I have taken the SF Technorati Agent offline temporarily, as there appears to be a routing issue with the hosting provider. When this is resolves, I will bring the agent back online.
UPDATE: This event appears to be affecting routes to hosts on the Globix Network.
His comrades fought beside him, Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best
So the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead
That son of a bitch Van Owen blew off Roland’s head
There is always something something soothing in the words of Warren Zevon, even when they describe the wandering ghost of a Biafran War veteran. They make the human condition, well, more human.
And the human condition is an important thing to remember on a Monday morning. With headlines shrieking of suffering, you have to sit back and wonder why; why are we still here?
I called up my friend LeRoy on the phone
I said, Buddy, I’m afraid to be alone
‘Cause I got some weird ideas in my head
About things to do in Denver when you’re dead
The virus I have in my system right now has a greater chance of surviving into the next century than the human race does. And sometimes I wonder if Zevon and Gunter Thompson always knew that, and used this knowledge to fuel a life of what we see as madness. In fact, their madness has a stronger truth than the artifical and virtual lives so many of us (including your author) lead.
It’s not melancholy that drives this rambling rant; it is a smiling realization that we are all the same, and in the end, for 99.99% of us, life is pretty darn empty in the end.
Well, I pawned my Smith Corona
And I went to meet my man
He hangs out down on Alvarado Street
By the Pioneer chicken standCarmelita hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town
The words of a strung out junkie can ring more true in this world than the pronouncements of great people. The battles we, the 99.99% unwashed masses, face everyday are what keep societies working. Without our willingness to get up and battle every day, the great people would drown in a wave of chaos that makes today’s world seem like a tea party.
Viruses have it easy. The dead have it easy. It’s the living who stare down that dark tunnel every morning, and walk toward the deeping darkness (humans who say they see the light are more deluded than the rest of us).
Embrace viruses; embrace pain; embrace love; embrace every breath you take.
In the end, that’s what you take with you.
Left eye, right eye
Take a look around
Everybody’s heading
For a hole in the ground
And it’s the Dance of Shiva
It’s the Twilight of the Gods
Thunder and lightning
‘Til the break of dawnMonkey wash donkey rinse
Going to a party in the center of the earth
Monkey wash donkey rinse
Honey, don’t you want to go?
We are all hanging around the house, sniffling and snorting and hacking, a truly wonderful sight.
Kids and school: the true spreaders of the plague.
Ok, I finally bought myself an MP3 player, a Creative Zen MicroPhoto…in orange!
I like it because:
Still learning the controls…but it’s great to have a new geek toy.
UPDATE: Well, the headphones that came with the Zen Micro have gotten the boot. My Sony Fontopia earbuds still kick everything else off the map…and no, I can’t afford a nice set of Shure e2c’s.
Ya know, this is getting really tiresome…
Is it time to move back to Yahoo! Mail? Does Google care that they have performance problems?
Technorati Tags: Gmail, Google, errors, unreliable, capacity planning, web performance
ZenWife decided to re-design the stone path alongside our house this weekend. When she tried to position one of the stones, she encountered what she thought was a large buried rock. This would not be surprising in New England.
Being a good husband, I offered to try extracting it for her.
An hour later, we were staring at the outline of the 6′ X 3′ X 2′ deep concrete fish pond.
We knew there had been a fish pond on the property at some point, we just weren’t expecting to encounter it right there.
Needless to say, we are going to re-bury it until the boys are older; right now it is on their bike raceway, and I don’t feel like adding a water obstacle to the raceway.
Technorati Tags: fish pond, archeology, house
I have been shopping around for a new, unlocked GSM phone. I live in the US, so these are not as readily available as they are in the rest of the civilized world.
The criteria I have can be summed up easily:
So far, I have narrowed the search down to three options:
If anyone knows of any other candidates, or has domments on my shortlist, they would be appreciated.
Technorati Tags: J200i, C650, T68i, unlocked GSM, GSM, 900/1800/1900, tri-band, worldphone, world phone
It took 3 calls, 6 people, and 90 minutes to resolve the problem with ZenWife’s new Dimension 3100.
And what was the fix? A secret squirrel hotfix for Media Center.
Still wouldn’t buy another Dell.
Technorati Tags: Dell, Dimension 3100, tv tuner, Windows XP Media Center
I am writing this from Toronto. I am in shock that I am here, as the events over the last 24 hours seem like a bad dream. It appears that the US media has not picked it up on this crisis. In fact, I am having difficulty getting to US news sites and blog servers from Canada.
Yesterday, representatives from DHS arrived at my office and took me into a conference room along with the CEO and COO. The COO (a Canadian with a permanent resident status) and I were told that we and are families were being taken to Logan airport and placed on a flight to Canada. They then handcuffed us and took us out through the back door to an unmarked bus, with about 20 others onboard. There were guards in paramilitary uniforms I could not identify.
After three or four more stops (it was a blur, I can’t remember it all), we arrived at logan. I was re-united with ZenWife and the boys in a abandoned hangar, where there were 200-300 of these unidentified paramilitary guards. There had to be 2-3,000 people in the hangar.
We were herded onto a series of C-5 cargo planes and flown for about 90 minutes. Off the plane, and left at what turns out to be an abandoned airfield just outside Toronto. After about 20 minutes, OPP and RCMP officers appeared, looking as stunned as we were.
Does anyone know what’s going on?
Sound scary? Well, I would say April Fool’s Day, if it weren’t for the fact that the current xenophobic ranting going on in the United States makes me feel that this scenario is not so far-fetched. I am here legally on an H-1B, but could be deported at the whim of the US Government. And these whims appear to engulfing the American psyche.
Right now, the targets are the “illegal immigrants”. This is white, middle-class code for “latin immigrants, regardless of status”. But will it stop there?
As the US fortunes are matched by other growing economies, will this xenophobic and racist tendency lead to all immigrants being targeted, regardless of status and origin? Is the tradition of US isolationism rearing its head in a world of crumbling borders and economic barriers?
Is the US really ready for the world?
I want to welcome a new measurement agent to the GrabPERF family: New York PubSub #1. This location came online yesterday, and has been delivering data consistently since about 21:00 EST (02:00 GMT) last night.
The world is a very small place. Turns out that my primary technical contact on the PubSub is someone who used to work at my current employer. Always good to stay in contact with folks.
Many thanks to Bob Wyman for making this happen.
Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, Web Performance, agent, pubsub