Month: May 2004

Say goodbye to Earthlink

Earth­link costs about $22 per month. For that, I get sev­er­al e‑mail address­es that I actu­al­ly use, pret­ty effec­tive spam block­ing that I actu­al­ly use, and nation­wide local access dial-up num­bers that I almost nev­er use. Prob­lem is, I get those same ser­vices “free” with oth­er stuff now. My domain host­ing­com­pa­ny gives me e‑mail, and the Mac OS gives me spam fil­ter­ing.

I’m hap­py to give up the e‑mail address­es and the spam-block­ing. Amus­ing­ly enough, the part I wor­ry about ditch­ing is the nation­wide local access. What if we’re on vaca­tion and we need a local num­ber? What if we’re on a busi­ness trip and want to check e‑mail? I think Tiffany’s actu­al­ly used this once or twice while we were on vaca­tion in Flori­da. But she says she can prob­a­bly get along with­out it, and so many hotels now offer Inter­net access in the room any­way.

It has been a good run, I think I’ve been an Earth­link mem­ber for at least five or six years now. That’s a long time on the Inter­net. Will I regret it? Maybe. But change is good.

Why do 50% of the people believe this man?

Tonight, George W. Bush gave a speech that, in a rare show of good taste, the net­works did not deign to cov­er. How­ev­er, NPR did cov­er it, and we lis­tened to a lit­tle of the thing. Our Pres­i­dent spent much of the time asso­ci­at­ing Iraq, both past and present, with ter­ror­ism.

What I don’t get, is why peo­ple still believe him. Just because he’s the Pres­i­dent does­n’t mean he’s not lying to you! His own Admin­is­tra­tion has admit­ted that Sad­dam Hus­sein’s gov­ern­ment had noth­ing to do with 9/11. If Iraq has any­thing to do with glob­al ter­ror­ism now, it’s because of Bush’s war and oth­er poli­cies regard­ing Arab nations. He start­ed the war for his own rea­sons, and that war has served to inflame sen­ti­ment against the Unit­ed States, thus fos­ter­ing an increase in ter­ror­ism. Bush has made the world less safe for us.

But because he says Iraq and ter­ror­ism are the same, we must con­tin­ue to fight this war, and actu­al­ly, we were jus­ti­fied in start­ing this war in the first place! Yeah, that’s it!

It just makes me so angry.

The problem with third interviews

Well, Creighton has called me back for a third (!) inter­view. The first time i met with the direc­tor of the group I would be work­ing with­in. The sec­ond time, I met with my poten­tial co-work­ers, the VP in charge of Aca­d­e­m­ic Com­put­ing, and a man­age­ment con­sul­tant work­ing with the CIO regard­ing new hires. This time, I am to meet with the CIO him­self.

And there is one, all impor­tant prob­lem I must over­come. No, not Aidan’s ill­ness, we’ll trade him off on my way to the inter­view. And not my own bud­ding ill­ness, I’ll just sol­dier through and polite­ly not shake hands. And not my shag­gy mien, as I’m sure I’ll find some time some­where to shave and show­er. No, the prob­lem is this: I don’t have a third inter­view out­fit. Actu­al­ly, I bare­ly had a sec­ond inter­view out­fit.

I expect I’ll cob­ble togeth­er some­thing I’ve already worn once. And then, if I get the job, I’ll go shop­ping.

Testing of the new blog software

This is a test install of Mov­able Type­’s new ver­sion 3 blog­ging soft­ware. I plan to use it for all my blogs, but this one gets first crack. You all be sure to let me know what you think of it.

Update: Ghaaaa! I just looked at this thing in a web brows­er, and it is hideous. Oh, the blue, oh the human­i­ty! I’ll be chang­ing all of that forth­with.

Calendar Girls

It took us two nights, we were so sleepy, but we did man­age to watch Cal­en­dar Girls this week­end. It was pret­ty cute, though I have a soft spot for British film (or Amer­i­can film with British accents, I guess). There’s a lot of ama­teur T’ai Chi in it, and I kept think­ing that our old teacher would love the movie, but might hate the T’ai Chi… she used to go on so about those Cele­brex com­mer­cials. (Though what I found least believ­able about those com­mer­cials was the calm Bor­der Col­lie.)

