Irish Trojan in Tennessee

D'oh!

By Brendan Loy

Just get a Mac for crying out loud

By Jay Johnson

Well, I'm the lone Mac in my office, and everything else hanging around is a Dell product with Windows XP SP2.

Today, my secretary was working when her Dell spontaneously shut off.  Not shut down, not blue screen of death, no "Windows needs to shut down,"  just a stone cold, power off.

Hmm.  That's weird, so restart, which it does back to the main Windows screen, same thing in just a few seconds. 

Any of you PC types have any idea what could be going on here?  I'm thinking it's likely a hardware failure of some sort, possibly a power supply.  But, then again, I know just enough to be dangerous around children and animals.

BTW, I told the attorney I work with that he should replace it with a Mac and he looked at me like I was crazy.  Oh well.  Live and learn.  Die and forget it all.

You got enchilada in my Kung Pao chicken

By Jay Johnson

The former owner of a now defunct Chinese buffet in Knoxville has been sentenced to one year in federal prison for knowingly employing a staff of illegal Mexican immigrants at his establishment.

I'm torn about what to think about this, upon first glance.

Part of me thinks that it's certainly a reasonable response to a violation of existing law.  Then, I look at the defense strategy, which was likely the only real thing that the attorney could have argued in such a case.

"Everyone else does it, and the government doesn't do anything about it.  What's the big damn deal?"

Certainly, I feel as though our immigration laws aren't being enforced to the degree necessary and our borders aren't adequately protected from the influx of illegal immigrants.  While I don't feel a need to stem the tide of immigration to our country, I do believe that it is important to require/demand that our policies on immigration be followed.

However, a law not enforced is essentially a nullity.  It's similar in theory to real estate law, and the adverse possession of someone else's land.  If you build a fence over someone else's land, and they do nothing to remedy the situation within X number of years, then it's no longer their land, it's yours.

With our immigration laws, it would seem that a similar logic should apply.  When does the government have an affirmative obligation to start enforcing the laws on its books consistently in every such case?  When do (or should) they lose the right to do so if they fail to enforce those same laws?

How do you arbitrarily pick this particular guy to prosecute when there are hundreds or thousands of others out there doing the same thing?

I'm really torn about how to feel about this case, and would like to see what you all think.

Memory lane

By Brendan Loy

While culling several old photo boxes recently, I discovered a bunch of used film rolls that hadn't been developed. Not knowing what they were, I took them into Walgreens to get them developed. I figured there would be a mixture of interesting photos and total duds, but actually, as it turns out, those undeveloped rolls were a real gold mine of fun memories, recalled by never-before-seen pictures, most of them from 2003. For example, here I am in my headier, more confidently pro-Iraq-war days, at a "Support the Troops" rally sponsored by the USC College Republicans:

Say what you will about the war, but that was a damn nice sign I made. :) Anyway, later in 2003, here's me and Shannon in Rockefeller Center:

And then there's these adorable shots of Butter and Sasha when they were just little tiny kittens:

Aww! They were so little!

I also developed a much more recent roll of film, a throwaway camera that I used during Andrew and Bea's wedding when Becky had my digital camera. Check out this wonderful picture of Andrew's dad and Bea's dad, all smiles just after the ceremony:

And here's a shot of Bea's maid of honor, Pardis, frantically scribbling last-minute notes in preparation for her speech, just minutes before the reception started:

An eventful August

By Brendan Loy

Man, we've had quite a eventful month in terms of visiting friends, haven't we? Last week, Adrienne came to town, and then we met up with Brian Merrell (a.k.a. Briandot) for dinner -- the fourth "blog friend" we've met in person after becoming acquainted through the Loy-o-sphere. Cue the photos:

Now we're en route to Buffalo -- again! -- to hang out with friends and family, and to be showered with gifts and attention on Saturday. (Well, really it'll be Becky who'll be showered. My job is to sit there and oooh and ahhh. I know my place in the world. :)

Pick 'em contest reminder

By Brendan Loy

This post will remain on top of the homepage for a while: Enter the 3rd annual Irish Trojan USC & ND pick 'em contest!

