William M. Hartnett

Recent comment spam from my new best friend, a delightful fella named “Garden Centers in Kentucky,” not caught by Akismet:
Why didn’t anyone tell me about this blog earlier? Lol. Seriously, awesome work on this post (along with your other posts…) Keep it up!…
I almost approved it just because it was so cheerful and encouraging. Hey, [...]

> Murdoch’s ‘WSJ’ Greets New Year - With Front-Pager on Kucinich’s UFO (E&P)
The Wall Street Journal writes about Dennis Kucinich’s UFO sighting 25 years ago at Shirley MacLaine’s house. Editor & Publisher asks: “Was there really any pressing need to cover Dennis Kucinich’s old, and much laughed over, UFO encounter, especially with him about [...]

I’m obsessed with tracking my mileage. I’ve even been known to record my mileage in rental cars. Here then, for no very good reason, is the year-end mileage report for my 2001 1.8T manual transmission Volkswagen Jetta, with comparisons over 2006:
Miles driven: 7,263.1 (+15.5 percent)
Gallons burned: 248.424 (+4.1 percent)
Miles per gallon: 29.237 (+11.0 percent)
Average price [...]

Kids these days. Is there no end to their wimpy need for constant coddling? From the story Straight A’s, With a Burger as a Prize in today’s NYT:
Students in kindergarten through fifth grade can now receive a Happy Meal from a local McDonald’s restaurant as a “food prize,” as it is described, for achievements like [...]

What is the logic of the “time remaining” bar in software installation windows? I’ve been staring at “Time remaining: 3 minutes” for exactly 11 minutes while waiting for a software update to install. It is literally impossible to overestimate how immensely annoying I find this. Now it’s counting down individual seconds from 45, except each [...]

You can barely make it out in this grainy picture I took last night through my windshield with my phone, but the Corvette’s license plate says MR BAD 7. Do you suppose the driver is the seventh-baddest dude in Florida, or that he owns six cars even badder than the Corvette?

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This story in the NYT’s Week in Review section references an amazingly titled document from the National Security Agency: “Redacting with Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized Reports Converted From Word to PDF.” No way I could resist a name like that. So, how does the NSA redact with confidence? Apparently, with the assistance of [...]

> ‘Truth’ be told (Commercial Appeal)
> Hollywood Plugs Its Tale of a Leak (Washington Post)
> Another Leak: Kate Beckinsale Starring As ‘Judith Miller’ in New Movie (E&P)
(Via Romenesko, lots of other places)

Separated at birth? And 25 years? Miller as reporter, left. Beckinsale as vampire warrior, right.
Kate Beckinsale (34, born in London) is [...]

A thousand apologies, Hartnett readers, for being blog-lazy (blazy?) lately. I’ll write something substantive some day soon. Or not. In the meantime, just a few odds and ends I wanted to get on the record.

I can’t get enough of this story from today’s Palm Beach Post: Ninja-like force protects exclusive Gardens enclave. The people who [...]

> Newsday Pulitzers recovered (Newsday)
Definitely was not involved in this:
The medals were turned over to federal agents on Friday, said Doyle. Two of the medals had already been shipped to Florida, and were recovered in the West Palm Beach area, said Jim Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI.
Don’t know nuthin’ about it.

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