Jeff Nichols: Life

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 03:06:03 GMT

A side effect of spending a weekend visiting someone stuck in a hospital is the massive appreciation you suddenly get for your life. Things that were everyday and boring are suddenly wonderful. Just getting into the car and driving out for lunch, or listening to James Taylor in the backyard, are things worth appreciating. And the big things, like having a job and a wife, are positively sublime. It is indeed fine to be alive and well.

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 02:12:54 GMT

The End of Days

Just got back from five days in Florida, gone to visit my maternal grandmother in the hospital. I've much more to say about it, but even if you don't read the rest of this, say a prayer or have a good thought for Ruth Hunt Bates, age 86, approaching the end of her days.

I don't even know where to start. Being around someone in her situation (hospitalized, sick, weak, hanging on to what little quality of life is left) gives me so many things to think about. Death is a big subject.

Just thinking about all she's seen and done is amazing enough. She was born in 1916, in America. But it was an America all but unrecognizable to me. There were no freeways, no commercial air travel, no computers, no television. Socal was still a frontier, a dusty end of the road filled with orange groves and horse ranches. Surburbia was not yet a way of life; it was either small towns, farms or the city. Space travel wasn't even a dream. She lived through two world wars and 16 US Presidents, beginning with Woodrow Wilson. She saw it all, lived through it all. It's extraordinary that one life encompasses all those changes, and I've just focused on the technological.

And she stayed married to one cantankerous engineer though all this, raising three children, one of them of course my mother. They all turned out to be excellent people. Her family life was her focus, and the rise of America and technology was just a backdrop to her more immediate concerns of children, meals and education. So it is with most of us.

My grandmother's good humor and spirit amazes me. She's had a tough run the last ten years, with the deaths of her husband, two of three children, and the gradual loss of her health and mobility. It would be easy for her to be bitter about the hardships that seem to pile on at the end of days, but she isn't. She's optimistic, cheerful, and uncomplaining, even to this day. Even in the hospital, not knowing what comes next, but knowing it won't be good. Amazing. That says a lot about her and her spirit, her strength. I hope I can be as strong if/when I'm in that situation.

This all reminds me of two sayings. My salt-of-the-Earth friend Jim Moore says "gettin' old ain't for sissies...". Very true; life gets tough. And I've often said that perhaps the whole purpose of life, of the experiences you gather, is to make you tough enough for those days at the end. Facing mortality requires a maturity and a strength that most of us aren't born with, we have to earn it. It seems that my grandmother has earned it.

And just as I didn't know where to start this note, I don't know how to end it. Let's just say that after these few visits with her in the hospital, my admiration for my grandmother has increased immeasurably. I hope and pray she has many more days, but if it's not to be, I'm impressed and comforted by the grace with which she's dealing with it all.

Wed, 22 Jan 2003 14:37:42 GMT

Hilary Rosen Is A Dangerous Moron

Today's Wired article covering Ms. Rosen's idiocy is quite a read. I particularly liked this bit, wherein security consultant Robert Farrell gives Hilary the what-for:

"Well, Ms. Rosen, I'll tell you what: You forward all your e-mail unedited to a public mailing list, scan and post all your private written correspondence to the same list, give us all-read access to your hard drives and post 24-7 webcams in your boudoir and bathroom, and then I'll believe you understand the invasion of privacy your shrill insistence on flushing what's left of the Constitution down the toilet entails," Ferrell suggested.

What is it with women named Hilary, by the way? Yikes!

Wed, 22 Jan 2003 14:12:50 GMT

I've taken a lot of time off, not writing in this weblog for two weeks. In that time I've recovered (mostly) from the holidays, gotten back to work in a big way, and have gotten the professional site Pervasive Computing News up and running. So I haven't been lazy. It's more like I'm trying to decide what to do with my time and energy in 2003.

January is always an opportunity for a fresh start, but this January is more so. I can feel the last bits of my old life falling away, and what's left is...different. Perhaps not better, certainly not worse, but different. It's hard to explain.

I do know that writing simply about technology just doesn't "do it" for me. In creating the other site, I hoped to be so consumed with the subject matter that I could leave the introspective, semi-random reflections about life behind. But that doesn't work. The tech-only writing gets old fast. I need either fiction writing (made up lives) or commentary on my own journey to really scratch the writing itch.

Much criticism has been aimed at the new generation of diarists, created by the weblog boom. After all, how many recounts of puerile adolesence can one stand? Just living through the teen and early 20's years is bad enough; living it again through another's writing can be pure torture. Though I may not want to read those weblogs, I feel a certain kinship with the authors. They've got the itch, and some will pull out of the self-reflective black hole. Others won't, but there's room for them too. The Net is a big place. I'm still not sure what makes web-published journals useful or even desirable, but once you've really got the bug, it's hard to shake.

