I am an honest person. It is very difficult for me to lie openly, and I attempt to never do so. I try my best never to be duplicitous and to make my honest feelings known on all matters, or, if I do not wish to make my feelings known, to simply not speak, or refuse to answer. I make it pretty clear to people whether I like them or not. I try to avoid people I dislike and to stay in the company of those whom I like. I try always to answer questions honestly. Generally, I do a pretty good job of it.

I’ve noticed lately that I will speak mistruths when I make it clear, through my actions, that I am joking or that I am lying. I don’t really like that I’ve been seeing myself do this from time to time, it really goes against my policy of complete honesty. I need to attempt to stop when I see myself doing this.

There is one person in particular who has a very open and well-known disdain for me who insists on pretending to be nice when he needs things from me. It annoys me to no end — we both know that he hates me, and it’s really stupid for him to pretend to be nice and then walk out the door and start shouting obscenities about me. I just don’t get why he acts that way.

There have been two occasions in the last week or so where administrators have said things to me that I know to be completely untrue. Their demeanor while putting forth these lies was almost exactly the same as their demeanor at other times. This worries me greatly. It is pretty darn obvious if I’m telling a lie, on the few occasions that I do. To realize that people I talk to every day are so adept at lying really throws me for a loop — I don’t really know if what they’ve told me in the past has been the complete honest truth.

Everyone embellishes, everyone tells half-truths, everyone distorts things slightly. I strive to be as honest a person as possible. While other students might go to professors and attempt to get grades changed on things like papers (and often succeed), I don’t do so because it just doesn’t feel right to me. While people make excuses for missing class, be they legitimate or not, I generally don’t, because I don’t think they’re honest — if I wanted to get to the class enough, I would have, and if I had another priority that made the class secondary, then I really don’t have the right to make excuses. And when I tell people my opinions, I tell them my true opinions, not the ones I think they’re going to like.

I’m beginning to feel that my honesty puts me at a distinct disadvantage to other people. I think that bothers me, but I’m not sure. Should it?

I’m pretty amazed with the result of the Hutton Report. At the same time, I wouldn’t be suprised if most people who read this haven’t a clue what that is. Alas, American focus. I don’t really feel like taking the time at this juncture to delve into the many facets of the fascinating and disturbing chain of events surrounding a BBC report about a British intelligence dossier, the suicide of the source for said report, the incredible public debate about the whole mess, and the eventual quasi-resolution, today, with the release of a 700-odd page report by an investigator who exonerates almost completely 10 Downing Street and places a heap of blame right on the doorstep of the BBC. And now the head of the Beeb has fallen on his sword. But will one resignation be enough?

You won’t hear it on the US nightly news. Here is a report on the report (IHT), some other coverage (Al Jazeera), a political analysis (Guardian), and some angry opinion (Telegraph). What surprises me the most is the amount of respect all sides place in Hutton. I don’t know the story on this guy or really much at all about the process of the inquiry and how the British treat their judiciary, but I’m amazed at how muted the criticism is of a report that came out much more one-sided then anyone expected.

Why is this especially bad? The BBC is quite possibly the best source of journalism on Earth. And in 2006, it’s charter is up for renewal. And there are not a few people who would really like to see that organization given it’s due (what said due is is left as an exercise for the reader). Looks like they now have more ammo then they ever dreamed of for this upcoming fight. And does is surprise anyone that Rupert Murdoch (owner of the Sky network, among other media holdings in Britain) is helping lead the charge?

Well, that’s the end of that wonderful dream of not missing any classes. A radio, an alarm clock, and a 500 watt halogen light on a digital timer didn’t do the trick, and I just slept through Spanish.

Sigh. Is there really any more point in trying?

Meredith Glansberg’s excellent year in review is worth reading in it’s entirety, and since registration for the Justice web site is annoying and unnecessary, I’m reproducing the article here in the hope that it’ll get just a little bit wider distribution. Amazing that in the end, incidents that seemed to last forever and involve us so completely become mere sentences in the march of time.
Continue reading “Brandeis Year In Review”

A close friend of someone I know at Brandeis recently died, which caused me to pause and reflect on life and her struggle with a rare form of cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma. I never knew Liddy, but she shared her experiences on the web, and I had glanced at the site a few times. Now I’ve read through much of it, have learned a lot about suffering, a lot about the human spirit, and way too much about cancer.