Any­way, it was­n’t much of a movie, but sure­ly worth $3 to rent. Helen Mir­ren was fun, as was Julie Wal­ters (Mol­ly Weasley in the Har­ry Pot­ter movies, and the bal­let teacher in Bil­ly Elliot). Per­haps the best part was watch­ing the fea­turette on the real Cal­en­dar Girls (this was the DVD ver­sion). Watch it after the movie, so you know who every­one is.

Hey buddy, wanna buy some speakers?

Walk­ing into the gro­cery store today, hold­ing Aidan in one arm, I was inter­cept­ed by a pick­up truck with some youths inside. The dri­ver leaned out and said, “Hey bud­dy, you want some speak­ers?”

My response was, “Been there, done that. Thanks any­way.”

It has to have been ten or eleven years ago now, liv­ing in New York City, when I did, in fact, buy some speak­ers off the back of a truck. I was young, fool­ish, and pret­ty broke. Oh, and I did­n’t have a stereo sys­tem. And yet, the guy was per­sua­sive. He’d ordered some speak­ers for a night­club he was set­ting up, and they’d sent him twice as many. He could­n’t use them all, and they would­n’t take them back (at this point I should have start­ed get­ting curi­ous), and he’d sell me a pair cheap.

I don’t remem­ber what I paid, but they were cheap, big black things cov­ered in that low-rent pilled fab­ric that night­club­by speak­ers are cov­ered in. Ser­vice­able, they would have been bet­ter in a col­lege dorm room where vol­ume is more impor­tant than tim­bre.

I endured a lit­tle rib­bing about those, but they last­ed a long time, and served me well. When Tiffany and I moved in togeth­er, we splurged and bought some real­ly nice speak­ers (Mirage bipo­lars) and these were con­signed to… well now I can’t remem­ber what hap­pened to them.

Any­way, how often can I expect to be approached in the street to buy hot speak­ers? I’m not sure which is more sus­pi­cious, in the park­ing lot of a gro­cery store in Nebras­ka, or out­side my apart­ment on the East Side of Man­hat­tan.

Life is strange.

love actually

This was the per­fect movie for the mood we’ve been in late­ly. Too much dra­ma on TV, too many shows about bad things hap­pen­ing to lit­tle chil­dren, not enough light­heart­ed feel-good stuff. There are no good sit­coms any­more.

Any­way, love actu­al­ly was delight­ful­ly British, touch­ing, and sig­nals the fur­ther reha­bil­i­ta­tion of Hugh Grant in my wife’s esti­ma­tion. The ensem­ble cast is excel­lent, the sto­ries inter­twine but not in that hip­per-than-thou Alt­man way, and not every­thing turns out with a pink bow. Some peo­ple actu­al­ly end up with heartache. It remind­ed me of Four Wed­dings and a Funer­al, except with­out the deplorable Andie Mac­Dow­ell, only not quite as snarky.

Like Trainspot­ting and Father of the Bride rolled into one. Well, more Father of the Bride.

If you liked Four Wed­dings, About a Boy, and Not­ting Hill, you’ll like this.

‘A’ is for Aidan

Arr. My son, whose name is AIDAN, was named such because we thought it was a kind of cool, uniqueish name. We only real­ly knew of one oth­er Aidan, that being Aidan Quinn, actor. We were a lit­tle leery of peo­ple think­ing we’d named our son after him, because we did­n’t. We just like the name. Sure, we like him as an actor, and we think he’s cute, but we did­n’t real­ly think any­one would make an asso­ci­a­tion.

Boy were we right. Because just about every­one who runs across him seems to be mak­ing an asso­ci­a­tion with some­body named AIDEN. Well, except the peo­ple at his day­care, who have insist­ed on writ­ing his name AIDON from day one. That one just escapes us. But Aiden we can at least under­stand… if maybe you have no Irish in you any­where. (Aidan is #63 on the SS rolls for 2002, Aiden is #141.)

I have, how­ev­er, hit upon a way for peo­ple to remem­ber how to spell his name. You just have to think of me as an ego­tis­ti­cal man who wants his son named after him. Then, the last bit of his name, “dan” becomes the first part of my name, “daniel” and it’s all clear. AIDAN.

Yes? We know and under­stand that every­one’s inten­tions are good, hence the mnemon­ic above. You could also go with, “A is for Aidan. ‘a’ is also for Aidan.” Remem­ber it, use it. Help to pre­vent a life­time of mis­pellings.

Of course, I have been get­ting mail for a Ms. D. N. Robert late­ly.