So I'll continue to strive for a balance between writing for professional reasons and writing for personal reasons. I don't think I'm there yet. But as I told a group of people yesterday, pessimism is the belief that the bad things in our past are good indicators of the future. Optimism is the sureness that they aren't.

And that means I've come full circle - a year ago I believed I had lost my optimism, that life ahead looked decidedly downhill. Today I know that's not true.

Mon, 06 Jan 2003 15:42:46 GMT

I can't say it any better than this. Karlin Lillington writes about the US's amazing apathy as we lose 200 years' of personal rights and freedom (from Ireland, no less). So rather than paraphrase, here's her post. And read the article being linked in the first sentence - it's a great, disturbing summary.

-----------------------------

"This piece is being widely blogged and highlights a disturbing truth -- that people just do not seem to care that the most basic rights and principles, those which underlie the foundation of the world's democracies and are deeply interwoven into the US constitution, are being thrown out the door in the vague intention of 'fighting terrorism'.

Today, people of the United States have given up their rights through the "Patriot Act," the "Homeland Security Act" and the Pentagon's new system of "Total Information Awareness." The astonishing thing about this "land of the free" is that most Americans now have no effective rights and do not care.

...The government now has the power to enter your home or your computer and secretly record whatever they find without ever having to notify you. They do not even have to obtain a warrant from a publicly accountable judge showing reasonable suspicion that a crime is being committed.

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold spoke the following words from the Senate floor on Oct. 11, 2001, when he was the only senator to vote against Attorney General John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act: "There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country where police were allowed to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country where the government is entitled to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your e-mail communications; if we lived in a country where people could be held in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, the government would probably discover more terrorists or would-be terrorists! But that wouldn't be a country in which we would want to live." "

[[ t e c h n o c u l t u r e ]]

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 16:39:06 GMT

Also from the NY Times, another big shift in the US, this time in health care. I predict this proposal is the beginning of universal health care coverage in the US.

There's no doubt that our system is a mess. There's also no doubt that as the wealthiest nation on Earth, it's a crime to let anyone go without proper health care.

Senator Breaux's proposal to require purchased health insurance for everyone is a good starting point. The trick is to get the maximum number of middlemen out of the delivery process, which IMHO is the major reason our system is so screwed up today - the dollars get siphoned off between my payment and the MDs and nurses who actually deliver the goods.

I believe this will be a major legacy of the baby boom generation - institution of some form of universal coverage. About time, but as always, the devil is in the details.

Sun, 05 Jan 2003 16:19:35 GMT

Today's NY Times article about water in Socal is a big deal. Population pressure in Socal is immense, and if you constrain the water here, well...let's just say that one of the most expensive places to live just got more expensive.

As a realist, it's about time. How can we possibly rationalize 17 million people living in a place with no fresh water? Plus, we waste water here as if it were free and plentiful. I have no doubt that things will change here, possibly quickly. The politicians will waste no time raising the price consumers pay for water.

Thu, 02 Jan 2003 13:37:04 GMT

It's January 2nd, another travel day. Our lo-o-o-ong holiday trip comes to an end, thankfully. I'm ready to get back to Socal. Between getting ready for the trip and difficulty keeping a dial access line up, not much will get posted today.

Tue, 31 Dec 2002 22:45:45 GMT

Can't end the year on a note as depressing as the previous post. So with six hours to go till 2003 circa EST, Happy New Year! In the immortal words of Blue Oyster Cult from the 70's, 2003 will be a good year to get "...OD'd on life, OD'd on life itself...". Life itself ought'a be enough.

Tue, 31 Dec 2002 15:26:27 GMT

Perhaps this will be my last DMCA-bashing post of the year. Or perhaps this post will force me, my ISP and Radio Userland (the weblog's host company) to shut down.

This article from Wired is as depressing and frightening as anything I've seen all year. To me, it's every bit as frightening as watching the towers fall on 9-11-01.

The article describes how Dow Chemical took offense to a site making fun of them, and used the DMCA to force the site to shut down. Because of a stupid move on the parody site creator's part, I think Dow was within their rights to do so (the creator registered the domain with Dow's President). What happened next is the scary part. The top-level ISP (Verio), scared of Dow and the DMCA, shut down the entire web hoster and all its clients - it cut them off from the Internet, effectively shutting down hundreds of people and businesses having nothing to do with the conflict. The Wired article included this quote from the web hoster:

"One of my users said it's as if an offensive poster mocking a company was put up on a building, and when the company's lawyers couldn't reach the building owner immediately, they got a bulldozer and knocked down the whole neighborhood," Staehle added.

