Journal Archive 1

If you're here because of my weblog, welcome! If you're not, this entry is prompted by the Am I Hot or Not? website. It's an interesting experiment that could only happen on the web. Essentially, people post their pictures anonymously to the site and vistors, also anonymously, rate them on a scale of 1 to 10. Picture owners can log in and retrieve their "scores", if they so choose. It has pictures of both men and women, and there's no limitation to who can vote for whom, or even how many times. The site is normally set up to offer random access to the entries so there is at least some difficulty in running up the score for a particular entry. As the site has become popular, though, alternative access methods to the pictures have been made available, including one that lists them in ranked order according to score, either lowest to highest or vice versa. I took a look using this interface. The highest rated women, not surprisingly, were usually partially nude or in lingerie. The lowest rated, on the other hand often were larger than "average", even if they were dressed similarly. This reflects the typical bias against women, and men, who are not considered thin. Apparently, there's no way that they could be pretty or sexy, right?

Wrong! Very, very wrong. I'm sick and tired of this artificial standard of beauty that limits a great part of the population from even being considered as pretty or sexy. I don't find Calista Flockhart, the anorexic star of TV's Ally McBeal, to be very attractive. To me, she looks sick, and doesn't look much like a woman. Of course, you may think otherwise. I find a woman such as Camryn Manheim, of The Practice, to be the very epitome of womanliness, and I think she's pretty and sexy as well. Once again, you may not agree. Camryn has made a much publicized push for awareness of larger women, which I applaud. I've had a preference for larger women for a long time, although I didn't realize it for many years. At some point in the past, I came to the conclusion that the reason all my girlfriends were big wasn't just coincidence, it was a pattern.

Despite my dawning realization, I wasn't ready to be vocal about with the "guys". That took a while longer, and women like Camryn made it easier for me to be upfront about my preferences. It was obvious that I wasn't alone in the way I felt, and, perhaps because of my age, I was much less concerned what the "guys" would say. I still hear the occasional "you're kidding, right?" comment, but it neither bothers me nor gets repeated after I answer in the affirmative.

One additional note: I was careful to use the word preference above. This is opposed to the word fetish, which implies a fixation that drives choices in one single direction. I, on the other hand, appreciate beauty in every woman, regardless of size. There's no denying there are those who have a "fat fetish", but I'm certainly not one. What I am, I guess, is an FA, or Fat Admirer, but I dislike that term and never use it. The FA term implies that fetish thing to me, and I consider myself far to openminded for such a label. Peace.

I'm back home, my dad's looking pretty good and that's a relief. The news about my uncle is not so good, and I don't know if it ever will be. Cherish the ones you love, their time with you is so short.

Had the pleasure of seeing Asleep At The Wheel at the Tralf in Buffalo, NY this weekend. I even picked up leader Ray Benson's Western Swing guitar video. Now all I need is time to watch it and learn something. I was brought back into playing by listening to Ray and AATW, so this is probably way overdue. By the way, Hepcat Records (see above) is a great place to get Western Swing and other roots music (shameless plug).

I'll be driving to the Poconos to spend Thanksgiving with my parents, not having seen them in almost a year and certainly not since my dad fell off the roof. Not sure how I'm going to handle seeing him, but it will be good no matter what. The weather is typical for this time of year, snow and moderately cold. West of here in Buffalo, there was a 39" (1 meter) snowfall over the weekend. We were lucky to have missed most of it, since there was only a few inches when we left Sunday morning. Looks like it snowed from Saturday on into Monday. At least one school was snowed in, and had trouble feeding the children, since they lacked sufficient food storage and preparation capability. Gone are the days when schools could be self sufficient. My daughters' school district is no different, with the food being prepared at the middle school and trucked to the elementary school. To make things even more complicated, the schools have different menus and even portion sizes, since the middle school has children reaching puberty (and growing like weeds).

Apparently, there are a number of countries treating the US election process as a joke. It's not, in fact the system is working, although in a manner that's not often seen. But there are certainly things that could be changed for the better. First of all, there should be a single standard for voting mechanisms. Right now we have everything from paper ballots to mechanical voting machines to electronic ones. There's still a lot of manual labor required and that means room for mistakes. I wouldn't mind seeing a single federal standard for electronic voting mechanisms (to allow for multiple suppliers) although I don't think voting from home via the Internet is the right idea. Why? Too much opportunity for security breaches and problems related to privacy. It would also be nice to be able to teach how to vote in schools using the same information everywhere. That can't be done right now, given the variety of systems in use. Above all, a new system would have to be easy to use (think about large type for older and visually impaired voters) and easily adaptable to the various districts. It seems as though the disputed Florida vote was in part due to a ballot that had some Gore voters voting for Buchanan. A lot of very disparaging comments have been made about the Florida voters, but I think that ballot was indeed more complicated visually than it should have been (a Xerox PARC scientist has examined the ballot and his review is here). Still, you don't tally intentions, you tally votes. It seems that this election will be forever tainted, no matter who wins.

Secondly, it's time to question the use of the Electoral College. The first thing to ask is "Why was this created?". It was pretty much a compromise to the Southern states that allowed them an equal chance in the national elections at a time when the Northern states had a significant population advantage. In short, the North could have easily controlled every election without this. In addition to the College, Southern states were allowed to count their slaves as population, at a less than 1:1 ratio, even though slaves could not vote. There is also the arrangement in Congress where the Senate has two senators from every state while the House of Representatives is population-based. And most of our early Presidents were from Southern, slave-holding states. Coincidence? Nowadays the population is moving towards the South and away from the North, although there are states (mostly in the Midwest) with relatively low populations. But it's not an easy matter to eliminate the Electoral College, it's part of the US Constitution, meaning only an Amendment can change it and that requires the agreement of the very states likely to lose power if it passes. Still, we are the only country I'm aware of that can have a President who lost the popular vote. All in all, a great civics lesson for the kids, and a continuing nightmare for the adults.

This surprising US Presidential election has been a interesting introduction to the electoral process for most of us. The US has an interesting system whereby the people cast their ballots for a candidate but the actual voting is done by the Electoral College. Each elector is expected to cast their ballot in accordance with the state they represent. Notice that this is expected, not required. There have been some cases where this was not done and the laws have never been changed to prevent that. It adds a certain bit of suspense to an otherwise cut and dried procedure. It's been a lot of fun for schools as this gives them a great opportunity to show the process in a detailed fashion. I can still recall going through mock elections in grammar school, and having to portray Nelson Rockefeller running in the primary against Richard Nixon. I lost :) Although I can say with some pride that I've outlived both men (Rockefeller died in bed with his mistress and Nixon, well, you know).

At work we are facing a paper shortage as well as a transparency shortage. And along with the travel restrictions there is also a ban on videoconferencing. At least email is still active. For now. Given that all expenditures basically require the signature of a corporate VP or higher, and these are the kind of folks that don't want to be bothered and don't get rewarded for spending money, it doesn't look promising. If this manages to cut down the number of meetings though, perhaps it won't be so bad. But I'm afraid it may just increase the PowerPoint slide production and that's a much worse outcome (see below).

Not much new on the Instant Messaging front, although I get the occasional message from strangers. I would love to get one from someone I knew, but I despair of that ever happening. I would also like to get Groove to work at, um, work. See my weblog for more on that saga. In other words, same as it ever was.

My uncle remains pretty much as he was, unfortunately. My aunt is now faced with a number of tough choices and they live far away from the rest of the family so she bears the burden alone. They've moved a number of times in the last twenty years, never settling in one place for very long. Considering the stress of moving, I don't expect them to move again, no matter what my uncle's health.

