***Dave Does the Blog

What, Me, Worry?

Later this week, I am flying off on business.

And two weeks later, another flight.

I do not know how many people I've heard at my office say something like, "I'm not flying. It's way too scary. Why take the risk? Who knows what might happen?"

Who indeed?

Well, according to the US Department of Transportation, in 1999, United Airlines alone had 776,815 scheduled flights take off. United Airlines alone carried 80,283,411 passengers.

Those odds are so long as to be meaningless. I mean, that's lightning strike odds. Getting run over by an ice cream truck odds. Being mistaken for some pin-up and stalked and axe-murdered odds.

Like I said, I'm more worried about whether I can carry enough books to last me through the security checkpoints. Really.

4:39 PM  •  2 comments

Yeah, That's The Ticket

Mile High Stadium -- er, I mean Invesco Field at Mile High -- is banning backpacks, coolers, things like that.

Security measures. Of course.

I suppose the resulting increase in food and drink purchased on-site never entered into their minds.

Naw.

4:07 PM  •  0 comments

Signal, Meet Noise

A bunch of people have decided to spoof search engines. This is nothing new -- it is a long, if universally condemned, tradition to try to draw people to your (commercial) site by throwing as much attractive chaff -- including the names of competitors -- into your META lines as possible.

But these folks are after something different, from what I can tell through their blogs.

Either they are doing it in a jolly, silly desire for hits.

Or they are doing it to basically make searches for some subjects virtually unusable.

The most common form of this new effort is some sort of stream-of-consciousness story that ties in all of these searchable words and phrases. These might be famous movie stars, folks who are common searches for unclothed downloads, famous TV commercial personalities of either the talk show or infomercial kind, the names of popular TV shows, or the sorts of tag lines that are usually found only in the blacklist of applications like PopUp Killer.

You'll notice I'm not quoting here.

Now, don't get me wrong. These are often amusing.

And obviously I don't have any problems with folks trying to get hits for their page. Legitimately.

Call me a stick-in-the-mud. Call me a curmudgeon. Call me a History Major. I just don't like flooding signal with noise, at least not for fun, and even not usually for malice. The Truth Will Make You Free. Diddling with search engines just strikes me too much like tearing pages out of books in the library. Or rearranging the books. Or rearranging the card catalog.

Maybe there's not a good reason for people to be seaching for some late-night-TV psychic. But I don't feel qualified to make that judgment for others.

That sounds really goofy. Maybe it is just that I'm a stick-in-the-mood.

(That's what I actually wrote. Should be -mud, of course. But maybe that's a better choice of words.)

3:59 PM  •  0 comments

The Write Stuff

Doyce inquires (via an inquiry by Juli -- glad she's back to trying to post regularly, I'll have to put her in the link list) why people blog. Or, more particularly, why some people blog so much (cough), and others either shy away from the whole idea, or else start one, and then it quickly withers with that first (or maybe even second) post.

I can't speak for why folks don't blog. But here's why I do it.

Actually, I think I tried answering this shortly after I started doing bloggy stuff. Let's see what I think now.

Flying skies getting friendlier

Or at least marginally easier to get to.

Saturday's Rocky had an article to follow up the preceding day's, basically indicating getting through security should be much easier. Express lanes (one purse/briefcase/backpack, though not laptop bags). Signs suggesting that people empty their pockets before they get to the front of the line.

It does still sound like more of a hassle (e.g., they're checking all laptops, which would then apply to practically every business trip I take), but that's okay -- I expect it to be more of a hassle than it has been.

2:12 PM  •  0 comments

I am getting sleepy ... sleepy ...

Long weekend. Looooongggg weekend.

Good. But long.

Largely because the balance between "awake" and "asleep" was unduly skewed toward the former, largely as a result of Our Little Miss Noisemaker.

More after I get some inspiration. Plenty to talk about, but not enough brain cells awake to actually make it all gel.

2:00 PM  •  0 comments

"Autumn" sounds so much more romantic

So I'm out front watering the potted plants there, and I notice something.

There are a lot of leaves on the ground.

A lot of leaves.

I look around. The obvious explanation is, as usual, the giant cottonwood between our neighbor's house and ours.

But all the cottonwood's leaves are green.

Well, duh. The yellow ones are all on the ground.

Like I said, I like autumn. But fall sucks.

2:04 PM  •  0 comments

Why do they hate us? For stupid reasons.

From the below-mentioned Victory Blog, a Sunday Times of London article with a very different view than what you might be hearing elsewhere ("elsewhere" including, occasionally, "here"):

So at the most basic level America is loathed simply because she's on top. The world leader is always trashed simply for being the leader. The terms of the trashing are remarkably consistent. Nineteenth-century Germans, Lind points out, responded to Britain's dominance by saying, in effect, "they may be rich but we have soul". That is exactly what many Europeans and all anti-Americans are now saying: we're for God or culture or whatever against mammon. This is inaccurate - America has more soul, culture and a lot more God than any of her critics - but it is the predictably banal rhetoric of envy.

12:06 PM  •  0 comments

Is irony dead?

A good article from the Victory Blog.

If anything, this might be a rebirth of irony -- the irony of Voltaire and Swift. Engaged. Witty. And above all, deeply passionate about their beliefs. It's humor that surrounds a moral core, and lampoons deserving targets instead of whatever's closest to hand.

(Via Xcot)

11:42 AM  •  0 comments

Fly the Friendly Skies ... if you can get to them

The Rocky Mountain News has an article this morning about life at Denver International.

Four hours. That's how long in advance they suggest people arrive.

Urg.

Of course, a lot of this is while new processes are getting shaken out with both the security staff and the passengers. Still ...

Naturally, some people are bitching. One person lined up notes, "This is not how you stimulate the economy, having all the salesmen in the country waiting in line, not making deals. There is probably not a person here who wouldn't have paid an extra $40 to not have this line. They tell us to get back to normal, come out and fly. I'm stuck here for four hours. Tell them to get back to normal."

Now, this is a guy is a VP from Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch. Didn't they have a bunch of people killed in the WTC attack? Sheesh.

