Into The Weeds

Please remember that is important to be polite. Be careful of what you say on the internet, especially if you're talking to an ass. A certain acquaintance of mine from back in Champaign, let loose quite a diatribe directed towards a local loudmouthed conservative bigot (exhibit B):

Yeah, this seals it.  You're pretty much the biggest 
dumbass in the world. If I ever meet you, I will anally rape 
you.  Not because I'm into that, but just because I'd love to 
see how somebody like you deals with having had a 
homosexual experience.  Hopefully you'll kill yourself.

If you knew the people involved, you'd probably agree with me that this was downright hilarious. Whether or not it was appropriate, is another matter. Somewhat predictably, the dumbass recipient went whole-hog and complaned to the poster's employer and the local police. Luckily, both were understanding and pretty much laughed the incident off. Anyway, be careful out there. I, for one, plan to never threaten anyone with anal rape on the pages of this blog, no matter how hilarious or appropriate it may seem.

There was an episode of the Daily Show a couple of weeks back where my good buddy, governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, became the butt of one of their humorous "interviews." This one had something to do with pharmacists refusing to dispense emergency birth control pills or something like that. I thought it was quite hilarious.

For those not familiar with the way this works, the Daily Show calls prospective interviewees up, asking innocently for an interview discussing a serious topic. Of course, the Daily Show is a comedy spoof, so the "interviewer" ends up making the interviewee look like a fool by asking ridiculous questions and making off-the wall statements. Anyway, I thought that maybe I was the only one that found this one particularly noteworthy and funny, since I am a former resident of governor Rod's state and all. However, apparently I am not alone, since it's covered on CNN.com now.

At one point in the interview, a startled Blagojevich looked to 
someone off camera and said, "Is he teasing me or is that legit?"

It seems like Blago is taking it in stride though, and has somewhat of a sense of humor about the thing, which is good.

"It was going to be an interview on contraceptives ... that's all 
I knew about it," Blagojevich laughingly told the St. Louis 
Post-Dispatch in a story for Thursday's editions. "I had no idea 
I was going to be asked if I was 'the gay governor.' "

By now, you probably know about how Gilette's new 5-blade monster, the Fusion, was accurately predicted by the Onion back in 2004. If not, please take the time now to appreciate the irony and humor of that. Let me start out by saying that I've always been a non-electric razor person. Electrics (and yes, I've tried a few) do not produce as long-lasting a shave. They cause more irritation. You really can't use them in the shower (or at least the thought of using an electric appliance in the shower gives one pause). But enough of my anti-electric evangelism. Switching from a regular 2-blade razor to the Mach 3 back in the day was like a difference of night and day for shaving comfort. I'm not exaggerating here. So you can see why I gave in to the hype, and picked up my own Fusion from the CVS this past weekend.

It's a bit intimidating, as you can see from the above image. I do remember thinking the same thing, however, way back when I first tried the Mach 3. It's just such a large surface of sharp metal blades, that it's a tad scary -- even though the science and physics say otherwise. More blades, closer together, reduce the pressure on the skin while shaving. This produces a better shave with far less irritation. The decreased space between the blades (as compared to the Mach 3) probably decrease the chance for cuts, since there's less chance of skin getting caught in between the blades. Those are all things that the commercial says, and every one of them is true.

The shave was comfortable. It was even more comfortable than the Mach 3. This, of course, is the whole point of the new razor, so I wasn't too surprised. I was pleased, but not surprised. The shave was close and smooth. Better than the Mach 3. This increase in "shave quality" was unexpected. Also unexpected, but related, was the fact that facial smoothness is maintained well into the post-shave day. Much longer than my experience with the Mach 3. Now, the downsides. The mysterious "6th blade" on the back of the razor just didn't do it for me. It's oriented in such a way that it's not really convenient to use for trimming. Besides, I don't know about the nooks and crannies on anybody else's face, but the main side of the razor does a good job of getting everywhere. Also, the price is high. This is also to be expected, since that's Gilette's whole motivation for bringing out new razor technology every few years. An excuse to charge more for handles and, more importantly, blades. I'll also take this opportunity to note that I went with the regular Fusion model. Not the goofy thing with the battery inside that vibrates as you shave. As I stated earlier, batteries have no place in my razor.

Overall Grade: A-

A friend provided a link to this article, which is an amusing bit about the easter bunny punching someone in a mall. The conversation, however, eventually turned to this line in the article:

My esteemed colleague pointed out that this is a violation of correct subject-verb agreement, because "The couple" is singular and "were" is plural. "Not so fast," I said -- "The couple" is a collective noun, which makes the situation a bit fuzzy. A few quick internet searches provided the following rule:

This is truly one of the weirder corners of the english language. Another point was brought up concerning musical groups and sports teams. My esteemed colleage pointed out how Rolling Stone is guilty of such nonsense as: "Phish are releasing a new album." This, I agree, seems to be completely wrong. "Phish" should be treated as a singular, since it's the group as a whole releasing a new album. But what about groups such as "The Doors?" What about sports teams with singular names, like the Minnesota "Wild?" Oh well, back to work.

Well, since this topic came up at some point last night, I figured it's time to blog about it. On July 19th 1989, United Flight 232 was a DC-10 flying from Denver to Philadelphia via O'Hare. The crash of flight 232 is probably the most well-known american aviation disaster, due to the presence of film crews at the crash. What most people don't know, however, is the full story of how the 185 survivors of the crash owe their lives to the extraordinary actions of the captain, the crew, and a DC-10 instructor that just happened to be deadheading as a passenger when the plane's hydraulic systems all went into the weeds.

In subsequent reconstructions of the circumstances of the accident in flight simulators, no pilot, regardless of seniority, has succeeded in reproducing the flight crew's achievement of maneuvering the aircraft as far as the runway, generally losing control in mid air.

There was a survey for some national organization or something that listed the cities with the rudest drivers. Boston made the list, of course, but down at #5. The next day's headline in the Boston Herald, in typical Herald-style big lettering on the front page, was "Boston Drivers Not Rude Enough." Appropriate.

For a good portion of last week, for whatever reason (probably something to do with the biblical-style flooding and rain) the traffic light at the end of the BU bridge and Commonwealth Avenue was broken. This caused certain variations in traffic patterns and directional closings that wreaked havoc with the already tenuous traffic balance in that area. The bus trip home one day actually involved my bus (the CT2) making a 3-point turn across Commonwealth Ave. All of this made me chuckle a bit about how we drive here in Boston. Here's some very good advice paraphrased from a guide book (Not For Tourists Guide to Boston):

In Boston, and the surrounding area, squares are not square. They usually have six or seven feeder streets. In high speed situations, roads intersect in "traffic circles," a.k.a. "rotaries." The ability to properly navigatethese dangerous, but efficient interchanges is a source of pride for Boston drivers. And proud they should be. Boston drivers are the best in the country, which is something you will realize once you understand the rules of the road -- a system based on the idea that everyone who learned to drive anywhere else sucks. Some rules:

Be aggressive: Drive the streets of Boston. Don't let the streets drive you. You will often find yourself needing to make four-lane changes in 100 feet, weave in and out of crowded rotaries, or drive at 60mph on narrow roads within inches of the oncoming lane.

"The whites of their eyes": Eye contact and gestures will let you know if they will let you into their lane, are upset that you cut them off, or if they applaud your recent ballsy driving maneuver. This will also be a good opportunity to see if they hate you. Drivers in other cities may inadvertantly cut off others in their race to "get there first," but in Boston, driving is often spite-based ... people will cut you off just for fun.

Check your directions, check them again: If someone tells you to take a right or a left, ask how much of a right or a left. Knowing if you need a turnaround right, hard right, soft right, or straight right makes all the difference.

Commonwealth Avenue: You'll encounter hills, masses of bikers and BU students, legal left turns through three lanes of traffic and two trolley lanes, illegal right turns that everyone takes anyway, green lights that require stopping, and red lights you're expected to know to ignore. Enjoy.

Here are a couple of my favorite sights in thumbnails with links to google maps:

"The autor is Artemii Lebedev, one of the leading web-designers in Russia. He recently went on a trip to DPRK."

This guy took some pretty neat pictures. I like the fact that pretty much every other picture was one that "you're not supposed to take." And I can just imagine how he was irritating his "escorts" over there. Some pretty good snapshots of life on the other side of the DMZ. Check it out.

Here is yet another confirmation that nobody should still be using Internet Explorer to browse the web in windows. The .wmf file vulnerability has been around for a few months now, and has mostly only been pervasive in the seedier corners of the internet (I often run into it on bittorrent trackers, warez and serial sites).

The basic gist of this vulnerability is that if IE is presented a .wmf file in a web page, your computer will open it. There is a vulnerability in the application that handles .wmf files that enables an attacker to embed code in the .wmf file and pretty much own your computer. You'll run into it online with ads that will automatically use the vulnerability to attempt to install adware and spyware on your system. Of course, sane browsers, such as Opera, Firefox, Mozilla, whatever, won't open the file automatically, and will instead present you with a dialog box to save it. And if you're not using a Windows PC, .wmf files don't mean anything anyway, so it's just an annoyance. Microsoft has relased a patch to "fix" this, but apparently a lot of people out there have never applied it.

