All this time I thought it was Lou-iss Brandeis, with a nickname of Lou-E. Turns out, according to local authorities, Louis is pronounced as the latter. So go figure. Point being, its his birthday. Happy Birthday Louis! 🙂

I’m switching from Granite Canyon, which for some reason wasn’t recognizing my domain on their servers, even after they claim to have the zone transfer all done, to zoneedit.com, which looks like an easier to use and in fact speedier service, also free. Cool! Now this should be back up, hope hope hope, by Tuesday. Yah!

And for those of you who just stare at this entry mysteriously, basically what happened is my domain name, agblog.com, is there, and my web site is there, they just aren’t linking up correctly, the name to the actual location. So DNS is what allows them to link together, and that is what I’m working out right now.

My DNS switch got snafu-ed somewhere, so no one is seeing this currently. I’m not quite sure what the problem is yet, but I’m trying to work it out, although Robin isn’t being much help…

I am also writing to point out that:

1. I’m only half-done with my evil 12 page conspiracy essay that I have pledged to turn in tomorrow, and thus I am still awake at this ungodly hour.
   
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer Rocks! And I still haven’t gotten my entry on that, writting last week in class, posted…

Hello loyal readership. In my never-ending quest to please you, my visitors (and to avoid schoolwork), I have spent a good chunk of the day updating to a newer version of this weblog software. As a part of this upgrade I have moved to hosting on my Power Mac at Brandeis instead of my host in Kansas City, leaving that host basically only doing email, proxy, and some assorted junk. I’m almost at the point where I can dump the $20 a month virtual hosting, and the main reason I’m doing it is because they don’t support PHP 4, the web scripting language I use, and so I can’t run new scripts on their @#&)% servers! So if I were really to do this I’d have to figure out – do I want to host everything here? Or maybe at Maintex? Or somewhere else? Or find someplace to host the DNS so that I can move around? Cause when I go home or wherever for summer I’m gonna lose my Brandeis internet connection, and I don’t want my email, web, and such interrupted. Yet CommuniTech.Net really isn’t doing anything for me anymore…

Sigh. Oh, also, as a result of this upgrade, things are a bit cleaner, I can do better control over posting, but I also lost my admin stuff that I programmed, so for a little while I won’t be able to do admin stuff until I get that cleared up. Also I still have to make sure all of the commenting things are going to work right, and the format is a-okay. And of course I have to switch the site to point here… And maintain an uptime on my computer of something substantially better then 2 days…

And if you aren’t a geek, almost all of the above was completely unintelligible, so I might as well just stop now and go talk to Robin about it.

The point isn’t that they look alike or look completely different, it is that Buffy is HOT! 😉

Well, I have lots of time now! I have an essay still for Jerry Cohen, which is mucho important, but other than that I’m FREE! Which gives me time to make fun of Sophie! Cause she says Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Geller) isn’t very pretty. I told Sophie that I disagreed, and also that she herself looks like Buffy. Ha, she says! Well, take that – here is a comparison pic. What do YOU think?

You haven’t really lived until you’ve seen a guy playing an electric umbrella.

I actually wrote this in philosophy class, but didn’t have a web connection (damn lack of wireless access):

It is easy with all the war hoopla to start respecting our president. Then one sees him speak, remembers his campaign, and checks out Slate.com’s “Bushisms� page. School is where wings take dream? Sigh. As sad as I am to say it, this “war� has brought about a return to a lot of the responsible world policies that Bush abandoned. But we must remember that he did abandon them. Of course he did not cause the tragedy, but this US-first isolationism certainly does not help matters. Remember the good old days when our worst foreign concern was Northern Ireland?

I hesitate to call most television reporting “journalism.� Yet, I got a very good taste of the difficulty of creating a TV news broadcast today in News On Screen. Our in-class writing assignment gave us 80 minutes to distill a NY Times article, some shots, and a couple interviews into a 300 word news story. At the end of that time, I wasn’t finished, nor was half of the class. It is very very hard to simplify down a story for television, to write to your footage, and to get the facts across in one and a half minutes of screen time. I have a newfound respect for news writers now, although I still don’t really approve of the whole process.

Last I wrote I fell asleep. Well, it took me until about now to really wake up, which is really…odd, but now I feel great. I’m awake, I’m healthy, and I’m loving listening to Miss Saigon on my new iTunes 2 installation.

Between that time and this, the ‘rents came over for Family Weekend. We hung out, they got to see one of my teachers, and I got to go to Cheesecake Factory (with Sophie and her parents), where we celebrated my mom’s birthday. Then I gave her a giant alligator, and challenged her to find a way to get it on the plane. Well, apparently, she succeeded, cause Crockett is safe and sound at home. Oh, and I got to meet Sophie’s dog Daisy. Aww!

Today was rain and cold, and it was fun because I got a chance to wear my big jacket for the first time. It is excellllllent! Big hood, very comfy, not too cold nor too hot. I like! I like!

