kencf0618

I rented a carpet cleaner yesterday and took care of the entrenched stains with Dr. Bronner's Eucalyptus Soap. I've been in this condominium for a decade now, and this was the first time I've cleaned the carpet. It was getting decrepit, to say the least. O.K., I'd let it go, with two cats and all but sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves, apply some elbow grease and clean things down to the wainscotting.

Rescued a small Persian rug and an octagonal fluted glass vase from the dumpster yesterday. The yard sales, on the other hand, were a total bust. I bicycled through the hot, empty town... Folks must be out camping.

I'm occasionally running Tor as a bridge relay now, which I believe to be in within my ISP's AUP; I never did get a written response back from the CableONE executive to my specific technical questions, so we shall see. Knock on wood!

The NedaNet Wikipedia issue seems to have been settled. Granted, ESR is a flak magnet, but one editor has a definite animus against the man. If he keeps on WP:DEADHORSE, it's "Welcome to Pavlov's House..." We have a hard kernel that can't now, I think, be broken.

Wherein there are several anti-Socialism floats, but no Socialism floats.









The Hare Krishnas were especially lively —one doesn't usually associate motorcycles with ISKON. And the paranoia enthusiasts, the Tea Party and Continental Congress (not Constitutional Convention!) crowd, provided a fine array of wing-nuts, let me tell you. Me, I just threw Trident gum at patriots from the Ada County Democratic Float (or Gloat), and a good time was had by all.

I learned that one lady in whom I was interested has just moved with the help of five men. Lucky guys...

Lost the battle but not the war re NedaNet on Wikipedia. It's not notable enough to be included in the Hacktivism article, at least not so far, but now the boob wants to delete the NedaNet article itself —apparently he has some sort of animus against Eric S. Raymond, who is a widely known blow-hard. I was pleased to see that the consenus is that NedaNet was sufficiently sourced. The cites get it over the transom, whatever Damien.rf imputes to Raymond's self-aggrandizement is moot, savvy? Most of my edits stick for a reason...!

Bought the gum I threw at CostCo... Mom really tells Dad how to navigate in his car excruciating detail nowadays.

I'm not touching Tor again unless and until I know for a certainty that I can licitly use it in whatever capacity on CableONE... I HATE being cut off from the Internet.

Despite the local CableOne tech telling me one morning that Tor wasn't a problem and that bandwidth wasn't an issue (especially between midnight and noon), that afternoon I came home after work to a nasty DMCA take-down notice and a frozen ISP account. I could receive mail, but that was it, and so perforce had to deal with the sanction by phone... Some idiot had sent a bit torrent through my machine. Some game... & I'm no gamer.

Well! I steered everyone and their dog to the EFF's legal boilerplate, but it was only the day after that I finally reached someone who knew what they were talking about, Tech No. 2, and he informed me that Tor on a residential account was in itself a no-no. (Proxy servers ist verboten!) And by then I no longer had the nous to contest the matter. I had acted in good faith & had received bad information from them, and that was that. Time to move on. (He was very interested in the identity of Tech No. 1!)

You learn by doing. Knowing then what I know now, I probably would have stuck with a humble relay or bridge node and stayed under the radar. Parse your TOS's and AUP's well!

I give CableOne a C- for their handling of this affair. And from what I can ascertain, there are after all several Qwest-hosted nodes on Tor and no CableOne-hosted nodes... I was off-line for a bit over a day-and-a half, so as much as I'd like to help out the dissents in Iran I'm really, really not going to dick around with Tor anymore if it exposes me to the risk of having to be filtered through several morons again. That just leaves both me and the Iranians in the lurch.

The whole experience was very odd. I couldn't even write to my ISP on-line, yet if I'm accused of a second instance of abuse I'll have to fax them or send them a letter. Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

After viewing Neda's death throes, just once, I bit the bullet and set Tor to full-fledged exit node.

Bicycled to Garden City on the Greenbelt and back on this, the first full, rather cool day of summer.

I've been bouncing around like a ball in a pinball machine on the highlift at work, so I was more than ready to give The Hole its sendoff Friday Night. The artwork is such a great piece of local color, and such a good mural, that the landlord is keeping it until such time as a new tenant wants it painted over.










Out one practice venue, in a new bout venue: the TVR has signed a contract with Qwest Arena downtown! Woot! Definitely a step up for them; they've been extant for three years, so they have corporate knowledge and structure —this incarnation of roller derby isn't a fad, it has legs. And the contact, like all good contracts, is mutually beneficial to all parties. Qwest Arena gets its facility filled during its slow May-October sports season, and the TVR gets huge exposure, gets to play the regional teams in the surrounding states, etc. Rivalry, baby!

Had a great time last night chatting up a storm with all and sundry, especially Kat, Folded, Mia, Cybell Disorder and K.; I was pleased to hear that I'm considered family. "But all I do is show up and drink beer!" Drunken discussion ensued about the Wikipedia article; it was pointed out that it really took off after I began editing it (my claim to fame).

