How about before we go trying to liberate a whole country — Iraq — we first liberate just one man, one good man, who is now sitting in an Egyptian jail for pursuing the very democratic ideals that we profess to stand for. (nyt, registration required).

There is this guy who lives around here somewhere, who I have never met, who apparently fixes air conditioning and heating units, owns a trailer, doesn't keep up with his mortgage, may live with another man, is apparently not listed in the phone book, and shares the same name as me (if you don't mind the different spellings of the last name, the different middle name, and so on).

What this means is that I get a random phone call once a month or so from some bored banker or collections agency worker or distraught, climate-controlled octogenarian, asking me to call them back so that I can pay my outstanding bills, fix their air conditioner, or otherwise aid society in its quest for a nice, cool place to count its money.

This wouldn't be at all annoying if bored collections workers, as a rule, didn't tend to doubt my heartfelt and sincere protestations of a confusion of identities, but it is very difficult to prove, over the phone at least, that you are not a trailer-dwelling air conditioner repairman with a roommate and bad credit.

There is a Champéon in France.

James McNally reviews the CSS book in Digital Web. I think he liked it. You might, too.

The owner of the company whose site so curiously resembled ours has written in again, to let us know that the site was, indeed, pirated, and that they've taken it down. He says he will be pursuing the "designer" with "some gusto". I wish him luck. His company claims to recognize the importance of having a powerful and unique identity. It must have been extremely embarrassing to find that theirs was a weak, bastardized copy of a previously existing powerful, unique identity.

Last week, this company was found to have stolen, as of sometime last fall, our site's design, copy, general layout, and various other stuff, including scripts and graphics, which we launched nearly a year prior. They then proceeded to modify it in bizarre and unexplainable ways (I love the drop shadow on their bastardized version of our logo, for example).

For those who would question whether the site was actually stolen as opposed to merely having had a great influence on some impressionable designer, feel free to view source. The DHTML menus are still composed of DIVs named "expertisemenu", "processmenu", and "proofmenu", despite their labels on the stolen site being named "products", "services", and "admin"; the footer DIV is inexplicably named "midfunk" on both sites (I'm not even sure we knew what midfunk was supposed to be when we launched ;); you can see my comments in the script that runs the menus (such as "silly browser specific values"), about which I presented at Web2001 nearly a year later; the graphics for the "case studies" section are tiny versions of the logos of the companies they originally represented, namely Sports-Expo.com, TomPaine.com, RedHat Center, McKinney and Silver, and one other I can't make out. The complex, three-way mouseover behavior on the menu buttons, icons, and so forth is exactly the same (it should be - it's the same source). And, of course, "Are you ready?" which once posed its query as the lead out from "Image is only the Beginning - Today's Web means Business". Even the three curved corner boxes in the main graphic were reused by the thief. Anyway, the site is now listed in pirated-sites.com.

They have taken the site down, claiming they bought the design from a third party, which is, I suppose, possible. You may, if you ware a Web designer, wish to check out their other site, which offers a variety of other designs for license. Not, as you might suspect, to patronize them as a customer, but rather to verify that none of the other designs they offer for sale or license were acquired under similarly lax circumstances.

Quite a weekend. Jeff and Leslie dropped by on Friday, on their way to the Outer Banks, and Jessamyn and Greg stayed the weekend, and a good time was had by all. A bizarre intermission was brought about by an accident in front of the house that took out a telephone pole, which CP&L had to replace, bringing down our electricity for a good three hours, which time was spent on the porch watching the show. I got pictures, and will post them as soon as I can get them downloaded off the cam. And, of course, after the three days of three square meals, copious cocktails, and general merriment, I need a good long nap.

A new article in New Architect this month: Debugging Web Applications. Lots of hints 'n' tips.

I'm a complete freak when it comes to headlines. I look for ambiguities, deeper meanings, hidden and unintentional ironies, and sometimes just weird juxtapositions as a result of placement. This past year or so has been a gold mine, it seems. How can editors release stories with headlines like "Bishops planning child abuse strategy" or "Some in GOP moving past Bush on business fraud"?

Nothing makes me snort as much as hearing about our "Homeland". Come on, this isn't a "homeland", at least not for the vast majority of us (and most of the few for whom it may well be proper to call it a homeland already have their own homelands within it, and so aren't affected (much) by the new Homeland term.) My progenitors landed from England in 1646 or thereabouts and France in the 1700s. So, I've got some right to call this a homeland, relatively speaking (if you'll pardon the pun). But the word feels wrong, stale, silly. Can't we come up with something that doesn't smack of Hitler, Stalin, or Disney?