Post Thanksgiving Roundup

So Thanksgiving is over, and Lisbeth and I have returned from San Antonio. It was about 12 hours each way, but we made more stops and drove more slowly on the way back, so we think the return path may be a better on to take next time. Don’t ask how we went, I don’t really remember.

We had a lot of fun in Texas. Lisbeth’s cousin, Jennifer, and her husband Jeff, recently had a baby. She’s their second, and we kept her for a few hours so they could have some quiet time. Jennifer went with Lisbeth’s sisters Lindsay and Annalise to see Pride and Prejudice. Jeff hung out and relaxed. We enjoyed her a lot, and hopefully have had our baby fix for a while.

I was pretty stoked to hear of a press conference to be held by Dan Glickman and Bram Cohen, but the end result is a little less than I hoped for. I thought it would be a revolutionary content-delivery system, probably based on BitTorrent, but it was really more like a cease-fire of sorts. Still cool, and Bram is a mad genius regardless, but I thought I could finally find that middle ground, where my hard drive is filled with Xvid movies, (more likely DivX, H.264, or some sort of crippled deal like WMV,) but I pay someone for them, and the person I pay has the legal right to take money for them, and I don’t have to bother ripping DVDs or risking a C&D letter.

Even though this is coming at the end of this post, it is the most significant thing here. For everyone who doesn’t believe this nation is going to hell at the hands of the Bush administration, I present Deborah Davis. Please, please visit http://www.papersplease.org/davis/ to get the full story. Here’s the short version, though. Deborah Davis was asked by a security guard to show her ID because she was on a bus. No reason stated, except that he was ordering it. She refused. This was a warrantless search, devoid of just cause, reasonable suspicion, or due process. He ordered her off the bus as punishment for her lack of compliance, but she again refused. So he got a fed to retry his failed attempts for him. Fed one called fed two. Then they arrested her. She is being charged criminally with federal misdemeanors. I have the utmost respect for this woman and her refusal to show her papers. We could all do with a little civil disobedience like this, and maybe some paranoia when we find out this kind of thing actually happens in the “land of the free.”

Copyfighting since 1967

I know it looks bad to say I’m going to start posting regularly again, then not post for a week. I have a legitimate excuse this time. The internet at our apartment is down, and has been for several days, and we don’t have internet hooked up at our house. So I’m at the library right now.

I was at the library last night, as well, going through the basement stacks of bound periodicals, looking for some old literary journals for a paper I’m writing. While I was wandering through the nondescript binders of journals, magazines, and abstracts, I noticed a title I recognized from my youth: PC World. To its left sat PC Magazine. I read those in junior high and high school. I loved them. I filled out the response cards so that vendors would send me mountains of junk mail filled with pictures of the toys I so desperately wanted. One of the computer mags I used to read had a column by Penn Jillette. I thought it was hilarious when I was 14, but haven’t seen it since then. I couldn’t find it in any of the issues in the basement, (I think they have them all,) but I didn’t look very long since I was researching a paper. I’m wondering now, though, if Penn’s column was in a different publication, or was just very short lived and I looked in the wrong ones. Or maybe it wasn’t on the last page of every issue like I think I remember it being.

When I came up to the first floor of the library to find microfiche of another journal, I discovered reels of Computerworld, one I hadn’t read. They had it dating back to 1967. I couldn’t resist coming back today to look through some issues. Turns out it was a bi-fold newsweekly that read remarkably like the Slashdot of today. For example, the front page of Vol. 1, No. 2 (July 26, 1967) has such stories as “Brooks Bill Results Reviewed…By Brooks,” describing the situation in which Congressman Jack Brooks, in charge of some type of computer legislation, was allowed to determine his own effectiveness without outside review, and “Copyrights—Disappointing Position,” describing the struggle between the right to store data and the perceived right to control what data you made, or paid to have made, even after you’ve sold it. “The problem of copyrighting came up in two cases—and in neither case was there any comfort for the computer people concerned,” the story begins. “Information retrieval people, interested in building up their on-line libraries, heard the Deputy Register of Copyrights insist that the creation of input data which included copies of whole documents was a “clear violation of the copyright owner’s basic right to ‘print, reprint, publish, copy, and vend’ his work.”” Sounds like half of the /. discussions each and every day.

One of the longest pieces was called “Are Women A Problem?” “Single women have a social life; married women have families. A manager, though he may not readily admit it, is hard put to assign one of his female staff to overtime, shift-work, or assignments of short notice. Almost every manager feels more comfortable asking a family man to assist in extracurricular projects than he does a woman, single or married.” Apparently, it’s just too hard to ask a woman to do her work, so you should only hire men. What can you say, it was 1967. Still, no wonder geeks don’t have social skills, the women were intentionally kept away from them by their employers. Incidentally, while typing this, I found Computerworld.com. I searched the site for the article title and came up with with “Mammography repository offers private access to health data”

I can't think of a title right now.

