I caught the tail end of tonight’s Republican presidential debate on CNN. Although I generally consider myself a political junkie (albeit one who hasn’t exactly been real “tuned in” lately), I must admit that there were several faces on that stage which were totally unfamiliar to me. I mean, I’d obviously heard of them all, but… Duncan Hunter, for example? Yeah, pretty sure I’d never seen his face before.

Anyway, these were my impressions of the field:

• Mitt Romney wants to be Ronald Reagan. Really bad.
• Rudy Giuliani wants to be Abraham Lincoln.
• John McCain wants to be John McCain (because John McCain is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being John McCain has ever known).
• Tom Tancredo wants to remind everyone that he is not Mexican and that he does not speak the Spanish.
• Everyone wants everyone else to be Ted Kennedy.

Oh, and Larry King wants to be Anderson Cooper.

P.S. While Giuliani was answering a question about his views on abortion, lightning struck. Heh. If only Jerry Falwell were still alive, I’m sure he’d have something to say about that…

…I moved into my second ZIP code. That is to say, my parents and I moved from Hartford to Newington. I was 4, going on 5.

Also, 11 years ago today, ’twas el dia del fuego at NHS! And of course, last year it was 6/6/6. :)

P.S. Speaking of Newington… the Class LL state baseball semifinals were apparently postponed due to rain yesterday; they’ve been rescheduled for today. Newington plays Bunnell at 3:30 PM. Go Indians!

I promised earlier that I would explain why I was at the Apple Store yesterday afternoon and evening. Well, my PowerBook is having some issues, both hardware- and software-related. (Details after the jump.) I’ve been putting up with them for a while, largely because I didn’t want to be computerless for any period of time during my final semester of law school. But I don’t need a computer to study for the bar (indeed, its absence will probably induce me to study more and blog less), so I finally decided to bite the bullet and take the computer in.

Just like the other time I brought in my 17-inch PowerBook for repair, its absence leaves me using Becky’s old iBook — her extremely slow old iBook — as my primary computer, albeit with a FireWire clone of my PowerBook’s hard drive as the startup disk. (The resulting squishing of 51 Dock icons, which fit just fine on my 17-incher, onto a 12-inch screen, is rather amusing.) Everything takes an excruciatingly long time… so I think it’s fair to say I’ll be doing less with the computer for the next little while, out of sheer frustration.

Anyway, like I said, there are more details on my latest computer saga after the jump, if anyone’s interested.

(more…)

In a positively stunning and wonderful development, it appears that the fan campaign to save Jericho actually worked! According to the L.A. Times, “CBS executives are in discussions with the show’s producers and actors to resuscitate the show — killed just last month — for an eight-episode run in mid-season.” And it wouldn’t necessarily end there. According to executive producer Carol Barbee, “The idea would not be to bring it for eight and out, but to bring it back for eight with the hope that it would keep going.”

In TV Guide’s words, “To say this would be a huge victory for crazy TV fans everywhere would be the understatement of the frakkin’ millennium.” Barbee, for her part, sees those crazy fans as the wave of the future: “I really think that what has been learned here is that networks are going to have to look at numbers and who is watching their show and who is downloading their show in a different way from here on out. I think they have to understand that the Nielsens are not telling the story anymore and that the 18-49 demographic they’re all so keen on is online and that’s how increasingly they are getting their news and entertainment.”

SyFy Portal has more, as does EW.

P.S. There will most definitely be no Gerald McRaney, however: “he actually quit the show before it was canceled (which is why his character was killed in the finale), and he will not be returning to Jericho, regardless of the show’s status.” Nuts. I was hoping for some flashbacks or something.

As long as I’m at the Apple Store (for reasons I’ll elucidate in a new post later), I might as well point out Apple’s new TV ads for the iPhone, which comes out on June 29. I think this is the coolest one:

Will any of y’all be buying an iPhone? I won’t, because a) I can’t afford it, b) I’m under contract with Sprint until next May, and c) as cool as it looks, I’m skeptical of whether the touchscreen with no tactile feedback would work for me. Besides, I figure it’s better to wait until the initial kinks have been worked out. I’m sure iPhone ‘08 or iPhone ‘09 will be even cooler. :)

One word, ouch!

You know how I know Knoxville is better than South Bend? It has an Apple Store! :)

(Please note, this is what was supposed to appear in the blank "Woohoo" post below. Heh.)