1/15/04: Liddy took her final steps on her journey with Ewing’s sarcoma today at 11:15 AM. No more pain. No more labored breathing. No more trembling hands and wobbliness. No more auras. She is at rest and at peace.

A few days ago President Bush announced a new initiative to send Americans to Mars, a mission that will end up costing anywhere from 500 billion to over 1 trillion dollars. I very much believe in our future in space and the wonders of what we can achieve. But perhaps that money could be best spent, at present, in another, more noble and more immediate cause: the eradication of cancer, a terrible, terrible, and mostly human-created disease.

What a strange feeling. I was just entering my credit card info to submit my Georgtown summer program information when I realized that an aspect of my application was now incorrect — I am no longer a student “in good standing.” In fact, I am now on academic probation. I feel like that’s not going to help my chances much. I’m one of over 1800 people applying for 200 spots, and I’m in bad academic standing. Wonderful.

I’m very happy with my wonderful new 15″ Aluminum PowerBook. It’s double the speed of my last one, at 1.25Ghz, has a much-needed larger hard drive (80GB), and a DVD burner. Has the same 512MB as my last one and an AirPort card, although this one is “Extreme”, so it can use 802.11g access points. So when I work in Web Services, at least, I’ll get very high speeds. 😉 A lot of design flaws have been corrected since the TiBook. The new case is a lot more solid and, so far, hasn’t gotten any scratches. The very cool backlit keyboard is wonderful in the dark. The LCD is springy so that, even when closed, it doesn’t come in contact with the keyboard, and, thus, doesn’t get dirty.

Now, the problems. The battery looked a lot smaller then the old one, and it turns out it is — max advertised battery life is 4.5 hours instead of 5.5, and while I was able to get up to 4 hours on my old ‘Book, this new one hasn’t give me over 3 so far. The big test will be on the plane, when I have it in ultra power-saving mode, with brightness way down, screen effects turned off, etc. We’ll see. Secondly, because of the aforementioned springy screen, the ‘Book really isn’t meant to be held in any position other then normal upright, with two hands. I can’t really grab it with one hand and walk around, I don’t think. I’m still trying to figure this one out.

I’m gonna grab a 3-year AppleCare warranty for my ‘Book as soon as I get a chance — it is highly worth it, since my poor old TiBook decided to die after 18 months and the repiar costs are very, very high when you need a new logic board or display.

All in all, I’m very happy with this wonderful new tool, and I can’t wait to accessorize with a nice, padded backpack. One thing I don’t want to buy is a second battery at $129, but unfortunately I may have to do that at some point. Before I do so, I’m gonna see how this one holds up in normal school usage conditions.

Hmm. It doesn’t feel like a new year. Perhaps because my transformation began a few weeks early.

As soon as I leave town to head back to Brandeis, demolition begins for our little home remodel. I haven’t seen the plans and don’t actually know what is going to change, but one major part of it is re-apportioning my room. End result: all of my things need to be moved out. Right now I’m focusing on my collected papers of the last nine years.

It’s painful. Every new paper I overturn brings back memories, of my first two years of college, of high school, of middle school. I’d love to keep everything, and preserve it forever both in paper and online, but apparently I’m not allowed to do that, so most of it gets trashed. I’m setting aside things to scan in, assuming the scanner downstairs works, works well, and works quickly — it’s a fair amount of papers. Things I think I’m gonna keep: essays and essay prompts, exams, high school writing portfolios. Things that get dumped: all my homework, as fascinating as it is to look back at all the things I’ve studied (and mostly forgotten), and to remember people I’ve shared my life with, if only briefly, in classes.

It’s funny, because when I went to college I decided to treat it as a clean slate, a chance to start over, a tabula rasa, if you will. And in the process, as was somewhat my intention, I forgot about the drudgery and pain and silliness and stupidity of my high school years. But in the process, I forgot about the many good things about high school as well. Sifting through these relics of my life causes me to remember…and throwing them away ensures that I will, again, forget. And the memory will be harder to retrieve without these guideposts to show me the way.

