Up til yesterday morning, our livingroom was bare except for an armchair someone had put out for the trash, and a discarded wooden interior door I was refinishing with the intention of turning it into a coffee table. But then, Saturday morning, we unexpectedly inherited an apartment-load of really nice furniture from someone who was moving away. It might be karmatic rebalancing, after we each had reason to give away most of our own respective belongings within the last year. Nice when things work out like that.
There's yet another update of Sample Junkbuster Blockfile.
Just had another problem with the acm.org email
servers not accepting email for days, so I'm going to start publishing nwv@neilvandyke.org as my primary email address.
The full-personal-name vanity domain name still bothers me,
but neil.org, nwv.org, and vandyke.org (darn
those Methodists!) were already taken.
My quality of life just improved substantially with the purchase of an OEM-version Logitech optical mouse ($12 + $6 on Ebay). I'd been using a flaky $10 Kensington ValuMouse that would often take a good 20 seconds to move the pointer 100 pixels to the left, which was not conducive to a pleasant disposition.
Ironic Unawares Quote of the Day: "I think a person who is Arab should be questioned if they get on a bus or plane or go in a government building, [...] You don't want to be afraid of Arabs, Iranians or other foreign people. But how do you differentiate and figure out which one is the bad one from those who love freedom and our country?" Sadly, this kind of ignorance is all too common.
Work stalled last Tuesday, even though I tried to resist my natural inclination to do armchair analysis of the media and social situation. Besides the obvious tragedy to those immediately affected by the WTC attack, the event is also tragic (yet entirely predictable) in that people are exploiting the event to further existing agendas — good or bad. Our President's image is bolstered as we embrace his position as national pride figurehead, and public criticism will largely be limited to the "we urge him to show restraint" class. We can expect to see rapid legislative attacks on civil liberties, and some grave attacks will be successful. Some of the cries of "bomb [particular country or region] back to the stone age" are no doubt from racists who appreciate the newfound social acceptability of their positions. The event might also have modified public perception past a threshold that enables military actions that were already deemed necessary. The event might also prove another milestone in the rise of Christian fundamentalism in the US. As an American, I'm embarrassed by some of our collective actions, but the US remains my home, and I can only hope that those in power will not abuse their power too much in wake of this event.
Periodic update of Sample Junkbuster Blockfile.
© Copyright Neil Van Dyke Contact
