Funny how differently colds affect folks. My son has been fighting one longer than I, and it manifests itself with a constantly running nose. Meds from the pediatrician are helping with that. And other than the runny nose, he's been in his usual great mood for the most part. For me, my nose doesn't run, but instead the congestion drains down my throat, meaning I'm constantly coughing. OTC congestion and cough meds haven't been doing the trick, and last night was the first with the new script from the doc. Still, I was lucky to have gotten four hours of sleep, the longest uninterrupted bit being around an hour and a half. Not to mention that the coughing lends itself to a near-constant headache, and I am not one who usually gets headaches. The good news is that I can feel the new meds working. As the saying goes, it just takes time. Right now, with an empty house, I think it's time for a nap.

I am not referring to an airline hijacking. Michael informed me this morning that our host for ATPM told him we went over our bandwidth limit for the month of February by 17 GB. After further investigation, we learned that most of this extra bandwidth is going toward serving up various JPEGS to other sites. In other words, rather than downloading the desktop pictures we offer to our readers each month, and hosting it on their own server, people are linking directly to the file on our server for display on their sites. They are hijacking these images, and our bandwidth. This is nothing new. It's just never happened on such a large scale before with any site I've been involved in. People, this is not cool. First off, those desktop pictures are the copyrighted property of a photographer or artist who graciously donated their use to ATPM, and subsequently to our readers, as desktop pictures. This means if you want to use said picture on your web site, or any other medium, you should be contacting that photographer or artist for permission. Second, if said photographer or artist grants you permission for usage, you then host the picture on your own site. To link to the picture directly on ATPM means you are stealing our bandwidth, and driving up our costs. We are not a for-profit publication. Our staff is all-volunteer, from the top down. Any moneys generated from ads and sponsorships goes in to our hosting costs, and after ten consecutive years of publication, those costs can be considerable. Thus, bandwidth is not something we can afford to give away, and certainly not at the rate of an extra 17 GB every month. If you are one of the many persons out there linking directly to one of our pictures, please stop. You are violating legitimate copyright and stealing bandwidth from a group of people who do something each month out of love and joy.

No, I'm not kidding. As if we needed another reason to lobby for copyright law overhaul.

Dave Murphy, for the San Francisco Chronicle:

From the time Tilly Merrell was a year old, doctors told her family she would never have a normal life -- or even a normal meal.

British doctors found that the food she swallowed went into her lungs instead of her stomach, causing devastating lung infections. They said she had isolated bulbar palsy, and their solution was to feed her through a stomach tube. Forever.

But having a backpack with a food pump wired to her stomach wasn't much of a life for a girl whose favorite smell is bacon frying -- a girl who once broke through a locked kitchen door in an effort to sneak some cheese. So her family got help from their community of Warndon, about 120 miles north of London, raising enough money to take Tilly, now 8, on a 5,000-mile journey they hoped might change her life, a journey to Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University.

Doctors at Packard were intrigued that she had no neurological symptoms often associated with the palsy. In all other ways, she was a normal child with a mischievous smile and a truckload of energy. After seeing her Feb. 7, they ran three tests and found out what was wrong with her.

Nothing. And you wonder why conservatives froth at the mouth over such nonsense as HILLARY!Care. [Via Jack on World_SIG.]