Sad.

One of my favorite restaurants, Corner Bakery, has undergone a bit of a shift at it’s Irvine Marketplace branch since the last time I’ve been home. When last I ate there, and since it’s opened, customers would enter the restaurant, pass a few displays, and queue in a short line that takes them past a counter/display case showcasing all of their food. You would order, your food would be prepared and given to you, you’d put it on your tray, and slide it down to the register to pay, cafeteria style. The design was elegantly simple — newcomers had a chance to see all of the available food options without having to just read a menu, and traffic was managed effectively as people moved quickly through the line.

Now, the line is gone, the area is rearranged, and the display cases are no more. While things like salads and soups were dished out right in front of the customer before, they are now hidden in the back, along with the sandwiches and such. There is no food sitting out except for the baked goods, and there is no queue. Now, you enter through the front door, look at the menu, approach a cashier, and place your order. It is a very, very bad change.

The new layout creates a choke point at the door as people line up before the registers. No more are crowds swept into the restaurant through an elegant queueing system; now they are bunched up in a line. Worst of all, because food is no longer prepared in front of the customer, there is a much higher rate of errors. Since I have to sit down before I can receive my food (delivered to my table), I have no opportunity to correct someone if they put the wrong soup in the bowl, if I want a different kind of bread, or whatever the circumstance is. And the last time Shaina went to a Corner Bakery, they forgot to bring her her order, and then didn’t believe her when she went to the counter to ask for it!

At the same time as this change happened, trash receptacles and dish bins were removed, I assume so that customers no longer feel the need (or have the ability) to clean up after themselves. That one confused my mom to no end. Are we supposed to leave everything on the table now, or not? Were we before? Do we need to tip now? The old design was unclear, yes, but now it is perhaps moreso.

All in all, Corner Bakery’s new approach to dining — and it’s gradual transformation into a more full-service restaurant — is a major disappointment, and a very poor choice.

What’s working and what’s not in the new blog: All of the posts are here, but many are not formatted correctly. New categories, but nothing in them. Remaindered links, but no easy way to post them. Archive works, RSS works but isn’t linked, comments work. Pagination doesn’t. Images might need tweaking. Haven’t set up the auto-acronymer yet. Shows “new” posts but doesn’t yet indicate which posts they are. Took a bit of time but I got the newest comments tracker back to working. New calendar is pretty nifty. The “context” tracker is cool, but might not take into account all contexts. Have to see if I’ve missed any! Most of the “other places” pages aren’t actually there yet. That’s the major hurdle at this point.

I really love my new design, it makes me happy. Things are subtle, not too much information presented, nicely categorized. Pretty much all XHTML goodness, very few tables (calendar, 2-column links), and (generally) it degrades well. And I think it’s pretty. And it’s all about me, right? So there! 😛

I was feeling pretty bad about switching to a fixed-width design (one where the web page does not expand to fit the entire browser window), but then I found that there is an ongoing debate about just this issue going on right now, with more and more people supporting fixed-width for the design control vs. fluid designs that maximize use of screen real estate. What are the advantages? When you’re designing for fluid it’s much more difficult, and you often can’t do things or line things up without an excessive amount of tinkering and tables nested within tables and all that. And then, to top it off, your nicely formatted paragraphs of text end up expanding to fill the entire screen, looking awful with paragraphs being only one or two lines long, and the reader having to move their eyes all the way across the screen to read it, which is just a very bad situation. There is a reason books and newspaper columns are narrow. And I should know — I write all my papers using L^AT_EX, which uses nicer fonts and much larger margins then Microsoft Word and the like for the express purpose of making things more readable and easier on the eye.

I’m still not sure I really like fixed width in all situations (I often find sites that use it very contraining, and it’s annoying when you have a large monitor and the site was designed for a small one), but I might just be going with it anyway, because I like how it looks for my site. Hmm.

NYT on Firefly – the show was killed early by FOX and is now enshrined in a nice collectible DVD, but, in the tradition of Television Without Pity (which gets a shout out), there is also a fan-created commentary disk set, which is basically two DVDs worth of character info, video montages, and video essays, plus some audio commentary and such. I’ve blogged before (or at least written an essay) about fan-supported television, and my belief that the networks are becoming obsolete and television is getting more democratic. I think this is a pretty good example of it.

