Clancy's View

Good News from an Unlikely Source

Traitor, defeatist and all-around asshat, Congressman John Murtha has changed his tune.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), one of the leading anti-war voices in the House Democratic Caucus, is back from a trip to Iraq and he now says the "surge is working."

When the Dem’s biggest asshat finally recognizes reality, it is good news indeed.

h/t: TARANTO

Open Letter to Comcast and the NFL Network

Last time I checked, I actually had the NFL network, both on regular broadcast and HD. Of course, that was before there was anything worth watching on the NFL network. Now they have some games and I was psyched to watch Dallas destroy Green Bay tonight. That is until I tuned in the NFL network as was greeted by the ‘Subscription Required’ screen…

I checked – It’s only $5 a month, in fact Comcast even has a nice promotion going on right now where I can have it for $1.99 for the first 6 months. But, I’m sorry that’s just bullshit. We’re already paying Comcast a ridicules amount of money for TV and cable internet. Redicules.

So – to both Comcast and the NFL network, I have just one thing to say; Fuck You.

Now if Verizon would get off there ass and get FIOS run to my door…

Upgrade Project – Status Report

So, um, MovableType 4.0 – yeah, well, I’m not impressed. I mean the interface and the bells and whistles look good, but … what the hell were they thinking when designed the stylesheets?

See, in the grand scheme plan of resurrecting this neglected blog, I want to first give it a facelift. The existing style was never my fav, it just worked, and I couldn’t get motivated to play with it any more because, well, I pretty much hate stylesheets. (I did mention somewhere along the line that I write code for a living, right?) Pouring over a stylesheet is not my idea of fun.

But MT 4.0 makes that easy right? One of the many nifty widgets included in MT 4.0 is StyleCatcher which ‘theoretically’ allows you to import and deploy themes pretty much on the fly. But in order for that to work, there need to be themes to import. The base MT 4.0 install comes with 10 options, all in varying degrees of butt-ugly. But outside of those, there is a whole bunch of NADA. Zip, zero, nothing. Everything I have found is geared toward 3.x. (MT 4.0 is only about 4 months old, so maybe I’m out of line expecting to find anything yet.)

Six Apart made some pretty heavy duty changes to many of the basic classes with this upgrade and 3.x themes simply do not play nice with 4.0.

The whole StyleCatcher thing appears to me to be unnecessarily complicated. Between the 3 sheets that compose a simple default style (they call it ‘minimalist-red’), there is over 850 lines of code. In three separate sheets! I like the fact that they’ve embraced modular programming in style sheets, but 850 lines? Dude – that’s like, so NOT the point of modular code.

So now I’m left in a dilemma. Do I attempt to preserve this mad system so when I become bored with the next theme I can change it easily, or so I scrap the whole thing and script my own style from scratch and thus break StyleCatcher forever?

The existing style works mostly so in the meanwhile you’ll have to tolerate the pukey orangish/brownish color a little longer.

Disbelief with a big ‘ole helping of ‘Proof’

It’s not even over yet, but the as we approach the end of the 3rd quarter, the 5-5 Eagles are up 28 to 23 over the undefeated Patriots.

I’m a recovering Eagles fan, but this makes the second year in a row that I’ve “fallen off the wagon” and come back to the birds. The commonality for each “fall” . . . the absence of McNabb. Why did Garcia do so well last year? And Feeley now?

One word – Leadership. Donovan doesn’t have it and never will (neither does Reid, but that’s another post).

The is a team with heart - always has been. They are capable of so much more when they have leadership. Not some over-rated punk collecting a paycheck.

Update: Ok, so it couldn't last. I probably jinxed it with this post. But, it was the best lose by any team so far this year, and it crushed the 24.5 point spread...

Excuse the mess... (Updated)

...we're upgrading around here.

Houston, we are now at MT 4.0.

Now to do something about the stylesheet - this look was never good and it hasn't aged well...

Tolerance

Story and special thank you to Michael Yon, someone we should all be reading more of...