My girlfriend’s become a minimalist.
She wants nothing to do with me.
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What Did President Obama Say..
What did President Obama say when a rocky member of the Fantastic Four enter the room?
Look, here’s the Thing.
A New Winter Bus Season
Early this year I made an animated video about a character, Meely-Mouthed Gary, waiting for a city bus.
I have edited the video. Now it is 2:30 rather than 4 minutes, and I have removed the background music. Here is the new video:
The Near Miss With the Straw of the Camels Back
As you may know, I was struck twice by cars this summer in Chicago. Then, several weeks later, in New York’s Williamsburg neighborhood, 2 chunks of rock (or plaster) fell from a worn-out building to the sidewalk, two paces ahead of me. It was quite a shock. It took a moment for me to realize what happened and what was avoided. Since that late August day, I have not been hit by anything else. I have healed from the car accident injuries (no thanks to ATT) and am grateful to be healthy.
When Bad Jokes Become Reality, Who Wins?
On September 4th I tweeted this:
“Downloaded MSFT security essentials. It says Chrome is a risk”
This was my first Tweet to be Favorited (and by top tier comedian @JimCoughlin nonetheless) so I remember it…
On September 28th, Essentials did indeed begin flagging Chrome as unsafe, and removing it from PCs! Read about it in Wired.
Background:
It was a simple joke, based on MSFT’s history of abuse of Windows power. Security Essentials is a highly recommended FREE program for protecting your PC (it happens to make redundant Norton and McAfee’s offerings*).
With the power to remove viruses and malware, it was easy to see how MSFT might “define dangerous down” to include software from competitors like Google, which makes the Chrome browser. Remember, MSFT set out to destroy Netscape Navigator back in the 90s, which is why to this day it has to recommend alternatives to Internet Explorer for European PC users.
But my Tweet was just a bad joke. I didn’t think MSFT would purposely remove competition. Nor do I think it acted in bad faith with Security Essentials. There was a basis for mistaking Chrome for malware… and the corrections have been made on both sides.
* more irony: MSFT destroyed Navigator by giving away IE. Now MSFT is giving away Security Essentials, putting Norton Anti-Virus in peril.. but the government could care . less.