The Stanley Cup is the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, a fact proudly touted in the sports world by the NHL. Now professional hockey can lay claim to another famous first in North American professional sports: it is the first to cancel an entire season. I was raised on LSU football, and later, during the Dale Brown glory years, LSU basketball. When I was a student at LSU, the Tigers began their dominance of the College World Series in the 1990s. Growing up in Baton Rouge, we had no professional sports teams, only the New Orleans Saints, an hour's drive away. Doesn't sound like much, but that hour's drive may as well have been an ocean. I didn't pay attention to the Saints until I was a resident of the New Orleans metroplex, and while I attended a few games, most were at someone else's expense. I got in to hockey my last year in college, when I had my own place and cable television. ESPN's National Hockey Night brought me at least a game a week, and I grew addicted. Maybe it was all the attention Pavel Bure received, but I found myself following the Vancouver Canucks, and thrilled to their Stanley Cup bid in 1994. Taking the Rangers to seven games, it was probably the greatest Stanley Cup series I've watched since I began to love the game. My first NHL game was in 1996, when my spouse and I ventured from New Orleans to Dallas to see the Stars play the Canucks. It was a memorable weekend for several reasons: it was my first time in Dallas; Dallas saw a big snow storm the night of our arrival, leaving us "trapped" in our hotel most of the next day; we saw our some friends we hadn't seen in three years; and the Canucks walloped the Stars. My wife was recruited by a Dallas law firm, and in July 1998, we made the move from New Orleans. I was at the first home game of the 1998-99 season for the Stars, and I watched or listened to every game that year. I stayed up all night long to see Brett Hull score the third-overtime goal (and sorry, Buffalo, it was a goal) to deliver the Stars franchise its first-ever Stanley Cup. I've been to a few games each year since then, mostly thanks to recruiting and client development efforts on the part of my wife's now-former firm. But I've also paid my own way on more than one occasion to see the Stars play. I've rooted for Mo, and Eddie the Eagle, Turk and Nieuwey. And now the players of the NHLPA have thrown away all of the good will they have built up over the years, not only with myself, but with millions of other hockey fans. Yes, I lay the bulk of the blame for this cancellation at the feet of the players and their union. If they were willing to concede to a salary cap at the eleventh hour, why were they not willing to do so earlier in the lost season, when there was still a season to be salvaged? Why are they letting this season go away because of 6.5 million dollars per team. That's right. That is the difference in the total salary-cap figures the teams want to impose, and the players are willing to accept. Six-point-five million. That's about a couple hundred thousand per player on each team. That's pathetic. As I've noted before, these guys get paid to play a game. They get to do as their profession in life something millions of people wish they could do as well for just one afternoon. We made you. Sure, you have great talent and skill. No one denies that. But where would you be without hockey fans? Playing pick-up games on the town's frozen pond in between gutting fish or delivering packages? Professional sports run on fans. Professional sports gain television contracts to reach more fans because advertisers are willing to spend money to reach those fans in an attempt to sell products. No fans means no professional sport. I'm not saying the team owners and the league get a pass, please don't misunderstand. I'm a good little capitalist, and believe both the owners and the players should try to make as much money as possible. But everyone negotiates their salary; first, when you gain employment, then thereafter based on your performance and later experience. It's the same whether you're working at McDonald's, coding for a Fortune 100 company, or playing a professional sport. And sometimes, the business just doesn't have enough money in the bag to pay you what you want--and believe you deserve--to get paid. Maybe the answer isn't a salary cap. Maybe some of these smaller market teams in the NHL should be allowed to shrivel and die, even in the birthplace of hockey, O Canada. That would be good capitalism. It would also mean a smaller marketplace in the NHL for players, so maybe the players and their union should think twice before embarking on a course of action which would lead to that outcome, as fewer of them would be employed. When the Stars began play in Dallas in 1993, many people thought they'd never see the NHL below the Mason-Dixon line. Today, you have five NHL teams in the old South: Dallas, the Florida Panthers, the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Nashville Predators, and the Carolina Hurricanes. Two of those teams have won the Stanley Cup. Those people who thought "What is hockey doing in Texas?" must be out of their minds wondering "What is hockey doing in Tampa Bay?" Never mind the fact that the Lightning now have their name on the Cup. Three years ago, however, Tampa Bay would have been a poster child for the NHL chopping block. The Ottawa Senators have always been so (in my mind, at least). After a wildly successful inaugural season, attendance has been disappointing at Nashville games. I'm not hearing much from the Columbus Blue Jackets, and I can't imagine that market supporting a NHL team in the long run, unless they can consistently begin making long playoff runs. Maybe some of these teams should never have been allowed to be. Maybe some of them should be allowed to fold. None of that really matters now. There will be no 2004-05 season for the National Hockey League. A suitable compromise could not be reached by the two sides. Both sides have gotten rich at the expense of the one thing they cannot afford to lose: fans. It will take years for the NHL/NHLPA to win back the fans it is going to lose with this utter nonsense. I don't particularly care for basketball, other than to actually play it. The NBA holds no appeal to me, even less so now that I've actually attended a NBA game. While I'll watch the NFL, I don't follow a specific team, and I much prefer the college game. I think Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones are both incredible egomaniacs, and could care less about the Mavericks or Cowboys while either is running his respective show. That leaves me with hockey and baseball. My winter, as far as sports are concerned, is shot. I think MLB (talk about a league needing a salary cap) spring season starts next month...

