Musings and rants about politics and geekery with a distinct Chicago flavor.
Let’s fast-forward to the day of our firm’s Christmas party. I left gracefully after the gift exchange, saying goodbye and wishing a happy holidays to most of the staff (and bidding a clumsy, misinterpreted goodbye to a woman leaving the firm with whom I had hoped to continue a friendship), and began walking down Michigan Avenue to pick up a book.
I made several stops, first at a LaSalle Bank and then at a Bank One, to cash a rather nice check from a friend. I stopped at my own bank and then her bank, waiting in line for what felt like ages.
But I was delayed just enough, evidently, to suddenly spot a familiar face as I crossed the street.
“Jessamyn?”
Jessamyn has put up photographs of herself in her diary before, since she uses her real name. Since I’m not quite as brave (and, yes, I do consider it a matter of bravery), I stand behind anonymity, even going to the extent of spending time to crop myself out of the photographs I took of myself at the Serendipity premiere in September 2001 (how’s that for recursive references, huh?). So, although I recognized her as she walked across the street, she had no way of recognizing me.
I imagine it must have been quite odd to have a total stranger call out your name in the middle of busy Michigan Avenue holiday pedestrian traffic, but once I actually explained who I was, she seemed rather delighted to have run into me, and we had a great conversation. I soon found that Jessamyn is just as gracious and kind a person in real life as she is in her journal. We parted briefly thereafter, as I didn’t want to hold her up, but it sure brightened up my afternoon even further.
But this certainly was a moment of serendipity working quite pleasantly. If you don’t understand me, I should explain that Chicago, if I remember the last estimate, has at least three million residents, and I believe the last census pegged the general area of Chicago at right around eight million people. So if you imagine eight million marbles in a big Olympic swimming pool … what are the chances two will actually bump into each other, if they don’t have similar friends or employers or circles that would keep them in the same area of the ‘pool’?
I’ve had serendipity happen to me before — I was downtown watching Mel Gibson film a scene in “Payback” (the shots of the El), and happened to catch a fellow alumna of my college’s theater program out of the corner of my eye, who just happened to be in town auditioning for the part of Beauty in the Disney tour of Beauty and the Beast. (Believe me, she should have been a shoo-in.)
It’s always nice when the chaos theory of everyday population mechanics instead parts way for the far more pleasant experience of serendipity.
* * * *
So, how was your Christmas? I went off to visit my family for a week, and this entry is in fact being plonked down at about a half-hour before my parents’ hometown, a sleepy little hamlet tucked away in the northeastern corner of Indiana, marches into Friday, December 27. My mother is letting off deep snores from her sleeping point, while my sister taps away at her own Mac portable on a chair not 10 feet away from me.
(My mother, I’m embarrassed to say, is sleeping on the living room floor. She adamantly insisted. Normally, I would sleep in the guest room and she on her own bed, but they are in the process of turning it from a rather damp, stone-and-mortar venue into a walled, heated, and generally nice place to stay, evidently complete with bathroom. But the work pretty much makes it uninhabitable for the Christmas stay. Hey, listen, I really tried to convince her, but she was not to be swayed!)
* * * *
I am enjoying the time off, using it to catch up on e-mail and other projects (such as these journal entries, backlogged web bookmarks, finances, and more). Seven days have passed, and yet I still have six more days before I have to return to the office. I’m quite pleased with the long stretch of time in which I can kick back and decompress; God knows I got compressed enough in the last few months of this year.
I did find myself concentrating more on the gift-giving than the gift-receiving this year: although what I got was certainly quite nice, I found myself not really devoting much thought to the actual material goods I’d be receiving Wednesday morning. Instead, I found myself looking forward to the time with my family, and to doing things with them, and to seeing their reaction as they opened their gifts, hoping that they liked what they got. Guess that’s a little bit of growing up, although perhaps my attitude won’t be quite as mature next year when I haven’t just bought myself a laptop in recent months. Heh.
In any case, although it’s been a day of vacation, it’s nevertheless been a long day, and I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow as well, plus travel back to Chicago either on Saturday or Sunday. So I’m going to wrap it up for now: part of the vacation time is sorely needed recuperation of missed sleep! Hope you all are doing well and had a very joyous holiday with your family.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Good news recently, in that John McCain will be the new chair of the Commerce Committee. The Senator he is replacing, Fritz Hollings, had been pretty much the lapdog of the movie and recording industries; he had even introduced an act, the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act, which would have mandated anti-digital copying devices in nearly anything electronic, with definitions so broad that they would have caused havoc. By all reports, McCain is much more deregulatory and consumer-friendly.
* * * *
Hopefully, by now you have heard of the extremely scary “Total Information Awareness” concept being proposed by retired Admiral John Poindexter, the Iran-Contra convict who is now in charge of the Information Awareness Office at the Pentagon. A gentleman by the name of Don Upson, senior vice president of webMethods, made an interesting point in an article in last Sunday’s issue of the New York Times; he said, “I’m glad DARPA is doing this, because somebody has to start defining what the rules are going to be [about how and when to use data]. I believe we’re headed down the path of setting the parameters of how we’re going to use information.” If I understand him right, then his point is astute: it’s good that it’s coming up now and publicly, so that it can be challenged during a time when people are hypersensitive (and justly so) about infringements upon civil liberties.
* * * *
Courtesy of Zay N. Smith of the Chicago Sun-Times “Quick Takes” column:
The Case for Zero Tolerance of Modern School Administrators (cont’d):
The Plain English Campaign notes an advertisement for a school administrator in Brisbane, Australia, calling for an applicant who can “coordinate and undertake the development of planning, performance management and policy development through effective design and implementation of frameworks and systems that enable the achievement of strategic imperatives” using job skills including “extensive knowledge of the principles and practices underpinning performance measurement and educational measurement to facilitate the achievement of broader developmental goals and objectives in a complex and changing sector.”
* * * *
How might various authors have written the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy?
“Gandalf, Gandalf! Take the ring!
I am too small to carry this thing!”
“I can not, will not hold the One.
You have a slim chance, but I have none.
I will not take it on a boat,
I will not take it across a moat.
I cannot take it under Moria,
that’s one thing I can’t do for ya.
I would not bring it into Mordor,
I would not make it to the border.”
— If Dr. Seuss wrote Lord of the Rings
Wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraith-eree,
A Nazgul’s as nasty as nasty can be.
Wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraithery, wraith-wraith-eroo,
your luck will run out when I’m looking for you.
So give me the Ring, or you’re Nazgul, too!
— Mary Poppins meets Lord of the Rings
* * * *
The White House just ruled out a deal that would have permitted cut-price rates for life-saving drugs sorely needed in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, thanks to heavy lobbying by pharmaceutical companies. Sources at the World Trade Organization’s Geneva headquarters said that the decision had come directly from Vice-President Cheney, who had “seiz[ed] the reins from America’s trade negotiator, Robert Zoellick.”
Says Britain’s Guardian, “Mr. Zoellick helped broker a deal on affordable drugs at the WTO’s meeting last year in Doha under which developing countries were promised they would be able to override patent laws in the interest of public health.”
Add this to the thing tacked onto the Homeland Security Act getting Eli Lilly out of liability for an autism-causing vaccine … I just get so pissed off.
All I can say is that I am going to be majorly pissed off if Bush gets back into the Oval Office in 2004. The Democrats better pick someone to run and run hard against Bush. We simply can’t let this continue in this country.
I’ve grown far too accustomed to disillusionment under this administration. It chafes hard with my desire for idealism.
* * * *
An online comic strip I read recently had its characters talking by the watercooler. One asked, “So as a change of pace for the holiday, what would you take away from the world to make it better?” The consensus? Human stupidity, religious zealotry, low standards, and reality television.
“Ye gods … that covers it all.”