I was wondering, how long do you have to live somewhere before you're "from" there? I moved here in 1975 to go to college, and I've never gone home to Long Island (NYC suburbs). I don't have a Lawn Guyland accent anymore, except now and again a word slips out. I notice too, when I'm with my relatives, that I easily slip back to my old way. But while I people I'm from here, I usually also mention where I was from originally. Considering how often people move these days, am I that out of the ordinary? I would bet a large percentage of the people you meet are not living in the state or city where they were born. But New York State is unique in that it has New York City which dominates the news but is only a small fraction of the state. Although they have a lot of clout politically due to the large number of voters, there's plenty of variety elsewhere. Western NY'ers such as myself neither talk nor act like NYC'ers and we hate to be lumped together :)

So while I still have a job, nothing seems to be certain. The major announcements were full of intentions, but no clear plans. Wall Street barely reacted, although given the amount of time that the problems have been known, you'd think they'd be angry with the lack of details. Just one of the many reasons I don't invest in stocks.

The predicted end of Napster has not happened, although I'd bet that it will eventually reach some temporary compromise situation that customers will dislike. And then they will switch to an alternative source and the process will reoccur. It's not likely that the "hole in the dike" will be plugged, now that it has been opened. Look for a continuing succession of "secure" digital formats followed by their being broken, followed again by new formats. The SDMI (Secure Digital Music Initiative) format is said to already be cracked, after they set up a hacker contest to prove how strong it was. There's some question as to the validity of the claim, but isn't it just a matter of time? Seems like a lot of effort to support the record companies. Do yourself a favor and buy direct whenever you can, put the money in the performers' pockets.

Here's something important I never used to do: Live deliberately. Even if you've convinced yourself that nothing you do matters, act as if it does. If you love someone, tell them. Don't worry if they don't respond in kind. If you support a cause, then support it, don't sit idly by while your cause is ignored or attacked. Whatever you do, do it like you mean it. Be good, be bad, but don't be wishy-washy.

My uncle is not doing as well as hoped and had to have a second, emergency, surgery to have a second drainage tube inserted. At this point, no one is quoting percentages anymore. One of the sad aspects of growing older is seeing those you loved and grew up with pass into their twilight years. It's hard to have to admit you're ephemeral, that all that we know is temporary, but there's no escaping it. We don't live forever, at least in the physical sense. If you believe there's a life after this one, and I certainly do, death is a transitional stage between one life and another. But even with this knowledge, the concept is still frightening when you're looking at it from a distance. I can't help noticing that the dying often don't seem to have this fear. I think they are allowed to see into the beyond and the vision is far from unsettling to them. May we all have our chance to see.

I finally broke down and started my own weblog, My Likes and Dislikes on Blogger. The software, which uses a standard browser, is easier to use than the Weblogs.com interface which I had tried first. It's more web-centric than this journal and I add posts almost everyday. Try it and see what you think. I still need to work on customizing the template since it's a bit too basic for my tastes. One other nice thing about Blogger is they allow you to use your own server if you wish. I may someday redo this journal with it, on this server, with my weblog on the Blogger server.

Companies are not people. Oh, they're usually made up of people, but they're not people in and of themselves. So when a company ceases to exist, you don't feel sorry for the company, you feel for the people who've lost a job. But my company, the Big Company I've sort of lambasted here, is not your average company. At one time, it was the veritable symbol of the high-tech office, an originator of a lot of the technology you're using to view this, a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average companies, and a name so deeply entrenched in the vernacular that it's name was synonymous with copying. But that was yesterday. No company, or any institution for that matter, can survive years of mismanagement and reluctance to acknowledge change without some damage. Some, like IBM, can actually turn themselves around. Others, like Digital Equipment Corporation, end up being dismantled and sold off. Guess which future is in store for us?

I wonder if any of the management responsible for this feel any remorse, any responsibility for what they've done. Our fired CEO probably doesn't. Our present CEO, who hired him, probably doesn't either. The sad irony of it all is that we make good products, perhaps too good. In some cases, the extra work and expense involved has no value to our customers, and may even make them less attractive. The end result of the mismanagement and lack of focus on the market is exactly what we are facing today.

On the very first project I worked on for this company I learned a very valuable lesson on "Good Enough Engineering". It's related to the old cliché, "Shoot the engineers and start production". There truly is a desire on the part of most engineers to make the best things they can. This can be a valuable tendency, when used properly it makes for good products. Good products usually mean good sales and profits. But there is a tendency to overdo the perfection to the point that products either never get finished or end up too costly for the market. Either way, you're talking about losing money. There is a minimum level of quality you need to enter a market, less than that and you can't play. You can have more than the minimum, but not too much, or you'll probably not make enough money. This assumes that there's a limit to how much you can charge before customers shy away. This doesn't apply to all markets, or all market segments. For instance, in automobiles, there's plenty of cost competition in the low end, but in the luxury and exotic segments, the sky is the limit. Sadly, we are still trying to apply Mercedes Benz techniques to a Hyundai market. It doesn't work for office equipment.

Quick update: the Big Company has managed to have rumors regarding it going Chapter 11 (US code for bankrupt). This has taken the stock price to a level lower than it's been in 15 years. And the annual cost-cutting measures have been instituted, as usual. Could the (real) end be near?

As I've noted in the past, I work for A Big Company, well at least it was big at one time. And it still is, although this seems a temporary condition. To put it bluntly, they've mismanaged themselves into a hole that they cannot dig themselves out of. The new CEO that was hired to carry on the good times instead so ineptly bungled a sales force reorganization that he was eventually fired and replaced with the very man who had hired him in the first place. The new/old CEO finally had to admit that the company has an "unsustainable business model" and we look forward to either a takeover or large asset sell-off to survive. Our business has three major markets, we either have almost no presence in them, or have lost the dominant position we once had. It's like the old cliché, we had nowhere to go but down. Even the venerable research organization, which I'm currently in, could be up for sale. It's a sad ending for a company that once owned every market it cared to enter. Oh, and by the way, we pay the fired CEO $800,000 a year for life. At least he can look forward to a comfortable retirement.

Given the circumstances, people are nervous and wondering what the future holds. Some of us are hedging our bets by considering new employers. I've used monster.com in the past, although I wasn't seriously looking. It generated a lot of queries, although none were in my hometown, which I was careful to mention I wasn't interested in leaving. Still better than nothing, and it's not the only job search game in town. Alas, the days of spending one's entire career are long gone. The employees aren't loyal, and in turn, companies aren't loyal either. Even the ones trying to be loyal are not guaranteed to survive long enough to fulfill their expectations.

It has certainly been a year of unfortunate occurrences. My (step)mother-in-law suffered a stroke over the past weekend, but is at least home now though facing a lengthy recovery. My wife's parents are younger than mine but none of them is under 70. These sort of ailments are certainly not unusual but the implications that they bring remind us that there will be a day when our parents will be gone. My wife and I both lost our mothers when we were young, mine at 13, so we are both well acquainted with loss. Still, there is no way of preparing for the inevitable, and no way of freezing time to make the present last forever.

On a more positive note, my father continues to mend, my uncle is home from surgery although it will be a while before we know if the surgery was successful, my own recovery continues, and my best friend's wife is recovering nicely from recent surgery (Hi Gretchen!). The two of them came over to watch me after surgery so my wife could pick up our oldest daughter from summer camp, my thanks to you both.

One thing that I have recently noticed about myself is the diminishing of the feeling that "I'm injured". Having almost all of my range of motion back is a big part of that, it's only certain movements that cause me any pain. I can even play guitar reasonably well, although my shoulder definitely tells me when I've played long enough. My skills are certainly rusty, but it's so much fun to be able to play at all and I seem to be playing from a slightly different place, if you understand such things. Play Music.

