About my weekend

This weekend was a whirlwind tour of New England, precipitateed by my brother's graduation. I left Nashville on Thursday afternoon and flew to Washington, then on to Boston. Then I rented a car at Hertz and wandered across the city to my friends' apartment in Cambridge. (And I do mean wandered -- apparently Hertz's NeverLost system hasn't yet figured out the Big Dig.) Finally arrived, and stayed up talking for several hours. The next morning, I left and picked my brother up. (He had flown in a few hours before me and spent the night with a friend from his college.)

We headed north into Maine, and arrived in Brunswick. My parents and three of my grandparents were already there, and had been killing time on campus. (The school has a museum dedicated to arctic explorers Robert E. Peary (Class of 1877) and Donald B. MacMillan (Class of 1898), and also an art museum.

The first big item on the agenda was the Baccalaureate ceremony. Afterward, we stopped by the president's reception, and then walked through the rain to get to the massive tents on the athletic fields for a the traditional lobster dinner. . After dinner we stopped by my brother's house, then headed back toward the Maine coast, where we had comamandeered a vacation house belinging to friends of my parents

Saturday morning dawned grey and wet, just like Friday. We drove back to campus and ate breakfast in the main dining hall. Then we headed over to the Quad, which was practically underwater. But Bowdoin has been having commencement exercises outdoors on the quad since 1806, and they weren't going to let a little rain stop them. (They had a backup plan to have it in the field house, but apparently there had to actually be a foot of standing water for that to happen.) The school was handing out ponchos and hot coffee. (See below for another picture.)

After getting drenched, we posed for the obligatory group photos. Then we headed back to the house and goofed off for most of the afternoon. (There are worse places to be stuck in a rainstorm than a house with a view of the sea. In the evening, we all piled into two cars and used the NeverLost gizmo to almost find our way to a restaurant in Portland, about 40 minutes to the south.

Singing in the rain: That's my brother singing the national anthem behind a sea of umbrellas at his graduation, Maine. May 24, 2003.

The next morning, I departed Maine and drove about 5.5 hours to get to Albany, where I met up with a bunch of my northern friends. Everyone had gone to Albany for the weekend for a party to celebrate Aaron's graduation from medical school. So I joined up with them just in time to play trivial pursuit, gorge on party leftovers, look at Italy slides, and stay up late playing cards and, err, taking care of the surplus alcohol problem.

The next morning, I got up very early, shook off a slight hangover, and drove three hours back through the pouring rain to catch my plane in Boston. And then back to Nashville. All-in-all, a very action-packed weekend, at least by my standards.

I'm back from up north. My brother is 100% graduated, and there is much to say about the weekend. But for the moment I'll just leave you to ponder this: it appears that Exxon is being remarkably upfront about its environmental record! :-)

Exxon Sign, Brunswick, Maine. May 25, 2003.

Sorry I've been slacking a bit on the posting lately -- things have been busy. Right now I'm in New England to attend my "baby" brother's graduation from Bowdoin College. Then I'm probably going to try to escape Sunday to visit friends in Albany, then back to Nashville on Monday.

Things they don't tell you at the tourist information office

I just watched a fascinating show on PBS about the sinking of Venice. The most startling revelation (to me) was that the city has no public sewer system. So most of the sewage just gets dumped directly into the canals!

But the show was also gave a really interesting explanation of why the city is sinking, what they are talking about doing about it, the potential effects of climate change, etc. The city is sinking more slowly now that nearby cities have stopped pumping water out of the aquifier underneath it, but it is still heading down as the sediments are compacted. In the old days, when the water got too high, Venetians would just lay down more stone and raise the height of the streets and building floors. Or they would demolish buildings and rebuild them slightly higher. But for the last 200 years or so, no one has wanted to destroy or change the beautiful archictecture of the city. So things have stayed at the same level despite the fact that the city is now something like 8 inches lower than it was 100 years ago. The result is lots of flooding -- in 1900, St. Mark's square flooded 7 times, and in 1996 it flooded 99 times.

The TV show discussed a plan to build giant gates that would rise across the entrances to the lagoon when high water is expected. That's what the sign we saw in a square in Venice was talking about. After watching the show, though, I think that whover put it up was a bit of a crackpot.

That said, there are some interesting issues associated with the gates. For one thing, if global warming causes significant changes in weather patterns or sea level, they could be entirely ineffective well before the end of their projected 100-year life. And there is concern that if the water level continues to get higher, they might end up being closed so often that pollution in the lagoon would become intolerable. (Remember what I said about the lack of sewers!)

All of this relates to another problem -- the city of Venice is becoming a museum rather than a living city. Millions of tourists visit the city each year, and the number of permanent inhabitants has dwindled to 70,000, driven out by the high prices and flooding.

Definitely a beautiful and fascinating city, but one with its share of problems.

Some guy in the UK is auctioning off his Macintosh computer made of Legos. He notes that the system does not include "the Lego man or his plants (but he's available from any shop that sells Lego, and anyway, you'll want to populate that nice green space with your own Lego people and things. It will be exciting for your Lego people to live so close to such a wonderful technological marvel)".

Now that the semester is over, I'm partaking in a guilty pleasure and reading the John Grisham novel I picked up a few months ago. That and battling a massive infestation of itty-bitty ants.

The Last Page keeps finding great stuff. The latest is this story. Researchers in England decided to test out the theory that infinite monkeys with infinite typewriters will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. But they only had six monkeys and one month. The results, unfortunately, failed to prove anything about the literary prowess of primates:

LONDON - Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.

Researchers at Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

"They pressed a lot of S's," researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. "Obviously, English isn't their first language."

You can read the complete work of the monkeys (helpfully translated into four languages) right here

Random visit

Jay, my college roommate, was in town for his brother's med school graduation. He was last in Nashville when a bunch of my friends came down for New Years a few years ago -- and it was snowing then! So this was his opportunity to see that Nashville actually is actually a bit different from Boston!

We met up for breakfast this morning at Bongo Java. (They have catered breakfast on Sundays with yummy caramel apple french toast.) Then we drove around downtown a bit and headed over to Bicentennial Mall, which is one of my favorite places in Nashville. We hung out there for a while, walking around the fountains, farmers market, etc. We even got yelled at by the park ranger for climbing on the rocks. Then I took him to the airport, and now I'm back at Bongo supposedly working on my final exam that's due tonight. Although at the moment I guess I'm not technically working on it. But when I'm done with this blog entry I'm going to be crazy productive. Yeah, that's it!

The bathroom at Bongo Java -- there's actually a lot more you can't see in this picture. This really has nothing to do with the visit except that I happened to have my camera with me.
Jay being a tourist at Bicentennial Mall.	Nifty bouncy river fountains at Bicentennial Mall.

Sunday's New York Times contains a stunning article about how 27-year-old reporter Jayson Blair frequently fabricated articles during his five year career with the newspaper. Blair used reports from wire services, photos from the paper's internal archives, and telephone interviews to create the impression that he was traveling around the mid-Atlantic region reporting stories, while in reality he was camped out at his home in New York. Remarkably, despite a history of known accuracy problems and the fact that Blair's expense reports didn't match his supposed work assignments, no one at the Times caught on to the depth of the deception until another paper lodged a plagiarism complaint. Since then, a team assembled by the paper has found significant problems with 36 of the 73 articles the reporter wrote since last October, including major stories about the DC sniper and the rescue of Jessica Lynch.

I find this amazing from many angles. I have trouble understanding the thought process that would make someone behave this way. And it's hard to imagine how a young reporter could pull this off in such a way as to not arouse suspicion from his editors or others at the paper. I wonder if there is a cultural bias where editors assume that someone good enough to work at the Times must be an accurate reporter. Plus, I'm amazed that members of the public who were misquoted in the paper or who obviously knew that the reporter was lying failed to contact the newspaper and let it know about these problems.

Thanks to The Last Page for the link.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kumquat, Newton
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 3:43 PM
To: Coworker, A
Subject: italy pics



You can see my mind-numbing pile of pictures at http://www.clubphoto.com.  Put "DMD" in the album search box to find my stuff. (Note that you click to get into the actual albums, and that there are two pages of them.)