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
“President Bush on the war on terror:
“‘It’s also important for people to know we never seek to impose our culture or our form of government. We just want to live under those universal values, God-given values.’
“The atheists of America are with you, Mr. President.”
— Zay N. Smith, “Quick Takes,” Chicago Sun-Times, November 27, 2002
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
ÒŽever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.Ó — Margaret Mead
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I’m not precisely a fan of Scientology; it’s the world’s largest and most powerful cult, not a religion. (They bought the Cult Awareness Network, by the way.) And today I find out that Scientology beliefs were integrated into episodes of “Muppet Babies” and “SuperFriends.” Have I been brainw—L. RON HUBBARD IS GOD …
*shakes head* Where was I? Ahem …
* * * *
I saw the new ‘Trek’ film yesterday. Don’t read farther unless you mind very mild spoilers.
The film was moderately good. There were some troublesome concepts. It has been said that producer Rick Berman disliked Gene Roddenberry’s humanist philosophies and preferred a more militaristic ‘Trek,’ and surely his helming of the various television series since Roddenberry’s death has made this more militaristic. A sequence in which patriotic music was played as the crew prepared for battlestations made me rather nauseous.
The concept of the Remans was disgusting. Not only does it really seem to conflict with existing ‘Trek’ lore about the Romulans’ life, but they simply look comic. They are the spitting image of Nosferatu, and I’m sorry, but that’s funny, and they weren’t supposed to be funny. What’s gonna happen in Trek XI, Sisko fights werewolves or Frankensteins?
And what’s with Data still having no emotions? Since the moment Data switched off his emotion chip in “First Contact,” the fact that Data can feel (as of Generations) has been pretty much ignored. Writers insult their viewers when they ignore a major change to the universe they’re writing in — like when actors leave shows and the writers don’t do anything to explain the characters’ disappearance.
* * * *
According to Sun-Times columnist Zay Smith, Big Bend National Park in Texas announced it has had to cancel this year’s International Good Neighbor Fiesta, during which Texans and Mexicans gather to celebrate their strong ties and friendship, because of all the border closings. Guess we’re not being an “International Good Neighbor” this year. That’s such a surprise.
* * * *
Over half the WTC rescue workers are suffering from persistent upper respiratory inflammation, post-traumautic stress disorder, and/or acid reflux.
But the good news is that they’re still reducing the number of people who died — they just found three of them (not in the rubble — there’s no more rubble; they discovered that the three were alive, elsewhere). When finding that Oliva Khemrat, Jeffrey Montgomery, and William Yemele were alive, the death toll got lowered down to 2,792.
* * * *
Roger Ebert mentions in today’s Answer Man column that Woodrow Wilson was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Google seems to bear this out. Interesting, huh?
* * * *
The ACLU now has 330,000 dues-paying members … but 50,000 of them joined after the attacks. And Northhampton, Massachusetts and other towns are telling the Department of Justice to take their surveillance plans and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine — and instructing their law enforcement agencies not to cooperate, either. God bless these Bill of Rights defense committees …
* * * *
Butterflies naturally put into practice everything man currently knows about aerodynamics.
* * * *
Cute kitties.
* * * *
“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas … “
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.” — a judge in Robert Heinlein’s short story ‘Life-Line’
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Not that I’m complaining, but boy, is there an anti-conservative bias in Yahoo’s choice of 2002 Year in Review comics. Not that I’d expect anything different from Ted Rall, though. Sometimes, he’s a little too rabid even for me … and that’s saying a LOT.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
On December 3, a Denver photographer was arrested and accused of being a terrorist simply because he took photographs of the hotel at which Vice President Cheney was staying. This is a recording of his interview on a radio show. If you find the story credible, as I do, then this is yet another one of many events and changes that seems to foreshadow an American police state in less than a decade, should the continued political climate remain unabated. In the meantime, the Washington Post reports that extremely loud sounds (eyewitness reports liken them to sonic booms or rolling thunder) continue to come from Cheney’s residence at the Naval Observatory, but the government claims that the reason for the blasts is classified.
* * * *
Well, the dust has settled, and that redesign I mentioned is finished. I’m wondering how people like it … but, more importantly, I like it. I really like how the splash page looks. The white on black American Typewriter font looks stark yet retro, which is kind of a neat look. I got the idea from the use of a very similar font on the “Adaptation” movie site.
I’m hoping that because I designed it rather simply, it’ll look pretty decent. I use the Chimera web browser, which, due to its anti-aliasing, makes every Web page look rather nice. I really love using Chimera (as do most Mac OS X users); it makes web browsing an experience that’s almost aesthetic, and the pages load so quickly. But, hopefully the page looks pretty decent in any web browser. (By the way, if you’re on Windows, check out Phoenix for a similar lightweight yet sweet browser.)
The one part of the design that’s going to make a few of my past entries look just a bit odd is that I’ve used a special CSS code that indents the first line of each paragraph. That’s going to make a few things here and there look odd … but I like the look it gives most everything else, and I can hopefully go back and tweak things here and there that look odd.
I’ve been using a free trial of Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, which is pretty much my only opportunity to use Dreamweaver, as the $400 price tag they slap on the product is absolutely, stark-raving bonkers. But it is a very, very nice little program. The market is rife for a nice Shareware or freeware version of this product, something that the average Joe Schmoe off the street can afford instead of this very nicely featured and well-coded, yet exorbitantly expensive behemoth. Still, the behemoth helped me redesign a few personal websites I maintain, so I’m appreciative for the fact that Macromedia doesn’t cripple its software during the demonstration period.
I’ve now had the iBook for about a month and a day — I went to go get it from the Apple Store on November 8. I cannot tell you what a sweet little machine it is, and how incredibly aesthetically pleasing it is, to boot. Right now, the only slight downside is that it’s not using AirPort, so it’s ‘wired’ and not ‘wireless’ Internet … I can’t surf from my bed or the kitchen, for example. But we’re talking an extra $410 to do that, and I need to focus on paying this guy off before May 8 comes along and the 26.99% interest kicks in. I’m not doing too badly on that front, though: as of this Friday, I should have about one-quarter of the machine paid off, or maybe even a third, depending on how much I land in overtime pay.
I’m not totally going without accessories, though. After reading what this guy had to say, I ordered a “laptop sleeve” from InCase Designs, which should hopefully show up tomorrow or Wednesday. I’ve been putting it in my backpack, and it’s a little loose in there.
The more steady readers may have noticed that, shortly after ridding myself of the obsession over my backside by getting an “all-clear” from a surgeon, I began worrying about the state of my teeth. Well, I’m happy to report that aside from some mild gingivitis around the incisors and cuspids on my upper jaw, I’ve got a clean bill of health there. Now, the trick is to keep up a strict dental hygiene routine without an imagined threat of periodontitis hanging over my head.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Yo, yo, yo, my peeps. You gotta check out some fine sh-t by my peep Tom Bombadil, a.k.a. M.C. First and Fatherless, and check out his gangsta rap, J.R.R. Tolkein-style. It takes mad skillz to send out props to Tolkein, Nimoy and the Bangles with fine tunez. Go Gollum! Go Gollum! Go Gollum! Go Gollum!
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
From This Modern World: Republicans recently inserted a last-minute provision into the Homeland Security Act to protect Eli Lilly from lawsuits over a vaccine preservative ancedotally linked to autism.
Also, the U.S. army recently expelled six highly-trained Arabic translators, during a time when we’re very short on Arabic translators and need them very much. Why? Because they’re gay.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
“We should not harness the Internet with a confusing array of intrusive regulations and controls. Yet, the Bush administration is trying to do just that.
“The Bush administration would like the Federal government to have the capability to read any international or domestic computer communications. The FBI wants access to decode, digest, and discuss financial transactions, personal e-mail, and proprietary information sent abroad — all in the name of national security.