Freedom of speech is possibly the most powerful political idea ever created. It's possibly the major reason our nation has ascended to the top of the world heap. And yet we have pissed it away in a single law created to protect the music and movie industries - the DMCA. Thank you, President Clinton.

If we generalize the events described in the article just a bit, we'll find that:

A corporation lampooned by Saturday Night Live or Mad TV could demand that the show or perhaps the broadcast network be shut down
Individuals using encryption for private email or chat could be prosecuted and jailed
Public speeches or presentations that use content from a corporation to make a negative point about that corporation could be prosecuted

After that, who knows. The sad irony is that the owner of the site described in the Wired article is looking to re-host the site in Europe. Think about that - in Eurpope! At this moment there's more freedom of expression in the European community than in the US, at least online.

So this will be my one New Year's resolution for 2003: To get more informed and to get more involved in the fight to protect personal freedom in the US, particularly freedom of speech. I'll write, I'll contact Congress-critters, and if I can find an organization that is doing something constructive about all this, I'll join it. It appears to me we've taken the first couple of steps toward becoming a police state as bad as anything seen since the Cold War, and we now have technology that gives a bad law very, very long arms.

I still have faith that we'll get turned around as a nation - that we'll preserve the creative chaos that made us great - but it's a dark time at present.

Mon, 30 Dec 2002 13:54:14 GMT

Robber attacks woman with Playstation. A burglar hits a woman over the head with a Playstation console after she catches him trying to steal from her home. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

I guess this is a good example of excessive video game violence.

That's progress, though. In my day you couldn't lift the refrigerator-sized versions of Pacman or Galaga.

Mon, 30 Dec 2002 13:27:11 GMT

Spent a great afternoon yesterday at Grayson Lake State Park, 30 minutes from the KY house. We hiked three miles, got some nice pictures (should post a picture later). It was an amazingly perfect day, with sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-50s. Felt like March, not late December. The big surprise - they've built a championship golf course in the park. It looks great - and it looks tough. Now if they can only get the money to finish it.

As we walked we rousted up four wild turkeys. It's great to see them come back to eastern KY. There's a lot to be said for low population density!

Sat, 28 Dec 2002 14:33:46 GMT

The SQ (strange quotient) around here is getting pretty high. Eastern KY has always been a slightly off-center place (with slightly off-center people), but lately things are weirder than usual.

First there's the big Powerball lottery winner. Granted, he's from WV, but the winning ticket was bought only 20 miles away from our home in KY. Like it or not, there's no difference between the folks on one side of the river versus the other. It's odd that such a big prize would be won here in sparsely-populated Appalachia. It's also odd that this is a repeat of sorts, as in the summer of 2001 when an ex-con 10 miles away from this same home won one-third of another $300M pot. His story deserves special mention, as he bought the ticket in the same convenience store he once held up at gunpoint. Figures.

The next contributor to the SQ, another instance in which Boyd County makes the national news, is the much-covered fight over the high school's gay club. Sadly, this was my high school, so I feel some guilt over their amazingly dumb handling of the whole thing. Currently, the school board has decided to ban all formal and informal sponsored clubs, just so they won't have to deal with the gay student issue. No beta club, no FFA, no chess club...nada. Perfect. A solution that hurts everyone, not just a few. Democracy in action. So as BCHS squirms in the national spotlight, I'm amazed at how such a small place could spawn such newsworthy happenings.

Sat, 28 Dec 2002 14:02:58 GMT

Three Movie Reviews

Being the holidays, and being an unrepentent couch potato during them, we've watched more than a few movies this week. Here are some opinions on them.

We Were Soldiers - I thought that another Vietnam war movie would be redundant, but it's not. It's a powerful movie. Mel Gibson plays a Patton-esque Army colonel, without Patton's character flaws. He's a leader any man would follow and die for, and many do. This is the story of the US Army's first major encounter with the North Vietnamese army in 1965, when we still didn't know what to expect. I don't know if it's a true story, or if it's even based on a kernel of truth, but it's a powerful story nonetheless. In the first hour of the story you see these soldiers as nice people, even great people, and later as they're mowed down you get a sense of the real tragedy of war. If you're going to war, there better be a GOOD reason (are you listening, George W?). I also think it's interesting that Mel plays pretty much the same part he played in Braveheart, with pretty much the same plot - just in a different era and place. WWS was written and produced by the same guy as Braveheart, Randall Wallace. Bottom line, if you like war movies, see this.