I'm planning to put together a "best of" album, but I haven't done it yet. My friend went in and started captioning a few of them, but most have not been captioned. I can fill in the blanks, though!

-NK

-----Original Message-----
From: Coworker, A.
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 4:43 PM
To: Kumquat, Newton
Subject: RE: italy pics


The naked tourists and don't ring the bell and double bra signs are a hoot

What's up with the bag of chips?




-----Original Message-----
From: Kumquat, Newton
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 8:37 PM
To: Coworker, A
Subject: Potato chips

Just being silly!  :-)

They are actually Worcester Sauce Potato Chips. When we left my friend's aunt's house in Monaco, she packed a bunch of food for us to take. We eventually ate everything else, but neither of us could quite stomach the idea of worcester chips. So instead we started taking pictures of them instead. They traveled to all sorts of interesting places, including:

Venice

Naples

Pompeii

Florence

The Vatican

When we got to the Vatican on the last day of the trip, we decided that time was up and we had to finally eat them. They weren't as bad as we expected!

Aaron thinks we should send the photos to the company.

Reasons not to have kids...

I was just reading the instructions that came with a Pelican case we purchased to transport computer equipment. At the bottom is the following warranty note:

Pelican Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee of Excellence

If for any reason you are not satisfied with the quality or performance of any PELICAN product, we will gladly replace the product or refund your money (at your option) within 30 days of purchase through the original retailer/dealer. PELICAN PRODUCTS will continue to guarantee the product directly for a lifetime against breakage or defects in workmanship. The case is guaranteed to be watertight when properly closed with O-ring in place and undamaged. (Replace O-ring annually or when damaged.) Any liability, either expressed or implied, is limited to the replacement of the case and not its contents. This guarantee is void only if the PELICAN product has been abused beyond normal and sensible wear and tear.

THE ABOVE GUARANTEE DOES NOT COVER SHARKBITE, BEAR ATTACK, OR CHILDREN UNDER 5.

Based on the behavior I've seen from some three-year-olds, I think the case might stand a better chance against the bear!

The weather service has determined that at least 10 tornados struck Tennessee in a 15 hour period on Sunday and Monday. This included the F-4 tornado in the Jackson area, and a number of smaller ones. (Tornados are rated on a scale of F0-F5) There was also major damage in Montgomery County, where 100 homes were damaged, and in Springfield, where about $5 million in damage was recorded.

And it's still raining. So flooding is becoming a big problem. Even the normally-tamed Cumberland River in Nashville has risen to the point where it's causing problems. Equipment from this weekend's "Riverstages" music festival is now underwater, including lights, generators, Porta-a-Potties, and a Budweiser beer truck loaded with 600 cases of beer was stranded beneath the water. A team tried to fish out some of the stuff yesterday afternoon, with partial success.

Images from Jackson

Road to Jackson, Monday, 2:21 PM: After driving through pouring rain, strong winds, and grape-sized hail, suddenly the sun broke through the clouds.

Downtown Jackson, Tuesday, 11:40 AM : Onlookers gaze at the remains of the Mother Liberty Church.

Downtown Jackson, Tuesday, 11:45 AM :Overturned postal trucks lay strewn about a parking lot near the post office.

Downtown Jackson, Tuesday, 12:57 PM: One of many demolished buildings in the city.

Tennessee got steamrolled by intense storms last night. Our company has a division in Jackson, TN, which was struck by at least one tornado. Most of the city is without power, including our office. So I got called in with a van-load of computer equipment to help set up temporary quarters.

I'm in a hotel room in Jackson right now. I happened to pick up a Sunday copy of The Jackson Sun. I was slightly amused to see most of a page devoted to the important civic issue of whether or not Hooter's should be able to open a reastaurant in as fine and upstanding a place as Jackson.

Here are two of the many letters printed on the page:

I think it's wrong for women to look "sexy" instead of settling down with a good husband and raising a family. They, and whoever brings that restaurant to Jackson, should be ashamed and will have to answer for their actions someday.

Cletus Barnes
Paris

Sounds plum wonderful! Them ladies are good people, just waitresses. I say we should let them work if they want to.

Shane Heart
Newberry

Hmm... It appears there is some disagreement about this issue. Will the good people of Jackson allow such a vile establishment in their midst? Will Hooters destroy the moral fiber of yet another city? Are people named "Cletus" for real? You'll just have to tune in next week for the exciting conclusion of this little drama!

New Hampshire mourns the loss of an old friend

The state's landmark stone face crashed to the valley floor sometime in the last day or two. (The mountain was obscured by fog, so no one knows exactly when it happened.) The Concord Monitor writes:

The Old Man of the Mountain, the stern granite profile that symbolized the state's independence and stubbornness, is gone, likely the victim of the same natural forces that created it thousands of years ago.

[...]

Daniel Webster, a 19th century New Hampshire statesman, once wrote, referring to the Old Man,

"Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."

Bling Bling added to the OED

It's official: the term "bling bling" is now part of the Queen's English, according to MTV.

The next time you and your pals coin a slang term to describe your latest bejeweled accessories, don't bet on keeping it exclusive. The linguistics "gangstas" over at the Oxford English Dictionary aren't "new jacks" to the latest "def" lingo.

The venerable definitions resource has already added other hip-hop-turned-mainstream terms like "jiggy," "breakbeat," "dope" and "phat" to the online updates of the 20-volume dictionary, and now it has started drafting an entry for the latest OED-approved term, "bling bling."

The term, which is used to describe diamonds, jewelry and all forms of showy style, was coined by New Orleans rap family Cash Money Millionaires back in the late '90s and started gaining national awareness with a song titled "Bling Bling" by Cash Money artist BG.

Thanks to Xeni over at BoingBoing for catching this.

What planet do these people live on?

From the AP: Georgians Plan Whites-Only Prom Party. My jaw was on the floor. What year is this, anyway?

Radio programming in the bible belt

From a Tennessean story about a month ago about how local radio stations deal with explicit lyrics:

Popular stations receive more than 100 songs a week and have to decide which to play. Program directors often rely on their experience and knowledge of their listening audience to make that call.

"I follow the 'hell-damn-ass' rule," said Kiki the First Lady, former program director and on-air personality of Clear Channel's The Beat. "Those are the only three you'll hear. All three of those words are in the Bible."

Goin' for some street cred...

My goddamn rock solid ghetto shiznit name is Fellatio D.
What's yours?
Powered by Rum and Monkey.

(I did this with my "real" name -- when I put in "Newton's Kumquat," I got "Tempestuous Kawfi!")

More pics posted yesterday. And Aaron got loose in Club Photo and started captioning some of the albums.

From a paper we had to read for class:

It's a dubious success if the project dies when its manager is hit by a beer truck.

From this I draw the conclusion that if you are a manager you should watch out for beer trucks.

Man bites dog!!!

It's not just a J-School cliche anymore. Some guy actually got into an altercation with a police dog outside my favorite Syracuse brewpub. In his own words:

"I don't think I bit the dog. I just got into a fight with him. I don't really remember (what happened). I was pretty drunk. After I got hit in the head a few times, I blacked out. It's all one big fog to me."

I almost missed this, but luckily Page saw it on CNN.com.

Pics from Italy (episode 1 of many)

I'm still trying to sort through more than 2000 digital photos, sound clips, etc. from Italy. I am uploading the raw images to Club Photo. There is a lot of garbage -- at some point I hope to put together a "greatest hits" website, and add in the movies and audio and captions and stuff. But for now you're welcome to look for the gems amongst the rubble.

So far I've uploaded the first 6 days of the trip -- the rest will be coming along as I have time. (I'm also editing a group paper for class and trying to pretend like I didn't just ignore schoolwork and workwork for two weeks.)

It is amazing to me that you can find people in graduate school with the writing skills of a 7th grader on smack.

