dsandler.org/wp

I just updated my copy of Adobe Reader so I’d be able to add fancy annotations to PDFs (one of the side-effects of your advisor being halfway across the country is that it’s harder to pass marked-up drafts back and forth).

I officially hate it in all ways. RAM eater? Check. (The reader takes up gobs of memory as you’d expect, and even the Safari plugin chews up an additional 40MB when it first loads.) Interface? Uglier than the dog poop left in my parking spot by the neighbors in the next building.

But what’s really driving me nuts is the text rendering. This is Adobe, for pete’s sake—you’d think they’d have gotten it down! But, no, the anti-aliased type display is a disaster. The ClearType (or CoolType, or MyType, or ZOMGtyp3!, or whatever Adobe calls it) is worse—a plague visited upon the Earth. There’s also some kind of horrible spasm going on inside the hinting engine, visible especially at small point sizes:

So I’m thinking I’ll shelve Reader until I absolutely positively need to do some annotation that can’t be handled by Preview. But does anyone know of an easy, reversible way to switch on and off Reader’s control of PDF viewing in Safari? (Online documentation seems to indicate that Reader will “heal” Safari if it notices that the PDF viewer plugin has been deleted.)

Update 2/1: Well, at least Adobe lets you turn off the Web plugin (in the Reader app’s preferences):

Houston Chronicle, Jan. 10, 2007: Rice extends Todd Graham’s contract through 2012.

Houston Chronicle, Jan. 12, 2007: Rice coach Graham heads back to Tulsa.

Elsewhere, the Chronicle bloggers are ruthless: “While Rice fans will always remember the magical ride to their first bowl appearance in 45 years, I’ll remember the luscious coachspeak Graham gave in a state-that-he-never-meant a few days ago, after he accepted a contract extension” … “Those football players at Rice learned an important lesson this week. They learned that college football isn’t really about the kids. Never has been. Never will be. College football is about the schools raking in millions and the coaches jumping at the next opportunity.” … “And just like that, Todd Graham is gone. We’ve been told that he will sign an 8-year deal worth $1.1 million per with Tulsa. He left for the money, plain and simple. Everything he said about Rice, its supporters, its players and its future was bologna. We can’t help but wonder where he stashed his Dale Lloyd pin.”

Here’s a snapshot, for posterity, of the GrahamFootball.com promo site that Rice Athletics put together.

Update 1/19: Chronicle: Rice hires Texas State’s David Bailiff.

Time to start writing “2006??? on all your checks.