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The Psycho Husband of the Psycho Sensei went and bought me an early anniversary gift. And it is the most fantastic little wonderful thing (well, not so little) in the whole wide WORLD.
HE BOUGHT ME A G5 DUAL PROCESSOR AMAZING BOX!!!!!
Happy Happy and FILLED WITH JOY!!!!
I have only one regret - I can't play with it because I'm going to paradise. Oh feel bad for meeeeeee :-)
We are preparing all of our stuff for the scuba trip tomorrow morning. Looks like we aren't going to be going to a hotel this evening, so we will have to wake up very early to get to Baltimore to catch the plane out. The plan is then to fly to Montego Bay and switch planes to Bonaire. This is the standard drill for our Bonaire trips.
When in Bonaire, we stay at Captain Don's Habitat. We'll be taking our cameras. Hopefully we'll be getting some really cool photos. And hopefully whatever hurricane brewing off the Yucatan Peninsula won't annoy us :-).
So...it's been a week. Oh yes it has. A week indeed.
Living without reliable and constant electricity is quite the thing. Little things that you take for granted become things you actually have to think about. Such as finding business attire. So there I was with the flash light in the closet, hoping to find actually matching stuff. Then went and gave a talk to the International Trademark Association, who booed and hissed, but that was expected :-). They didn't like the fact that I represent free speech interests over property interests. But that's ok.
What a fantastic feeling to come home after being booed to find...ELECTRICITY. Yay. Was indeed very nice. So I spent a lot of time bringing machines back up, cleaning up (not using a vacuum for a week with dogs can make life quite interesting) and getting the house back in order. Thank goodness we didn't have terribly much damage to clean up.
Next event was the meltdown of my blog database that was housing 4 blogs. I have a main blog, a really nasty ranting blog (it's very therapeutic), a wiccan blog and the blog for the Art Magic project . I also house another blog for speech rights for the Domain Name Rights Coalition. Click through the "news" links for that blog. But that is on another machine and wasn't touched.
The database scrog made it impossible to export all of the database information, however I WAS able to get most of the stuff off, so I moved the blogs to another machine and redirected them. It was quite annoying and took lots of time. Then I went to the task of rebuilding things.
Thursday we had a big problem at Tae Kwon Do that I had to deal with, that became a serious hassle, necessitating my staying at the Leesburg school until about 11PM. This seriously ate into my fixing time. Grumble. When I finally got home, I found a friend's mother had passed. Very sad, but she is no longer in pain and discomfort.
Then the T1 line to my house killed itself. Apparently the cable itself is deteriorating. It is affecting all of our house lines too, and they are VERY static filled. Not great. Could be worse I guess. Workers arrived on Sunday and made a temporary fix that isn't so great, but working.
Saturday we had a cancer benefit tournament. Morgan won two first place, one second. I won two first place. Work work work. Sunday was a golf tournament run by GMC as another cancer benefit tournament.
Now it's Monday and we have to pack up all the equipment so that we can go to Bonaire on Tuesday night (actually leave for a hotel Tuesday night in Baltimore, then fly out Wednesday morning at 0 Dark Early. ) for 10 days worth of vacation. I'm hoping to finish my Master Herbalist final before I go, but maybe not.
So that's the week. *phew* Hope everyone else is doing well.
As we all know, the media cartel first runs and screams, then litigates and lobbies to block any new technology it can't control. So what will they do when they read this story on ultra high definition television. Their draconian rules and blocking efforts have thusfar been successful in preventing people from recording programming in high definition, and attempt to block recording of any digital programming whatsoever, so what would they do with THIS? I guess we shall see.
Apparently, our T1 cable has been deteriorating over time, causing a complete failure yesterday. A temporary fix is installed. Apparently the big guns will come "real soon now" and give us a new cable. Due to the tenacity of the RS, Verizon did indeed show up on Sunday and did indeed trace down the problem and fix it. For this, we are pleased.
