Yes, this should be a lengthy entry…[insert laugh track].

A few things that caught my mind the last day or so:

• No receipt: I just purchased – online, as I’m wont to do – a new product. A well-over $100 item. I didn’t get an e-mail confirmation. Odd, and a little worrisome. First time with this company (online), but I’ve worked with them in the past offline, and I have a couple of personal commendations of this site’s online sales. I’ll see, but why not an auto-confirm?
• PDF: Regarding above item: I did get a confirmation page as part of the order process; when I got not confirmation e-mail, I created a PDF out of the page (I have Acrobat installed). While this was a nice ability, I still don’t understand people slinging PDF’s back and forth around the world. Bloated, have to have the (free) Acrobat Reader installed, only test-searchable recently (with Google Desktop et al). This is a huge break from the standards of the Web. Can’t someone invent, say, a wget-like tool that’ll turn the page(s) into, say, a single HTML file or what have you? Hmm…
• Bush and Democracy: Old peeve, but I just read something else about this. How can the Bush Administration keep pushing for world-wide democracy (a justification for the Iraq war) and turn away non-Republicans from events with President Bush? This bugged me during the election period last half of 2004, but at least it was Republican dollars paying for the events for the most part. Shame on the media for treating the events as true Town Hall meetings rather than a cognitive dissonance mind-meld. But during Bush’s recent tour to support his Social Security plan, well, shouldn’t that be open to everyone? Including those – Red or Blue – who agree/disagree with him? It’s going to affect us all, ja?
• Bush and Democracy Deux: One (of many, to be honest) problem I have with Bush’s push for world-wide democracy is the tacit assumption that democracy is best for all countries. I don’t know if this is true. I just don’t. And I don’t believe anyone can really say this is/isn’t true. It’s like the religious fanatics who insist their god/gods/lack of god(s) is better/more correct than yours. There are not true yardsticks for these measures, and – if there were – they would probably change in units/size depending on who controls the measures, and when such is measured. And if democracy is so great, why won’t Bush – see preceding point – let the voices of all into a national debate?
• Religious Wars: By this I don’t really mean the friction between various religious factions: Christain, Muslim, Jews and so on (thought they certainly fit) – the religious-like fervor that people, for some inexplicable reason – expend to defend their choice of [x] vs. [y]. More accurately, to dis’ folks who don’t use/believe in superiority/beliefs of [x] and so on. To silly, completely blindered lengths. Black/white. No one will seem to concede gray. Consider the religious wars:

  • Windows vs. Macs
  • Windows vs. Linux
  • vi vs. emacs
  • Republican vs. Democrat
  • mySql vs. Postgres
  • Pro-Gay [whatever- marriage/adoption/rights etc] vs. Con-Gay
  • Guns vs. not
  • MPAA/RIAA/DMCA vs. Free Use
  • Open Source Software vs. Proprietary Software

  Imagine what could be accomplished if the religious baggage was discarded and the merits (!) of each side weighted and acknowledged. On the other hand – there’s alway another hand – I fully understand the power of fanaticism and how it helps shape the world. If you focus all your energies to [x] – however good and possible [y] may be – there’s a better chance of you getting some fragment of [x] accepted than if you did spend some energy on such fluff as [y] and [z]. But, still, *sigh*.

And that’s a short list of stuff.

Because the sheer volume of stuff I don’t understand would crash the Internet.