The Washington Post's "Security Fix" today prints the disturbing revelation that the malware has made it to the mainstream. Unscrupulous ad companies are selling ads embedded with this vulnerability to major web sites such as Webshots, and Myspace (which is one of the most visited sites on the internet). So all those people saying to themselves, "Oh, I don't go to strange places on the internet, so I don't need to worry about all of these Windows security problems" now also have a bulls-eye painted on them. And if you're saying to yourself right now, "Oh I patch my Windows regularly, there's no reason to stop using IE. " what will happen when the next vulnerability is found?

Get Firefox

So lately I've discovered YouTube. I know I'm probably a few months late to the party, but that whole Zidane thing drew me to YouTube. There are always a good bunch of people with too much free time on their hands. here is a compilation of all the mini videos that people made. Some are pretty darn amusing. This one is one of my favorites, but pretty much anything with Fidel Castro is bound to be a little bit funny.

I remember first using voice recognition software about 10 years ago. Apparently, the experience is still the same today, as evidenced by this wonderful video of a Microsoft demonstration. I suppose this is one of those things we'll never have. Like flying cars.

The topic of the "supermax" prison in Florence, CO (wikipedia article) came up in discussion last week, so I figured I would expand on it a bit via the blogosphere.

USP Florence ADMAX (as it is officially called), is one of only two "supermax" federal prisons (the other one is in Marion, Illinois), and is the only federal prison built from the ground up originally as a locked-down "supermax". It's where the U.S. sends federal prisoners who are extremely dangerous, or at risk in some peculiar way. The federal bureau of prisons has a particularly neat website where you can search for information on any particular federal inmate -- provided, of course, that you know the exact first and last name. What follows is a partial list of the "interesting" guests of the federal government that will be residing in Florence for the remainder of their natural lives:

• Richard Reid -- 24079-038. The guy who tried to blow up an airplane with a bomb in his shoe, and is forever to be known as the "shoe bomber."
• Ted Kaczynski -- 04475-046. The "unabomber".
• Robert Hanssen -- 48551-083. FBI agent, spied for the USSR. His revelations to the enemy resulted in several covert agents and spies being outed and probably killed, and is guilty of violating U.S. code title 18 section 794. The content of which has been drilled into my head by a certain previous employer of mine, but that's for another blog entry.
• Terry Nichols -- 08157-031. Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator. His partner in crime, Timothy McVeigh also served his time at ADMAX Florence, before his execution.
• Eric Rudolph -- 18282-058.1996 Atlanta Olympics bomber, bomber of multiple abortion clinics, and longtime fugitive. There's an interesting and lively discussion on wikipedia about whether he should be referred to as a "Christian Terrorist." But that's beyond the scope of this blog.
• Ramzi Yousef -- 03911-000. "Mastermind" and perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
• Mohammad Salameh -- 34338-054. Another perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was supposedly arrested while trying to collect the deposit on the van that they blew up.
• Zacarias Moussaoui -- 51427-054. Terrorist and possible would-be-participant in September 11th attacks.

Also supposedly present at Florence are: Charles Harrelson (Woody Harrelson's father), Brink's Heist robber Richard Scutari, and Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano. Here's a more complete list.

There's just something oddly fascinating and vaguely dangerous about all of these people being at the same place, but I suppose that concentration at a single supermax facility is probably the best way to do these types of things. The people of Florence are apparently not happy about staffing levels at the facility, and worry that the place now known as "terrorist central" might actually be a terrorist target.

So I was watching some documentary the other night about the "cola wars," and was amused by their mention of the whole "New Coke" fiasco (that's for another entry, of course). So I hit up the old wikipedia and was eventually led to a list of notable "failures" of the dot-com variety. Perpaps none of these was so notable and precipitous as that of kozmo.com.

It turns out that there was a documentary, E-Dreams, being filmed on the fledgling company, starting way back after it's founding in the heady days of 1999. Appropriately enough, as the documentary was being filmed and put together over the next year or so, the whole thing collapsed spectacularly. This makes for a good story, and an interesting film (we watched the DVD last night). It does a good job of documenting the fall of Kozmo, but also acting as a subtle commentary on the wackiness we like to call the "dot-com bubble" that lasted up until the crash in April of 2000. Remember those times? When any average joe with a somewhat off-beat idea could take a company public while burning through hundreds of millions of dollars of capital with only the vague hope of distant profit? Reality caught up to us in a hurry during the spring and summer of 2000 and into 2001 as the Nasdaq lost more than half of its overpumped phony value.

At any rate, back to this movie in particular. See, these fresh-out-of-college investment banker kids (Joe Park and Yong Kang) had a business idea. The plan was to not only sell things online, but to deliver them to the customer in under an hour. In the course of a year, Kozmo grew from 10 employees to almost 4,000. They raised over 250 million dollars, and filed for an IPO -- all while never being solidly in the black. Anyway, it was a good idea. Being in college back then, it was great to have videos, playstation games, etc. delivered to your dorm, and I was a customer.

Around the middle of it, the movie starts to take the form of a greek tragedy. The hubris, excitement and fallacies of those few unique years sticks out like a sore thumb when you realize what's coming in the summer of 2000. Of course, the money was all wasted (hiring too many people for too little work), they expanded into massively unprofitable markets (bike delivery in Los Angeles?), and put standard business fundamentals (like "profit") on the back-burner. Eventually, the IPO was pulled, the founders were ousted, and the business completely collapsed, leaving all of us without any online delivery service.

And now for an interesting postscript. In April of 2001, when Kozmo.com ceased operations out of the blue, unexpectedly and suddenly, they apparently fired everyone before they could go out and claim the dropboxes and videos contained therein placed in strategic locations around the city. Thinking quickly, someone called the local "Au Bain Pain" claiming to be from Kozmo.com and notified them that someone would be by to pick up the drop box. Such a pick-up was made, and that's how an official Kozmo.com drop box ended up in the lounge on 2ndwest for several years. I wonder where it is now?

Ever been pissed off when you're at a merchant that requires a minimum purchase amount to use a credit card? Did you get stuck buying something you don't necessarily want/need to get over the amount? Or is it just the principal of the thing that sticks in your craw? According to the merchant rules for MasterCard and Visa, this is not allowed. Section 9.12.3 of the MasterCard merchant manual (be careful, it's a 268-page pdf) clearly states:

"A merchant must not require, or post signs indicating that it requires, a minimum or maximum transaction amount to accept a valid MasterCard card."

Http://www.mastercard.com/us/personal/en/contactus/merchantviolations.html is the page to report such violations. Let's all do our part!

On an unrelated note, there was a problem with the anti-hotlinking setup on the webserver that affected people viewing this blog through a link aggregator or external interface such as bloglines. This should be resolved now. Feel free to let me know if any issues persist. I had to do something, since all sorts of people were annoyingly hotlinking to certain images and sucking up bandwidth. I suppose that story is for another entry, but it's similar to the fishgina/damon situation that errhode ran into a while ago

So I was on my treo today looking at pictures that I had stored on there, and up popped two that we took at our old apartment building on the day we moved out. Beautiful luxury condominiums at Longwood Towers my ass. It spurred me on to finish up this blog entry that I've been working on for a while:

Yes, if you want to pay $700,000 or so you too can live behind the same leaky, crumbling edifice that we were only paying $1950/month for before some clueless out-of-town real-estate mogul moved in and decided to "convert" to overpriced luxury condos. Yeah, yeah, they are "patching" the brickwork outside, and replacing the old windows with new (but still leaky from what I hear) windows, but it's all just a surface wash. "Lipstick on a pig" is a good description of what they've been trying to do. Spending millions of dollars on a fancy-pants lobby renovation -- which still includes, by the way, an unintentional, but sizable, water feature whenever it rains heavily -- and putting paint, plaster, hardwood floors and new appliances into old apartment units is probably not going to convince enough people to pay the abnormally high price, even for Brookline. My only hope is that sanity will prevail, and most people will probably see through the facade the moment they realize that most units don't even have laundry, and they would have to slum it down to the basement just like us poor apartment dwellers used to.

To Norman Radow and "The RADCO companies": I hope you go broke. You've taken a great historic building, one of the last bastions of pseudo-afforable housing in Brookline, and defecated all over it. I didn't really bear them too much ill will while we were happily residing there. Even though they used heavy-handed and questionable legal tactics in unsuccessful attempts to push current residents aside to make way for the "renovations," I still somewhat respected their right to make a buck or two. But now, when I take into account the thousands of dollars that we had to spend in order to move (into a much nicer and cheaper place, by the way), and multiply that by the hundreds of other residents who probably went through a similar process and may not have been as financially secure as us, I think they deserve every bit of what's coming to them.

They spent $110 million to buy the old dame, and then what's estimated as another $30 millon to "renovate" it. Those costs have probably skyrocketed since then. Since they couldn't just bully us residents and kick us out, a one-year facade repair project has balooned to 2.5 years and is still less than 75% complete. "Historic Longwood Towers just two years away from opening!" is the latest news. Professional designers were brought in to pick out the thousand dollar chairs for the lobby, the ugly artwork, stupid chandelier, marble floor, gay-looking sconces, and other trappings of artificial wealth. Yes, you heard me right, artificial. It's like 1999 all over again, and the bubble is about to burst. See, the awful truth is that not enough people actually want to pay $700,000+ for what is really a $2500/month apartment in a crappy old building. It doesn't matter if the valets have walkie-talkies or if there might be a driving range, or an indoor putting range put in at some point in the future (yeah, like that's ever going to happen).

