There's been speculation that the Veep's surliness, like his current neoconservative extremism, is a byproduct of his bypass surgery, which has been known to induce dramatic personality changes in the patient (turning him or her into a "pump head," to use the vernacular.)
Personally, I doubt it - the heart doesn't seem to have ever been a particularly important organ in Cheney's psychology. (A man who produces an offspring nine months and one day after learning that only fathers will qualify for a student draft deferment can't exactly be called someone who is ruled by his emotions.)
My Norton Internet Security prompts me that "firefox.exe is attempting to access the internet" every new page I go to. I have to write a rule allowing that for each page. Some pages cause 6-7 prompts, so forget that. If I turn off the firewall, I'm vulnerable to outsiders trying to access the computer even if firefox is blocking malicious pop-ups. So I'm back to IE.
Another thing I noticed is Firefox reads Tree pages in the "one column" format inconstistently. E.G., when I first go to Jim's page it fills the entire screen left to right, but if I hit "older posts," it returns to the correct width (the width of the clouds picture). As I page back through my and Sally's pages, the width changes from correct to screen-filling to correct, almost at random. I can't figure out anything from my own html that would make one /pageback page different from another. The same thing happens when I view groups of posts by date from the archive--there, almost all the pages are screen-filling; in Sally's archive it's a mix. Again, back to IE.
Also, now I have this "Java Console" thingy on my status bar that wasn't there before. What the hell is that? (Oh, it goes off when you turn off Firefox. Never mind.)
Dear Bruce:
We the undersigned need you.
Our country's leadership is in desperate need of change.
On September 1, the Republicans will hold their convention in New York City and will nominate George Bush for President. Many people will see this event as it will be broadcast on all the major television networks. However, an opportunity exists at that time to make it clear to Americans that they can choose an alternative to George Bush.
I have put Giants Stadium on hold on September 1 in the hope that you will lead the music industry in coming together and perform in a concert for change. Once it is known that you are involved, many other artists will want to perform with you. Together your collective voices and music will send a clear message to all Americans that our country needs their vote to create change. The event is called VoteAid: "Concert for Change" and we think that it has the potential to become the largest concert in history. We would like the money that this concert generates to go to support voter registration and participation throughout the country, but more importantly your decision to play at exactly the same time George Bush is being nominated will focus all Americans on the importance in this election for their future as well as the future of the world.
I have asked the undersigned to join me in signing this letter.
We need you.
Andrew Rasiej
Contact: andrew@draftbruce.com
Transcript of Stern fan faking out "wooden Indian" Peter Jennings
Link to Real audio of call.