My main hope for this presidential administration is that those of us who became complacent over the last few years about certain (more liberal) rights and issues will get riled up enough to take action again. Taking things for granted is never a good thing.

Here’s a fascinating chart of the history of Unix and all its subsequent varieties. Check for your favorite flavor. Find NextStep, watch it morph into Mac OS X Server. Then follow it back in time to see its strangely connected parentage. The main page has links to more history and other formats for the chart. (via Camworld)

I really appreciate AdCritic.com arranging all the Superbowl ads by quarter so I can watch them in order of appearance. It seems it was no small task for their worker bees to get these up in a timely fashion. At the end of the second quarter list, the description for the Visa:Vacuum ad reads “Girlfriends can sometimes really suck. Ha ha ha. We’re tired.” Thanks for making it possible for me to share in the true glory of the game without all those bits of football between. Now get some sleep. (that was the Quicktime link; Windows Media is also available)

Salon profiles Matt Groening, from “Life in Hell” to “Futurama”. He has “a father named Homer, a mother named Marge and sisters named Maggie and Lisa.” Sound familiar? He named one of his sons “Homer” as well. And the author sneaks in a reference to Groening’s life as being “more Quixotic than Homeric.” Groening hasn’t written for the Simpsons since the beginning. But he keeps his hand in the alternative comic world, still putting out the adventures of Akbar & Jeff, Binky and Bongo. He certainly isn’t responsible, I hope, for the terrible Simpsons Sunday cartoon that mercifully disappeared from my paper after a couple months.

There is a World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, Alaska. The entries from last year are available for online viewing as well. (via Yahoo’s Daily Picks)

My cat is now the owner of a Crate&Barrel; “meow” placemat. At $2.95 each, they are a wonderful way to add whimsy to your decor. Maybe I should get some for the dining room table too.

Odwalla update: I had complained about Odwalla’s bottle redesign and how difficult the new bottles, particularly the quart size, were to pick up. I also sent an email to Odwalla and received a nice response and some free coupons. At Safeway yesterday I noticed that their quart sized orange juice bottles were not in the new bottles, but in a smaller version of their old half gallon jugs (with a handle). What a surprise! I’m not sure what they are up to; perhaps they are testing a few alternatives. The other juices were still in the new bottles.

Some days I remember to be thankful for the tolerant culture I live in. Some days I remember how much more tolerant California is. Today I was at the post office. I was waiting to pick up some mail and was standing near the desks where clerks were handling passport applications. A man was getting extremely frustrated about the paperwork and records he would need to fulfill his passport request and said, rather loudly, to the clerk, who was of Chinese origin, “I can’t believe this! My family has been in this country for over 200 years!!” He took a quick glance around the room, perhaps hoping for a sympathetic smile. I looked around the room and did smile (not at him) because I was rather proud to see not one other Caucasian in the room. All us “newcomers” just ignored the poor guy, who was obviously just fresh off the Mayflower and didn’t know how nice people usually are around here.

Very busy. No time. Quick links:
Photos of the pandas at the National Zoo (cute of course)
San Francisco Bay Wind Pattern Streaklines. Java applet, very cool (via Larkfarm)
Dan Gillmor on why it’s worth saving web pages for posterity (from reader Marc. Thanks!)

Housekeeping note: I’ve removed the date/time footers from each posting and added a link to the permanent archive location. I’ve removed the date/time mainly because I’ve changed my Blogger time settings to the Eastern time zone. This was all done for some silly, but psychologically comforting reasons which I will not encumber you with.