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I switched from Windows to Mac OS X a little over a year ago. All in all, I’m much happier and recently even bought a second Mac. The main frustration I’ve faced comes from the fact that I kept my old Windows keyboard and mouse (pictured below), and they don’t play nice with my Mac… well, at least not without some arm-twisting.

The first problem is that my mouse has 8 buttons, but out-of-the-box Mac OS X only recognizes the normal three. So after much searching, I discovered USB Overdrive. This let’s me map my other mouse buttons to normal commands, like Back, Forward, Expose, etc. Very handy. I didn’t really know how it worked, but it worked, so I was happy, until recently.

The second problem was that my keyboard, being a Windows keyboard, acted a little screwy with OS X. Most noticeably, the Command and Option keys were switched and not where they should be on the keyboard. Very confusing, especially for someone trying to get up-to-speed on a new operating system and trying to learn the shortcuts.

After a little more research, I found DoubleCommand. This handy little app has an option to switch the Command and Option keys. Presto, I was in business.

All that changed when I upgraded to the latest version of OS X, nicknamed Leopard. DoubleCommand doesn’t work in Leopard, so I was temporarily without a solution. Then I stumbled upon a much cleaner solution that doesn’t use third-party software. In OS X, you can just change the “modifier” keys yourself. So easy, now my keys work as they should.

Except, all of a sudden USB Overdrive stopped working. After even more research, I discovered that USB Overdrive really just does same fancy key mapping on the backend. So previously, it was mapping my forward and back buttons to Command-Left and Command-Right. When I switched the Command and Option buttons, it was no longer mapped to the right thing. USB Overdrive isn’t smart enough to detect the switching of my modifier keys.

Long story short, I worked around the USB Overdrive issue by assigning each button in USB Overdrive to a new keystroke that takes into account the modifier-key-switch, as opposed to using the built in USB Overdrive mappings.

Damn, that was a pain. In retrospect, I probably should have just saved myself some time and ponied up for a new keyboard and mouse that are actually compatible with OS X (almost all new keyboards and mice are; mine are at least 5 years old, but I love ‘em). On the bright side, at least I’ve satisfied my geekier side with some in-depth research into how USB Overdrive works.

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It’s that time of year, and every year around this time I start to hear at least a few radio and TV personalities lamenting the “secularization” of the holiday season. It’s also already become election season, and while most candidates shy away from any serious discussion of religion, Rep. Ron Paul makes no bones about his dislike for the separation of church and state, especially in respect to Christmas. At first blush, it seems like they do have a point, except…

…Rep. Paul, he gets things all wrong when he says that, “Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.” If you read and analyze the Constitution, you’ll see that it begins, “We the people,” and contains no mention of “God” or “Christianity.” If you really want to see how non-Christian the Constitution is, read this article that gives a more accurate portrayal of our Constitution and our country.

I have no problem with Rep. Paul or anyone else wanting to inject more Christmas and Christianity back into the season. After all, it is the main holiday of the season, and most people do celebrate Christmas. But as a staunch believer of the separation of church and state, I object when my tax dollars are used to promote a specific religion or holiday. If the private sector wants to focus just on Christmas, they’re more than able to. But I think that many companies in the private sector are finding that neutrality offends no one and is the better business decision.

So don’t blame “minority rule” or “political correctness” - it’s just normal market forces in our ever more pluralistic society that are reducing the presence of Christmas in the Christmas season. Oh yea, and enforcement of what the Constitution actually says, as opposed to what people want it to say.

Just because it used to be different in the past, doesn’t mean we should force our society to go back to how it used to be or re-write the Constitution.

Plus, if you really need to get your Christmas fix that bad, WashFM in the DC area plays non-stop Christmas music from the week before Thanksgiving until the big day, and you can listen online.

(if you didn’t actually read the FFrF article, I encourage you to go back and read it. It’s quite interesting)

Happy Turkey Day everyone. In the spirit of large groups of people getting together to eat, I thought I’d share this (sorry ladies if you find it a little gross):

A Harvard man and a Yale man are at the urinal. They finish and zip up. The Harvard man proceeds to the sink to wash his hands, while the Yale man immediately makes for the exit.

The Harvard man says, “At Hah-vahd they teach us to wash our hands after we urinate.”

The Yale man replies, “At Yale they teach us not to piss on our hands.”

At Penn, they teach us REAL knowledge and assume we learned how to use a bathroom before we got to college!

But seriously, that joke is amusing (kind of) but also really misleading. It’s a personal peeve of mine when I see men not wash after using the bathroom. First off, is it really that hard? And second, it’s just gross. But I never knew exactly why it was gross until now.

Click the link to read why it is very important to wash regardless of how good your aim is: Why are men supposed to wash their hands after urination?

From:

Our wedding videographers captured not just our beautiful wedding ceremony, but also some great scenes from the reception. Here are my favorite scenes of our friends dancing, singing, and generally having a great time.

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Nicole keeps asking me why those Chevy truck “Our Country” ads get me so hot and bothered. I’ve talked to lots of other people, and it seems pretty split - either they absolutely hate the ads or they don’t care at all.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact one thing that bothers me about it, but I think it’s a combination of a lot of factors.

1) Repetition breeds retention annoyance - I feel like they show this ad at least 400 times during any sporting event. They probably show it during other times, but thanks to the wonders of DVRs, at least I can avoid them there. Anything repeated that many times is going to be annoying.

2) Manipulation through patriotism - at least to me, the ads seem to be saying “if you don’t buy a Chevy truck, then you’re not a real American.” I think this bothers some of us because it hits a nerve. Ever since 9/11, many people in the news have tried to use patriotism as a blanket excuse for pushing through bad ideas. And if you didn’t agree with the person making the patriotically-shrouded statements, you must be anti-American, or even a terrorist. Obviously this campaign isn’t exactly saying that you’re un-American if you don’t buy a Chevy truck, but the message is pretty close.

3) Emotionally manipulative - the ads use images like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, the moon spacewalks, even hurricane Katrina to evoke an emotional response from viewers (see example below). The are all very iconic images in American history and ones that everyone feels strongly about. Using these images implies that we should have a similar emotional response to Chevy trucks, and that seems pretty obnoxious to me.

4) Xenophobia - I can’t help feel that the ads stress the word “our” in “this is our country.” I’m worried this is fueling the xenophobia and anti-immigration feeling that’s already rearing its ugly head in our country. I don’t think anyone wants to see us slip back into an isolationist state like after WWI, but it’s a slippery slope, and it starts at home with an understanding that nationalism needs to be balanced against openness and freedom.

But anyway, I was glad to hear that I’m not the only one who’s rubbed the wrong way by these ads.

• A Newsweek columnist has written a story titled “Dear John, We Beg You, Make It Stop”
• Slate has written a story about the ads and their negative effect on people
• Molly Wood and most of the C|Net gang on the Buzz Out Loud podcast expressed the same annoyance over the John Mellencamp ads

Here’s an example of the ad that’s annoying so many people.

And where are Ford and GMC in all of this? They’ve been around even longer than Chevy, and are arguably more “American”. Where are their counter-ads?