Donald Rumsfeld is resigning from his position as U.S. Secretary of Defense, which he has held since George W. Bush was elected President in 2000. Rumsfeld’s resignation comes one day after the Republican Party suffered major defeats in congressional elections, largely due to voter frustration with the Iraq war. Bush will nominate former CIA Director Robert Gates to become the next Secretary of Defense, pending Senate confirmation.
Another Belated Update: Busy and Election Gear-Up
So things remain busy. We were out of town last weekend visiting family, which was a lot of fun, and things have been a little crazy at work. The good news though is that I got a new[ish] company IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad to play with, which is now successfully rigged as a dual-boot Windows XP & Ubuntu Linux machine. No more outdated desktop for me!
Internet Explorer 7 Now Supported
Off on a Tangent is now supported in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (released recently). IE7 offers many important security improvements over IE6, and users who wish to continue using the IE browser should upgrade (if they are running Windows XP). I still recommend using more secure browsers such as Mozilla Firefox. Please let me know if you find any problems using the site in IE7.
Website 19 Development Kick-Off
On Thursday, the Joomla project (the content management system that powers this site) released the first beta of Joomla 1.5. I would have called it Joomla 2.0, personally, because 1.5 is a major rewrite of the CMS code-base. To implement it on my site will require quite a bit of work, but that’s okay because I had big things planned for Website 19 anyway.
North Korea Conducts Nuclear Weapons Test
North Korea, a reclusive Communist nation lead by Kim Jong Il, has conducted a successful nuclear weapons test and is now the eighth declared nuclear-capable nation. This development has received near-unanimous worldwide condemnation, including condemnation from the United Nations Security Council.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.