aplomb (from the Etymology Dictionary):

“assurance, confidence,” 1828, from Fr., lit. “perpendicularity,” from phrase à plomb “poised upright, balanced,” lit. “on the plumb line,” from L. plumbum “(the metal) lead” (see plumb), of which the weight at the end of the line was made.

And the atomic number for lead is 82.

Kent chuckles at the so-called A-listers’ discsussions about link-baiting, and proposes an alternative for the rest of us: just give away that link-love to the people you read.  BTW, my blogroll widget in the right sidebar gives everyone I read a little shot of link-love on every page of my blog.

Reg provides some excellent thoughts and examples on how to write programs for people to read, and why syntactic sugar may be good for you.

Joseph deplores the actions of the WBC in protesting the funerals of those slain at Virginia Tech.  Yes, protesting the funerals, because they see the deaths as part of God’s punishment for America.  Some forms of religion fall squarely into the category of mental illness, if you ask me.

Responding to my tirade against TechRepublic, Jason Hiner posted links to feeds for individual TechRepublic blogs.  I’ve subscribed to a couple of them, including Jason’s.  Thanks, Jason!

You’d think that Randy Morin would be consuming all of his time thinking of ways to spend the cash he got from NBC for R|Mail on like, a new RV or something.  But instead he’s already diving into his next project: finishing out ResumeBay, “the openest resume and job Website”.

Randy created this site, which provides job search and résumé search and submission services, about a year ago.  I reviewed ResumeBay in its pre-alpha infancy here.

Now as then Randy is looking for your feedback.  He’s giving away up to $20 in Amazon.com merchandise each month for the best suggestion on how to improve the site.  I’ve already sent him a few ideas, for which I’ll be receiving a copy of The Ruby Way, 2nd edition, by Hal Fulton (recommended by Reg).

As of this posting, the site is not loading — although it was functioning earlier today.  I expect he’ll encounter more rough spots in the road ahead before Randy reaches Releaseville.

Good luck, Randy!

In a recent post appropriately titled This sucks, I described a problem with Office 2007 on Vista Ultimate when saving files on a network share.

It turned out that the root of the problem was an inability to rename files or folders on a share, and saving files in Office apparently requires the ability to rename.  Office need not be involved at all to reproduce the problem.  I could, for instance, create a folder on a network share in Explorer, but in order to change its name from “New Folder” to something more descriptive I would have to use another workstation running XP, or go to the server itself.

Googling vista can’t rename files on a share led me to this forum, where I found a work-around:

Open the Control Panel and choose for classic, then choose “Offline files” and set the use of offline files off. That’s all.

So I clicked the first button on this panel:

Reboot required (grunts in minor irritation).  But then presto change-o, I can once again use shares in a sane manner.

So I guess something about saving offline copies gets Vista’s panties in a knot when you rename a file … but not if somebody else does it.  Weird.  I’d be interested to hear the end of this story, once it’s told.  But for now, I’m happy operating without offline copies.

No, let’s don’t.

I have a general theory about people who want to talk about relationships.

But first, let’s talk about general theories.  I have a general theory about general theories:  general theories are always wrong — or more precisely, they’re always imprecise — including this one.

My general theory about general theories is imprecise because it’s always true, which violates itself.  So, um, it’s not always true, making it imprecise — which makes it true.

Think about that for a few minutes and you might come to see all human concepts, when converted into words, as overstretched metaphors barely able to cover the outline of their subject matter.

But back to my gross generalization du jour, my general theory about people who want to talk about relationships:  a person’s desire to talk about relationships directly relates to the challenges relationships present in their own lives.  Those who have no relationship issues don’t need to talk about them.

To some degree you could generalize this further: a person’s need to talk about any subject directly relates to the challenges that subject presents to them.  If I think I’ve got a subject all figured out, then discussing it seems like just covering the same old ground (even if I’m wrong about having it all figured out).

But if I know that there’s a lot I still need to figure out, I’ll be blabbing about that subject until I think I’ve got a good handle on it.

Actually, it may be more of a bell curve:

Having absolutely no idea about how to approach a subject would shut you right up, too.

So then the question becomes: does my lack of interest in discussing relationships place that topic (for me) closer to “A” or “C”?

How about you?

This is a bit like gaming the system.  OK, it’s a lot like gaming the system.  But heck, I’m game!

Robert Hruzek tagged me in this little link-love pyramid scheme.  But it looks like he left himself out of the list, so I’ve added him in.

My only dilemma is what three blogs to add to the list.  Don’t anyone be offended — I’m going to pick the three members of my blogroll who have the lowest Technorati rank, so they can get some much-deserved help.

***Start Copying Here:***

Here are the rules:

1) Write a short introduction paragraph about how you found the list and include a link to the blog that referred you to the list.

2) COPY the Rules and ENTIRE List below and post it to your blog. To avoid duplicate content and increase the amount of keywords your site can accessible for, go ahead and change the titles of the blog. Just don’t change the links of the blog.

3) Take the three blogs listed under “My New Faves” and move them to “The Original Faves” list.

4) Add 3 Blogs that you’ve just added to your Technorati Favorites to the “My New Faves” section. Remember to also add the “Fave Me” link next to your new blogs (i.e. http://technorati.com/faves?sub=addfavbtn&add=
http://www.yourfavesdomain.com)

5) Add everyone on this list to your Technorati Favorites List by clicking on “Fave the Site.” Those who want to respond will fave you back. If not, you will for sure get the benefits of faves from the bloggers who continue this list after you.

