The Next Window

I bought a couple cool items last week from Allposters.com, who has framed and unframed posters, matted prints, notecards, postercards, standups, wall tapestries, magnets, apparel and more.

The whole shopping experience was smooth. Shipping was so so quick that I was surprised when my package was delivered, despite picking the cheapest shipping option.

TIP: Allposters.com has a free shipping special for orders over $9.99, which expires Thursday Feb.23, 2006. Be sure to click on the Click Here for Details button to get the required “coupon code.”

First, the reason I was shopping, was a birthday present. This choice was a fabric dragon / yin-yang poster.

Ying Yang Guardians
30 in. x 40 in.
Click here to buy Dragon Posters

My other selection was a small poster to mount on the cabinet door (inside) in my

Caffe Espresso Art Print — Morrow, Anthony; Buy at AllPosters.com

I am constantly amazed at the news media and television talking heads, let alone the politicians who are trying to shoot at anyone involved in the Hurricane Katrina situation — whether they were involved in preparations or response.

One of the headlines at Yahoo! News today reads “U.S. Unprepared for Katrina.” This article summarized a Republican attack on the U.S. preparations and response.

Wow, isn’t that news? It’s now February and someone has figured out that the U.S. wasn’t prepared and could have done better on responses?

Of course, they haven’t figured out that no one could be prepared for a disaster on the scale of Katrina. After a disaster of this magnitude, mistakes and inefficiencies in the response will occur.

ONLY IN THE MIND OF A POLITICIAN COULD EVERYTHING BE PERFECT IN PLANNING AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE — especially if they can potshot at the people who did the planning and response, and without themselves having to worry about funding the programs that would have been necessary for perfect planning and perfect response!

It wasn’t just the wind or the storm surge or whether the levees should have held up — it was where the storm hit and how hard.

Think about it from the total mirror-side, though. What if the U.S. was prepared for Katrina?

Just how do you expect that we would pay for such preparations? We’re not taking about minor flooding and a coastal town that got washed away.

We’re talking about the whole coastal region of eastern Louisiana, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and parts of Alabama — and six weeks of flooded houses and buildings in one of the most populated cities in the country.

The sheer scope of this hurricane damage is such that no one could be prepared to prevent or mitigate that much damage.

And, if we as a nation, tried to prepare for such significant damage for every type calamity that might hit, just how are we going to pay for it? With European-style 90% tax rates — would that be enough?

Just looking at hurricanes, we would have the whole of the Gulf coast and the East Coast — all the way up to Maine — to prepare.

Just how do you provide spare housing to take on a population the size of New Orleans? Where are you going to put it? How do you get the people there? How do you rebuild after six weeks of flooding? Where do you find enough building materials for the rebuilding? Where do you find the skilled craftsmen/craftswomen to rebuild?

Our friends in California, of course, would love to help pay for that – as long as we’re preparing for the same scale responses to earthquakes in California. Oh, yeah, they’ve got the mud-slides problem too, so let’s not forget that regular problem.

Tornadoes in the Mid-West, and other problems in other parts of the country. Some are severe and affect small areas — most of the time — just like hurricanes do. As New Orleans learned, just because it hasn’t happened before, doesn’t mean it won’t.

Meanwhile, I’m reserving my disgust for the politicians who want to take potshots at those who had to react to the hurricane’s impacts.

Sure, they can make a headline or get a sound-bite by bashing anyone and anything related to Katrina — it’s much easier than helping solve problems.

Subscribers to my email Terry’s Computer Tips newsletter received a Special Edition today.

Continuing my practices of recent weeks, I am giving the subscribers to my free email computer tips newsletter the first look at new pages I’ve added to my Terry’s Computer Tips web site.

These new Unlisted web pages will be added to the site index and linked from other pages in a few days.

Right now, though, the only way to access them is via links in my email newsletter.

Click here to Subscribe

Last year, I started brewing coffee via a Bodum vacuum pot. This became one of my regular brewing methods, along with my drip coffee maker, my espresso maker and my French press.

The vacuum pot is a step back to the past. Steam pressure from boiling water in a lower bowl pushes hot water into the top bowl, where it actually brews the coffee. Once you take the brewer off the heat (gas or electric), the temperature in the lower bowl drops. The steam cools, which lowers the pressure in the lower bowl — and sucks the coffee back from the top bowl to the lower bowl.

Well, just before Christmas, I oops’ed. While heating the water, I walked away and forgot it. I came back when I smelled burning coffee– after all the water had evaporated. Some time during the cooling process, the glass cracked.

One of my Christmas presents was a new vacuum pot to replace my older one — but Amazon had them back ordered. IT ARRIVED TODAY!

I use the Bodum Santos glass vacuum pot, not the electric model.

Bodum Santos Vacuum Coffeemaker (Kitchen) Manufacturer:Bodum

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Java, JavaScript, ActiveScript, VBScript and JScript

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Software Review: Filzip File Compression Utility

CounterSpy and Microsoft Anti-Spyware

Accessing Email While Traveling

A New Use for Google

Accessing the Internet While Traveling

Getting a Wireless Keyboard & Wireless Mouse

Windows has a number of ways to start programs automatically. Unfortunately, it includes only a few ways to identify and control the programs that start automatically.

Windows will let you look at the Startup folder (Start / All Programs / Start). Unfortunately, very few programs put their startup commands in this folder because that makes it too easy to prevent them from auto-starting.

Read more in my Terry’s Computer Tips article Indentifying Programs That Start Automatically