Kind of short notice I know, but there is a bloggist bash planned for this afternoon in Fort Lauderdale for any south Florida conservative/libertarian bloggists, in the bar at the Cheesecake Factory on Las Olas, starting around 4 PM.

John Scalzi, on how he decides what to put up on his blog:

I’m not nearly organized enough about this site to say to myself “Hmmm, you know, I have a book tour coming up, maybe I’ll do a whole bunch of self-promotey things, and then after that I’ll write some more about politics and then put up a picture of my cat, because the kids always love that.” Honestly and truly, what I write about here is whatever I’m thinking about at that moment. There is no plan, there is no agenda, there is nothing except me sitting in front of my computer banging out words. Sometimes you’ll get what you want to read, sometimes you won’t. The only thing you know that you get from it is what I want to write. That is the guiding principle.

Same thing here. Some people complain because there’s too much politics, some people complain because there’s too much space (though probably not lately). Don’t come to this site with the expectation that you’re going to get either. What you’re going to get is me, in whatever mood I’m in, set off by whatever event set me off that day. This isn’t a regular publication, with publishing deadlines, themes, advertising. It’s just (as Virginia Postrel used to call it before the word “blog” caught on) a me-zine. Take it or leave it.

OK, if I have a spreadsheet in Excel, now do I convert it to a Word table?

More to the point (for the real mavens) if I have an Open Office spreadsheet, how do I convert it to an Open Office Write table?

[Friday morning update]

OK, I ended up “pasting special” into Open Office Writer as an Excel spreadsheet. Duh. And thanks for all the tips.

Well, that was a nice little break. I got to focus on building a new linux box, and resting from this cold that just won’t quit (it’s settled into my chestal regions now, and continues to wrack me with aches in my kiester and lower extremities). My thermostat is screwed up–I’m always either too warm or too cold. It ebbs and tides–just when I start to think I’m getting over it, I head back downhill overnight.

Yes, obviously it was April Fools, but it got the expected responses. Particularly from the mental cases who actually believe (or at least claim to believe, since they repeat it with such robotic regularity) the nonsense that I wrote yesterday. One would think that something that was an “emergent property of golf statistics” would display more intelligence.

Hopefully, regular blogging will recommence shortly.

I’ve been running this blog for over five years now, and I’m getting tired. Moreover, I realize that Brian Swiderski and others are right–I’ve been letting the Bushies pull the wool over my eyes for too long. There is no difference between the fascist theocrats in the White House, and those overseas, and the ones in the White House are in fact much scarier, because they have so much more military power, and the actual will to use it, unlike the bluster of the Iranians, who are merely, after all, feeling justifiably threatened by the presence of the torturing American troops on both their eastern and western borders.

For five long years I’ve turned a blind eye to the incompetence of this administration, the worst one in the history of the Republic, unlikely to be equaled in the future, as I’m confident that historians will judge. Whether out of a naive hope for world domination by the forces of Christian righteousness, or just a latent lust to kill brown people by the millions, like all the other neocons, I’ve stood by this administration, and misled my readers for too long. I can’t undo all the damage that my fascist propaganda has done for the past half decade, but I can at least stop perpetuating it.

This is my last blog post.

I’m under a couple of deadlines, and I managed to come down with a cold (probably from my trip to Phoenix last weekend), so blogging will be light for a while.

They’re really cheap, and hosting is very cheap as well these days. I’ve had Blogspot banned for many months now, because the splogging had gotten totally out of control, and now I’m getting tons of spam from Live Journal. I’ll probably have to ban that as well.

I’m going to leave the computer in the room for the evening session, so I’m not so tied down with it. See you tomorrow.

Ultimately, my plane ended up being over five hours late. When I got in, I didn’t want to mess with the computer, but I attended most of the afternoon and evening sessions. However, Clark Lindsey has several posts up on what’s going on at the conference (just keep scrolling). I had a long day, and I probably won’t check in again until manana.

My original flight was scheduled for 7 AM. We got up at 5:30, got dressed to go, and checked the schedule. It’s been delayed until 10:30 (probably the plane didn’t get in from wherever it was supposed to last night). But I’m up now, and don’t know if I’d get back to sleep at this point.