“This proposed policy raises obvious concerns about Americans’ privacy, in addition to tampering with the competitive advantage that our U.S. software companies currently enjoy in the field of encryption technology.
“There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes and that advanced encryption could disguise such activity. However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our homes for unlimited wiretaps. Why, then, should we grant government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time to our communications across the Web?
“The protections of the Fourth Amendment are clear. The right to protection from unlawful searches is an indivisible American value. Two hundred years of court decisions have stood in defense of this fundamental right. The state’s interest in effective crime-fighting should never vitiate the citizens’ Bill of Rights.”
“The administration’s interest in all e-mail is a wholly unhealthy precedent, especially given this administration’s track record on FBI files and IRS snooping. Every medium by which people communicate can be subject to exploitation by those with illegal intentions. Nevertheless, this is no reason to hand Big Brother the keys to unlock our e-mail diaries, open our ATM records, read our medical records, or translate our international communications.”
Who wrote this, you may ask?
Surely, you say, it must be some liberal firebrand. John Perry Barlow, perhaps, or some lawyer at the ACLU.
Try John Ashcroft.
Yeah, Mr. Big Brother himself said these words, back when he was a Republican Senator during Clinton’s presidency (I changed ‘Clinton administration’ to ‘Bush administration’ just to throw you off), said the above words.
It’s amazing he didn’t break his neck reversing himself like that. Guess it all depends on who’s in power, huh? What a fucking hypocrite.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Another Linkmania entry. I’m planning, if I can, to do a redesign sometime this weekend. We’ll see.
If you ever get an e-mail from an unknown person that has no content in it except for the URL “http://911atwtc.com,” it’s a spam site with absolutely no content related to the events of September 11th. Isn’t that disrespectful? Just more proof that spammers are the scum of the earth. Here’s a little research someone did on where that spam originates.
* * * *
“As Steve Jobs has pointed out is that [digital rights management]’s dirty little secret is that it does not work and will always be hackable.
“The answer is to make reliable, quality, fairly price downloads available. Don’t assume your customers want to be criminals.”
— tucay
* * * *
“Microsoft can make their [digital rights management] technology work, by using Security-by-Lawyer …
“If you crack even the stupidest [digital rights management] technology, you have violated the DMCA. Therefore, there’s no need to make a bulletproof DRM technology, just a stupid one with lawyers to back it up. That seems to be good enough for Hollywood.”
— LostCluster
* * * *
This is a really odd, yet rather captivating, analysis of the CBS television show “Everybody Loves Raymond.” Basically, it paints it as sort of an anti-comedy of desparation.
* * * *
“There’s all this National Rifle Association and everyone in America is — I mean 13 year olds keep going out and they borrow — they get a hold of weapons from their grandfather’s arsenal — ‘I’ll borrow the Howitzer, the M16 machine gun, the Uzi, the’ — what the fuck’s the grandfather doing? Th — This kid down in Arkansas just helped himself to a ton of military weapons and went and blew away his school. You know. And there is — they say — the National Rifle Association says that, ‘Guns don’t kill people, uh, people do.’ But I think — I think the gun helps. You know? I think it helps. I just think just standing there going, ‘Bang!’ That’s not going to kill too many people, is it? You’d have to be really dodgy on the heart to have that — ‘Bang! Bang! Boom! Bang! Rat-a-tat boom! Bang!’ I think they should just try that, you know.”
“But it — it’s interesting, because, you know, there’s things like these kids started shooting people, which you’ve had in America. Because guns don’t kill people, it’s just, uh, uhh, that certain noise they make. And umm … Uhh, it’s just a bullet ripping through people’s bodies. That’s what kills people! Erhhh … Yeah, have guns but don’t allow any ammunition. There! We got it! We got it sorted! And they just go, erhhhhhoh? *thunk*.”
— Eddie Izzard, Dress to Kill
* * * *
Have you heard about the Information Awareness Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Pentagon and headed up by Iran-Contra convict Admiral Poindexter? Have you heard about their plan to create a “Total Information Awareness” database on every American (additional link), including every purchase you make? Moreover, have you seen their creepy-ass logo? Here’s a little more about it.
* * * *
Moreover, did you hear that America has a secret court? It’s called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And thanks to the arguments of DOJ lawyer Thomas Olson (who, you may remembered, argued King George II was entitled to the Presidency case before the Supreme Court), they have said that the U.S.A. Patriot Act gives the government very broad wiretap powers, which Ashcroft said he is immediately implementing.
Get this … when saying that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was reasonable, they actually wrote this in their decision: “We think the procedures and government showings required under FISA, if they do not meet the minimum Fourth Amendment warrant standards, certainly come close.”
COME CLOSE?!?!?!
Ashcroft has told us, “We have no desire whatever to, in any way, erode or undermine the constitutional liberties here.”
Oh, I’m soooooooo relieved, Johnny boy.
Here’s the real carrot, right from the article: “The appeal hearing was not public, and only the Justice Department’s top appellate lawyer, Theodore Olson, presented arguments.”
In other words, there was no one there arguing against this piece-of-shit scheme.
“This is a major Constitutional decision that will affect every American’s privacy rights, yet there is no way anyone but the government can automatically appeal this ruling to the Supreme Court,” ACLU director Ann Beeson said.
Good God, we’re heading right for some sort of dytopian dictatorship. When Bush was elected, I never thought things would get this bad. And the Democrats are just gonna put up Gore again? GOD! We need Jed Bartlet in here, stat.
* * * *
A cautionary tale.
* * * *
I’m really rather disappointed in Michael Moore.
* * * *
Best recent first line for a television episode:
Lisa Fabrizzi [to her computer]: I don’t want my penis enlarged.
[A passing agent looks at her oddly.]
(Spam-related, of course.)
* * * *
This guy is brilliant. Whether it’s an alternate history of the U.S./Afghanistan conflict, or the Apocalypse done in manga-Pokamon-style, or an eerie yet utopic and spiritual view of the future done in a sort of CGI form … do you really need me to go on? 
* * * *
I really think these people like far too simplistic views of cultures younger than their own.
* * * *
A neat theory about what started the Big Bang. Basically, they say that two big huge fifth-dimensional membranes collided. Go ahead. Use the term “ekpyrotic universe.” I know you want to.
* * * *
Dude, you’re getting a genital burn!
* * * *
The Detroit Free Press peers into the mansion of a spammer. Even a 0.25% response rate (right, one-quarter of one percent) is enough to keep him very well to do.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
“Why are we so easy about the root words that describe bodily functions? By ethnic agreement, it is not only shocking to use taboo language but it is sometimes held to be sinful and sometimes held to be criminal. It is, therefore, exactly such taboo language that will best express our feelings when we are enraged or socially mutinous.” — John Ciardi
“Genius, that power that dazzles mortal eyes, is oft but perseverance in disguise.” — Henry Willard Austin
Quotes from a December 11, 2001 Chicago Tribune article about the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois:
“In addition, Bush’s executive order providing for secret military tribunals as part of the war on terrorism is anathema to the organization, whose strange bedfellows on this issue include conservative columnist William Safire and arch-conservative U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.).”
Illinois ACLU Executive Director Colleen Connell: “Ashcroft’s proposals offend not just the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution, which involve the rights against self-incrimination and to a lawyer. Those are profound issues in themselves. But this argument goes much deeper. These proposals offend the very constitutional structure our founders left us, threatening the right of the judiciary as a co-equal branch. That’s the essence of divided government. If we could try the Nazis, whose atrocities rivaled if not surpassed those of Sept. 11, in open trial according to set procedures, we should be able to do it here.”
“Neither is the organization anti-God or even anti-religion, they argue … [a] little more than a week ago, for example, the Virginia chapter of the group offered to help the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s fight with the government in a dispute over church property rights.”
