Windoze indeed.

I just want to point out that when I boot my office PC at work (Windoze XP on a very fast machine, way faster than my new mini or my old desktop), it takes fifteen minutes for me to be able to check my email and do ANYTHING.  In that time, I hit the potty to make room for coffee, get the coffee, check my paper planner and then still have enough time to be annoyed by this big slow box.

So, in the name of productivity, I don’t always turn it off at night and thereby waste power.  They want us to turn them off, since we’re in the midst of a 30% energy reduction plan.  I know all the naysayers like to point out that running a desktop computer uses “only” the amount of energy of a lightbulb. I like to ask: do you leave  your stupid damned lamps on all the time?  No.  And if you do, you’re a poopface.

I realize part of this slowness and waste of time is my job’s network crap and probably also them spying on me (I work at a state university, and they warn us, yadda yadda — HI, GUYZ!).  But still, this happens at home, too.

My home desktop with two hard-drives (one Windoze, one Ubuntu) does something similar, on the same freakin machine.  Ubuntu getting ‘er done time (power button to writing an email in Yahoo! webmail): a minute tops.  Windoze (power button to writing an email in Yahoo! webmail): 3-5 minutes on a good day, and I don’t use it enough to update my VP software anymore, either.

Ugh.  I think I need to start bringing my mini to work?  Or maybe boot Ubuntu on a live disk, since my work machine is so loaded with RAM?

Paper, a phone and a typewriter?

NSA and Google: Bad mix?


The world’s largest search engine and the largest entity that spies on you and I might team up, according the Washington Post.

Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.

Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.

The ACLU is urging its members and supporters to speak out:

The partnership is supposed to help protect Google’s networks, but the ramifications of companies like Google working with the NSA are frightening.

The NSA — a component of the Department of Defense — is an intelligence collection agency with few effective checks against abuse, and no public oversight of its activities. The NSA sucks up the equivalent of the contents of the Library of Congress every six to eight hours, every single day. In the last decade, the NSA’s dragnet, suspicionless surveillance has targeted everyday Americans, in violation of the law and the Constitution.

Google’s never won much praise from folks concerned about their privacy (do your own web searching on that if you’re interested), not that other search giants are exactly revolutionary in this area.  And maybe this  means nothing.  But it’s sure creepy, to me, too.

Footnotes and Endnotes in Open Office.


Now, I don’t write about software and hardware because there are bloggers and regular people who know way more about this stuff than I do. But, in formatting my dissertation and my new netbook/mini Dell box, I’ve come across some issues for which there are many possible solutions on the internet. Some are dated. Some conflict. Some are round-about. Some are on public forums where: person A has a problem; person B offers a solution which does not quite work; person C offers a solution; but person A never writes back to say if it worked or not. So you’ll have to excuse my temporary overstepping of my usual boundaries in this exercise in open source Pragmatikism.*

Okay. You have, literally, hundreds of endnotes that you need to make into footnotes in Open Office. You have committed to writing your entire dissertation (or essay or novel or whatever) in open source software, down to the fonts. Maybe you already entered your notations as footnotes that just appear at the end of the document, rather than the end of the page. In the current version of Open Office Writer, go to Tools–>Footnotes/Endnotes. Under “Position,” click either “End of page” or “End of Document” under the “Footnotes” tab. If nothing happens, you have endnotes. If they move, they are footnotes.  Put them where you want them.

Mine did not move. So. Most guides tell you that you’re either screwed, that you have to resort to Windoze MS Orifice, or that you have to do them one by one. Well, you do have to do them one by one, but at the rate of about one second (or less) each. Do this:

1) Find the first endnote anchor (the little number or symbol). Right-click it, and click “Footnote/Endnote,” third from the bottom.
2) When the little box appears, click the dot from “Endnote” to “Footnote.” Instead of doing them all like this, however, DO NOT hit “OK.” Rather, hit the arrow to the right. This will take you to the next endnote. Click the dot again, arrow again, and you can get through a few hundred of these in a very very short time.
3) Need to move them again? Now that they are footnotes, you can make them appear at the end of the page or at the end of the document (like endnotes) via Tools–>Footnotes/Endnotes.
4) The lesson here: NEVER USE ENDNOTES IN OPEN OFFICE!
5) Hint I’ve found for editing them all: Make them appear at the end of the document. Then you can edit them more easily and then revert to having them at the bottom of the page with the touch of a button. Easy-peasy!

*(As opposed to the much better Pragmatism of American philosophy.)