The Answer to Bryan Miller

The Star-Ledger, to it’s credit, apparently is seeking some balance on the gun issue in it’s New Jersey Views blog feature.   The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Club (ANJRPC) President Scott Bach, who is also on the NRA Board of directors, now has a blog running counter to Bryan Miller’s.   We welcome Scott to the party.  I anxiously await the hordes of anti-gun people which will no doubt now swarm his blog (It’s hard to even type that with a straight face).

Cat Got Your Tongue?

I noticed that Bryan Miller’s blog has been strangely silent.  Perhaps he’s a bit sheepish about his reaction to the whole Newark tragedy after the details of the criminal record of the alleged perpetrator have come to light.  Perhaps he’s just busy.

Or perhaps the anti-gunners are realizing that they can’t compete in the blogosphere.

Light Posting

Posting always tends to be light when I’m coming back from Bitter’s.  It might be especially light this afternoon, because in order to do two blogs last week, I actually was kind of slacking off at work a bit, and now I need to catch up and get back on schedule.

Saying No to Myself

I actually voted “Not a fan” over at Uncle’s poll, even though I was one of the mentioned guest bloggers, because I’m actually kind of wary of the group blog concept. I’ve seen some people make the transition from solo to group pretty well, but I’ve seen other blogs head downhill fast when they went that direction. Group blogging can work if you have the right mix of people. I think Eugene Volokh has done a pretty good job of that over that The Volokh Conspiracy, but few people could replicate his enviable “staff”.

Given Bitter’s recent burn out with trying to keep The Bitch Girls up all by her lonesome, I’ve given some thought as to how I would try to ride a busy period. I think the key would to bring in different guest bloggers to feature maybe for two posts a day for a few weeks. If I found someone that was doing pretty well, I’d ask them to come on as a regular contributor, maybe just a few posts a week. I see contributors as a way to fill in gaps, rather than contribute to the fundamental “voice” of the blog, which I think one person has to retain some degree of control over.

That said, I do think that group blogging can work, you just have to be careful about how you go about it.  I think it works best when you pick contributers you know pretty well, and know will help to fill in gaps, while not changing the fundamental tone or style of the blog.

Windows Vista: “Just Say No!”

Glenn Reynolds got Windows XP for his wife’s computer, instead of Vista.  I agree with this move wholeheartedly.  Professionally, I am a Systems Manager for a small pharmaceutical research company.  I run everything IT for it, including a fairly sizable Linux based compute farm.  I use MacOS, both at home and at work, in the form of a MacBook Pro I carry back and forth.  It works well for me, since most of our infrastructure is Linux based, which inter-operates well with MacOS.  But all the scientists’ desktop PCs, and a few of our servers, are Windows.   At this point, I have no plans to upgrade them to Vista.  Some of our scientific software isn’t even certified to work on it yet.  I know, at some point I will have to upgrade, because Microsoft will force it.  I am starting a few pilot users, non-scientists who don’t require the non-certified software, with Vista.  Their experiences will determine whether I upgrade anyone else.  I have evaluated Vista myself, and wanted to throw the machine it was running on out a window after 10 minutes.  I’m not too happy with Office 2007 either.

So I’m glad to see Glenn joining the ranks of people just saying “no” to Windows Vista.   Now, all we need to do is get him to say no to Windows Vista by getting a Mac :)