Monthly Archive: July 2008

We went camping about a month ago and I was blessed by the loving touch of Toxicondendron radicans; the dreaded poison ivy. It took about two weeks for the rash on my legs to run its course, during which time I told myself it was preferable over two other Minnesota attractions: Lyme disease or the West Nile virus.

There’s nothing like a bout of “urushiol-induced contact dermatitis” to make you better appreciate the absence of other unwholesome conditions.

Despite my investment in the book Outwitting Poison Ivy in preparation for this camping season, I had been defeated by the plant. The book certainly has useful information, and reading it while afflicted made it even more compelling, but alas, it would have benefited greatly from more color pictures.

So, clearly, it would be advantageous for me to improve my recognition capabilities of this woodland scourge, but “leaves of three, let it be” casts a wide net …

A couple of Augusts ago, back in 2006, Keir Thomas wrote an article about switching his office computer from GNU/Linux to Windows and then a follow-up article about the resulting criticism after the post made the front page of Digg and LinuxToday.

(What is it with web sites that don’t publish the year as part of the date on their posts? I had to go to the Digg post to figure out which August this was.)

Keir describes himself as an “open source” advocate and was a bit flummoxed at his treatment at the hands of the mob. I don’t remember the flavor of the original discussion (maybe I didn’t read through those comments), but I’m sure there were some of the knee-jerk flames you’d expect in response to this kind of admission, which aren’t especially helpful, alongside more useful comments that you also see in these conversations.

And I was particularly impressed by the thoughtfulness of one commenter, enough to save his response with …

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