11:54 AM Big news in Davey-world....

7:37 AM Congratulations Heidi! Great news! I wonder if this fellah knows what he's getting into. :)

"May 22. I feel as though a fog has been lifted and I'm living for the first time! I never realized that television was such an insidiously stifling presence..."

"Sometimes cartoons have a way of cutting through these issues." heehee, Tim Russert showing a Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon to Tom Daschle (the comic's not online yet).

Have a nice vacation, Robyn; go ahead and get in the ocean, no matter how cold it is.

Sean, I'm puttering by at 154 Kbps.

11:08 AM

Liz, how's that arm healing? I haven't broken anything in years (though I managed to screw up my feet not too long ago), but I don't miss it. Sounds like it's a hassle. Now would be a good time for me to take you on in racquetball, heh heh.

Has John already left for jolly old England?

Days have been flyin' by recently, but in a good way. The last few days have been productive: Jim helped me get the garden going on Saturday, and Clint's house is painted (though my part in that enterprise was marginal, mostly drinking beer and spilling paint). And the grill is functional, and veggie hot-dogs rule. And, and, and....

(warning, cat anecdotes)

Jack has taken to staying out all night and getting into fights with the latest addition to the local feline community. I ended up working late last night and didn't get home 'til well past my bedtime, but that rascal was still out and about. Eddie decided to help look for him by darting out the front door as I was heading in, and of course I don't have a flashlight (it's on the list of things to acquire post-haste), so I spent some fruitless moments crouching in the dark whispering into the brush for him, with no idea of his whereabouts. This continued until I saw him across the street, checking out the neighbor's yard. He really wants to be an outdoor kitty.

So, Eddie returned safely within Shangri-La cat-compound, I headed out for a late-night stroll about our neck of McDoel gardens. It reminded me of the evenings I'd spend looking for Oscar, and lo and behold, who should I see but the orange loner himself. He wears someone else's tag these days, but still gives me a friendly meow and rubs up against my shins. It'd be cool if he had stuck around, but I'm glad he's found a new home. I also saw the new cat that fights with Jack, and took an ignoble bit of pleasure in the fact that Oscar didn't seem to care for him either. (not that I have anything against this cat, mind you, I just don't like to see Jack coming home with battle scars).

Anyhoo, I saw a local skunk lurking about (what in the world is that doing here?), but no sign of Jack. I retired for the evening. Moments later my alarm went off, and I went out on the porch to call for Jack again before starting the day (i.e., crawling back into bed and setting the alarm a half hour back). As my head hit the pillow again, I heard him calling from the front porch. I went out, got lots of purr action, then brought him in.

Back to the servers....

7:11 AM Upfront, I'm out on raquetball tonight (blame poison ivy), but let me know what else is going down. Tomorrow is my real day of projects, as I plan on a) hitting the farmer's market early and getting some tomato and pepper plants, then b) heading to May's for soil stuff and then c) putting the raised beds together, ala Square Foot Gardening (the site seems to be down just now).

From there, I'm not sure what comes next. Jibber's heading south with a boat; which day is Get Bent?

Check it out: James Woods thinks he flew with the terrorists prior to 9-11. Strange indeed.

Totally unrelated: Doom III is starting to make the game convention rounds. 'nother link. Makes me think that we'll never get to see Duke Nukem Forever, as the technology bar continues to rise. And at this point, I'm not sure my computer could handle either game. I just hope I get to play America's Army (hehe).

It's been linked to before but ... George Lucas in Time's cover story on Star Wars:

"All democracies turn into dictatorships—but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it's Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea ... What kinds of things push people and institutions into this direction?"

I'd hoped to find it online, but there was an interesting essay in the issue of Harper's Heidi quoted stats from recently. It commented on the manageable size of governments, and compared the number of citizens per representative at the time the constitution was written versus the ratio now. Interesting stuff.

Spoiler or two coming

One of the good things about Episode Two, I think, was the democracy discussion, however clumsily it was spelled out. I mentioned this to Phil last night, but for me a difference in how I judge the Star Wars films as opposed to, say, LOTR or X-Men or Star Trek movies, is that Lucas isn't working with someone else's story, trying to translate it from one media into a movie; he's working on his own project. The Star Wars I saw last weekend isn't the Star Wars I cut my teeth on 20-odd years ago. I've changed, and so has Lucas. For all the flaws that are easy to point out in the recent films, I can't say I'd rather he didn't make them. The bottom line was, and still is a week later, that I had a good time watching Episode Two, despite the times when it made me roll my eyes at the cheese and rotten plot elements.

