Happy post-Thanksgiving, big-ass-shopping day!

This morning, I fell in love, hopelessly, swimmingly, forever in love… with my new 17” flatscreen monitor. It turns out that my residency program dropped a big check in my account this week, a “housing allowance” that I had not known about. So instead of treating it like a housing allowance, I treated it like a buy-a-nice-present-for-Jason allowance. I went to CompUSA first thing this morning, walked out ten minutes later with my new toy, and had it hooked up and running within the hour; I love it.

I gotta say it, I just don’t understand Radio Userland. The entire beauty of Manila and Blogger is that you do everything you want to do in your browser window — no other app needed, and more importantly, no other app needed when you’re somewhere other than your primary workplace. You don’t have to keep the settings of some application synchronized across two or three computers. All you need is your browser. That’s the key for me, and the only way I could continue to maintain a (quasi-)daily website.

This week, Microsoft announced that the next release of Windows will require software to be digitally signed in order to run. The problem with this is that it just shifts the security burden to another group of companies, those that issue digital signatures (e.g., Verisign, Baltimore, and GlobalSign), and it’s another set of privacy policies, issuance rules, and revocation procedures that we will all have to learn and follow.

Uh oh…. is it a server configuration error, or are Meg and Evan up to something supersecret and clandestine today? If they’re taking over the world, I want to be first in line to request the position of Ambassador to TiVo and Other Gadgetry.

Last night, I was playing around with ofoto with a cousin of mine, and was blown away by the little drag-and-drop applet that they provide to be able to upload images easily; I wish that Manila had this feature. The help info says it works in Internet Explorer on the PC, and in both IE and Netscape on the Mac — that covers a lot of ground.

Thank you, Firda, for the link to the Modern Humorist Real-Life Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. Classic.