Well, I'm back in dear old Music City now. Italy was great, although very exhausting! (We didn't really leave any empty space in the itenerary, so it was nonstop sightseeing.)

I am now trying to dig out from under a huge pile of messages and mini-crises at work, get caught up in my class, etc. This may mean that my blogging will still be a bit eratic over the next couple of weeks.

You can look forward to more about the trip -- I have over 3 GB of digital photos, movies, sound clips, etc. The digital camera took a beating, but it worked out great. It's going to take me some time to sort through all this stuff and post it online, but rest assured I'll let you know when I get around to it!

Look for postings about the italy trip at:

http://www.hipcats.net/italy

In rome now. Actually wrote a post earlier from the philly airport, but have not posted it and it is buried on my laptop in my bag. So we will jump right in here. (You might be noticing the lack of contractions in my writing -- I am using a computer in a Roman laundromat and I have not yet found the apostrophe on the Italian keyboard!) Also do not think I can post pictures from this machine. I have them on my camera, but no easy way to get them off. So that will come later.

I think I am going to start a seperate blog just for the Italy stuff -- stay tuned for details.

Naturally the kids were out celebrating last night... From the Daily Orange

Thousands of Syracuse University students flocked from dorms, the Carrier Dome and bars to celebrate on Marshall Street. And celebrate they did. More than 100 police greeted the fans, barricaded crowds, put out fires and, generally, tried to subdue the mass.

[...]

“Within five minutes, we saw a guy naked in a tree, a homeless guy, a guy in a chicken suit and a bonfire,” said Lindsay Skorupa, a sophomore English and textual studies major.

Several times, officers escorted fire officials to those blazes. At one point, officials put out a fire, in front of Jay’s Communications, that stretched about 8 feet into the air.

“The cops did a great job, they didn’t break up the fires as fast as they did last time and just let everyone have a good time,” said freshman architecture major Mark Wizeman.

Oy. I am dead tired, and am so behind on my to do list that it's not even funny. But first things first:

Syracuse 81, Kansas 78

National champions, baby!

Not long after the game I got a call from one very happy friend in Boston -- and then about two minutes later another called my cell phone. Boston in stereo! They had both just gotten home from watching the game with 200 SU partisans at a local bar. When it started snowing, they figured that it was a good omen for good ol' snowy SU!

Aaron, who is already in Monaco, sent a distressed e-mailed this morning begging me to bring a tape of the game, since he couldn't find it on TV over there! I don't think this will work since I think a VHS NTSC tape may not play back in Europe, but I went ahead and recorded most of the game on my DV camcorder with the idea that I could then suck it into my laptop. So far this hasn't really worked, but maybe I'll take another stab. Or just stick the tape in my bag in hopes of running into someone else with a camcorder!

Back to my to-do list: still have to xerox my textbooks, finish the pro bono website, talk to the 12-year-old next door about feeding the cat, call my credit card company, get my hair cut, haggle with my dentist about insurance, go to several meetings at work, finish up packing, pick up hemmed pants, leave instructions for the temporary folks we hired to work on a project I'm running, etc, etc. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day. Then Wednesday morning it's off to the airport for two days of travel hell. Despite all this, I'm still totally jazzed about the whole trip!

I'm a bit of a preservation buff, and I love looking at those "then and now" books where they take old photographs of buildings and streetscapes and place them side by side with the same view today.

Here's an an even cooler idea:

What do you do when you get laid off and suddenly find yourself with lots of free time on your hands? First, grab screen shots from a DVD of various San Francisco locations used in one of the greatest films of all time. Then visit those locations and take digital pictures. Go home, download the images and meticulously crop them to match the original screen shots. Arrange them in sequence, add a little text and ba-da-bing, you're done. Then you look for another job

You can check out the results right here.

Link via Scrubbles.

Went out this afternoon and blew an insane amount of money on some new clothes and a pair of prescription sunglasses. Then (while watching the basketball game) I spent the evening trying to figure out how I was going to lug all this stuff around the continent. My rolling backpack thingy is crammed full, and weighs in at over 42 pounds.That's with the laptop, which I really want to take so that I can do classwork, post my photos online as we go, etc. But after picking that danged bag up a few times, I may just reconsider. (Times like these I wish I'd splurged on a teeny-tiny notebook, instead of my standard middle-of-the-road Toshiba.)

I'm actually going to unpack a bit of it to carry on the plane with me (probably the laptop, camera, one change of clothes, etc.), but I'm trying to make sure it will all fit back in when I get there.

I also still have a page-long typed list of things I need to do before I leave -- everything from xeroxing pages out of my textbooks to cleaning the litterbox to writing a paper. And since the first two days of the trip are all travel, I'll have plenty of time to stew about what I forgot to do!

The cuse is in the house!

Syracuse 95, Texas 84

Think I'm way off base on that last post? Well you have to admit that this is pretty disturbing. (more here) "

Just caught part of The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl on the Sundance Channel.

Riefenstahl, whose cinematic genius gave a heroic veneer to the horrible undercurrents of Hitler's Germany in the 30's, is a fascinating person to study, especially in light of the ubiquitous imagery we're currently seeing of the war in Iraq. Throughout the documentary, Riefenstahl maintains that her work was clearly nonpolitical. She did not orchestrate the events she filmed, she says. Instead she merely used creative cinematography to tell an interesting and artistic story. To back this up, she points out that her films even won awards in France prior to World War II.

Whether or not you believe Riefenstahl's convienient assertions that she was oblivious to politics and social issues, she raises interesting points about the nature of art and imagery in a politically-charged environment. Is it possible to be nonpolitical yet still produce meaniningful images? Are photographers, filmmakers, and journalists responsible for the reality they document?

Riefenstahl chose to document one side of the Nazi rise to power -- the glorious rallies and public events. At the same time, her art entirely ignored other defining elements of the Third Reich's rise to power -- including the vicious antisemitism that became boiled to the surface on Kristallnacht.

Riefenstahl's misdeeds were those of omission, not commission. Rather than impartially chronicling the important events occurring in 1930s Germany, she focused only on events that she felt portrayed the heroic spirit of the German people. She ignored the seamy aspects of this spirit, which fed on the hate, fear, and longings of a German people embittereed by war and depression. As a result, her work, while admittedly brilliant from a technical perspective, is seen as propaganda that presents a stilted image German life.

I have heard criticism of a photo that appeared in the paper a few days ago of a clearly-anguished Iraqui man crouching in the dirt between the coffins of his family, who were evidently killed by US bombs. Why would the paper run this photo? This, I hear, is merely propaganda that weakens our country.

By and large the front-line media coverage of this war has been nothing if not complementary. Embedded with the troops, photographers and videographers have sent back material that clearly portrays the hardship and confusion of war, and highlights the heroic acts soldiers undertake to carry out their mission in spite of all this.

Yet one photo showing what happens at the other end of our advanced weaponry is somehow considered unpatriotic -- something that we should not even think about when our brave soldiers are overseas.

But I'm glad that the photo was published. If a media organization bows to popular opinion and shows only heroic and monumental, it is in the propaganda business, not the news business. And no matter how popular or technically superior the material is, it can only lead to misperceptions and poor political judgement. Riefenstahl's films didn't tell lies -- they merely omitted critical truths to support an alternate view of what the Reich was up to. If we demand that the news media only cover things we are comfortable seeing, we are nudging our country toward a myopic and destructive worldview.

I will close with this link and this link. Inflamatory? Absolutely. But worth pondering.

Let's go, orange...

I'm not normally much of a basketball fan, but I have to give a shout out to my Syracuse Orangemen, who will play in Final Four against Texas this coming weekend. (Another article here.)

The last time SU made it to the final four, I was still in school. I remember getting together in a friend's dorm room to watch the games, and then heading down to Marshall Street to celebrate after they made it into the Final 4, and again to commiserate after they lost. (Ignore any stories you might hear about me dancing on a table at Chuck's one of those nights -- the only people who know for sure were too drunk to be trusted!)

Ahem. Anyhow, I'm rooting for Boeheim and his boys on Saturday!