Chris links to an article that explores an alternate take on the Empire and democracy in the Star Wars universe, but it misses all the important elements for me. The end of episode one was interesting because it felt like the good guys had won, but wait, all that really happened was that the future emperor manuvered himself into a position of greater power. The ambiguity at the end of episode two was even better (as mentioned by both Chris and Jimmy), not just because it was odd to see Yoda coming to the rescue with Stormtroopers, or that the war scene was so destructive, but because, as Yoda sums it up, the fact that the war has started means that they've already lost. Heavy stuff.

I'm probably one of the "lapdogs that's ruining the Star Wars Universe," but oh well. I liked the movie, warts and all.

The grill has been installed at Shangri-La, but still needs some minor tweaking. I expect to eat something grilled off of it sometime this weekend.

6:59 AM Meant to link to this a while back: Troops is the Cops of the Star Wars universe. It's been around for years, but I enjoyed seeing it again after watching Episode Two last weekend. It's a big download, unfortunately.

All I can say is that maybe next week will see more posting on the tanquelogue. When I've gotten online in the past week or so, it's been to play Diamond Mine, so I've been out of the loop a little. Remember the episode of Next Generation where Riker brings back an addictive little game that eventually gets everyone on board entranced? Well, it's like that, except that Ashley Judd hasn't been around to help me figure out a way to break the spell.

9:33 AM Well, the weekend was a good one, but now Shari and I both seem to be under the weather somewhat. That, coupled with lingering poison ivy, has pretty much killed tanquelogue posting recently. It'll come back eventually.

The Star Wars universe is so screwed up at this point that my expectations were pretty low for episode 2. So I was pleasantly surprised by many aspects of the flick (which we saw on Sunday afternoon, en masse). Bottom line, I enjoyed it. I'll have to read through everyone's comments on the forum soon.

via daypop: 'While domestic cats may not know language, a study suggests the animals, which have lived alongside people for thousands of years, have adapted their "meows" to better communicate with humans.' link.

9:10 AM (Belatedness:) Happy Birthday Dani! Happy Birthday Jibber!

Tom, Christopher, you've given me something with which to pry myself away from Civ 3; unfortunately, Collapse and Diamond Mine are now my new life-stealers.

My drive home from work is just long enough for me to think about the stuff I told myself I'd post when I got home, and decide that it doesn't need to be posted. Last night I got home, wandered back and forth from one end of the house to the other a couple times, replaced a wiper blade on my car, drank some Upland (think globally, drink locally), and pretty much settled down in front of Tanque3 to putter and watch TV all night. As far as I'm concerned, Jibber's right: I'm a couch potato.

and then?

Dave and I have this silly competition going, where he's always staying up later than I, and I'm always up before him. Two nights ago he almost won (staying up later and getting up first), but I was up earlier. Last night I think I beat him on both fronts, as he went to bed before me and was still asleep when I left. But you never know, that rascal might have stayed up late reading. How long until sleep deprivation catches up with us?

9:06 AM Haven't had much posting inspiration lately, hence the lack of posts. No troubles, I'll be back. Need to spend more time in the sun, less in the glow.

9:42 AM

"Define the universe, and give three examples." -Anonymous (i think)

(more beard obsession)

I don't plan ahead. A few years back, when I was close-shaven, a couple co-workers suggested that I let my side burns grow out (I had always kept them shaved completely off). Seeing as these co-workers were two attractive young ladies, I decided to take their fashion advice. Grow they did.

However, soon they began to take on a life of their own. In no time they had turned into unwieldy monsters, bushy and scattered. If I had met Sly Stone in those days he would have said, "dude, think about trimming those burns." As did the co-workers who had given the original advice. I didn't relent. I was my own walking anachronism. It made me laugh when I saw myself in the mirror.

The thing was, I didn't have an exit strategy. Side-burns don't mean that you don't have to groom, it just means you have a different grooming regeme. I conveniently forgot (or rather, ignored) this when I entered my beard phase this year. I just wanted to get out of having to shave. And it's been great. With the possible exception of my newfound beard-stroking obsession, the experience has been overwhelmingly positive. But now, I can tell, the beard is becoming like the side burns before them: approaching unwieldyness.

And here's where the lack of an exit strategy comes in. I don't want to go back to shaving.

