The fact that I can do a countdown to when the bombs could start falling is probably one of the single most freaky and surreal things about this whole mess.
Personal
The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.
Getting active
I really have no idea how interesting (or horrendously boring) the sudden proliferation of posts falling into my ‘politics‘ category is, but in all honesty, it’s been all sorts of fascinating for me when I stop to step back for a moment and look at myself.
Until recently, I’ve never been overly politically minded, or even very politically conscious. I knew my general outlook leaned toward the liberal side of things, of course, and I’d occasionally make random grumbling noises when I saw or heard about something that I found excessively stupid or aggravating, but that was generally about the extent of it. For all too much of my life, I lived in something of a bubble of my own creation — I had my world, and my friends, and most things outside of that bubble just didn’t get much thought.
It was during the 2000 Gore/Bush presidential race that this started to change for me. I’d given up watching television quite a long time ago (roughly 1990 or so, I think), but I went ahead and got a cable subscription at that point so that I could actually pay attention to the debates. While Gore wasn’t nearly as impressive as I hoped, even then Bush worried me, and I wanted to see if the impressions I’d picked up until that point bore out. Unfortunately, they did — Gore still didn’t impress me as much as I hoped, but Bush worried me more and more every time he opened his mouth.
Watching the rest of the race was an exercise in both fascination and frustration, and by the end when the popularly elected candidate lost due to the ridiculous intricacies of the electoral college system, I more or less threw up my hands in frustration and tuned out again. The cable subscription was turned off, and I went back into my bubble — not quite as much, though. Too much was happening for me to be able to justify tuning out as much as I used to.
Then came 9/11, and suddenly it was impossible for me not to pay attention anymore. There were times when I wanted to tune out, of course, and some of my friends did just that, but I couldn’t do that anymore. Things have gotten too big, too important, not to have some idea of what’s happening.
Suddenly, I’m reading political websites on a regular basis. I’m paying attention to news from all over the world. More than just reading and ranting about things, I’m taking the time to participate when I can by going to rallys around town. I’m looking into the various candidates for the 2004 election cycle, and may have found one worth supporting in more than a “yeah, he seems interesting” lackadaisacal sort of way.
It took me nearly thirty years to get here, but I’m here now. None to sure where the road I’ve stumbled upon is going to lead, but — as frustrating and frightening as it is at times — really enjoying the new scenery, so to speak.
There’s a whole world out there that I’m a part of, and it’s obviously time for me to start acting like I’m a part of it.
I hope this doesn’t bore you all too much in the meantime. I promise to still make my usual inane posts from time to time in the midst of all this. ;)
Ack!
When did it get to be 3 A.M.? I’ve gotta get to bed…
Random downtime fixed
At least, I hope it’s fixed.
I’ve had a recurring problem for a while now, where at seemingly random times, I’d lose my connection to the ‘net. It seems that this is some sort of odd problem with my Linksys router. Since I host this domain (and three others) off of one of my computers here in my apartment, I’ve had my LAN isolated behind the Linksys router (as seen in this diagram).
Unfortunately, for some reason, every so often when I’m browsing my own website from any machine on my LAN, the Linksys router will freeze up. Since it sat between my computers and the outside world, this effectively killed my network connection. I’d recently upgraded the firmware of the router to the latest version, hoping that it would fix the problem — unfortunately, that seemed rather to exacerbate the difficulties, where the Linksys proceeded to randomly freeze while browsing my website even if I was using a computer outside my LAN.
Needless to say, this is quite annoying. Especially on days like today, when it froze at five in the afternoon, and I wasn’t able to come home and restarted until after I got off work at 9pm.
However, my account with Speakeasy allows me two static IP addresses. I got ahold of them, got my second IP address configured, and rewired my network (here’s the new diagram) to take the Linksys out from between the webserver and the world.
Technically, this is a little less secure, as there is now a direct line between my webserver and the world, with no intervening firewall for protection, but OS X is fairly secure, and I’m willing to take that slight risk if it allows my sites to have better uptime. The Linksys does still protect the PC, however. Somehow I just can’t justify leaving a Windows box open to the world, even if I think I’ve got it locked down. So much for ‘trusted computing‘.
Candlelight Vigil at Green Lake, Seattle
I was just starting to go through my regular online reading tonight when one of the first posts I read was Shelly Powers’ post about the candlelight vigil she was planning on attending (Update: her post about the vigil she attended is up). I checked the MoveOn page where the vigils were being organized, and found that there were many planned for Seattle. The largest was being held at Green Lake, so ten minutes later I was on a bus out to Green Lake.
The entire vigil was very nice. Hundreds of people turned out (literally — when I was on the MoveOn page, over 500 people had signed on with intent to attend, and I’m sure that many more showed up that hadn’t hit the website) for the walk around the lake. Greenlake is already one of the prettiest areas of Seattle that I’ve seen so far, but it was absolutely gorgeous tonight. Lit by an incredibly bright full moon, at any point along the three mile path you could look across the shimmering waters of the lake and see the softly flickering lights of candles being carried along by participants. An area by the main parking lot had been set aside as the primary staging and meeting area, and some people had set up a quick sculpture that looked like it may have been modeled after an American Indian dreamcatcher (I’m not sure if the design had any special significance, it’s just that that was what it reminded me of).
As has been the hallmark of the recent demonstrations, the assembled people were from across the spectrum, from students to businesspeople to entire families. Everything was nicely low-key, as people worked their way along the path either singly or with friends, talking quietly, enjoying the cool weather, the walk, and the companionship of so many others gathered together in their hope for peace. As people left, one section of flowerbed started gathering candles that hadn’t gone out yet, carefully placed between the daffodils, creating a softly glowing island of serenity on the way out of the park.
