Posts in the category “rants”

Cursive == Dodo

“When handwritten essays were introduced on the SAT exams for the class of 2006, just 15 percent of the almost 1.5 million students wrote their answers in cursive. The rest? They printed. Block letters. … Scholars who study original documents say the demise of handwriting will diminish the power and accuracy of future historical research.”

How To Fly Without ID

I happen to be one of the (apparently very few) people in this country that has not only read the Constitution of the United States, but also understands it and — by gosh! — thinks it’s a pretty good way to run a country. So I tend to get really, really upset when presented with

Hollywood Minute

Here’s something that’s been nagging at me lately: Why don’t you ever see commercials for fruits and vegetables? I realize that apples and bananas and squash aren’t really all that sexy, and the mega-corporations that sell them all — Dole, etc. — do some vague advertising for their processed products (like OJ and pineapple chunks).

Click Install

Reason #4,213 Why People Get Frustrated with Microsoft:

Wasted Space

Can anyone tell me if I really need Java 2 Runtime Environment, SE v1.4.2_03 and J2SE Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 3? These things are ridiculous. Each one is over 100MB! What a waste.

DreamSEO and SubmissionShark

I get a lot of spam. A lot. No, really. I get a lot of spam. I am directly or indirectly connected to the whois / registration of dozens and dozens of sites. I get a.lot.of.spam. So. Tonight I happen to notice a piece of spam directed towards a URL that I own that nobody

The (New) Smiths

We went to see Mr. & Mrs. Smith tonight at the AVCO on Wilshire in Westwood. It was great! I wasn’t expecting much, but (a) the trailers were funny, (b) both stars are dead sexy, and (c) LA has been deluged with posters, and we — as simple drones — just can’t resist such a

Poor Programming

CapitalOne’s website is just terrible. About every third time I click the “LogIn” button on the front page it simply redirects me to the front page. Even on my work connection the entire site loads like it’s running on a 1992 486 box. There are ridiculous pop-ups thrown at me every time I attempt to

What Is This?

davidgagne.net is the personal weblog of me, David Vincent Gagne. I've been publishing here since 1999, which makes this one of the oldest continuously-updated websites on the Internet.

bartender.live

A few years ago I was trying to determine what cocktails I could make with the alcohol I had at home. I searched the App Store but couldn't find an app that would let me do that, so I built one.

Hemingway

You can read dozens of essays and articles and find hundreds of links to other sites with stories and information about Ernest Hemingway in The Hemingway Collection.