Quiz today in CS, at 9:00am. But the quiz is late in the class, so I could have gotten there at, say, 9:40 and still been fine. But I didn’t.

Every day for the last week I’ve been going to bed before 1 AM and waking up before 8:15 AM. It just worked. My alarm is set for 10:00 AM, my body is set for 8. It WORKED, and flawlessly. Then my stuffy nose got the best of me and I figured, what the hell, I’m going to sleep anyway, I’ll take some of my Tylenol Allergy and Sinus medicine, it will help me sleep. Hah. It certainly did. That is the only change in my routine, and now I wake up…uh…now. And not my lucid self, but a walking zombie. Ten minutes I was saying something or other to Kelson and half way through I forgot what it was. Now I’ve forgotten completely. Damn you Tylenol!

I’m going back to sleep. No, wait, must….stay….awakeeeeeee………sdvnm,./kl; j

I was very pleasantly surprised to receive today an e-mail from the NPR Human Resources Department offering me the opportunity to apply for an internship in Washington, D.C. Of course, all college students are allowed and invited to apply, but after my poor experience last year trying to get the application information, I really appreciate NPR making the extra effort to let me know about the new application.

So for the summer I have two internship ideas – the Pew Internet & American Life internship, doing some research for a very respected organization, or the NPR one, doing some radio work for another greatly respected organization. And both of them are in DC. Hmm. I’ll apply for both and see if either wants me. If by some fluke they both do, then it becomes more complicated…

On second thought, I think I’d jump at the chance for NPR above all else. It would get difficult if NPR referred me to KCRW or KPCC, my local public stations, and it was a choice of that (and being at home) or the Pew thing. That would be a toughie…

Everyone assumes I’m against the war in Afghanistan. Truth is, I am happy that I have not yet had to decide my position. I don’t really know. I know on the one hand that war is hell and all that, that it takes it biggest tole on people my age – 18-25, and that it is bloody, evil, misguided, destructive, and counter-intuitive. On the other hand, of course, I know that there are many people out there that, for legitimate reasons or not, are violating the laws of the land and international conventions (eg the Geneva Convention) is terrible ways, and there is no easy diplomatic solution to bringing them to justice.


I won’t talk about the million things that everyone else talks about – anthrax, smallpox, war, recession, peace, civilians, children. I will say that I have long ago and frequently said that the US is in no way prepared for a real war in the new world. We haven’t been ready since the Soviet Union fell. We never got the organizations on the right track. Remember that just a few months ago President Bush brushed aside proposals by a joint senate and house comittee for an “office of homeland security,” saying that Dick Cheney would look at other alternatives (probably involving missile defense, cause look how helpful that would be in the present case). We will learn the hard way that hazmat units, decon teams, and counterterrorism units are vastly understaffed, underfunded, and underequipped, especially in the big cities where terror is most likely to strike. I’m just glad I’m not living in a major metropolitan center right now.


On a related note, and the real reason I am writing, is to point out yet another excellent article on Salon.com about the war. I really, really, really hope Salon stays in business, because their reporting is just the best I see anywhere. This article is headlined:

The sorrow of war

With every heartbreaking picture of innocent victims, more of the world turns against the U.S. bombing. But the American military has taken more care to minimize civilian casualties than any other armed force in the world.

Click here to visit, but without Salon Premium membership you don’t get to see much.

I am the first to criticize our military, but I also believe that our force is probably one of the best ones in the world with regards to precision. Their precision guided bombs may not actually be able to hit a quarter in the middle of Baghdad, and they really should stop claiming otherwise, but you do have to admit they they are lobbing cruise missiles at $10 million a pop instead of just carpet-bombing because they want to fight wars the right way, the way the Geneva Convention and the rules of war dictate. So I give them credit for that.


Okay, i’m done being patriotic. Back to my old complaining self. 🙂

Yet another reason I’m happy I don’t fly: Everyone who knows me knows I’m a big civil liberties nut and I have high-fallutin ideas about joining the EFF or something and protecting people’s rights. If you have doubt as to why this is needed, here is a nice story of security in the wake of the Sept. 11th attacks.

This day was crap, but that’s okay. I woke up, slept, woke up, slept, woke up really late. I missed picking up my laundry. I’ve felt tired and bored all day, despite me having a bunch of essays to write for next week. Actually, this week. But with the apparent time roll-back, this week could be considered still last week….

I made the remark to Kelson that, at 8:00, if it was 2 AM, it would actually be 9:00. I think that made him quite confused. It is just a measure of my here-ness today. How about some quick updates. I like bulleted lists, so we’ll go with that for now:

• Mock Trial is rolling. We’ve secured space for our meetings for the next two months (Schwartz 2), we’ve gotten pledges of support and funding from Legal Studies and American Studies, in addition to the inadequate funds from the Allocations board. Senate people have been very helpful it teaching us how to get things done around there. I spent three hours a few days ago making 4,400 copies using the duplicator machines in the Senate office. Thanks a lot to the Senate guy who helped me, although I don’t recall his name. Now I have to get binders, punch holes, and stuff. No collating on the duplicators, and to get the Copy Center to do it the _right_ way on real copiers would have cost $170, so we’ll just go with this.
  
