Getting ready to rumble...

Once you get familiar with it, CSS offers you a high level of control over how your web site is displayed. However, the key words in the previous sentence are: "Once you get familiar with it...". The WackoWiki that I've become partial to in recent months comes with a couple of extra 'skins' that are heavily CSS based, and last night, after finishing my translation load for the day and cleaning the office a bit, I spent a bit of time trying to understand how the various definitions are reflected on the screen, because if the truth be told, the default skin is pretty boring.

Be that as it may, a boring interface is something that I'll have to live with for a while, as I must concentrate on finishing the paper chase (yes, I know: Not Really Feasible In Our Lifetime™) and in the short term -- i.e., by tomorrow morning -- I've got to do six more extracts, check the entire lot of 13, finish the masonry specification, and send the translations back where they belong.

As I write, the ESPN Tour de France site (which will probably cease to exist Real Soon Now™) reports that the peleton has moved 70 km... sorry, make that 83 km (updates are well done, as is the entire site)... of the overall 110 km in today's final stage. Barring something entirely off-the-wall, Armstrong will win -- and win big -- thus becoming the only rider in the history of the event to win it six times.

But talking about the number six, that's exactly the number of documents I have left to translate for the day. I had best get on them.

Cheers...

Objective reporting...?!

I happened to be upstairs a few minutes ago to see if there is any coverage of the final minutes of the Tour de France. There is, but it's on a subscription channel, so I decided to hit CNN and Fox News to see if there might be some coverage there.

I switched to CNN just in time to catch an item about some Republican Senator who apparently is under investigation for leaking some al-Qaeda memos. What I found, um, interesting about the report was the accompanying video: a shot of the Senator appearing on stage with GWB, both smiling, and then cutting to a tight shot of the President by himself, all while the voiceover was continuing to speak about the allegation of wrongdoing against the Senator.

Can anyone point me at a major news outlet's reporting -- if you could call it that -- of the Sandy Berger affair that featured Sandy Berger and John Kerry together on the screen? Heck, as far as I can recall, not only did nothing of the sort appear on the TV, but Berger was 'demoted' over the course of two days of news reports from being a "Kerry advisor," to an "informal, unpaid Kerry advisor," all while a major effort was under way to switch the focus of the story from what Berger almost certainly did -- and I can't understand why everyone seems so calm about this; hell, Winona Ryder generated more flurry with her shoplifting caper -- to the timing and motivation behind making the news public?

I can't say much about the timing of the CNN report, but the motivation, I think, is obvious.

Cheers...

Every place I go...

As a treat for finishing my 6 documents (yes, I am finished... at least for now), I decided to browse eBay and ended up looking at Colorado real estate. (Don't ask. I started out complaining about an Eversharp fountain pen I'd won a few days ago, but that's another story.)

So knock me over with a feather when I read the following (here), in a description for a restaurant located in The Centennial State:

River Ridge offers prime rib, sea food, chicken and Italian.  It has a minimum seating capacity of 100.

Come again, bro?

You need to have 100 people lined up outside the door before the joint opens, do I read you right?

Or are you trying to say that 100 is the maximum number of people you can shoehorn into your establishment?

The only interpretation that makes any sense is that the dining room in question can hold only 100 hungry souls, unless I am missing something splendid. But I consider it a personal affront that, in trying to convince me to pony up a mere $850,000 for the joint, I have to have my consciousness rattled a bit to have to stop and ask "What does that really mean?" as I read the sales pitch.

And representatives of the "who cares if it's right, as long as you understand what was meant" school of linguistics, who hold that all of us who get upset about stuff like this really need to get a life (at least that's what I think the essay -- now long lost -- said, since it wasn't, um, very clearly written), can jolly well take a flying funk at a rowing dome nut, so to speak.

Cheers...