In the last few days, I’ve heard two stories of friendships tested or lost because of racists who usually know better than to express their views directly who were driven to do so by the imminent possible election of Barack Obama.
In the first instance, one of the members of my mother-in-law’s long-standing bunco group was ranting yesterday about electing a black man as president. My mother-in-law, the only liberal in the group, was quite shocked both by the expressed racism and by the passivity or agreement of the other group members.
In the other instance, a woman in our neighborhood who is a vocal Obama supporter was told that a group of her friends had been mocking her “gay-and-black loving” beliefs behind her back. When she confronted one of the offenders the primary offender, the woman tried to play it all down she admitted that she didn’t like Obama because of his race. The Obama supporter told my wife that she chose to end the friendship than to remain friends with a hypocritical racist.
This is a sad state of affairs.
UPDATE: My wife received and forwarded to me the email from the Obama supporter herself. I’ve corrected one line above based on first-hand info in the email. Another point in the email is the irony that Pflugerville is probably the most racially diverse suburb in the Austin area, with a high percentage of African-Americans. The racists seem to be living in the wrong neighborhood.

(Click on photo for larger version)
I took this photo on the window of my taxi in Singapore this morning. I tried a durian pastry on my last visit to Singapore. It’s definitely an acquired taste, but not bad. Though I understand the smell of fresh durian is much more pungent than cooked.

I took a photo of this message on a gas pump. I don’t understand how a $75 cap protects the customer from fraud, especially when it states on the pump how to exceed the limit.

I’ve probably assembled and installed well over a dozen ceiling fans in my adult life. Over the years, the manufacturers have improved the designs so that the fans work better and, more importantly, are easier to install. This past weekend, I installed a new Hampton Bay ceiling fan in the kids’ bathroom. Two features presumably keep it from rattling: rubber washers where the blades attach to their brackets and rubber bands around the light globes where they are held in place by screws.
But this fan had a feature that made a big alleviated probably the biggest installation headache: holding the blades in place while you screw the blade brackets into the body of the fan. Due to the light kit, the screw holes are awkward to access, plus you have to hold the blade in place, the fan in place and screw in the screws upside down. Inevitably for me, the first screw for each blade falls to the floor once or twice before I get it in (the second screw is much easier, since I no longer have to hold the blade in place).
The helpful feature of this fan: the screws that attach the blade brackets to the fan were already inserted into the blade brackets and held in place so that they would not come out. That meant I just had to hold the blade and screw them in. Very nice.

I took this photo yesterday morning while avoiding first-day-of-school traffic.

Here is the key card for my office:

If you’re like me, you would assume that the arrow goes into the reader. But here’s the reader:

Apparently, my assumption is pretty common.
Oh, and the text at the bottom of the card reads, “Place this edge in bottom of reader slot.” That’s also not very helpful since all our readers are horizontal, like the one in the photo.

I spent most of last week at the Agile 2008 conference, which was held at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in Toronto.
In my opinion, this hotel was an epic fail in regard to internet access.
The rooms offered only wired internet access with per-day charges (which is pretty standard for business hotels), but the jack in my room didn’t work. When I informed the desk of the problem, they sent someone up to give me a new network cable, which, of course, didn’t help. After that, I just didn’t bother with internet access in my room. I didn’t feel like trying to get it fixed and then having to pay for the access.
The hotel offered two wireless access networks in all the public areas of the hotel and conference center. Both networks were unsecured, which didn’t thrill me considering I was among 1500 geeks. But that was a secondary concern: the networks were both unreliable; sometimes I just couldn’t get an IP address from them, and other times, I could connect but not get any internet access.
Because of the situation in the rooms, every evening, the lobby was completely full of geeks using their laptops, including me (when the wireless worked).
You would think that business hotels and conference centers would be getting these things right by now.

Introducing the UroClub:

Attention Male Golfers! How many times has this happened? You arrive at the golf course, and soon you’re on to 18 holes with your best buddies. After drinking sport ades, water, beer, and whatever, you’re on the 3rd hole with no rest room in sight. There are no trees or bushes around and you just gotta go, what are you going to do?

Now if someone would only market the UroGear Shift^TM for those unexpected rush hour traffic jams after my morning coffee.

Two stories that I ran across on the web today give me some hope for the human race: Nun offers mercy, but robber gets jail (via Fred Clark) and ‘Unbelievable’ sportsmanship in softball game (via MeFi).