Taking 'Dummies' a step further, they now have a book on that subset of the Dummies population that considers themselves a dummy amongst his peers, or a 'Dummy's Dummy' if you will.

At least, thats what I think of when I see Mp3 for Dummies (For Dummies). Heck, they even lowercased the p in MP3, and capitalized the second For.

Still, things could be worse... (from the same publisher, I have to point out the hilarious Data Structures & Algorithm Analysis in Java by Sarah Michelle Geller. I want that book. I bet the exercises would be more fun, though I'd probably get annoyed every third page when she says "and this part had lots of gnar, so I asked Willow to do it."

So by now you've all hopefully remembered to set your clocks back an hour. For me personally, the change was a subtle reminder of how ubiquitous computing is marching ever-forward. I've just counted, and I have fifteen timepieces in my life. Of those, four automatically changed time to adjust for the end of Daylight Savings.

I was a little surprised by some. Here's how they fared:

• Yahoo Watch - No update. Hardly a surprise; it's a dumbtech watch that barely knows what the day and month are, much less day of the week or time zone.
• Desktop Mac - Updated right on time. I came home at 1:30am (the, err, second 1:30am) and it was right on the ball.
• Powerbook - Same as desktop mac.
• iPod - Nope. It knows about timezones (thanks to the 1.2 update, which also gave it a clock and calendar) but it required me to go into settings and change my time zone from 'Eastern (EDT)' to 'Eastern'. It might have done it automatically if I'd sync'ed it with my mac. I won't know 'till April.
• Elph s100 Camera - Not only did it not know the time changed, but it thought I was still in California! Funny how little I pay attention to the datestamping functionality of my digicam.
• Camcorder - At 12:50am I checked it (just now) and it thought it was 10:50pm. I would have been a little confused if not for the fact that I had checked the elph moments before and it showed 9:47pm. So I thought, 'Neat! It thinks I'm in California still, but at least it did the time change!' Then I realized no: I simply had never set the time forward back in April. Now, writing this down, I realize I have it backwards: The Elph hadn't been reset since before April. The camcorder wasn't even purchased until after April. Anyhow, they're both just smart enough that they should know better, but don't.
• Car Stereo - As smart as it is, it doesn't know a thing about calendar dates, and seeing as how it doesn't get its time signal from a radio station, it knows nothing about daylight savings.
• Zen Alarm Clock - The thing's analog for crissake. And that's why I love it.
• Zeit Atomic Clock - The one item in my house that is expressly created to handle daylight savings time correctly, and it messes it up. A bit about this clock: It reads the longwave time signal broadcast from Colorado, and syncs itself to that signal all the time, so it's the most difinitive timepiece I own. Nevertheless, for the past two years, it adjusts itself for daylight savings time two weeks before it's supposed to, without explanation, or even corroboration by other Zeit clock owners. This month it fell back two weeks early, a not-so-subtle reminder of the impending shift, but fixed itself a few days later. Now, at its moment of truth, it ticks blithly on in defiance of the end of daylight savings. I have little choice but to wait for it to figure out on its own what's what.
• Bose Alarm Clock - Doesn't know about dates.
• Cellphone - As smart as my Nokia purports to be, and as hopeful I was when I activated the 'auto-adjust clock' feature on it, the thing is as dumb as a digital rock. No joy.
• Microwave Oven - Another example of dumbtech. I trust the thing to work as a countdown timer for food, but that's about it.
• Kitchen Wall Clock - Analog dumbtech.
• Digital Cable Box - Smart. I'd expected that, but considering that the phone line umbilical is currently cut, I wouldn't have been surprised if it didn't get the message for a day or so.
• TiVo - Ditto above, though I actually figured it wouldn't update the clock until it made its daily call, which it's been unable to for the last week, thanks to me and my non-payment of my Verizon bill. I should've known better though: A device with Linux at its core is smart enough to know about daylight savings, and adjust on its own.

As for my body, I put a little effort into trying to even out my sleep schedule. It's now 1:15am local time, and I'm going to sleep. Considering that I usually go to sleep around 3:15am, I'm compensating an extra hour, turning in an hour earlier than my biology expects.

I hope everyone else's weekend was good. I've got a few bits to write up in the morning, probably before most of you even wake up from your Monday Bonus Hour of sleep.

Things not to do, item 1505:

Don't go see the midnight showing of The Ring and then drive home alone to park in front of your private cemetery, climb up to your solitary attic and go to sleep.

Unless, of course, you're me.

Reading an article hypothesizing on the source of G W Bush's polar nature, I got to thinking...

When does partisanship give way to objectivity? Or does it ever? It's interesting to me that my own personal historical opinion of past presidents is only clouded by partisanship as far back as I was consciously aware of their term of office. I hold my own opinions of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush the Sequel because I lived through them. Farther back than that though, I gauge a president's effectiveness based on what history thought, and that history, found in the textbooks mostly, usually speaks with one voice, with both the right and left channels mixed into monophonic.

Where does that national consensus come from? Who decides, in the end, whether our children and grandchildren see GWB as a great leader or bully dullard?

At the end of a presidency, do we all take a deep breath and say "okay, now that it's a moot point, yeah, he was really bad. Thank god there's this new guy" or will Republicans stand behind him even after there are more intelligent and worthy leaders at the point of the GOP's blade?

As an example, I'd probably have supported Carter 100% against Reagan in 1980, but now I'd freely admit that his talents didn't particularly lie in his presidential acumen. Is this polarization inherent in a two-party system mirroring the 'with us or against us' polarization we fear so much in our sitting president?

So the newest web toy on the block is Googlism.