And what's with the "$40"? Security through folding money? "Hey, you don't need to see my driver's license, but I have here are a couple of photo IDs of Andy Jackson, if you know what I mean?" Sheesh.

Driving home this morning, someone on the radio was saying that they're setting up an "express lane" for those people not carrying on any baggage (though, oddly, it's not clear how a "purse" differs from a "carry-on"), and this seems to be speeding up things for folks who can do that.

Still ... I've got two business trips coming up in the next few weeks. Know what? I'm not worried about flaming death and destruction in the air. I'm worried about being able to carry enough books with me to make it through the line.

10:13 AM  •  0 comments

The Net's First "Enterprise" Slash Fiction

The Brunching Shuttlecocks strike again. Slash fiction is always kind of ... disturbing. This, though, is damned funny.

6:46 AM  •  0 comments

Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell: 'We Expected Eternal Paradise For This,' Say Suicide Bombers

Immense entertainment from the Onion. The whole issue is pretty funny, which I suppose is a healthy thing.

It's hard to feel guilty about this, though I keep thinking I should. Ah, well ... those wanting something more wholesome from the issue can try God Angrily Clarifies "Don't Kill" Rule.

5:32 PM  •  0 comments

"Mark me up, Scotty."

You never know what might come in handy.

When I was in college, we all did stuff on the college mainframe. PCs didn't come in until after I graduated, scarily enough.

Most people who wanted to "word process" used a text editor. We used one called EDGAR (since it was a VM/CMS system). This was sort of like word processing with Notepad, except without line wrap.

Those who were Privileged could make use of Waterloo Script. This was a markup language written and made available through the U. of Waterloo in Canada. WScript was cool. You could type ".pp" in front of a bunch of text and, voila, when you processed it out through the virtual spooler to the virtual printer, it came out as a formatted, justified paragraph. Yowzers!

There were, of course, far more commands than just that. And it had a macro language, so that you could create a set of elaborate markup tags to do tables of contents, standard MLA formatting, all sorts of keen things.

By Privileged above, I meant faculty. And, of course, the computer center staff. Using the mainframe for word processing by students was exceedingly frowned upon as a frivolous use of a valuable resource, which resource, if we absolutely must extend it beyond the faculty, really should be used only by Science and Math undergrads anyway.

Consider the butterfly-in-the-Amazon impacts of the above apparently irrelevant bits of info above.

Because I wanted to learn more how to use the text editor to word process, I wrote a series of online help files for EDGAR. That brought me to the attention of the Computer Center Powers That Were.

Because I was a History major, and someone had the brilliant idea that maybe they were emphasizing use of the computer for just Math and Science majors a bit too much, I was offered a post-grad internship at the Computer Center.

Because someone else was already going to be heading up the student consultant staff, I was offered the Systems Programmer internship.

Because of that, I ended up working in the computer biz as a career, rather than going on into academa or becoming a personnel manager somewhere.

Also because of that, I landed a job at my employer of the last 17 years.

And also because of my internship, I got to learn Waterloo Script. Which meant I got introduced to markup languages.

Which made my learning how to do HTML a whole heck of a lot easier, conceptually. Since HTML is, too, a markup language (that's the "ML" part of it).

Which is how it is I'm able to do this blog.

You never know what might come in handy.

3:54 PM  •  0 comments

Starbucks Apologizes for Water Flap

This, kids, is what is known as Bad Publicity. Don't let this happen to you.

Of course, I'm more amazed that the rescue workers could not simply walk across the street to yet another Starbucks.

(Via Quiddity)

3:40 PM  •  0 comments

"Beam me up, Scotty."

Fun news article on still more quantum teleportation advances.

Anything that Einstein referred to as "spooky" has got to be fun.

(via Xkot)

3:31 PM  •  0 comments

'Why do they hate us?'

An interesting (and sobering) look at how a variety of people around the Muslim world perceive the United States and its actions.

3:06 PM  •  0 comments

Enterprise

Note that, if you missed it last night, the following contains some SPOILERS.

::: The Good :::

• Solid casting. Bakula fits the role well, and the other parts, though only sketchily filled in thus far, look good.
  
• Good design work. This looks like a more primative ship (at least on the inside). The technology is more Buck Rogers than Next Generation.
  
• Nice sfx. This has some of the better work I've seen in a show of this sort. Natch, since it's the newest of the breed, but, still ...
  
• Human writing. This is not the plastic of TNG, the melodrama of TOS, or even the tired piecework of Voyager. In some ways, it reminded me of the first few seasons of DS9, with cultural politics playing (realistically) a role as big as technology in how the action progresses.
  
• Respect for the past. There were echoes from TOS (the ever-burgeoning Rigel system) and from ST: First Contact. Nothing happened that made me scratch my head and say, "Hey, if they could do that then, why couldn't Kirk do that later?" (That's going to be one of the most difficult problems for them to juggle.)
  
• Arc-y goodness. Who's the mysterious figure from the (I assume) future? From what I've heard, that whole underlying plot will be a major one. There were hints at the foundations of the Federation. There was stuff occuring -- not a lot, but at least some -- to make me think that it will be more than a series of hour-long episodes.
  
• Minimal technoglibness. Nobody mentioned tetrions. Not once. We are truly blessed.
  
• Nice montage of images during the main titles. Very evocative of the sense of adventure and advancements they're trying to build here.

• Sketchy history. When last we left Earth and Z. Cochrane, human civilization was on the ropes. Now we've conquered war, hunger, and, oh yeah, cleaned up San Francisco, all in a relatively short time (and all while funding a major space program). Sure, the Vulcans might have helped. Sure, having a common goal of space might have helped. It still seems convenient. I hope we learn more.
  
• Foolish inconsistencies. The Klingon homeworld is only 80 hours, at Warp 4.5, from Earth? It's a Small Universe After All.
  
• Convenient personality shifts. I didn't buy the way the Vulcan science officer changed her mind about the mission. It was sloppy writing.
  
• A dumb ending. Earth's first (and only) real starship. A major mission. A visit to distant worlds. A big battle. "Oh, never mind -- go ahead and do some more exploring while you're out there. It's not like you could just pop back here for repairs and debriefing in -- oh, 80 hours."