The bell is tolling for all of the condo moguls. Not just Radow. "The increasingly troubled Bay State home and condo sales market is racing into a downturn that could take years, not months, to work itself out," according to the Herald. So, brace yourselves, home owners, buyers, and sellers. And most importantly of all: buyer beware!

Tenant discontent complicates Longwood conversion -- Boston Business Journal Article
Longwood Towers Tenants Association -- website
Longwood Towers Condominiums -- official website
Longwood Towers (brookline) to go condo over coming months (hehe, months? yeah...) -- blog entry

Rolling Stone magazine from a few months ago has a whopper of an article on the Chur^H^H^H^H Cult of Scientology. Fellow reader beware. It is a long one, and prepare to be sucked in for a long but good and educational read. It's perfect for those bored at work, or at home unemployed, or for those looking to gain fame and fortune by starting their own science-fiction-based religious cult.

The article talks about everything from the history of the organization and L. Ron Hubbard, to how much those "auditing sessions" actually cost, to the wackiness of the secrets of OTIII. OTIII is the stage of Scientology where you're finally mature enough to have the secrets of the faith revealed to you -- including the creation story involving aliens, spaceships, nuclear bombs, volcanos, etc that was revealed to L. Ron Hubbard during a trip to Africa in 1967. Those of us who have seen the "Trapped in the Closet" South Park episode are familiar with OTIII. Actually, the whole South Park Trapped in the Closet episode fiasco and the departure of Chef, played by Isaac Hayes -- a now-angry Scientologist, is a good story in and of itself. But, as Bob Bradley, my high school english teacher used to always end up saying: "I digress"...

There are some well-balanced interviews of current, happy members, and those who have left Scientology and suffered forced separation from their still-brainwashed friends and family. Good stuff, and definitely something to keep in mind next time you see those people out on the street selling copies of Dianetics and offering a "free stress test." The author actually submits to one of these, and describes what happens when you're brought inside.

Some quotes from interviewees that the author reveals at the end of the article:

"PLEASE, let me know what you will be writing in the story," wrote one young woman. "I just want to make sure that people won't be able to read it and figure out who I am. I know my mom will be reading."

"The church is a big, scary deal," wrote another. "My [initial] attitude was if this information could save just one person the money, heartache and mind-bending control, then all would be worth it. [But] I'm frightened of what could happen."

"I'm about two seconds away from losing my whole family, and if that story comes out with my stuff in it, I will," wrote a third. "I'm terrified. Please, please, please . . . if it's not too late . . . help me keep my family."

Someone let me know that Yahoo! was in the midst of a technology upgrade for their mapping application (maps.yahoo.com), making it web2.0-ified just like they are doing with their mail. So I decided to try it out and see if it gives google and mapquest a run for their money. The results were grim, to put it nicely.

I'll start out by saying that driving directions around Boston are just about impossible for a computer or navigation system to generate accurately. Many of them don't have the logic to tell you how to maneuver traffic circles, or what degree of "right" turn you need to make at Davis Square where five streets converge, or that in order to "stay on" Foo Street, you may need to make several sharp right and/or left turns. That being said, I have found that Mapquest actually does the best job of differentiating the severity of turns, navigating through traffic circles, and even handling no-name streets and alleys. I used my favorite Boston directon benchmark to test the new Yahoo! maps. Get me from my apartment to Zero Church Street in Harvard Sq. Of course none of them can handle an address of "0," and despite the sign outside the church, I'm pretty sure that technically the address is "1", so that's what I had to enter.

First of all, the new Yahoo! maps (getting sick of the exclamation point yet? Thank you, late-90's dot-com-ism!) uses some sort of stupid flash application to display everything. Contrast this to the new Mapquest and Google maps, which have the same functionality without requiring a slow, crashy plugin that doesn't even display right on my browser (firefox on OSX). And once I got past that (by resizing the browser window until the applet popped up), I couldn't even copy and paste the directions, because they were in a flash app. I clicked on "printable version" and here are the directions it gave me:

1. Start at 150 BROOKLINE AVE, BOSTON - go 0.1 mi
2. Turn Right on PARK DR at PARK DR - go 0.4 mi
3. Turn Left on MOUNTFORT ST[RT-2] - go 0.2 mi
4. Turn Right to follow RT-2 - go 0.1 mi
5. Turn Left on US-20 WEST - go 0.1 mi
6. Turn Right on BOSTON UNIVERSITY BRG[RT-2] - go 0.2 mi
7. Turn Left on - go 0.3 mi
8. Continue on MEMORIAL DR[US-3] - go 1.3 mi
9. Turn Right on JF KENNEDY ST - go 0.3 mi
10. Make a Sharp Left Turn on BRATTLE ST[RT-2A] - go 0.1 mi
11. Turn Right on CHURCH ST - go 0.1 mi
12. Arrive at 1 CHURCH ST, CAMBRIDGE, on the Left

Start out going which way on Brookline Ave.? I'm lost already! And note step number 7 there. Turn left on what? Those of us who know this trip know that it's not even a left. Once you go over the BU bridge, you're merging into a traffic circle (towards the right, if anything) and then making the first exit (on the right, again, since we're in the United States) onto Memorial Drive. Both Mapquest and Google get the traffic circle right. Mapquest says: "Enter next roundabout and take 2nd exit onto MEMORIAL DR / US-3 / MA-2." Back to the first point, neither Mapquest nor Google can tell me which way to turn onto Brookline Ave. to start my journey, however they do at least indicate that I need to go "Southwest."

The problems only get worse once we enter Harvard Square. I appreciate that Yahoo! denotes that it is indeed a "Sharp Left" onto Brattle St. as the map below will attest to. Google simply says "Bear Left" which is anything but the truth, and even Mapquest calls it a "Slight Left," which is also horribly incorrect. The biggest test is right up ahead though. See where the line that represents your path takes an intermediate right turn? This is still Brattle street, but you need to make this distinct right turn. Going straight ahead will land you going back the way you started:

Yahoo! maps completely skips past it as if you will magically end up at the corner of Brattle and Church just by "go 0.1 mi." Same problem with google. But here is where Mapquest shines: it is the only one to actually note that you need to turn Right onto Brattle St. after already making a Left (albeit incorrectly denoted as a slight left) onto the street.

All in all, if you're read this far, thank you for suffering through this rant. Newer definitely does not always mean better, and not even Google can be the best at anything. The winner in this field continues to be Mapquest. As for the new Yahoo! maps? I hope they make some improvements before taking it out of "beta."

Looks like the plans to build a new Apple store on Boylston Street across from the Prudential Mall have finally gotten approval from the BRA. I must admit, it looks pretty sweet, and the building they are tearing down to make room for it is a piece of crap anyway.

Hey everyone! Election day is coming up! Are you excited? To tell you the truth, I'm not really too terribly stoked about my voting options here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There's the Ted Kennedy vs. some-guy-who's-going-to-lose race that we see (or don't see, since there are no ads or anything) here every 6 years. There's the gubernatorial race where Deval Patrick holds a sizable lead over Lt. Gov. Healy. That race seemed at first like it might be somewhat interesting, but for whatever reason, Healy went way overboard with the negative ads and sketchy claims. Polls say that's just weakened her support even more. You've got to give it up to the MA voters for actually realizing that and being turned-off by the negaitivity.

The one mildly interesting thing on the ballot is "question 1," an initiative to modernize the liquor laws to allow grocery/convenience store businesses to hold multiple liquor licenses. This will have the effect of allowing wine to be sold in grocery stores here. Of course, the liquor-store and liquor-distribution cabal is all up in arms about this. I was in a liquor store (a "packy" as they call them here in the commonwealth) the other day, and there were scary posters on the walls and pamphlets claiming that question 1 will pretty much lead to mobs of boozing underage maniacs, drunk drivers on every street and bodies piling up everywhere. Will selling wine at grocery stores really destroy our normally oh-so-temperate society? This seems kind of questionable. At least where I come from, the grocery stores were always way way way more anal about checking ID and enforcing the law. The weekly dig has a great opinion article on the subject.

And as for the national implications for this election? I can't lie -- the potential for a big change is kind of exciting. Democrats, don't count all your chickens before they've hatched quite yet though; and Republicans, don't start slinking away or looking for high ledges to jump off of either. We all know about the dubiousness of polls and that a lot can change in one weekend for either side. A great place to follow the "action" is at electoral-vote.com where the votemaster painstakingly collects data from all polls and organizes it into predictions. Here's where things currently lie, according to him:

Readers of this blog can be excused for forgetting that Microsoft released a little thing called the Zune a couple of weeks ago. The somewhat large, rectangular, sometimes-brown rubbery portable video/music player was under development by Microsoft at a cost of untold millions of dollars and vital man-hours to be thrust upon the market in time for the holiday season this year to compete with the ever-ubiqitous and 80%+ market-share holding iPod.

Well, the product launch seemed to fall upon deaf ears. The new player pretty much landed with a "thud." No excitement, nobody running out to the Best Buy or Target to grab their Zune on the day it was released. After months of hype, Zune has fallen to 93rd (at the time of this writing) on Amazon's list of most popular electronic products behind pretty much every other portable audio player and just about anything else anyone would want to buy. The iconic image that will quite possibly forever be inextricably linked to the Zune is the installation error screenshot, featuring a bizarre picture of people doing who-knows-what on the ground with some asian woman's face contorted into a bizarrely approriate expression of pain and anguish.

