Full story.

Thanks to those who serve

Christy Ferer is a 9/11 widow who recently was a member of a group of celebrities (including Robert DeNiro and Kid Rock, among others) that took an Armed Forces Entertainment Office and USO-sponsored trip to Iraq to show support for the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines still over there. Following is an e-note she sent her escorts about the experience. In her cover note, she said she intends to submit it to the NY Times for publication. It is really powerful, and very moving, and will make you proud that you have chosen to serve your country, and proud to be an American. Enjoy…and thanks as always for all you do for America's Air Force!

Brig Gen Ron Rand

When I told friends about my pilgrimage to Iraq to thank the U.S. troops, reaction was underwhelming at best.

Some were blunt. “Why are you going there?” They could not understand why it was important for me, a 9/11 widow, to express my support for the men and women stationed today in the Gulf.

But the reason seemed clear to me: 200,000 troops have been sent halfway around the world to stabilize the kind of culture that breeds terrorists like those who I believe began World War III on Sept. 11, 2001. Reaction was so politely negative that I began to doubt my role on the first USO/Tribeca Institute tour into newly occupied Iraq where, on average, a soldier a day is killed.

What I was not prepared for was to have soldiers show us the World Trade Center memorabilia they'd carried with them into the streets of Baghdad.

Looking into that sea of khaki gave me chills even in that blistering heat. To me, those troops were there to avenge the murder of my husband and 3,000 others. When I got to the microphone I told them we had not made this journey for condolences but to thank them and to tell them that the families of 9/11 think of them every day.

The crowd interrupted me with chants of “USA, USA, USA.” …. Full story

—Christy Ferer [The Braden Files]

Armstrong Picks Himself Up and Widens His Lead in Tour. Shaking off a crash that left him lying on the road, Lance Armstrong the dominator reappeared today. By Samuel Abt. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Lance can be so amazing! He has already been in one major crash on this Tour and has had several close calls. Hats off to Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, and the others who did not resume racing until Lance had returned to the peloton. This was the same courtesy Lance bestowed on Jan two years ago when Jan crashed. The Tour is still open for Jan or Andrei to win but I think the rumors of Lance's demise are greatly exaggerated. Lance is not going to lose the Tour for them. Jan or Andrei will have to win it the old fashioned way.

I was reading an article on recommended low cost or free software and found this reference to PDF995. I like PDF files and I really like them for archiving paper documents. For some time I wished I had a PDF version of my tax returns. I previously owned a copy of PDF Writer from Acrobat and that capability still matched most of my needs. I am unwilling to spend big bucks on a low priority item so this free version really appealed to me. I tried it and it works as advertised. The ads that popup with the free version are annoying but for only $9.95 I can make them go away permanently. Pretty darn cool!

Anonymous. “God is not dead but alive and well and working on a much less ambitious project.” [Quotes of the Day]

Yes, I finally installed a UPS on my server. I have not had any file problems due to power outages but I believe it is just a matter of time. A funny thing happened! We had a storm that came through and the power blipped. Two of my three computers rebooted. The good news is that the third computer was on the UPS and did not reboot. The bad news is that when I looked at the event log it said nothing happened. I am running the latest version of APC Personal UPS.

Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear text blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF is good for printing, but that's it. Don't use it for online presentation.

Two points to remember:

1. All big linear text blobs are unpleasant to read and navigate online. PDF's allow you to print them and read them offline where they are more bearable.
2. For some reason when people say online presentation I think of Powerpoint or Flash. I have never seen Acrobat used for an online presentation. If this is a widespread problem I have somehow missed it.

The politics of open-source software. CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh discusses why the Initiative for Software Choice is lobbying hard to make sure government agencies here and abroad don't unduly favor open source. [CNET News.com]

This is an interesting article that expresses a concern that Microsoft will feel obligated to protect their turf from Open Source software. Licensing costs and complexity are at the crux of the problem since the open source software quality has gotten quite good and useful.

Dave Barry. “Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.” [Quotes of the Day]

Samuel Johnson. “What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.” [Quotes of the Day]

Katharine Whitehorn. “The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.” [Quotes of the Day]

Joe Ancis. “The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.” [Quotes of the Day]

Here are four quotes that appeared on the same day. The first one appeals to my sense of danger in one of my favorite sports. The second quote aptly describes my dilema in writing. Writing is hard work if you want it to be read. The third quote highlights an important fact about how children learn about money. Children without money seem to learn their “life lessons” so much easier. Most kids with money just don't get it until life kicks them in the butt with a bitter life lesson. Some kids grow up and never get it despite a multitude of “life lessons” heaped on them. To me the last quote speaks about the problem we face in talking about our dysfunctional families. We are hurt by our family strangeness. It makes some family members very embarassed and lonely. The solution is to share these problems with a close friend. There lies the problem. You need a friend who won't run away screaming as you describe your family problems. My slightly abridged version of the quote is, “The only normal families are the ones you don't know very well.”

There are a lot of ways a person can make a musical photo slideshow. My choice of bundling the photos into a media file with the music is primarily the result of the success of Microsoft and Real to encode the data into a file size I consider to be reasonable for today's users. I consider both Microsoft and Real versions to be equivalent in quality so the overall winner is Microsoft based on the smaller file size. I was kind of surprised to find out that Pinnacle Studio was the best way for me to create the file. I will not tell you how much I surfed the web trying to find a solution that Pinnacle already could do. I am running version 7 so I was surprised when I looked at the file and found that it had encoded with the Microsoft's version 9 encoder and Real version 8 encoder.

Is DHTML Dead?. Cross-browser incompatibilities, insufficient power, and the march of technology have relegated DHTML to a small—and shrinking—niche. By [email protected] (A. Russell Jones). [DevX: Latest Published Articles]

Browser Navigation is a pain in the butt! You probably should not use DHTML because of browser captibilities. Some people turn off javascript. This forces you back to the navigation scheme we use for blind people. I am trying get myself up to fixing our website for Netscape 4. It used to work but I think I should of paid more attention to how I used css.