She makes my list again:

Senator Olympia Jean Snowe McKernan

“History calls“, Senator Snowe, not for your vote on the Democratic “health care” (uh, power grab assault on individual liberty) “bill” (uh, alleged bill), but rather for you to leave the GOP in disgrace.

OpenDocument Spreadsheet (Flat XML) (.fods) format in OpenOffice 3.0 is a great source format for spreadsheets. It’s human-readable XML, it’s good for “Save As…” into Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls) format.

Best of all, it allows you to easily configuration manage your spreadsheets (along with meaningful textual diffs) using Mercurial, git, etc.

I made a clean install of Kubuntu Jaunty (9.04) last week, and had some trouble getting wireless networking to work.  This post explains my current working configuration.

OS configuration:
kernel: 2.6.28-13-generic
wpasupplicant: 0.6.6-2ubuntu1
network-manager: 0.7.1~rc4.1.cf199a964-0ubuntu2
plasma-widget-network-manager: 0.0+svn966653-0ubuntu0.1

Router configuration:
Linksys WRT54GS ver. 6
Firmware version: v1.50.6, Feb 17 2006
Wireless Network Mode: G-Only
SSID Broadcast: Disable
Security Mode: WPA Personal
WPA Algorithm: TKIP

Steps to connect:

1. Network Management dialog showing that the connection I want doesn’t exist yet.  (Note: adding my connection information directly via this dialog box does NOT work):
   
2. Click on the plasma networking icon, make sure wireless is enabled, and click on “Connect to hidden network” (recall my router doesn’t broadcast its SSID):
   
3. Textbox for entering a hidden SSID appears:
   
4. Type in hidden SSID name, hit Enter:
   
5. Enter network security details in dialog that pops up.  In my configuration, “Connect automatically” doesn’t work – whether or not this box is checked is a dontcare for these instructions.  I currently have to manually repeat all these steps on each login:
   
6. KDE Wallet Service requests a password:
   
7. After entering password, rotating connecting icon appears on the plasma panel:
   
8. After a few seconds, connected icon appears:
   

My letter du jour to Congressman Griffith:

Dear Congressman Griffith,

I applaud your vote against the Cap and Trade bill in this morning’s “test vote”.  It’s a massive tax hike/power grab based on pure pseudoscience.

I would request that you not only vote against this bill when it comes to a live vote, but also speak out strongly in a leadership role against it.

We Americans are growing very weary of these supposed “emergency” bills that must be rushed to vote right now or else.  We’re not being given reasonable time to review the text of these voluminous bills.  I suspect our representatives have no time to truly digest them, either.

Vote NO, lead NO on cap and trade.

Respectfully,

Dave K. Smith
Huntsville, AL

My letter to Congressman Parker Griffith:

Congressman Griffith,

Please vote NO on the euphemistically named Employee Free Choice Act (aka Card Check).  Americans do not need to be strong armed into joining unions.  Misguided unions destroyed GM with their power to drive the company to a globally uncompetitive position.  Exporting that failure to the rest of our economy accomplishes nothing.

America doesn’t have “little guys”.  We don’t want or need faceless unions to stand up for us.  We stand up for ourselves.

I will be watching your votes very carefully on repressive power grabs like this one that seem to be all the rage in Washington, DC these days.  I will work diligently against those members who support such attacks on our cherished freedoms.

Respectfully,

Dave K. Smith
Huntsville, AL

(UPDATE 2009-09-23): LearnOutLoud.com has outstanding technical support if you ever have trouble with your downloads.

Today I found my Linux audiobook solution. LearnOutLoud.com allows paying for and downloading audiobooks in MP3 format. No annoying proprietary client-side app required. Books purchased in the past are available for later re-download from my LearnOutLoud account if I need them. Wow, it’s so nice not to be treated like a common criminal! Thanks very much, LearnOutLoud.

their customers aren't criminals

So I’m now officially a former iTunes Store customer. And I used to be a loyal one. I wrote an 8 part series last year about how to make the iTunes Store cooperate with Linux and an old iPod. But then Apple planted a bunch of doubt in my mind about DRM, and I eventually jumped ship and only bought music from Amazon’s MP3 store.  And then I discovered that Audible.com (iTunes Store’s only option for audiobooks, last time I checked) was completely wrapped in DRM.  Good grief, I just stopped bothering.  I had no option at all for audiobooks, and that was painful.

Linux buddies of mine told me to just buy audiobook MP3 CDs, and copy those over to my MP3 player.  But that sounded painful, too – I gave up messing with discs of any kind years ago now.

It’s nice to have an option again.

Yeah, I know it’s a poor man’s soft tail, but I’m hoping to break it in with 50 miles of trail riding this weekend. I’m psyched.

Cane Creek Thudbuster

Here’s Senator Steinberg to Senator Sam Aanestad, R-Penn Valley, who took issue with the public being excluded from recent California state budget deliberations:

And I wish to God that you could deviate just a little bit from your philosophy, from this endless mantra of no new revenue, no new revenue ever…

I've got a small violin going for California Senator Darrell Steinberg...

Yeah, I see where you’re coming from, Senator Steinberg.  There’s been way too much of this “no new revenue” nonsense flying around recently.  I can fully appreciate your frustration.  [Okay, okay, let me find the off switch for this sarcasm-whirligig before it throws a lug nut...]

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt (Apollo 17 astronaut) doesn’t subscribe to the New Science hubris school of human-caused global warming.

Harrison Schmitt

The vote is not quite over, but the turncoats have ensured that it’s a mere formality at this point:

Senator Arlen Specter
Senator Olympia Jean Bouchles Snowe McKernan
Senator Susan Margaret Collins

In response to your votes on today’s Economic Stimulus bill, American conservatives invite you to leave the Republican Party.  Each of you is a complete disgrace to the GOP.