“The ACLU gets a lot of behind-the-scenes respect from legislators not hinted at in the headlines. This has its cynical side. ‘Legislators have told me by voting for a bill we oppose they get certain constitutents off their back, while they’re reassured we’ll sue and get the bill declared unconstitutional anyway,’ Connell says.”
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
This Friday, I left early from work (after having put in some overtime earlier in the week) and took some connecting buses to head out to Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois. When I got there, I walked into the Apple Store … and bought an iBook.
This was somewhat unwise, but not necessarily a bad decision. The unwise part of this decision is that I added $1,800 to my debt. I also placed a gun to my head somewhat (metaphorically): the interest on that loan is 26.99%, but it has a six months “same-as-cash” philosophy. Can I pay off the $1,800 price tag by May 8, 2003? Yes, I can: that’s only $300 a month, and that’s something that’s doable on my present salary. Furthermore, I’m hoping that this will get me more in the momentum of paying off debt, so that once I knock off the $1,800, I can continue clearing off the Comp USA credit card (on which I bought the iMac that this iBook is now replacing!), and then the Discover and Private Issue cards that got me moved out to Chicago five years ago.
I lost most of my Quicken history in a computer crash that happened in late August this year, but I have no doubt that by this time in my life, I have paid a huge, yucky chunk of money in interest.
(Speaking of which: Karyn Bosnak has completed her Internet panhandling campaign. Of her $20,000 debt, she ended up paying only about 11% of it. People contributed over $13,000 to her, money that could have gone towards buying people wheelchairs or helping out hospitals.)
In any case, though, it wasn’t a bad purchase. The iMac had developed a few problems, minor ones. The FireWire ports were underpowered, making my iPod give a very nasty high-pitched squeal whenever it was plugged in. And the CRT had developed a bit of an unpleasant flicker to it at times.
The iBook is great. The simple clarity of an LCD screen is something to behold. And this computer is incredibly powered for the moolah I spent. Apple had a “double your RAM” promotion where you get double the amount of RAM that would normally be installed in your machine for an extra $40. So, this model comes with 256 MB of RAM … and I got bumped up to 640 MB, due to something with the vagarities of laptop RAM chips. So I ended up getting 384 MB of RAM for $40 … that sort of deal is amazing.
Add the fact that this laptop has a bigger width screen (14.1″) than my CRT (13.7″), and has 32 MB of video RAM, enabling it to use Apple’s Quartz Extreme technology and handle things even faster … and its processor runs at 800 mHz, making its basic speed double that of my iMac … well, it’s a nice little machine. Not top-of-the-line, but I didn’t want to spend the exorbitant money for Apple’s top-of-the-line laptop, and I wanted a laptop, meaning that Apple’s desktop systems (which have the G4 chip) weren’t in the running.
About the only thing I need to get used to is the keyboard; it is much different typing on a laptop keyboard than it is typing on a full-sized one. I figure the more I practice, the more I’ll get used to it. Of course, I’m missing my beloved function keys. This laptop has an odd setup where if I hit any of the F1 through F6 function keys, I end up handling volume or brightness controls. I actually have to hold down a “fn” button to get those to work. Since I used to use those function keys to launch programs, this is a real pain in my heinie.
Well, the place is a real mess, and I’m not going to tackle it tonight, which means I’ll need to get up early to tackle it tomorrow. And I’ve gone on in this entry long enough.
G’night, y’all …
P.S. I love the smaller footprint this laptop has on my desk!
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Did you know that “&c.” means “etc.”?
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Evil clowns are fun.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
This post just is meant to share with you all a few choice excerpts from an e-mail message that John Perry Barlow sent out to his friends.
[John Perry Barlow is a fascinating and very intelligent person. If you've been around the 'Net for a while, you may remember him as the one who authored "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace".) Whenever I see he's written something, I check it out right away. Check out his website.]
I can’t claim to be one of his friends, but part of it was reposted on a blog I visit called Boing Boing. It’s one of the better “link blogs” (blogs that exist for pretty much the sole purpose of spreading links) that I visit, and they usually feed up thought-provoking, humorous, or just plain interesting links on a daily basis. You ought to check them out.
Anyway, one of the first things that Barlow does in the above e-mail is dig up a really rather amazing quote. Turns out that if Lincoln, that most famous of the Republicans, was around today, he’d probably be marching right along with those hundreds of thousands who marched last week. He wrote:
“Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’ but he will say to you ‘be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’
“The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.”
— Abraham Lincoln, in a 1848 letter to his law partner, William H. Herndon
Barlow points out that this was written in response to a suggestion of Lincoln’s partner that it would be prudent to pre-emptively attack Mexico, because Mexico seemed clearly willing to attack us. Hmm. Where have I heard that logic before?
Here’s a few quotes of Barlow:
“If another country harbors people we regard as terrorists, they have forfeited their sovereignty. If they cobble together a few of the weapons we possess in stupefying abundance, we will cross their borders and disarm them by force. Indeed, if they do anything that might eventually, left to develop unchecked, threaten American interests, we will stop them as brutally as we must.
“These statements are not merely polemical on my part. They are American policy.
“On September 20, the Bush Administration released its National Security Strategy. You can find it at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf. It speaks plainly of American ‘convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities.’ According to whom?
“In other words, Nations of the World, if you don’t make smart choices, you will just have to accept that there will be consequences. Now go clean your rooms.
“Reading this document, which makes ironic use of the word ‘freedom’ every third sentence or so, one begins to imagine the United States as the jut-jawed marshal, patrolling the world’s mean streets, showing the lonely courage that is the sinew of virtue.
“But as a fellow Wyomingite, Don Cooper, wrote me after my last rant, the metaphor is horribly flawed. The Code of the West required proof of guilt and threats made bad. The scoundrels actually had to actually raise hell before the marshal took up arms against them.
“What we are doing in Iraq is more like this, to quote Cooper:
A storekeeper is sweeping the wooden sidewalk in front of his shop and sees a rough stranger approaching. He runs across the street to the Marshal’s office crying out and waving his broom in the air. The Marshal comes out, asking what all the fuss is about. ‘It’s a bad guy ridin’ into town, Marshal. I can tell he’s up to no good. Got that look about him. Word is he is planning to rob the bank, steal a horse, burn down the church and slap a barmaid.’ The Marshal is aghast, ‘Well, not in my town he ain’t!’ The Marshal grabs his shotgun and waits out in front of the saloon. When the stranger rides up, the Marshal levels his shotgun and blows him off his horse.
“This isn’t American. It’s chickenshit.”
By the way, Barlow quotes correctly. That file’s hyperlinked; head over to it and go to the bottom of page six: “We will disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations by … denying further sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists by convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities.”
One of the best quote in the piece:
” … George II has been working for the Lord ever since he was divinely instructed some years back to stop snorting blow. He knows that God wants us to have oil and that the world’s second largest petroleum reserves are not to be entrusted to a people whose divine messenger was, to quote Jerry Falwell, ‘a terrorist.’
“I don’t think that our new Emperor is an evil man. But he has the kind of unquestioning belief in his own virtue that is the richest loam for growing evil. He is simply too weak to possess this kind of power without misusing it. And now we have removed all the Constitutional impediments that might have checked his hubris. We have thrown ourselves on the mercy of a conscience too clear to be reliable.”
By the way, the full quote of Jerry Falwell is from an October 6, 2002 interview he did with ‘60 Minutes.’ He said, “I think Mohammed was a terrorist. I read enough … by both Muslims and non-Muslims, [to decide] that he was a violent man, a man of war. In my opinion … Jesus set the example for love, as did Moses, and I think Mohammed set an opposite example.”
Interesting that Falwell is now blaming Islam. Two days after the bombings, he said on ‘The 700 Club’ (to Pat Robertson’s fervid agreement) that abortionists, pagans, feminists, gays, lesbians, the ACLU, People for the American Way, and anyone who has tried to ’secularize’ America were responsible for the bombings. Fucking moron.
