blogwaffe

On Greg and Michelle’s recommendations, I read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (check out his blog) a few weeks ago.

It’s the best book I’ve read in a long while. Unnameably good. For realies.

So good, in fact, that I left my living room, walked the mile to Borders on the 17th to see the author in person at a book reading/signing. So good that I “fanned” him on Facebook. So good that I’m actually blogging for once.

If I were stranded on a desert island and could only have one book with me (that’s a choice I get to make before getting stranded? that’s stupid), I would take a frisbee instead just to spite all those ego-hungry authors begging me to take their books. But I’d really think long and hard about The Name of the Wind first.

Pat is totally cool. He has professed undying love for Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman, and Jamba Juice (not necessarily in that order) and signed Greg’s book for me with just that little extra something.

Dear Greg,
I will cut you open and dance in your entrails.
Love Pat <3 xxoo

Now, if only I could get him (and his publisher?) off Blogger and onto WordPress. Hell, I could probably swing him a VIP on WordPress.com.

A simple two step process (for Firefox users).

1. Set Firefox to use Gmail as the default application for mailto: links.
2. Tell Apple’s Mail application to use Firefox as your default mail reader: Open mail. Go to the “Mail” menu and select “Preferences”. Click the “General” icon/tab. Click the dropdown next to “Default email reader” and choose “Select…” from the list. Browse the Applications folder and pick “Firefox”.

Now, Firefox will send mailto: links to Gmail when you click them from within Firefox, and OS X will send mailto: links to Firefox when you click them from outside Firefox. I imagine something similar can be done with other browsers.

The other methods I found online both required an extra application running on your computer, which I didn’t want. Google’s official solution to the problem for Mac and Windows is Google Notifier, which does have some extra features. I also found many references to Gmailto, but it apparently doesn’t exist anymore.

If this country hadn’t re-defined marriage, black people still couldn’t marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn’t have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead.

msnbc via @iammattthomas.

I was reading some depressing news about California voters likely banning gay marriage via a constitutional amendment and found a surprising footnote about Florida’s ballot measures.

Among the more unusual measures on this year’s ballots was one in Florida that would repeal an old clause in the state constitution that allows legislators to bar Asian immigrants from owning land. The repeal would be symbolic, as equal protection laws would prevent lawmakers from applying the ban. With 78 percent of precincts reporting just before 11 p.m., the vote was close, with 52 percent voting to preserve the clause.

Thomas Kienzle/Associated Press via NBCOlympics.com