Something quick and simple this morning

Finish this sentence:
"You know you spend way too much time on LJ when..."

JoCoShow update: The extra ticket finally got sold

...thanks to a referral from my friend sffilk off the GAFiA e-mail listserv. I get the money back, another true Jonathan Coulton fan gets to see Jon live, and neither of us has to go to any ridiculous lengths to make it happen. Glee!

And the show is TONIGHT! (T minus 11 hours 15 minutes and counting...)

Someone at Adobe finally gets it...but is it years too late?

Anyone who's had to use Adobe Photoshop more or less continuously over the last decade or so (as I have) has had an opportunity to see it grow from relatively manageable (if non-intuitive) application to hideously over-featured (not to say over-priced) bloatware. Now Adobe senior product manager John Nack becomes the first Adobe employee to publicly admit this—in his company-sponsored blog, no less—and that he and others have been working behind the scenes, and continue doing so, to remedy the problem. (See blog here.)

Being as it now costs north of $1,000 to buy one copy of Photoshop all by itself, never mind in a package with the ever-growing family of "Creative Suite" apps to which it now belongs, and that installing it practically requires you to buy the damn thing its own dedicated hard drive to hold it all, one must wonder whether the situation is at all salvageable anymore. A quotation from that legendary cartoon sage, Daffy Duck, comes to mind: "Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin."

The Romney campaign and the Democrats both get creative on fundraising

Well, it seems GOP presidential nomination candidate, former Massachusetts governor and recovering liberal Mitt Romney has asked his supporters to start auctioning off their old stuff to raise money for his campaign. (Given that his chief rival for the nomination has just scored the endorsement of a key leader of the very faction Romney's been so assiduously courting lately [see analysis here], one can understand Mitt starting to get just a tad antsy about his chances and wanting to replenish the ol' coffers.)

When the folks at the Democratic National Committee (currently run by Mitt's old colleague and fellow New Englander Howard Dean) got wind of this, they figured it would be fun to conduct a similar auction...of Romney's old, discarded liberal positions on issues (or at least, some items symbolizing same). The results are described in this NewsVine.com story (with links provided). Sounds to me like a great way to kill two turkeys with the proverbial single stone: raise some more cash to fight the GOP and point up Romney's blatant pandering to the wingnut right of his party.

It's Posters' Day! Your wish is my command

As I do every Friday, I'm opening up the floor to my readers. Anything you've wanted to see me write about here that I haven't yet—or anything I have written about that you want followed up on—post the request here. All part of our friendly, helpful service; wash your windshield, too?

Note to self

Do not even THINK about actually driving all the way from Atlanta to Timonium, MD for this year's Darkover Grand Council convention. It is over eleven hours, each way and an even longer drive than OVFF would have been...even if the Songbird were willing to let you use her car, which is exceedingly unlikely. I don't care how many of your friends are going to be there; the very notion is insanity squared with a side order of "what, are you nuts?!?"

So forget it. Period. Paragraph. Not gonna happen. If you absolutely must go (and I leap to remind you, you are supposed to be squirreling money away to pay for the really important trip, to Nairobi to see SB in a matter of weeks), do the at-least-halfway-sane thing and take an airline. Otherwise, fuhgeddaboudit.

A game where your mouse-clicks are a starving kid's food

I found out abut FreeRice.com a couple months back. It's an online game where you match English words to their appropriate synonyms, and each correct answer results in 10 grains of rice donated to feed the hungry in developing nations; 100 grains fills a bowl. I thought it was (and is) a great idea, and it was even recreational for a word-geek like me; but I figured it would be very hard to make any real headway on the cause very quickly when each correct answer only buys 10 grains. Most people's patience would, I figured, probably run out after the first two or three bowls of rice were accumulated...particularly since the words get harder the longer you play.

But now this Reuters news story tells me that I underestimated the power—and word-geekiness—of the netroots. Over 77 million grains of rice were recently donated in one day alone! All told, they've already generated enough rice donations to feed 50,000 people. Amazing and moving, especially for people like me for whom fighting hunger is a pet cause.

So go play, already. It's absolutely free, it's fun, it's even educational...and you've never felt so good about wasting time playing a silly-assed Internet game.