Author: Doug McCaughan

Father of 5. Juggler. Ticked off at blogger.com.
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Anyone use TinyMCE?

Has anyone implemented TinyMCE to accept cut and paste from MS Word? I’m having an issue where it takes the cut and paste within Firefox correctly but alters the formating when pasted within Internet Explorer

IE: *p**font face="Times New Roman" size="3"* */font*/p**strong*
FF: *p class="MsoNormal"* */p* *p align="center" style="text-align: center" class="MsoNormal"**strong**span style="font-size: 20pt; font-family: Tahoma; color: red"*

Note: To get this example typed in within WordPress (which used TinyMCE btw) I had to replace my greater than and less than signs with astericks. Has anyone worked through this? I’m so frustrated I’ve switched to trying to get Xinha working but am running into a whole different set of issues.

UPDATE: Xinha works great!

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Meme of Four

I’ll play. This one took a bit of time! I’m not tagging anyone but feel free to participate.

Four jobs you’ve had in your life:

  1. Sold plants and flowers at an Amish market;
  2. dormitory Resident Assistant (Clement Hall & Reese Hall);
  3. Manager of 60 people testing software;
  4. Owner of an Internet service provider (dialup connections)

Four movies you could watch over and over:

  1. Das Boot;
  2. Hunt for Red October;
  3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail;
  4. Life As A House

[hard to list only 4]Four places you’ve lived:

  1. Cary, NC (3 years 76-79);
  2. Kenner, LA (New Orleans) – roughly 1/2 mile east of the west levee break (4.5 years 79-83);
  3. Medford, NJ (3 years 83-86);
  4. Germantown, TN (2 years 86-88)

Four TV shows you love(d) to watch:

  1. Lost!;
  2. Boston Legal;
  3. anything on the History Channel;
  4. Futurama (Note the 2007 date on the “in production” episodes!)

Four places you’ve been on vacation:

  1. Jamaica;
  2. Lake Tahoe;
  3. Chattanooga;
  4. Ocean Isle, NC

Four websites you visit daily:

  1. Rocketboom;
  2. Domestic Psychology;
  3. No Silence Here;
  4. KristyK

Four of your favorite foods:

  1. Gumbo;
  2. Jambalaya;
  3. Pork Ribs;
  4. French Toast

Four places you’d rather be:

  1. Ocean Isle;
  2. backcountry in the Smokies;
  3. at a park with my wife and kids;
  4. in a larger house
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Pounded

I don’t feel like living anymore.

Now that’s not a cry for help and no need to put me on a suicide watch. It means “the they” have won. I’m beat. Beat down.

I used to suck the marrow out of life. There was no challenge I wouldn’t accept and very little I didn’t want to do. Early on I set my eyes on hang gliding. Haven’t done that one yet and I have yet to “jump from a perfectly good airplane” either. But I was fearless and I have done much!

In the 9th or 10th grade I was at a school dance taking a break from the noise of the gym and talking with friends in the hallway. Something landed in my hair and I turned around and mouthed off at some muscle bound nimrod that had obviously thrown whatever it was. The first punched landed before I had fully turned my attention back to my friends and I momentarily blacked out as I slammed up against the lockers. Just as my vision returned I took another punch to the face and discovered blackness again. I received about five consecutive hits just under the left eye. Blackness returned to light just in time to see the fist, blackness, repeat.

I could not get a punch off and could not get my arms up to block the punches. I could hear a voice, “just walk away.” Is that where I am in my life? I am definitely taking repeated blows. Am I to “just walk away?” And for the literal readers, no, not family. I would never abandon family. I mean dreams. I mean desires. I mean Willy Loman. I mean Sam Lowry.

One week later, my blackened eye was traveling to Virginia to embarassingly visit relatives.

I don’t feel like living. I don’t want to hang glide or parachute anymore. I don’t even want to leave the ground. And I am tired of having to explain my blackened eye.

(Of course this post is a result of exhaustion, stress and economics. Let’s see how my tune changes if I ever get back on top.)

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Scott County’s future looking prosperous!

In November I posted “Future headlines we might see in Denver’s paper” Now we have “Charges have been dropped against Eric Footer”

Eric Footer was the first person arrested in Denver under state marijuana law since the city’s voters wiped out penalties for adults who possess small amounts of marijuana.

And it looks like Nevada is quickly following in Denver’s footsteps. The dam is breaking and legalization of marijuana is coming.

In related news, Michael Silence discusses the fact that TN already accepts taxes on drugs and the impact it has had on drug users that have neglected to pay their taxes such as this found on Say Uncle:

In Tennessee, a 60 year-old man recovering from cancer smoked marijuana to alleviate the pain and depression. He has since been arrested and had his money and cars seized and a lien placed on his house. All this without due process of law, which is blatantly unconstitutional. The fifth amendment states that […]

Now that’s not right.

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Firefly Season 2 Project

For you Firefly fans that are still seeking a season 2, Browncoats Rise Again may not be taking donations but The Firefly Season 2 Project looks to be encouraging a pay per episode approach.

see also: Firefly Fans Create Website for 2nd Season and Browncoats Defeated…again

UPDATE: A discussion regarding Firefly Season 2 Project. And this one which claims “We intend to license the Firefly Intellectual Property from Fox, produce the show on our dime, and sell to the highest bidder.”

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What does the Google subpoena mean?

Here is a fantastic summation of the Google subpoena. In short, the government is once again trying to pass a law with vague terms in the name of protecting our children.

The Child Online Protection Act makes it a crime for a commercial Web site to post material that some jurors might find “harmful” if a minor stumbled across it.

The problem comes in deciding just what is harmful.

even portions of a “collection of Renaissance artwork” could be viewed as harmful to minors if a prosecutor was sufficiently zealous.

So, people that believe in abstinance teaching may find medical information about the male and female bodies offense while people trying to teach their children about sex may find that same information very important.

We should not be creating laws to make up for bad parenting! Parents should be talking to their children. The Internet is a reflection of the real world and while we can keep our children from seeing adult magazines and movies in our own houses that does not prevent them from going to a friend’s house, cracking open a beer, sitting down with a Playboy magazine (since it makes you go blind, nice of them to publish in Braille), and watching a hardcore sex dvd. Only through talking to our children and teaching them can we give them the tools to make the right choices and police themselves.

If we let our government become too involved in dictating morals to the people, the generation that grows up under such government will know nothing different and when that generation steps up to run our country they will see no problem in further limiting rights and civil liberties in the name of “protecting the people” and it will dominoe us right out of democracy!

see also: White House: DOJ Request for Google Data Is ‘Narrow’ “You know… “Narrow” like a wedge is narrow on one end.”