LOTR, The Two Towers - Another good movie, in fact amazingly good considering the hype and the difficulty LOTR presents in translation from book to screen. I liked it, but I fear the power and the detail of the effects suffered form our viewing in a mediocre theater. I'll have to see it again somewhere with bigger screen and better sound before rendering a final opinion.

Robin Williams Live on Broadway - We bought it for the bit on golf, but the rest of the two hours (!) was great as well. Great, hilarious, and raunchy. RW is a truly unique person. If you're not offended easily, watch this.

Sat, 28 Dec 2002 13:48:32 GMT

California town sells online for $1.78m. A "fixer-upper" town fetches more than twice its reserve on the online auction site eBay after strong Christmas bidding. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

What can I say? I think someone got a real bargain. In our part of Socal, tract homes a mere 10 feet apart are going for $1M. For your $1M you get granite countertops and bare dirt on your 5000 square foot lot (~ one eighth acre). These folks got 82 acres and some riverfront property, not to mention their own zip code. And the legend of eBay grows...

Sat, 28 Dec 2002 13:42:33 GMT

Life is getting back to normal, and I think that's good. First, we're no longer guests in someone else's home. That's always tough for me. While it's nice being treated politely and even graciously, there's nothing like the freedom you feel when you're inside your own domicile. Freedom to eat, sleep, veg out, listen to irritating music - whatever.

Second, I'm getting used to the new computing tools. Moving to the Mac continues to be a journey. I haven't switched, I'm switching. It may take all year before I feel comfortable and competent in the new environment. Add to that the evil email problem I've had for the last two weeks, and just using the computer has been a struggle.

So even though it's cold outside in KY, and I'm on dial access, I'm grateful that these are problems I expected to have. It's the unexpected ones that push you over the edge.

Fri, 27 Dec 2002 13:37:43 GMT

Very light posting this week - busy having a life instead of writing about it. Traveled on 12-24 and 12-25; had logical Christmas on 12-26.

Plus, have spent *much* time futzing around with computers and new software toys. Have launched a new weblog, Pervasive Computing News. It's strictly for work, sort of an online magazine authored by yours truly. It's still under development, but is up and running as beta. ASVL will become strictly for personal/family/life notes.

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 23:38:09 GMT

Grand Junction Colorado must be one of the Christmas light capitals of the US. It's a small town, but fully half of the residents seem to decorate their homes with extravagant light displays. I've seen variations of this all over America, but Grand Junction goes all out.

Mon, 23 Dec 2002 23:31:57 GMT

Spent the day at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, near Montrose CO. Absolutely spectacular scenery and some interesting geology. Montrose is my wife's hometown, so we did lots of sightseeing and trips down memory lane. The Black Canyon is the steepest/narrowest/deepest in the US - others are larger or wider, but for sheer drops, the Black Canyon is the champion. It's a very cool little national park.

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 19:33:09 GMT

I had an epiphany today while in church. It was a good service, full of Christmas carols. I've often wondered why church is so appealing to elders, and so universally unappealing to kids. I don't know of a single child who really wants to go to church. I think the answer has two parts: (1) conditioning, and (2) the comfort of rituals held year after year.

All through the early years, kids are getting the foundation, the conditioning that will pull them back to these rituals later in life. But that conditioning has no comfort - for the kids, it's all pain and no gain. Then as aging takes its toll and we begin to feel out of step with an increasingly complex and unfamiliar world, we embrace the songs that we heard as kids, and take comfort in that small bit of stability. I imagine the architects of each "faith" understood that process very well.

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 15:43:26 GMT

Got to go target shooting in the foothills near Grand Junction yesterday. Northeast of the town, the edge of large BLM holdings (millions of acres?) makes for great recreation. Hiking, offroading, shooting, hunting and fishing - there's room for everything. And the views...awesome! You simply couldn't avoid becoming an outdoors person if you lived here.

Sun, 22 Dec 2002 15:39:37 GMT

We're back on the uphill slope! Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, so today will be just a little longer than yesterday, as will every day till June 20. The worst is over.

Sat, 21 Dec 2002 14:53:33 GMT

In connection hell today. Have sporadic 28.8 access from Grand Junction, CO. Making matters worse, am trying to move my domains from Verisign to somewhere else, and am getting nonsense from Verisign. Once Verisign gets the domain, it seems to be hard to move elsewhere. More later...

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 17:34:08 GMT

This is outrageous but unfortunately now true. We've given up our right to privacy in libraries. One step closer to 1984.

Thu, 19 Dec 2002 16:02:50 GMT

We're in the last frantic push before leaving for holiday today. Posting will be light today and irregular for the next couple of weeks. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!