Even as a beneficiary of the Technology boom, I still have to wonder at what I spend most of my time doing: sitting in front of a TV screen, typing, and occasionally moving a plastic thing around the table top. When I was in high school in the early 70's, computers were these big machines that spit out grade reports from some distant place we were never allowed to see. When shown in movies or on TV computers were massive machines that had spinning tape wheels or clanking card readers and sorters on them. There had to be something moving, don't you see, else how could it be doing anything? By the time I started college, interactive computing was coming to the fore, though the computers were still enormous and needed rooms of their own. I remember the room where the Teletypes and DecWriters were, it had a video terminal (just one) but no one used it because you couldn't use it to print your program listing. When I graduated and started working full time, microcomputers were just starting, and minicomputers like the Dec VAX had replaced the big leviathans for interactive computing. I first learned Pascal, my first serious computer language, on an IBM mainframe running VM/CMS. From there it was on to Pascal and C on Vaxen and from there Suns running UNIX. At the same time, I was using Macintoshes and PC's at home, though mainly as dial-in terminals to the VAX and Sun machines.

Most of my programming was what is called embedded computing, where you program microprocessors to control devices. Usually, there is no direct access to the computer and it's not always obvious there's one inside. It's anonymous programming, in that no one ever remembers the program, just the device (unless it doesn't work, then they blame the code). Despite the lack of notoriety available, embedded is one of the fastest growing tech fields. Once you count up the computers in your life that don't sit on your desktop and stare at you, you realize that embedded computers greatly outnumber personal computers. I still keep up on embedded developments (no pun intended) as this forms a big part of my company's products. There's no Bill Gates in embedded, there are too many players at present, too many choices, and far and away too many platforms to allow anyone to become dominant. Unlike a PC, every device is different, with different cost structures, and there's no easy way to come up with a one-size-fits-all solution. MS has tried to take over things with WinCE, but so far, it's only been successful with handheld PC devices. Vive le difference!

A quick update on The Offspring. They've changed their minds about releasing their music free to the Web. I haven't read about the reason, so until I do, I won't speculate on why.

An article in kuro5hin.org, on the :Cue:Cat pointed to an article in the UK IT magazine, The Register. Neither article is partiularly friendly to Digital Convergence, and both point to their attempting to stop people for writing new and/or non-Windows drivers. The catch is their attempting to enforce agreements that are not binding if you don't use the supplied software. They have no case, but may scare some anyway. Of course, if you don't use the software provided, you can use the device as a generic barcode scanner. Oops.

Let me say, first of all, that Physical Therapy hurts. It's unavoidable, I guess, but it still hurts. But I also have to admit that I am getting benefits from it already. I've gained about 20 degrees of additional movement in my left arm and I can touch the top of my head with my hand. This allows me to actually wash my hair with both hands, something I couldn't do before.

This past Saturday was open house at my local BMW Motorcycle dealer, Country Rode Motorworks, in Fairport NY. I was glad to find out my old K75s is on it's way to rode-worthiness, although not all the way yet. It has a nail in the rear tire, after being transported in a truck owned by a contractor. This is minor compared to the frontend work necessary, so I expect to see it on the road before the snow flies. That is, if the new owner has the time and money to finish it that soon. I don't expect to be in riding shape this year, so a spring purchase is what I'm looking towards.

We just received a new Radio Shack catalog, it came with the :Cue:Cat (yes that's how they spell it) that allows you to swipe barcodes in the catalog and have your web browser jump to that page. The company that makes it, Digital Convergence, also collects information about you everytime you use it. To add insult to injury, their web site was recently hacked and all of their collected customer information was copied. So not only do they want to make web browsing even harder and spy on you in the process, they can't even keep the info on a secure machine (it was in an unencrypted text file on the same server as their home page). Not as bad as the advertisement I saw in a print magazine for ads that had a special mark on them. You, get this, hold the page up to your web cam and it directs your browser to the advertiser's page. I guess typing is too difficult for people who can install a web cam themselves. Hello, McFly!

On the Radio Shack topic, there's a blurb on the back cover of the catalog for MSN, with the tag line "The everyday web." Excuse me, is there a special web for important days? MSN is a re-tooling of Microsoft's attempt at challenging AOL by providing value-added services to home-based customers. In the early days, that meant nothing more than a dial-up BBS, but it became the Internet plus AOL-only content. The original MSN failed miserably back before the ascendancy of the Web and even now, it's still way behind AOL. They seem to marketing themselves as an Internet access provider nowadays though they still may have some MSN-only content. Either way, both AOL and MSN have to emphasize their Web access ahead of their other services to be attractive. For the record, I use Frontiernet, the host of this page, which is your basic ISP (Internet Service Provider).

Here's something that truly makes me chuckle: The Toronta Canada-based band, Barenaked Ladies, has flooded Napster servers with MP3 files that have the same name as songs from the new CD, Maroon, but are instead commercials, by the band, for the CD. CNN calls them "Trojan" downloads. They correctly anticipated the flood of downloads on the heels of the new release and took advantage of it. Savvy users would probably spot the short file sizes as being a red herring, but the naïve might not. Turnabout IS fair play. At the same time, two other bands, The Offspring and Smashing Pumpkins have released material for download essentially in defiance of their record companies. Two different views, two approaches to the problem, but from bands that have a fair amount of success. Neither would work for an uknown. For the record, I'ma big fan of BNL and will buy the new CD like I've bought all their others. I can't say I've heard anything by the other two.

If nothing else, the whole Napster debate is getting people to think about CD prices and the entire value chain around the music industry. This should finally make clear to everyone how the system is biased against the artists (not to mention the consumer) and in favor of a bunch middlemen. But ultimately, Joe Average Consumer has to vote on the matter with his wallet.

There's a new website for news on the various peer-to-peer networking tools, called infoAnarchy.org. If you're interested in running one of them on your server of personal workstation, it's a good place to find out about the latest versions, legal implications, and other topics related to Napster and DeCSS (and more).

In the past two days I've received news of my uncle requiring a operation to relieve pressure on his brain, a cousin's ex-husband with a cancerous tumor in his brain, and a friend with cancer. Given everything else that has happened this summer, I shouldn't be surprised. Please pray for all of them. Enough said.

There have been some interesting developments of late in the continuing Napster/MP3.com saga. First of all, Courtney Love has sued Universal for a piece of the money they have made from the MP3.com settlement. This is significant, but not surprising, since Courtney published a rant on this very issue. Universal claims, of course, that the money will go to compensating their artists. Love, of course, says that's a load of bull and is suing to try to get her share. She probably won't win, but the very existence of the suit is a major statement in favor of the artists.

The case against MP3.com is similar to, but not identical to the Napster case. The MyMp3.com site was setup up to allow a CD owner to upload CD's and then have them "ripped" into MP3's so they could be downloaded and played at any time or place. There were some security features, but not enough, and MP3.com was not quick enough to fix them. They lost big, very big. Universal is getting up to $250 million (US) from the judgment (I've seen a number of figures, it's all dependent on the number of CD's involved, as the judgment uses a penalty per CD metric).

In other related news, Eric S. Raymond, or ESR as he's known in the geek community, published an "in your face" kind of commentary on Napster and DeCSS that is reasonably fair to both sides. Not that he's all that conciliatory to either side, but he's fair. Read it, and don't be surprised if it makes you think, even if it doesn't change your mind. ESR, for your information, coined the term Open Source and is one of the movement's more literate advocates. He's also a gun enthusiast, which causes quite a bit of controversy in and of itself, and the author of fetchmail, a nifty mail retrieval tool for Linux and Unix systems that I used to use. DeCSS is the program that allows Linux users to play DVD movies on the machines. It was not intended as a tool to make illegal copies of DVD's, but simply to allow them to be played on non-Windows/Mac computers (a DVD holds so much it's currently impractical to copy them to disk, most bootlegged movies are on VCD, or Video CD, a vastly inferior format that uses compression to shrink onto the 650 Meg CD limit). Although DeCSS has been ruled illegal, you can find it all over the place (no links, for my protection), including a lyrics to a song :) By the way, an MP3 of that was recently removed from MP3.com. Try searching with google if you want the lyrics, or the source code, which is available in many formats.

