zen.org Communal Weblog

I now, again, get extended basic cable on my cable box.  I surfed a little to far up the channel list and there they where.  Comcast is just wishy-washy sometimes.

A classmate from school is over for the afternoon so his mom can take the younger brother to the doctor to look at an ear infection. E’s up into town with Eoin (did I mention we have a second boy now? 🙂 ) for his 6-week checkup. So today I get my initiation into letting two 5 year-olds play together for about 3 hours. hee hee.

Of course all I can think of is the sheer havoc my cousin Peter and I got into when we played together. At least P doesn’t know about melting sulfur yet…should be fun!

I telecommuted yesterday, an advocation I had I had not undertook for some time. For a portion of this time I left MSNBC playing in the background, the only twenty-four hour news station limited basic cable allows me. The entire hour, or so, I heard: Blå blå blå blå blå Bush. Blå blå blå blå, Bush. Blå de blå, blå blå, Condoleezza. Blå, blå blå blå blå blå, Bush. Blå blå, blå blå blå blå blå, blå Beckham. Blå blå blå blå, Bush. Blå de blå blå, Condoleezza. Bush, blå.

I started wondering, while I struggled getting the Princeton VPN to work, why did Ms. Rice always get des in her blås when Mr. Bush and Mr. Beckham didn’t? Then I pondered what Mr. Beckham had to do with Iraq. Now, after some snooping on the Internet, I just think Mr. Adu is going to kick Mr. Beckham’s ass.

It’s 71°F today. Daffodil and crocus leaves are sticking up. Our chickweed is taking over! A Pennsylvania ski lodge is resorting to polytheism! We ate lunch outside this morning.

Thanks to my Weeds of the Northeast book for helping me identify my Stellaria media.

/. linked to the IMDB entry for it.

Sometimes the Chinese are just genus: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6178659.stm

At work I subscribe to about 60, mostly music, podcasts. Some of which probably don’t actually produce shows anymore, but I don’t often notice it. Usually I just let them play in the order they download. For weeks, nay months, all has been well. I pop on the ear phones and away I go, but today I’m running out of shows. Even though Trance Tuesday in three hours long, it’s going to run out soon. Sure tomorrow there will be more shows, but enough for most of a work day?

I guess in the mean time I’ll to run a sort of best of in my head tomorrow.  So No me gusta la Coke, No me gusta la Coke. That you Quiero Club.

Just one more illustration of the increasingly glaring fact that “The Land of the Free” is anything but … the Paranoid-in-Chief and his toadies strike again!

from the Electronic Frontier Foundation

American Travelers to Get Secret ‘Risk Assessment’ Scores
Washington, D.C. – An invasive and unprecedented data-mining system is set to be deployed on U.S. travelers Monday, despite substantial questions about Americans’ privacy. In comments sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked the agency to delay the program’s rollout until it makes more details available to the public and addresses critical privacy and due process concerns.The Automated Targeting System (ATS) will create and assign “risk assessments” to tens of millions of citizens as they enter and leave the country. Individuals will have no way to access information about their “risk assessment” scores or to correct any false information about them. But once the assessment is made, the government will retain the information for 40 years — as well as make it available to untold numbers of federal, state, local, and foreign agencies in addition to contractors, grantees, consultants, and others.

“The government is preparing to give millions of law-abiding citizens ‘risk assessment’ scores that will follow them throughout their lives,” said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. “If that wasn’t frightening enough, none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or to challenge it. Homeland Security needs to delay the deployment of this system and allow for an informed public debate on this dangerous proposal.”

Earlier this month, EFF’s FLAG Project submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to DHS seeking more details about the ATS data-mining program, but the agency has not yet disclosed the requested information.

For EFF’s full comments to DHS: http://www.eff.org/Privacy/ats/ats_comments.pdf For the DHS Federal Register notice announcing ATS: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2006/06-9026.htm

This year, for the first time, thanksgiving is at my house!  I got everything all sorted out, apart from the dressing.  I look it up on the web, and most things have more stuff in them then everything else I have to get combined!  Humph.

I was agonizing about getting a new computer, so Daphne made some command decisions, she used her employee discount, and got a Dell. She got a Dell Dimension C521 with Windows XP Media Center Edition. Though I don’t think she will admit it, she loves it, it works as a great television in the kitchen, it’s even got a remote control! Plus it gets all those extended basic cable channels we don’t pay for. Hello Dr. Who!

I was agonizing because I wanted to get a computer that I would not have to fight with the hardware to run Linux. Daphne wanted a television in the kitchen. I wanted Linux to play audio files, and a video podcast or two. Daphne wanted a television in the kitchen. I wanted to stand up for my libertarian rights to have no corporate software on my computer. Daphne wanted a television in the kitchen. So Daphne won three votes to two. Zoë just wants to be able to visit Elmo’s web site. To be honest, I’m not giving 余艾蕾 full credit, but this is my post not hers.

Zoë happened to be sick the day the system was going to show up so my Father came over while I tried to get some work done. In came the new Dell, I was going to leave it until the evening but my father wanted to see the TV card working. After the set up, and two or three reboots to get all the security updates installed, Zoë and Papap where happily watching Fox News.

Then came Linux! That will have to be a post for another day, as it’s time to get some work done.