The site takes the name of a person, place, thing, etc, and will throw back an impressively long list of definitions garnered from the web. Not definitive definitions mind you, but a list of phrases that begin (in my own egotistical example) 'Kevin Fox is a...'.

The output is really impressive, as you'll no doubt see. I'm still sifting through, but the one that caught my eye was "Kevin Fox is my soulmate."

Sadly I don't play the cello, and dimes'll give you dollars that she's lusting after my nomesis, musician and creator of the "Six Degrees of Kevin Fox".

Nevertheless, here's my complete list. I've put links on the ones that I recognize as referring to me:

kevin fox is a cellist and guitar player residing in toronto
kevin fox is understudy for the title role in the musical 'buddy
kevin fox is the bass player for the jimmy nations combo
kevin fox is his own registered trademark
kevin fox is currently an interaction designer
kevin fox is suitably perplexed as the antipholus who finds himself being given money
kevin fox is an avid team roper
kevin fox is sure to celebrated as this insanely talented songwriter / much sought after string
kevin fox is trying a
kevin fox is trying a neat experiment on qwer
kevin fox is technical director of the spa and has trained closely with alan over the past ten years
kevin fox is new to toronto
kevin fox is writing
kevin fox is an experienced wrestler with great technique
kevin fox is
kevin fox is all right once the spelling starts
kevin fox is sl 538
kevin fox is loaded with complexity and good dialog
kevin fox is someone i met in the sca
kevin fox is making me giggle
kevin fox is fueled largely by exposition that is taken to a whole new level by the engaging performances of
kevin fox is now based in indonesia and plays for the jakarta bintangs
kevin fox is my soulmate
kevin fox is opening
kevin fox is working with an outfitter in asheville
kevin fox is struggling
kevin fox is coordinator of the school
kevin fox is now operations manager at wfxa
kevin fox is refining pcl's program to pay for this equipment replacement through the use of a general obligation bond act
kevin fox is the most clever human being on the planet
kevin fox is a genius
kevin fox is purposely meant to be cynical
kevin fox is the new mayor of roxbury of the mayor’s committee
kevin fox is the one that had to go to the scene when these dogs were lose
kevin fox is fun to talk to

Of course, I don't know about a lot of the remaining items, but I'll be spending a little time on Google searching for the phrases to find out. It's like referrer-checking (aka backlinking) but on a linguistic, not a linky, level.

So what are you?

I think I used to work for these guys...

(note to previous employers reading this blog: I don't mean you. I mean that company two jobs before I worked for you. You know, the one that, while it didn't get me the job with you, increased my résume-cred enough to warrant that phone screen interview...)

(note to everyone else: I can't believe a pap post like this is Fury's grand 1500th post. Ah well, happy cognitive reference point to me!)

Spoiler Warning: If you haven't seen this week's Buffy and plan to, then read no further!

Okay, now for the rest of you... If you did watch Buffy, and you enjoyed it as much as I did, (and there really was so much to enjoy this week!) and you were geek enough to download the Once More With Feeling mp3s floating around last November, and buy the OMWF Soundtrack this month, then you're probably lusting for Selfless's two OMWF bonus tracks.

You know I think too much, and I don't really know how Joss would feel about posting the MP3s but, since the're taken straight off the airwave broadcast, hopefully UPN and Mutant Enemy won't mind too much (note to Joss: Look how much I love your work). Just promise that, if and when these tracks are available commercially, you'll buy the album, just like we all bought OMWF when it came out.

He Got the Mustard In.mp3

I'll Be Missus.mp3

Oh, and if you want to link to these files, please link to this post, instead of directly to the files.

Okay, I know I put Strongbad's Email in the meme-o-matic over a month ago, but for some reason I just find today's weekly installment so, so funny, it's worth a mention. [flash]

So Manchester, UK was "rocked" by a 3.2 temblor this morning, and later was hit by two larger earthquakes which, at this time, don't have Richters attached to them yet.

The funny bit is that everyone seems so surprised that there could be a larger quake after the first. The term 'foreshock' apparently hasn't crossed the pond, and even experts at the British Geological Survey seemed a bit surprised:

Julian Bukits, of the BGS, told BBC News 24 that it was unusual to have further quakes that were stronger than the first.

He said it was usual to have a strong tremor followed by further smaller aftershocks, but sometimes there could be up to three quakes leading up to a "bigger earthquake".

In truth, foreshocks are really common, and in the event of a 4.0 or higher, the USGS will usually put out a warning that there's a 20% chance of a quake larger than the first within the next 48 hours.

Okay, okay, so maybe I'm just being picky. I just get a kick out of how the BBC put "bigger earthquake" in quotes.

I only wish I was making this up, or that it was in The Onion... Apparently, swayed by Johnny Cochran's statement that he's "90% sure" that OJ is innocent of the murder of his ex-wife and her lover, the seeds of doubt have been planted in OJ's own fertile mind.

"For years I've been pretty sure that I did not murder my wife,” Simpson said today at a golf course in Boca Raton, Fla., where he was taking a rare break from searching for the real killers of his wife. “But if Johnnie’s not 100 percent sure, I’m like, hey, maybe I better take another look at this."

“Look, you’re talking about a guy, Johnnie Cochran, who is a pretty smart guy,” Simpson said. “If he said maybe I did it, then maybe I did it.”

When asked about his unrelenting manhunt for the 'real killers,' OJ revealed,“If it turns out that I’m actually the one who did it, then looking for the real killers would be a big old waste of time.”

Sounds like someone needs to make a call to the Psychic Friends Network to get this thing settled once and for all. Then maybe we'll learn the truth; that the whole thing: murder, flight from prosection, and neverending trials, was just a test balloon being raised by the folks at Fox to see whether the world was ready for reality TV. It looks like we were, and still are...