On a more fun note, my guitar teacher, Steve Greene, has a nifty website that has on it an MP3 from his CD Acoustic Living (I love the cows). The best part is I now own the Epiphone archtop his second guitarist, Roy Berns, played on the CD. Roy now plays an Andersen archtop, like Bill Frisell. When I purchased the Epi from Roy he had gotten a gorgeous Gibson L5, but I'd bet he still has it. You can't have too many old archtops :)

And, on a personal health note, I get to start physical therapy next week for six weeks or so. There's been enough bone growth to allow it and, despite the pain I'll be facing, it will give me back some of the range of motion I've lost in the shoulder. Pain-free by Christmas is my goal, and I intend to make it.

I am constantly amazed by the "antics" of distracted drivers on the highway. This morning, I saw a car ahead of me with the driver's visor down and the vanity mirror lights on. I figured that some type of grooming was occurring, especially when the car began to drift in and out of the left lane. It moved into the center lane, then into the right, then back into the center. At this point, I made my move to pass on the left, even as the car moved to straddle the lane marker, I prefer to have "weavers" in my rear-view mirror. I honked as I passed, as a warning, since I wasn't sure what the reason was behind the drifting (at 7:45 AM, it could have been sleep). The driver looked up at me and I saw she was holding three pieces of makeup gear in her hand! At that point, she either realized her foolishness or finished, and moved into the right lane, more or less permanently. Perhaps I saved someone's life today, more likely I just annoyed someone who had no clue.

A 31-year-old man was killed Thursday when he was struck by lightning while riding a motorcycle near Angleton. Charles Wright was struck about 2:30 p.m. while southbound on Texas 35, about 8 miles north of Angleton, said Kip Westmoreland, a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper. Westmoreland said he and others worked for about 45 minutes to revive the Pearland man, but they couldn't get a pulse.

I can honestly say I have never heard of such a thing. While most vehicles with rubber tires are relatively isolated from ground, water and conductive materials in tires can make them less so. Even without those factors, lightning is pretty unpredictable, at least from a human standpoint (the physics are fairly straight-forward, naturally), so caution in threatening weather sounds like a good idea. It's unclear from this snippet whether he suffered any additional injuries from the inevitable crash (assuming he was unconscious from the shock), but it was likely he did. Truly, an unfortunate individual.

Lately, the journal entries have taken a turn toward motorcycling and related issues. Given the summer I experienced, it'll be a while before that ends. Funny though, I didn't have much to say prior to the accident. Part of that was because my K75s was pretty much problem-free, and all I did was the usual maintenance items like oil and filters. It was running particularly well that day, and I was greatly enjoying myself. Assuming I can save up enough money to buy a new BMW, I can only hope it will be as nice to me as it's predecessor. Mechanical things are not alive in any real sense, and I laugh to myself when I see people who name their motorcycles on the BMW list, but even mass-produced devices can manifest a "personality" in that they malfunction just enough to be noticeable but not enough to fail outright. Mine mostly just ran and ran, and I never felt obligated to name it and I'm not sure I would have anyway. Now my car is a different story, mind you, but I haven't named it either, despite the numerous incidents of "personality" it has shown me in the three years I've owned it.

I seen a guy on US-1 in Homestead Fl. last weekend carrying a large painting on an unfaired motorcycle. The painting was about 2 or 2 1/2 feet wide by about 3 feet long. He was carrying it flat, wedged between his arms and stomach, laying across the tank up over the handle bars. I really didn't notice the thing until it popped up in front of his face. I guess he had a couple of bad seconds there while trying to get the thing to lay back down. The wife and I were in the cage in the left lane coming up on him from behind. As soon as that thing popped up I stood on the brakes. I didn't know if this clown was coming over into my lane or off the right shoulder. I don't think he did either. From what I could tell it wasn't that good of a painting. Wasn't quite up to the Elvis on black velvet quality.

This makes those people carrying mattresses on the roof without anything holding them down but the driver's hand out the window look like wimps.

I had my mid-year review with my boss today (yes I know it's not mid-year, we've been busy). Besides the obvious talk about me, we had a short discussion on the difference between responding to customer demand and creating customer demand. It's not all that difficult to respond to customer demand, in the sense that there is a pretty good definition of what you have to do or make. Getting it done in time may be an issue, but what to do isn't. Creating demand is another story. You have to come up with an idea, make it a reality, then convince people they need it. It's risky, and you may fail. Companies, particularly big ones, don't like failure, they're all about risk-avoidance. Smaller companies are much more likely to be willing to take the chance. And they fail, regularly. Sometimes, the more conservative can take advantage of the created demand, acting in the safer response mode. The Big Company we work for, suprisingly, still operates in the demand creation field, but doesn't do it very well. Consequently, we're bleeding money in a couple of places. Sadly, we don't have as much extra cash as we used to, eventually the company will die of anemia. Our job, among others, it try to save the company from itself. Like I said, we've been busy.

I received the itemized bill from my first surgery. The pin, which is described below, cost $262.80. I was also charged $1.30 for the marking pen used on my skin to layout the area they cut.

As if my stupid rider sighting wasn't bad enough, read thie following I received in an email from one of the BMW list readers:

Unfortunately I can top that story. Evening before last I went for a ride on my normal, short route. As I approached a rail road track I note a guy on an older dirt bike. He has on jeans and no shirt, no helmet. Wait, what's that in his left arm/hand?? It's a child. By all appearances about 18 months old and wearing nothing but a diaper. About that time he leaves the road and starts riding down the RR tracks.

A motorcycle crashed near Red Lodge, Montana, burned up and started yet another wildfire in the American west. Locally, there have been no wildfires, but four motorcyclists have died in separate accidents this summer. Three out of the four have been single-vehicle "lost control" accidents, and two involved a car in the opposing lane running the downed rider over. Motorcycling is a dangerous sport, there is no denying that. However, when there is only the rider involved, there's a strong likelihood that the rider was either reckless or riding beyond their ability. Training can help the latter, I don't know what will help the former.

I saw the stupidest thing on two wheels I have ever had the displeasure of seeing. I was driving to work this morning, and came upon a large touring-type motorcycle in the lane next to me at a traffic light. The rider was wearing standard protective clothing: shorts, t-shirt, shoes without socks, and an open-faced helmet (this is sarcasm). He needed the open-faced helmet as he was holding an insulated coffee mug in his right hand (non-motorcyclist note: this is the hand that controls the throttle and front brakes, the front brakes supply far more than half the braking power required). Somehow, he managed to twist the throttle and pull away. I couldn't see any cup holder, though maybe he had one.

I'm much more interested in what other riders are wearing these days and I often want to yell at the less well-equipped ones about how much of a chance they are taking. But then I would just be ignored as some old crazy guy, so I keep my opinions to myself.

If you like challenging your mind, and have time to read, you should take a look at Phil Agre's Red Rock Eater News Service, a very thought-provoking regular newsletter (it averages 1-2/week). Phil's newsletter often has a technological basis, but he covers things besides that. He recently had some things to say about online communities. It was in response to a fairly negative article on Internet groups being formed around some sort of shared good ownership (I myself belong to a mailing list for BMW motorcycle owners) and using some type of newsgroup to interact. The conclusion was most of the messages in the newsgroup were junk, therefore the group interaction was weak and minimal. Phil's argument was that the groups formed, not because of a particular technology (like a newsgroup), but because of a shared interest (including, but not limited to common ownership of something). The technology simply enables a form of communication, but is often one of a number of tools. Thus, it is dangerous to make generalizations about the state of communities without considering all of the ways the members connect to each other. So besides being linked by ownership (even though I'm not an owner at the moment) and the BMW email list many members correspond with each other privately, use the list web site, and meet each other in person for rides. Any one of these may seem fairly meager, taken as a group, they form a rich set of communications tools.