At work occassionally someone will ask, "what does your girlfriend think?" And I have to stop and consider what answer I give. Do I say, "well, my relationship with Shari has changed, so we're not boyfriend/girlfriend anymore, even though we still live in the same house and are great friends and it's not like there's nothing there, it's just different, you know, we're both 'available' as they say" or do I say, "she still doesn't like it"; I usually go with the latter.

This weekend will be a good one, mark my words. I have several little mini-projects to keep me busy, including getting the scanner re-connected, and mailing some post-cards, and even some gardening if I feel really ambitious, plus I've got a ton of reading I'm looking forward to, maybe some web stuff (but don't hold your breath), catboxes, you know, some tedious house stuff too, but it's gonna be good. I can feel it.

I dreamed about Reed last night. I think I need more baby time in my schedule too. Speaking of, Sophie is 10 months old! Sunny days.

(I'll return to complaining about stuff soon, don't worry)

(Oh, and I checked my page yesterday in an old version of Netscape; Yuk! I didn't realize the iframe tags I use for Shoutbox aren't understood by older browsers, and the spacer gifs I use aren't invisible. [sigh]. And here I thought I was still cross-compliant)

1:40 PM Heh, heh. Tom, I had to look up churlish. I've been overusing "surly" and plan to start using churlish more often.

4:33 PM Ah, back home at Shangri-La. A nice sunny day was just the ticket. Today is no longer a defeat but a triumph of the will! Er, no, wait, that's not what I meant. Um, let's see, that which does not kill Ned makes him thirsty! Yeah, that's better.

So, let's flush the cache and get back out on the porch. Let's see ... in the comments over on Sean's page last week Sonya mentioned Creed, which made me giggle internally and think of two CD-swapping internet-thingies, the MeFi swap and Blogger swap (neither affiliated with their namesakes). Why? Because the MeFi swap had a "no-creed" option. A-HA-HA-HA! "No Creed!" Whew, that's good stuff.

Instead of just going on and on about Cornerhost to Jibber, I figured now would be as good a place as any to post a bunch of cornerhost-related links, if only so's I can find them again easily. Cornerhost is a part of Sabren.com; you can see all the times something's gone wrong on cornerhost on the cornerhost blogspot blog (hosted off-site for obvious reasons). Of course, cornerhost is really only one guy right now, and his blog is at sabren.net. He seems to have several projects going at once, including Sixthdev which seems to be some sort of Python thing. He's also just started a second mailing list (in addition to the cornerhost one) at webappworkshop.com which is a newbies-learning thing about scripting in Python. Crazy, eh?

In unrelated news, I don't remember how I came across CentralBooking, but it looks interesting.

Let's see ... on the way home from work I stopped at BoxCarBooks, which is the closest thing to a Chicago bookstore I've seen in Bloomington (with the exception perhaps of Aurora Books, which has been gone for many years now, and which was the place I picked up Keep the River on Your Right and Exploring Meinong's Jungle at their going-out-of-business sale). It comes from the ashes of Secret Sailor, and is actually run as a non-profit. Cool. I had postcards in hand, approaching the register when I found sadly that they cannot accept VISA (turns out it's not everywhere I want to be), and seeing as how payday is tomorrow, my purchases were a dream deferred. Er, I mean, postponed. Um, that is, I plan on swinging by tomorrow with cold hard cash in hand, ready to define myself with my purchases like a good American. On a side note, I saw that Chomsky book that Phil's been quoting, and boy, it's big! I think I'll have to pick that one up eventually.

Speaking of Phil, don't expect to hear me pleading for him to come back to the blog. Not because I won't miss reading his stuff, but because if doing the weblog thing is that frustrating, there are better ways to spend your time. This is supposed to be fun, or at least rewarding on some level, and if it's not, then it's not worth doing. Life is short. And ... well, heck, no, I guess that's all I have to say about that.

Heh, heh. A search on Google gives me this history of the Serenity Prayer, which has always sounded like wise words to me (though I get hung up on the "god" stuff, ya know). The serenity to accept things I can't change, the courage to change things I can, and the wisdom to recognize the difference. I've been meaning to say for a while now how cool it is that people I know are working on making positive changes in their lives. Smoking and drinking are heavy; shouts out to those who are freeing themselves of the shackles.

Okay, 'nuff blogging for now.

