I was looking at the version of Installing OpenOffice 2.4 under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.x that is delivered for the LiveJournal feed of this 'blog, and saw that it has a bunch of unmatched closing p[aragraph] tags that simply aren't in the entry as I marked it up. Indeed, I don't think that I used p[aragraph] elements at all in that entry.

Looking at the entry that is delivered to visitors to my site, I see <p> and </p> appearing various places that I haven't put them. But they don't appear when I attempt to use the WordPress editor to remove them, nor are they in the entry as it appears in the raw dB. The problem, then, is in the preprocessing by WordPress.

I s'pose that I need to explore the problem and then file a bug report with WordPress.org.

Yester-day, I jumped through the hoops to renew my California driver license by way of the 'Net.

One may renew one's driver license by mail or by way of the 'Net for two terms in a row, and each term lasts for five years. That means that, by the time that one must go back and get a new picture taken for a driver license, fifteen years may have passed.

I see that Alan Greenspan has endorsed McCain. Back in January, Volcker endorsed Obama. This leaves no Fed Chairmen to endorse anyone else, as the present Chairman is supposed to stay out of it, and the other guys are dead.

Nobody much cares, but I am not endorsing anyone. I'm especially not endorsing Mike Gravel, who has joined the Libertarian Party and is seeking its nomination, nor the Libertarian Party, who have welcomed him. Mike Gravel has made plain where he stands on the issues, and it's plain that he's not a Libertarian.

I forgot to mention that last night I actually saw a stretch Hummer stage (turning east onto Washington Street from the alley between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue).

Perhaps some such vehicles have a better use, but I'm inclined to regard them as an example of conspicuous consumption, and therefore as repugnant.

As well as continuing to desire an unusual amount of sleep, I notice that I have a persisting sensation of white noise. I'm definitely ill, though the symptoms remain low-level.

I did, at least, get PHPMailer working for me at PraxioLogic.com. That's good, because I've been approached to creäte a small website for a client, which would use such functionality, and FourBucks are probably the folks to host it, as its traffic should be relatively light and as the client apparently only wants one domain.

David's Coffee Place in Hillcrest has a rear patio and some sort of back room which have long provided meeting places for chapters of Alcoholics Anonymous and similar organizations. Yester-day, I learned that the new owners have applied or will be applying for a license to sell beer and wine. To-day I saw a notice on the front door declaring that, beginning on 1 May, the patio and back-room will be remodelled and no longer available for such meetings.

The notice also indicates that Babycakes is imagined as a bakery and bistro.

David's Coffee Place has been around for about 15 years, but it has only been a few weeks since I started hanging-out here. Now it is apparently to be gentrified. Perhaps I should be glad that I didn't have more time to get attached to it.

Up-Date (2018:01/30): Someone informed me of a change of the domain name for Alcoholics Anonymous, and I've editted the entry to reflect that change. That same someone asked me to include a link to a resource hyperlist from Comlumbus Recovery Center for those dealing with alcohol addiction. That's a bit tangential to the original purpose of this entry, but….

One of the things that I greatly appreciate in my relationship with the Woman of Interest is that when one of us has a joke to relate to the other, it can be described, rather than told.

Each of us likes telling jokes, but sometimes that's too much effort for the occasion — indeed often both for the conveyor and for the recipient. (Much of the time, I just need people to cut-to-the-chase.) On those occasions, the conveyor just sketches the joke in sufficient detail that the other could, if so desiring, reconstruct the joke and indeed tell it.

I may have some low-grade illness. I fell asleep relatively early and quite quickly on Thursday night. Though yester-day morning I awoke from a dream that had left me furious and nauseated (it involved child abuse), I thought that I'd otherwise got enough sleep. But I fell asleep again in mid-after-noon, thinking that I'd nap for perhaps 20 minutes — I left my computer, albeït in its backpack, on the foot of my bed — and, instead, I slept until late at night. And for the last few hours I have been increasingly sleepy.

In other thrilling news, I'm having trouble getting various pieces of PHP code working for me on the FourBucks server that I use for two of my domains, but I'm largely working blind, since I don't have administrative privileges for the operating system itself. One of my subscribers here hasn't been able to add his OpenID to his account here. And I've not been able to get PHPMailer working at PraxioLogic.com.

Yester-day I received an old Haldeman-Julius catalogue that contains a picture of David Oliver Cauldwell. He looked like some cross between a stereotypical Marine and Beaker.

The mail to-day brought four tickets from Television Preview:

You have been selected to participate in a survey whose findings will directly influence what you see on television in the future.

The thing is written to make it seem that the audience will be evaluating a show or shows (and my gut reäction was to be appalled that any of us in SoCal should be asked, it being bad enough that the thinking in Los Angeles has such a disproportionate and otherwise perverse effect). But I did a quick check on the WWWeb, and what I've learned is that the audience will really be used to test commercials, and otherwise be surveyed for their reäctions to consumer products. The shows presented will be old-and-probably-failed pilots or series.

I stopped at La Vache for lunch, and ate too much food. I entered planning to eat a salmon sandwich, and found carrot soup on the menu. I ordered a bowl (rather than a cup), and this in itself was a good choice; but I should then have forgone the sandwich (and its side of mashed potatoes), in spite of the anti-depressant virtues of salmon. I am now parked at David's Coffee Place, attempting to remain relatively inert.

Speaking — well, writing — of David's Coffee Place, my understanding is that the new owners are going to change the name to Babycakes. I think that this new name is a generally bad idea. First, David's Coffee Place (AKA just David's Place) is something of a neighborhood institution — a well-regarded institution — and a wholesale name-change will make people feel as if that institution is gone. Second, I see the particular name Babycakes as the sort of thing associated with something at best briefly fashionable.

Someone in my apartment complex reports his or her lap-top computer having been stolen from his or her apartment.  They ask that we be alert to someone who seems inappropriately to have an lap-top computer.  Since there are cameræ at all of the entrances and exits, the strong suggestion is that is was stolen by or with the complicity of one of the other residents. I have been used to feeling that I could leave my door unlocked when making a quick trip out, and otherwise feeling that my things needn't be locked away in my apartment. I regret the change.

On a sidewalk along Washington Street this morning, I spotted a belly-ring sans the little screw-ball that would keep it attached to the big screw-ball. I imagined it falling free from someone's navel, though it might instead have escaped a pocket or hand-bag.

As I was passing Club San Diego on Fourth Avenue, the sounds of men giggling were escaping through an open door. I resisted the urge to cry Christ is risen! into the tiled entrance-way. There would have been a good chance of a reply asking just what part of Him had risen.

I breakfasted at the San Tropez Bistro on Fifth Avenue. Now I am parked in David's Coffee Place, until I feel that I must go home and get some sleep.