The pin was removed Friday with no problems whatsoever. The anesthesiologist gave me a nerve block with caused my entire shoulder to just disappear, at least as far as I could feel :) Then my doctor just unscrewed it. The pin itself is a stainless steel threaded rod without a head on it. In fact, it looks like something you'd buy in a hardware store, not some sort of high tech medical gadget. A couple of quck sutures and I was done. I have to be careful for a while, since the bone is not fully healed, but otherwise, not having the pin poking me when I move is rather nice.

My dad is home and recovering. The suspect vertebrae was due to his advanced arthritis, not a fracture, so they released him. He's all bruised and cut up but that's better than what could have been. It is important to care about those you love, especially your parents. My mom died when I was 13, and I still miss her very much. I was too much of a dumb kid to treasure the time we had together and there's no making up for that. I'm an only child, my father may ultimately be my responsibility, my stepmother is older than he is. I'm not really ready for that role reversal, but when the time comes, it won't really matter whether I'm ready or not. I can't help wondering if my children will ever face that situation. There's no telling how long I might live, provided I don't keep running into deer. My father's family seems long-lived, as does my mother's (she being the exception). Will my children also be middle-aged with families of their own and find themselves with parents who need to be cared for like they themselves once were? What will our society do with the elderly and infirm in forty years or so?

A quick update today. My surgery is scheduled for 4:30 PM, though I have to be in the hospital for tests at 2:00 PM. My dad is likely to be coming home today, his vertebrae not being fractured after all.

To make my day complete yesterday, I got a call from my sister-in-law, telling me that my father (age 78) was in the hospital. Seems he fell off the roof while working to remove an old TV antenna. He's still in the hospital, with multiple injuries, including a potentially fractured vertebrae, but his spirits are high. We Maszerowskis are tougher than we look, it seems. Though all I can say is "It doesn't rain, it pours".

Apparently, my last entry was more prophetic than I would have expected. This morning, as I was talking with a coworker, he noticed that my shoulder was bleeding through my shirt. The pin had indeed finally worked through the skin. I was able to get an immediate appointment with my doctor and he scheduled for the removal on Friday afternoon. In the mean time I have to wear a bandaid over it and hope it doesn't get infected. The pain is bearable, but I still can't wait for this to be over.

Finally, I got a jabber client to work on my Linux machine! It took literally hours, and 9 separate downloads and compiles to get all the pieces in place to build GNU gabber. It's a GNOME application, which was part of the problem, as I don't use GNOME and the libraries I had were old and incomplete. But it's nice, nonetheless, and even docks into the status bar on my KDE desktop. Now I've signed up for the service on one of the publicly-available servers and I'm starting to look it over. Since I don't know anyone on the service, I guess I just wait until someone contacts me (I'm not one to start conversations). The impetus for the burst of activity came from the latest Linux Journal which has Jabber on the cover and has an extensive article inside that manages to to include Linux, embedded computing, XML, Instant Messaging and Jabber. The task for me now is figuring out how to incorporate this into something useful for me.

I intend to build a jabber server for inside the firewall at work and make it available to my workgroup as an experiment. Jabber clients do not currently allow connections through firewalls so the server has to be internal. My dream would be to also have a gateway to wireless devices but that would likely require the server be accessible to the external net, and in my company, this requires money to be paid. I run most of my experiments like this on discarded equipment with Free software, and I don't intend to change this mode of operation anytime soon.

My shoulder is just killing me today, not sure why. I have a recurring vision of the end of the pin finally poking it's way out of my shoulder like some monster in the movie Alien. It is certainly sore all over and particularly tender at the pin end. I want to be normal again.

I work for A Big Company. Working for A Big Company is an interesting experience for me, having spent most of my career working for companies that either were small to begin with, or were Former Big Companies that were on their way to being small. What I've discovered in my travels is that Big Companies don't run on the sweat of the workers, at least not directly. Big Companies run on Microsoft PowerPoint. How do I know? Well, besides being a worker in A Big Company, I often get asked by my boss to investigate various things that are going on internally and report back. To do that, I often use a product that allows me to search document archives all over the company. And guess what I most often find when searching? And these aren't just a few slides with bullet points on them like I used to make, these are multimedia masterpieces with dozens of slides. The latest trend is to include other slides as graphics in slides, but reduced so you can't read them. This is particularly useful when the slides contain tables that would otherwise convey information. The idea is to show that the work was done, without actually showing the work. If this seems to make little or no sense to you, you probably don't work in A Big Company. Lots of things get done, get checked off on some chart some place, and then no one ever looks at it again. If you're smart, you realize that you can save yourself a lot of effort by simply creating a PowerPoint slide that shows what you: could do, should do, would have done, or what someone else has done. If you're even smarter, you make lots of slides. Remember, you're actually feeding the big machine that is A Big Company. Don't be stingy, the shareholders are counting on you.

All of a sudden, the whole topic of peer-to-peer, Napster, and the rest of the (see below) file-sharing schemes are hot on Weblogs. Another recurring topic is the concept of how an artist makes a living if all of their work can be freely copied and shared. It's an important issue, though I'm not sure there's an answer coming out of any of this, except the elimination of the middleman. As in the case of my guitar teacher, artists need to become business people and take on the challenge of being the direct distributor. My prediction is this will work, to a degree, for those capable of handling the additional work. But there will always be a need for some type of third party distribution mechanism for those who simply cannot deal with the details. Record companies will never cease to exist.

Two instances of artists taking the direct approach are Stephen King and The Artist (Formerly Known as Prince). King has his latest book, broken down into separate chapters, available for download. If you download it, you're asked to contribute to an account that will fund further chapters. If King receives enough, he will continue to produce the remaining pieces of the book. It's all voluntary, you can download it without it costing you a thing.

The Artist has been very aware of the Net and the possibilities for a long time. He's already produced an album (is that still a valid term these days?) by asking fans to send money, with a minimum level required before he would make the music available for download. He got the money, and it was released. Of course, he's been at war with his record company for years, so this is not all that surprising. There's a better write-up of this here.

Now, in both cases, these are artists that have a large, and loyal, coterie of fans that have been happily purchasing their work for years. I can't imagine how an unknown could pull something like this off. It is just this sort of thing that brought on this rise of the middleman. Only the most well-known artists could command audiences large enough to pay the bills on their own. The lesser-known needed help to survive, at least survival with regards to art. And so it goes, even today. What I hope does change, though, is the way the wealth gets distributed. I guess we'll see what happens.

One thing that happens when you're injured, and visibly so, is people seem obligated to tell you their own accident stories. As a result of my particular situation, the stories I heard were mostly centered around collarbones. Most of the people I talked to who had broken collarbones were left to heal on their own, with mostly less than optimal results. The number one drawback to non-invasive treatment seemed to be time, with the healing taking months and months. I am glad beyond measure that my doctor chose to operate when he did. And one of the folks I've talked to had problems with their blood pressure dropping too, except they were released from the ER and fainted in a hotel they were staying in (traveling alone and away from home). I was "fortunate" enough to have the problems while still in the ER, given that it was about an hour's drive to my house, it would have been dangerous to have left when they first wanted me to.