Good food, good conversation, punks & geeks and rollergirls... What more can a man ask for?

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/

More than a few people person have been getting ticked off at King Charles at work lately. Yesterday Biker Chick told me that, among other things, that he just smells rank! Apparently this is quite a ways beyond "funky," and not the good kind of funky, either.

Boss-man doesn't need the drama, given the major switch-over the the voice-activated wazoo next month, but there you have it... Wended through the bare fence posts on my break, as it'll be one of the last times I'll be able to do that. One of the benefits of this job is that the scenery (on the edge of the Great Basin Desert) is quietly spectacular. It kind of looks like this:

http://confluence.org/confluence.php?id=402

My LDL is still too high, so I'm taking Lovastatin now. I've cut cotto salami from my diet. Between diet, medication and exercise, we'll beat the numbers down! Not only do we have a baseline to work from, we have met the enemy, and he is us. Unfortunately for the new regimine my new bicycle got its first flat today and desanguinated Green Goo from its valve. Fortunately for the new regimine, I had some hummus falafel and green tea at Shangri-La on Federal Way, my first visit there and the first of many.

On a long-standing whim (I have a whimsey of iron) I bought a Swiss Army watch from a pawn shop. I now own six watches, one for every occasion. It's my first watch with a steel band; I like its heft. I adjusted the band with my Wegner Swiss Army knife on the stairs in the sunlight of the late afternoon, had a couple of beers and began reading Stephen Baxter's apropos science fiction novel Manifold Time.

The new and unusual H1N1 strain is worrisome; I've been working on its Wikipedia article. From what I can gather, it doesn't have to be that virulent to be Bad News. A small percentage of a very large number is a large number, and Mexico City's population density being what it is, I think that this story shall be with us for weeks to come.

Fascinating watching the article morph!

At my first edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2009_H1N1_flu_outbreak&diff=prev&oldid=286055349

The article as of this writing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_H1N1_flu_outbreak

From a correspondent:

I had no clue that leg pain could be a symptom of ovarian cancer, but now I've found that it can be. Fran Drescher, who is a survivor of uterine cancer, was speaking and I happened to catch just a bit of it on CSPAN. Apparently, she also experienced leg pain as a symptom of her cancer. I was taken aback, as I'd never heard of this. I did a google seach, and have, indeed, found several mentions of it.

Christ is risen, but I didn't rise in time to make it to St. Michael's without rushing, so I lit some myrrh incense & put on some Gregorian chants. Soon I shall be taking photographs of blossoms and eating lamb with my parents.

Working backwards chronologically, I selected some more photos as favorites on Flickr (May This House Be Safe From Tigers), cleaned up some puppy poop, celebrated my sister-in-law's Nth birthday, and took my Dad to The Plank, where I had to explain the unanticipated pop culture phenomenon of Zombie Night.






So life is good.

Sad news indeed.

An old college buddy contacted me out of the blue last night.

Which inspired me to look up my high school drama teacher.

Which led me to the news of Paul's brain injury.

Rockers of a certain age, and all readers of Philip K. Dick,
know who Paul Williams is. And those who don't, should.

http://www.paulwilliams.com/

http://www.cindyleeberryhill.com/

Alas...!

Blossoms have abruptly appeared en masse, the trees suddenly festooned with watercolor brush impressions.

Interviewed with ANA; I'll be tutoring English. Shock-horror.

A college buddy got in touch via Facebook. Good times, good times...

http://www.thememoryhole.org/

http://versionista.com/pub/15881/1/25/2:1/

http://www.propublica.org/feature/changetracker

Ah, praxis...!

My birthday was great. My mother and father and one of nephews came to my workplace and delivered chocolate cake. I sent The Ronster 30' up on the cherry picker and said nephew's eyes got as big as dinner plates. Much joy, many shrimp, many birthday greetings, and I have the rest of the week off!

Rainy and dreary today, alas. My digital hearing aids are in good shape despite being eight-years-old (and God knows what the technology shall be like when I'll eventually have to get them replaced)... I had a Clarion CZ209 installed in my VW, Serial No. 293-8709-00 CZ209 *PE3157BA 0004744XZ... It'll take a while to set up (nothing is intuitive)... The first disc of The Three Stooges (1934-36) arrived via Netflix... Reading Iain M. Banks... Have switched to the 2009-03-31 date format.

Typically I stay in on New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's Day; I have to have a really good reason to hit the streets on Amateur Night.

Got the Netflix DVD of early Three Stooges shorts. Listen to the Mockingbird, heh. Anarchism!

Our temps' hours have been cut to 30 per week. The next thing you know, the light in the candy machine shall be turned off, we'll only be able to use one lung a piece, and furthermore we'll have to rely on the air in our tires.