Doh! no, not yet: here's two from the Onion Archives (and both one's i've linked before, I know): Area Students Prepare Breasts for Increased Springtime Display and Bush Actually President, Nation Suddenly Realizes. "Wow!"

1:41 PM Man, today has been one big defeat. It's a state holiday, so the building is pretty much empty, and we had planned to upgrade a couple servers during the downtime. Well, we didn't even get to the OS upgrade because when we rebooted our main server, it's array controller died. The thing's been up for nearly a year without crashing, and now hardware failure. It's a bummer because every person will be effected tomorrow morning; that server holds shared drives that everyone connects to. So what was going to be an interesting day (moving our Netware tree to NDS7) turns out to be a giant step backwards. I'm going home.

9:34 AM Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain.... "bus, please don't take me to work today."

Looks like Jibber is going to have to start hosting his own stuff sooner than planned. Bummer on the hosting problems; it happens. Here's something to make you feel better: I just realized that the email I used with network solutions (now verisign) was my old bluemarble one (which they finally got around to shutting down). So I have a few years to get it straightened out, and it looks like it just might take that long. No response yet to the fax I sent in on Friday, not that a faxed photo-copy of a driver's license is really a secure way to update that info. I've been reading much lately about how some domains are getting hi-jacked by people sending in bogus faxes, and verisign's response is like, oh, sorry about that, nothing we can do.

Back to the servers.

9:50 AM Sean's grandfather passed away this weekend. He sounds like a good guy who will be missed.

9:09 AM quick weekend update: Ended up working late Friday night, so I didn't get to see Catharine's play until Saturday night, but I think maybe that was for the best, as Saturday was closing night; it was a lot of fun. Saturday morning saw the first Farmer's Market of the season, which was cool, but it's early yet, so there wasn't much in the way of produce available. But it was still fun to see the market up and running again. I picked up some early garlic. Then off to Bryant park for some Tai Chi. Dave's sifu (sp?) Randy showed up and went through some form with us, which was a nice bonus. Then, after Catharine's play, Courtney's graduation party was in full swing at Shangri-La. Quite odd to come home to a house full of unfamiliar (though friendly) faces. More fun had by all, I believe. Sunday was spent pretty much sleeping in and playing CivIII. Spiderman at 5:00pm was about what I expected: fun afternoon comic-book-type entertainment, light and fluffy. It was actually a little violent for my tastes in the last fight scene, but maybe I'm just getting older and more prudish. A fine weekend.

12:33 PM update: Courtney's graduation party is officially happening at Shangri-La, so if you're looking for something to do tomorrow night, feel free to stop by.

Also, there were a ton of people lined up all morning to get into the convention center (the line was steadily streaming in; it just now cleared). If it wasn't $30 I'd slip in over lunch, but I'm not that much of a Star Wars freak.

9:07 AM Most weekends for me are open-ended, no-plans affairs. Not so this weekend:

• Friday: Catherine's play at Bloomington South (followed perhaps by a viewing of Justice Ginsberg being interviewed by Moyers on PBS - I'll try to remember to tape it just in case)
• Saturday: First Farmer's Market of the season! Then Tai Chi at noon. Then Courtney's graduation shing-ding (maybe @ Shangri-La, don't know location yet).
• Sunday: okay, Sunday's not too busy, which I like, but there's talk of catching an early-evening/late afternoon showing of SpiderMan - looks like fun eye-candy to me.

Bill, I don't know what I expected from that Dr. Pepper knock-off site, but I have to admit I was a little amazed at the number of DP wanna-be's. There's a whole world of beverages out there trying to mimic that distinctive "what-ever-you'd-call-it" syrupy taste. Mr. K's Dr. K got a so-so review, which matches my experience, so I'll have to hunt down one they like to see if it's a good replacement. Of course, it'd be better to just get back in the habit of drinking H20.

Todd, I hear ya when it comes to vegitarianism. I haven't kicked the flesh yet, may never do so entirely, but knowing how chicken is produced in this day and age makes it easier to stick to the veggies at the Indian Buffet. Now if I could just forget how tasty chicken is....

And Chris, I hear ya when you talk about supporting musicians by paying for their music. I buy music occassionally, not much. Never have. I've been lucky enough to have many friends who are music freaks for much of my life, so it's always been around. And people have made tapes for me of music they like, and I've taped albums I like. Personally, I don't think my "consumption" habits have changed much because of internet file sharing; I don't buy more or less. That said, I think the music industry is right to be concerned about how easy it is for people to get music for free but not for the same reasons you're talking about, and this sort of ties into what Sean's been talking about lately in my mind.

