MyGoogleCal2 no longer works 100% in Inter­net Explorer. A run­time error occurs when nav­i­gat­ing month-to-month or when switch­ing to Agenda mode. The workaround is to sim­ply hide the nav­i­ga­tion inter­face. Now, I don’t know if this bug was intro­duced when Google updated the code last month, or if it’s always been there and I just never noticed. In any case, the run­time error occurs when //"+a.host+"/calendar is replaced by //www.google.com/calendar. Given the poor debug­ging avail­able in IE, I didn’t get very far with fig­ur­ing out why IE breaks. I sus­pect that when IE makes an Xml­HttpRe­quest, it’s dou­ble check­ing that the request URL matches up with the server host, or some­thing to that effect. Since Google obfus­cates the Javascript code, it’s just way too hard to try and fix it. Instead, I’ve opted to cre­ate a new ver­sion of MyGoogle­Cal that uses the orig­i­nal tech­nique for IE but uses the tech­nique from MyGoogleCal2 for all other browsers.

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If you’ve been keep­ing up with the US Demo­c­ra­tic pri­mary, you’ve prob­a­bly heard what a piss-poor job ABC did con­duct­ing the Penn­syl­va­nia debate. It some­times floors me that Jon Stewart et al. often give more cred­i­ble news and com­men­tary than the major news out­lets. One of the more both­er­some bits to come out of the debate was ABC hand­pick­ing Nash McCabe for a voter ques­tion. It wasn’t so much her obvi­ous bias that both­ered me; another voter could always be inter­viewed to pro­vide a coun­ter­point (not that ABC did). What both­ered me was that her vote comes down to whether or not a can­di­date is will­ing to wear a lapel pin of the Amer­i­can flag. Some may think big deal, until you real­ize that she’s prob­a­bly not alone in how she makes polit­i­cal deci­sions. That some­how one’s appear­ance is a reflec­tion of one’s per­for­mance. That one’s patri­o­tism is mea­sured by how often you’re will­ing to dis­play the flag. That some­how sym­bols are greater than words and actions. (A Digg com­menter aptly ref­er­enced the scene from Office Space where Joanna quits because her man­ager hounds her about wear­ing flair despite being a pro­duc­tive employee.) It’s really depress­ing to think that peo­ple do make impor­tant deci­sions based on such triv­ial cri­te­ria. Just another exam­ple of why the US edu­ca­tion sys­tem needs improvement.

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