Last night, in an attempt to connect a very old printer to a very new computer, I made the ultimate Geek mistake: I read – and followed (!) the instructions.

Forty-five minutes of swearing like a longshoreman later, I finally realized: What the hell am I doing? Do the install like you normally would.

Five minutes later, the printer was humming…

Yes, I am now operating on a suspended Geek license.

Ok, the Oscars are on tonight. I’ll be watching for two reasons:

• I usually watch the Emmy’s and Oscars every year.
• I’m a big Jon Stewart fan, and I want to see how his first stint as host goes. From what I’ve see of past hosts, his performance will put him into one of three categories:

  • Classy and classic: Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, Billy Crystal (not as classy, but classic).
  • Shrug. Whatever: Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock.
  • Crash and Burn: David Letterman (and I’m a Letterman fan).

OK, on to my guesses, where – in less than 10 or so hours, I can look like an ass!

I’ve not seen any of the pictures nominated this year, so I’m going by what I’ve read, gut and guessing.

• Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain. Hey, Tom Hanks won for playing a gay lawyer dying of AIDS in Philadelphia, right? Possible spoiler: Crash, which has built buzz recently (came out in May/June of 2005).
• Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote. This one the sole lock, to me.
• Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line.
• Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney, Syriana. I think it’s a coin toss between Clooney (partly as consolation for not getting this year’s director’s award for Good Night and Good Luck) and Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man, as a mea culpa for overlooking his brilliant work in last year’s Sideways (not even a nomination!).
• Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener. I know less about this category than any other this year, but Weisz’s work was supposed to have been great, and the general overlooking of this film might win her some votes aimed at getting this film some recognition.
• Best Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain

And the Oscar® goes to…

Update: I got everything except Best Picture correctly, but – at least – my dark horse candidate won for this category. Jon Stewart? Fell in the middle bucket. He didn’t crash and burn, but he didn’t shine, either. Hmm…

Got a new computer for the downstairs office, and I never dreamed it wouldn’t come with a parallel port (for an old printer).

Uh, guess what? It doesn’t. My bad.

So I’ll have to take a trip to CDW on Monday – they’re closed Sundays, of course – to pick up the damn IEEE 1284 to USB cable.

Dell’s really stripping down its computers, that’s for sure…

Update: Enjoy my continuing stupidity here.

OK, no surprise to me, but Blackberry has managed to survive.

Sounds like a compromise agreement, with RIM essentially shelling out over a half-billion bucks, but getting NTP to give RIM a “get out of patent lawsuits” card. At least, that’s what I take away from this at this point.

But still. NTP has essentially had all the patents it has sued RIM over declared, to some degree, invalid.

$600 million for baseless patents?

Something’s (well, lots) horribly wrong with the current patent system. I like the concept, I don’t like the reality.

After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon handed over documents Friday that contain the names of detainees held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. The release resulted from a victory by The Associated Press in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
…
Most of the Guantanamo Bay hearings were held to determine whether the detainees were “enemy combatants.” That classification, Bush administration lawyers say, deprives the detainees of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections and allows them to be held indefinitely without charges.
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The documents released Friday did not name all current and former Guantanamo Bay detainees. And for ones they did name, they did not make clear whether the detainees were still being held or had been released.
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The United States, which opened the prison on its Navy base in eastern Cuba in January 2002, now holds about 490 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Only 10 have been charged with crimes. [Note – that’s a 2% charge rate, after four years…]

— Source: CNN