If you could see me right now, you'd tell me to go to bed. I need more sleep than I'm getting. On the plus side, I finished that presentation. It went off pretty well, if a bit long. Now I'm working on some other stuff that I have do do tonight. Or rather, not working on it, as you can plainly see.

I have a small pile of those $1 DVDs with the old cartoons on them. Today, I encountered a professor's son, about 2 years old I think, crying in the arms of a GA while his mom was at a mandatory staff meeting. I ran home for the cartoons. By the time I got back, they'd found an Elmo game online, but they had the cartoons now as a backup plan if he got bored. I also brought them Ren and Stimpy seasons 1 & 2, which may be a little, umm... mature, for a two-year-old. Since he was in the care of a graduate student from the English dept., I'm sure the "uncut" label didn't go unnoticed. If I'm wrong, well, he had to learn about fart jokes and hairballs sooner or later.

I typically believe in quality over quantity, but right now I'm getting back in the habit if posting. I'll make good posts when I get around to it.

Holy Crap!

Several months ago, shortly after I posted about the Terrible Thunder Lizards, this blog somehow became the first hit on Yahoo search for Terrible Thunder Lizards. Kind of strange, but Yahoo search isn't that hot, so it wasn't a shock. But now, even though I don't even provide real information, and other sites do, my referrer logs just showed me that I'm the third hit on GOOGLE! Also, number 3 on MSN. I'm not really a relevant hit, but it's still pretty cool.

Edit: Fiddling around in the logs some more, I see that on yahoo, I'm number one for "endangered feces +gilda"

Okay, lots of other search engine hits, but at this point I'm probably noticing things that wouldn't interest me if I were really awake, so I'll stop gushing about it.

Back in the Saddle

I may have set a record for not posting.

There have been some pretty overwhelming events in my life since my last post, including the best event, and one of the worst.

Lisbeth and I were married on September third. It was amazing, and I am still in awe that I could be so fortunate to have been chosen by her. She is an incredible person, and I can't describe how much I am in love with her. Nothing could top the joy I have at being able to spend my life with my best friend.

On the other side, about two weeks later, Sandy, my puppy, was killed. I won't go into all of the details, but it resulted in a criminal trial. The trial was this past Wednesday, and we got a conviction, but the defendant has appealed, so the process will start all over again soon.
Back to good stuff, Lisbeth and I bought a house. We are in the process now of readying the place to move in. We're a little strapped for time, but we're very excited about the whole thing.
Now then, that brings us current.

Right now it's about 3:30 am. I was doing homework, preparing a presentation on Norse mythology, but like I said, it's about 3:30 am. I am very caffienated, and rapidly losing ability to comprehend what I am reading. Typing is not so much easy right now either, because my hands are shaking, and I can't think in complete sentences. What thoughts I do have are silly. Case in point: when I typed the word "sentences" above, I originally typed "senteces" and immediately thought how much it looked like "feces." I like poop jokes. You already knew that.

I'm at that point where sleepiness and artificial stimulation converge into mild paranoia. Not bad, just enough that noises make me jumpy. It put me in mind, though, of a far worse case of the same condition.

One time, two or three years ago (while taking the second class Lisbeth and I had together,) I had been sleeping about four hours a night because of too much homework. Then I had to stay up all night writing a paper for said class. About three or four in the morning, I was finishing my second or third pot of coffee. The words on my computer monitor ceased to be a language I knew. The level of sleep deprivation I was suffering combined with the extreme over-stimulation resulted in my body being awake while my brain was pretty much asleep. That was when I realized there was a vampire in my house.

Having a vampire in your house is frightening, make no mistake. But I was more angry than scared. I've seen the movies. They can't come in your home uninvited, and I had not invited any blood-suckers in. The most logical course of action, then, was to tip-toe in my socks around the house, hopefully finding him before he found any of my roommates, and tell him he was not welcome. Thanks but no thanks, we don't want any.

I didn't catch him. I never saw him. I assumed he had realized I was onto him and left. After a little sleep, though, I felt pretty silly.

I'm not seeing any vampires tonight, but man do I want to go to sleep. I can't wait to get home from work.

On a side note, I can't go this long without posting again. I'm typing this offline, and I don't know if I'll remember my password. If you read this, I guess it means I did.

Side note #2: Nevermind, I remembered it on the first try. Turns out it was one of my common ones.

Side note #3: I thought with this post I'd stop using song titles and other pop-culture references as post headings, but this one just made sense. Even though I don't really like Aerosmith. Maybe next time.