Researchers in Saint Louis are developing a booze-powered battery:

Recharging your cell phone might one day become a simple matter of giving it a shot of tequila. A new breed of battery, fueled by alcohol, may become the power source of choice for portable electronics.

[...]

"You can use any alcohol. You will be able to pour it straight out of the bottle and into your battery," said team member Nick Akers, a graduate student. "We have run it on various types. It didn't like carbonated beer and doesn't seem fond of wine, but any other works fine."

Users won't have to deplete their liquor cabinets to keep their portables powered up, because all it takes is a few drops.

This is getting freakin' silly. French's, the mustard concern, has issues a press release stating that they are not, per se, French, so please lay off with the boycotts already!

On a more sinister front, 59 Republican members of the House are asking the Pentagon to cancel food service contracts with Sodexho, a subsidiary of France's Sodexho SA headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD. The company has around 110,000 employees in the US, part of the more than 600,000 american jobs provided by French owned companies.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), whose district includes Sodexho's US headquarters, points out that setting off a trade war isn't going to help anyone:

"If the foreign governments that disagree with U.S. policy toward Iraq should respond in a similar fashion by canceling contracts with American companies, many more American jobs and companies would be at risk."

I think we just finalized a bunch of the loose ends regarding the Italy trip.

We are driving from Monaco to Venice, and were planning to spend a night in somewhere like Padua or Verona. But rather than trying to book something, I think we're just going to try to find something along the way.

Venice had been a problem because we really wanted to stay in the old city itself, and all the hotels there are crazy expensive. (You can get cheaper ones if you don't mind being a boat or train-ride away from all the cool stuff, but that wasn't ideal.) After looking at a number of options, we decided to try the Hotel Riva, a great-sounding hotel with almost no footprint on the Internet. I called them a few minutes ago, and luckily managed to speak to someone who spoke better English then I speak Italian. I'm pretty sure I reserved a double room with a bath for 110 Euros, which is a steal by the astronomical standards of Venice.

In Florence, we had a fallback plan of a McHotel out near the airport. But I really wanted to get something a little more adventurous and closer to the action. So I think we're going to stay at the Instituto Oblate dell'Assunzione, a convent in the old city that rents out rooms. I've been coordinating this by fax, and they speak very little English. Hopefully I worked it out right in advance. If not, there seem to be many options there, so hopefully we can find something on the fly.

So that's most of the big trip planning out of the way. My friend is actually leaving for Monaco tomorrow, and I'm going to catch up next week.

Now I've just got to figure out how I'm packing. Since we're going to be schlepping our stuff everywhere, I've decided that my rolling mega-suitcase is too big. So I'm looking for something smaller but still big enough to hold a week's worth of clothes. I've seem a few examples of rolling bags that convert into backpacks, including zip-off day packs. This seems like a really good solution, so I'll probably be searching for one of those this week.

I also have to try to get ahead in my online class so that no one notices when I more-or-less drop off the planet for the better part of two weeks. (I'm planning to check in a few times, but I doubt I'm going to feel like spending much time on Knowledge Management when there's a new city to explore.)

Not to mention dealing with all the loose ends at work and finishing a pro bono website for a nonprofit I help out. It's going to be a busy week!

Old favorites
The Rosetta Project is creating an online collection of antique, freely downloadable children's books:

The Rosetta Project's collections currently contain about 2,000 antique children's books which were published in the 19th and early 20th century. We shall be putting these combined collections on line as funding permits. Our current goal of putting 2,000 volumes on line will create an online library of aproximately 65,000 html pages. However, as we are still collecting books from around the world, we expect the Rosetta Project online library to eventually reach millions of html pages.

Link via dollarshort.org

Just spent about five hours on the phone with my Dad trying to fix my Mom's office computer so that it could see her secretary's computer on the network. She is a pastor, and I gave her an old computer and set up the networking while I was at home over Christmas. They were ecstatic about the fact that they could now share files without using a floppy disk. But about a month ago it stopped working for no apparent reason.

After having my dad replace the network card and mess with just about every Windows 98 network setting, the two machines still don't see each other. The network is working, and if you set them to the same IP address one of the complains. But for some reason pinging doesn't work and they don't show up in the network neighborhood. If PC bigots wonder why Mac users were so haughty about their OS for so many years, they have obviously never compared the networking on MacOS 8 versus Windows 95. On a mac, if you have a working ethernet jack, Appletalk pretty much always works. On an older PC, it's anyone's guess. (Admittedly this has all gotten a lot better in Windows 2000 and presumably XP, but that doesn't help folks stuck with old machines.)

So this is all very frustrating. Unfortunately I'm probably not going to be up there for at least another few months, and unless they can find a guru to work on it I don't think they're going to be able to figure it out on their own.

In between ducking and covering, Saddam Hussein seems to have found the time to start http://saddamhussein.blogspot.com/:

:: Thursday, March 20, 2003 ::

I have been up all night looking for my mustard gas, but for the life of me, I can't remember where I put it. I know I had ten tons of it a couple of weeks ago. That's when it was hidden in Mosul. Then I ordered it moved to Baqubah, and when the UN inspectors started snooping around there, it was supposed to be moved to Kirkuk. But according to IraqEx, it was shipped to Tikrit by mistake. From there it supposedly went to Bayji, but no one in Bayji remembers signing for it. I've been calling IraqiExpress, but no one's answering the phone. I think the cowardly bastards have all fled to Jordan. Sometimes it's lonely at the top.

:: Saddam "No Nukes Here" Hussein 3:49 AM [+] ::

Link via Missives Anonymous

Travel Mania

Got off the phone with my friend a little while ago after another marathon travel planning session.

We're trying to mix it up a bit. We can't afford four-star elegance for the whole trip, but we also don't want to slum it the whole time. So we're spending a bit of time in fancy digs and a bit of time in cheapy hostels. We purchased a "Rail and Drive" pass from Eurail that gives us four days of train travel two days of car rental for one low rate.

It's very subject to change, but here's the rough itenerary as it exists at the moment:

• WED 9th - NK leaves Nashville in morning, sits in Phildelphia airport all afternoon, and leaves for Rome at night.
• THU 10th - NK arrives in Rome in morning, catches midday high speed train, arrives San Remo at 8:30 PMish. Somehow makes way to Monaco to stay with friend's aunt. Collapses from two days of cumulative fatigue and jet lag.
• FRI 11th - Hang out in Monaco.
• SAT 12th - leave monaco 10 AM, pick up car in San Remo. Drive to somewhere like Padua, spend night in TBA location. Maybe make a brief stop in Milan on way if time looks good.
• SUN 13th - drive into Venice. get rid of car. Sleep in Venice at place TBA.
• MON 14th - tour Venice including Murano Glass works. 11:30 PM - catch overnight train to Naples.
• TUE 15th - Arrive Naples, stash luggage somewhere, tour city. At end of day, catch train to Sorrento. Check in to Grand Hotel Aminta
• WED 16th - Catch ferry from Sorrento to Island of Capri. Tour Capri. Back to Sorrento hotel in evening.
• THUR 17th - Leave Sorrento, take train to Pompeii. Tour archeological site. Take train back to Naples. Catch 7:30 PM train to Florence, arrive at 11:05 ish. Check into cheap lodging place, TBA.
• FRI 18th - Tour Florence. (need to check on art gallery reservations and stuff.)
• SAT 19th - Rent car -- drive to Pisa, take obligatory pictures of imminent tower collapse, and tour cathedral. Drive from there to Siena, tour town. Return to Florence at night.
• SUN 20th - Attend Easter festivities (including exploding cart) in Florence, then catch afternoon train to Rome. Check in to Hostel des Artistes.
• MON 21st - Tour Rome (Easter holiday, so need to figure out what's open.)
• TUE 22nd - Tour Vatican. Friend on Train 10ish overnight to Monaco.
• WED 23rd - NK on flight from Rome. Friend on flight from Nice.