• In the process of stretching I just smashed my right hand into the wood closet door. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
  
• I’ve gotten most aspects of Mac OS X running to my liking. It has a few programs that aren’t as stable as I’d like, but I’m running Unix stuff through XDarwin with the Oraboro-something-or-other window manager, so that’s cool. I can still have fun sucking Robin’s bandwidth with Opera, but I still need to install some font libraries with Fink, a package manager that I’ve been having some problems with…
  
• Yesterday a group of us went into Boston to eat at Legal Sea Foods. Ouch. I spent $40 on a filet mignon (medium-well, so ha jason, you raw-flesh eater!). I also good a $3 salad, a $3 side of onion strings, adding up to $30. Add about 25% for tax and tip, and you get maybe $37-ish. I paid $40 and didn’t get any change back. Hmm.
  
• On the bus I was crowded in with about 200 other people and I met Robin sitting on a seat. Grr. He’s been doing a bunch of work in the Physics department, setting up SSH servers and such. Sounds like fun, or not. But the best is yet to come when he gets to install a 16 or 32 node Beowulf cluster. Drool.
  
• COSI 2a still is teaching me nothing, I have ceased going entirely. I will have to do the cut and paste homework 3 for, i think, monday, and go to class for whenever the next stupid quiz is.
  
• I’m worried about GeekLog. The system is really nice and getting much nicer. I was a contributor, working on developing the new 2.0 version before I came to Brandeis. As at the time, 2.0 development is basically frozen without me. Sigh. And I lost all my changes in my hard drive crash, so it looks like they’ll just keep adding onto 1.x, the flawed codebase, for the foreseeable future, since I certainly don’t have a lot of time currently to commit to the project.
  
• I was pulled into eating at Sherman Dining Hall, despite my terrible experiences there. The food was very good, with even the vegan meal being quite tasty. Hmm. I’m going to have to try going back again and, if the quality wasn’t a fluke, I’ll be sending another letter to them, only this time not demanding a refund…
  
• I miss my cats. Oh, and my family. 😉
  
• My topic for a paper in conspiracy is conspiracy books dealing with the recent presidential travesty. Except the book Jerry Cohen gave me, Down and Dirty, by Jake Tapper, is actually very well research and very accurate. So not much in the way of conspiracy coming from him. Now I have another one by Vincent Bugliosi called The Betrayal of America, and I have some meat for my essay now, but the problem is I agree with many of his assumptions, which will make it hard for me to try to debunk them. Sigh. Guess I have to give the old journalistic mind a workout.
  
• Fluxx is a cool card game. I now own it.
  
• Len in at home in NY until Monday. Looking around the room, I figure maybe its time I clean up my stuff a bit.
  

Well, there is much more in the way of scattered thoughts, but this is getting unpleasantly long already, so I shall rest now. I’ve started to recreate my playlists in iTunes and get music to restore my collection. Having some background music is nice. And since Len is gone, I don’t have to worry about headphones! 🙂

I bought two cases (64 bottles) of water at Costco. I’m selling the bottles at 25¢ a piece, as a service to the dorm. My cost is something like 22¢. Justin wonders why I even bother if I’m not making a profit. Wow, he really is a libertarian to the core.

Our floor meeting tonight involved five people from Triskellion. Wow. I was thoroughly amused and now feel enlightened. They also answered my question well. And we got to learn more then we wanted to know about various acts that best go unnamed as long as my family is reading this.

Little to report as of late. I’m reading an incredibly interesting book about the American media entitled Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neal Postman. I am finding evidence of everything he says everywhere that I see a television, newspaper, or oral presentation.

Justin, Jonathan, and I went to Costco with Avi from the next building over (he has a very nice Saab with lots of trunk space for his drums). We bought three cases of water, three of soda, and three of root beer, plus muffins and assorted other fun stuff. I fog my favorite Alouet cheese concoction, now I just need to get some crackers and meats.

I’ve been reorganizing all of my music over the last few days, recovering from the Great Hard Drive Crash of 2001 ™. I’m finding stuff all over on all my different hard drives, plus I’m pulling a lot of things from Gnutella, friends, and my CDs to build my collection back up. In the process I’m discovering lots of music that I’d never heard before and really like, so I see a CD purchasing binge coming.

I’m also getting into techno a bit, which might scare my family members but isn’t really seen as very odd around here.

Now back to my Postman reading.

Even when you know exactly what is going to happen going in, it doesn’t make it any more fun. So I met with David (Peter, the Ed-in-Chief couldn’t make it) and we chatted for a bit. I have lots of fun stuff to say about technology, journalism, etc., etc., but I’ll can it for now, and wait until I see if this thing is salvageable.