As I made my way around the lake (candleless, unfortunately, but with camera in hand), I came up behind a family with two little girls. One of the girls (shown in the picture at the beginning of this post), striding in front of the group, carried her candle in front of her and proudly set the pace for her family by singing “My country ’tis of thee.” The simple sound of her young voice singing that song as she walked gave the lyrics an air not of irony, but of hope — words of a land of liberty, letting freedom ring from every mountainside.
How I hope she’s right.
I’ve posted some pictures (those that weren’t too dark to be visible) of the evening’s walk on my family’s website. Feel free to take a look.
I want a Big Wheel!
From a Yahoo! Messenger conversation with my friend Laura back up in Alaska…
Laura: dawn just got a bike!!! i’m so jealous!!!
Michael: really? wow…cool!
Laura: not a harley…but still…
Michael: Big Wheel? lol
Laura: LMAO
Laura: that would be cool
Michael: dude
Michael: I would so get an adult-size Big Wheel
Michael: haul my happy ass around seattle on it
Michael: that would rock
Michael: r
Michael: a
Michael: w
Michael: k
Michael: rawk
Laura: HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Michael: lmao
Laura: that would be so very very cool
Laura: lol
Michael: y’know, I think the front wheel would end up something like four feet high
Michael: sweet
Michael: lol
Laura: someone could probably make a lot of money off people like us….
Michael: no kidding
Michael: i need to go into business
Laura: it’s another get rich quick scheeme
New job position!
I’ve got a new position at work! My first full day was yesterday — I hadn’t written about it yet, both because it all happened fairly quickly, and because I don’t like to jinx things too much before they happen.
Last Friday, my boss came up to me and told me that one of the guys in the EDS area (where customer submitted files are tweaked, adjusted, set up, and sent to the printers) was leaving, and asked if I’d be interested in taking a shot at the spot in there. Hm. Was I interested? You bet’cha.
So starting this week, I’m now a member of the EDS team at MSCopy, Xerox’s print shop on the Microsoft campus. I’m finally away from the Big Green Button! I’ll now be spending my days bouncing among Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Pagemaker — and probably more, those were just the ones I got to play with yesterday — making sure everything we’re sent is ready to go flying out of the machines. Fun stuff!
Quiet time
I’m around, I just haven’t been feeling overly talkative lately. Not sure why, really, but figured a couple days away from the weblog wouldn’t really hurt anyone.
I’ll surface a bit more later on tonight, after I’m home from work, but I wanted to get a quick note of this up — the Seattle Times is starting a weblog tracking the Iraq conflict called Battle Lines. No clue where it’ll go, as they’re still on their first post, but it might be worth keeping an eye on.
Oh, and while they’re not linked from the main page, you can find RSS feeds here (RDF) and here (XML).
Update:
There are also two associated weblogs as part of the site — one by a family against the war, and one by a family in support of the war.
Interesting approach, this. Could it be one of the first signs of corporate media “getting” blogs? Dunno yet, too early to tell.
Nice to see they’re using MovableType, though! Now the just need to turn on comments, trackback, and all the other associated goodies!
An honorary offer
I once knew a woman who offered her honor, so I honored her offer and all night long I was on her and off her.
— seen in Yahoo! Chat
Love me, love my country
I found this post from Dave Winer today, which definitely raised my eyebrows.
Our European allies say we don’t need to go to war. But what do they say to the families whose kids are going there to die? They say that they love the American people but hate our government. They don’t understand the US. Read the Constitution. Check out the first three words. It’s our government. You can’t like us and not like our government, and vice versa.
This seems to me to be completely off base. In fact, the first thing to pop into my head after reading this was, “Sorry — but Bush is not my President.”
Yes, the Constitution of the United States begins with “We the people….” The thing is, not only did I not vote for Bush, but “we the people” didn’t vote for Bush either. It’s well known at this point that though he got the Electoral College votes to put him in office, the popular vote was not for Bush.
But — even if that were not the case (and it is a moot point, not to mention one that’s been beat to death many times over) — why must an appreciation of a people equate to appreciation and condoning of that people’s government? That doesn’t make any sense to me, for many reasons.
One of the great things about being an American is the right to disagree with our government. I can look at the decisions my government is making, decide for myself whether or not I agree with them, and voice my approval or dissent without fear of reprisal or retribution (at least that’s the theory, though some recent events have called that into question — just another reason why I am dissatisfied with the current government — but I digress…). I can do things like state that Bush is “not my President,” a technically false statement that does a good job of indicating my displeasure with Bush’s tactics, without having to hide behind a false identity, or worry about secret police knocking on my door. Given that that is the case here in America, and one of the things that we pride ourselves on — why in the world would we deny that right to others?
This “love me, love my country” attitude is, in all honesty, kind of frightening to me. If we’re really so fired up about how great our country is, and how everyone really should be just like us (whether or not they want that…), shouldn’t we allow others the same rights we allow ourselves? Such as the ability to appreciate America and Americans while having difficulties with where the present administration is taking us?
A question for Dave — you state that “you can’t like us and not like our government, and vice versa”. Turning that around, does that mean that because you dislike the decisions of France, Germany, and Russia, that you now dislike the French, Germans, and Russians en masse? Or that because you dislike what Saddam is doing, that you dislike all Iraquis? I don’t really think that that is the case, but it’s the same attitude, and it’s one that worries me.