Big brother is... uhh... trying to sell you something

Maybe everyone else figured this out long ago, but I just noticed that Blogspot targets its ads based on the content of the blog. How cool (and slightly spooky!) is that?

I noticed this because I was checking out Abbie the Cat and noticed that the page had ads for "I Love Cats" magazine and "Persian Cat on eBay."

Eager to test my theory, I went over to My Side of Things, where Laura recently wrote a post about a bird getting stuck in her air conditioner. Sho 'nuff, the BlogSpot ads inquired boldy whether I had a problem with bird droppings or pest starlings!

So then I tried a random blog from the blogger front page. At Where does it go?, some college student included a bit about how she got hotel reservations in Portland through Priceline. And the ads were for -- you guessed it -- "Homestead Portland Hotel" and "Residence Inn."

I'm a bit insulted by the fact that my current ad is "Visual Editing for Blogs." What, do they think I need some help? :-)

I assume this uses the same basic technology as Google AdWords, but I don't know if it's related to Pyra's recent entry to the Google empire.

It seems like there's got to be some way to turn this little revelation to my advantage, but I have no idea what it is!

Frantically working on my midterm exam, which is supposed to be in by midnight tonight. If they had a procrastination olympics, I'd be a gold medalist.

A quiet rebellion

The Sunday comics come with an annoying half page ad affixed to the front. It gets in the way and makes the section difficult to read. I always make a point of tearing the ad off without reading what it says. I figure if if I do this long enough, maybe they'll stop putting it there. So far this initiative has been largely unsuccessful.

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled war for a brief rant...

Today's paper contained this little gem from a story about a war protest in Nashville:

About three dozen people held and waved signs at motorists to oppose this week's allied attack on Iraq. The effort mirrored other protests around the nation in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles.

The crowd faced some angry drivers stopping to criticize their war protests. While some supporters honked and flashed peace signs, others veered toward the curb where the protesters stood or made obscene gestures.

[...]

Across the street from the peace demonstrators, three employees from nearby Advantage Business Solutions used their lunch break to spread their own message. Their sign, scrawled on a cushioned business envelope, said ''Protestor equals terrorist.''

I am fed up with people who contend that those opposed to the war are unpatriotic, terrorists, or any of the other epithets that have been hurled. Speaking one's mind is a a right guaranteed to all Americans, and whether you agree or not it is despicable to imply that dissenters don't care about this country or its people.

If you have a problem with what someone is saying, you should engage them by refuting their arguments, not by questioning their patriotism.

British Lieutenant Colonel Tim Collins gave a stirring speech to the battlegroup of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish shortly before they rolled into Iraq:

"Iraq is steeped in history. It is the site of the Garden of Eden, of the Great Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. Tread lightly there.

"You will see things that no man could pay to see and you will have to go a long way to find a more decent, generous and upright people than the Iraqis.

"You will be embarrassed by their hospitality even though they have nothing.

"Don't treat them as refugees for they are in their own country. Their children will be poor, in years to come they will know that the light of liberation in their lives was brought by you.

While speaking on a panel sponsored by my alma mater, Ted Turner he volunteered to cover the war in Baghdad for his old company (CNN), but was rebuffed:

"I'm 64, pretty much financially wiped out, and it would be a dramatic way to exit the world," Turner told an audience of media luminaries yesterday at a Newhouse School of Public Communications breakfast.

"But they said no, I 'wasn't qualified.' How qualified to you have to be? Holding the microphone and describing the world falling apart isn't a magical thing . . . 'I'm here in Baghdad . . . bombs are everywhere . . .' "

The best part was the New York Post's typically boisterous headline: TED TURNED DOWN AS BAGHDAD BAIT.

Salam Pax is blogging live from Baghdad. Link via Missives Anonymous.

UPDATE: There is some speculation that this could be a hoax. Paul Boutin examines the evidence and concludes that the blog is likely for real -- but no one knows for sure right now. (link via Boing Boing)

Danielle asked what digital camera I bought. I deliberated for a long time (months!) on this. I wanted something that could take reasonably decent photos that could be enlarged, but I wasn't quite ready to pay for a "pro-sumer" model like the EOS 10-D and its ilk.

Originally I was looking at the Canon Powershot G2. But then I realized that the PowerShot S45 was basically the same camera in a smaller case. The biggest problem with my old Pentax K-1000 SLR was that it was so bulky I never seemed to have it with me when it really mattered. A few years ago I got a smaller autofocus Fuji camera to carry around, but I was never very happy with the quality of the snapshots it produced.

The S45 seemed like a good way to get a lot of flexibility in a 4MP camera, without having to lug around the larger body. (The biggest thing I gave up was the ability to easily attach interchangeable lenses or an external flash, but I think I can live with that.)

I'm having a bit of trouble getting used to all the digital gizmos. I never really realized how the controls on the K-1000 had become second nature until I tried to use the electronic settings for ASA, aperture, and shutter speed on the S45. What used to be an almost subconcious process of turning knobs now seems like programming a VCR. So mostly I've been using it in auto mode, but I'm really trying to learn how to push the envelope on it a bit before I go to Italy. (In the arena picture below, I had to fight with it, because the auto exposure wanted to pick up on the bright sky and underexpose everything else.

The camera does have some nifty extras built in. For example, it has a stitch assist mode that helps create a seamless panorama from multiple photos. (So far I've created a stunning panorama of my living room, but I'm hoping to try it on something more dramatic soon.) The camrea also allows you to do short movies and add audio annotations to photos, although I haven't tried these things yet.

I just got my first set of prints back from OFoto, and was pretty impressed with the quality. I was a bit skeptical as to whether I would really be comfortable using this as my primary camera for stuff I really care about, but I think my doubts are evaporating.

I bought it from some hole-in-the-wall on the Internet -- partly because their price was good and partly because I was able to avoid the outrageious 9.5% sales tax we have to pay here in Nashville. (I feel slightly guilty, but if this state would actually pass a decent tax plan, this sort of thing wouldn't be an issue!) I didn't really have any problem with the company except that they refused to ship anywhere except my billing address -- and I'm typically not home during the day to sign for things. It actually worked out, though, because they delivered it early in the morning before I left for work.

I just bought an extra battery and a 512 MB card (to augment the 32 MB it came with.) Hopefully that will be enough to get me through a day of trigger happy photography in Italy. I think I'm going to try to post photos online during the trip, depending on how often I can get decent internet access.

Which reminds me, does anyone have a European-style GSM cell phone that they want to sell for cheap? I'd like to get one, but it seems like a total waste to buy a new one for the short time I'll be there, and the rental rates aren't much better. I'm thinking a used one would be a good way to go. (Apparently an American GSM phone won't work, though, since they are on different frequencies.)

How could anyone start a war when it's this nice out?

The Tennessean just had another article about Kevin Barbieux, a homeless guy from Nashville who runs a blog at http://thehomelessguy.net. The blog is definitely an interesting read.

To the anonymous WebTV user who was came to my site after googling "victoria secret uncensored": I'm really sorry to disappoint, but I don't really have a special source on this. If I were you, I'd try here. I imagine it's still sort of censored, though.

And I wish I could help the guy who was looking for "how to digitally uncensored equipment," but I'm still trying to figure out how to program my VCR. Maybe these folks can help.

An unexpected visitor...
So Friday night I was at work late, and all of a sudden my phone rang. It was my cousin Steve, who I haven't really talked to in about a decade, and who at that point was in a U-Haul at a gas station east of town. (Having apparently done the grand tour of Nashville interstate highways first.)

We agreed to meet at the Exxon near my house, and I burned rubber out of work. Turns out there was no rush -- he somehow managed to circumnavigate the city twice more before arriving! But we eventually met up, and then went back to my place. He had originally been planning on driving for another few hours, but after some prodding (and a beer) decided to spend the night. So we caught up, more or less, looked at old photo albums, toured my scary cellar, watched TV, goofed around with an online dating service he's a member of, and stayed up half the night.

Saturday morning we got up and I decided we should go to the Pancake Pantry for a true Nashville breakfast experience. So we headed over there, but when we saw the line snaking out to the street, we decided instead to go downtown, get barbeque at Jack's, then head over to Bicentennial Mall to eat.

