Yummy Unicode Goodness!

Color me impressed. I've been transferring my CD collection to MP3s at the behest of my roommate, so I can listen to what I want, when I want, and do neat playlists for parties and whatnot. I've been using MusicMatch for encoding--It's one of those programs that downloads CD/Track information from the net. Now, I got far enough to stick in my Laputa import sound track CD, and... Voila. All the Japanese tracks pop up in Japanese, and it names and tags the files accordingly! Neat-o!

Warning--Politics!

From http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/08/international/worldspecial/08PREX.html?hp

Mr. Bush's request for $87 billion was on the high end of what Congress had expected. In recent days, administration officials have said they anticipated asking Congress for an additional $60 billion to $80 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The financing, if approved by Congress, would significantly add to the federal government's deficit, which is approaching $500 billion. Mr. Bush said $66 billion of the $87 billion would be for military and intelligence operations over the next year. White House officials said tonight that they could not specify how the money would be spent.

I wonder what my boss would say if I asked him for a budget with that logic :-)

All seriousness and complexity aside, though, I do really, really pray that these latest nation-building exercises will improve soon.

In Other News Today...

From http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/08/international/middleeast/08MIDE.html?pagewanted=2&hp

Many Gazans attributed Sheik Yassin's escape to a miracle; Israeli security officials attributed it to insufficient explosives.