I’m attempting to redesign this site and move it to a new blogging system. This’ll be the fourth design, and I hope to capture in it some of the information that was long in the transition between design 2 and design 3. Somewhere along the way I lost some biographical info, old files, etc. I’m drawing heavy inspiration from Jason Kottke‘s simple, direct site with minimal junk. This site redesign has been on my mind for a while and is kinda a part of the whole “life redesign” I’m going through at this point – simplified, focused, deeper, more real.

This is also the first design I’m doing on a PC, since my Mac is still dead. I’m borrowing cycles from Shaina, who is nice enough not to kick me out of her room. Shaina rocks.

I’ve been telling people I see Dean is a Bartlet, and Aaron goes into detail. Yeah, like he said.

I’ve been waiting for the Dean moment to match the Bartlet “I screwed you on milk” one, but I haven’t found it yet (Aaron likes Dean’s straight talk about the draft). I’m also scared because I think it would mean incredible things about the improvement of our democracy if Dean were to win, but you can see from The West Wing how the Bartlet people went into the White House all idealistic and stuck up and how it completely backfired on them. You have to hope the Dean people are a little more gracious, a little more strategic, and a lot more political. At this point, they seem to be doing a good job.

Two annoying things that Kevin points out:

The Wasington Post has an article on how the Bush administration is rewriting history by retroactively changing their web site to reflect policy. Some of the deletions: information on how condoms can be used to stop unwanted pregnancies and avoid sexually transmitted diseases, a report showing that there is no link between abortion and breast cancer, and a transcript from a Nightline interview where the interviewee tows the party line that the US taxpayer will pay no more then $1.7 billion to rebuild Iraq — thanks to contributions from other ally nations, of course.

Second is a BBC piece about how Governer Arnold has declared a “fiscal emergency” in California so that he can redirect money from welfare and public health care programs towards police and firefighting, which are apparently underfunded now that he has removed the controvertial car tax. Now I don’t know about the car tax, but Arnold’s tactics closely mirror what the Bush administration has done with Medicare and other programs — finding ways to “force” them into debt or cutbacks. So you don’t like welfare, fine. Debate it in the open, try to get a law passed. Stabbing programs you don’t like in the back and then claiming that it’s not your fault, that’s just evil.

From August through to December, my life has just been a string of failures. A failure to finish club renewals in the month I originally budgeted, resulting in an ongoing struggle and loads of work to get the damn thing done in a semester. Thank YOU, club leaders. A failure to keep issues of racism and the school newspaper in the student realm, with both sides asking and then forcing administrators to intervene, striking a blow for student soverignty. A failure to resolve any of the issues raised in a meaningful or productive manner. A failure to get all the people involved to just calm down, shut up, and go back to classes, including myself. A failure to account for that huge amount of time spent (wasted?) on a futile pursuit of happiness for students, resulting in…

A personal failure of classes, for the first time ever, and that just doesn’t help my prospects for grad school at all, in fact it hurts them, perhaps irreperably, and there is really nothing I can do about it at this point.

And finally, a failure at home. A failure to maintain on an ongoing basis anything I try to do at Maintex. The result is that I try to give people things that are better, try to improve their lives, but all it does is give them short-term hassles (thanks to a variety of factors, several out of my control) and then ongoing hassles because no one can maintain what I create and it ends up being thrown away anyway. Is there really any point to me creating a standard boot image, or trying to install antivirus software, or secure these computers? The result, of course, will be that someone here won’t have the specific software that only they use, and someone there can’t get their email, and someone over in the corner can’t do something else, and it’s just endless fixing things, and then when I leave something breaks and no one else knows even the basics to fix it and so they just get angry or throw it away or start over, and I’ve accomplished nothing.

I really can’t handle any more failures at this point. Maintex is great — nice people, good pay, but it’s just not something I can deal with any more. And tech support has not, is not, and will never be my thing. It’s just painful to do, and I don’t want any more stress, even if I’m getting paid for it.

I’m finished. I’m going to go in to work tomorrow, fix Orchid’s email, try to fix Ali’s computer, figure out how to back up the Mac server that serves less and less, and then going home, and that’s it. I’m done there, I think, because I’m not being useful to anyone, I’m not enjoying it, and I can do better doing something — anything — else.

