Me: My name is Carson Sasser. I live in Florida. I’m a retired Mathematician / Operations Research Analyst. I worked for the Defense Department for 40 years as a civilian employee and private contractor. I now spend my time enjoying my children and grandchildren, fishing, improving my home and grounds, hobby computer programming, and harrassing politicians via the internet. Now that I have this blog up I intend to do more of the latter.
Research: Most of my posts will be composed of commentary and opinion based on my take on what I read and hear, and will usually not be annotated with references. When I do post a piece based on research, that research will most likely be done entirely on the web. I don’t have easy access to a good library.
Font Size: If the default font size on my blog doesn’t suit you it can be changed if you are using one of the following browsers: Firefox 2.0.0.1: Press Ctrl + to increase, Ctrl - to decrease, and Ctrl 0 to return to default. You can also set it using the View menu. Internet Explorer 7: To magnify the whole page use the control at the bottom-right corner of the browser window or rotate the mouse wheel while pressing the Ctrl key. To change just the text size use the Page tool or the View menu. Internet Explorer 6: Use the View menu or rotate the mouse wheel while pressing the Ctrl key. Both methods change just the text size.
Browser: I recommend that you use either Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox 2.0.0.1 if you are a frequent reader of blogs. If you use Firefox with Windows, and the text looks too thin and squiggly, you need to enable ClearType:
1. Click Start, click Control Panel, click Appearance and Themes, and then click Display.
2. On the Appearance tab, click Effects.
3. Select the Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts check box, and then select ClearType from the drop-down list.
4. Effect your change by clicking OK to close the open dialog boxes. (These instructions are for Windows XP. Vista is set to ClearType by default.)
Theme: The theme and templates used on this blog are based on the Sandbox theme developed by Andy Skelton and Scott Allan Wallick. It is described here. However, I’ve made extensive changes to their original theme. I removed the skin options; it is locked-in to the three-column, sidebar-on-each-side layout. I changed it from fluid to fixed width. I added background colors, changed the fonts and made many other minor changes. It has been tested on Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Firefox 2.0.0.1 and Netscape 7.2. It seems to display the best on IE7. If you want a copy of the theme files e-mail me at the address on the Contact page.