• The Vulcans know more than the Humans. How long will the "We know but we won't tell you" schtick play before it becomes a real pain? Conversely, how long will the "Okay, we'll tell you, but only because it will resolve this plot obstacle" (reconfiguring the sensors to track the plasma phase shift hoohah) schtick play before it becomes the equivalent of Geordi figuring out a new way to reallign the tetrion fields?
  
• I'm not sure how much sniggering we can stand about alien sex.
  
• Why the rush to introduce phasers? It would have been nice either to continue using the (apparently effective) plasma guns, or (if we want a way to "stun" folks) have phaser technology already present.
  
• How many years will it be before the main title music sounds really dated? The quasi-classical bits from the most recent three series will hold up for quite some time, and the TOS theme, while heavy on the 60s tones, is iconic. In ten years, this will simply sound like a 90s guitar ballad.

(On a side note, I am more than a little concerned that the only thing that UPN could figure out to advertise from its schedule during Enterprise was (surprise) Buffy. The same two or three commercials, repeated near-endlessly -- and not very good commercials, at that. True, they were somewhat less annoying than the also-oft-repeated Sprint PCS commercials, but, really, folks -- do you have that few advertisers, and that few shows worth pluggling?)

6:40 AM  •  0 comments

The View from Across the Pond

The Register is my favorite computer trade (on-line) journal. Here's their take on some of the IT-related issues in the current DoJ anti-terrorism proposals.

(See -- you knew I'd eventually get back to serious stuff.)

3:35 PM  •  0 comments

Hoo. Dee. Frickin'. Hoo.

Courtesy of my employer's broadband connection (and a download of QT5, since QT4 won't hack it), I am now the proud "owner" of the 30Mb trailer to Lord of the Rings. (Both the trailer in various sizes and a static scene-by-scene are available at the site.) This trailer ran on Angel on Monday, but now I can play it and play it and play it some more until Margie bludgeons me with whatever she can find.

In the words of the Knights of the Dinner Table, Hoody-hoo.

A typical trailer of flashing images, each building more and more excitement. The calm of the Shire. The menace of Sauron (though I never pictured him embodied, clearly he must have had at least one finger at some point). The pursuing Ringwraiths. Endless, marching armies of evil. The hobbits (and the "reduction" technology looks like it's going to work, folks). Gandalf (Ian McKellan looks like he is going to rock in this role). Galadriel (looking as etherially powerful and beautiful as I could have imagined). The Fellowship itself. The pursuit by the agents of Sauron (birds swooping overhead as the Fellowship dives for cover). The Western Doors to Moria (and what rises from the pool). The interiors of Moria (stunning in their decay, their grandeur, their detail, be it a corridor, the Hall of Records, the Great Hall, or the Bridge). Orcs. Trolls. Cruel Caradhras. Arwen (and I'm willing to bend enough to see more of Arwen than in the books). And a fleeting glimpse of the Balrog.

Oh, and Gandalf. Did I mention Gandalf? Some great Gandalf.

And the rest of the cast looks pretty awesome (when not awesomely pretty), too.

The movie opens 19 December, which is right before when we leave for California for the Holidays.

I'm already trying to figure out how to take an extra day off to see it that day.

11:51 AM  •  0 comments

Randy's Amber Page

Randy has some extraordinarily nice things to say about the Amber campaign I ran him in over a year ago (the end of which coincided, no coincidence, with Katherine's birth). He notes, "Among many other fine GMing qualities, Dave does the best Dworkin I've seen." Since Dworkin was just so bloody fun to do (and though the players were forever irritated at his oracular obtuseness, they always seemed to enjoy it when he showed up), it's a very nice complement.

Keep it up, guy, and you'll get me back in the GM saddle sooner rather than later.

10:55 AM  •  0 comments

Get a Chinese Name

This is fun. I'm Huang Tuwei (the Path to Calm). Who'da thunk?

(via Doyce)

10:00 AM  •  0 comments

On the lighter side

I am not unaware that a number of the posts below have been -- well, if not gloomy, then unrelentingly serious.

Well, these are serious times.

Which makes alleviating that seriousness all the more important.

My world, and welcome to it ... The environment is a reflection of the occupant, and in turn the occupant is a reflection of the environment. Read on and learn.

In my office is a book case. Well, there are more than one, but I'm looking at the tall one on the other side of my desk. Given its position, it's my "show, not use" book case.

On the top is my "museum of old computer stuff." A 286 motherboard. A 20Mb hard drive. A 2400b modem. A 720k floppy drive. A very early Microsoft mouse (with a steel ball).

I an historian at heart. I would never throw these things away. They are now cool.

Also on top is my Construction Safety Equipment Because I Work For An Engineering Firm, Dammit. That includes two hard hats and a pair of safety goggles.

Also, there's a Birth Day picture of Katherine in a cute little "daughter" frame.

And a Jacobs frisbee.

And a clock whose battery wore down about nine months ago.

Understand me better now?

I'll save the other shelves for another time.

9:00 AM  •  0 comments

Treading carefully

The Justice Department is pressing for expanded powers after 9-11. That's only natural -- we all want to find a way to be safer than we currently are.

That having been said, there are serious concerns over some of the proposals being made, and how they may have effects beyond nailing the bastards who did this, or preventing others from doing the same. Effects on our liberties.

Privacy djinni are very difficult to put back in the bottle after they've been opened. I'm a lot less concerned about privacy issues than a lot of folks, but I am concerned that the government is rushing to judgment and action right now without really thinking through what they're doing. Even if you don't really think that there are Evil Fascist Big Brothers out there just waiting to Tune Into Your E-mail and Turn You Into a Slave, it's worth considering what expanded law enforcement and surveillance laws we pass will actually allow to happen.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is one of the few truisms we have today. Along with the military truism that you don't plan to what your opponents will do, you plan to what they can do.

Click on the link in the post title to send a fax or e-mail to your Congressfolk, expressing your concern. It goes through the very efficent (and easy) ACLU site, and you can tailor your statement as you wish.

I'm heartened by some of the concerns I heard from Congressfolk yesterday on the radio. Let's make sure they know there are concerns out here in the rest of the nation, too.

