johnfulwider dot com

Photos from Jami’s Second Graduation Party are now up.

The first party was just practice, as Nebraska Wesleyan University walks its grads just once a year through the coma-inducing commencement ceremony. Wednesday’s party was more practice, as Jami finished her final class that day but still doesn’t have her diploma.

Coming up as soon as the diploma comes in the mail: The real graduation party. It’ll be a humdinger.

BugMeNot.com supplies generic, privacy-saving logins for all those news sites that erect a registration wall between themselves and potential readers. It lets you easily read the odd news article without registering. There’s even a Firefox extension that puts a menu item for BugMeNot in your right-click context menu.

Loyal seven readers, I’d like your advice on an idea I have for re-starting a computer consulting business I let slip into nothingness a while back. I basically just need you to tell me whether you think the price I have in mind is attractive for the service I want to offer.

My old idea, which didn’t work, was to charge $50 an hour for on-site computer repair and software training for businesses, and a $50 flat fee for the same services for home users. My new idea is to charge a $35 flat fee for up to two hours of software and gadget training for anybody, and not do computer repair (instead referring customers to a friend of mine). It could be people who need help with office suites and other standard applications, or, more likely, people who need to learn how to use their new digital camera, printer or CD burner and the like.

I think the old idea didn’t work because a) the price was too high and b) I utterly underestimated the torturously severe problems people have with their computers. My repair skills weren’t up to the task.

So, would you or someone you know pay me $35 to come to your house or office and teach you how to get the most out of your computer or other gadgets? Would you buy a gift certificate for that amount to give as a gift along with some new gadget you’re buying for someone? Please let me know, and be brutally honest. No comments about my ancestry, however. The French and the Germans are nice people.

And you thought the dislike of Clinton among Republicans and his popularity among Democrats represented unprecedented polar opposition in American politics.

You thought wrong. Turns out the like-Bush and hate-Bush crowds are much farther apart than the comparable Clinton crowds, according to the study reported in this article:

Bush is a measurably polarizing figure. Republican Bill McInturff of the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies uses an “intensity range” to show that public attitudes are significantly stronger on this president than they were on President Clinton in 1996 or Bush’s father, former President Bush, in 1992.

When McInturff adds the percentage of Democrats who strongly disapprove of Bush (69 percent) to the percentage of Republicans who strongly approve of him (68 percent), the “intensity range” is 137 percent — almost double the 72 percent range for the elder Bush. The range for Clinton (in this case, Republican disapproval added to Democratic approval) was 92 percent.

“It’s stunning. I have never in my life seen these kinds of numbers on the level of intensity on both sides,” McInturff said. “We are seeing the largest gap in American history in approval and disapproval by party. The level at which people are locking in is without precedent.”

Loyal seven readers, you may have noticed some appearance ickiness when visiting johnfulwider dot com lately. I blame half of it on Bill Gates and his freakin’ incompatible and insecure Internet Explorer browser, and half of it on my poor understanding of CSS and XHTML.

Anyhoo, your favorite Web site will be displaying a safe layout and style for a while. Hope you find it pleasing to the eye and, more importantly, usable.

Oh. My. Gawrsh. Not to be overenthusiastic, but presidential campaign commercials from 1952 to 2004 are now online. This is exactly the kind of resource I need to do research about political communication.

It’s also a great way for people to understand contemporary debates about negative advertising. Everyone who’s read or heard a story about attack ads has heard “the Willie Horton ad” mentioned, right? Critics of the ad say it’s an example of Republican race-baiting, as it features a black criminal given weekend passes by then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Now, thanks to the American Museum of the Moving Image, you can watch the ad, read the transcript, and judge for yourself.

Just posted: Golden Climbing Trip Slideshow. More later.

Javal took a bunch of great photos on this past weekend’s climbing trip to Golden, Colorado. Check ‘em out.

The Colorado climbing trip’s over and we’re back in the Flatlands. Trip report coming for your perusal and enjoyment, along with pictures of Brian sporting the cutest French-braid ponytails you’re ever likely to see. And a whole lot more. In the meantime, why not rate the trip using the handy-dandy poll on the upper-left side of the page?

Bloglines is the best RSS reader out there, and I’m about to tell you why.

1. It’s Web-based so you can keep up with your RSS subscriptions from anywhere. Read a few in the morning from home, and they’re marked as read when you later log on from campus or work. You don’t need to download a reader application.

2. There’s a bookmarklet to auto-discover and subscribe to the feeds on any page you visit.

3. You can e-mail to a friend, “blog this” or clip any article. Clipping an article puts it in your choice of folders for later perusal. It works fast so you need never hesitate to send something off or save it for future reference.

4. It’s free.

I’d change just one thing about Bloglines: When I signed up, at least, the “My Blogs” listing of my subscriptions defaulted to displaying the last month’s worth of entries. This created a long load time for me and must have been a heck of server load for Bloglines, so I’d suggest changing the default to display the last 24 hours or week’s worth of posts.

Bloglines’ creator, Mark Fletcher, deserves a pat on the back.