I often have the desire to rotate column headings 90 degrees in table header columns. My brute force to this solution, an ASPX page that creates a rotated image of the text, has worked well for me in the past but I've just discovered what may be a much more elegant way to address this in the future. It seems that IE supports a "writing-mode:tb-rl;" tag that will force text to be rotated 90 degrees. Unfortunately it does seem to be supported only by IE at present so I can't scrap my ASPX page just yet. Still, for corporate web pages where my users are required to use IE (and a certain revision of IE, at that) it may work just fine.
I read with interest in the Christian Science Monitor that a mixed bag of Republicans and Democrats are joining forces to restrict political robocalls. The bill would not outlaw political robocalls entirely, only restrict the number of times in a 24 hour period that a household can be contacted, restrict the time of day in which calls can be made and require that caller-id not be spoofed. All good things, in my humble opinion.
One of my favorite books as a kid was "The Oldest Man and Other Stories" by William Kotzwinkle. While going through the basement last night I happened upon it. It's still too old for my boys who don't yet have much of an attention span for books that are not liberally sprinkled with pictures. Still, it set me to thinking and this morning I googled Mr. Kotzwinkle. It seems he's been a busy author, penning the acclaimed "Walter the Farting Dog" as well as a screenplay for one of the "A nightmare on elm street" movies. Interesting that writers of children's books sometimes cross the line to horror. Roald Dahl also did this.
About two months ago, I happened upon the VSS.VSSCoordinatorClass, a COM management interface for the volume shadow copy service. All the testing I did was on various XP Pro and 2003 server configurations. It seems that this COM interface doesn't work with Vista or on 64-bit XP. It doesn't seem to be documented by Microsoft. If I have time, I may open up a support issue with them and see if I can find out more info about the VSS.VSSCoordinatorClass interface, how Microsoft intends for it to be used and whether it will be supported in the future. Until then, use at your own risk.
I'm about a third of the way through Steven King's "The Stand". My first exposure to this book came from watching the miniseries which I enjoyed and found quite thought provoking. The film stuck with me, and after finishing GK Chesterton's biography of St. Thomas Aquinas I was feeling somewhat apocalyptic so I turned to the audio book version of The Stand.
The book is quite different than what I remember from the movie. The first third of the book (at least) deals with the ending of civilization in the US after a military grade genetically engineered flu virus is accidentally released from a clandestine lab in the southwest. It spreads rapidly, and King gives us snapshots as 99% of the population of the US dies within a week's time. The military stage manages the news, so mass panic is averted. As hospitals fill up with the dead and dying, people slowly come to realize that there is a pandemic. This phase of the book is really well imagined, I think, and I don't remember much coverage of the spread of the virus from the miniseries. I'd like to re watch the miniseries and see how the miniseries handles the spread of the plague.
Plagues seem to be a favorite bogeyman and seems to have supplanted nuclear catastrophe as the most popular way for us to imagine the world's end. We have avian flu fears, and that lawyer who was quarantined last year. I wonder how much of an influence "The Stand" has had?
It did influence me to rent "Osmosis Jones" for my kids. Osmosis Jones is a great movie about a brave white blood cell who fights fearlessly and against great odds to save his host, "The City of Frank" (played by Bill Murray) from an Anthrax infection. Great movie, even if IMDB does indicate that it was a box office flop. Ebert liked it, too.
I read with interest in the Christian Science Monitor that a mixed bag of Republicans and Democrats are joining forces to restrict political robocalls. The bill would not outlaw political robocalls entirely, only restrict the number of times in a 24 hour period that a household can be contacted, restrict the time of day in which calls can be made and require that caller-id not be spoofed. All good things, in my humble opinion.
One of my favorite books as a kid was "The Oldest Man and Other Stories" by William Kotzwinkle. While going through the basement last night I happened upon it. It's still too old for my boys who don't yet have much of an attention span for books that are not liberally sprinkled with pictures. Still, it set me to thinking and this morning I googled Mr. Kotzwinkle. It seems he's been a busy author, penning the acclaimed "Walter the Farting Dog" as well as a screenplay for one of the "A nightmare on elm street" movies. Interesting that writers of children's books sometimes cross the line to horror. Roald Dahl also did this.
About two months ago, I happened upon the VSS.VSSCoordinatorClass, a COM management interface for the volume shadow copy service. All the testing I did was on various XP Pro and 2003 server configurations. It seems that this COM interface doesn't work with Vista or on 64-bit XP. It doesn't seem to be documented by Microsoft. If I have time, I may open up a support issue with them and see if I can find out more info about the VSS.VSSCoordinatorClass interface, how Microsoft intends for it to be used and whether it will be supported in the future. Until then, use at your own risk.
I'm about a third of the way through Steven King's "The Stand". My first exposure to this book came from watching the miniseries which I enjoyed and found quite thought provoking. The film stuck with me, and after finishing GK Chesterton's biography of St. Thomas Aquinas I was feeling somewhat apocalyptic so I turned to the audio book version of The Stand.
The book is quite different than what I remember from the movie. The first third of the book (at least) deals with the ending of civilization in the US after a military grade genetically engineered flu virus is accidentally released from a clandestine lab in the southwest. It spreads rapidly, and King gives us snapshots as 99% of the population of the US dies within a week's time. The military stage manages the news, so mass panic is averted. As hospitals fill up with the dead and dying, people slowly come to realize that there is a pandemic. This phase of the book is really well imagined, I think, and I don't remember much coverage of the spread of the virus from the miniseries. I'd like to re watch the miniseries and see how the miniseries handles the spread of the plague.
Plagues seem to be a favorite bogeyman and seems to have supplanted nuclear catastrophe as the most popular way for us to imagine the world's end. We have avian flu fears, and that lawyer who was quarantined last year. I wonder how much of an influence "The Stand" has had?
It did influence me to rent "Osmosis Jones" for my kids. Osmosis Jones is a great movie about a brave white blood cell who fights fearlessly and against great odds to save his host, "The City of Frank" (played by Bill Murray) from an Anthrax infection. Great movie, even if IMDB does indicate that it was a box office flop. Ebert liked it, too.
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