With Zune, Microsoft has apparently totally thrown their ironically named "Plays For Sure" initiative into the dustbin of history. I always thought that the idea of P.F.S. was good. The only way anyone could go up against the iPod and iPod technological ecosystem would be to band together and offer something the iPod most certainly does not -- choice. The "Plays For Sure" initiative states that as long as you buy a player that is labeled as "Plays For Sure" you could buy music from any of the participating stores and expect it to sync and play flawlessly (in theory, at least). Obviously, the Zune not working with this existing infrastructure has pissed off all of the other former Microsoft allies (Creative, SanDisk, Napster, etc.) and has analysts scratching their head as to why would anyone want to get a Zune now if it means you can only use it with the proprietary Zune-only store and Zune-only player. The darn thing supposedly doesn't even work with your pre-existing and pre-installed Windows Media Player.

Beyond that, I could go on and on about how this player is flawed. You can't buy the songs directly with money. You need to trade in your money for "points" that, in turn, are used to purchase the music. Since there's a minimum amount of points you can get, it's "like a county fair that makes you buy food tickets, this system forces you to buy more than you need for the next transaction" (washington post). The Zune store doesn't offer videos yet. The player is bigger and heavier than the iPod video and other competitors, yet the screen offers no additional pixels. The software is buggy and prone to crashes and difficult installs (see all the reviews mentioned below). Apple has already stuck it to Microsoft by lowering the iPod price to $250 with relatively short notice before the Zune launch. Originally, the Zune was supposed to price at $300 -- competitive with the iPod. Apple's move forced Microsoft to lower the Zune price to $250 to still be competitive, so now they're taking an additional $50 loss on each player sold. I know it's supposed to be a loss-leader initially, but that's ridiculous. And remember, Apple and all other player manufacturers sell their players for a profit, a novel idea, eh?

Tech pundits and reviewers are having a field day writing about the Zune's shortcomings and the potential for it to be a massive failure:

• Top 10 Things Wrong With Zune (zdnet.co.uk) -- "...the reasons Zune is doomed to become known as the New Coke of failure in the drinks holder of the Edsel of marketing misfires..."
• Avoid the loony Zune (Chicago Sun-Times) -- "...The Zune is a square wheel, a product so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity..."
• Microsoft's No-Zune Zone (thestreet.com) -- "...Years after anyone would have expected it to counter the most successful product in the history of archrival Apple, Microsoft rushed out a slightly undercooked product to hit the holiday season..."
• Installing the Zune... sucked(endgadget.com) -- "...That's because this is where the software crashes for the first time. So we have to start over from make a connection -- but if your Zune is still plugged in, the software won't see it. So kill the process, unplug the Zune, restart the software, plug the Zune back in. Ok. We did this a couple more times before we learned our lesson..."

I promised a while ago that there would be an upcoming post about Vista (the new version of Windows), given my early impressions running it on a few systems (or not running it as the case may be). It turns out that there is a bunch to say, so I'll split it up into a few entries. This is part 1 -- the intro. A note to all readers: I think I'm actually somewhat biased on this topic. I guess you could call me a "recovering Windows administrator" -- having given up on Windows a few years ago now (except where necessary) and become a Mac and Linux user and focused my career to UNIX-only systems administration. So Microsoft fans, zealots, and employees can take my ranting with a grain of salt perhaps.

It's hard to believe that it's been so long, but on October 25th, 2001, Windows XP was released to market. This means that it's been over 6 years now that desktop and workstation windows users have been using the same operating system and the same technology (with minor upgrades and service packs of course). What we now know as Vista started development in 2001 as a very ambitious next-version of windows. Vista was originally expected to ship sometime in 2003 as a middle step between XP and a future version with the codename of "Blackcomb." Sure enough, 2004 rolled around and feature creep and development headaches of various types made it clear that big changes needed to take place. Exciting plans for a new filesystem (winFS), among some other features, were abandoned, and development was started anew to be built off of the Windows 2003 server codebase.

Vista is arguably the largest and longest consumer software project of all time. There's a school of thought that it was doomed to failure from the start. The windows codebase is too complicated, old, huge and messy to maintain any longer. Developers state that these days there are more than 50 dependency layers in windows (the Broken Windows Theory). Some of the headaches of this are evident in the comments of this Mini-Microsoft blog entry , where the author bemoans the slipping of the schedule and hopes for leadership changes.

So here we are, in January of 2006, a few weeks from the retail launch of Vista. After billions and billions of development dollars, countless man-hours of work, PR nightmares and years of punditry, what is it that we'll get? The answer is really "not much." I got my hands on the final market version of Vista a few weeks back and installed it on a couple of systems. As a side note here I must add that the supposedly next-generation activation procedure and copy protection is, as expected from Microsoft, a pain in the rear end to normal users, but already hacked and easy to circumvent for people looking to pirate the OS. Overall, I liked the OS (with a few snags that I'll mention in my next entries on the topic), but the one, overriding feeling I had was: "We waited 5 years for this?" Stay tuned for future entries in this series.

It seems that the sad story of the Windows Vista shutdown menu is emblematic of the Vista development process, and all that seems to be wrong these days with Windows UI design in general. In his blog entry Choices == Headaches, Joel Spolsky goes on a great rant about the new shutdown menu in Vista, and how it's really a microcosm of all that is wrong with the Microsoft UI paradigm.

As a guy who most frequently uses Mac OSX and Linux (gnome and kde) as his desktop, the annoyances of working in Windows are glaringly clear and obvious. It's obvious when you go to a hotel and the instructions for hooking up to the wireless network are 8 steps long for windows users, but only 3 steps for Mac users. It's obvious when the in-laws come over with their hopelessly borked windows installation default from the manufacturer loaded with all sorts of messy memory-leaking tray applications that serve no real purpose and hijack system settings and file associations. And it's obvious when you look at the shutdown menu in Windows Vista:



Every time you pull up that menu to leave your computer you have to choose between all of those options. Plus, of course, there's still the "lock" and "power button" buttons on the start menu itself. Couple this with the prevalence of sleep and shutdown buttons already present on your keyboard or your laptop and it's a classic windows crapfest.

The back-and-forth of the windows shutdown menu continues though, with a response from someone who actually worked on the darn thing. Some choice quotes:

So that nets us an estimate -- to pull a number out of the air -- of 24 people involved in this feature. Also each team was separated by 6 layers of management from the leads, so let's add them in too, giving us 24 + (6 * 3) + 1 (the shared manager) 43 total people with a voice in this feature. Twenty-four of them were connected sorta closely to the code, and of those twenty four there were exactly zero with final say in how the feature worked. Somewhere in those other 19 was somebody who did have final say but who that was I have no idea since when I left the team -- after a year -- there was still no decision about exactly how this feature would work.

In Windows, the node I was working on was 4 levels removed from the root. The periodicity of integration decayed exponentially and unpredictably as you approached the root so it ended up that it took between 1 and 3 months for my code to get to the root node, and some multiple of that for it to reach the other nodes. It should be noted too that the only common ancestor that my team, the shell team, and the kernel team shared was the root.

Good stuff, huh? Next up -- my experience installing and (trying to) use Vista on my relatively nice, not-too-terribly old Sony Vaio laptop. A hint: it didn't end well.

It was a happy coincidence that yesterday was not only my birthday, but also was the inauguration day for the new governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick. Since it was actually the first one held outside the state house, and open to the public, and the weather was unseasonably warm and precipitation free, I took the day off. It turned out to be a fine day for us to get up early, head a few T stops downtown to brave the crowds, and witness a bit of history.

We got there early enough to get a good spot right at the front of the public area, leaning against the barricades. For a while there was nobody between me and the podium, but then the VIPs and some schoolchildren showed up and filled up the reserved section in front of us. It was a lot of standing, and eventually things got a bit chilly, but witnessing the ceremony was a good thing, the speeches were nice, and the people were friendly. Even the construction workers remodeling the upper floors of a nearby building took some break-time to get up on the roof and peer out the windows for the festivities. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving, I discovered that my camera was hopelessly broken. Nevertheless, I was able to snap a few blurry pictures with my camera phone to provide some record of the day.

RECORD EVENT REPORT NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA 
1223 PM EST FRI JAN 5 2007

...RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE SET IN BOSTON...

AT 1221 PM...A RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 63 DEGREES WAS 
SET AT BOSTON/S LOGAN AIRPORT. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD 
OF 62 DEGREES SET IN 1993. A FINAL RECORD REPORT WILL BE 
ISSUED LATER TODAY OR TONIGHT WHEN THE DAILY MAXIMUM 
TEMPERATURE HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED.

And it doesn't even feel like a "nice" 63 degrees. Apparently the humidity is 80+ percent, and it's all gross and sticky even here sitting at my desk inside the climate-controlled hospital. And tomorrow's supposed to be even warmer. Now, I don't usually blog about the weather, but I figured this deserved some sort of mention.

Here's a nice quote from our good buddy Jim Allchin, back in 2004:

 I'm not sure how the company lost sight of what matters 
to our customers, both business and home, the most, but in my 
view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what 
bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, 
what security means, what performance means, how important 
current applications are, and really understanding what the most 
important problems our customers face are. I see lots of random 
features and some great vision, but that does not translate into 
great products....I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at 
Microsoft.