8:45 AM  •  0 comments

Where are the heroes?

Back when this was all coming down (literally) on 9-11, I asked what the heck the comic book creators would do. This week, I began to find out.

I subscribe to the Comics Buyer's Guide, a weekly tabloid that has various articles on the comics industry, history, etc. Yesterday the first issue written since 9-11 came out.

Lots of personal stories. The comics industry is still centered in NYC, so people knew people in danger.

And lots of the beginnings of "So, where to now?" Lots of pictures of the (twin) Luthor Towers in Metropolis, damaged during the recent "Worlds at War" story line. The Superman comic with the most chilling panels of this was published on 12 September.

The most poignant of the articles was Peter David's "But I Digress" column. I'm prejudiced here, because I think David is a vastly entertaining writer. He's one of the few guys I'll pick up whatever they're writing and try it out. He writes comics. He writes franchise fiction (including some of the best Star Trek books out there, not to mention some nifty B5). He writes original fiction. He writes television. And he's got a wicked sense of humor, and a way of slipping in something serious, even profound, when you least expect it.

His BID column is really one of the reasons I subscribed to CBG. He (wisely) does not post it on the Internet. If he did, I suspect that CBG would lose a good quarter of its subscribers.

David's column this week intersperses how this affected his family life with vignettes about what would have happened in a comic book world. Batman taking the hijackers down in the airport parking lot. And the people are safe. Another group of terrorists discovering that boxcutters are no match for Wolverine, who happens to be on their plane. And the people are safe. Superman, rushing to the scene of the first plane crash into the WTC, snuffing the flames, spotting the second plane, and lifting it away until he can tear his way onboard and resolve the situation. And the people are safe.

I'll quote the last bit.

The President, grim-faced, sits in front of the Great Seal of the United States. "We have been attacked on American soil by great evil," he says grimly into the TV camera. "But I promise you, my fellow Americans, that those who perpetrated this deed will be punished immediately ... and swiftly. The Luthor administration will bring them to justice. You have my personal assurance, for I ... Lex Luthor ... your president ... always pays America's debts."

And somewhere a pack of terrorists laughs at the obvious American rhetoric ... until a roar of rockets alerts them that something's wrong. They're on their feet, but it's too late for them to flee, as men in flying armored suits, with the letters "LL" stamped on them, smahs in from everywhere. The terrorists are rounded up in seconds, to be brought before a world court that Luthor will oversee. They will be convicted. They will be executed -- and Luthor will make certain that the Eighth Amendment is repealed so that cruel and unusual punishments can be implemented.

And the people are not safe -- but they are avenged.

If comic books are morality plays, if they are fantasies in which the conflicts and struggles of the modern world are played out with metaphors and avatars of the human spirit, then it will be very interesting to see what happens some months from now, when the actual comic books written after 9-11 start coming out.

Stay tuned.

7:10 AM  •  0 comments

Predictions

I'm really bad at predictions, of figuring out what's going to happen next in the movie I'm watching or the book I'm reading (or the game I'm playing in). I tend to take things on face value, as they come along.

(Margie, it must be noted, regularly figures these sorts of things out way before I do. "Oh, it's Ben." "Huh?" "Ben. He's the figure they saw by the boat house." "Wait, the boat house? Ben?" "Yup.")

So bear that in mind as I go through the following.

I've been reading a fair amount of consternation about the massive US military build-up near Afghanistan. The consensus of everyone from the doves to the folks who know anything about Afghanistan is that we've more than enough ordinance there already, and there are so few targets to throw it at that we're only going to make "the rubble bounce."

So is it all just meant as saber-rattling? As a public show for the folks back home? As a delaying method while we figure out where to hit?

Karnak the Magnificent predicts ... we're targeting Iraq.

Consider. There have been a number of shadowy, downplayed reports that indicate that Iraq may have been a (if not the) key player in the 9-11 attacks. They certainly have the motivation to do so, both for revenge and to pull some of the pressure off of them (depending on how things went with Afghanistan, Iraq could offer to assist in return for eased sanctions, or, more likely, try to rally the Muslim world around its own cause as an extension of the Afghan conflict). And they've certainly showed the callous disregard for life to pull something like 9-11 off.

The biggest problem in the US dealing with Iraq, though, is that there's been increasing lack of interest (officially) in the Gulf for taking further action, or even maintaining the embargo regimen in place. And to really do a job on Iraq would require a slow, massive military build-up in the region which would be both obvious and lengthy, and give the Iraqis plenty of time to play all the diplomatic demogoguery cards they could.

A slow, massive military build-up.

After which, we can (relatively) turn on a dime and hit whomever we're intending to hit, assuming they are the sorts who can be hit with the armada assembled.

What exactly is being discussed behind closed doors during the US' diplomatic full-court press? What evidence is being presented? Is bin Laden really the target? The primary target? Is there a reason why we're still only referring to him as "the prime suspect"? Is there a reason why very few people are talking about Iraq? Or why there's been a remarkably heavy veil of secrecy over exactly what we're going to try to do?

Like I said, my Predict-o-meter is not terribly reliable. Take this with a grain of salt. Your Mileage May Vary. Void Where Prohibited.

6:43 AM  •  0 comments

Name That Tune

A note from a friend regarding the Clear Channel (informal) no-play list:

"I guess we can all be thankful that none of the planes that crashed were loaded with illegal drugs piloted by porn stars or we wouldn't have any songs left to play on the radio at all."

2:16 PM  •  0 comments

What's in a name?

U.S. Renames Buildup 'Operation Enduring Freedom'.

12:49 PM  •  0 comments

You can sit next to me any time

An informative article from the Christian Science Monitor on the Sky Marshals program.

11:49 AM  •  0 comments

Can't tell your players without a program

An interesting New York Times article (courtesy of Yahoo) about who the "Northern Alliance" is, and who the other players in Afghanistan are that are being courted. I do worry, of course, that in our efforts to throw out the Taliban (who, frankly, regardless of whether they are bin Laden's best friends or worst enemies, are eminently worth of being thrown out) that we'll end up with yet another group perceived to be a US puppet and who turn out to be less-than-worthy rulers. Happened before, way too many times.

