Archive for September, 2004
I mentioned in an earlier post that we had all the old, overgrown shrubs and trees on our property razed to the ground. Since then I’ve mulched the garden areas (we’ll start planting things in the spring) and I’m tremendously impressed with myself for growing some nice, thick grass in the spots that needed it. But we’re still the scary house on the block. One afternoon someone came by and stuck a Democratic Party flyer in our door. That evening I was out in the street playing with Kai and some of the neighborhood kids. A canvasser was working his way down the street, stopping at each of the houses where the flyers had been placed, and following up with the residents. I watched him as he approached our house. He stopped on the sidewalk in front, looked down at his clipboard, then up at the house, paused, looked down and then up again, paused again, and then walked right on by.
So the house looks better than it did a year ago, but we’re not there yet 
In a couple weeks we’re having the front door and the back door replaced. I’ve acquired many home improvement skills over the years - from tile work, to laying floors, to electrical work. But I’ve never gotten the knack of hanging doors (I think my problem is that, unlike most other home improvement skills, it’s an art, not a science). So I’m leaving that job to the pros (we’ve been lucky to find a very good contractor - it’ll be the same guy who did our kitchen windows).
I’ve realized in all this time I haven’t posted any exterior shots of the house yet (actually, I have, but you’d have to hunt for them: they’re tucked away in my Route 50 travelogue). So here’s a shot from when we moved in last year, and then a couple showing the recent yardwork.
What the house looked like when we moved in last year:
What it looks like now - we’ve removed the shrubs, and replaced the windows and roof:
Since taking this picture I’ve mulched the garden area and planted grass:
Kai has developed two strong new interests over the past month: drawing, and playing with blocks. The primary goal of block play is to construct a tower and then demolish it. I figure that’s fairly standard for a 3-year old boy. But what’s interesting is the design of his buildings: the only word to describe them is “organic.” I wouldn’t have thought that was possible with blocks, but he somehow manages to put them together with a minimum of right angles, and he has interesting ideas on how to use the arch-shaped pieces (he’ll typically center them on top of some other narrow piece, so they’re more like see-saws than arches). So far I haven’t been quick enough with the camera to get a picture of one of his creations before he smashes it, but I’ll keep trying.
His drawings are primarily focused on Thunderbirds. Here’s an annotated sample:
Back in the day, (all of 2 years ago), I found good stuff on Napster. The concerns over copyright weren’t significant in regard to my interests, as I was mostly looking for obscure tracks (B-sides, concert bootlegs, etc.) from obscure bands (NoMeansNo, Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, Steroid Maximus, etc.) - not the kind of stuff that’s going to hurt anybody’s record sales. (Rather than fighting new technology like most of the music industry, insound.com has embraced it, and they’re making a bundle, but that’s another topic…).
There were two reasons Napster had such a huge library: 1. it was the only significant online P2P system around at the time, and 2. it got a huge amount of free publicity from the news media. Now we have a number of different P2P networks and a variety of client software packages to choose from. Venturing into this world, I stumbled around for a while before figuring out the best approach. There are a lot of client software options: Morpheus, Limewire, BearShare, Xolox, Phex, neoNapster, Shareaza, and more. There are also different networks you can connect to: Gnutella1, Gnutella2, the eDonkey network, bitTorrent, and probably more.
I started out with Morpheus but it was a huge resource hog. It also came with spyware. I then tried LimeWire, which was much nicer to my PC and did not contain spyware. But my searches would not persist. What I mean is this: I’d enter a search, and it would chug away for 10-15 minutes, and then it would essentially forget about. My search would continue to display, but if I didn’t get any results right away, then I would never get any at all. I’d have to keep re-running the search to keep up with changes on the network. I’ve now settled on using Shareaza, which runs nicely, has no spyware, connects to all the major networks, and diligently runs my searches continuously.
The eDonkey network is better at finding what you’re looking for and has sophisticated handling for large files, which means a lot of the action, especially for movies, has moved there. The downside is that the queues on eDonkey can be mighty long (I often get a queue position over 1,000) so you have to be willing to leave your PC on continuously (and hope your network connection doesn’t go down, which will force you out of your queue position if you can’t get back online quickly). Out of curiosity I downloaded a couple of movies. I found the quality to be poor: really major compression artifacts were always a problem, and some of the movies were just recorded by someone in a theater with a camera, so you sometimes get people walking in front of the camera, ambient noise, etc. But given the ever-increasing bandwidth capacity of networks, and the ever-improving compression technologies, I imagine Hollywood is soon going to fully join up with the music industry in its war against filesharing.
Kai’s latest malapropisms:
Glowering and stomping his feet, he said, “that makes me serious!” This was after something happened that annoyed him. I realized he picked it up from me saying things like “stop it now, I’m serious.” He thinks “serious” means annoyed or frustrated.
Wanting more water pressure from the faucet while washing his hands, he said, “make it louder Daddy!” I was about to correct him, but I couldn’t think of an easy word to substitite for “louder,” and besides, it’s cute.
I think this is the first time since I started my blog that I went almost a full week without a post. Maria and I were hit with a number of difficulties: Maria’s father has been diagnosed with some extremely serious health problems, Maria is contending with some health problems of her own, my good friend Jay’s work situation in India has turned into a disaster, Kai essentially boycotted the whole idea of sleeping more than two consecutive hours, and this high-stakes yet cartoonish Presidential campaign has both Maria and I on the verge of shouting from the rooftops.