Jim Allchin is, of course, none other than the windows development chief, and has been since the mid 1990s. Well, at least he's being honest, I suppose.

As mentioned in the previous entry in this series , I went through the experience of installing Vista on my work laptop. The laptop in question, is approximately 1.25 years old (it was purchased over the fall of 2005). It's a fairly nice Sony Vaio VGN-T350p. A handy little 10.7" wide mini-laptop with a 1.2ghz Pentium M processor, 512MB of RAM, 60GB hard drive, Intel 855GME graphics, and a DVR+-RW drive. Obviously not top-of-the-line with what's out there now, but still a very very nice system -- arguably even better than most laptops that are currently in operation out there.

So, as I look out my 15th floor window here at home, my view is polluted by three news helicopters hovering over the city. It turns out that there was a series of "bomb threats" caused by certain devices found at important places throughout the city (near hospitals, on interstates, underneath major bridges, etc.).

The real kicker though, is that this was a publicity stunt gone horribly wrong. Highways were closed, subway lines were shut down, lots of people were late for work, and hundreds of police officers and FBI and ATF agents had to get paid -- all because of a dumb marketing campaign, and a dose of somewhat irrational paranoia.

Now, I hear from jrandall, that he has obtained a video (it was up on youtube, but has since been taken down) that shows them putting the devices up in several places in the city and its surrounding environs. I hear that some people may have been able to watch the video and obtain said devices before the police and bomb squad could arrive. I shall obtain said video shortly and put it back up on the internet in a stable place, so stay tuned, and maybe get ready for some scavenger hunting.

Okay, here's the link to the video. Feel free to go scavenger hunting, everyone:
athf-lightsnipes-boston.flv
Apparently, I just missed one right down the street from me near Fenway Park. The cops are just arriving now to "diffuse" the device.

So, sometimes for entertainment or whatever, I head on over to the virtual midwestern portion of the internet to catch up on the happenings at the University of Illinois, via dailyillini.com, the online manifestation of the school paper. Judging from the opinion columns and news of some sort of dubiously thrown together "race relations symposium" from last week, one would get the impression that the school is a stone's throw away from an all-out race riot. Issues of "The Chief" (which the NCAA has declared a racist mascot fostering a hostile environment, etc. etc.) and the socioeconomic and racial demographics of a large midwestern state school are outside the scope of this blog. But I will share with you the poll of the day. It's supposedly very cold in Champaign-Urbana these days, so the poll asks: "how are you keeping warm?"

Spooning? Drinking Heavily? Burning Textbooks? Glad to see it's still the same old UIUC after all. I was starting to worry they had all gone crazy loco over there. Keep warm, folks.

Homaru Cantu is a weird dude. Weird, but cool. His deal is that he uses his expertise in the field of molecular gastronomy to conceive food and methods of preparing said foods. He's famous for his use of edible paper, and printing on said paper with a modified inkjet printer filled with various flavored solutions. He also seems to make heavy use of dangerous, hot lasers, and liquid nitrogen.

I had heard of the guy before, but I actually got a chance to see him in action a few weeks ago on an episode of Iron Chef America (which he won, by the way, against Morimoto). It was bizarre, to say the least, to see him over on his side of kitchen stadium with the class 4 laser, liquid nitrogen, pipettes, and other equipment that seemed to be more at home in a science lab than in a kitchen. Nevertheless, his stuff looked great, and supposedly tasted great too -- or so the judges thought. Next time I'm in the windy city (yeah, like that happens very often these days), his restaurant might be worth checking out. Actually, the whole idea of molecular gastronomy seems pretty neat. I hadn't even heard of it until last week, and have no idea how someone would prepare themselves for a career in it, other than going to cooking school and having some sort of general chemistry background. It would be interesting to know how Cantu stumbled into the field. Anyway, so long, and I bid you good eating!

...about guys with fancy sports cars. Stick with me here folks, trust me it's worth it. Here's a guy, selling his ferrari on ebay. Now, if you go and click on his feedback link (the number next to his ebay id denoting how much feedback he's gotten, currently 66), a list of stuff he's previously bought and sold comes up. So, go ahead, and click right there on the top of the list to see what the last thing was that he bought on ebay. A "pleasant transaction" indeed!.

Whoa. Just Whoa. Here's the story: Some dude at UNC finds out that his girlfriend is cheating on him, with his roomate. So what does he do? Organizes an elaborate 'event' on Valentine's Day (yesterday), where he invites her to a public place on campus (the pit), and tells her she's going to get serenaded by the acapella group. In reality, it's an elaborate plan to break up with her in public, with as many people watching, broadcast across the internet, and the acapella group is singing the Dixie Chicks' "Not Ready to Make Nice."

I picked this little story up off of a Daily Illini Blog entry, and there's apparently going to be full coverage on some UNC campus television show. They've got a nice teaser video of their footage up on their site. Also, of course is the facebook group.

So I wonder, is this all in good fun, or is this just another sign of the fall of western civilization? An elaborate hoax? Over the line? It's hard to actually determine who got the best of who in the ensuing argument, and/or who ends up looking like more of a douchebag. Even if it's a hoax, it's an fairly clever one, and the mob definitely got played. Ahh the internet -- wonderful thing, isn't it?

I was going to devote this entire entry to fleshing out my feelings on the illegal substance policy of the United States, particularly as it relates to Cannabis. I found a pretty informative and enlightening article at the Dallas Observer a little while back about Barry Cooper, a former Texas cop, who has apparently completely switched sides of the issue and makes it his life's mission to teach people how to get away with trafficking and using Cannabis without getting caught.

But then I realized that spouting off on this touchy subject which I know just about nothing about (pretty much no matter what I might say) might reflect poorly on me in the future with potential employers, strangers, family members, etc. who may stumble upon this blog. Anyway, as a 100% clean non-user of any sort of illegal drugs or intoxicating beverages, or even tobacco products, the political issues don't really directly affect me anyway, right? Yeah, sure they don't... Actually, even that little bit that I just said probably makes me sound like an addled, radical hippie pothead in some people's eyes anyway. I assure you, really I'm not. It's just an interesting topic to think about. Okay, I suppose I might as well delve a little deeper. Let's look at this bit of text that's currently in the wikipedia article on the War on Drugs:

"Illegal drugs that are less dangerous tend to gain more widespread popularity than dangerous ones. An example would be the relationship of marijuana, a less dangerous drug, and heroin, a more dangerous drug. People are more willing to experiment with marijuana than heroin because the consequences are less severe. But because both are illegal, both require a black market infrastructure for distribution. Because marijuana is popular, it creates a network of people for this black market distribution infrastructure that is larger than would be present if only heroin were illegal, and marijuana were legal. In this manner, the criminalization of multiple drugs serves as a gateway of access to those drugs which are more dangerous.(Slightly modified to make more sense, as is often necessary when citing the wikipedia)

That's an interesting point. If marijuana were legal in small amounts for personal use (as I believe it might be in Alaska), would the diminishment of the black market infrastructure also diminish the infrastructure as it relates to more dangerous drugs, e.g. heroin? And since there would be no exposure of the casual pot-smoker to the illegalities of the drug trade, would they be less likely to be dragged into trying other, more dangerous illegal substances? Food for thought. Anyway, really, that's all I'm going to say on the subject... for now at least.

So, "our long national nightmare is over?" I sure hope so. From the FAQ, the team names and whatnot will still be "Fighting Illini," since that's shorthand for the name of the state, and a general term for anyone who may find themselves living there. The stupid dance that some student does dressed up like a native american (feathers and all) at half time at sporting events will probably go away. Yes, I always thought it was stupid. Not necessarily offensive, but lame and out of place, and maybe inappropriate. Actually it turns out that they're getting college credit for dancing around like fools. The "performers" have, of course, sued to prevent their elimination, saying that it may jeopardize their scholarships (last paragraph of this article).

Nevertheless, this too shall pass. I don't really care too much about the issue either way, but something needed to get settled. The whole mess was making the entire university seem like a bunch of screaming drunk morons, pinko liberal commies, and backwoods old-fashioned good-ol'-boy klansmen.

Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 09:41:48 -0600 (CST)
To: All Faculty & All Academic Professionals & All Civil Service Staff & All Undergrad Students & All Grad Students <everybody@uiuc.edu>
From: Chancellor Richard Herman <chancellor@uiuc.edu>
Subject: MASSMAIL - Chief Illiniwek

To members of the campus community,

A decision has been made regarding the Chief Illiniwek tradition. For more information, go to: www.uillinois.edu/chief.

If you receive any questions or concerns regarding the decision, please feel free to use the following reply.

"Thank you for your comments about the recently announced decision on Chief Illiniwek. For more information, please refer to this web page:
www.uillinois.edu/chief

You can email comments by clicking on Contact/Feedback link [InfoSource@uillinois.edu] in the top section of the web page."

This mailing approved by:
The Office of the Chancellor

--
This Message sent via MASSMAIL. < http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/services/massmail/ >

I ran across this blurb on digg just a few minutes ago. For whatever reason, I found the concept of this type of graphical representation, and what it can tell us about human relationships in general to be strangely interesting.

