Zathras' Great Machine

A brief entry to keep the blog from going blank.

I haven't been up to communicating much lately, and I'm still not -- but I don't want this page to go all white again, so I'll do a brief update.

I was going to do a review of QuickMail and PowerMail, but I don't really have the inclination to do so any longer. For various reasons, I've decided not to use either of them -- they're reasonably good apps, but not worth the price. One of them also has that weird "feature" where, if you show full headers and click "forward", the forwarded message has only brief headers (what are these people smoking?) It also puts the headers at the bottom instead of the top -- hint, guys: they're called "headers" for a reason; if they were supposed to go at the bottom, they'd be called "footers".

Anyway. It's now a choice between Apple Mail or sticking with Eudora. In doing some more research on Mail, I found, unsurprisingly, that I was not the first person to take note of its shortcomings, and quite a few people have written various Applescripts to compensate. What did surprise me was that Mail is partially open source, which means that you can modify the source code to add or change features. (I put in a bundle from one developer to make Mail support priority flags and return receipts, for example.) That being the case, I'm much more inclined to move to Mail now, although I do intend to give it a more rigorous workout before I'm sure about the move.

I ran various errands on Saturday and discovered, while I was buying new clothes, that my formerly forty-inch waist is now down to a thirty-six. I also discovered, when I went to the movie theater, that the critics were largely correct about "The Punisher".

I put a bunch of stuff up on eBay on Sunday, including all my back issues of Playboy -- then, much to my annoyance, eBay pulled the auction and sent me a reprimand, saying that Playboy can only be listed in the "Adult" section. I wrote them back and gently pointed out that they themselves have Playboy listed as one of their categories in the "General -- Magazine Back Issues" section, so I couldn't understand what they were complaining about, and to please put my auction back up. I haven't received a response yet, so I suppose this weekend I'll throw in the towel and list them in the "Adult" section instead.

I had plans to go to Six Flags today, but when I was looking into that a few days ago, I discovered, much to my extreme annoyance, that they are currently only open on weekends. I'm thinking about going to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg instead, since I know they're open during the middle of the week (I would very much prefer not to go to an amusement park on a weekend, for obvious reasons).

Almost done watching Bab 5 -- only six more eps to go, plus the special features on the last two discs. Probably wrap that up over the next few days.

I haven't been shooting in quite some time, so if I don't go to Busch Gardens next week, I'm thinking about renting a car and heading to the NRA headquarters firing range to burn some powder. If I do rent a car, I should probably also run some errands while I have it, like donating some old books and clothes -- might as well make the most of the rental as long as I'm doing it.

There's been a pretty nasty stink in the local news lately about a 15-year-old girl who said that three boys raped her in the high school bathroom. The three boys were arrested almost immediately and spent the next several days in jail -- then, after various witnesses told the police what they saw and the accuser herself admitted she had lied, the charges were dropped. These three underage boys were all publicly identified by name and age, as well as the high school they attended. The girl's identity is still being concealed, though, and -- get this -- the police have said that they're not going to charge her with a crime. This girl committed a felony and did irreparable damage to those three boys' lives (you know that, no matter what happens, there are going to be people out there who will still think they're guilty), and the police are still concealing her identity and saying that "she needs help, not punishment". Am I the only one who understands that this kind of thing produces a backlash against feminism? Equal rights means equal responsibilities, folks. It's not going to do a heck of a lot of good for race relations, either, considering that the girl is white and the three boys are black. Well, at least one of the boys' fathers is talking about a lawsuit, which is something, at least. "Help, not punishment." Maybe she needs both. OK, rant mode off...

Hmm. I spent the last couple of weeks sweltering in the heat, since the AC in this building isn't turned on until the last weekend in April. So it got turned on Saturday morning, and -- naturally -- the weather turned cold again. Very cold... last night, it dropped to about forty degrees, which is very unusual for this time of year.

I'm slowly managing to get more stuff done around the apartment... I did two loads of laundry on Monday and was planning to do two more yesterday, but discovered, much to my annoyance, that both the washing machines in the building are broken again. Other than that, I'm making progress -- I've dusted about half the baseboards and hope to finish that tomorrow, then vacuum the entire apartment. I still have junk in the closets that I have to sort thru and either donate, organize, or throw out. I really hate cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom, but fortunately, I never have to. They always stay spotless on their own. *cough cough bullshit cough*

And that's the latest... now returning to stealth mode for who knows how long...

Posted by Zathras at April 28, 2004 10:06 PM