So I've been thinking about Daniel Pink's article, "Revenge of the Right Brain", over the past couple of days, and it's amazing how much my own feelings toward a future career mirror his piece. One would have to consult my parents as to when I may have first exhibited artistic sensibilities, but as I grew up, I was very fond of writing, drawing, and music. I was always doodling, tracing, sketching. Making up stories, or just bits of stories. In seventh grade, I started playing the clarinet in band, was quickly moved to the bass clarinet by Mr. Dawson, our fantastic teacher-director, and continued all the way through high school. I did not attempt to gain a music scholarship to LSU; I had a partial academic scholarship, and the Air Force wanted to pay the rest of my way, so long as I was willing to be an electrical engineer. By the end of my freshman year, my Air Force scholarship was gone. My grades tanked, and they yanked it. I was not a party animal, I did not go hog-wild upon becoming a college student. I simply goofed off. Looking back, maybe there was a subconscious effort on my part to sabotage my academic and future professional careers. I was a right-brain person, suddenly thrust in to a left-brain world. No longer burdened with studies related to engineering, I remained in Air Force ROTC, and switched majors: criminal justice. When LSU's Criminal Justice department was terminated as a separate division the following year, swallowed by the larger Sociology department, I was forced to change majors again. Not particularly interested in a sociology degree, I opted instead for political science, a decidedly more right-brained course of study. I minored in history. I excelled in English classes, testing out of Freshman English 101, or whatever it's technically called. The large part of my professional career since college, however, once again led me in to left-brain land. I have been involved with computer technology, troubleshooting, and support, for over a dozen years. When I was laid off in October of 2003, I was both devastated and optimistic. My son was only two months old, and I was looking forward to spending a lot of time with him, which has been great. Perhaps this was the opportunity to move in to a new field as well. I have not kept completely out of the right-brain sphere these past twelve years, however. I began volunteering as a copy editor with ATPM in the summer of 1998, and began writing the occasional review or opinion piece shorly thereafter. Today, I'm the Managing Editor, and quite happy to work with the fine staff of our little publication, all of whom do what they do because we enjoy the Macintosh platform. I also believe a goodly number of the staffers are like myself, and enjoy having this right-brain outlet, compared with the left-brain professions they may be involved with. This blog, like its predecessor, is nothing more than an outlet for those right-brain skills yearning for exercise. Which brings us back to Pink's article, in which he hypothesizes that the coming "age" will be devoted to more right-brain activities, as opposed to where we currently are now, and have been, where more left-brain occupations have reigned supreme. I'm all for it. I feel as though I have a couple of books in me, and I love the editing thing. Just ask some of my online friends and acquaintances how many times I've annoyed them over misspellings and other grammatical gaffes on their blogs. Likewise, they are quick to point out my own brain burps, in large part because they know I care about such things. (Though with Lawson, I suspect it's just out of spite.) There is a part of me which has enjoyed my past dozen years in the tech field, and I would heartily welcome another job in that arena. Yet another part of me yearns for something different, something more right-brained, and this is reflected in some of my Monster search agents. In the mean time, I'll concentrate on editing, writing, digital photography, and most of all, being a dad.

I can appreciate the little sticky security tape on the tops of CDs sold to consumers. I realize it is a preventive measure against the CDs being stolen from out of the cases in a store. However, I am quite sure that over the past year or so, the tape has gotten increasingly more difficult to get off. It used to be, if you were careful, you could pull up the tape on one side of the CD, and slowly pull the entire thing off. Not any more. Now, the tape splits at the slightest hint of intolerance to being pulled. It took a good five minutes to get all of the security tape off Amy Grant's latest. Normally, this should be a 30- to 45-second process. I realize someone out there will say something to the effect of, You wouldn't have this problem if you just ordered the entire album from the iTunes Music Store. I like having the physical CD, with liner notes, thank you very much. The process of opening said CD did not used to be this annoying. Now it is. That is the complaint.