These researchers at The Ohio State University decided to survey a mid-western high school of approximately 1000 students, asking them to pick out their romantic partners have been over the past 18 months from a roster of students at the school. The researchers then drew a graph with pink and blue dots (representing males and females), and lines (representing relationships). Here's the graph. And here's the article about the research.

Some interesting points:

• The most striking feature of the network was a single component that connected 52 percent (288) of the romantically involved students at Jefferson. This means student A had relations with student B, who had relations with student C and so on, connecting all 288 of these students.
• The lack of cycling seems traceable to rules that adolescents have about who they will not date. The teens will not date (from a female perspective) one’s old boyfriend’s current girlfriend’s old boyfriend. This would be considered taking “seconds” in a relationship.
• The practical result from such a rule is that no cores form, and that long, chain-like networks form instead. That has important implications for preventing the spread of STDs in teenage populations, according to Moody, Bearman and Stovel...“there aren’t any hubs to target, so you have to focus on broad-based interventions,” Moody said. “You can’t just focus on a small group.”

And now for a public service announcement. Check out this article in the Globe today. Outbreak of intestinal illness lingers in city. Norovirus isn't a very pleasant experience. Apparently, local Boston hospitals, schools, colleges, etc. are just getting over a fairly major outbreak.

"Boston continues to be mired in an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness, with the latest figures from a disease-tracking system showing that emergency room visits reached peak levels in February..."

So, wash your hands. Thank you for your attention.

Some things with which to busy yourself today if you're looking for a diversion:

• RoHS Directives: This topic came up last night in conversation (yes, you know you're in a strange crowd when electronics environmental regulatory regulations come up in conversation). As an IT professional, I've had some experience with the "RoHS" labeling, but had no idea about the details of the specification. Check it out, there are some interesting things there. Particularly the bits about lead-free solder and potential long-term impacts on equipment durability and quality. Is this just the price we have to pay for the future of our environment? I don't know, but it's food for thought. Irregardless, I don't think anyone will argue against restrictions of hexavalent chromium or polybrominated biphenyls in our electronic equipment, and thus in our landfills and in our drinking water.
• Paul Levy's Blog: Not only is Paul Levy the president and CEO of my wife's employer, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, he was also a professor of mine at MIT. The actual name of the class escapes me at the moment, but it was an Urban Studies class (course 11, which I eventually got a minor in) involving infrastructure management and planning. We took all sorts of neat field trips to the Deer Island treatment plant and the under-construction new water aqueduct into boston, and we got to check out a jet-cleaning and robotic examination of a 100-year-old hand-built sewer main underneath Cambridge. As the executive director of the MWRA, which was in charge of the so-far-successful Boston Harbor cleanup project, he had a whole lot of interesting stories. From there he went on to be a dean at Harvard Medical School, and then was hired on at Beth Israel. I guess everybody's got a blog these days, eh? His is kind of interesting (although maybe I'm just saying that because I work in a hospital?), and he's got a good sense of humor. His entry on a recent paper-towel-dispenser-change debacle is a real gem. We actually have the same dispensers in our hospital's main corridor, and they pretty much suck. Kristy concurs.
• xkcd: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language. Go on, read through the comics, all of them. I promise you'll like it.

• ^ - Popeye's: Popeye's has opened their first branch (as far as I can tell) in Boston, and it's at Kenmore Square, just down the street from my apartment. Now, I'm sure some fair readers of this blog will have horrible, nasty things to say about Popeye's for all sorts of reasons, but nevertheless, I give them a solid up arrow. I remember as an undergrad, Kristy and I driving out to the service area on the Mass Pike that had a Popeye's, since that was, at the time, the only one anywhere near Boston.
• ^ - 38 pitches: Curt Schilling definitely hasn't been at a loss for words on his blog. Let's hope he keeps it up through the season -- there's really been some fascinating stuff on there. Supposedly the dude spends a large amount of time on the computer anyway, participating in forums and playing MMORPGs.
• V - The unsustainable american lifestyle: Man, I bet it must suck to have to use a car to get around all the time, doesn't it? I can't imagine being trapped in my car for an appreciable part of the day just to get to and from work -- and having to pay hundreds of dollars per month just for the privilege of filling the tank.
• ^ - Grand Chau Chau: This place belongs in the hall of fame of chinese restaurants. It is second to none. It's (arguably) within walking distance on a nice day, and that's what we did yesterday after catching a movie (Shooter). Damn tasty chinese food. It's the real deal.
• = - TOD: We need to do a better job of making the distinction between real, well-planned Transit Oriented Development, which I still believe can be a good thing, and doesn't have to simply be a sprawl-contributor, and Transit Proximate Development, which is a wolf in sheep's clothing. I had a nice conversation with someone about this last week, but have just now gotten around to actually organizing my thoughts.
• V - Qmail: Qmail sucks. It's complete disregard for any sort of standard as to how the rest of the world and all of the other MTAs work and are administrated is mind boggling. It's a shame too. I'm sure that DJB is a brilliant person, and the architecture of Qmail is very good and solid. But, dear lord it's a frustrating technology trap that hasn't been updated since sometime in 1998, and requires custom 3rd-party modules to even obtain some semblance of operability on today's internet. Please, Qmail fanboys (I know you're out there, and will come across this), save yourself the effort and refrain from arguing about it. Now, if you want to argue about Emacs vs. VI, that's another matter...

There's a great op-ed article in the NYT today, written by two former independent record-store owners, that does a good job of laying plain what's happened to the music industry over the past few years:

"The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead."

They make some great points about the rise of single-oriented mass-appeal artists (Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, etc.) and what "the death of the album" really means for music consumers, and the retail outlets that one used to actually be able to go to to buy said music.

"The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay...."

"...It’s tempting for us to gloat. By worrying more about quarterly profits than the bigger picture, by protecting their short-term interests without thinking about how to survive and prosper in the long run, record-industry bigwigs have got what was coming to them. It’s a disaster they brought upon themselves."

And now for a brief piece of trivia that some/most of you may already be aware of, considering one of my favorite colorful phrases in the english language, "balls to the wall." My apologies in advance to those readers who are already aware of the etymology.

"I told the staff … that I expected them to cut every piece of red tape, do everything they could, that it was balls to the wall..." -Michael Brown, former director of FEMA, in testimony to U.S. Senate 2/10/06 [emphasis mine]

Contrary to common belief and misconception, the phrase has nothing whatsoever to do with potentially uncomfortable proximity of genitalia and walls. It's origins apparently date back to use in the US Air Force during the Vietnam War, and possibly as far back as the Korean War or earlier. You see, "balls" refers to the balls on top of the throttle control and flight control of an airplane, and the "wall" is the cockpit firewall. Thus, "balls to the wall" would indicate the state where the plane is either pushed into a nose dive and summoned to 100% throttle, for example in a situation where extreme evasive maneuvers are required.

Similar to "pedal to the metal," "balls to the wall" indicates a condition of maximum effort and intensity. But, of course the connotations and nuances of the term are so much more than that. Like all phrases of this kind, it really isn't possible to succinctly and effectively rephrase it in other language -- that's the reason it exists and is in use in the first place.

From http://flickr.com/photos/jeffcarlson/127632129/:

Running "The" along the side isn't bad typography, but the lack of a visual break between the T and H makes me say, "WTF?"

Today, let's examine the strange case of a Mr. Thomas Midgley. I was doing one of my regular wanderings through the Wikipedia the other day, and somehow ended up reading all about CFCs and the depletion of the ozone layer, and all of that good stuff. I remembered that as entering freshmen at MIT way back in 1996, we were treated to a brief lecture on the topic by Professor Molina, who had just won a share of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for explaining the link between CFCs and ozone layer depletion. But, I digress.

Back to Midgley now, he was working for a subsidiary of GM back in 1930 when he began work on developing a safe refrigerant for use in household appliances. You see, back then people used nasty things like ammonia or sulfur dioxide in their refrigerators, and people were dying and getting poisoned left and right from leaks.

What he came up with was a little compound known as Dichlorodiflouromethane, and an entire family of these chloroflourocarbons (CFC) with unique boiling points that can be used safely in any number of applications as propellants (e.g. aerosal cans), as well as refrigerants and cleaning solvents. At the time, understandably, he was hailed as a hero. Apparently, in a demonstration of the compound's safety, he inhaled a breath of the stuff and then used it to blow out a candle. Of course we all know the rest of the story, how in the '80s and '90s scientists like Molina discovered a mechanism by which the CFCs, once inevitably released into the air, would destroy the earth's protective ozone layer. You see, that's a good example of unintended consequences. Here's a genius engineer who comes out with an amazing invention, wins all sorts of awards, etc. and still ends up having to take at least part of the blame for the CFC/ozone debacle that we're still dealing with to this very day.