8:48 AM  •  0 comments

News as it ought to be

Actually, it would get boring kind of fast. But I think we could all use some boredom.

(via bornfamous)

9:31 PM  •  0 comments

This season of Angel brought to you by ...

Many thanks to Doyce for his Herculean efforts to get us All Caught Up on Angel, so that we could watch this evening's season premiere with a clean conscience.

He made the comment the other day that some folks who watch Seventh Heaven might be in for a bit of a shock when, seeing the "cute" title of following show, stay tuned to Angel. I think it will only be matched by the angst I expect to go through each week catching the last few minutes of Seventh Heaven before tuning into what follows it. Bleah.

Made up for, of course, by the kick-ass LOTR trailer.

On the other hand, is anyone else getting a wee bit tired of the "patriotic" station IDs now showing up on-screen all the time?

On the other hand, that was one KICK-ASS LORD OF THE RINGS TRAILER.

Do I have to repeat that again? I suspect I will.

8:58 PM  •  0 comments

Making blog is hard to do

Okay, after this morning's gloom, doom, and general bad-moodiness, let's try something different.

Walking into my office this morning, I saw the trees were beginning to turn. The locusts right in front of the office, and the maples off to the side, beginning to be dusted with lemon yellow amidst the green.

Driving in, I felt a slight coolth to the air, even though the radio was nattering about warmer-than-usual weather for a few days.

In back, a couple of cottonwood branches have turned lemondrop, and the Japanese maple is tipped in brownish red.

It's autumn, one of my two favorite seasons here.

Growing up in California, what I always heard most from immigrants out of the rest of the Lower 48 was wailing and moaning about the lack of seasons. They always followed up by noting that they enjoyed the year-round warmth and sunshine, but there was always as well a certain prettier-than-thou wistfulness about spring and autumn.

They were right.

In the fall, things slowly go to sleep. The days become cool and crisp. The leaves turn glorious colors, then fall away. It's a time for getting ready for the winter, blowing out sprinklers, planting bulbs for the spring, and enjoying the change.

I like winter, too. The California Boy enjoys the snow here, except when I have to drive in it with my feather-weight Saturn.

But autumn is special. Colors. A bit of meditative "things are changing, things are dying, this too shall pass" about it. Time goes by, and you can see it happening.

Spring is my favorite, of course. As bits and pieces begin to leaf out, to bloom. The zillions of bulbs we've planted over the past several years begin burst forth, daffodil yellows and iris purples and whatever else we plugged in there.

Still, I do like the autumn.

I think we can use the change.

6:47 PM  •  0 comments

Student Suspended Over Suspected Use of PHP

An oldie but a goodie, esp. having converted this page to PHP last week.

2:44 PM  •  0 comments

Okay, here's something to cheer about.

Trailer for the new Justice League cartoon coming in November. Cool.

11:19 AM  •  0 comments

Pay no attention to the man behind the keyboard

I'm grouchy today. Try to ignore the irritated, irked, and otherwise gloomy nature of this morning's posts.

9:54 AM  •  0 comments

Afghanistan Is Like Nothing You've Ever Seen, Soviet Vets Say

A rather sobering tale. The Soviets had their own problems, of course. But, still ....

9:15 AM  •  0 comments

"Back in time"

Spacecheese.com reports on the screwball editing of Back to the Future on TV.

Puh-leaze, people.

7:46 AM  •  0 comments

The Gorilla Cage

The Denver Zoo has large, elaborate enclosures for its gorillas and orangutans. Big, elaborate frameworks for them to climb on, and lots of "toys" down on the ground -- often such simple things as cardboard boxes and other things that the big apes can pick up, carry around, tear apart, etc.

That's our family room. Katherine's MO is to pick things up, carry them around, drop them, and, if possible, tear them apart. Clean up the floor, and within an hour there's stuff scattered in all directions again.

Little Miss Entropy.

Life in the gorilla cage ....

7:22 AM  •  0 comments

I get angry

Yup. Yet another angry political post thing. You've been warned.

Reading the Denver Post op-ed pages (you remember, the ones Margie doesn't like me reading because of my blood pressure?), I ran across the following inane remarks from a columnist whose name I will not mention:

"It makes me wonder whether this newfound patriotism will move Democrats to now support legislation to protect Old Glory from being dishonored by some of their addled constituents."

Well, that answers the question I raised a few days ago about Flag Burning. Aside from the insult that it's Democrats burning the flag, or that the folks doing it are automatically to be considered addled, the question is meaningless because the flag is a symbol, not the values it symbolizes. Seeing a flag burned torques me off. But I'd rather be torqued off than tell people they cannot make that sort of political statement, any more than I'd tell the columnist in question that he cannot write such tripe.

"I feel certain we will hear from the anti-war movement again. We may even see our cities awash once more in armies of angry young men and women unwilling to shed a drop of blood to defend the United States of America, land of their birth."

By equating those who oppose war, or specific wars, or even specific acts of war, with moral cowardice and an unwillingness to sacrifice for this country and its people, the columnist engages in just the sort of knee-jerk reactionary dialog that makes anti-war protests necessary, even where I don't agree with them.

"I'm concerned that when casualties do roll in, the appeasers and partisan politicians who are determined to undermine the president will make moves to confirm to our enemies that America is indeed a decadent nation."

I am sometimes concerned that we are still so casualty-shy from Viet Nam that we've let those fears warp and weaken our foreign and military policy of the last decades, that we've taken the easy course of bombing and missile attacks, with their collateral damage and relative ineffectiveness, so that we don't have to face the horror of American soldiers dying "on foreign soil," lest it call into question what we're doing in the first place.

That having been said, to call those who are concerned over whether such sacrifice of life is necessary "appeasers," and to chalk up the rest of it to "partisan politics" and people who are just out to "undermine the president" is a maddening case of black-or-white thinking. It is possible to oppose the President's policies without being a weakling, without beint a traitor, without wanting to give in to terror. I do think that we are called upon, to some degree, to stand together as a nation in a time of crisis. But that can only take us so far. We do not, as ancient Rome did, elect a dictator during national emergencies so that policy can be made unimpeded by the voices of dissent and debate. We remain a democracy, and a land of values, freedoms, and diversity.

