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Monday, July 15, 2002

Book Review: Fast Food Nation -- Read This Book! In my flurry of activity before I left the house for Italy, I stopped by the local book store and grabbed a handful of books -- and not my usual trashy science fiction or business case study choices.  Among the books was Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.  Now I'm a happily practicing carnivore, and I've even in years past, been known to hunt and fish (only ducks / geese and sport fishing, never Bambi and I'm a lousy shot to boot).  So I shouldn't have any problems with what this book goes into, right?  Nope!  Reading this book was not only frightening in the extreme but it has also convinced me to swear off store bought beef, end the (infrequent) stops for fast food and generally avoid processed foods.  I'm a decent cook anyway so that really doesn't bother me at all.  Damn scary but highly recommended.  It's basically not just about fast food, it covers the whole U.S. agribusiness in general and how out of control it is.  For example, did you know that if the FDA suspects tainted meat they do not have the legal ability to order a recall?  It's at the discretion of the different companies involved.  That's scary. Amazon Listing: Go! 11:46:53 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

And So I Return Again, Less Tired I seem to have slipped into a bizarre time zone that I can only describe as NWItAmerican (Northwest Airlines - Italy - American).  I've slept about 3 hours out of 28 - 30 now.  Sigh.  But I'm awake again and starting to get back to my normal frenetic state of blogging, mail, coding, etc.  And now I have the bizarro joy of returning from a long trip where you had connectivity -- but not time to make use of it.  Here's what the past week looks like to me in retrospect: Current Events Yet more business issues in the U.S. - It looks more and more like MCI / Worldcom will go bankrupt and the stock market seems determined to plunge downward.  Apparently President Bush is now under investigation for some time of insider trading violation -- but it isn't on www.cnn.com. It looks like the whole Adelpha family is being indicted! Apparently Mac Folk may be smarter than Windows folk.  What does that say about *nix folk then? Peru, which had been an interesting entrant in the Open Source front, looks like it has been bribed by Microsoft.  Sigh.  Given the tragic, perennial state of South America's economy, even I can't flame them for this but I do think it indicates the lengths that Microsoft and company will go to in order to prevent losses to the Linux community.  If you are a nation state and thinking of going to Linux?  All you need to do is let the Western press know and you can get a free meeting with Bill Gates and probably some $$$ too!!! Apparently RoadRunner is selectively blocking Kazaa, iMesh and other music sharing tools. Ebay is buying PayPal.  Who said the dot com revolution is over? Being Connected Again and Back Home The quantity of spam I get continues to amaze me.  Wow!  All those ties I could tap into Nigerian embezzlement!  Aren't I lucky? My two cats seem absolutely terrified of my leaving again (sorry my little dudes -- OSCON is next week) The most annoying thing about lost luggage?  My digital camera charger was in my missing bag and I can't get all the photos off the camera (battery too low).  *Grrr.  Argh* I've had to manually reconfigure networking under Mandrake Linux and Mac OS X -- shifting both back to DHCP.  Shockingly it was about as confusing under OS X as it was under Mandrake.  That really surprised me. One of the nicest things about being away?  Not carrying a cell phone.  One of the worst things about being in Italy?  Not having a cell phone.  An interesting double edged sword that reflected the nature of phone service in a small family owned Italian hotel, being silly enough to buy an MCI calling card (ACK!!!), not knowing the AT&T access # and that 30% of Italian pay phones are broken (according to our guidebooks) One of the worst things about being away?  Not being tied to my "collective" -- that wonderful group of IM friends from the Radio and PHP communities who make me feel "at home".  And how frightening is that ? 7:24:08 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Northwest, Northworst....  Either Way it's the Last Trip on THAT Airline! We had a just plain wonderful trip in every dimension ... Until we had to return.  And, while I've done the whole road warrior, globe trotting, laptop carrying, schtick before, which always seems to encompass "Road HELL*, this was extreme even for me.  And, I'm not even going to mention the total time on planes (> 12 hours).  No.  For me it was the loss of 66.667% of our luggage.  And then there was the FAFH (flight attendent from hell).  And then there was the "food".  To go from the wonderful cuisine of Northern Italy to, well, BLECH!  And when you thought it couldn't get any worse, one of the two movies was "CrossRoads" with Brittney Spears attempting to act.  Sigh.  Northwest.  Never Again.  So Totally NOT Recommended It's Not Even Funny. PS -- I didn't even have to try and make up "Northworst" -- a fellow passenger told that to me.  And Gretchen's comment was "I've never not had a delayed flight on Northwest". 3:09:20 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Woo Hoo!  I'm Back! The obligatory early morning blog entry -- as much as anything -- to let Paolo, Monica, Simone, Fabrizio and the rest of the wonderful people at eVectors know that I have indeed returned.  More shortly...  Including an utterly amusing tale of travel hell. 3:00:17 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This