On creating a better world:

[W]hen you stumble a lot, you start looking at your feet. We have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon and see the line of ancestors behind us saying, “make my life have meaning.” And to our inheritors before us saying, “create the world we will live in.” We’re not just holding jobs and having dinner, we are in the process of building the future.

ARGH!!!

So, I’m attempting to set up the Maintex computers to work better, be more standardized, and be more secure. All of these computers came from Dell with Windows XP Home installed, and the company doesn’t see the financial incentive to upgrade to XP Pro since they aren’t doing anything on a domain, don’t have any Windows servers, etc. This should be fine. XP Home should be fine, right?

So I went through and removed all of the Dell crap, photo album software and jukeboxes and strange support programs and spyware. I also installed all of the Windows updates and patches, the various programs Maintex uses, disabled Internet Explorer scripting and such, removed Outlook Express, installed Mozilla, removed as many references to the terribly insecure Internet Explorer as possible, set up network settings, and the like. All set!

When I go in the C drive and select everything, it says that I have 2.33GB used, but for some reason the hard drive insists that I’m using 4.02 GB, the difference being two more CDs to Ghost the computer. So fine, I get it all Ghosted onto four CDs. Then discover that none of these CDs have floppy drives for a boot disk, and that, despite what the manual says, no, Ghost does not make it’s disks bootable by default.

So I burn another four disks and get Ghosting. Set up a computer in 30 minutes. Go to change the Security ID but see that I can’t do so since XP doesn’t include DOS and my boot disk is, alas, still a floppy disk. If it’s a problem, I’ll figure out how to make a boot CD later, but it doesn’t appear to be causing any problems. XP so far has not tried to “phone home” or deactivate itself, so that’s good, I’ll assume that’s because I left the Dell support partition intact.

Okay, let’s get down to the real problem here. Maintex uses TinyTERM by Century Software to do terminal emulation for it’s SCO server. (Yeah, SCO.) So Term works great when I tested it with the admin account, but apparently it won’t run on a non-admin XP account. The hell? No way am I letting everyone run an admin account. I see a tip on a web page and type control userpasswords2 into the “Run…” dialogue and it pops up a nice hidden Win2K-like user administration panel. I change the default user from a “Restricted” user to a “Standard” user, which should solve the problem.

Except, despite the program in Win XP Home allowing me to make this change, apparently XP Home does not have a “Standard” user, only “Limited” or “Administrator.” So you can do absolutely everything or absolutely nothing. “Standard” users I guess are a “feature” of XP Pro. Grr.

But that’s not all. Now that my user is a part of a non-existant group, the user just completely disappears, and I can’t get it back. Great! And now I’m sitting at a Windows “Welcome” screen with no users to select. Groovy.

I eventually figure out that Ctl-Alt-Del gets me to another login screen where I can login with the apparently hidden real “Administrator” account named, appropriately, “Administrator”. Riiight…

So yeah, the users are going to be running admin accounts. And when one gets a virus, it’s gonna be that much easier for the virus or malicious program to take over the computer completely and wreak havoc on the network.

Not my fault.

Thanks, Microsoft.
Yes, I still hate you.

Hooray! Everything2 is back, now hosted at UMich on a much better internet connection with some shiny new hardware. That means, more speed! Less downtime! And thus, more time wasted by me and thousands of others who peruse through E2 whenever we have free time. It also means my “Node For the Ages” sidebar has been updated, with an entry on a topic that I feel strongly about.

I’m hoping in the next week or so to move my blog away from b2 to something new, probably pMachine but possibly WordPress. I’m looking for something with some more features, a little prettier, and somewhat extensible. pMachine lets you have sidebar blocks, and if they can include PHP code, then that’s all I really need, I gather. And it’s XHTML 1.0 compliant, which is nice, including converting characters into proper HTML entities for things like curly quotes and em-dashes. That messes up copy and paste sometimes, but it might be worth it. The trick will be to figure out how to import all of my old entries to take advantage of the new formatting. And perhaps to replace all of the line break tags with proper paragraph tags…but that might be harder.