Will there be those who use these perilous times as a means of gaining political or social or financial advantage? Certainly, but they'll pop up on both sides of the fence, without a doubt. It's already happening. Using national anger and a desire to Do Something, Dammit, as a tool to silence debate is unworthy of the ideals, of the "freedom," that some of the most jingoistic sound-biters are yammering about.

And which, by the by, the flag stands for.

Okay, enough ranting for the day. Time to flee to mindless entertainment.

12:03 PM  •  0 comments

Arab-Americans kicked off NWA flight

Do you think the ignorant assholes on this flight would have changed their mind if they'd known this is exactly the sort of division and "us against them" that folks like Osama bin Laden want?

Nah.

"The men say they feel depressed and very discriminated against." I can certainly relate the the former of those emotions.

9:00 AM  •  0 comments

Something to bear in mind

Margie forwarded me a quotation cited by the CEO of her company in a memo to all employees.

"You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."
   -- Gandhi

4:24 PM  •  0 comments

words mean things - photography

Adam's posted some basic tips for photography. There are a lot of folks who should be required to read these before every snapshot they take.

4:19 PM  •  0 comments

Synchronicity

I've been reading William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade, his autobiography/expose of his screenwriting career. It's really a good book -- a bit dated as far as names go, but still an entertaining description of how Hollywood works.

So over the last few days I've been reading the section of the book on Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, a movie I've never seen.

And this morning, on the History Channel -- an examination of the movie from an historical perspective.

That goes right along with my earlier this week having read his section on the making of A Bridge Too Far and then running across, also on the History Channel, a "History's Blunders" on Operation Market-Garden.

Weird.

(Actually, what's weird was that I read the screenplay, knowing Robert Redford and Paul Newman starred, but not knowing who played which role. I got it the wrong way around, which made seeing some film clips of the actual movie -- a bit surreal.)

10:18 AM  •  0 comments

The horror! The horror!

No, not really.

I think one of the things that helps humans be human is our ability to lose our focus on what's really important now and again. I mean, with War and Rumors of War, with the events of Red Tuesday still burning in our memories, what could possibly be worth worry and angst and anger than all of that?

Well, how about the incredible inconvenience of our main remote control no longer operating the TV correctly.

We've got several of the wretched beasties.

• The AT&T Cable Box remote: This puppy is our main one. It controls the cable box, but also (until the last week) controlled the TV and VCR, too.
  
• The RCA TV remote: This guy controls the TV and the VCR, and can actually channel up/down the cable box (though that's not very useful). It's also critical for changing the TV input so that we can play the DVD.
  
• The RCA VCR remote: This one controls the TV and VCR, too. It's also critical for programming the VCR.
  
• The Sony DVD remote: This one controls the DVD (duh), but can also control the volume on the TV.
  
• The Generic remote: We bought these (we ended up with two of them, for a variety of reasons) a long time ago. They control the TV and VCR, but not anything else. We took the batteries out of one of them and gave it to Katherine in a vain hope that she wouldn't want to play with, eat, or lose the others. Hah!

This really sucks. I mean, screw the war, to hell with the disaster, fuggedabout terrorists, do you know how hard it is to keep one remote conveniently handy but out of Katherine's reach? Let alone two remotes?

Life can be really unfair sometimes.

9:26 AM  •  0 comments

Am I the only one really irritated by those stupid Dell commercials with the so-cool older teen (probably 25) who is trying to convince his pals' parents to buy his pals Dells?

I didn't think so.

9:17 AM  •  0 comments

Music, maestro?

There's a report at Launch.com about songs that the Clear Channel Network (the largest owner of FM stations in the US) decided were, in the aftermath of Red Tuesday, "lyrically inappropriate" to be played.

They include some presumably obvious ones like Peter Gabriel's "You Dropped a Bomb On Me," James Taylor's "Fire and Rain," and pretty much anything with "New York" in the title.

They also include some oddities like the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian," Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," and the Beatles' "Obla-di, Obla-da."

We have met the Enemy, and He is Large Corporations Making Goofy Decisions.

Further coverage is available from the NY Times.

Via Moriarty, who had a few other interesting things to say.

8:25 AM  •  0 comments

Boomerang Rocks

It's 1968. The Fantastic Four. Shazzan. The Wacky Races. The Banana Splits

Cartoon Network runs year-themed bits from its Boomerang sister network early on Saturday mornings (right about the time when Katherine wakes up, coincidentally). Fun stuff.

Katherine likes the Banana Splits.

8:08 AM  •  0 comments

A punitive puppeteer?

The Evil Empire Strikes Back? Xcot pointed out an Slashdot article which further pointed to the InfoWorld article cited above. In it, they report the FrontPage 2002 EULA includes the text:

You may not use the Software in connection with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or their products or services ...

*Shrug* Let's see them enforce it.

7:53 AM  •  0 comments

Damn you hackers!

Well, my company's been badly hit by the Nimda virus. As soon as they think they have systems clean, some new infection wings its way in.

Not unlike anti-terrorist measures, the Network Powers That Be have been implementing stricter and stricter controls, trying to get this under control. They've had Internet access shut off for most of the week (they finally opened up a couple of controlled mail gateways, but general Internet access is still blocked). They've been forcing each site to get up-to-date on AV and IE software, or face being cut off from the world. They've been discovering that workstations and servers alike need to be rebuilt when infected (our office is actually in pretty good shape here, compared to some others who were too distracted spending money to practice good network administration).

But the crowning blow came today. They're shutting down all outbound modems. Disastrous. "But that's how I do my personal e-mail! And check out web sites I don't want being monitored by the Network Spooks! And --"

Obviously not something I can complain about to anyone who could or would do something about it. Though I've tried to be safe, turned off Win2K Internet sharing, running a firewall, etc.

*Sob*

So if my daytime blogging and e-mailing takes a plummit in the days to come ... you know why.

6:56 PM  •  0 comments

I missed it

I'm actually sorry I missed Bush's speech last night. Evidently it was -- well, not spectacular, but a lot better of a speech than most people thought him capable of.