Bicentennial Mall is one of those places I take just about anyone who visits town. The best time to go is probably a few weeks from now when the fountains are turned on and the trees are in bloom. But there's really never a bad time. The entire 19 acre park was built in 1996 in honor of the state's bicentennial, and it is a great way to learn about the state (and get wet, if you want.) Plus it's right next door to the farmer's market, so you can always go buy veggies and stuff at the same time.

After eating we walked around the park for a while, then we headed back to my place, where we hung out for a little while longer before he finally loaded up the U-Haul and headed for DC about 24 hours later than expected.

Then I started frantically thinking about the paper that I was supposed to be writing for class all weekend! (Although I admit I got sidetracked on travel planning for a couple of hours today -- still trying to narrow down where we're actually going next month.)

All in all, it was a pretty nifty weekend.

Spring is here...

Only two more days to submit your entries for the world's most pointless, intrusive, stupid and self-serving security measures. As the folks at Privacy International put it:

We've all been there. Standing for ages in a security line at an inconsequential office building only to be given a security pass that a high school student could have faked. Or being forced to take off our shoes at an airport that can't even screen its luggage.

If you thought the accounting profession was bad news, just wait till you hear how stupid the security industry has become. Even before 9/11 a whole army of bumbling amateurs has taken it upon themselves to figure out pointless, annoying, intrusive, illusory and just plain stupid measures to "protect" our security.

I whipped up some from-scratch chicken soup. The first bowl was good. But I forgot to turn off the burner. Now the noodles are mushy. It's a shame.

All sorts of family news arrived in my e-mail box tonight:

First there was a short message from my mom letting me know that her Aunt Maggie passed away today. Aunt Mag lived in Massachusetts, and growing up we would always stop at her house on summer vacations to New England. Her house was on a rise above an old Aquaduct in a tiny town, and her son had collected all sorts of stone that was displayed around the grounds. (She had a cobblestone driveway.) She lots of cats, and a complete set of vintage Hardy Boys mysteries on her shelves. I remember pulling up in our Griswold-esque Chevy Malibu station wagon and spending the night sleeping on the floor of her guest bedroom.

She had a rack of firewood that sat in a metal rack by her firelplace, and on top of it was hand-lettered sign warning against using it in a fire. It seems that this wood was split by her son before he went off to war and was killed. (I can't remember where -- France in WWII sticks in my mind, but I'm not sure the timing is quite right. It might have been Korea or Vietnam.)

I had not seen her in a long time, but she would send me a card every year on my birthday, and I would write back occasionally. (Although not as much as I probably should have.)

Shortly after I received this news, I got an e-mail from my grandmother on the other side of the family letting me know that my cousin was laid off from his job at Micron, along with over 1000 other people. As a result, he has decided to head back to the DC area for a while, and is driving a U-Haul across the country. It appears he may pass through Nashville sometime in the next few days.

I am not real close to this cousin, but it would be nice to see him again. The circumstances are kind of unfortunate, though.

All this is pretty much the most news I've gotten out of family e-mails in a long time.

RIP Possum, ? - 2003
Alas, it seems that the possum, whose public debut was chronicled on this very site, met its untimely demise in some sort of motor vehicle incident sometime earlier today. The authorities have been notified, but they have no suspects. (Well, ok, I left a message on the answering machine at the city's animal control office.)

I'm at work and I just received an invoice through the mail with two huge sneaker footprints on it. This just reinforces my phobia about sending anything truly breakable through regular mail.

According to this Wired story, the US Army has deployed a boatload of Panasonic ToughBooks running Windows 2000, and precisely one Titanium Mac Powerbook. Of course, the media folks deployed with the troops have all sorts of macs.

The digital camera's here... Yay!

Regardless of your viewpoint on the war, William Saletan makes a good point in Slate:

If you tuned in to President Bush's Thursday night press conference to understand his point of view on Iraq, you got what you came for. If you tuned in to find out whether he understood yours, tough luck. That was the deal when we traded in Bill Clinton for Bush. We got a president who understood the difference between truth and lying. We gave up one who understood everything in between. The upside is that our president is doing the right thing in Iraq. The downside is that he can't talk anyone else into going along.

[...]

[S]ometimes, things aren't black and white. Sometimes they're gray. When the governments of France, China, or Mexico don't see things your way, you have to start the process of persuasion by understanding where they're coming from. That's where Clinton was at his best and Bush is at his worst. Four times at his press conference, Bush was asked why other countries weren't seeing things our way. Four times, he had no idea.

Also, ABC's Nightline had an interesting report the other night about how Bush's Iraq agenda was basically mapped out by a bunch of his cronies in a right-wing think tank years ago, long before September 11. The September 11 attacks just provided the political climate needed to put the plan into action. Ted Koppel introduces the story:

You can watch our story tonight on at least two levels. One, the conspiracy theory, as in this excerpt from a Scottish newspaper, the Glasgow "Sunday Herald". "A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure regime change even before he took power in January 2001." And a similar, if slightly more hysterical version from a Russian paper, the "Moscow Times". "Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow."

Take away the somewhat hyperbolic references to conspiracy, however, and you're left with a story that has the additional advantage of being true. Back in 1997, a group of Washington heavyweights, almost all of them neo-conservatives, formed an organization called the Project for the New American Century. They did what former government officials and politicians frequently do when they're out of power, they began formulating a strategy, in this case, a foreign policy strategy, that might bring influence to bear on the Administration then in power, headed by President Clinton. Or failing that, on a new Administration that might someday come to power. They were pushing for the elimination of Saddam Hussein. And proposing the establishment of a strong US military presence in the Persian Gulf, linked to a willingness to use force to protect vital American interests in the Gulf. All of that might be of purely academic interest were it not for the fact that among the men behind that campaign were such names as, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz. What was, back in 1997, merely a theory, is now, in 2003, US policy. Hardly a conspiracy, the proposal was out there for anyone to see. But certainly an interesting case study of how columnists, commentators, and think-tank intellectuals can, with time and the election of a sympathetic president, change the course of American foreign policy.

--Transcript via Lexis-Nexis

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that even if it is justifiable and necessary, the war should not be carried out without the backing of the UN and the majority of our allies. The world is too interconnected these days for us to take action without considering the effect of the action on our relationships with other countries. Launching a first strike that most of the rest of the world (and many Americans) see as wrong is bad policy, even if you feel that the war is just.

I want to be clear any anti-war sentiment gleaned from the above paragraph is not directed at our soldiers in the field. I have imense respect for those who volunteer to serve our country, and I understand that it's their job to carry out orders. But supporting them doesn't imply an obligation to agree with those orders.

I think that many of the hawks fail to appreciate the true impact this war could have. We're talking about billions and billions of dollars in military spending, a substantial US military presence in the Gulf region for decades, and possibly permanent harm to our relationships with our Allies and the UN. Not to mention the possibility that the war may drag on longer than predicted. And the human toll on both sides -- especially the challenge of invading and conquering a large and already impoverished country without precipitating a massive humanitarian crisis.

I am prepared to admit that I could be wrong on all of this. But I wish Bush and his crew would at least give a passing thought to the idea that they might be wrong -- or at least that the opposition might have some valid points that should be addressed. The "anyone who isn't with us is against us" doctrine may sound good on the evening news, but it's not a very intelligent way to run a country.

I finally broke down and ordered a digital camera last night. It's from some hole in the wall on the Internet, so I don't really know when it will be here. But expect to see more visuals on this page in the future.

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I spent the afternoon studying and listening to a bunch of bluegrass guys jamming at BJRC.

Then I went with some friends to saw a very long (but quite good) 1954 Japanese action movie called Seven Samarai at The Belcourt. If you've seen A Bug's Life, you know the general gist of it.

All in all, a lot better than today's marathon session at work. And more of that in store over the next week, since we have a product launch coming up. Gak.