Barlow also points out that we are getting more than a bit close to the world that George Orwell’s 1984 described, and points out a couple of moments that have eerily echoed Orwell’s books.
For example, he pointed out that at one point, Bush said that we might have to attack Iraq in order to preserve peace. “That’s right,” he writes. “We must start a war that there might have peace.”
“Saddam Hussein has always been the object of the Two Minute Hate. Osama bin Laden was never our Emmanuel Goldstein. The anchor-bimbo actually hissed whenever she uttered Saddam’s name, and she did so involuntarily. I remembered the line from Orwell’s novel, ‘The horrible thing about the Two Minute Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.’”
Furthermore, he points out something rather amusing yet pointed:
“It pains me deeply to say this, but I think that part of the problem may be the Internet. [...] All of our energy goes into things like this BarlowSpam, energies that might be better spent in creating traditional blocs like the NRA, or the AARP, or some large group capable of either buying Congress or scaring the shit out of them. This screed won’t scare an elected official anywhere. And it wouldn’t generate enough money to elect or defeat a dogcatcher. As much as I loathe organizations, we need to organize.”
He went on to propose an October 26 gathering. He wasn’t solely responsible for it, but that resulted in one of the largest anti-war protests since the Vietnam era on October 26, 2002, where about 200,000 people showed up. Photos, footage and transcripts. And, no, you didn’t see much about it in the news, or if you did, it was really rather downplayed, until the New York Times finally corrected itself and wrote:
“The demonstration on Saturday in Washington drew 100,000 by police estimates and 200,000 by organizers’, forming a two-mile wall of marchers around the White House. The turnout startled even organizers, who had taken out permits for 20,000 marchers. They expected 30 buses, and were surprised by about 650, coming from as far as Nebraska and Florida. A companion demonstration in San Francisco attracted 42,000 protesters, city police there said, and smaller groups demonstrated in other cities, including about 800 in Austin, Texas, and 2,500 in Augusta, Maine.”
Barlow’s final quote in his newsletter:
“The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is also a product of presidential hubris. This resolution is breathtaking in its scope. It redefines the nature of defense, and reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the Executive Branch. It would give the President blanket authority to launch a unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived to be a threat to the United States. This is an unprecedented and unfounded interpretation of the President’s authority under the Constitution, not to mention the fact that it stands the charter of the United Nations on its head.”
— Senator Robert Byrd to the Senate, October 3, 2002
Add Robert Byrd to the list of people who I wish I could vote for.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Here’s a link about the very odd intricacies of Indiana time. Essentially, their time zone never changes, but mine does. It’s interesting that Hawaii and Arizona also don’t respect Daylight Savings Time. I can get Hawaii, but if Hawaii doesn’t, then why does Alaska? I mean, good grief, their daylight schedule (being so incredibly far up north) must be so odd as to make the purpose of daylight savings time — namely, saving daylight — pretty much moot. Also, just wanted to let y’all know I got some great news that I’ll probably write a longer entry about. But the relief was so great that I actually found myself laughing with relief. First time I’ve ever laughed with relief (as opposed to humor) that I can think of …
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Last musing of the night … a few weeks ago, I got a brand-new toilet installed in my apartment by the superintendent. The newness of the equipment is nice. However, I have learned one simple truth: low-flow toilets (now required by federal mandate) suck. Or, rather, they don’t. That’s kinda the problem.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
My folks live in Indiana. This creates a very odd scenario, because the town they live in just doesn’t respect Daylight Savings Time (cf. season premiere of “West Wing,” in which Toby, Josh, Donna all miss plane because of wacky Indiana time zones). Anyhow, this means that during Daylight Savings Time, the folks are on the same time zone as I am here in Chicago, but when we switch back to ’standard’ time, suddenly they’re an hour ahead. Since they’re early-to-bed people, this means that all of a sudden, I’m waking them up or catching them just as they’re hitting the sack if I happen to call them at 8:45 or 9:00.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Some days, I want to call up my college’s alumni association, and say, “Hi. Yes. You know how you send me about twenty letters per year asking me to send you money? Yes, how much do you spend on that? Okay. Take that money, and put it as a bequest to the college in my name. That’s my contribution. Don’t send me any more of this constant, nagging one-step-away-from-panhandling crap, and go ahead and put the money you’d otherwise spend doing it towards doing whatever big whoop-de-doo you want to.” Frankly, the only reason I don’t tell them to entirely yank my name off their mailing lists is because the alumni newsletter lets me keep a thirdhand sense of what is going on with ‘friends’ I haven’t spoke to in years. Hmm … is it worth it? I’ll have to think about it.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Incredible Huge Karmic Imbalance Update:
93% of Karyn Bosnak’s debt has been paid off — 68% of the funds (well over $12k) coming from strangers, 20% from her eBay sales, and only 12% from her own wallet.
Photographs of the first successful Internet panhandler: 1 - 2
Quote from this article:
On Aug. 16 she goes on the “Today” show, where she is interviewed by Matt Lauer. “He’s a real dreamboat,” she later said. Agents watch the show, find her telegenic, sunny, marketable. They call with proposals for her to do books and films. “Nothing is finalized yet,” she said. “In fact,” she confided, “I’m not sure any of that will work out.” But what definitely will benefit her future, she said, is all she has learned from this experience.
Google search.
Articles from Business Today, Salon.com, and Catholic San Francisco.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Not much to say. Doing a lot of work on my computer, still in the T-shirt and sweats I went to bed in, and am getting profoundly annoyed by the sound of some sort of really loud power tool that interrupts the otherwise silent Saturday afternoon. (Yes, a buzzsaw in the middle of a city. Don’t ask me why.)
Two fellow Chicago online bloggers: Jessamyn and Mimi Smartypants. Mimi evidently actually lives right here in my neighborhood; she references using the same bus routes and subway station that I do.
Two particular links I’ll disseminate today, ’cause I think they’re worthwhile reading.
Bet you never knew that there could be a crusade against the Avon 3-Day Cancer Walk. What surprised me is that I think the guy actually has a point. Long story short: he and his wife can’t raise the “minimum” of a few thousand bucks, so they’re not being allowed to walk. Doesn’t sound right? Check it out.
Also, check out the audio section of the “Illegal Art” website. It’s an education, and some funky tracks are on there, too.
Oh, yeah, a third. Spock shoots photos, now. I actually like his work. His new book, Shekhina, which supposedly explores the female side of God, is now on my wish list … some really great shots in there, I think. I really liked this one.
Aw, hell, here’s a fourth: the original shooting script for “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” which has characters and scenes that didn’t make it into the film.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
“The caricature they made of Dan in ‘88 is George W. . . . It wasn’t true about Dan, but it is [of] him.”
— Marilyn Quayle, Arizona Republic, 7/26/99
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says … fool me once, shame on … shame on you. Fool me … [pause] … you can’t get fooled again.”
— George W. Bush, East Literature Magnet School, Nashville, 9/17/02
A mental giant, our President.
(”Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”)
When asked to name something he’s not good at by Talk Magazine in September 1999, he responded, “Sitting down and reading a 500-page book on public policy or philosophy or something.”
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Well, after a brief emergency where an attorney showed up in the wrong place for a deposition, things are a little quieter here for a few moments. So, I’m going to take the time out to write this entry now, when I’m awake and my battery’s full, instead of waiting until I get home, when the day is done and my expressive powers are less.
One year ago, I was riding the subway into work when I heard someone talking on his cell phone about the plane hitting the World Trade Center. I can’t recall precisely what he said, but I believe he was just finding out about the second plane, which would have hit at 8:03 am. Since I hadn’t heard about either, I turned around in my seat, shocked, and said, “Excuse me?” Others in the subway car hadn’t heard, either, and after a few seconds of shocked information exchange, a hell of a lot of cell phones were whipped out.
