I enjoy the week of big city marathons because of the week long coverage they induce in the local newspapers. This Sunday is the NY City Marathon, so there has been coverage in the NY Times.
Today an excellent article probes the task of assembling the 3rd largest collection of port-a-potties each year. Enjoy!
I had sort of forgotten about the final season of The West Wing until I read an article in today’s NY Times. Now I’m realizing that the parallels between Matthew Santos and Barack Obama are extensive.
Since the TV show ended after Santos won, should we expect the world to end in the next few months? Once we’re no longer working off The West Wing script, what will our politics look like?
This HOWTO for making your own yard sign alarm is too funny. If you are concerned about your yard sign running away, just follow those directions.
I’m sure I mentioned this four years ago, but I really like Electoral-Vote.com. It is a collection of polling in all the states to predict the current electoral map. There weren’t as many sites like it when the Votemaster followed the 2004 Presidential Election, but I am still impressed four years later. Although the Votemaster revealed his identity and his general support for Democrats, he clearly explains his polling methodology.
An example of why I like this site has been the Votemaster’s discussion of recent polling in Minnesota. Princeton Survey has polls showing significant leads for Obama (18 points) and Al Franken (9 points). The Votemaster is willing to call both polls “hard to believe”. It is nice to see some critical thinking and analysis with these polls.
If anyone has other polling sites they’d like to recommend, let me know in the comments!
I am pleased to announce that Matthew for America is back online after our recent relocation.
This blog is now hosted in the Eastern Timezone, and I have moved closer to the financial and political centers on the east coast for more timely reporting. I doubt you’ll notice a difference. Maybe if I wink at you enough, you won’t notice.
I am going to take the blog offline in a few days in order to relocate the server. The system should not be down for more than two or three days if everything goes according to the plan.
While the server is down, I might actually come up with some ideas for new posts. Did you know that there is a presidential election coming up?
A comment I overheard on my way to work today:
“I never thought I’d cheer for a guy named ‘C.C.’”
I had to laugh just a little.
Okay, this blog isn’t really hosted by a Mac. It is still hosted by the Gentoo box sitting in my bedroom, but I have begun the process of migrating my laptop usage to a MacBook.
I’m still using my Windows XP laptop for work this week, but I’ve been getting everything setup on my new MacBook in the evenings. I have Windows XP setup with Boot Camp and VMware Fusion. It even picks up USB devices when running as a virtual machine. I also have Office 2008 for Mac installed. There are some major issues with add-ins and macros because Microsoft dropped support for Microsoft Visual Basic in this new Mac version. I might install an old version of Excel on the Windows side for when I run into problems. I also need to install some chemistry/work software (ChemDraw, NUTS, Mathematica, and EndNote) and Adobe Illustrator. NUTS probably has to go on the Windows partion, and I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do with EndNote and Illustrator yet.
I’ll post updates once I figure out this whole Apple thing and find cool stuff on my MacBook.
Today is opening day for the Mallards! Due to prior commitments, I will not be able to attend this evening’s game. I am looking forward to hitting up the Duck Pond sometime next week so I can watch some baseball and see some ridiculous promotions (Tuesday is a Budweiser Pint Glass Night).
If you go tonight, say hi to my Facebook friend Maynard.
My laptop has me concerned. It’s been making horrible fan noises for the past month or two. It gets bad for a few days and then calms down for a while. The idea of writing a thesis on a computer that is making bad noises has me more than a little nervous, especially since I don’t have easy access to a backup Windows computer. I’ve started thinking about replacing it with a new laptop now so that I can get at least a little bit of sleep while I’m writing the thesis. This has me thinking about some possibilities.
I really like my VAIO, but I’ve been thinking about other options. I think I could get more for my money if I went with Lenovo, so I was pricing out some options there. Then, I had the craziest idea of all: I should look at MacBooks.
Here are the reasons I’m seriously considering the MacBook:
I’m going to sit on this decision for a few days before I spend any money. I also want to convince myself that the bugs are worked out of VMware because solid support for running a couple of Windows XP programs (including access to USB devices) will be vital this summer, and rebooting to use an XP program is not my idea of “seemless”. I also want to figure out if I can use Time Machine to back up my laptop to my Linux server with its fancy RAID 5 disk system. I’m thinking this will depend on being able to setup a VPN or tunneling an NFS mount through SSH. I’m sure it is doable, but I haven’t found the perfect HOWTO yet.
The other emotional hurdle is putting off (or giving up) the idea of setting up a Linux laptop. I’d been thinking about doing this after I graduate, but buying a MacBook might change those plans a bit.
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