blivet 2.0

I gotta hit the rack. This morning’s transition was traumatic. If unemployment was quiet and involved dark and Mr. Pillow it was welcome. Thank ghu for Audrey. So, are you gonna go to work? All I could do was blink. I don’t want to do that again.

We watched part 10 of Ken Burn’s Jazz tonight. I really enjoyed the series, I suspect a book and some CDs and DVDs may eventually enter the already voluminous blivet library. Not to mention more music CDs.

Lots of synchronicity out there in blogville. I keep posting things or read things and think about blogging them and then seeing things in a similar vein a half hour later on other weblogs when i swing by. Interesting…

MANUFACTURING NEWS. As always, thank you Mr. Baum for shining the light of sanity on some recent “news”.

David is ’speaking of energy’ - We took our eye off the ball, and now the other guy’s got it. We’re going to have to play very carefully to get it back. Mr. Rogers, as always, is accurate. Actually, I fear we dropped the ball and the referees on the home court seem to be ignoring the body checks at the top of the key. In terms of the energy situation in California and soon (perhaps) elsewhere, Al notes that “We can view these events as either a crisis or an opportunity.” Again I wholeheartedly agree. The choices we make (collectively) should be long-term solutions rather than short-term (perhaps motivated by profit) fixes that will just have to be made again. But, there’s two guys from Big Oil in the White House, Watt’s stepdaughter approved as Secretary of the Interior, and few if any Democrats with a spine in Washington … We’re hosed.

Rather than a tax cut (we pay less than most of the industrialized world - I want to say “all” but I’m not positive I’m right) lets invest heavily in research for active solar, storage technologies, wind power, and clean up car and truck emissions. There’s that little thing called C O N S E R V A T I O N. Let’s just do it. Tax cuts for conservation by industry and citizens if you want to cut taxes.

I just caught garret’s well written entry for today. Yep to that too.

The petroleum industry penetrates into almost every sector of our lives. Al (rightly) points out, why are we burning this stuff?

I have to move on to other subjects. I was on the debate team in 1971 when the national topic was (paraphrased) ‘pollution and what to do about it’. I get too too too wound up on this subject. Perhaps because I haven’t done nearly as much about it as I could and should have in terms of my own life and activism. My house is made of glass and I have a plank in my eye.

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“om-line bill paying” Hee! That must have uncoiled from some region of my sub-conscious. I want to be calm, I want to be calm. I hadn’t noticed my Freudian typo until Dan sent me an email.

i’ve had only bad luck.

robert over at bump mentioned a bill paying service about a week ago …

I’m investigating om-line bill paying. I haven’t scouted around since CheckFree™ got unbundled from Quicken™. Anybody have any experience with such a beast? Wells Fargo® has pretty good on-line banking (balances, transfers, downloading Quicken files) but their bill paying isn’t up to par. One transaction a day won’t cut it.

Forty-mile an hour gusts today. Very bad for trying to collect pollen samples. Doing GPS work doesn’t care about no steenkin’ wind though.

I’ve been pre-approved by my health care provider to go to the sleep clinic. Thursday, 10 February is the day - err, night. It could be interesting, I always have a real hard time sleeping in a strange place. Wait a minute, I have a hard time sleeping in my own bed, … whats my point here?

Hmm, I get home and fire up Claris^H^H^H^H^H^H Palm Organizer to enter the sleep clinic time and date and notice that February 10 of this year is on a Saturday. I made the appointment on the phone, away from a calendar. Details like this are important!

There must be time for love - and maybe art. — Jonas

Meow! - Miau! Thanks Andrea! I hope your thesis is progressing well.

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No time to really look for anything on the web this morning. Have a great day.

Well, page flipping seemed to work fine. Operator Error yesterday? I’m 99.9% sure.

I’m not sure what’s going on. I ‘flipped the page’, but this page isn’t showing up.

Pretend the top part of Saturday’s page is here. Hopefully, I’ll not do whatever I did again …

here’s what should be here:

blivet - A Superbowl-free zone, more out of apathy. I’m just not interested in most sports.

I’m down for the count. Monday will be here sooner than I suspect.

Ugh. Sounds like Al has the flu. I hope the vaccination kicks in and you recover soon!

[Washington Post] We’ll Get Over It If You Get Off Your High Horse. via Tom at backup brain

Jonas and Aila went Sunday cruising, but did some fine communicating along the way. Jonas turned a phrase near the end that struck me as very poignant, This is what the Swedish dream used to look like. Wow. You have clear vision Jonas. I hope it takes you far.

