Arms and influence

Fruits not fried

Glad to hear that Matt (of Fruits and Votes, a political science professor at UCSD) and family have escaped the San Diego fires. In fact, Matt is so OK that he's blogging about baseball.

P.S. Who created the entry for Fruits and Votes in Wikipedia? I have to create my own now...

He was just here!

I'm back from a self-imposed sabbatical from writing. I needed to take care of some matters in my life outside blogging: for example, I swore that I would eliminate every source of possible distraction until I hired a replacement for my department at work. (We were months overdue finding someone, and the recruitment process proved especially tough.)

To be honest, I also needed a break from writing while I worked out a few things about the future of the blog. I keep the rest of my life out of the blog, and vice-versa. Unfortunately, there was a bit of overlap, in a way that made me wonder what the right thing to do was. I think I've figured out how to square that proverbial circle, so I'm back in the writing chair again.

Wow, do I have a lot of catching up to do. If I'm writing about topics that arose in the news days or weeks ago, my apologies. I don't think these matters are settled, or else I wouldn't be writing about them.

Happy weekend, everyone

I've been traveling, plus Queenmommy's broken arm has taken priority. I'm back to posting this weekend.

Since I'm already off-topic, not getting to national security at all yet, I'll mention a pleasant surprise I had recently. After years of having the same TV, we splurged and bought a big honkin' high definition-capable replacement. From there, the dominoes started falling. Of course, since we had an HD TV, we needed a new HD DVD player...And while we're at it, the TV channels we were watching looked pretty crappy on the big screen...

This is one of the few times that I've been really impressed when upgrading technology. (Perhaps that's because, by comparison, the switch from Windows XP to Windows Vista was a totally underwhelming experience. Unless you have to, don't bother.) As movie buffs, we're watching some films as if we were seeing them for the first time again. Plus, some of the HD programming, such as the Showtime series The Tudors, is truly dazzling.

The HD upgrade happened just in time. While Queenmommy is benched, we have entertainment galore, at her beck and call.

Where'd he go?

We had a minor medical emergency here at Kingdaddy Arms, so I'll be posting little or nothing today.

Party in SF

Tonight, I'm going to be at a blogger event in SF. If you happen to be there, and you can figure out who I am, please stop and say hello.

Bloggus interruptus

Sorry for the drop-off in posting. Life intruded. If it’s any consolation, I’ve been MIA in other areas, including a friend’s birthday party. Stupid life.

Today, I'm a rover

I'm on the road today, so I won't be posting. Meanwhile, enjoy Tom Waits performing "Cold, Cold Ground." This song became the only song played twice on Homicide: LIfe on the Streets, a TV series filled with great music.  That makes "Cold, Cold Ground" as close to an anthem of that show as any song, aside from the theme music.

If I understand Waits' lyrics, "Cold, Cold Ground is about the craziness and indifference of violence. That makes it a good choice for this blog.

Widgets 'R' Us

As a public service, we here at Arms and Influence have made a widget-sized version of this blog. See the column to your right for the button that will help you use it.

The Internet: progressively tinier content since 2007.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming

I've finally tracked down the problem I was having with the RSS feeds. The short version is, Web 2.0 technology is still a bit twitchy. Or, at least, the way one service provider (not Typepad) was handling RSS was being helpful in an unhelpful way.

Technical difficulties

There's a problem with the RSS feed for Arms and Influence that is eating the time I would spend posting. Among other unfortunate side effects, the latest podcast isn't showing up in the iTunes Music Store. As soon as I the Typepad people help fix this problem, I'll get back to posting.