When I got to work, more things began to happen. I heard about the Pentagon being attacked, which had happened at about 8:43 am. They had rolled a television into our conference room, and the first tower collapsed at 9:05 am. I tried to go to my desk and work, but I was scared and in a sort of mourning, and far too distracted to concentrate. After another twenty or thirty minutes, I heard that the other tower collapsed, and that brought me back into the conference room. I continued to try to work for a while, but our managing partner got on the office intercom and said that all those who wanted to go home could.
The rest of the day was spent on the phone with family, and in front of my television, getting way too much information. Got a working definition of “information overload” that day. *sigh*
The first estimates we heard bandied about were that 6,000 people had died. I had even heard 7,000. I was watching ‘Nightline’ or something on ABC last night that had a brief segment on how talk show hosts first responded to the tragedy, and I heard Letterman, upon his return, toss out the 6,000 figure as if it was fact — and I remember us all believing it was. Then the figure began to fall, until it was the list of 2,801 names that were read aloud at the memorial ceremony at Ground Zero this morning. I feel sorry, though, for the people who died in Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. They’re certainly not getting no press coverage, but it strikes me as singularly disrespectful that many networks are giving very little coverage to the latter two, focusing things nearly entirely on the Trade Center site, i.e., “September 11: The Day The Towers Fell.”
Speaking of last night’s segment, I heard what Jon Stewart said on his show about the tragedy for the first time, and it was very moving.
The full speech, which wasn’t shown, can be read here, but this is what they aired last night, and it was enough to shake me strong, get me pretty teary:
“The view … from my apartment … was the World Trade Center. Now it’s gone. They attacked it. This symbol of … of American ingenuity and strength … and labor and imagination and commerce and it’s gone. But you know what the view is now? The Statue of Liberty … the view from the south of Manhattan is the Statue of Liberty … You can’t beat that.”
The text alone isn’t any more particularly poignant than the many other remembrances contributing to America’s information overload. But I suppose it has more to do with the fact that he was crying pretty hard as he said it, and the raw emotion on his face and the way he said it just knocked me for a loop, and brought the sense of national grief right back to me.
I didn’t know anyone who died in any of the attacks. I have a friend who lives in Brooklyn, and there are people who I have lost touch with who I know were in New York. But I talked with my Brooklyn friend within one or two days of the tragedy, and I spoke with someone a few weeks later who confirmed that none of the people I knew had died in the Trade Center attack.
I suppose there are a few things that I have brought away from that day with me.
The first is a stronger distrust of our current government. Let me clarify: I believe in America and in democracy, but I do not believe that George W. Bush and John Ashcroft serve either. I distrust the Patriot Act. I distrust how we are handling a lot of these cases, such as Jose Padilla’s, by entirely suspending due process and not letting suspects see their lawyer or do any one of a very large number of things. Given how Bush was not chosen by a majority of the American people, I wonder how the 2004 elections will be held. And I am immensely concerned about what will be done to basic human freedoms in the name of the war on terrorism, a phrase that unfortunately reminds me not of an actual conflict, but instead of our neverending “War on Drugs.” I may volunteer for the 2004 Democratic contender’s campaign, just to get that madman out of the White House.
The second is a better realization of how vast America is, and how that brings some measure of safety to us. We are an immense folk and unfortunately not well-educated, I think. The great “unwashed masses” can be controlled by how the media presents stories. We can be herded by media and by government if we don’t pay attention, and most of the time, that is indeed what happens. But at the same time, when we speak of simple physical survival, it makes us much more difficult to attack as a whole. Even if major cities were attacked again, we are millions strong, spread over great geographic distances. We’re not going to get squashed, no matter how many madmen try.
I live and work in Chicago. And I refuse to give up my home city. I will keep living and working in Chicago, even if God forbid we become a target. And guess where I prefer to go for Weight Watchers meetings? (Which I haven’t gone to in several months, but that’s not related to terrorism, just to a temporary abandonment of my weight loss efforts.) Yes, it’s the largest building in America, the Sears Tower, which was evidently considered by al-Qaeda as a possible target. It’s only 1.2 miles away from where I work. If it had fallen, too, I would definitely have been affected.
I may or may not write another entry later today, but I have to get to work here. Things are getting behind. Life goes on, I suppose.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
There’s something about “F is for fire that burns down the whole town! U is for uranium … bombs! N is for no surviiiiiiivorrrrrs, when you—” that just cracks me up. A few weeks ago I caught that episode and was thus introduced to “Spongebob Squarepants.” Rather amusing.
I saved a little yellow and black caterpillar on the El today. It was really rather cute. This girl felt him crawling down her back and didn’t immediately stomp on him, but tried to keep him on a piece of paper without stomping on him. He fell to the floor, though, and she wasn’t willing to pick him up. So I nudged him onto the inside back cover of my book and let him crawl around the spread pages, nudging him when he got too close to the edge. He didn’t like that and began rearing up half his body in an effort to look quite fearsome. I think he even bit me a little bit. But I walked him off the subway and then bent down and gently brushed him off into a little secluded area with lots of plants and a tree. So I feel like I did my part to make sure there’s hope for the flowers now … (click on Yellow if you don’t get the reference).
Listening to some fun songs. Including the above “F.U.N. Song,” but there’s also “Living on a Prayer.” There’s something about that chorus that just is very uplifting yet very … well, kick-ass. A sort of determination that speaks to me. I caught him performing this song to a really excited and singing along Times Square crowd at the NFL Kickoff Party that was televised this weekend. Very fun to see the crowd shots with everyone else singing along.
And to round things out with something entirely irrelevant, the next song on the track asked, “What would Brian Boitano do?” Because you know, Brian Boitano doesn’t take shit from an-y-bod-y … (I wonder if the South Park creators created that as a take off of that annoying ‘WWJD’ fad a few years ago. Annoying not because it was a bad idea, but because people tended to wear them just as tokens with absolutely no effort to actually let the principle guide them.)
I have to admit, I’m really getting attached to “7th Heaven,” to my great disgust at myself. The show is so saccharinely GOODY that it’d make Marsha Brady want to run off and become a biker chick. Everyone is so entirely above-board and honest with what they say, and self-realized, and … bleh. Yet its unabashed earnestness is somewhat appealing. Watching “7th Heaven,” I think I can understand why “The Brady Bunch” was a hit even way back when, when it wasn’t yet the ultimate statement of retro-kitsch.
I have yet to figure out whether I’m going to write anything on or about the one-year anniversary of September 11. Everyone else appears to be, and I don’t know as I have anything to say. I do know that right now, I fear for the future. I have thoughts that border on the bizarre and socially unacceptable, mostly distrustful of Bush. I found him to be a very corrupt man with a lot of extremely scary flaws during the campaign, and I found his illegal ascension to the Presidency to be extremely upsetting and scary — a honest-to-God coup d’etat thanks only to the slim Republican majority of the Supreme Court.
If September 11 hadn’t happened, I think it’s safe to say that there’s no blooming way in hell that Bush could have won the 2004 election. He’s a far more powerful candidate now in quote-unquote-”wartime”. And frankly, I wonder if he let it happen. It’s a horrible thing to accuse anyone of, and it’s awfully polemic, but it still strikes me as a real possibility. And now he’s going to go yee-ha all over the Middle East, and I think America stands the very real possibility of getting hurt. Bush has already nearly rent the Constitution in two with the Patriot Act. And there’s a lot more.
I wrote a year ago, “I just hope to God that this won’t be my remembrance of the start of a war.” I still find myself hoping that.
Huh. Guess I’m two days early …
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
A few random thoughts.
I’m very unimpressed with the interim version of WeatherPop Advance that was released … it occurs to me that they have written a program that is essentially a GUI around a perl wrapper for bandwidth hogging, and that’s why their “data source” disappeared; it’s presumably because Yahoo! Weather figured some way to programmatically block WeatherPop calls. Of course, all this is major conjecture.