Spent the day at Grandmaster Choi's 11th annual "Kick Cancer Out of the World" tournament. Was a referee mostly for the whole thing, but did a bit of competing, both in creative forms and traditional forms. Won my divisions, but blew it for Grand Champion. Morgan, as usual, kicked serious butt. First in sparring, first in traditional forms, second in creative forms. What a studly kid.
It took most of the day to recover enough data to repair the scrogged databases, move everything to another machine, reinstall MT on the original machine, schlepp everything back over to the original machine, and get it all working again. I really hope I never have to do THAT again.
I truly need a vacation. Good thing it's coming up :-)
Gee, what is wrong with this picture? Why do some people believe they have some kind of RIGHT to disturb our privacy?
A federal judge in Denver ruled late yesterday that the government's effort to curb unsolicited telemarketing calls was unconstitutional, another blow to plans to implement a national do-not-call list next week. [Washington Post: Front Page]
Gee, were there some BRAINS in Congress after all?
Lawmakers ground plan for an airline passenger-screening system until the General Accounting Office certifies its effectiveness and assures safeguards for innocent passengers. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News]
It seems that database corruption has claimed my blogs. Therefore, for at least a short time, they will live here, on another machine, under another URL while I attempt to fix that which has been mangled. This will, unfortunately, necessitate a massive amount of work that I was not planning on, but will hopefully be completed by the time we go on vacation 10/1. Yes, the Psycho Sensei is leaving the country. Woo hoo.
WE HAVE POWER BACK!!!!!!
139 hours later, the power has been restored. Yay us :-) Happiness abounds once again.
Yes, it could be worse. Yes, other people lost their lives. Yes, other people had terrible property damage. Yes, we have a small generator which is better than most have. All these things are true. However, there is a strange psychological and physical process that one goes through when one is without power for so long.
Day Five. Hour 113. Northern Virginia customers still out of power - 50,224. Percentage of total customers: 6.9%. Body Odor - past critical levels. Shower at ex's down the street - priceless.
Well, the hearty band of utility workers are nowhere in sight, but the explosions of last night indicated they were still out there somewhere. When Wes took a walk down our road, he found a physical line break that had been tied to another line, likely the cause of the transformer explosions as it shorted out when power was applied. Are they here to fix it? No. Can we get a human on the telephone to find out about it? No. Are we annoyed? Yes.
The frustration that one goes through when one is in this type of a helpless situation is quite cyclical. It goes from abject rage at the stupidity of the situation, to amusement, generally with a few stops in between for extra gasoline for the generator. It is still spitting fire, but it is also still producing electricity.
Meantime, I'm having terrible problems with MT, and can't get help on it likely because whenever the technical people have time for me, and they go check the server, it's down. Oh cycle of annoyance.
Not to mention that I am supposed to teach Tae Kwon Do this evening, and give a talk to INTA tomorrow. Guess who may not make it? Someone bring my power back PLEASE!!!!
It is day four without power here at Psycho Sensei's house. Yesterday, we had some hope when they brought a new power pole and many trucks to fix the transformers that had smashed onto the road when a tree took the original pole down. Alas, it was not to be as many explosions soon followed.
As a side note, Wes was going to get generator fuel when he noticed that a power pole was smoking. He let the power guys know, and they brushed him off. They paid attention when it burst into flame. Har har. I don't think we had the "A" team here.
We are better off than many in that we have a small generator that powers a little bit of the house. We are an all electric house on a well, so when we have no power, we have no water. The generator powers the well pump, the fridge, and a few lights. We have cold water, but not hot, so no showers. Our only damage was the pool equipment enclosure that was destroyed. The fallen trees missed all major structures. Yay.
More as it happens.
You must go see this funny little movie. Click here to view.
