Jef Raskin, creator of the Macintosh and human interface designer extraordinaire, has passed on.

Update: From the ‘Jef Raskin’ Wikipedia entry:

Jef Raskin died of cancer on 2005-02-26. As a tribute to him, someone anonymously put this comment in a web forum:

“[Undo]! [Undo]!”

Busy Saturday: first birthday party for the child of a friend, home for a brief nap, a run down to Chevy Chase for beer (the cellar was getting pretty empty), followed by dinner and hanging out with S. and L. Fun all the way around.

Local schools still closed — due to “possible ice-covered sidewalks”, according to the news reports. Utterly mind-boggling. Typical Friday work day: got a few things done, struggled with a few others. Out for Thai with the family in the evening, then home.

Florida high school principal bars yearbook photo of female student wearing tux. (In the story, it’s prominently noted that the student is a lesbian; I’m unclear on whether a straight female student wearing a tux would result in the same ban.) The story offers up this perfect summary of how our high schools are preparing students for ‘real life’:

Officials at the northeastern Florida school have said the picture was pulled from the yearbook because Davis did not follow the rules on dress. School board attorney Bruce Bickner said there is no written dress code for senior pictures, but principals have the authority to set standards.

In other words, “There are rules, we won’t tell you what they are, and enforcement will be swift, decisive, and arbitrary.” Another chilling quote:

Others applauded [the decision to pull the photo], including Karen Gordon, who said, “When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds.”

(This “I can’t believe they said that” moment via grrtigger’s LiveJournal.)

I’m sure most people saw the news last week about the man charged with plotting to kill President Bush. I wonder how many people realized that the accused is also the subject of an unlawful detention lawsuit, in which the Justice Department is trying to not only present secret evidence, but also wants to argue its side of the case in secret:

ATTORNEYS FOR the Justice Department appeared before a federal judge in Washington this month and asked him to dismiss a lawsuit over the detention of a U.S. citizen, basing their request not merely on secret evidence but also on secret legal arguments. The government contends that the legal theory by which it would defend its behavior should be immune from debate in court. This position is alien to the history and premise of Anglo-American jurisprudence, which assumes that opposing lawyers will challenge one another’s arguments.

The timing is interesting, too: the Post story appeared last Monday, and the news about the assassination plot was released Tuesday.

Attention commuters on I-270 in the Washington DC Metro region: remove ALL the snow from your vehicle BEFORE you get in it and start driving down the road. Turning on the rear defrost and immediately starting out on your commute is not an acceptable substitute. Neither is scraping out a one foot wide square of windshield while leaving the rest of the vehicle with a two inch coating of ice and snow.

(All examples drawn from real life. Sadly, people — real, grown-up people, driving expensive vehicles — apparently need to have this spelled out to this level of detail. Fucktards. Watch this space for the next item in this series, provisionally entitled “It takes longer to stop when there’s a quarter-inch of slush on the roads, you jackasses, so slow down and increase your following distance”.)

The local schools all closed (on the basis of a forecast calling for 5 to 7 inches of snow, which ended up being maybe three inches, at least around our house), which meant TheChild’s day care closed too. Since TheWife had an appointment at the doctor, and since the doctor’s office had canceled that appointment three times already, I ended up staying home in the morning. Since TheWife brought back lunch when she returned from her outing, it wasn’t until a little after 1pm that I headed into work, and almost 2pm when I got there — slow and steady wins the race in the snow, kids. I think I walked through the door at about the instant that the “two hour early dismissal” memo landed in everybody’s inbox. sigh Still put in a half day, and managed to get a thing or two done. Home around 7pm for a sedate evening.

Ho-hum Wednesday. Finished with the mail and ticket catchup in the morning, then the usual afternoon meeting, then a rush home so TheWife could get to her class. Luckily, this week finishes that class out; it was getting to be problematic to make it home in time (and I think it was stressing her schedule too, a bit). Busy fun evening with TheChild: reading, playing, dancing…

The first day back after a three-day weekend is always a bit of a mess; it always feels like two days crammed into one. Aside from that background frustration level, and the continuing saga of getting some new hardware for the issues that came up over the weekend, it was a fairly normal, albeit long, day.

This was nominally a day off — Presidents’ Day — but I ended up at work anyway, rebooting the same probably-failing hardware that I’d gone for yesterday. Did a bit more analysis of the situation (because it’s odd that one machine by itself can’t handle the load that we see when both machines are up), which generated some ranty mail.

Back home in the afternoon, for general day off lazing around and catching up.