I enjoy the “I’m a Mac” and “PC Guy” ad series from Apple, Inc. I use both platforms (although not with Vista) and generally prefer Macs, but I think the ad series is pure genius. C’mon, admit it. Regardless of your platform preference, the ads and the two characters are endearing.

Here’s another.

My mother-in-law sent this with the caption, “Ask the American Indians what happens when you don’t control your borders.”

The graphic has been in use for a few years, at least since 2005, and is usually found on t-shirts or bumper stickers. I was surprised to learn, though, just how many opinion pieces had been written about it and what writers believe it means.

Some, it turns out, see it as an affront to native Americans or believe that those who display the graphic are America haters. Joseph Farah’s article is an example. I thought he had completely missed the point, but it got me thinking. So I looked again at the graphic, this time without the caption that had accompanied it, and decided that he just might have a point or two.

But when I view the graphic in the context of the accompanying caption, I see it the way I suspect it was originally intended, to illustrate the importance of border security by implying (with tongue in cheek) that, had native Americans protected their borders against the invading European terrorists, the complexion of America might today be quite different.

I think as a society we need to develop a collective thicker skin and stop looking for things to find offensive. What do you think?

The 65-year-old New Frontier, the second-oldest property on the Las Vegas strip, was taken down with the requisite fireworks and cheering November 13 to make room for a bigger, more palatial hotel casino.

The Frontier was the venue where Elvis Presley made his Las Vegas debut in 1956 and also featured such entertainers as Wayne Newton and Siegfried and Roy. Once owned by eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, it endured one of the longest union strikes in U.S. history.

I always feel a nostalgic twinge when one of the old casinos is moved out to make way for the new. Farewell, old friend. You went out in grand style.

Louise reminded me that I’d promised to post the results for those of you that took the “new and improved” nerd quiz a couple weeks ago. I’d asked that any of you that took the test (and were so inclined) embed a photo of yourself and email me the resulting quiz icon. Some of you did and so, as promised, here ya’ go. I’m not sure what any of us learned from the exercise, but it was kinda fun, yes? It did demonstrate just how diverse our readership is and that at least one of you has a sense of humor about his (or her?) mug shot…

Thanks to (in no particular order) Louise, Robo, Ralph, Karen and Sterling for following the directions (some of you didn’t include the photo.) And Teddy, yours didn’t get published for the same reason your carved pumpkins didn’t make the cut. Pretty funny, but a little over the line for posting on this site. But keep ‘em coming, the editorial staff loves them!

I’m doing some house cleaning on the website today. Although it’s not yet bug-free, I’ve added a “Photo Album” section in the Navigation bar (right side of site pages) and have changed the way images are viewed. In the past, portrait (vertical) images could not be viewed without scrolling, a less than desirable experience, and landscape (horizontal) images had to be reduced in size to fit the column width. So what I’ve done is allowed album images to be viewed in a “lightbox” screen requiring no scrolling.

Initially, this worked with Safari and Firefox on Macs, and with Firefox on PCs. However, it locked up in Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) so I disabled it pending some reworking. Today, it appears to be working in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) but I’m not sure if it works in IE6 as I no longer have IE6 on my office PC. However, now I notice that, at least with Internet Explorer, portrait shaped images are being “squeezed.” That is, the aspect ratio is being rendered too narrow on vertical images.

So, I’d like readers’ help. Click on the albums, view the images and let me know if you experience any irregularities, whether with the portrait shaped images being squeezed or the whole thing not working with your browser. Then just let me know (Include your browser and platform. Thanks!