It sounds like bin Laden is the target of the hour, going beyond "prime suspect" into the realm of "we want him, give him to us, or face the consequences" messages to the Taliban. There's further sabre-rattling going on, and indications are we may see air and missle strikes Real Soon Now.

Which is stupid, because those are just the things to be least likely against terrorist groups like this, but most effective at hurting innocents.

The Taliban, of course, are saying, "Show us the evidence," though there's certainly reason to believe they're being disingenuous in their request. No such evidence seems to be forthcoming, though, which either means it's Secret, and revealing it would endanger the sources we got it from, or else it's not convincing, and the Administration is moving forward with this simply to be seen as Doing Something.

I sure hope it's the former.

6:09 PM  •  0 comments

Flags

Driving home tonight, I spotted a flag fluttering about the roadway along C-470. In the brief glimpse, it was clearly one of those cheap, plastic things that folks fit into their car door windows. It had come loose, and was now being run over by various cars.

I'm enough of a traditionalist to cringe at such a thing, and a quick dozen plans flashed through my head, all equally rejected. No way, even if I were pulled by the side of the road, that I could run out there and grab it without causing a major accident, myself being a ground zero of same.

Nuts.

But it occured to me -- it's still just a piece of plastic. It symbolizes so much more, but it's still just a symbol. Not worth, in context, a life.

Which made me wonder -- will the current crisis make passage of a Anti-Flag Burning Amendment more or less likely? Will all the flag-waving and patriotic hoo-hah make people more willing to sacrifice political expression for the sake of a piece of cloth? Or will the tragedy of last week make people put things in perspective, and realize that life and liberty are a lot more precious for all of that?

6:05 PM  •  0 comments

Get comments, we?

Ha ha ha. FrontPage is so funny. When I try to update my top-level pages, even telling it to ignore subwebs (which I've defined by Blog directory as), it notices a couple of directories under there -- Comments and Archive -- and deletes them. Ha ha ha. Hilarity ensues.

9:38 PM  •  0 comments

We get comments!

Well, I hope we do. I've put the Dotcomments code up on my page, so you should be able to comment to your heart's delight. Knock yourself out.

I'd put a link to Dotcomments, but since the code is no longer supported, and the page is going away 1 October ... well, once I have a place to link to, I will.

In the course of doing this, of course, I had to change the extension of this file to .php, instead of .html. So I got to create a referrer's page, too.

2:45 PM  •  0 comments

Whoa

If true, this is fairly remarkable. A variety of domain names were registered, as early as June 2000, such as:

"attackamerica.com,"
"attackonamerica.com,"
"attackontwintowers.com,"
"august11horror.com,"
"august11terror.com"
"horrorinamerica.com,"
"horrorinnewyork.com,"
"nycterroriststrike.com,"
"pearlharborinmanhattan.com,"
"terrorattack2001.com,"
"towerofhorror.com,"
"tradetowerstrike.com,"
"worldtradecenter929.com,"
"worldtradecenterbombs.com,"
"worldtradetowerattack.com,"
"worldtradetowerstrike.com,"
"wterroristattack2001.com."

12:58 PM  •  0 comments

Raining, pouring, snoring

Of course, after I got that fixed, suddenly I couldn't update the blog any further. It appears that putting the extensions on "locked" the blog html files, so that the Blogger FTP couldn't update them. I had to go into a separate FTP program, copy the files down to my hard drive, delete them from the site (this, evidently, was still allowable), then copy them back up. Hey presto, everything works.

Bizarre. But another technical problems solved by The Dave. Nice to know all of those skills haven't atrophied.

Feeling a little better today. Fever is still there, but diminished, as is the snotty head. I'm trying to do some work from home today, somewhat hampered because our internal network is blocked from the Internet (major Nimda virus problems, complete lockdown until all servers and all workstations are validated as up-to-date and immunized).

12:47 PM  •  0 comments

Oh, that picture!

Got it working, obviously. FrontPage Extensions. Sold my soul to the Evil Empire, but at least I got Katherine's picture back.

9:44 PM  •  0 comments

Picture? What picture?

Yes, I know the picture at the top of the page is not loading.

Yes, I know why. Because the way Averdata juggles directories in FTP is not easily compatible with how FrontPage wants to use FTP to load pages up.

I'm workin' on it.

5:26 PM  •  0 comments

The Reason

"Next on SciFi: At 6, Star Trek. At 7, Babylon 5. At 8, Farscape. This is SciFi."

There's a reason I have digital cable, folks. It doesn't get much better than that.

4:20 PM  •  0 comments

... Has been reconnected

Well, mail seems to be (finally) flowing once again. My nose, on the other hand, has reduced its (over)flowing. So my life should return to normal as of tomorrow. Huzzah.

4:17 PM  •  0 comments

The number you have reached ...

My mail is most distinctly down. I've set up the new accounts on Averdata properly, as far as I can tell. Trying to access mail produces no error. Mails I send to that address (dave@hill-kleerup.org) don't bounce. It all falls into a black hole ...

This, of course, comes at the extremely convenient moment when I'm feeling like crap, and when Margie needs to get the mails that are forwarded from her office to her hill-kleerup address. Timing is all.

I have an e-mail (from my davehill47@earthlink.net account) in to Averdata, but haven't heard back from them. There's no phone number on the page to contact them directly (grrrr). I'll see what happens.

Anyway, anyone who reads this who actually wants to contact me should try the Earthlink addy. That seems to be working. For the moment ....

1:28 PM  •  0 comments

Oh, that apology

Jerry's Official Apology can be found, for the moment, here. In part, it reads:

I made a statement that I should not have made and which I sincerely regret. I apologize that, during a week when everyone appropriately dropped all labels and no one was seen as liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, religious or secular, I singled out for blame certain groups of Americans.

This was insensitive, uncalled for at the time, and unnecessary as part of the commentary on this destruction. The only label any of us needs in such a terrible time of crisis is that of 'American.'

I obviously did not state my theological convictions very well and I stated them at a bad time. During the difficult weeks ahead there will be much discussion about the judgment of God. It is a worthy discussion for all of us at a time when we are reminded of the fleeting nature of life itself, but it is a complicated discussion.

