Is your library unpatriotic? The FBI has now started checking library records. From metafilter.

On a related note, go take a look at the Code of Ethics of the American Library Association.

From the Washington Post article:
“People are scared and they think that by giving up their rights, especially their right to privacy, they will be safe,” Krug said. “But it wasn’t the right to privacy that let terrorists into our nation. It had nothing to do with libraries or library records.”

Or, as Ben Franklin put it: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

It was true then, and it’s true now.

I read a lot. Always have. I will, in fact, read just about *anything*. (Upside down memos on my boss’s desk and the backs of cereal boxes included.) It’s almost a compulsion. If I haven’t read something decent in a while I feel funky. Now, I’m not independently wealthy, so this means I spend a lot of time in libraries.

I didn’t realize, growing up, just what I great local library I had. (The Sussex County main branch was seven miles from my house. It rocked.) I thought every town had a decently funded library with a great selection of new and classic sci-fi, a large travel section, a good selection of soundtracks on CD and LP, and a new releases section that was updated on a bi-weekly basis.

I was wrong. With a few notable exeptions (The snooty rich towns, mostly) the Bergen County library system comes up as just adequate. Not that most folks would think it sucks - I think it’s more that I grew up with a really exceptional library, so I’ve got some tough expectations. Hell, my standards are high enough that I will (when I can) drive an hour and a quarter each way just to use my old library. It might be out in the boonies, but they’ve got quality.

But… now and then I *do* find something decent locally. And boy did I ever. Henry’s List of Wrongs. Possibly the best thing I’ve read in two years. The characters are interesting. They’re human. Everyone fucks up at least once. The plot itself pulls you in and then spins you about in a direction you might not see coming. The writing itself, just the pure art of the phrasing and sentence structure…. gorgeous.

I plan on finding everything the author has written and devouring it.

The only thing on my plate right now is a site for some folks who make child caskets. Very quiet office and pictures of mini coffins in front of me. Mini coffins in *pastel colors*. So what am I focusing on? Finding a nice lace image for the backgrounds, ’cause imagining these suckers actually being used is going to drive me into nuttyville.

I want to be cremated and tossed somewhere nice - no creepy box for me, thanks.

Could it be? After more than two decades and some of the nastiest leagal wrangling in sci-fi fandom, could a Battlestar Galactica remake actually be happening?

Also known as a very grumpy bitchfest/review of Fusion 7.

After several weeks of running about like a beheaded fowl, I find myself with very little to do. So I’ve spent most of the day going through the drek that is Fusion 7.

When Website Pros bought the package, it seems they were determined to make as few changes as possible to it. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the program actually produced reasonable code, but of course, it doesn’t. Not even close. I still can’t get it to produce a backward and forward compatible stylesheet. It still only takes version 4 browsers into account when giving code output options.

There have been some minor improvements, but they really are minor. It’s now possible to create java based flyout menus. (The option was there before, but it was useless. It’s gotten a little better now.) You can now tweak the auto-generated navigation images with greater ease. They made the sizzle better and gave us the same leathery dry steak as we were trying to choke down before.

Not that I was expecting much else.

However - the fawning, drooling, and dare I say slavering PR Coolmaps has been giving the upgrade might lead one to think the Grail had just been discovered. Or invented. Not that the fine folks at Coolmaps are impartial. Their entire existence is based on this piece of software - they *have* to love it. Makers of, say, photoshop plugins have other graphics apps that they can work with. Coolmaps isn’t branching out into the Dreamweaver market, so if Fusion really had died a dodo’s death when NetObjects went under, they were just as screwed. So I can understand why their heads are smack in Website Pro’s laps. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

You get the same PR at the TeamGotFusion and WebsitePros sites. Everyone just falling all over themselves letting the world know how “cutting edge” the software is. Yeah, right.

Cutting edge if it’s 1999. Maybe. Their idea of 508 accessibility? Table cells can now be designated as headers. CSS support? They now have a link to a very nice article on what CSS is and why it might be a good thing, but the program can’t produce a CSS formatted site that works in NS4 and IE5 at the same time. (It would have been too hard to *mention* the @import hack? Maybe give us some ability to implement it?)

CSS-P support even seems to have been *de*creased, but I may be mistaken about that. (I just switched to winME - I’m not willing to rule out OS glitches yet.)

Like I said, lots of sizzle, and I’m still looking for the steak.

Te has some lovely things to say about the hypocrisy of the cult of thin as regards fandom. Jessica-Ruth has more thoughts in that vein, especially as regards the notion of starving in the midst of plenty and consumerism/thinness being hallmarks of an overly affulent society.

Oh the joys of RAM. And I mean, lots of RAM. Enough that everything is just blazing along, no matter what. The hassle of re-installing everything is almost done with, and the only thing I forgot to back up was my address book. So I’ll be rebuilding that later. Probably during lunch.

Two old friends dropped by today, and somehow, we wound up bumming around most of Manhattan. We wandered through the village, we wandered through Little Italy, Chinatown, broadway, times square…. oh yeah. And we went to ground zero. Which is the first time I’ve been back there. It was a pilgrimage. A very humbling one. Wound up feeling pretty small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, looking at that huge pit and thinking about what it all represented.

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll have some more lucid thoughts on it all. (It’s almost 2:00 AM… sleep would be such a good thing)

I have three songs running around in my head right now, and none of them have anything to do with the others. The theme from the movie Arthur (when you get caught between the moon and New York City…), the Smallvile theme song (somebody save me…), and something classical that was on the radio as I drove to work (no words, just melody). The three melodies are competing for brain space - it’s like eating cotton candy, jalepeno peppers, and chai all at once. I may get neural indigestion from this.

For those few of you who know my family and care, my sister is engaged! Whoo hoo and hee hee… she’s the first of my immediate family to take that big jump. (I don’t count - think I’ll just be living in sin for the rest of my life. Easier that way. Really.) The gentleman is a lovely man name of Lynn - real nice guy, and he makes her happy. Thus, I am happy. :)