Diane Finley: Conservative glamour queen

"Canada's New Government" (which has been in power for almost two years) is all about controlling image. Note the spectacular Diane Finley. Yes, yes, I know, she has a condition that requires her to wear dark glasses. But does she also have a condition that makes her curl her lip like Billy Idol? Furthermore, does the Conservative Party have a condition that makes them unable to judge the suitability of photographs? Or do her staffers just hate her? What other possible reasons would prompt someone to post a photograph like this on the front page of her ministry's website?

Building Pidgin on Ubuntu with all the fixin's

I had a heck of a time finding the packages I needed to install so that Pidgin would compile with all of its extensions and protocols – particularly screen saver integration for "away" status. Hopefully a good version will be included in Gutsy. These are the components I needed for building Pidgin 2.10 under Edgy. (Why am I still on Edgy? Because distribution upgrade didn't work from Dapper to Edgy, so I mistrust it, and I haven't set aside a morning to upgrade.)

I spent the most time figuring out which packages would contain mono.pc and gstreamer0.10.pc – once I figured that out it went a lot faster. Hope this helps -- it probably isn't everything, but it's most of it. Start with a nice howto, and use the stuff below to turn on the other options.

sudo apt-get install libstartup-notification0-dev libperl-dev libnm-glib-dev libgadu-dev libsilc-dev libhowl-dev libavahi-compat-howl-dev libsqlite-dev libnspr-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libdbus-1-dev libgtkspell-dev libmono-dev libxss-dev libebook1.2-dev libedata-book1.2-dev libsqlite3-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev tcl8.4-dev tk8.4-dev libmeanwhile-dev liblaunchpad-integration0 libnm-glib0

./configure --enable-gnutls=yes --enable-mono --enable-nm --enable-consoleui --enable-gevolution --enable-gstreamer --enable-plugins --disable-schemas-install --enable-screensaver --enable-tcl --enable-tk

LaCheese Gourmet

We had a gourmet experience yesterday, at the intersection of U.S. Highway 29 and I-94: we lunched at LaCheese.  We had seen the sign on our way to my folks' house, and had screamed in delirium, and my mom said that my cousin Mary had been talking about it as well (that sign is apparently quite the freak magnet).  So we got to meet the inventor of chili cheese fries, and we beat a fellow hipster to an irony-drenched saturated fat-fest.
The hostess was very friendly, though a bit deaf; when we asked for menus, she directed us toward the washroom.  It turns out that the adjacent gas station has no washrooms, as there are signs within the restaurant admonishing non-customers to buy something.

So we got seated and checked out the menu: pizza filled a third of it, and the most intriguing item was "LaCrust": cheese-stuffed double-layered pizza.  My mom asked for a salad (not on the menu) and the hostess (also the cook, bartender, and part-owner) offered to make her one with her ingredients on-hand: which turned out to be iceberg lettuce. I got a pepperoni pizza (playing it safe) but didn't go for the special: second pizza half-price, third pizza free! It was toaster-oven-bar-pizza, in the grand tradition of Tombstone. Mom and Dad got hamburgers (freshly microwaved) and Adolfo hit the jackpot with LaChicken.  Dad also ordered the MexiFries, which our hostess told us they had invented one night from ingredients on hand: french fries, taco "meat" and melted cheez goo. (Delicious, for the record.)