Want a sense of just how much traffic VeriSign is receiving from its SiteFinder service? Alexa, with its Alexa Toolbar and associated traffic tracking services, makes it easy to find out...Over the past three months, taken as a whole, VeriSign had traffic rank 1,559. But today its traffic rank is 19, meaning... [CircleID]
And I bet he claims that the relatively light damage is due to his prayer. Har har har - ed.
United States: Pat Robertson recetnly urged his followers to cast a spell, sorry, pray in the name of Jesus to turn Hurricane Isabel away.
On today's broadcast of The 700 Club,
Robertson gave God credit for turning past hurricanes away in response to prayer.
Praying in the name of Jesus,
Robertson said he believes that God will put up a wall of protection.
He added that he and those praying with him command this storm to go out into the sea and to pass land harmlessly.
Robertson has a history of blaming disasters on the behaviour of the people affected, and claiming that they are punishments from God for 'crimes' such as tolerance of homosexuality. As Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell observes:
Remember when Pat Robertson suggested that gay-pride flags in Orlando might incur God's wrath in the form of a storm? How odd, since Isabel is now heading toward Virginia Beach -- where Pat is.
Pat Robertson prays that Hurricane Isabel will turn away - Hampton Roads NewsChannel 3, 17th September 2003 (via Stageleft - scroll down to find the story if you appear to have a blank right column - the layout is hosed); Taking Names: Hurricane Isabel - Orlando Sentinel, 18th September 2003.
We Internet users, who either own domain names or have an interest in the domain name system, wish to object to the VeriSign's Site Finder system. We believe that the system: 1) Breaks technical standards, by rewriting the expected error codes to instead point to VeriSign's pay-per-click web directory, and threatens the security and stability of the Internet; 2) Breaks technical standards affecting email services, and other Internet systems... [CircleID]
Yesterday, September 15, 2003, Verisign hijacked the Domain Name System by essentially making a sales tool out of every combination of letters or numbers that is NOT currently registered in the .com or .net heirarchies. This includes misspellings of domain... [Domain Name Rights Coalition]
The Black Belt Saga continues.... In the beginning, there was kickboxing, and I started learning at a wonderful little studio called Murphy's Self Defense in Manchester, NH. I met a wonderful woman named Linda Park (who hadn't yet married Peter Murphy :-)) and began taking kickboxing lessons in an all women's class.
As things progressed, the class was integrated into the men's class, where we practiced with world ranked kickboxing competitors. Since there were no real kickboxing competitions for women at the time, the world ranked people were all men :-). We did a lot of the same training, sparred together, and otherwise caused difficulty :-)
After moving through the ranks, and a tortuous stint as children's instructor (egads!! :-)), I was told I was ready to test for black belt. After the test from hell [tm], I passed way back around 1985 or so. Click below for more story. Click Here for Photos.
Signs that we may still have a constitution?
The police cannot attach a Global Positioning System tracker to a suspect's vehicle without a warrant, the Washington Supreme Court said in the first such ruling in the nation. [New York Times: Technology]
As if we don't have enough invasion of the privacy of law abiding citizens, in the "trust us" category of Shrubisms, read the following:
A quite interesting project has published its results today. Project Censored has published its top 25 "under reported" stories. Given who owns the major media outlets, it isn't too difficult to figure out that they would definitely wish to maintain the status quo and keep their privileged positions as information receivers to the government, and the rich and powerful interests.
Each story listed contains various sources where publication occurred, and the story then kind of just.....was ignored.
The stories included The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance , Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberty, and Closing Access to Information Technology . Well worth the reads.
All 25 stories are located at this link
Egypt: An Egyptian acadmic has announced plans to sue all the Jews of the world
for the return of everything they stole from the Pharaonic Egyptians gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more, leaving Egypt in the middle of the night with all this wealth, which today is priceless
.