I do not know if the horrific events of September 11 are the judgment of God, but if they are, that judgment is on all of America--including me and all fellow sinners--and not on any particular group.

My statements were understandably called divisive by some, including those whom I mentioned by name in the interview. This grieves me, as I had no intention of being divisive.

In conclusion, I blame no one but the hijackers and terrorists for the barbaric happenings of September 11.

We know, as Abraham Lincoln anguished in his second inaugural address, that "The Almighty has his own purposes," but as he said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

10:18 AM  •  0 comments

Huh.

Doyce passes on today, via Xkot, et al., that Rush Limbaugh, of all people, has lambasted Falwell & Robertson for their finger-pointing comments last week. The originals of Rush' comments can be found here.

To quote the Rushster:

For the most part this terrible event has brought out the best in Americans... But there are some, unfortunately, in which this disaster has brought out the worst. Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson and the Reverend Jerry Falwell are two such individuals. ...
Suggestions of this kind are one of the reasons why all conservatives get tarred and feathered with this extremist, bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic label or image that isn't true. The words of Robertson and Falwell are not the words of all conservatives - they are the words of Robertson and Falwell. ... All I can say is I was profoundly embarrassed and disappointed by their comments. They can try to take them back all they want, but the bottom line is that their words are indefensible.

I'm not a Rush fan. I think he is plain wrong on a number of things, and I find I can listen to about five minutes of him before I start popping blood vessels and have to change the station before I drive myself into the center divider.

Still, kudos to him for this. And I don't think it's just conservative ass-covering or trying to ride the wave of folks who are also torqued by F&R's vitriol. I think he really feels this way.

Doyce made the comment that "these two are moral equals to the creatures that killed thousands last week" I have to disagree:

1. Falwell and Robertson might like to see the folks and ideas they dislike be outlawed or, at most, thrown in jail, but I've seen no indication that they'd blow up thousands of innocent people to do it.
   
   
2. At least the "creatures" in question held their vile opinions with such strength that they were willing to die for them. Falwell and Robertson are both furiously backpedalling from their comments. (Though, to be fair, given that the responsible parties for the attacks have not actually announced their identity and their purpose, they, too, can be considered gutless. C'mon guys, step forward to the mike -- we'll still respect you even when you're just a smouldering puddle of grease.)

9:54 AM  •  0 comments

Slosh, slosh, slosh ...

See previous post on my head and its contents.

So this was a perfect day for the host/DNS cutover from DollarHost to Averdata. This blog was down for most of the day because I was trying to use Explorer's FTP, which kind of masks the whole directory shuffle that Averdata does, which meant I was not creating the directories I thought I was.

Mail seems to be connecting (no errors), but I haven't seen any come in all day, which is worrisome. If nothing comes in tonight, I'll check with the Averdata people.

None of the other web content is up, which is okay in a way because I haven't pointed anyone over to www.hill-kleerup.org as of yet. On the other hand, evidently all the uploads I did the other night went into the other directory, which is a tad annoying.

That and I managed to "ruin" B5 Season 4 by leaving a tape cued up between two episodes, rather than to be the beginning of the tape. Not a huge problem, except that it was the Big, Climactic Battle tape, so Doyce went straight to the happy post-war party tape, and kept waiting for the flashback ...

Slosh, slosh, slosh ...

7:59 PM  •  0 comments

Falwell Apologizes For Remarks (Kinda)

Falwell regrets making the remarks -- though, it sounds, more because of the timing and the wording (and the ensuing uproar), not the sentiment.

Robertson, his host, dithers some more.

12:20 PM  •  0 comments

My head is full of snot

I've been fighting off something for the past several days. A little scratchy throat. Ah, I thought, a day later, that's just post nasal drip. Change in the weather. Leaf mold. That went on for a few days (and restless nights).

This morning, it's worse than ever. My head feels like it's swollen to twice its normal already-inflated size. There's a pressure on the front of my face that makes me want to babble like Joyce, except I don't have the energy to do so.

I'm seriously considering calling this a sick day, since my ability to concentrate lasts about as long as it takes me either cough or snort. I'm torn, because I'm behind on some deliverables at work, for a variety of reasons, and the little guy in red tights with a pitchfork sitting on my shoulder is not going to take "I'm sick for an answer." The only one who can fight that guy is my muse, and she's waist-deep in mucus right now.

Bleah.

And the worst part is, as any time one is feeling so bad one has to stay off of work, is that I don't even feel good enough to do anything fun during my "time off."

Besides, whenever I bend over the keyboard, I ... drip.

8:06 AM  •  0 comments

Cartoon, cartoon

Today's Ted Rall cartoon
Today's Tom Toles cartoon

Yup.

9:13 AM  •  0 comments

Back in the saddle again

And so life begins to return to a more normal-like state. Back in the office this morning. Doug's back in this week, too, which means I can take off one of my several hats. Day-to-day concerns, like calling in on the furnace, setting up eye appointments, etc., become the norm, rather than 24-hour news coverage.

Which is how it should be.

Still, folks continue to natter on about what happened, what we are doing, and where we are going. Which is good, too, since once we stop talking about it, we let the agenda be controlled by others.

I'm neither in the camp of the "The Guvviment is going to use this to take away all our rights, slaughter innocent abroad, and tattoo barcodes on our foreheads" folks, nor am I in the camp of the "Nuke 'em all until the glow and let God sort 'em out" people. I'm in the camp that's ready to act, not sure what that action should be, but willing to entertain reasonable ideas. Which is where I suspect most folks are.

Jackie and Doyce were over last night, as we try desperately to catch up with this past season of Buffy and Angel. I would laugh at Doyce's efforts to make this happen, if we weren't also participating in those efforts.

Got an e-mail from Wil thanking me for mentioning his site on my blog. Which is kind of weird in a bunch of ways it shouldn't be, and kind of neat in a bunch of ways that are too geeky to go into right now.

Well, daylight's burning (not really, it's cloudy out), and time's a-wastin' (quite true). Let's move 'em out.

7:15 AM  •  0 comments

Shattered 9/11/2001

Amazing photoessay from Time magazine and photojournalist James Nachtwey.

Looking at it "Ground Zero" reminds me, appropriately enoug