Today was the day for doing the August Updates to the California Highways Web Pages. This was the first time doing them from the new XP machine, and of course, things didn’t go right. In particular, a script designed to delete all the Emacs backup files (delete *.*~) did a “delete *.*”, after I stupidly answered “yes”. Furthermore, SystemWorks undelete was unable to do so, just “disappearing” after scanning half-the-disk. Luckily, I had a week old backup (I love STOMP Backup My PC1), and it didn’t take me long to rework in the changes to the highway source files.
Please look at the changes and let me know if there are any problems. I’ve also had fun playing with the Church Sign Generator (you’ll see the results on the next Jewish-related post I make), and the License Generator (results on this post). Now to the rant…
RANT ON
For my highway pages, I regularly review state legislation. August is silly season for the California legislature, where they feel this need to create new legislation, but state laws don’t permit them to introduce new bills. So what do they do: They take a bill that is dead, gut the contents, and introduce it as a new bill. This makes it hard for bill trackers (like me) to find things; it also doesn’t permit the normal process of review. If you take a look at my legislative page, down at the section on dead bills, you’ll see they’ve done just that. A number of dead bills (usually related to license plate frames) have been gutted and reused. Take a look at the gutting on AB 541 as an example. Supposedly, the governator has said that he won’t sign such bills, but he may have too. According to the LA Times, Schwarzenegger himself may have to ask lawmakers to gut and amend a few bills before the end of session. If he, for example, signs any more legal compacts with Indian tribes allowing them to expand their gambling operations, he will need the Legislature to approve them before they go home Aug. 31.
Sigh.
RANT OFF
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1: Even if I’m still having trouble with it spanning drives. Basically, at some point on a backup, it always gets a media error. I’ve done what STOMP suggested and killed most of the background stuff, but it still happens. I think it is due to bad media: my Pacific Data CD-Writer could handle Memorex, but perhaps the HP 400c DVD writer is more sensitive. I’ll try it with better media.