If we assume that the weight of what was stolen was one ton, [its worth] doubled every 20 years, even if the annual interest is only 5%. In one ton of gold is 700 kg of pure gold -- and we must remember that what was stolen was jewelry, that is, alloyed with copper. Hence, after 1,000 years, it would be worth 1,125,898,240 million tons, which equals 1,125,898 billion tons for 1,000 years. In other words, 1,125 trillion tons of gold, that is, a million multiplied by a million tons of gold. This is for one stolen ton. The stolen gold is estimated at 300 tons, and it was not stolen for 1,000 years, but for 5,758 years, by the Jewish reckoning. Therefore, the debt is very large…
Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Al-Zaqaziq, assures the Jews that The debt can be rescheduled over 1,000 years, with the addition of the cumulative interest during that period
. Dr. Hilmi quotes the Torah as evidence of Jewish ill-deeds - a book which also says that the Jews were being kept against their will as slaves. I wonder how much the reparations for that will be (with interest, of course)? Egyptian Jurists to Sue 'The Jews' for Compensation for 'Trillions' of Tons of Gold Allegedly Stolen During Exodus from Egypt - memri.org (usual caveats apply), 22nd August 2003.
This month has been and will continue to be totally insane. There is just so much going on, so much to do, and so much to think about. First and best, Wessiepooh got a JOB OFFER! It looks pretty good, so he'd better take it. Second, we got approved for a refi but the lender is dicking us around about the rate.
Other insanity this month includes Morgan's braces, bi-monthly tae kwon do testing at the Great Falls School, the twice a year black belt ceremony (where I finally get a new black belt :-)), the yearly Kick Cancer Out of the World benefit tournament, my speaking to INTA, a referee seminar I am required to go to, and DC Pagan Pride next Saturday.
Of course, this is on top of already insane dealings with Morgan's new school that seems to come up with more supplies that are "required" every day, rather than one coherent list at the beginning of the year so parents don't go insane, another "important form" to sign each day, and of course that is on top of regular homework checking.
So the desire to have time to myself is growing larger and larger, but the probability is getting smaller and smaller. At least after the 27th I'll likely be able to BREATHE! Ah, life :-)
In a rare blow for sense in the DMCA muddle, an Illinois district court ruled that replacement garage door openers were not "circumvention" devices under the DMCA's anticircumvention provision. Chamberlain, a maker of garage door opener devices, claimed that Skylink's interoperable replacements circumvented its access controls, but couldn't manage to show the court how accessing one's own car was the kind of harm Congress envisioned when passing the DMCA. Maybe if they'd called it a boat garage ...
[Wendy: The Blog]Trademark interests declare war on an innocent African country. We knew it was only a matter of time before those evil trademark interests gained enough power to threaten the very fabric of the world's structure. Trademark interests will become another world power, declaring war at will, stripping countries of their names.
Perhaps we can persuade them to take over Iraq.
See the horrendously horrible seriously scary details HERE
TERROR ALERT
The Government Strives Mightily to Keep Fear Alive
John Ashcroft unplugged: On the road, pushing Patriot Act
[...]In many ways, this tour is a variation of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic "Dr. Strangelove, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." If citizens are going to come to love the Patriot Act and the rollback of their civil liberties, Ashcroft needs to emphasize the other, less known, positive features of the law.
For example, the new authority to conduct secret physical searches of our homes means greater interaction for home pets. Before Ashcroft, privacy kept pets in stressful isolation for long days until the return of their working owners. Under the Patriot Act, insertion teams of agents will often bring dog and cat treats for such pets as they scrub your computer and insert surveillance devices. Owners will return to find their animals rested and frisky.
So what's going on, this Labor Day, traditional end of summer and beginning of the fall? It's the last crunch day before back to school, where child is running in circles trying to make sure she has everything she could possibly need. She says she's really looking forward to going to the new school....we'll see what she says next month or so :-).
What is going on in the world, this beginning of fall? Well, Iraq is in a total mess, with a civil war about to break out with US troops in the middle. The economy is in a mess still, and the administration is spending more time at pep rallies than doing anything about it. And 2/3 of the population can't name a democratic presidential candidate. So hey, what's the point? Nobody really cares.