It seems to me that the music industry (at least the big players) are showing their cards by going after internet radio. Why? Because I think traditional radio has been one huge payola story for a long time now. Maybe there aren't actual checks coming from record corps to radio stations, but I'll bet it works in other ways. Why do people still talk about "singles"? The whole CD comes out at once, but we still pretend that people are buying 45's and listening to them in the order the record companies decide to make them hits. It's a farce. College radio has been different for a long time, but no one in the industry really cared because it didn't directly compete with the bigger operations.

Now comes internet radio. Here's a good article that comes to mind. Shoutcast sounds like a really easy way to set up a streaming broadcast, but Jibber could probably get something similar set up in a weekend if you bought him the beer and doggie snacks. And you could do it without running afoul of the proposed laws (if I understand correctly) if you stayed away from the corpo-labels that want this tax. Now, I know that's just about everyone, but there's a ton of stuff out there that's not coming from the major labels, right?

This is what I think really scares the big labels/corps. The idea that some distribution system is going to come out and do what they've been doing better than they can. They've got the distribution channels, because they control the airwaves and they have the national/global distribution to record stores. They can say "everyone listen to track 3 on the radio first, and only track 3, and then 2 months later start playing track 7 because that's the second hit, and we don't want them to overlap."

I think the piracy issue is still a real one, because you have scores of kids who are growing up with the idea that music is free off the internet; they haven't been trained to be paying consumers like we have, and I think that many of them are saying "look, I wouldn't have bought your CD if that was the only way to listen to it, but since I got it free, I'll play it." They'd just listen to the radio if they couldn't afford it, or listen to other people's collections. To a certain extent, the paying customers have always made it possible for other people to listen for free. For me, the point becomes, yes, if an artist doesn't want his/her stuff getting into the hands of people who haven't paid for it, I can understand why they'd be upset. I guess the question becomes, knowing that some people will get it for free, at what point do you decide to get out of the business? Because music sharing isn't going away.

Now, when you look at a company like Napster, whose business plan was to generate revenues from this, I think they set themselves up to get sued, because they planned to make millions of dollars off of this. I'm not so sure you can make the same arguement for shutting down kids trading files on the internet where no money is exchanged. In situations where internet connections are subsidized, like in colleges, I think it's fine to figure out appropriate use policies (say, bandwith limits on machines acting as servers) and enforce them (though that may be a real challenge).

I'm interested in setting up some better private music sharing system via internet (been tossing around an idea or two with Jibber), not so that we can burn whole CD's and stop paying for music, but so that if someone asks "what's the new Fugazi like?" I can say, here, download a couple tunes off my PC. Again, I'm not interested in giving my collection away, or getting someone else's for free, but I do think it'd be cool to be able to hear samples when someone I know buys something they like.

Enough on that for now. I'm still interested in hearing other ideas on this (I know Chris has given it more thought than I have, but I think I pretty much see eye-to-eye with him). I may even send an email to my reps as Sean requested, though at this point I'm more curious to see the record companies get their way so I can watch the backlash against them that's already started. The internet will be in our cars before you know it, and then pop-radio will finally get better or die; either way is fine with me.

Having nothing to do with music:

I liked Robyn's story about remembering her GrandFather. I'm a firm believer that little kids know the score, even if they don't seem like it in our eyes. Well, "know the score" isn't the phrase I'm looking for, but they're certainly aware of what's going on around them; they absorb.

Hey, look at that: it's Friday again.

8:33 AM You know, Shari's gonna have to update her webpage after today, since she's no longer 32, and no longer a college freshman! School's out for summer! B-towners, we're gonna hit the Upland tonight for dinner, so come on out if you're so inclined.

On a totally unrelated note, I just want to say that Dr. Pepper has become my Tomacco. "Urgh, what is this syrupy sludge? And where can I get more?" I mainly get the urge to partake at work, where I believe the caffeine is a factor in motivation maintenance. Gotta go brush my teeth, as soon as I finish one more can.

7:10 AM Liz, I plan to continue to do all the things listed in that chart, seeing as how I'd do most of that stuff (meaningless prattle about my life, political wanking, bitching about the middle east & MS, pontificating about tech, &etc) whether I had a webpage or not. Here's to finding your enthusiasm again.