Something to look forward to

By Brendan Loy

If this is what clothes-shopping with a pre-teen girl is like now, I shudder to think what it'll be like in, oh, 12 years or so. Excerpt:

Limited Too was awash in shimmer; virtually every item was encrusted with rhinestones or sparkling with glitter. Most of these clothes provided sufficient coverage, but my daughter doesn't like ostentation, so we looked through the T-shirts for something more subdued. There we discovered what I have come to think of as Nitwit Wear. These are T-shirts with slogans such as: "I Left My Brain in My Locker," "I Only Shop on Days that End in Y," and "Spoiled and Proud of It." (At least you only want to shake your head at these. Making you believe in corporal punishment is the Happy Bunny line of clothing, available online and at various department stores, which features phrases such as "Wow you're ugly," and "It's cute how stupid you are.") It's a comfort to know that if your child can't come up with her own insolent remarks, clothing manufacturers are there to help.

Of course, there's that extreme, and then there's the other extreme. Money quote: "Mom, I'm 11! I'm not Harriet Miers!" (Hat tip: Becky.)

Haloscan vs. Blogger Comments

By Brendan Loy

As this TypePad blog crisis stretches into a new day with minimal support and no resolution (not to mention an increasing number of other problems surfacing, like an epidemic of repetitively posted comments, presumably because of some flaw in TypePad's commenting system), it is becoming increasingly likely that I will be abandoning TypePad and switching to Blogspot. I'm hoping Blogspot might work a bit better than TypePad, and in any event, it's free, which TypePad is not. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $15/month for a buggy blog platform that doesn't provide adequate support when their mistakes are crippling my blog. So unless they fix this, and fast, yet another platform switch is in the Irish Trojan's future.

Which raises the question: which commenting system should I use, if indeed I switch to Blogger? Should I use Blogger's native commenting system, or HaloScan? I remember HaloScan causing lots of headaches, back in my blog's pre-WordPress days, in large part because of its per-comment character limit. (Even though I was a "pro" HaloScan user, there was still a limit, albeit a higher one than for regular users.) On the other hand, I've heard mixed reviews of Blogger's native commenting system. So I'm just curious what anyone with experience using either or both systems might have to say.

UPDATE: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! My TypePad problems have been solved, at least for the moment.

Let the season begin! And let Buffalo not lose by more than 50!

By Brendan Loy

So, I was planning to post something making fun of the quality of games, or lack thereof, on this season-opening Thursday of college football. I was going to list a representative handful of tonight's contests, with sacrcastic exclamation points at the end of each one -- Cincinnati vs. Southeast Missouri State! Louisville vs. Murray State! Rutgers vs. Buffalo! -- and then I was going to say something like, "Try to contain your excitement about this scintillating array of games."

But then I learned that I may have the opportunity to watch the Buffalo-Rutgers game, in a sports bar in Buffalo, with a bunch of crazed UB fans. And naturally, being a huge dork with a soft-spot for lovable losers like the UB Bulls, I'm totally excited. So it would now be disingenuous for me to go ahead with my originally planned post. :)

It's funny: a few years ago, Buffalo-Rutgers would have been seen as a rare opportunity for the Bulls to perhaps pull an upset against a BCS-conference team. Nowadays, however, it's almost as daunting as Buffalo-Auburn was last year. Rutgers is a legit powerhouse with legit BCS (and Heisman) ambitions, while Buffalo's ambition remains the same as ever: to avoid losing each and every single game it plays. To not go winless. A lofty goal indeed. :)

Anyway, not that it matters -- and this is the last time I'll root against Rutgers this season, unless they play USC or Notre Dame in a bowl game -- but I'll say it for what it's worth: LET'S GO BUFF-A-LO!!!