Over the past few nights we’ve succeeded in turning around Kai’s sleep situation: he’s now “sleeping like a baby” (I put that in quotes since the intended meaning of the phrase, IMHO, bears little resemblance to reality). How did we do it? We took advantage of Kai’s soft-spot: his Thunderbird toys. He’s obsessed with them. Although the recent Thunderbirds movie (based on the much cooler old TV series) was terrible, Kai of course loved it, and it’s resulted in a slew of new Thunderbirds toys on the market. We explained to him that four consecutive nights of good sleeping - illustrated by means of a chart where he would place star stickers every morning - would earn him a Tracy Island (normally we don’t spend that kind of money on his toys, but his Thunderbird toys provide endless hours of entertainment). The parent-toddler relationship is a fascinating composite of love, understanding, discipline, and - when you’ve played all your other cards to no avail - bribery.
Maria hurt her back running, and her doctor says it looks like her ongoing plague of fatigue is a low blood-sugar thing. Now that we know the cause, we can work on a solution.
I’ve been counseling my friend Jay over the phone. He’s in California right now, on what was supposed to be a short vacation from his research in India. But his partners there are reneging on their agreement, and putting Jay in a very difficult position in regard to his expected payments and retaining control of his intellectual property (in case you don’t know Jay, he’s doing HIV/AIDS research). So he’s working on developing a strategy to salvage what he can from a difficult situation.
Another reason I didn’t post much here last week was that I was busy setting up a new website. I worked myself through a cycle of political rage by starting WhereWasW.com, but I’ve already shut it down. The blogosphere is already awash in a flood of political commentary, and to make my own stand out, I quickly realized that I’d have to dedicate the kind of time that I just don’t have. I wrote a couple essays for the site, and I’ll archive them here when I get a chance.
Lastly and most importantly, we just learned that Maria’s father has been diagnosed with bone cancer and lung cancer. It’s probably not appropriate for me to say much more here, since this is a public forum, but please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.
The new design is in place. After all the work I’ve put into it, now I can’t decide if it’s cool or just horrible. I’ve looked at it for too long, and now I’ve lost my sense of perspective. Is it yucky hot dogs and mustard, or is it retro Soviet-imagery-became-cool-once-we-were-no-longer-afraid-of-them? If you’re reading this, I’m sure you have an opinion - please click the Comments link and let me know what you think!
Redesign in progress: please shield your eyes or wear sunglasses while I sort this out.
I just upgraded to Movable Type 3.1, and I’m using the new templates too. I’m making use of the new features for archives, which means links I made that go from one blog entry to another aren’t working right now. I’ll get them fixed as soon as I can.
And comments are back! For now I’m allowing comments from unregistered users. If spam comments become a problem again, I’ll switch to requiring registration.
I’m curious to see what the public response will be to the non-stop use of 9/11 imagery at the Republican Convention. Obviously the motivation was to perform the following exercise:
Remind Americans How 9/11 Brought Us Together
+ Display Bush As The Strong Post-9/11 Leader
= Increase In Support For Bush
Will it work, or will it be perceived for what it is: crass exploitation of a national tragedy for political gain? 9/11 did indeed bring us together as a nation. On that day, for, me, the past was erased. It didn’t matter to me what my prior opinion of Bush was, and I imagine that was true for most Americans. On that day, I wanted a leader who would steady and inspire not only me, but the entire nation. And on that day, Bush was not that man. His televised appearance that afternoon from a bunker in Louisiana - looking nervous and uncertain, looking down repeatedly as he slowly read a prepared statement - clearly showed a man overwhelmed, and it scared the hell out of me. The words that reassured me on that day were not his, but Colin Powell’s, who made a brief but impassioned speech from the OAS conference he was attending in Peru:
A terrible, terrible tragedy has befallen my nation, but has befallen all the nations of this region, all the nations of the world, and befallen all those who believe in democracy.
Once again we see terrorism; we see terrorists, people who don’t believe in democracy, people who believe that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose. They can destroy buildings, they can kill people, and we will be saddened by this tragedy, but they will never be allowed to kill the spirit of democracy. They cannot destroy our society. They cannot destroy our belief in the democratic way.
You can be sure that America will deal with this tragedy in a way that brings those responsible to justice. You can be sure that as terrible a day as this is for us, we will get through it, because we are a strong nation, a nation that believes in itself. You can be sure that the American spirit will prevail over this tragedy.
The Republican Convention did not mention Bush’s actions on 9/11, but instead focused on his carefully staged photo-op’s and prepared speeches on the days following 9/11. The Convention planners were wise to not mention Bush’s actions on September 11, 2001. Why? Read this article: An Interesting Day: President Bush’s Movements and Actions on 9/11. It’s a long document, but an important and telling one. It covers far more ground than the “7 minutes” made famous in Fahrenheit 9/11: it painstakingly reconstructs a highly detailed timeline of everything Bush did that day. Even after taking into account the many conflicting versions of exactly what happened and when, the picture that emerges of Bush is that of a man who was ill-informed, passive, indecisive, and uncertain about what he should be doing and where he should be going. After he got back to DC and got his PR team around him, then he started looking good. But that doesn’t tell us what he’s really made of. It was his repeated moments of befuddlement in the midst of the 9/11 crisis that showed us the real man.
