MT 3.1, Ready for Primetime?

I've installed MT 3.1 onto the system and I'm wondering if it's not quite ready for primetime. When I first loaded it up, the first thing I noticed was the comment system was out of whack. And I'm talking not even displaying right in the site menu. A few CSS fixes later, that appears to be working. However, one of the sites no longer builds properly. I guess I'll see if it works over the next few days. I'm really interested in the date posting capabilities.

Kerry Girls' Reception

Events like this at last night's VMA's give me some hope.

MTV, ROLLING STONE and the rock and roll establishment -- past and present -- have cast their vote, and their man is John Kerry.

So on Sunday night when John Kerry's daughters were announced to speak at the annual MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS, the MTV youth were expected to welcome his daughter's as pop culture princesses.

Instead, in an era of the unexpected, the daughters of the Democratic candidate were met with cheers -- AND JEERS -- during the live broadcast in Miami.

From the moment Alexandra and Vanessa started speaking, the boos outweighed anything close to cheers, and the reaction turned worse when the daughters asked the VIACOM youth to vote for their father. So shocked by the reaction, the taller of the two daughters tried to 'shhhhhh' her peers to no avail.

It's interesting to see this reaction and gives me some hope for people in my generation and younger. Let's see how this gets spun though, like the way the spun Michael Moore's encounter with a similar reception at the Academy Awards.

Shiloh

Sarah and I adopted a dog yesterday. Both of us had been wanting our own dog for quite some time and since I got the new job I started looking. Shiloh is a 4 yr old beagle mix that we adopted from the Woodford Humane Society. We found her through Petfinder.com and I would recommend that anyone looking for a dog or cat to try this site. You can find pure bred dogs on there, though some breds are much harder to find than others. She's perfect for Sarah as she's a very laid back dog and will probably spend most of her time just laying around or chewing on a bone.

More Work, thankfully. . .

Well, for a change I've got more work than I can handle now. I accepted a new job this past Friday. So, now in addition to providing support and work for the McConnell Center I'm now working with Orion Network Solutions. This means even more PHP/MySQL related programming, which I've grown to enjoy. But it looks like probably some perl, python and who knows what other types of programming.

England has a new Jester

For the first time since 1649, the year King Charles I was beheaded, England has a new jester.

Best of luck to the guy that won the job in the competition. It's going to be hard to cheer a country that's been told they can't smile for official photos.

Why Vote Bush?

Stephen Bainbridge again is spreading his wisdom throughout the blogosphere. He's now stated one of the better reasons why one should vote for Bush in November.

I'll add to it my former classmates at Brandeis, my girlfriend's classmates at U.K., and my little sis' too. . .

Upgrades

I decided to go ahead and upgrade to MT 3.01D. I know there's been a dust up in the blogosphere over the new licenses. And I'm starting to test other blogging software to see if any of them would work better. However, MT has been great in the past and while the free version restrictions are a bit inconvient for the direction I'd like to take this site sometime in the not to distant future, it'll work for now. Just means I can't use new versions for any collobarative sites like I've done in the past (at least not w/o paying for it).

I've also nixed the old journal website. Talk about letting something go stagnant. It'll stay there for any google searches that might come it's way, but otherwise I've incorporated the entries into this blog.

BTW, I'd like to thank all the individuals that have given some feedback on the new site design.

Al-Sadr

Looks like the coalition and Iraqi forces are finally going after Al-Sadr.

US troops surrounded the home of wanted Shiite Muslim radical leader Moqtada Sadr in the central Iraqi holy city of Najaf, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

US armoured vehicles, backed by Iraqi security forces, cordoned off the Al-Zahra neighbourhood, where Sadr's home is located in the eastern part of the city.

Smoke was seen rising from the area Monday amid the sound of heavy gunfire, mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenade explosions.

Hopefully this will end part of the current string of violence in Iraq and possibly cut off some of the Iranian funding of activities within the country.

UPDATE: And of course, the troops withdraw.