Lee points to another Silicon.com article which reveals Steve Ballmer is even more of a childish imbecile than was previously thought.

Mr. Ballmer: Despite your reckless and libelous statements regarding Apple and the iPod, please note that your 12-year-old is likely hiding stolen music in all kinds of places, given that your 12-year-old is likely much smarter than you are, having grown up with the technology your company had to steal copy "innovate". (He's also probably hiding a lot of other stuff he has found on the Internet.) A challenge then, to the CEO of Microsoft: without any warning whatsoever, conduct a full-scale examination of the hard drive of every Microsoft employee, including every PDA, every digital music player, every MP3-playing mobile phone. Cross-check the findings of digital music with each employee's personal CD collection. Report the findings of how much stolen music is residing inside Microsoft itself. That is, if you're not too busy dancing around on stage like a fool and flinging your feces at your competition, monkey-boy. (Via MacMinute)

Six years after Steve Jobs and Apple declared the floppy disk dead, with the release of the iMac, Bill Gates states the same:

In some ways, I think this is the first time I can say that the floppy disk is dead. You know, we enjoyed the floppy disk, it was nice, it got smaller and smaller, but because of compatibility reasons, it sort of got stuck at the 1.44 megabyte level, and carrying them around, and having that big physical slot in machines, that became a real burden. Today, you get a low-cost USB flash drive, with 64 megabits on it very, very inexpensively. And so we can say the capacity there for something that's smaller, better connectors, faster, just superior in every way has made that outmoded. So I suppose now that the tech industry pundits will proclaim Mr. Gates as a tremendous visionary for getting rid of the tiresome floppy disk, when in fact, Mr. Gates' company is one entity responsible for extending the floppy's life. (via RAILhead Design)

Pixar dumps Disney. Pixar will be the better for it. Eisner is an idiot. I hope the Disney board roasts him on a spit. (Thanks, Michael.)

In the most recent Macintosh Daily Journal, Matt Deatherage & Co. take Information Week to task over their recent PC Vendor poll and rankings. MDJ correctly points out what's really behind the buying decisions of most corporate IT managers:

IT buyers list many important factors, but when Apple meets them, they ignore them because Apple is not the "standard." The most important consideration for IT buyers is not cost, customer service, quality, reputation, or proven technology, even if the magazine's survey said so. The most important factor is that the PCs be Intel-compatible so they can run Windows, but no one wants to say that because it makes them look inflexible. Windows is the elephant in the middle of the room, and rather than talk about it, InformationWeek made up reasons why Apple doesn't meet criteria when it obviously does. It's hard to see how that is information, even if it does come out weekly.

Have you seen the commercial being plastered across the airwaves by Dell featuring the interns and Dell's product "designers"? The thought that Michael Dull employs product designers in the first place is tremendously laughable. It becomes more humorous when you notice the products said "designers" are handling:

• a PDA--designed and produced by an OEM, with Dell's logo planted on it
• a printer--Dell has never made printers, does not make printers, and won't make printers, so there's no need to employ a printer "designer"
• a flat-panel display--designed and produced by an OEM, with Dell's logo planted on it
• Inspiron notebook computer--the only item featured that actually is designed by Dull's product "designers," and is about as inspiring as a Michael Jordan Hanes briefs commercial.

Truly pathetic. Unfortunately, I'm sure Joe Consumer has no concept of how Dull operates, and is buying this hook, line, and sinker. You want truly innovative product design? Come on over.

I check my email this morning, and what do I find but some idiot has uploaded penis enlargement spam into the comments section of one of my posts (from October 2002, no less). Comment deleted, IP banned. Don't you morons have anything better to do?