In today’s L.A. Times, Mickey Kaus compares Bush’s immigration gambit with his Iraq gambit, and finds a number of discouraging similarities. Hmm.

The SciGuy is worried about how Houston will handle the next Rita (or worse, a Rita that actually hits Houston). Money quote:

If anything, Rita provided a longer-than-usual time for emergency planners to call for and implement an evacuation. Next time there may well not be as much time, and those looking to escape the winds during the height of the storm will have few options.

Lots of good thoughts in comments, too.

Former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has been sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000 in the CIA leak case.

Visit CNN for the latest.

Tropical Cyclone Gonu has mercifully weakened, though it retains major-hurricane status as a Cat. 3 with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph. The official forecast calls for it to remain just offshore of Oman as a Cat. 2 tonight (Eastern time), then make landfall in southeastern Iran as a Cat. 1 tomorrow night (again, Eastern time). Margie Kieper and Dr. Jeff Masters, the Weather Channel Blog, Weather Matrix and The Oil Drum have more.

Wyoming Senator Craig Thomas, who has been battling leukemia since November, has died, CNN confirms.

Visit CNN for the latest.

The first recorded Category Five storm in the Arabian Sea, Tropical Cyclone Gonu, is barreling toward Oman and the Persian Gulf region. Check out the satellite views:

According to this tracking map, it’s expected to reach the coast of Oman late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning, Eastern time. (Hat tip: Andrew Leyden.) So it looks like there will soon be more than one “surge” happening the Middle East.

What’s worse, Oman may not know what hit it: according to Global Surf News, “While tropical storms have hit Oman in the past, they are rare, and there is no record of a hurricane-strength cyclone striking the country. The last tropical storm to smack the nation was in June 1996.” Hopefully Gonu weakens a bit before making landfall!

There could be economic impacts, too. Dr. Jeff Masters writes, “Gonu is the strongest storm ever seen in the Arabian Sea, and could cause big trouble for the Persian Gulf oil rigs and tankers.”

Speaking of Dr. Masters, he’s jumped on the anti-Barry bandwagon — and I’m not talking about Barry Bonds, but rather the dearly departed Tropical Storm Barry, which formed on Friday (the opening day of hurricane season), soaked Florida, then winked out of official existence after a mere 24 hours. Masters writes, “Was Barry really a tropical storm? I think it should have been named ‘Subtropical Storm Barry’, and I hope NHC looks at the storm carefully to consider redesignating it after the season is over.” Margie Kieper is more emphatic:

Putting aside the unwelcome hype and “cry wolf” potential, maybe it’s best to just remember the ROFL moments associated with this chapter of the Atlantic 2007 hurricane season: that initial just-home-from-work oh-they-didn’t! moment when seeing the word “Barry” in the inbox (after which I generated a blog entry in record time — five minutes — then got on the phone with the equally-unbelieving Steve Gregory, where we hypered each other into a frenzy)…the comment by NWSFO Miami in their local discussion when Barry was named by NHC…the inability to provide Dvorak intensity estimates because there was nothing there except a LLCC (ok — that was hysterical — when has “shear” ever prevented Dvorak analysis, or, in the case of a subtropical cyclone, H-P technique)…just pick your favorite. Maybe NHC will quietly change it to subtropical in the post-season analysis.

Just to clarify, my take on Barry was that it tried to become tropical — obs showed that, although they also showed the extratropical nature of the disturbance — but there wasn’t persistent convection near the center, so it never developed, and did not fit the NHC definition of a TC. …

[I]s the situation with the generate-fear-and-hype media so out of control, that Barry was named, rather than risk some kind of media backlash, because no one believes that Florida residents can handle some minor coastal flooding, significant rain, and 25 mph winds, without framing it as a tropical storm? Or is it that no one thought they would prepare adequately unless it was called a tropical storm? Too bad for those who really did think they experienced one, because those folks will be caught unprepared when the genuine article shows up.

Alan Sullivan agrees: “[T]his was a marginal call for designation, following the even more marginal call last month. NHC has turned into a bunch of drama queens. There was a hybrid storm in the Gulf on day one of the official season, and it just had to get a name.”

LATER UPDATES ON GONU: here, here, here and here.

Just got my Tennessee driver’s license… and had to surrender my Connecticut license. Sniff, sniff.