Alas, that is not where the story ends with Mr. Midgley, however. Earlier in his career with GM, back in the roaring '20s, he came up with another gem. Midgley discovered that adding a small amount of a chemical known as "tetra-ethyl lead" (TEL) to gasoline, thus making "leaded gasoline," he could raise the effective octane level of the fuel and prevent engines from knocking. As with his CFC discovery, of course he won all sorts of awards and accolades. However, unlike the CFC issue, issues with leaded gasoline, pollution and lead toxicity arose early on, and indications are that Midgley actually was aware of problems. Dozens of workers in the factories that made TEL ended up falling ill, and in many cases dying. Midgley himself apparently suffered from a bout of lead poisoning. From tailpipe emissions contaminating soil and groundwater (especially in urban and highway-proximate areas), it's estimated that about 68 million children had toxic exposures to lead from gasoline between 1927 and 1987. As many as 5000 americans died annually from lead-related heart disease prior to the phaseout of leaded gasoline. Since leaded gasoline is no longer in use, the mean blood-lead level of the American population has declined more than 75 percent. (citation)

Hero, or Villian? Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any single organism in earth history." He ended up contracting polio in 1940, and being the engineer that he was, he constructed an elaborate system of cables, rope and pulleys to get him in and out of bed. Ironically, that system was the cause of his death as he got caught up in it and was strangled at age 55. Unintended consequences, indeed!

Thomas Midgley

CFCs

Paper on the discovery of Tetra-Ethyl Lead and Midgley's lead poisoning

Another article about leaded gasoline. What did the makers know, and when did they know it?

Rev. Jerry Falwell dies at age 73.

And from Daily Kos today:

Falwell blames 'pagans, abortionists, gays, feminists, lesbians' for death

(ANS, The Afterlife) Echoing his comments made after 9-11 that the terrorist attack was caused by a litany of "evil forces," the late Jerry Falwell said today from the afterlife that "pagans, abortionists, gays, feminists, lesbians, the ACLU, People for the American Way, Al Gore, Daily Kos and other immoral, liberal groups and individuals bear full responsibility for the heart attack that has claimed my earthly life."

Falwell went to add that, unlike his apology following his post-9-11 comments, he will "not be apologizing this time because there are no liberals where I'm going. So they can kiss my fat, dead ass."

As you may recall from this extensive previous entry about the longwood towers condominium conversion, I don't have much love for my former apartment building, now mostly-empty overpriced luxury condominium complex. I was amused at the following news story that I picked up off the web tonight:

BROOKLINE, Mass. -- Thieves are caught on camera looking for any means possible to steal an ATM.

Omar Ali Credle, a former Longwood Towers employee, and another accomplice allegedly used a wheelchair to cart off an entire teller machine on the night of April 18 from the apartment building where Credle used to work.

To pull off the heist, police say the pair stole a swipe card for the complex as well as keys to a tenant's vehicle before using the wheelchair to make off with the machine that they estimate contained close to $1,800.

Wow. Lot of good those security cameras and 24-hour night watchpersons are doing there. I've got to say that for whatever reason this made my day. Luxury living indeed. But wait, there's more...

What's this I find while doing a Google search looking for more info? Dear Lord, if only we had shelled out the cash to buy a piece of the dream in that crumbling old hole, these people could have been our neighbors! (literally, they apparently live in B402, we lived in B404). Peachy keen!

Hey, buckle up. This PSA brought to you by New Jersey Governor, Jon Corzine.

So, since my last entry was about large-installation systems administration, I figure it's only appropriate that this next entry should be about my other "passion" -- urban studies and planning. Jrandall forwarded me a link to this extremely interesting, but depressing article in the New Yorker.

Paumgarten studies the specific commutes of a handful of people with daily commutes that I would consider to be completely insane. There's the dude in Atlanta who commutes in traffic for two hours or so each day. Apparently that's a common thing in Atlanta, where they haven't quite figured out how to make mass transit work, and apparently don't quite subscribe to the theory of Induced Traffic, since they just keep building highways and highways. And there's also the woman who works as a legal secretary in Manhattan, and lives in Pike County, PA. She's got a commute of 3 hours and 15 minutes each way. The author follows her on a commute, and goes over the rundown of how she, and other similar people get to and from work everyday, and what they do while sitting in traffic or on the train.

The truly fascinating, and depressing, aspect of the article, however, is how these people justify the exchange they've made for hours of their lives every day. After a daily commute like that, when she gets home, the remainder of her evening is as follows: "...feeds her dogs, then heats up soup or pizza she buys at a pizzeria on weekends. She takes a shower and goes to bed, maybe watching a taped episode of CSI..." It seems like these people give up so much just for a bigger house, or a larger lot, or a nice place out in the woods. Am I the only one who sees the irony here? And I don't mean Alanis Morisette fake irony either.

Here are some gems from the article:

“There’s a simple rule of thumb: Every ten minutes of commuting results in ten per cent fewer social connections. Commuting is connected to social isolation, which causes unhappiness.”

"The source of the unhappiness is not so much the commute itself as what it deprives you of. When you are commuting by car, you are not hanging out with the kids, sleeping with your spouse (or anyone else), playing soccer, watching soccer, coaching soccer, arguing about politics, praying in a church, or drinking in a bar."

" 'Drive until you qualify' is a phrase that real-estate agents use to describe a central tenet of the commuting life: you travel away from the workplace until you reach an exit where you can afford to buy a house that meets your standards. The size of the wallet determines that of the mortgage, and therefore the length of the commute. Although there are other variables (schools, spouse, status, climate, race, religion, taxes, taste) and occasional exceptions (inner cities, Princeton), in this equation you’re trading time for space, miles for square feet. Sometimes contentment figures in, and sometimes it does not."

Anyway, it's a fascinating read and isn't overly long. Interesting stuff.

Sorry for being re-miss with the blogging lately. I've been hardcore into Rocking the '80s lately.

As I mentioned a while ago, I moved the hosts www.hejweca.org and www.intotheweeds.com to a virtual server co-located somewhere at Andy's roadkill.com. And that's pretty awesome. But, I still use my server at home for webmail.hejweca.org and mail.hejweca.org, and some other things -- including a WebDAV server for sharing iCal calendar data. Unfortunately, a few months ago my self-signed SSL certificate expired, and I've been too lazy to regenerate one.

The problem is, of course, that the server only has one IP address to the outside (it's on a cable modem), and so uses name-based virtual hosting in apache. I'd have to say that one of the greatest annoyances in the world is that name-based virtual hosting does not work with SSL. That is to say, since webmail.hejweca.org, mail.hejweca.org and calendar.hejweca.org all share the same IP address and are separated into virtual hosts by name only, I can't have different SSL certificates for each vhost. This is a problem, because, as we all know, SSL certificates are tied to the name of the server you're going to. So, if you go to https://webmail.hejweca.org in your browser, you'd get a nasty warning that the certificate belongs to some other name. Anyway, it's a pisser because I'm trying to fix the SSL WebDAV server. Maybe I'll try to make it authenticated access internal-only, and not use SSL at all. Bah, that's nasty. Yes, I know why the problem exists; and that it really can't be fixed without re-jiggering the SSL protocol and the HTTP protocol in potentially dangerous and nasty ways, but maybe someone, somehow, somewhere is working on it.

And while I'm on the topic of general annoyances, why does Sun's patching system for Solaris have to suck so much? And, for that matter, why does Sun's package management system (if you can call it that) for Solaris suck so much too? And also, why are plane tickets so damn expensive these days? $350/person to go to Chicago? Give me a break!

So, a few months ago, a Cold Stone Creamery opened up across the street from my apartment. I ate there once or twice, but generally I find the ice cream to be of sub-par quality -- too sweet, not enough "ice-creamy" flavor, and of a somewhat gooey consistency. Cold Stone has actually opened up a few stores in the Boston area, and it seems like it might be a bit of a challenging market for them. For example, while there may be a Cold Stone right across the street, there's an Emack and Bolio's right downstairs. They actually sell freshly made, all natural ice cream -- and it tastes much better.

Now, our neighborhood curmudgeon, Scott, likes to rail on about the grossness of Cold Stone ice cream. In this case, I whole-heartedly agree with him. Feel free to peruse (if you dare!) the ingredient statements(pdf). Yummy....sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, cellulose gum and artificial flavors!

And while we're on the subject, let's talk a bit about eggs. Now, I'm not a big fan of eggs (as many of you may already know). However, even I must pause to acknowledge the awesome technological achievement that is the Egg McMuffin. But, do you know what the egg thing in an McMuffin is actually made of? Really, it's just 100% egg. No crazy fillers, flavorings, preservatives and stuff. It's just egg poached in a novel form on the skillet. Let's contrast that to the "Folded Egg" that just about every other fast food breakfast uses, and is present in some of McD's other sandwiches:

Folded Egg: Pasteurized whole eggs, food starch-modified, soybean oil, natural flavors (botanical source), sodium acid pyrophosphate, carrageenan gum, flavor enhancer [salt, maltodextrin, natural flavor (plant source), spices, herb, turmeric (color)], monosodium phosphate, citric acid, soy lecithin. Prepared with Liquid Margarine: Liquid soybean oil, water, partially hydrogenated cottonseed and soybean oils, salt, hydrogenated cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, mono- and diglycerides, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preservative), artificial flavor, citric acid, vitamin A palmitate, beta carotene (color). CONTAINS: EGG, SOY LECITHIN

Yum! You know when you need that many nested parentheses in an ingredient listing that it must be good.

In case you've been living under a rock for the past week, here is the strange story of one Star Simpson, an MIT sophomore who was arrested at Logan Airport last Friday because of a "suspicious device" attached to her sweatshirt:

(click for larger image)

• Boston Globe Article
• Boston Herald Article
• MIT Newspaper (The Tech) Article
• Boston Globe Opinion

Anyway, this afternoon during my lunch break, I happened upon an impromptu protest/picket line type thingy on the MIT campus in front of Walker. Apparently they were protesting MIT's sole comment on the story thus far, calling Star's actions "reckless" rather than acting to clear up the record in regards to some of the inaccurate reporting about the "incident." The pamphlet/petition that they were handing out pretty much says it all:

What happened to “All tech men carry batteries?”