So the brilliant executive minds at Verizon Information Services finally decided on a plan for its IT personnel, and made said plan known to all of us yesterday at an 8 AM meeting: layoffs, or in corporate jargon, a RIF (Reduction In Force). On the one hand, I can respect this decision, as I believe it better for the company than the other major proposal that was looked at, which was outsourcing IT personnel under AMDOCS, our main contractor, and provider of much of the core server software the business runs on. Only everyone pretty much hates AMDOCS; their code is sloppy, as the Toad can well attest, and they're arrogant to boot, with a "we know better than you" attitude toward even the most techincally competent among the Verizon IT staff (most of whom are more technically competent than said AMDOCS personnel). The only reason this scenario didn't play out was because Verizon couldn't get AMDOCS to swallow a lot of salary and benefits issues that would have taken better care of Verizon employees who were outsourced. So my team lost three people yesterday, and I was one of them. I'm still on the payroll until 24 October, and the severance package looks pretty good. So potential employers, I'm a Mac geek with a decade of experience in computer support, with a little HTML knowledge I'd like to expand on. I need to stay in the Dallas area, and I'm open to contract, contract-to-hire, or, best of all, permanent positions.

So while the gloom of layoffs settled over the IT groups at VIS for the better part of a year, Chuck Lee, the former GTE CEO who sold us out to Bell Atlantic, is still picking up the perks: bq. Verizon Communication's former chairman and co-CEO, Charles Lee, became a "consultant" for the firm when he retired last year. In addition to the standard goodies, like office space, a staff, and use of an aircraft, he's receiving a consulting fee of $250,000 per month. (That's not a typo.) You'd think after getting paid $4 to $5 million in salary plus bonus over the past few years, and $27 million in options in 2002 alone, he'd have enough to retire on. Guess not. So I may lose my job, but heaven forbid that Chuck Lee not get to ride around in the corporate jet while he "consults" on where the company can make cuts...

I know the Toad has to be ticked off at the latest antics of one of our beloved Congresscritters, People's Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. She insists that the names assigned to hurricanes by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are too "lily white," and they should use African-American names as well. She even offered a few examples; none of which are African in origin, and some of which have been completely made up by black Americans. This reader's response puts it all in perspective: bq. "You can be sure if there were too many 'black' names assigned to hurricanes, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee would instead be complaining that this practice unfairly stereotypes blacks as violent. Let's hope this silly storm blows over!" And to think that this is our most pressing problem with racism and discrimination...

When I arrived at work today, the flags--American, Texas, Verizon--were all at half-staff, and I thought to myself, "What the...?" I totally missed the President's directive to fly flags at half-staff on the day of Hope's burial. That put my mind at ease. (For a brief moment, I thought some VZ employee had died, and this had been ordered by the corporate bigwigs; a big no-no when it comes to proper flag decorum. In an instance such as that, the only flag that should be lowered would be the Verizon flag.) Born in 1970, I have no memories of Bob Hope's vaudeville and radio work, though I have heard excerpts here and there. My greatest memories of him were of the television comedy specials he did, as well as the numerous USO shows he performed throughout the 1970s and '80s. To me, the latter was the great thing about Bob Hope: not that he was a tremendous entertainer, which he was, having worked in every medium of the time--stage, radio, television, and feature film. Rather, he never forgot those who put their lives on the line to defend our nation, the nation that gave him the freedom to do what he did. Bob Hope gave back. He gave those who needed it the thing his last name stood for. That is a legacy worth remembering, and one all in the entertainment business should recall and work toward. (Thanks to Rick for the clarification and link.) UPDATE, 5:15 PM: I felt the President's words were worth sharing: bq. "Bob Hope made us laugh. He lifted our spirits. Bob Hope served our nation. We will mourn the loss of a good man. Bob Hope served our nation when he went to battlefields to entertain thousands of troops from different generations. We extend our prayers to his family. God bless his soul." --President George W. Bush

Steven offers Frank discussion on why some "artists" don't want to participate in the iTunes Music Store.

Is the demise of the album format, if it even happens, a bad thing? What about the good things might pop up in its place? What advantages come from embracing the tides of change?

[...]