Just confirmed my reservations for the trip to Europe. The good news is that the airfare only cost me $93 due to creative use of frequent flyer miles. The bad news is that I had to fly into Rome to make this work, since US Airways doesn't serve all that many European airports. So I'm arriving and departing in a different city from the friend I'm traveling with. But still, for $93 I'll put up with some hassle!

We've talked about renting a car, but one snag is that most cars over there seem to be stick shift. I haven't driven one of those suckers in years, and the last time I did the owner (who was in the car with me) apparently swore she'd never let me touch it again. But I got us home, and the car survived the experience...

Anyone know the Italian for "I'm trying, but it keeps stalling -- pull around me!"?

Local radio bigmouth Steve Gill held a ''Bash A Peugeot For Peace'' rally in support of the war yesterday. ''That felt good,'' said one of the participants after swinging a sledgehammer at the French car's trunk. ''It's pretty good exercise, though I don't know what it's symbolic of.''

I'm glad to know that Nashville broadcasters are doing their part to contribute to intelligent debate about US foreign policy.

OK, I'm a little bitter. This year, my alma mater has lined up Bill Clinton to speak at commencement. Last year it was Rudy Giuliani. Obviously they're going for folks who have something interesting to say.

So who did they have at my graduation, you might ask? Some guy named Robert Fulghum, who wrote some book about sharing and taking naps. I'm glad someone was inspired.

Not such a beautiful day in the neighborhood...

Mr. Rogers, children's television fixture for more than 30 years, died of cancer early this morning. He was 74.

I had a hankerin' to blog up a storm last night, but unfortunately Blogger was down all evening due to server upgrades. And thus the world loses another literary masterpiece to the vagaries of technology.

Not as much time tonight, but I'll give you the highlights (and some random late-night rambling) :

I've decided to withdraw from one of the graduate classes I'm taking right now -- for a number of complicated reasons, beginning with the fact that the professor seems to have communications issues, and getting an ulcer just doesn't seem like much fun right now. The bad news about this is that it could end up costing me a big pile of moolah -- as much as 50% of my cost for the class. (At the suggestion of a registration advisor, I am petitioning to get a larger refund due to the problems with the class, but I'm not holding my breath.)

I have other reasons for this seemingly rash decision. One of my friends from college has decided to take a month off to bum around Europe after he takes his med school boards. And, having heard my musings about how I'm squandering my waning youth in middle America instead of seeing the world, he invited me to join in. (You can see my dilemma: stultifying information security class on one hand, European vacation on the other!)

So assuming I can work out the travel arrangements in the next few days, it looks like I'm headed for the south of France sometime in mid-April. I'm still going to be in the middle of my Knowledge Management class then, but I figure it's my duty to test the flexibility of online classes at least once in my graduate career.

We have a huge project at work that's supposed to launch in April, but in my opinion the schedule is already hopelessly optimistic -- so I don't think my absence for a week or two is really going to make all that much difference. Today I bounced the idea off of my boss's boss, and he told me to go for it. He also mentioned the possibility of hiring more help again. This is a very good thing, since unrealistic workload is probably one of my biggest complaints. He's been very concerned about my general mental health and well being lately -- I suspect that he was tipped off (or just guessed) that I've been dipping my toe in the job market a bit.

Recently I've become even busier after being handed the responsibility for the company archives. This department has been neglected for years, and has been cut to the bone in terms of staffing and resources. (The higher ups bought into the notion that a few computers would magically reduce the work involved in maintaining 50+ years of various archival materials.) I'm kind of enjoying the challenge of whipping things into shape, but it's a departure from my normal technology duties. Which just makes the three big programming projects we've got going on right now seem even more daunting.

Today I went out to the big boss's house to work on his company computer. This has become a ritual once or twice a year. Sometimes I do highly work-related things on these visits (updating virus software, installing VPN clients, etc.) Other times, not so much. (Installing a wireless network to his son's room isn't exactly on my copy of the company's strategic plan.)

I don't mind this as much as you might think, though. The big man is a wine afficionado, and in return for the housecalls he keeps me in decent vino. Plus I figure it's not a terrible idea career-wise to stay on good terms with a guy who has a corner office and the letters V and P in his title.

It's hard for me to believe that I've been with the company almost five years. I'm starting to feel like an old timer -- I've been here longer than many of people I deal with regularly. This is the job that I was supposed to leave in a year or two, and here I am about to vest in the pension plan. Last night I actually had to stop and think about my age for a minute -- I somehow didn't remember turning 27. I feel like I'm in some sort of strange dimension where I'm losing track of real time. My life is measured from deadline to deadline, and I can't think in terms of anything bigger. It's bizarre -- and a cry for help from my subconcious, I think.

Missing out on the snow...

Washington, DC, March 1942

I am very jealous of everyone in the Northeast. I love a good snowstorm -- and Tennessee just doesn't get enough of them. (Admittedly there's been more snow this winter than any other time since I moved here, but folks still consider it the blizzard of the century if five or six inches of snow stick around for a day or two.)

I talked to my parents yesterday, and they were right in the thick of things, with something like 16 inches on the ground and more coming down. (The Washington Post describes the scene.)

I was working in DC when the blizzard hit in 1996. I was home from college and working, and got to stay home from work for a few days. Then I had the adventure of making my way across town to work for a day or two before the next batch of snow. My brother was visiting a friend on the other side of the county, and ended up spending a couple of days there until I made it there to pick him up. Meanwhile, my dad stayed home from work, my middle brother stayed home from school, and we all just enjoyed the automatic holiday. I have a picture of my brother, my dad, and me posing with shovels amid the massive piles of snow in front of the house. (The picture is crooked -- I think Mom was having trouble operating the camera with gloves on.)

I honestly lookat the whole thing as an adventure. Everyone's in the same boat -- marooned by a blanket of white fluff. It's a good opportunity to sit down and smell the hot chocolate. Something people should do more of.

There's a guy named George who works the register late Saturday night at Kroger. He does a running commentary under his breath as he scans your groceries. "Ahh. Radishes... No, Spinach! Spinach is good. I love wild spinach. That's good stuff... We close in 15 minutes, you know. Some stores are open 24 hours. But not us. No. We close at 11:00 sharp. People don't know that. There's just two of us here now. Course some people have their day off. Not me, I already had my time off. Now I've got to make up for it. John Grisham book. He's a good writer. I've read his stuff. The Pelican Brief. Exciting. Better put the pizza in its own bag. Soda pop! Put those over here, yup."

Everyone thought Ken Lay of Enron was insider-trading, low-life scum. Turns out the real story is a lot more complex than that.

Help! I'm stuck somewhere in the wilds of deepest, darkest middle Tennessee fixing a computer. (Well, ok. Maury county.)

Will try to post details of parental visit soon (hint: it involved my first trip to the Grand Ole Opry), but right now am trying to deal with the fact that I'm two weeks into classes and already behind in my reading.

When it woke up, the dinosaur was still there

That, in its entirety, is one of the shortest stories ever written. Alas, its author, Guatemalan writer Augusto Monterroso, passed away on Friday.

Parents here visiting, so blogging is likely to be eratic for the next few days.

OK, the possum is out there again. I usually keep the shade on that window closed -- I'm starting to wonder if he's been hanging out on that windowsill all winter. It's behind a bush, under a roof overhang, and probably pretty warm due to my lack of decent weather stripping. If I were a marsupial, that might be the sort of place I'd dig.

Still no camera, but he looks almost exactly like this guy.

Possum!

Just had a possum sitting on the window ledge right outside my bedroom window. Oblivious to the whole thing, the cat was sitting on the sill of the next window over. Eventually she noticed the possum and started meowing and pawing at the window. The possum didn't exactly seem to be intimidated -- he yawned twice and sat there for a while before eventually climbing down the bush and sauntering off. (This is East Nashville , after all. A possum's gotta maintain his tough-guy image if he's gonna make it on the street.)

I snapped some pictures, but I don't know if they'll turn out. And still being digitally impaired, I won't know until I finish the roll and take it to be developed. That's just how old-school we are here at Newton's Kumquat. (I have my eye on a Canon Powershot S45, though, so maybe I'll get with the digital program soon.)

