When I was a child, I was taught that the United States was a “free country.” That I could say anything I wanted, with only minor limitations (e.g., libel or inciting violence). That the people were protected by the Rule of Law, and had the right to Due Process and Habeas Corpus. [...]

grotendous /gr-tnds/, adjective, grotesque, horrendous. Used for extreme emphasis. Adverb: grotendously.
Cory Doctorow brought the adverb form to my attention with a posting on Boing Boing:
What’s weird to me is how the collective output of all that great work by great people produces such lousy outcomes — DRM-crippled OSes like Vista, stupid products like [...]

A few months ago I ran over some kind of debris in the road, which slashed the sidewall of one of my tires (original equipment Firestone “Wilderness LE” P265/70R16). I purchased a new pair of Firestone “Destination LE” tires at the Sunnyvale Wheelworks, and kept the extra Wilderness LE as a “spare spare”. [...]

My Academic Advisor indicates that I am not required to take the CSC 410A Java Programming class, so in the Spring I’ll take two other CS classes and one of the three Liberal Studies Colloquia or Public Affairs Colloquia courses that I need for the General Education requirement.
I notice that the online UIS tuition and [...]

Woo-hoo!
I’ve been unbelievably anxious about this over the last three weeks, but I just received email notification of my acceptance.  The official notification will be in the mail.
I can hardly wait to get started!  The Spring semester begins on January 16.
The CS department recommends that students in the first semester of the program take:

CSC 305 [...]

Fantasy and Science Fiction has resumed their competition series, and the latest challenge is to combine the title of a genre book or story with another name, and describing the plot of the combined work. I’ve never entered the competitions before, but I thought I could come up with a few reasonable entries for [...]

I previously wrote about using the Logitech V200 cordless notebook optical mouse with my laptop. My only complaint with the V200 was that while the receiver snaps onto the bottom of the mouse for storage (and powers off the mouse in the process), it doesn’t stay securely fastened. I suggested that Logitech should [...]

Those of us that protested the so-called “PATRIOT” act were criticized as being “soft on terrorists”.  We’ve been told that the taking away of our civil liberties is just a temporary measure until the terrorist problem is solved.  And we’re told that the sweeping new powers that Congress has been giving the government will only [...]