Don't Use 3rd Party Fonts

From Xlr8yourmac.com

Upon calling Redmond for help, Microsoft's Mac Tech Support laughably told me after emailing them a bunch of sample files and enduring several long periods on hold that "the engineers writing the program decided no 3rd-party fonts were being supported in Office 2008 and that I could only use Microsoft fonts."

Can you believe that? I have an old version of Office here (V.x) and I have no intentions of upgrading unless I'm forced to. I use Neo-Office and thus far it does everything I need.

Speed Cameras for I-95

And so CT wants to put speed cameras on I-95 supposedly to protect motorists from speeders. Never mind that speed is never the actual cause of any accident on any road. Of course the real deal here is revenue since if speeding were actually all that dangerous people would actually be arrested for some crime and thrown in jail for doing it. But no, cameras, like Modified Ford Mustangs are the signs of a state going after revenues. I suppose that CT has to do something since it doesn't have the network of tolls that other states have imposed on drivers.

However; in keeping with the "safety" angle, we should look at where motorhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifists have been suffering under the big brother state for some time now:

We drive along at what we judge to be a safe speed. Then we catch sight of one of those menacing yellow boxes on their grey stalks, take our eyes off the road and the rear-view mirror to check the speedometer, and slam on the anchors. Before we know it - wham! - the bonnet of the car behind has thumped us up the backside.

This hasn't happened to me yet, touch wood, but you have only to approach a speed camera on a free-flowing road to realise that it must happen fairly often. Suddenly, every driver in front applies the brakes, and slows to precisely 40mph, or whatever the limit may be...


That is what is so unjust about speed cameras. These lumps of metal and wire cannot distinguish between somebody driving safely at 80mph, on a clear dry road, and a maniac tail-gating at the same speed in a blizzard.

The penalty for both - the careful driver and the potential killer - is almost always the same: a fine and three penalty points on their licences. Four strikes and the offender is off the road for a year, which for many can mean losing their livelihood...

Yes, we all agreed that we hated speed cameras. We all agreed, too, that some of them caused accidents rather than simply failed to prevent them (the figures for the Thames Valley police area, where serious accidents had increased in very nearly half of the places where speed cameras had been installed, made that point powerfully).

There you go. Cameras don't do squat for safety but do much for taxes.. I mean revenue.

Yet day by day I see people yammering on their cell phones, texting on their cell phones and reading newspapers while driving. But at least they're observing the speed limit right?

Whither X-Serve RAID

So Apple Announces a new version of the X-SAN product and lo and behold in their diagram the X-Serve RAID is nowhere to be found. Instead we see this Promise RAID. if you search for the X-Serve RAID you are redirected to the Promise RAID. Apple is out of the RAID business.

Snitches in the infield

I'm not one for the whole "Stop snitchin'" thing but how is it your "very good friend" is giving you up? Makes you wonder if baseball players have real friends. I'm just saying, why not say "I don't recall"?

McNamee

So let me get this straight. This guy injects his clients with steroids and keeps the needles, gauze and vials he used, with their blood on it for 7-8 years?
What? Was this bribe material? Or can we say "set up."

Money Matters

I've been called all kinds of cheap because I had, until recently, 2 20 year old cars. I now have one 20 year old car and one 11 year old car. I live well below my means and insist on paying credit card balances at the end of the month. I religiously save my spare change and all singles accrued at the end of the week.

I take my money very seriously. Which probably explains my current singlehood. But that's another story all together.

In any event the NY Times has a shocking article on just how badly some people are managing their money. Shocking to me at least because I cannot imagine even having $200,000 in debt or having a personal savings rate of -7% or -14%.

For the 34 million households who took money out of their homes over the last four years by refinancing or borrowing against their equity — roughly one-third of the nation — the savings rate was running at a negative 13 percent in the middle of 2006, according to Moody’s Economy.com. That means they were borrowing heavily against their assets to finance their day-to-day lives.

By late last year, the savings rate for this group had improved, but just to negative 7 percent and mostly because tightened standards made loans harder to get.

“For them, that game is over,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com. “They have been spending well beyond their incomes, and now they are seeing the limits of credit.”