My New Faves

· The Sideways Love Balloon - Fave the Site

· The Daily Twaddle - Fave the Site

· Klickatat.com – Fave the Site

The Original Faves

· Dawud Miracle – Fave the Site

· Gary Lee – Fave the Site *

· Dosh Dosh – Fave the Site

· Nate Whitehill – Fave the Site

· Jeff Kee – Fave the Site

· Scribble on the Wall – Fave the Site

· Jimi Morrisons Head – Fave the Site

· Jon Lee – Fave the Site

· Samanathon – Fave the Site

· Eat Drink & Be Merry - Fave the Site

· The Man of Silver – Fave the Site

· Hannes Johnson – Fave the Site

· My Dandelion Patch – Fave the Site

· Nathan Drach – Fave the Site

· SiteLogic – Fave the Site

· Julies Journal – Fave the Site

· Tea & Slippers – Fave the Site

· The Thinking Blog – Fave the Site

· Pencil Thin – Fave the Site

· Essential Keystrokes – Fave the Site

· Mom Gadget – Fave the Site

· Engaging the Disquiet – Fave the Site

· Monk at Work – Fave the Site

· Converstations – Fave the Site

· The Kiss Business Too – Fave the Site

· HomeMom3 – Fave the Site

· Grow Your Writing Business – Fave the Site

· Quartz Mountain – Fave the Site

· Prime Advertising Blog – Fave the Site

· Chips Quips – Fave the Site

· Creative Think – Fave the Site

· LOGICal eMOTIONs – Fave the Site

· Middle Zone Musings - Fave the Site

***End Copying Here***

Not far from tragedy, Interstate 81 passes within a few miles of Blacksburg, Virginia.

This also is not funny.

Chad Perrin, self-proclaimed introvert blogger, shares his reasons for blogging.

Randy Morin sold R|Mail to NBC.  Congratulations, Randy!  I just hope that the suits don’t make the service suck.  Rogers has more, including a question about why nobody is covering this story.

A new potentially habitable planet has been discovered orbiting the star Gliese 581.  At five times Earth’s mass, though, we’d have to come up with some means of dealing with the gravity.  I’m not ready to weigh over 800 pounds just yet.  Nevermind that we also need to figure out how to travel over 20 light years.  But hey, the Romans once thought the regions north of Germany were uninhabitable, too.  More on this and some great links from Paul Raven.

WordPress theme generator (thanks, TDavid).

Widget watch

Pacific State – An Anime Art Blog uses my tag cloud widget.

Strewn on the kitchen counter I found some crayon pictures drawn by my son.  I could easily tell that they were intended to be movie trailers.  An FBI warning page even headed up the series.  The three big letters glared menancingly at would-be offenders, but the warning in fine print read a bit differently than what you find on most videos:

If this is a bad movie you don’t have to watch it if it’s boring.

We need more warnings like that.

I guess I’ve become something of a homebody lately. Even though I drive around the island and surrounding areas from time to time, I never noticed until our recent road trip that I am now completely unable to focus on highway signs.  My left eye, which works better for distance, is especially fuzzy (since my eyes don’t align properly, I can switch dominant eyes at will).  I also tend to use my left eye more for reading online, which might explain why its focus for distance has become recently compromised.

All 800 miles from Bainbridge to Folsom I squinted at signs and missed turns.  Then as I was checking into the hotel, the left temple fell off my glasses (that’s the part that hooks over the ear, for any of you who may be eyewear-terminologically-challenged).  And I lost the nut that holds it on.  I hate these frameless glasses — they’re the most fragile pair I’ve ever owned.  Three of the four nuts have come off at one time or another.  So I put the temple in my pocket and perched the glasses across my nose and one ear, planning to go by a Lenscrafters at some point during our trip.

Naturally the only Lenscrafters was located all the way on the other side of the Sacramento circumsprawl in Roseville.  So I kept putting it off until I managed to lose the temple as well.

I’ve been considering Lasik surgery, but I wouldn’t have time to recover from that before the SPC next month.  So today I got examined and ordered a new pair of glasses in regular frames.  Progressive bifocal, transition, anti-glare, anti-scratch, anti-UV, anti-aging, anti-drug, anti-terrorist, anti-government, antidisestablishmentarian antidote for my astigmatism (OK I made up everything after anti-UV as if you couldn’t tell).

My wife accompanied me so that, in her words, I wouldn’t choose a stupid looking pair.  That usually means removing the association between the words “I” and “choose”, but this time our favorite frames actually coincided.  We’ll see how well I side-stepped stupidity when they arrive.

You may be wondering what happened to me, since I haven’t posted since Thursday.  My brother-in-law passed away suddenly, and we drove down to California to be with the family as much as we can.

I brought my new notebook with EVDO, but I did all the driving so I didn’t get a chance to use it on the road.  After we got here, we spent all our time getting settled and connecting with relatives.  Finally this morning I was able to close the door on one room of our suite and get to work.

The EVDO works great here in Folsom — much better than when I tried it at home.  I get about 550 Kbps, which is more than a third of what I’m used to on DSL.  The free wireless here at the hotel runs a blinding 50 Kbps (must be multiplexing too many users), so EVDO is definitely the way to go here.  Glad I got it when I did.

So, I’m back (at least for today), but I’ve still got tons of work to do.  We’ll see how much time I can squeeze in for blogging.

Joseph correctly guessed my numeric reference in the previous “Chipping the web” subtitle “GET along, POST haste“: port 80 is generally used for HTTP, and GET and POST are two of the more common HTTP requests.  Be the first to guess today’s reference to 81 and get a free link in the next edition.

Joseph also pointed me to The Rootless Root: The Unix Koans of Master Foo.

Hrafn is taking a poll: who’s afraid of robots?

Happy Birthday, Doug, and congratulations on 500 subscribers!

“A little link-love” back at you, Kent.

Unstrung links to my Vista-Verizon tirade.

Shasam.net links to my tag cloud widget for WordPress.