We finally got to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wu hu zang long). What a great movie. I’d like to see it in the theater again. We went to the matinée about 1 PST figuring the Super Bowl folks would be otherwise occupied.

The Icon Factory now has Iron Chef-themed Macintosh icons. via Pat (42) via the Iron Chef site.

15 years ago the Challenger space shuttle (STS-51-L) was lost seventy-three seconds after liftoff. The Challenger exploded, killing seven people, including Christa McAuliffe, a teacher, the first civilian passenger on the Shuttle. i was reminded by Jason

Sunday - I’m not sure what’s going on here. I flipped the page, but Sunday’s page (message 624) isn’t showing up.

I’m down for the count. Monday will be here sooner than I suspect.

Ugh. Sounds like Al has the flu. I hope the vaccination kicks in and you recover soon!

[Washington Post] We’ll Get Over It If You Get Off Your High Horse. via Tom at backup brain

Jonas and Aila went Sunday cruising, but did some fine communicating along the way. Jonas turned a phrase near the end that struck me as very poignant, This is what the Swedish dream used to look like. Wow. You have clear vision Jonas. I hope it takes you far.

We finally got to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wu hu zang long). What a great movie. I’d like to see it in the theater again. We went to the matinée about 1 PST figuring the Super Bowl folks would be otherwise occupied.

The Icon Factory now has Iron Chef-themed Macintosh icons. via Pat (42) via the Iron Chef site.

15 years ago the Challenger space shuttle (STS-51-L) was lost seventy-three seconds after liftoff. The Challenger exploded, killing seven people, including Christa McAuliffe, a teacher, the first civilian passenger on the Shuttle. i was reminded by Jason

Sunday - A Superbowl-free zone
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Saturday

More snow on garret’s patio. Some nice b/w pics with some Isherwood text too.

Kevin Drennan started a Grateful Dead Weblog. via Dave Scripting News

David at mirth has a great blog today. The twelve steps to political sobriety …

Craig is Just diggin’ some tunes while cooking up a yummy supper. One album he’s playing is a favorite of mine, the James Gang’s second album, Rides Again. I remember being amazed (hey, I was 14) how Joe Walsh worked Cast Your Fate to the Wind into one song (I can’t remember which one now, Funk #49?). Great music.

What’s your Soprano’s Mob nickname? I’m ‘The Quill’. I often do those games and end up with something ridiculous. Finally a semi-decent one. (Note: you get very different results with just your first name, like ‘Cedar Teeth’. LOL!) SirDeath is ‘The Icepick’ using his real name. Obviously a man to be reckoned with. via Dori at Backup Brain

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass. If you’ve ever tried to replicate those experimental results you’re supposed to in Physics Lab with broken equipment, indifferent TAs, and a Hotel and Restaurant Management major for lab partner you’ll understand. via mike’s weblog

Soft rain off and on last night — right now for that matter. I had several conversations with a damp cat last night. I want out. I want back in. It can’t still be raining — I want back out. Gack! I want back in. I want to walk on your head and implore you to make it stop raining. Meow, meow, meow. Why did you make it rain? I’m such a good kitty. Meow, meow, meow. I can remember standing at the door around 3am in my sweatshirt, old running shorts and disheveled hair watching it rain. I thought, “We don’t need one of those folksy ’scare away bad things’ totems, we’ll just put up a cardboard cutout of me at 3am.” That should take care of the things that go bump in the night.

Thats about it from this corner of the Mojave. We had a nice rain this evening. Dodger (the cat) was very unhappy for a time - as only a desert cat can be with rain, but now everyone is back inside and in bed. I think I’ll make it four of us…

re: the Doctor’s visit today: As soon as it gets pre-approved I’ll be spending a couple of nights in a sleep clinic.

I get fund raising letters from both extremes of the politico-social spectrum and I’m in agreement with John. They all go in the recycling bin. I get really disturbed when (apparently) that ‘I’m an Idiot!’ sign lights up on my forehead and the money-tree shakers show up. John, I hope spring comes early to Iowa.

It is a very interesting archaeological site. It drops neatly into the 11,000 - 8,500 b.p. pocket based on the diagnostics (Lake Mojave/Silver Lake lithic assemblage). Its in an unusual environmental setting and has good research potential, but some of it is now sadly gone. Hopefully, the rest of the site can remain undisturbed. I’d love to get some pollen samples out of that site! [Later: this site is the one I am being asked to evaluate and the reason I feel a bit like Cliff Stoll. Clear as mud? still later: I’m not trying to be coy, mysterious, or obtuse. This is part of a Federal investigation that will likely land in court depending on the pleadings, so I can’t say where it is or why it is, but I can say when it is.]

