, next morning: ...and now I’m tired of it. Maybe I’ll randomize it so it’ll be the gold stripes sometimes, or the solid background, or the blue stripes. You’ll just never know from one page-view to the next. <evil, maniacal cackle> Or maybe I won’t. <evil, maniacal cackle> I’ll think about it. <evil, maniacal cackle> ‘Nother other update: I thought about it. <evil, maniacal cackle> Yet another update, Monday: Three new background images, courtesy of Jed at FreedomSight (discovered via my new StatCounter stats). Turns out he knows how to use GIMP, whereas I know how to rummage through the menus, look confused, and say, “Heck with this, I’ll use Paint.” Yet another other update, Monday: One of Jed’s images was a little more contrasty than I wanted on my screen resolution (A 1280-px width shows lots of background space on either side of the content), so I fiddled with it in MS Photo Editor to tone it down a bit.

Tina Is More Entertaining

Sat   13 Sep 2008   12:27 by McGehee [Our Times] [Nature]

She had that high-heel strut thing going on in that video for “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” Ike, on the other hand, just sloshes all over the place, blowing out windows and flooding neighborhoods. Also, driving up gas prices. In my area, the prices I saw for unleaded today ranged from $4.079 at a regional-chain convenience store to $4.359 (or thereabouts) at another regional-chain convenience store. And yet the highest price I saw for diesel in the same sampling of gas stations was $4.199 at a freeway-side gas station. Flash Foods had diesel for $3.999, and its closest competitor (literally and figuratively) was selling diesel for the same price as it had for unleaded: $4.099. Now, I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve noticed an equilibrium of sorts between the price of gasoline and the price of diesel at stations that sell both. Generally speaking in our area—at least until the last few months—diesel has tended to be priced at most a few cents higher than premium. If any grade of gasoline went very much higher than diesel, one of two things was pretty much guaranteed to happen: either diesel would start creeping upward, or gasoline would eventually drop back down where the price of diesel indicated it should be. During this past summer the gap between diesel and premium soared, even as the prices of the various grades of gasoline was going way up. Recently, until the Ike scare set in, that gap has been narrowing gradually as the price of gasoline has subsided and diesel has come down with it. Now, while the Kroger fuel center sells unleaded and diesel at the same price, and Metro Petro actually sells diesel about 25 cents cheaper than unleaded, I think it’s fair to say the price of gasoline is going to be coming down fairly quickly unless the infrastructure damage from Ike matches the worst-case scenario predictions trumpeted in the media. I’ll say here more or less what I told my wife’s aunt via Facebook a couple of nights ago: unless you’re really hurting for gas right now, hold off a while before getting into line at the pumps. Never participate in a price panic—it costs you money and it doesn’t teach the retailers noth’n’.

That Would Be a Shame
Fri   12 Sep 2008   23:51 by McGehee [Get Offa My Lawn!]	Says here Hurricane Ike could complicate Barack Obama’s scheduled appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” I hope not. I’m sure he would feel right at home with all the other Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

Fri   12 Sep 2008   17:08 1 comment

A Sandwich Is a Sandwich… ...but taking second place in a caption contest is more like a cheesesteak with a pickle spear and a side order of nice, hot fries.

This Post Is About ‘That’ Topic
Fri   12 Sep 2008   1:15 by McGehee [Get Offa My Lawn!] [SARAH!]	No, not the yesterday topic—the day before yesterday topic. So, if you’ve had enough of that one, don’t look below the fold. » Read more "This Post Is About ‘That’ Topic"

REMEMBER

Thu   11 Sep 2008   8:46 by McGehee [War] [9/11]

Seven years. I’d have to say that, all in all, our men and women engaged in the war on terror have done a pretty damn good job—as have the American people and most of the politicians who have been called upon to support their efforts. Not all of the politicians, but most. The mission in Iraq seems to be accepted as successful now even by those among the reasonable who most strongly opposed it—what the unreasonable say is not important, and we do not hear their words. Anyway, I doubt we’ll be hearing much anymore about how Iraq is a “distraction” from the real war, which is supposed to be in Afghanistan. I do remember that some of these pols and media people were, actually, opposed to going into Afghanistan. They spoke of the brutal Afghan winter, and how the British and the Soviets had failed so how could we hope to succeed? Today those same people now insist they favored the mission in Afghanistan all along. Success has a million fathers. Where is Osama bin Laden? Does he even know anymore? Seven years of vigilance. That means it’s about time for seven more. Remember.

…sigh…
Wed   10 Sep 2008   13:45 by McGehee [Asides] [Alaska]	Autumn’s coming, at least way up north. The trees in this parking lot at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have turned a brilliant orange. You can see a live shot of this view and some others around Fairbanks here.

Wed   10 Sep 2008   13:26

…apropos of nothing I don’t care if Obama meant to refer to Gov. Palin with his lipstick reference, since obviously most people saw it that way. I don’t think “I’m stupid” is any better a message for him to send than “I’m sexist.”

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