In my entry on Napster, I neglected to mention another peer-to-peer sharing system called FreeNet. Check it out, if you're so inclined. And, by the way, The San Jose Mercury News' columnist, Dan Gillmor, has a recent column on this topic, he seems to get the architecture angle as well :)

File these under Motorcycle Accident. Today I received the Aerostich Roadcrafter 2-piece motorcycle suit I had ordered back in early May. This is the suit that, had I been wearing it, would likely have prevented some or most of the injuries I sustained (it wouldn't have done a damn thing for the K75s or the deer, for that matter). I will certainly be wearing when I ride again.

The other, less ironic, thing that happened today was I had an appointment with my orthopedic Dr. and I no longer have to wear the sling on my arm. In addition, I have a number of exercises to do that will increase the strength and range of motion of my shoulder. The X-Ray's showed evidence of bone growth in the gaps though I still have a way to go. The next checkup is in 3 weeks, he'll likely make the call on when to remove the pin then. The pin is actually screwed in to the bones, it will be removed simply by unscrewing it. You have to have significant bone growth before it can be removed because the pin isn't straight, and will flex on removal!

Here's an odd and troubling aspect of my accident: my hair is falling out. Not in big clumps, mind you, but noticeable nonetheless. I'm in no way in love with my appearance, but I've always had a full head of thick hair, so this is not something I'm used to seeing. It's a likely result of all the trauma, and I hope that it doesn't continue (am I that vain?).

File this under Napster (no link, you know where to go). I can't imagine I've got anything new to add to the ongoing saga of Napster and the fight against the RIAA (no link, no way), but here goes. First things first, I am a (part-time) musician, have friends who are musicians, and I'm all for getting paid to perform. At first glance, Napster would appear to be the antithesis of this, since nowhere in the Napster world is there a method to pay the musicians. But there's more to the story, of course. The RIAA, for all it's bluster, isn't about paying musicians either. Oh, sure, that's how they present themselves to the public. But what the RIAA is about is paying record companies and not the musicians. Do you really think that the almost $20 (US) that you plunk down for a CD is going to the people who made the music? If you did, think again. My guitar teacher recorded, produced, and sells his CD himself, at shows, local book/music stores, and by mail-order. By doing so, he makes a lot more money, perhaps even an infinite amount more given that he'd likely not see a penny if it was handled by a big record company. So, what does this have to do with Napster? Simply this: The free trading of music that Napster enables doesn't take much of anything from the musicians, only the record companies. The poor starving folks remain unaffected; perhaps this is to ensure their artistic integrity. Uh huh, sure.

While everyone is fixated on the no royalty issue, there is a lot that has been overlooked in the frenzy. I look at it from an architectural aspect, given my background. Napster, and programs like it such as Gnutella and Hotline, are the polar opposites of the so-called Client-Server architecture the Web has evolved into. With these programs, every computer that has a the program on it is capable of both sending and receiving files. You can look at it as sort of a network of all clients, or all servers, or all client/servers. What the Napster service does is provide a centralized "discovery" mechanism, so that the computers with Napster software on them can find each other. What Napster does (now) is limit the transfer to MP3-encoded files. The other two allow any arbitrary file to be shared, but the concept is the same. The door, so to speak, has been opened, there's no closing it now. One aspect of all the changes wrought in the Web era that I've disliked it the trend back to centralized data repositories with dumb clients accessing them, that was the hallmark of the pre-PC computing environment. The possible rise of Application Software Providers (ASP's) is but a new acronym on top of an old idea. That was how I used computers in the 70's and early 80's; the Apple II and IBM PC started a revolution that took the power away from Data Processing and put it into the hands of the folks doing the work. Napster and other sharing applications continue the PC revolution; there is no central data storage, data is EVERYWHERE, so in effect it's NOWHERE. It's not controllable, or censurable since you can expect that there are more copies around than you could ever find and eliminate in a reasonable timeframe. Is this a paradigm shift? You decide.

So, will Napster be shut down, ultimately? My guess is yes, although the victory for the RIAA will be a hollow one (see the above paragraph). One thing that Napster did during the trial was not to try to frame their arguments in terms of the famous Sony Betamax case. This case said just because a device (the VCR) could be used to make illegal copies of movies, it had legitimate uses as well, and to ban them would be unfair to those who only used it an a legal manner. US copyright law has a concept called fair use, which allows you to make copies of things provided they're for your use and you derive no profits from them. By extension, I can legally have an MP3 copy of a song I have on CD as long as I don't sell the copy. Things get a bit murky, though, if I give you that copy and you don't own the CD yourself. Of course, that's exactly what Napster enables. By the same token, you could have that CD, and then this would again be fair use. The Napster lawyers, on the other hand, pretty much admitted that Napster was for pirating music, and neglected the Betamax angle. Expect that future litigants will not be so foolish.

While I was home recuperating, I received an post card in the mail, apparently in response to the Letter To The Editor I wrote in the local newspaper. Here it is in it's entirety:

It is fortunate you received the care your letter-to-the-editor outlines. I trust you continue to heal.

Isn't it sad, sir, that the deer cannot also receive the Mercy allotted you. I don't suppose he/she lived to tell the experience to his/her family in their natural habitat? I sympathize with you both.

The front of the card had a sticker of Bambi and Thumper from the Walt Disney movie, with the following above it:

My letter had only my name and town of residence but a simple look in the phone book would had sufficed to get my address.

For the record, I don't think that birth control for deer is an idea that works. Sadly, we're created a seriously unbalanced condition in the Northeastern US where the deer population is higher than can be supported and almost no natural predators except for disease. Trying to catch enough does to give them the birth control is nearly impossible and incredibly expensive. It's been tried locally, along with organized culling via authorized hunters (with the meat going to charity). The deer are making pests of themselves and affected homeowners want them controlled. Animal rights activists object to the hunting, usually protesting the hunts, and other methods have been hit or miss (no pun intended). There has to be a better way, but I can't imagine anyone here agreeing to the re-introduction of wolves to the area.

I'm going back to work tomorrow, after being off for 4 weeks. It's been interesting, being home during the day, but I long to get back to my job and the (different) challenges it offers. My friends and family have been most supportive and helpful to me and it will be a while before I can feel I've adequately paid them back. I love you all!

I have a nifty sliding keyboard shelf from Fellowes that allows me to type two-handed even with my left arm in a sling. It allows me to put the keyboard almost in my lap and up close. It's also got a nice mouse pad attachment on the side, so I don't have to operate on two planes of different heights. I expect to use this even after I'm healed.

I haven't tried jabber yet because it won't work through my firewall at work and I don't have the proper libraries installed on my Linux PC at home to run one of the UNIX clients. This brings up one of the truly weak aspects of Linux and OpenSource software in general, software installations. There are a number of approaches being taken to address this issue, including the RPM file format used in RedHat and SuSE and the DEB file format used by Debian. Both of these are basically a way of packaging all the ancillary files together to allow you to install and upgrade a particular program easily. What neither of them do by themselves is keep you up aware of changes that are happening in the programs you have installed. This is becoming more of an issue with some Linux software, as interest grows, new versions appear faster, programs become dependent on particular versions of libraries and other support stuff, and you end up having to download 20 different things to get the program you wanted originally to run (details about my experiences with this in a later post).

There is a bunch of folks at a company called Eazel, that are confronting this challenge. While their most obvious product is an easy to use GUI on top of Gnome (a UI toolkit for X), they intend to make Linux easier to maintain and upgrade by selling a service that goes out onto the Web and checks for updated versions of programs and goes and gets them for you. There is nothing like this on any desktop machine at this time, other than registering your email address for update notices (and they don't checks for current versions and the support pieces). Eazel has on it's staff some hot shot programmers, including Andy Hertzfeld, the genius behind the Toolbox routines for the MacOS. Granted, brains are no guarantee of success, but they have seized upon a real need in the market and I suspect they will do well (and be widely imitated if they do).

