Business Advice

In the course of my daily interchange with other denizens of the web, I was informed that my blog looks like poo in Internet Explorer 6. More specifically, the lower content in the main column – the Highlighted, Overheard, and Randomized modules – moved up and overlapped the rotating Featured content. I had established a fix that should have prevented this, and it did – in modern browsers. Frankly, I hadn’t concerned myself with IE6, and why should I? Who still uses a browser that is insecure, that doesn’t comply with modern web standards, that has prompted the creation of a veritable cottage industry of hacks and workarounds by developers? Who still uses a browser that is now close to being two versions obsolete? Prison inmates, perhaps. People toiling in workplaces too glacially-minded to upgrade their software once a year. And the lazy, of course. Mustn’t forget the technologically lazy.

“Whatever,” I thought, and went about my business.

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Casual browsing at Airbag Industries directed me to a Coding Horror screed protesting the lack of built-in caching in WordPress. For those of you in a hurry, the highlights from the diplomatic Jeff Atwood:

… incredibly scary… completely unacceptable… appalling… absolutely irresponsible … naive… brainlessly stupid…

Stately, measured prose! Reminds me of the last office meeting I attended. Good times.

Having already experimented with WP-Super Cache last week and found that no matter which URL visitors clicked, they were always delivered to the front page of the blog, I opted today for the older WP-Cache instead. Things seem to be running smoothly. We’ll see what happens the next time I get actual traffic. In the past, this blog has been Deadspun, Wonketted, MichaelMoored, TalkingPointsMemoed, and DailyKosed, but never tested by an extinction-level event (Digg or Slashdot). It’ll happen, though.

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The new iteration of the platform that powers this weblog and a handful of others was pronounced good to go today by Automattic’s Matt Mullenweg at WordCamp Dallas. I wonder how many WP users just dropped whatever they were doing – doing chores around the house, perhaps, or interacting with family and friends – and rushed to WordPress.org (given a shiny new interface in conjunction with the new edition announcement) to snag the new hotness? This being Saturday, though, a lot of those folks may not yet have heard.

Add WordPress.org: It looks good. Much better than before, and I assume that the usability pros at Happy Cog were behind the redesign. (Wrong! It was Matt Thomas who did the redesign. Thanks to Matt Mullenweg in comments for the correction.) The new look extends throughout the site, even to the forums. The Codex remains a unregenerate holdout, but not for long, I hope.

Must admit that I like the new look for WP.org better than the new look for WP 2.5. Shhh! Don’t tell anybody! But we’ve talked about that one aspect of the new edition before and won’t belabor it today.

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I had heard earlier about the frequency of incremental upgrades to the WordPress platform, and so was unsurprised last night when WP issued a directive to upgrade to version 2.3.3 – an “urgent security release,” something about a flaw in their dechyon-field infrastructure or something equally unintelligible.

Well, better to be safe than sorry. I had some spare time for the upgrade today, so opportunity costs weren’t an issue. On the other hand, I did have private trepidations, and not merely because I’d heard that many WordPress users put off upgrades out of fear, uncertainty, and confusion. I have a rather checkered career of blogging platform upgrades (see: Movable Type), as readers here maywell recall.

There being nothing for it, however, I set about carefully following the rather bleak expanded upgrade instructions…and in the words of Canadian philosopher Alanis Morissette, everything’s just fine, fine, fine. The procedure was indeed more dreaded than dreadful; lots of steps, but each one completely unambiguous.

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Stand up, Mr. Blunt, and tell us what you knew

It’s Monday, and leading Missouri papers like the St. Louis Post-Dispatchand the Kansas City Star have yet to ask GOP Majority Whip Roy Blunt what he knew and when he knew it regarding the Mark Foley predatory email and IM scandal. Where are the investigations from vaunted “news leaders” such as KSDK? Blunt was not only part of the Republican House leadership at the time the story was first broached to that same leadership, he was in the top chair as interim Majority Leader and fighting to keep the position, as the National Journal‘s Hotline reports:

It’s important to note that when the House GOP leadership first apparently learned of something amiss with Foley and a page, the GOP leadership team was in flux. Roy Blunt was the acting Majority Leader fighting with John Boehner to keep the job permanently.Did the House GOP leadership vacuum that was created by DeLay’s departure lead to a situation where no one was calling the political shots? And did that sense of chaos create anxiety, preventing Republicans from taking the steps necessary to protect these underage pages?

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Following recent examples of politicans and celebrities making deeply stupid racial and cultural remarks, the Governator expounds on the legendary Cuban and Puerto Rican “hotness.” To sum up: They got it in their blood, boy:

Schwarzenegger: Cubans, Puerto Ricans ‘all very hot’Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized Friday for saying during a closed-door meeting that Cubans and Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of their combination of “black blood” and “Latino blood.”

He said the tape-recorded comments “made me cringe” when he read them in Friday’s Los Angeles Times.

“Anyone out there that feels offended by those comments, I just want to say I’m sorry, I apologize,” Schwarzenegger said. He added that if he heard his children make similar comments, “I would be upset.” […]

“I mean Cuban, Puerto-Rican, they are all very hot,” the governor says on the recording. “They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it.”

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Why does the DLC always make one think of this bit from The Empire Strikes Back?

Han Solo: All right, Chewie, let’s get outta here!
Princess Leia: The Empire is still out there! I don’t think it’s wise to—
Han: No time to discuss this in committee!
Leia: I am not a committee!

Sigh. Is it so very wrong to long for bold direction and decisive action from those who carry the official Democratic banner? Or is it simply naive? I must admit to being throughly underwhelmed by the latest pronouncement from the Democratic Leadership Council – hey, we’re all about commonsense! Yeah, there’s a banner for you. May the Force – or for the Barack Obamas out there, a merciful and nondenominational Providence – save us from leadership-by-committee:

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When one of them sneezes, the other catches a cold

The indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on criminal conspiracy charges should surprise precisely no one. DeLay’s history of flouting finance laws in order to enrich Republican campaign efforts has been well-documented, and awaited only a prosecutor with the stones to charge him. What’s interesting here is that only one charge was levied against him by Ronnie Earle’s office (indictment here). TRMPAC, Blunt’s money-making machine, raised a lot of cash. You’d expect that Earle would choose to go with the case he felt was strongest, but it is possible that he has further action – other charges – waiting in the wings?

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.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote:
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3– United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here. […]

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

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