So, while I'm staying here at the Marriott Courtyard in San Francisco, I get the USA TODAY for free every morning (yes, it's a rag). Yesterday's featured a little blurb on the front about the presidential candidates and their kids.

It turns out that Mitt Romney (former republican governor of Massachusetts, and everyone's favorite Mormon), named his kid Tagg. Mitt and Tagg. Anyway, that's a douchebaggy name if I ever heard one. Just thought I'd share.

In honor and observance of the Writer's Strike currently going on, here is my version of a "clip show." This blog has over 175 entries now, some good, some bad, some awesome. I know there are several new readers here, and it's a pain to sift through the entire blog to find the good nuggets. Here, in my opinion, are the 15 most worthy entries if you're flipping through this place I like to call "Into the Weeds":

• yuck: Cold Stone Creamery Rant
• The Soul of the Commuter: Commuting sucks. In very many ways. Here I get back to my urban studies roots.
• UIUC Mail Server Disaster: A tale of sysadmin sorrow from 2002
• Trivia: See if you can identify who all of these footnotes to history are.
• The Cult of Scientology: Mini-rant and link to a freaking awesome article on scientolgy.
• Longwood Towers: Rant about why the Longwood Towers Condominiums are some place you should not be thinking about living in.
• Kozmo.com: : Classic tale of dot-bomb woe. Ever wonder what that "kozmo" box is that's sitting in the kitchen lounge on second west?
• Florence Co. ADMAX: Crazy terrorist prison in Colorado with all sorts of nasties inside.
• New Apartment: Check out the awesome view from my living room.
• Driving in Boston: A primer, with scary crazy maps of intersections.
• Captain Al Haynes: The amazing story of Capt. Haynes and United flight 232.
• Firefighting Mode: Some systems philosophy, and the condition of what things were like back when I worked at MIT IS&T.
• The Switch: Mac vs. PC
• Unofficial!!!!: The crazyness at UIUC known as "Unofficial St. Patrick's Day" and why it is awesome and awesomely stupid at the same time.
• Datacenter Transformer: A tale of woe from some crazy-ass electrical problem and superbad preparation and handling at MIT IS&T.

As of Philip Rosedale's blog post a couple of weeks ago, Linden Lab's mission statement is now:

To connect everyone to an online world that improves the human condition.

For some pretty powerful examples of what this is all about, check out a segment on the CBS Early Show that aired yesterday morning: New Life in Cyberspace. It features a woman with MS who has built a successful and profitable (but somewhat strange) virtual business in Second Life, and John Lester (Boston Operations Director for Linden Lab) assisting a group of disabled adults who have created new lives in the virtual world. No, really, check it out.

Well, it's an official snow emergency in the city of Boston. Also, according to Universal Hub, the French Toast alert level is "High" -- Orange.

Ike Turner died yesterday, at the ripe old age of 76. The New York Post article headline:

IKE 'BEATS' TINA TO DEATH

You stay classy, New York Post.

O'Reilly book author, Leonard Richardson, has written an awesomely hilarious analysis of the book "Future Stuff." The book was published back in 1989, and had all sorts of predictions about 250 consumer products that should have been available by the year 2000. While the book does succeed in making a few valid predictions (Flat TV, HDTV, Memory Card Camera), and several near misses (Virtual World, Smart TV, Digital Audiotapes, Movies delivered over the telephone), it's even more interesting to see where it completely misses the boat.

Apparently back in 1989, even though we had computers, nobody could foresee that they could become general purpose devices. One of the biggest themes running through the list of future predictions is that they all end up requiring separate doo-dads and black boxes that would plug into your TV or telephone. So, yes it turns out that now we can have movies delivered electronically to us on demand, as the book predicts, but instead of over the phone line to a "special box plugged into your tv", we can do it over this thing we call the internet, and can use the computers that we all already have. Same goes for something called the "voice activated typewriter" or something they refer to as an "electronic newspaper."

Another amusing item is something called the "Smart TV." It appears to be similar to a tivo, but runs on a jukebox of VHS tapes. Awesome! And remember VCR Plus+? These days it's built into VCRs (who still has a VCR?), but back in the day, it was actually a separate box that controlled your VCR tuner and recording commands via an IR blaster.

So go and check it out. While you're there, also read the comments on predicted items such as "The Intelligent Toilet", "The More Intelligent Toilet", and of course, "The Most Intelligent Toilet."

I'm going to duplicate the sentiment of Paul Levy, a former professor of mine at MIT, and now the dude who my wife works for over at Beth Israel Deaconess, and remind everyone of what the fireworks are all about today. Go ahead, take a few moments to read it -- especially that second paragraph there. As he says: "What a great document. A superb exposition and argument. And it was signed. They weren't afraid of posting their opinions, even though it put their lives, liberty, and property at risk. Why are so many reluctant to own their opinions today?"

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

It was a Tuesday night, July 27th 2004. I was sitting alone working on the computer, in the living room of my house in Champaign, Illinois. There was a dude named Barack Obama running for senator that year, and even though pretty much nobody had ever heard of him (myself included) he was going to give the keynote that night at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. I had the TV on in the background, so I could hear this speech and see the guy I was probably going to be voting for to become the junior senator from Illinois when I filled out my punch-card ballot that fall.

The speech started out well articulated, but slow and not very notable in my opinion. At somewhere between 10 and 11 minutes into the speech however, that changed. As his voice rang out from the television, and a remarkable cadence arose, I turned around in my chair, gripped by the oratory. Here's the meat of the speech:

Go on, watch the whole thing. I find it interesting to look back on this speech from four years ago, and find the themes of his campaign just barely taking shape in it. By the end of the speech, I was wondering to myself if I had ever heard a politician in recent times with the ability to inspire like that, and I was convinced, like many others, that this guy was something special.

See, in my opinion, the job of President isn't nearly so much about making policies, drafting laws and toeing party lines, as it is about the intangible things like being a leader, inspiring us, bringing us together, and empowering and comforting the nation as necessary -- especially in today's global climate. This is something that our current president failed at miserably in the days after September 11th 2001. It would have been the perfect opportunity to unify the nation, soothe some raw nerves, and cement his status as a charismatic leader. Instead, he gave a series of disappointing speeches -- culminating in the decent, but disappointing speech to congress on 9/20 introducing the term "war on terrah", saying "either you're with us or you're against us," and promising that "we will prevail." While I'd definitely say that it's the best speech he's ever given, that's not saying much. It's interesting to compare and contrast the effects of someone with real charisma and speaking techniques to someone who can't pronounce "terror" properly, has a halting speaking style with no flow, and who is giving a speech that he definitely didn't write a large portion of for himself...

I am excited and proud that next Tuesday, I'll be walking down the street to my local polling place, and casting my ballot to elect Obama as the first African American president.

45 years ago, Martin Luther King said: ""I have a dream that one day, this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' " Maybe, just maybe, we're a little closer to that day.

Yes, I was there. The idea was hatched among a group of my MIT friends back around the election in November, and we went ahead and bought our train tickets and set up our accommodations way back then -- actually on the eve of the election. Luckily, that did not jinx things, and I was there on the mall with about 2 million other people to see Barack Obama get sworn in as our nation's first African-American president.

The day started for all of us at 4:00am, as we awoke in Andrew's grandmother's living room. We stumbled through a quick bite to eat, and then down to the bus stop. It was nice that we were right at the end of a bus line, so there were no crowds or difficulty getting transportation to the mall. The bus got us as far as Dupont Circle, and then we walked the rest of the way. It was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and we arrived on the already-crowded mall at around 6:30am, ready to wait another 4.5 hours for the ceremony to begin. It was cold, crowded, long and tiring, but it was worth it.

I was a part of history, along with the millions of other people standing there with us watching on the huge jumbotrons and listening over the loudspeakers. At the moment the presidential oath was read, there was an outburst of joy like none I had ever been a part of before. There was a nice, older black couple next to us who had driven up all the way from Alabama and were crowded into the masses with us and at the moment it became official there were high fives and flag waving and hugs all around for everyone. To say it was a special moment would be the understatement to end all understatements. Definitely something I'll be proud to hopefully tell my grand kids about someday.

This video is pretty awesome in a "glad that's not me" and "I hope they have offsite backups" kind of way. At around 5:21 watch the plate glass window fail, and then at 6:10 the video switches to a camera in the machine room. Servers and water don't mix.

An awesome retro news report from 1988 about the super scary Morris Worm. Centered on MIT, it features none other than jis himself a few times. And an amish part-time virus hunter cum MIT student? Courtesy of The Scottographer .

Some good quotes: "the students were safe ... their computers were not." "the suspect, somewhere.... a dark genius."

From an entry on ugliesttatoos.com(site is somewhat NSFW but this entry isn't):

That said, in a few years there will be a generation of adults for whom The Goonies is not the nostalgic icon that it is for us. And those people are going to ask you why you have a tattoo of a retarded pirate on your arm. If there are any measures you can take to prepare yourself for this outcome, you should probably do it.

...and that's sad.