Commander Dave is a hero too. Being one, he’d never bring it up.

GBY/GBA The 26th Amendment? via Kevin

Craig asks what we think about progressive or alternative v. mainstream web based news sources. His observation is that they are interested in the voice that they project rather than the products that they sell. I agree! I get most of my news links and pointers via the weblogs I frequent as well.

His kind of news: A nice thing Craig then did was to post a partial list of progressive / alternative web based news sources.

Mirth reappeared last night!

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On my way out the door, have a great day.

Going off to meet with various law enforcement types and a fellow archae — I feel a little like Cliff Stoll in Cuckoo’s Egg. Typically, I’d have little to say to these folks (Federal law enforcement except for Agent Scully!), but this time it’s different. Its on my turf, in my domain, in my area of expertise. I have a vested interest.

Hayduke, the PowerBook, is very unstable. An installer crashed the system a couple of times last night and the system crashed on its own overnight. No time to run TechTool, so its limping along with minimal extensions until I can debug things.

I’ve got an interesting day tomorrow. I’ve been called in to consult on a Federal ARPA (Archaeological Resources Protection Act) investigation so it could be good. The background is intriguing, I’ll see how much I’ll be able to say.

I’ve spent the last hour and a half trying to unhose my Radio Userland and My Manila on the Desktop installation. I was having path problems with enclosures (I was getting multiple folders - ‘Radio Userland˙’, ‘Radio Userland[trademark]’) and the ‘My Subs’ item in the left hand table had disappeared from the MUOTD homepage with a root update on Wednesday. So I ran the ‘fix address’ script from the Radio discussion group hoping to fix one thing and then move on to another and broke something. (eh? ‘measure twice, cut once’, says the voice in my head.) So I tried to do a new install, hoping I could begin again. But, I think I’m using the same password to enable upstreaming, but, apparently not. I’ve tried the usual iterations of the password scheme I should have used to no avail. Plus, Radio keeps dumping me into MacsBug which had never happened until I hosed the paths. I should have read more docs. Oh well, I don’t think I’m destined to generate things for syndication anyway… Enough cutting edge. I forswore beta software sometime during the great browser wars of the last millennium and should have stuck to it. I’m just playing anyway, I’ll leave the arena to the pros.

[10:30 PST] I wasn’t able to get on ETP from work at all, but other aspects of our connectivity were also broken from here so I don’t know it blivet was off the air or not…

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Happy First Anniversary to Andrea’s Weblog and Andrea!

Ken writes and is exactly right. TS Eliot in The Wasteland wrote ‘April is the cruelest month’. Thanks Ken!

My chill wind (mentioned yesterday) seems to be similar to garret’s, Al’s, Craig’s, Dave’s, Jonas‘, and others. My personal Dark Night of the Soul seems to be continuing. Seasonal Affective Disorder? (Dunno. I have been feeling better with the last four out of eight days working outside.) <tangent> I can’t remember who said March is the cruelest month but I think it may apply somewhat. (I’m taking ‘March’ as a metaphor for ‘winter’ since it’s duhhh January.) The time when the stored winter food is running low and you’re down to durable roots and tubers. A time of fasting and introspection. Also the time of starvation and desperation, as well as feeling abandoned by both god and humankind. of course the divine is always there, we just lose our vision.

Dave has an interesting link under ‘Esoteric’, I’ll have to check out.

I had a good day in the field today. We made it back in about a half an hour before the forecasted sprinkles arrived with the cold front. It had been about 60°F. Verrry nice. It dropped about 15 degrees in about five minutes. Back home (Kansas) I would have been looking for funnel clouds. We had to come in anyway because of mandatory safety training for golf cart operation. Yes, I passed and am now certified(-able).

The Year of the Snake has begun. If you’ve been watching the countdown script at the bottom of the page, you know we’ve arrived at the Chinese New Year.

“Maybe it’s time to think about why we are fighting, what we are fighting for, and whether the price we are paying is worth the misery we are causing.” -Al yep the chill wind has been blowin’ over here too Al

I’ve had just a minute to look over the changes to Radio UserLand and MUOTD (My.Userland on the Desktop). You’ve done a lot of work in the last couple of days! Great job Dave, Jake, Brent, Ken and the rest of the crew at UserLand! (And the army of beta testers.) sorry if I forgot anyone!

Audrey had a great time today at some tapings for celebrity Jeopardy! here in Las Vegas.

Late in the page flip department…