Swimsuit issue coming soon!

The National Geographic swimsuit issue, that is. The sober-minded magazine is publishing a 100-year retrospective of the swimsuit, timed to roughly correspond with the publication of the better known swimsuit issue.

Sports Illustrated seems to be dealing with the competition well. "‘As the pioneers of the swimsuit genre," said Rick McCabe, "we welcome National Geographic into the fold."

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never Lark, or even Eagle flew -
And while with silent lifting mind, I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

- John Gillespie Magee, Jr, 1922-1944

In memory of international heros Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Blair Salton Clark, and Ilan Ramon.

This guy at the INS had a huge backlog of paperwork, so he ordered his employees to start shredding. An estimated 90,000 documents, including passports and birth certificates, were destroyed. When the backlog had been eliminated, the manager ordered his employees to keep shredding so that they could "stay current."

Guess that whole reinventing government thing must finally be kicking in - bet they weren't that efficient when Clinton was in office! (Link via Boing Boing.

Out of control spam -- I think it may be time to get a new e-mail account...

I am no big fan of many of the policies of George W. Bush..

Economy? Let's cut taxes for the wealthy, increase government spending, and build up a record-setting federal deficit. Environment? Let's relax clean air regulations and encourage the purchase of gas guzzling vehicles. Foreign policy? Pay lip service to the UN while waging an undeclared war in the Middle East and ignoring other countries with more advanced weapons programs. You get the idea.

All that said, I want to take a minute to voice my wholehearted support for one of the initiatives Bush touted in his recent State of the Union address. Bush's unexpected proposal to spend $15 billion over the next five years on AIDS treatment and prevention in Africa and the Carribean is more than just another foreign aid program -- it's a moral imperative. As Bush put it,

Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus, including 3 million children under the age of 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than 4 million require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims _ only 50,000 -- are receiving the medicine they need.

Bush's speech only hints at the horror of what's happening. The worldwide AIDS epidemic has already left behind more than 14 million orphans, 92 percent of whom live in Africa. In Botswana, more than 38 percent of the adult population is infected with the virus. (link)

Secretary of State Colin Powell recognizes the gravity of this situation:

Powell called HIV/AIDS "a catastrophe worse than terrorism." He said, "One threat that troubles me perhaps more than any other does not come out of the barrel of a gun, it is not an army on the march, it is not an ideology on a march. It's called HIV/AIDS." (link)

Please take time to contact your congressional representatives and urge them to support Bush's plan to increase funding to help fight this global crisis. Health should be a universal human right, and as one of the richest countries in the world the US should be taking a leadership role in financing this sort of initiative.

Yay! DSL is back!

I am blog impaired right now due to the fact that my DSL provider (Direct TV DSL) has apparently gasped its last. I've signed up for service from Butler.net, a small local DSL provider, so hopefully I'll be back in business in the next few days.

Right now I'm doing the unthinkable and blogging from work. It's actually 1:30 in the morning, but let's just say I wasn't exacly in a state to drive home right away after departing the Saucer this evening. 47 beers down, 153 to go.

I have another class from the the professor from hell. I actually signed up knowing he was teaching it. The class I was hoping to take at another school fell through, and this was the most interesting one that wasn't full. But this means another freakin' group project and probably more hellish exams. Gak. On the plus side, after this semester I'm six credits away from finishing the degree!

My parents may be making a surprise visit to Nashville next week, so I might be spending my weekend cleaning house so I can show them how organized my place always is. ;-) This also means coming up with suitably parental activities, including where to send them while I'm at work, since I won't be able to take the whole week off. (Of course they're still waffling about the plane tickets, so they may never make it.)

Someone at the electric company apparently tripped over an extension cord and inadvertently cut off power to our office building this morning. This shouldn't have been a big deal -- we have an uninterruptable power supply the size of a VW bus that's supposed to keep the computer room in electricity when things like this happen.

Unfortunately, however, the it malfunctioned, and just about every computer system in the company took a hit at the same time.

So I spent all day working with many other folks to resurrect all of the various systems. Overall we were pretty successful, although there are still a few lurking gremlins. (One server still refuses to come back online correctly, a router got fried, etc.)

This was not how I had planned on spending my last weekend of freedom before classes start, though...

Danielle started a conversation about Chili... I typed in my favorite in her comments, but I figured I'd share with you folks too:

Ingredients:
2 tbsp oil
1-1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into one inch cubes
1 small onion, coarsely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
1 medium green bell pepper, coarsly chopped (about 1 cup)
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 can (14 1/2 oz) red kidney beans, undrained
1 can (14 1/2 oz) diced tomatoes (I sometimes use canned tomatoes with chilis mixed in - something like RoTel.)
1 tbsp Chili Powder
1 1/2 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp oregano or cilantro leaves
1 tsp sugar (optional)

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven or large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add chicken, onion, and bell pepper. Saute 8-10 minutes.

2. Stir in remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Simmer 15 minutes. Makes 6 cups.

(I think this was clipped from an ad, and they had a "serving suggestion" of putting it in a hollowed out bread bowl, but I've never done that.)

Argh. I actually write a post for a change, and freakin' blogger won't let me publish it! I gotta do something about that...

I know, I'm a lazy, non-posting scumball lately. I promise I'll get back in the habit once classes start again. (My procrastination potential increases in a linear relationship with the amount of schoolwork I'm supposed to be doing!)

I've been trying to make my "goof-off time" count. Among other things, I've actually read some books that have nothing to do with technology management, including:

• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
• The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology by Simon Winchester
• The Natural by Joe Klein
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (originally reccomended by Danielle, I believe)
• Look at Me by Jennifer Egan
• The Summons by John Grisham
• Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich
• Chicago Then and Now by Elizabeth McNulty (Christmas gift from my mom who went to a conference in Chicago and fell in love with the city.)
• Fresh for '01 You Suckas: A Boondocks collection by Aaron McGruder. (Still my one of my favorite comics that the local paper is too chicken to carry.)
• Most of the relaunch issue of the Oxford American, which has been on woefully shaky financial ground for the last few years, but is supposedly coming back.

I've even done some cleanup around the house, although it's still pretty disorganized. But at least they're no longer sending out avalanche warnings for the area around my desk. And I used rubbing alcohol (folk remedy suggested by some website) to clean the little aphid thingies off of one of my big houseplants. The patient is in remission, but we'll see how it goes.

Decided to try growing a beard -- after not shaving for most of my vacation. Reaction a work yesterday was generally positive. We'll see what happens.

In PA through Wed. Staying up all night, playing video games, losing money at poker, feeding deer, and otherwise generally goofing off. Much fun.

Off to Lord's Valley, PA to hang out with college friends for New Years. My friend is looking for fun things for us to do -- so far the options include a cement museum and a fishing lure museum.

Merry Christmas!

Urgh. Somehow it has fallen to me (again!) to go pick up the $#@*!%$ Honeybaked Ham. For those not familiar, this is a cherished holiday tradition that involves standing in a long outdoor line in a suburban Maryland strip mall to retrieve a hunk of meat. I'm just bubbling over with holiday cheer about this, if you can't tell.

Stayed at work until 4:30 AM on Saturday finishing up odds and ends, then slept for a while, packed, and left town Saturday evening. Drove as far as Bristol, stayed at a hotel, then drove the rest of the 675 miles today. (Of course I had to stop at my Mom's favorite barbeque place on the way out of Nashville and load up a cooler for her!)

The sky was absolutely beautiful driving up the Shenendoah valley on I-81 -- there was bright golden sunlight coming from the west with highlighting fluffy white clouds. But to the east of the mountains you could see a solid wall of black clouds. Every once in a while the ridgeline would dip and you could see brightly colored clouds underneath it all.

I'm in DC for the next few days, then heading up to a friend's place in the boonies in Pennsylvania for New Years, then back here for a dentist appointment (fun!) and back to Nashville sometime roundabout the 6th.