Healing up nicely, if not quickly. At least now I can take a shower. It's one more step on the road to being normal, if there is such a thing. Sold the K75s, partially because of the cost of repair, but mostly because of the memories of the accident I now associate with it. The guy who bought it from me works at my BMW dealer, Country Rode Motorworks, in Fairport NY. He's in a much better position to get parts and labor than I am. Now I'm in search of a BMW K1100RS, a larger and more updated bike than I had. I just need to heal enough to operate one :)

Here's something important that I learned from all of this: if you're uncomfortable with a doctor's diagnosis and treatment Get a Second Opinion! I was discharged from a local trauma center with the two ends of my clavicle almost an inch (25 mm) apart! My personal physician took one look and sent me to the orthopedic specialist. He looked me over for about a minute and I was checking in for surgery that afternoon. This aggressive treatment will likely cut months from my recovery time, assuming I would have recovered at all without it (there is plenty of literature that says I wouldn't have and would have needed the surgery anyway after months of pain).

The day after the last entry, I had the misfortune of hitting a deer while riding my BMW K75s motorcycle. Though you might say the misfortune was the deer's, as it was put down shortly after. There is no easy way to describe the moments following a traumatic accident, especially when I realized that, although I was hurt, I was not dead. I have a broken left 7^th rib, a shattered left clavicle (collar bone) that was surgically set back in place, and scrapes and bruises. I'm uncomfortable, but this beats the alternatives. Think about it.

What made the difference for me was protective equipment and speed. I had on leather boots, gloves, and jacket as well as my helmet. The jeans I had on wore through the knee and gave me a nasty scrape but little else. The broken bones were the result of hitting the deer and the ground. I have always been willing to "overdress" on two wheels, no shorts and tank tops for me. The other factor, speed, can't be overlooked either. Doing 35 in a 40 MPH zone helped minimize both the impact forces as well as the pavement slide distance. Take a moment and contemplate sliding 30 feet over blacktop with shorts and a T-shirt on.

Finally sat down with my boss to talk about direction (is there an REM song somewhere in there?). Now I'm working on applying to the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester to get my MBA (I already have an MS in Computer Science). My company pays and I get to attend school all day on Friday, meaning a "four day week". Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. But at least I have a goal and a path to get there.

But there are still lingering doubts about whether this is right for me, and I have some issues with the amount of time this will take out of my personal life. A big part of my personal time is helping my two daughters with school, and that's a job I cannot shirk. It's obvious that I need to seek an alternative path to the goal. It may be more or less difficult, but if it fits into my life, it can only be a win.

It's the Fourth of July weekend in the United States and Canada Day for our Northern Neighbours. All I can is: Have Fun, Be Safe! I'll let you figure out how to do both simultaneously :)

There's a lot of news on the IM front of late. There's the continuing saga of AOL and MSN doing their best to make their service closed to clients of the other guy. It's extremely ironic to see M$ complaining about being locked out of something. After all, M$ is all about lock-in. Luckily for all involved, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is actively working on a standard protocol for IM. Now this doesn't mean anything in and of itself (IETF makes recommendations, not clients), but it does establish an open standard that can be used as a reference. Given most of the big guys may include that, even if it is in addition to their own, it may just make it.

Something else new is called jabber. It's a new approach, in a way, to Instant Messaging. New because it's not an extension of an existing service, not new because the IM concept is not new. Still, it may just shake things up. They have released the protocol to the developer community as open source, and are working with the ITEF. I intend to try it on my Linux PC at home, once I get the right libraries built, and probably at work on my WinNT machine. Stay tuned for updates.

I read a lot of books, on a lot of different topics. My house is full of books, even though I try to periodically sell some. I should be an enthusiastic user of the public library system, but I can't get past the idea of not owning the books I read. It's a sort of miserly approach, I admit, but I love the idea of being able to just reach up and take a book I've read before to read again and again. Try that in the middle of the night with the library book you just returned.

One of the subjects I find myself reading a lot about is science and technology. Granted, a book on the universe by Steven Hawking is not the sort of thing reviewers gush about, but I enjoy such things. Living vicariously usually implies dangerous adventures, and I enjoy that too, but I also like to see inside minds much greater than mine. I suppose that's the sort of thing some folks take drugs for; I'm not that type. But then, I make my living from computers and technology (not HTML coding, obviously) so I've always thought it something I should be doing. As I've gotten older (we'll leave wiser for another time) I've been edging, ever so slowly, into becoming sort of a technophilosopher, if such a thing exists. I look at how technology has played such a large role in my life, and I wonder how others are affected. This journal thing is just one aspect of that. I used to be fairly good about keeping a hand-written journal, though now I am writing in it less and less. One thing I had noticed over time was the frequency of entries went way up during times of stress. Not sure if I'm in one of those periods now or not. I'd be lying if I said I was stress-free, although it's nothing like, say, the frenzy just before a product I'm working on launches. If you've ever been in a situation like that, you've probably seen the agony, the ecstasy, and the post-partum depression that accompanies product launches. I can remember the strange feeling I had when I got up on a table in the test lab area and announced that the product we had been working on was officially launched. And I also remember how lost and unnecessary I felt in the months following. It took another project startup to get me going again, and another one after that. Right now I'm more in a technology advisor role, so I'm not sure when I'll be on a project team. It's not as exhausting as project work, but still necessary. It's not enough, though, and I wonder how long I can keep going before I either get used to it or move to another project team.

Remember, this started off with babble about books so let's return before I digress yet again. I was reading the latest book by Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines. I say was, because I had to stop reading it. Not that it was badly written, although Ray is obviously not a writer at his core, but more that I couldn't agree with the predictions or his seeming acceptance of their universal beneficiality. He thinks that, over time, two trends will occur with humans and computers. One, that computation capability will reach and then exceed what the human mind is capable of. Second, that humans will begin augmenting themselves with computers as a means of evolution that is faster than DNA can manage. Frankly, I enjoy being human, I exult in my capabilities and limitations, I especially treasure the fact that I am unique. I enjoy the struggle I go through to write clearly. But Ray is convinced that those pesky little differences will be swept away by a sea of silicon so that we all become super intelligent super athletes with infinite capabilities. Perhaps that will occur, in some places. Certainly in the United States and Canada. Probably in England and Germany too. Wherever the standard of living is high enough to support the purchase of the gear necessary. But there are a lot of places where that won't happen, little countries, poor countries. And then what will happen? The mismatch will make what happened between the Europeans and the Native Americans seem like a kid's game. If this is a step we must take, let's take it with our eyes open and a willingness to admit the hazards.

You know, I had really hoped that this would be the means by which I discovered that hidden writing talent I always thought I had. I do write, but I can't help feeling like I still haven't found my "voice" yet. I often think of wonderful things to put here but when I actually get down to the typing, it just doesn't flow. Well, maybe practice will make perfect, or, more likely, I will get mad and quit as I have with so many other things in the past.

On the IM note, I've been getting ICQ messages from a gentlemen in Poland, a Polish news service and some lady in South Africa. All of them, I think, were because I put Polish as the third language I am familiar with. I can speak a few phrases but can't read or write it. These folks assumed that I could, and I suspect they wonder why I don't answer. I actually know bits and pieces of a bunch of languages but being able to order beer in a restaurant does not equate with fluency. But it does get you beer :) And if, by some slim chance, you read this and want to send me an IM, be sure to mention you saw my page so I know it's not some spammer. Thanks.