I have been dealing with some sort of fever, I think. I don’t like putting a thermometer in my mouth and getting a concrete reading, especially because I never seem to register fevers well. But I have been having a lot of moments of fever-feeling and flushing and cold sweats and weakness over the last four or five or six days. Weird thing is that there are also times during the day when I feel pretty normal; it just seems to be morning and evening that I feel crappy. I was joking with someone that I probably have West Nile … symptoms for that are high fever, muscle ache, and conjunctivitis is listed as a possible one, and I have had some serious sleepywinkers … of course, I really don’t think I have West Nile, and if you were to go on pollen.com for Chi-town, you’d see our pollen count is incredibly high, which would totally explain the sleepywinkers and the nasty cold symptoms … 11.6 out of 12 or something akin. So it’s obviously some sort of allergies combined with a flu or cold bug that’s going ’round the office.
My computer’s gradually getting better from its big old crash. I’m customizing things here and there, and tonight I grabbed a lot of its old applications off the Internet. That “If You Don’t Have Mac OS X” entry turned out to help me out a LOT … ya never know when something meant to help others will come back and karmically help you out, y’know? A pleasant example of positive karma … don’t see many of those nowadays. I still have a rather long backlog of URLs I need to sort through, and my bookmark file is a mess, and the news and blogs I used to check out aren’t preloaded into my macro program …
God, that sounds geeky. It’s all just convenience combined with knowledge, folks. I don’t have a macro set up for the geekiness of having a macro, it’s so that I can turn on my computer when I get home, hit ONE key, and have my eight or nine favorite journals, news sites, etc. load up automatically. It’s convenience, combined with the knowledge to act on that convenience.
Anyway, I’m fading fast. I really hope this walking flu or cold or whatever it is leaves by the end of the weekend. I also hope the Weather Channel is right and WGN isn’t … I don’t want a 91-degree high on Sunday/Monday, I want the Weather Channel’s prediction of 82/81. Much more palatable.
My chair keeps making nastily little ka-CHINK noises. And I think I do need a new mattress and boxspring sooner than I thought: this might be a mid-September purchase. THere’s a rather nice interest-free plan that Marshall Fields offers with a store credit card: 25% down, and 75% in 12 monthly payments, all interest free. Good for a purchase like this.
G’night.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
(If you don’t get the title, imagine this guy saying it.)
A lot has happened over the last week or so, and I also have a few paragraphs jotted down here and there that I wanted to put into this journal. So this may not really have a very cohesive feeling to it, but we’ll see. It’s also an extremely, extremely long entry (as you may have been clued in by the title, duh).
* * * *
Well, that was one thing I wanted to talk about. Another was my finances. I wanted to share with you guys my financial goals. At the moment, I have right about $7,000 in credit card debt spread over three cards. I’m not too ashamed of that, because a healthy chunk of that was my move to Chicago, my security deposit, and my iMac, all things I derive a lot of pleasure and solid use from.
But my first and most important goal is to wipe those cards clean. As I’ve read in many places, it makes absolutely no sense to be saving money and having the bank pay you an infinitesimally small amount of interest each month, when credit card companies are charging you finance charges of 20% or more. A few months ago, I sat down with Quicken on a Saturday and did a very boring thing. I took a category called “charges” that I had, and separated them out into ATM fees, bank service charges, and credit card finance charges.
You ready for this? In the last year and a half, I had paid over two thousand dollars in finance charges alone. What I could have done with that money! (See below, actually.) And I just paid it to the credit card companies for the ‘privilege’ of paying only the minimum amount on my card each month.
So, instead, I’m going to be shooting big blasts of money at it from every middle-of-the-month paycheck. (My end-of-the-month paycheck is what I pay my rent and student loan payments from, so I can’t do too much with those paydays.) My first two cards are 19.99% and 19.15% — my third card is only about 10%, so obviously that’s going to be paid off last. And my student loans? Thanks to the beauty of the Department of Education, I’m paying only 3.81% on those. (Yeah, you read that right! Only three-point-eight-one bloody percent! Lovely, isn’t it?)
So, that’s my first goal. Get my cards cleaned off. That should take me a year and a half, I imagine. Possibly less depending on things like tax refunds. Possibly more depending on unplanned things that may become necessary, such as getting a new mattress and boxspring. We’ll see.
After that, I’m going to shift my student loans to the 10-year repayment plan. It’ll mean I’ll pay almost twice as much per month, but I’ll save well over $5,000 in interest and pay it off seven years sooner than I would have.
I also want to get a new Apple laptop computer and sell my old machine on eBay. That’ll depend on what Apple is charging at the time that I’m getting my new system, but that would run me in the vicinity of $1,800 for an iBook or $3,800 for a PowerBook nowadays.
I’d like to save up enough money to put a down payment on a condo, so my monthly ‘rent’ would be towards paying off a mortgage and owning property, instead of just going into some landlord’s pocket. It’d be nice if I could do this while interest rates are still so low, but I doubt I’ll be able to move that quickly. We’ll see how things are in late 2003 or early 2004.
Finally, I’d also like to save up $2,000 or $2,500 and stick it somewhere, like in a short-term certificate of deposit or a savings account, for emergencies.
* * * *
Speaking of financial goals, I took a peek into SaveKaryn.Com again. I mentioned her a few entries back; she’s this girl whose idea of financial responsibility is to panhandle over the Internet. I did a little bit of research into her, and she’s hidden herself extremely well. The only two “clues” I could pick up were opposing in nature.
In her favor, a reporter spoke with her grandfather and named his name and his town, and sure enough, there is someone living in that town by that name, according to Switchboard.
Actually … hm. I just did a Google search while writing this to try to track down that article’s URL (no luck, it must have been through the maze of links one finds in blogs), and when I did it, I found that evidently the Smoking Gun has outed her as Karyn Bosnak of Brooklyn, New York.
‘Eeep’ for her … but ‘mwa ha ha ha ha’ for those of us who aren’t fans of Ms. Bosnak or her site. I really like this open letter to her: “[Y]ou may rest assured that successful, intelligent women around the world are ready and happy to head over to your obnoxious little domain and kick your facetious, ignorant, arrogant little ass.”
Heh heh heh heh … catfight!
Karyn has so far rooked people out of $8,621.48, according to her site’s figures. If she’s legit, she’s paid $3,731.74 towards her debts herself — $1,593.56 in her own money and $2,138.18 through eBay sales. So, good for her in that respect. But still, 70% of her repayment has been funded by strangers. Frankly, I’d rather do it the hard way, and have pride in myself. $20,000 is one fucker of a debt, I acknowledge that, but stop panhandling, Karyn.
* * * *
My computer catastrophically crashed on Saturday night. I lost a lot of data. And I can’t even blame it on computers; only my own dense stupidity. Here’s the story …
So, with my August 15 paycheck, I purchased Mac OS 10.2 from the Apple Store and had them ship it to me. When you’re installing it, you’re given three choices. You can upgrade. That merely puts the new stuff on top of the old stuff. You can archive and install. That puts the old stuff to the side and puts the new stuff in its place. Or you can erase and install. That zaps the old stuff entirely — your whole hard drive — and makes your computer fresh. (A more concise explanation of the choices is here.)
At first, I upgraded. But there were little quirks and spasms that I didn’t care for, and, furthermore, I really wanted to sort of start from a fairly fresh slate. So I started backing up my hard drive onto CDs. In order to do this, I was using a Iomega ZipCD 650. As you’ll see in that hyperlinked article (also check the user comments), the burning process is very, very slow (because it’s USB). It took roughly 45 minutes to an hour per CD, I think. I backed up one CD successfully with some text files, sound effects, my e-mail, and a few other things. Then I tried the second CD, and tried it once. An error occurred during verification. I tried it again. It happened again. I tried burning it at a slower speed, and it hung during the “finishing” stage. By the time, I had created four “coasters,” it was 1:30 am.