Or maybe, as the market shifts towards being merit-based, there will be a renewed interest in actually making higher quality individual tracks rather than a lot of filler. Wouldn't that be awful? Maybe songs would have melodies again, or musicians might learn how to play more than one instrument. It's even possible that lyrics might stray from the tried-and-true "man, my middle-class white male life here in America sure sucks". It would be catastrophic.

For you, I mean. Not us, the consumers.

Oh, this is rich: bq. "There was a disturbing attitude from the Pentagon toward unilaterals," said Campagna, Mideast program coordinator for the nonprofit group. "They gave the perception that if you weren't embedded, you covered the war at your own risk, and that U.S. troops were under no obligation to at least avoid endangering you." Um, yeah. It's called war, you blockhead. Everyone is participating at their own peril. The military's job is to accomplish the task handed to them by the politicians. More often than not, this means moving in, engaging and killing the enemy (while trying to avoid unnecessary civilian casualties; but hey, it's war), then securing the area they now occupy. They do not have time to babysit reporters who don't play by the rules. Those unilaterals wanted to be where they were. If you can't stand the heat...

Knowing the company I work for, the n3rdling thought I would be interested in this article. Yes, the Yellow Pages business is a cash cow. One of the reasons Bell Atlantic wanted to buy out GTE was that our Yellow Pages business was a major revenue generator; our last year prior to the "merger," GTE Directories accounted for 20% of all the revenue for all of GTE. I haven't heard any numbers in the past two years regarding VZ Directories' contribution to the overall revenue structure, but I'm sure it's not as high a percentage. In addition to the economic downturn, we've got the former Bell Atlantic books dragging us down...

Our workgroup maintains a central server for others in the company to access important information re: our projects, software to install, etc. As part of all of this, our sysadmin recently created a report that shows all of the current "advertisements" going out to our users, reminding them they need to upgrade Application X or what have you. Our great and wise sysadmin then puts a link to this report directly on the front page of our server, easy to find, easy to click on, easy to download. So then my boss decides that this isn't good enough, and that the report has to be emailed to our opposite numbers on the eastern seaboard. Now the opposite numbers have the exact same access to the aforementioned web page as we do. They can just as easily go fetch this report as any of us can. But now I have to email them a copy of it every week! <sigh> Anyone want to hire a Mac-head with some basic web design skills? As long as you're in Dallas and you've got killer health insurance, I'm flexible on other stuff...

1. Verizon Wireless rants, raves, and whines about how the FCC regulation for wireless local number portability--letting you keep your same phone number, even when you change providers--is going to cost billions and billions of dollars. Despite the fact that the FCC regulation has been in place for years and wireless providers have chosen to ignore it, since the FCC has failed to enforce it.
2. Take the FCC to court over the issue!
3. After the court rules against you, give in and announce that you're going to lead the industry and everyone should copy you, because by Zeus, you're doing what's best for the customer. (But only after being forced to...)

Marc Marshall brings up the excellent point that Microsoft has come full circle with regard to Internet Explorer. His is the last post in Macintouch's Browser Future report for today:

The bottom line in this situation is this: For the past several years, Microsoft gave away a free browser to kill the competition, and succeeded. Now, they have stopped development of their standalone product, and are giving people exactly three choices to get their "standard" product: 1) Buy Windows. 2) Use MSN for Internet access. 3) Pay them $10/month or $80 per year. No free options, no free upgrades.

The price is higher than Opera or Omni's paid competition, and you don't have a free option, and you have an ongoing fee. In fact, if MS starts charging annual licensing for Windows, there will be no lifetime-licence-purchasable version of IE. This sounds like exactly the sort of consumer hostile situation that monopolies create, and governments are supposed to protect us from. Now that they've pretty much saturated the market, Microsoft has been scrambling on how to consistently generate revenue. They have long discussed subscription software licensing, and this situation with IE appears to be the first shot across the bow. Unfortunately, I do not forsee the mass sheep of Windows and IE/Mac users torpedoing the Microsoft Bismarck any time soon.

As to the truths contained in Hillary's ghost-written tome, consider this: On April 29, 1997, Hillary told CNN's Larry King that she would never run for public office. Two years later...