Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Spring Cleaning/Death of Queen Mum
Spent much of the day doing spring cleaning and generally doing things I’ve been putting off for a while. At the end of it, my basement office no longer looked like a bomb had hit it (maybe a small grenade, but it’s a start. ;-)

I managed to do some long-overdue scanning of various items, and discovered that my Umax Astra 2000U scanner is dying a slow, horrible death. A bright yellow colour band covers the left-side of all of my scans, and progressively gets worse the longer the scan is used. I also discovered that the Umax Web site is pretty much useless – it’s sole advice was to turn off the scanner and turn it back on again. Great. No definitive reset or recalibration feature is available for the scanner. I don’t think I’ll buy another Umax scanner when the time comes to replace this one (which will probably be soon).

While finishing off what ended up being the second of two articles on Transition filters in Internet Explorer for The Computer Paper (and ultimately for Core CSS, 2nd Edition), I listened to CBC radio. I listened to Cross Country Checkup, which focused on the death of the Queen Mother. I was fascinated by the many reminiscences, including one by somebody I know: an email by Joanne B., Jenny W.’s mother was read aloud, mentioning a banner that her grandmother had created for a long-ago visit by the Queen Mum (who was Queen at the time) and how that same material was recycled into clothing during the Depression). The vast majority of the tributes were from people of my Mother’s generation – very few callers my age were represented on the show, and I guess that pretty much reflects the changing times. Personally, I consider myself a Republican (not in the bastardized U.S. sense of the word), so I’d be all for dropping the royals as the head of the Canadian state, but I can still sympathize with those who have fond memories of the woman whom Hitler once called the “most dangerous woman in Europe”.