Today's puzzle (answers) is by Peter A. Collins. I'm surprised to see his name after my tepid review of his last effort followed by a scathing tell-all mini-biography. Perhaps I don't wield quite the influence I imagine. My readers will be shocked to hear this. Both of them.
It turns out Mr. Collins bounced so far back today that it can only mean one thing — performance enhancing drugs. For the second time this week, this blog formally calls for a Congressional Hearing. And for the second time this week we get to solve an anagram puzzle after the main crossword is completed.
I have to admit I couldn't finish this one without help. I got stuck in the chewy center, trying to make "gnaws at" fit for far too long. I had forgotten "Embryonic membrane" was AMNION and I thought "Post vacation" would be "at work" or something. Wrong sense. The answer is RESTED. Then not knowing Brian AHERNE or "Political Hostess" Perle Skirvin MESTA really mixed my nuts. Someone will tell me if that's a clever metaphor or not.
While I'm in an admitting mood, here's another confession. That quip about performance enhancing drugs? Not mine. It's from Peter. Turns out he's smart and funny. Only one question, Mr. Smart Guy. Does one really precede an ellipsis with ETC? Sounds like another entry from the Department of Redundancy Department. (That may need a blog category all of its own soon.) Oh, and you can't backup onto CD-ROMS. It's impossible. CD-Rs are recordable CDs. The ROM stands for Read Only Memory and you can't write data onto them.
I'll postpone my discussion of Rex's magazine article so I can talk about a technical matter of interest only to fellow bloggers and people who want to find comments on specific puzzles. Like most active bloggers, I use that wonderful tool Windows Live Writer to create and edit my posts offline, publish them, download them later to re-edit, tweak the photos, and so on. (Yes, it's a Windows-only thing, but it's free.) I use it to keep several posts in the queue at once, waiting for the right moment to add that topic to the blog stream. For example, what percentage of NYT puzzles are pangrams? Any ideas? Coming soon along with more mini-bios of people I don't know anything about. The next subject could be you!
One Live Writer feature I've never used before today, though, is the one that lets me alter the date and time stamp. It hit me that this blog is the perfect use for that feature. I'll postdate this entry to just after midnight on Thursday. That way years from now when archeologists wonder what I thought of Peter's puzzle, they can click on the calendar to the right on the correct day instead of the day before. Duh. Not sure why I never thought of that before. Time warping doesn't require Live Writer. Your web software probably does the same thing. Live Writer just makes it easy for me, and now for my fans. Yes, both of them. I'd go back and fix up the old ones except, you know, lazy, etc...
News Flash...in a remarkable response to JimH's hollow rhetoric that is always promising change to his blog and his over-educated reliance on other people's words (i.e. crosswords) his readership increased by a third this week when PhillySolver started to read his drug-induced, madras trained slop. His wife is said to be finally proud of the NYT after a generation of squandering the best minds of our generation. The Epistemologically challenged new reader (who can't even spell philosopher) says, "He is no JFK, but seems willing to admit mistakes and hasn't proposed attacking anyone yet." It is too early to see if this rapid rise in attention will leave the country wishing for four more years of utter idiocy, but this reporter will stay on the story.
Posted by: PhillySolver | February 20, 2008 at 09:59 PM
Jim,
After one installs a program on ones computer from a CD-Rom, one keeps the CD-Rom as back up.
I disliked the crossing of orle and Aherne. I ended up with orly and Aherny. I recalled orle from my crossword past but could not remember if it ended with an e or y. Aherny sounded more reasonable. This week I have been off 1 square in almost all the puzzles even Monday's. I'll have to settle for almost perfect.
Posted by: profphil | February 20, 2008 at 10:18 PM
ProfPhil,
Nope, I don't buy it. The software that came in the shrink wrap isn't a backup. It's the original. Besides what you back up "typically" as the clue says isn't the software but the data. That can't be done on a CD-ROM.
Ok, I'm being pedantic. I can imagine a usage where your way works but for me it's a stretch.
Posted by: JimH | February 20, 2008 at 10:25 PM
Two things:
Firstly, you say "Like most active bloggers, I use that wonderful tool Windows Live Writer to create and edit my posts offline, publish them, download them later to re-edit, tweak the photos, and so on."
Um... given how recently WLW was released, and the available of other tools in this space (Scribefire and the numerous LiveJournal clients out there, just off the top of my head), I don't see how that kind of statement is supportable, especially since I can't see how one would go about gathering statistics on that sort of thing.
Two, if you couldn't back up onto CD-ROMS, you couldn't obtain software on them in the first place, because they wouldn't be writable at all. A CD-ROM is simply a non-rewritable optical disc. In fact, if I remember right, the R in CD-R stands for ROM just like the RW in CD-RW stands for rewritable (but I could be mistaken on that).
Yes, my second nit-picking post in two days. I'll try to balance out all that negativity in a later post. ;-)
Posted by: Craig K. | February 21, 2008 at 05:37 AM
Craig,
Thing 1: Yes, I have no data on Windows Live Writer usage. I happen to love it and I happen to know some of the folks who worked on it so I'm particularly biased. I'm sure the other tools are great too. The main point is if you blog at all, off-line tools are a huge help.
Thing 2: I'm not budging on my CD-ROM whine :)
Customers can't backup onto CD-ROMs. The bits get stamped onto the discs in giant factories and they're unalterable. The R in CD-R stands for Recordable specifically to make this distinction. You can write bits to these discs but once they're written they can't be changed. CD-RW does stand for ReWritable and that's an important distinction too. You can fill that disc with data and then write over it multiple times.
Posted by: JimH | February 21, 2008 at 08:45 AM
I don't know what you're talking about with this Windows Live Writer business. Blogger.com has its limitations, but it makes it pretty damned easy to write drafts and save them for later. (I have an April Fool's draft that's been lurking in there for months.) And Blogger lets me put whatever date and time stamp I want. (Well, not quite any one. I can't say it's February 73rd.) I can go back and edit posts—in fact, I do that nearly every morning, adding to the post when more crosswords come out. And Blogger is free. So put that in your Windows-whoring pipe and smoke it!
I'm not fighting you on the CD-ROM thing, though. Let Craig be the one obstreperous person. I think that's his specialty. :-)
Posted by: Orange | February 21, 2008 at 09:23 AM
Et tu, l'orange...?
Clearly Jim should stick to humor and commentary and leave the marketing to the professionals – but never budge on CD-ROM. That one is dead on (but yes, a minor nit.)
Heading off to work at MS now to go smoke me some of those pipes... :-)
Posted by: Robin Troy | February 21, 2008 at 10:11 AM
In scattered response: I'm not on dial-up so there's no practical difference between on-line and off-line for me.
I have the typical love-hate relationship with MicroSoft that many techies do, sometimes loving and hating products in the same suite, features in the same product, or different versions of the same product. I'm not including specifics in this post because you most likely don't want to hear them. WLW looks like it might fall into the "like" category, but if I were to return to blogging more regularly I'd probably install ScribeFire into FireFox instead.
Point on the CD-R naming taken. My memory isn't always infallible. That being said... the *technical* difference between a CD-ROM and a CD-R is... ?
Posted by: Craig K. | February 21, 2008 at 06:01 PM
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your website, it is a tremendous resource which I have only recently discovered. Having found that my library has ProQuest which has back issues of teh NY Times from 1850, I have down a lot of early (40's-60's) Sunday puzzles and Perle Mesta was a very common piece of crosswordese back in the day.
Posted by: Jim Mudrak | May 10, 2008 at 02:24 PM