By this time, I was very sleepy and very frustrated. I decided to do an Archive & Install (see above), instead of backing up my hard disk and then wiping it clean. So I started that installation process, and then noticed that I had forgotten to tell it not to install all the extraneous language files (Brazilian, Japanese, German, French, and so on). So … I told it to stop installing. D’oh!
It even warned me very significantly that doing so would screw up what I had on the disk, and, by this time nearly asleep, I ignored the warning. And when I rebooted the CD and started the installation over again, I saw that it was inviting me to either “erase and install” or to “install Mac OS X for the very first time.”
No upgrading available; no “archiving and installing” available. I had just wiped out my hard disk. *groaaaaan*
Fortunately, that one CD I had burnt had a lot of stuff I used every day: all of my e-mail for years and years, for example, which has strong sentimental value. And other stuff. But I still have to reinstall a lot of stuff from scratch, i.e., bookmarks, applications, and so on. Still, despite the major inconvenience, I think it’ll be good … I won’t load up the drive with crap I absolutely won’t be using. It’ll be inconvenient, don’t get me wrong, but I think the gradual ‘rebuilding’ process will leave a leaner, meaner computer, if you understand what I mean.
Still, in addition to a boxspring and mattress, I think that backup software and a faster, more reliable CD burner (48×12x48x instead of 4×4x6x) may need to get moved up pretty high on the ‘financial priorities’ list.
* * * *
“And … I’m spent.”
* * * *
Addendum, 8:29 pm: I just read L.A. Times article about Karyn. I am … grrrrr. Just read the last two paragraphs; I don’t even have the heart to relay the message. I think whatever supernatural entity is in charge of routing karma did a major, major screw-up here. She goes from a $100,000-a-year job to a $20,000 debt, gets 70% of it paid off by entire strangers, and then gets a “Today Show” interview and accompanying minor celebrity, and gets book, television, and film offers? I’m … I’m …. ARGH! FUCK!
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
So pissed off at the moment. Warning for my more genteel readers … profanity …
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,54678,00.html
The music industry’s trade association is asking a federal district court to force an Internet service provider to turn over private information for a subscriber, heating up the legal war between technology and entertainment companies.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-954591.html
Under the [No Electronic Theft] Act, signed by President Clinton in 1997, it is a federal crime to share copies of copyrighted products such as software, movies or music with anyone, even friends or family members, if the value of the work exceeds $1,000. Violations are punishable by one year in prison, or if the value tops $2,500, “not more than five years” in prison.
Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), said his industry would “welcome” prosecutions that send a message to song-swappers. “Some prosecutions that make that clear could be very helpful … I think they would think twice if they thought there was a risk of criminal prosecution,” said Sherman, who was on the same conference panel.
Christopher Cookson, executive vice president of Warner Bros. and another panelist, said there was “a need for governments to step in and maintain order in society.”
But, [Deputy Assistant Attorney General John] Malcolm said, criminal prosecutions can be much more effective in intimidating file-swappers who have little assets at risk in a civil suit. “Civil remedies are not adequate … [l]aw enforcement in that regard does have several advantages,” Malcolm said. “We have the advantage, when appropriate, of opening up and conducting multi-jurisdictional and international investigations.
Oh, sure, like we don’t have anything else more significant to be worrying about at the moment, you stupid bunch of fucks.
It’s not as if we haven’t heard a far more intelligent solution proposed.
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
http://www.janisian.com/article-fallout.html
“I mean something in the order of a quarter per song. I read a report recently showing that in the heyday of Napster, if record companies had agreed to charge just a nickel a download, they would have been splitting $500,000 a day, 24 hours a day, 52 weeks a year.”
To me, John Ashcroft, George Bush, and Dick Cheney are perhaps the most corrupt and vile people I have ever seen. I’m not saying Clinton was better, and I’m not too pleased with Gore. Frankly, I’m pretty disheartened and disillusioned with most of government nowadays, although my representative (Jan Schakowsky) seems pretty decent.
I am a Democrat and a liberal, but only because it is these parties and philosophies that closest embrace the simple fact of idealism. If I were to hear a Republican who was noble, respectable, not power-hungry, speak eloquently about why he believes Republicanism and conservatism is the way to go, well, damn, I’d respect him for it.
Like I’ve said, it’s not that I disrespect Republicans. For example, Colin Powell is a good man. But Bush and Ashcroft, they are dangerous, dangerous closed-minded men, men secure in the absolute certainty of the righteousness of their worldview, men who believe in stark fundamentalist absolutes and who are wielding more sheer power than any other President and Attorney General ever have.
God, I can’t fucking wait until the 2004 election campaigns begin, and I hope the Democrats grow a set of balls before then.
Can you tell I’m pissed?
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
Home with a bit of a fever and cold symptoms that basically took my energy reserves and wiped ‘em out. I feel a bit better after sleeping about twelve hours after downing some NyQuil.
I’m cheating a bit … most of the message was written over the weekend, and it’s one of those ‘hodgepodge of links’ sessions …
* * * *
Did you know that you can sing the lyrics to “Gilligan’s Island” to the tune of “Amazing Grace”? Try it yourself:
Just sit right back
and you’ll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful ship,
that started on
this tropic isle,
aboard this tiny ship.
(Amazing grace,
how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost,
but now am found,
was blind but now I see.)
And so on. It works for a while. Picked that up off a blog I was reading, although I can’t remember which one. Speaking of that, the links at the very bottom of this page have been modified. You read me? Well, I read them. And they’re some of the finest writers and bloggers out there, in my opinion. Check ‘em out.
One of them I want to particularly draw attention to is Davezilla, who got one of those ridiculous cease-and-desist letters, this time from Toho, owners of the “Godzilla” trademark. They’re claiming that using the suffix “-zilla” is a violation of their copyright. They’ve tried this before without success. I wish companies would realize that sending cease-and-desist letters about stuff like this is not a good thing for them …
You should go check out Blode and Food, and the other Flash animations Joel Veitch has thought up. They’re really quite funny. I keep humming “Feed the Food … find Food Feed to feed fine Food …”. I know, you’re looking at me like I’m crazy. Go watch episode 4 and you’ll know what I mean. (To give you a clue, I now have a remix of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid playing on iTunes.)
By the way … elephants, yeah!
Blogdex is a very cool way of finding out quickly what people are linking to. It indices what 13,475 sites are linking to, so you get a good sense of it.
Filed in
Main with
Comments Off
I’ve not written a journal entry since the end of July, and I’ve not really written anything deeply personal since July 24. I suppose I’m just not really very communicative lately.
I know that part of it is the heat. The apartment that I live in has very old windows. A few years ago, my parents gave me their window unit, because the house they moved into had central air conditioning. I suspect that either the unit broke while they were driving it out (on an unrelated trip to see me), or that my apartment can’t really use a window unit. I really wouldn’t be surprised if it was the latter. My apartment’s windows are in awful shape and in sore need of replacement. I think it’s quite possible all the cool air just goes right around the frame and outside. And I’m not about to go buy a $400 window unit with enough BTUs to cool a studio apartment if it will be similarly useless. So, I’m going to suffer through the heat, and probably move next April to a newer building.
There are two things that I really need to buy. I think I need to perhaps save up for a little bit and purchase a new mattress and boxspring. It looks to be a bit pricier than I had expected though, in the vicinity of $400-600. For that kind of money, I’ll wait until September or October and see if the bad sleep is resulting from the heat and humidity or a bad mattress. I’m fairly sure that I’m detecting a significant sag in the middle of the mattress, and I’ve owned it for probably about nine years, so it probably is due for replacement. Still, I really would rather pay $600 towards a credit card that’s accumulating hefty monthly finance charges (19.99% and 19.15%, ouch!) than spend that on a