I was going to write something really profound here, but instead I want to write about IM, Instant Messaging. It seems to be hot at the moment, even among business users. But I can't for the life of me figure out why. It's not fundamentally different than email, although it can be faster, provided the recipient is online. I have accounts with Yahoo, Netscape, and ICQ (no MSN for now, it's a principle thing). But most of the messages I get are spam, mostly for porn sites. This evening, for instance, I was Yahoo-spammed by someone trying to get me to buy a book. I love books, really, but I'll go out of my way to avoid reading that one. I wonder how long before IM clients are banned within businesses as more and more spam-type messages flow into business PC's. It's an untapped market, especially as IT departments start enforcing policies against email attachments (this is not just an MS Outlook issue, but Outlook adds the danger of VBScript). Most of the IM clients support the sending of URL's and some support file sends as well. In theory, the sender is easier to identify, given that the server is centralized and not relayed ala SMTP. But then again, it's a no-brainer to get these accounts and there's no background checking (the client and service are free) so the barriers to entry are non-existent.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are my IM account names, let's see if the spam percentage goes down:

There's another thing about Europe that is striking for an American: things are old there, old in a way that is almost incomprehensible. For instance, the cathedral in St. Albans and Dom in Koln, both built right at the beginning of Christianity and on top of Roman construction. Two hundred years (old by US standards) is nothing compared to this, and yet both cathedrals are in constant, daily use. The very atmosphere in both places brought me to tears, I can't describe why exactly. I've never felt that way in any church building I've ever been in here. Perhaps I could sense the millions of people who had been there before, their hopes and dreams, and then ultimately, their passage from life, through death, to life. I'm a spiritual sort, in case you hadn't noticed, and I was affected more than my companions. We all have our differences, for which I am eternally grateful. I will try to upload some digital photos I took of both places when I can. They won't convey my feelings, but should give you a feel for the sheer enormity of the buildings, and perhaps some deeper respect for the task of constructing on such a scale 1700 years ago.

Been a while since I've had anything to say. Of course, being in England and Germany for two weeks had an influence too. I'm still jet-lagged but there's two things I can say about those two countries right off: they drink a lot and they smoke a lot. I guess being an American living in a northeastern state makes me more sensitive to the smoking thing than I realized.

The United States was founded on a number of intriguing principles, among them peaceable assembly and redress of grievances. Of course, it's a bit difficult to draw a strict parallel between the Boston Tea Party and the demonstrations in Seattle and Washington D.C., but I can't help wonder if the police crackdown in D.C. wasn't a bit over the top. I'm sure the scenes from Seattle were on every video screen in police stations and that had to be a factor in their sensitivity. They were not looking for a repeat, that's for sure. What strikes me, more than anything, about a lot of the news about police behavior is the resemblance to a sort of siege mentality. Paranoia and weapons are never a good combination yet so many of our police officers are fully equipped with both. Don't be surprised when additional shootings of unarmed innocents occur.

Now there is something that truly does make me angry. Two things, actually. First of all is that young Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez and the hoopla surrounding him and his father. I am a father and I'm starting to bristle over the implication that the boy is better off with some sort of mother figure than with his own father. The so-called surrogate mother he's had in Florida seems to be mentally unstable (though not dangerously so) and yet it's deemed that he should stay. Please, stop the fooling around and let the boy go home. The Cuban-Americans need to look elsewhere for a political symbol.

Second thing is the Confederate battle flag controversy brewing in South Carolina. If you're not from the US you can't begin to understand the legacy of hatred and intolerance that this flag represents. Long out of fashion (given the Conferacy lost the Civil War), it was resurrected as a symbol of White Southeners' resistance to school desegregation in the 1960's. Oh, they won't admit that, it's a symbol of Southern pride and resistance to Northern influence. Right. Just like the swastika is a symbol of German pride. Why is it Americans are so resistant to learning the lessons of the past?

In the wake of the Microsoft verdict, I've been searching for something to say other than "it's about time." Sadly, even if it is about time, it's already too late. Just as executing a murderer does not bring the victim back to life, punishing MS now for the things it has done won't do much for the companies it rolled over. It seems at times that our country is ready, willing, and able to be ruled, not by a government, but by mega-corporations. Is our greed so overwhelming that we are content to let the idea of representational government go down the drain? After all, we wouldn't want to risk jobs, now would we?

A young girl died from injuries sustained in a fire in her home in the city. The fire was started by her little brother, five years old, who was playing with a lighter. The girl was only 10. There was no smoke detector in the house, despite the fact that the Fire Department gives them away for free. She was just in the wrong part of the house and didn't have enough time to get out. Needless to say what the warning a smoke detector gives could have done for that girl. I fought a fire (as a volunteer) that was started in similar circumstances. That house was a single story, but it had a smoke detector, and no one was seriously injured. The family itself was a mess, which no doubt had something to do with it. Kids and fire don't mix, and even "normal" kids can be overwhelmed by curiosity, with disastrous results. They tend to have an awareness of the wrongness of what they are doing so they often hide in closets or under the bed clothes, both of which can give the fire a headstart by making it harder to detect at first. Smoke detectors can give you the chance to get out. But even better is to keep matches, lighters, etc. away from kids. Of course it's inconvenient, but death is even worse.

More mindless babbling for the masses. Or is it the US Presidential campaign? Quite possibly the same thing. It's sad to see what passes for politics in the United States. The only people (seriously) running for President are rich white guys who've never done anything controversial. It's better, I suspect, that they not have done anything at all. After all, one never knows if that which is trendy now will be trendy later. Why take chances? The last thing we need is someone who might choose to do something out of the ordinary, or who possesses an unpopular opinion. Instead we get carefully manufactured candidates who make expertly crafted statements designed to appease the target demographics. What's really annoying is it's only March; the election is in November.

I'm way behind on my reading, the books keep piling up and I find it hard to keep up. And don't bother telling me I could stop buying new ones, it's way too late for that. Once I became financially secure enough to actually purchase books, there's been no stopping me. Given the latest issues over patents and Amazon, I've been concentrating my online book buying with fatbrain.com, not as easy as Amazon, but not bad (I won't link to Amazon right now). They have some exclusively electronic material as well, I've never tried any of it so I can't speak from experience as to the quality. Check it out.

It's fun, in a sick sort of way, to watch the NRA and President Clinton duke it out in a war of words over gun control. Both sides have some valid points but also quite a few wrong ones. There's no way the Founding Fathers (as we like to call them) could have imagined the kind of firepower available to civilians today. There were probably more guns, per capita, in those days than now, but keep in mind that everyone pretty much had the same level of technology. They were slow to load, smoky and, given that handguns were the exception, unwieldy to use. Having fewer people around probably helped too. Now there's plenty of semi-automatic weapons, easy to use and powerful beyond the wildest dreams of the Minute Men. So, should they be illegal? No, they shouldn't. Should they be regulated? Yes, they should. Hard to get, but not impossible. The big problem, as I see it, are all the illegal guns available. Many are stolen, usually from legitimate owners. But no matter where they came from, they're out there. And for that, I don't have a clue what to do.

Finally got to the web page update. My old static page of quotes had served but now it's time to embrace the 90's (yes, I know it's no longer the 1990's). The logo was done with The Gimp, an open-source Photoshop work-alike. I was getting a lot of segfaults so this was the result of much more work than I'd care to admit. It is a developer version, and guaranteed to be unstable, so I shouldn't complain.

I've been running Linux on a PC at home for almost two years now, first Red Hat and now SuSE. Neither is ready to replace Windows as a desktop OS, but it certainly provides a viable alternative. Knowing Jane and Joe average computer user as I do, it's going to take a lot more than glamorous IPO's to make them want to (and be able to) install it in place of Windows. It really is better, and way more stable, than 98 or NT, but that is not necessarily a selling point in the home market. Games and other "cool" software sells Windows, not esoteric concepts such as uptime.

Site by Tom Maszerowski

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