Off on a Tangent now projects that Jim Webb (D) has won election as Senator from Virginia, handing the Democratic Party a narrow 51-seat majority in the Senate.  This final call concludes Off on a Tangent's ongoing coverage of the election.  Barring any major irregularities during the expected recounts, the results included in this entry should be considered 'final'.

Donald Rumsfeld is resigning from his position as U.S. Secretary of Defense, which he has held since George W. Bush was elected President in 2000.  Rumsfeld's resignation comes one day after the Republican Party suffered major defeats in congressional elections, largely due to voter frustration with the Iraq war.  Bush will nominate former CIA Director Robert Gates to become the next Secretary of Defense, pending Senate confirmation.

So things remain busy.  We were out of town last weekend visiting family, which was a lot of fun, and things have been a little crazy at work.  The good news though is that I got a new[ish] company IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad to play with, which is now successfully rigged as a dual-boot Windows XP & Ubuntu Linux machine.  No more outdated desktop for me!

Off on a Tangent is now supported in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (released recently).  IE7 offers many important security improvements over IE6, and users who wish to continue using the IE browser should upgrade (if they are running Windows XP).  I still recommend using more secure browsers such as Mozilla Firefox.  Please let me know if you find any problems using the site in IE7.