Sorry. I couldn’t get any closer for the photo. The bumper sticker reads “Yeah, it’s got a Hemi”

[ Other photos from the trip ]

Today, another chapter in the always-frustrating saga of buying technology in Lexington. I’ve been shopping for a digital photo printer. I finally found the one that I wanted, but nobody in Lexington carries it. I found one that is almost what I want, and finally found it at Circuit City. The Sony DPP-EX50 Picture Station.

Although the sales guy promised me that it would come with a starter kit of ink and paper (Circuit City didn’t actually carry these supplies), it didn’t, so I had to go back out on a hunt.

Office Max seemed surprised that Sony made printers, as did Office Depot. Best Buy carried the printer, but not the ink. And CompUSA, finally, had the ink, although I had to practically goad a lethargic sales person out of the way to find it, having circled the printer cartridge aisle three times.

This thing better print wondeful pictures.

It appears that the school bus driver has unilaterally decided to move the bus schedule up 20 minutes. So, for two mornings, most of the kids missed the bus. When I arrived early and asked him about this, he claimed that he had sent a note home with the kids. However, since none of the other parents received such a note, and since neither the school nor the bus subervisor had heard of such a schedule change, it seems reasonable to assume that it was just a whim on the part of the bus driver. But, he was completely unrepentant, and continues to come at his self-proclaimed earlier time. This means that we have to be at the bus stop around 6:45 or 6:50, which is just too darned early. 7:10 was bad enough.

Conveniently, the folks at the bus supervisors office have been unavailable to discuss the issue so far, and don’t seem to be inclined to do much about it.

So much for liesurely mornings.

I was behind a truck in traffic today with a “Cthulhu for President” bumper sticker. “Don’t settle for the lesser evil!” it said.

I’ve been rather torn regarding the upcoming election. I don’t like having to choose the lesser of two evils. The two candidates, who are apparently called “Bush” and “Not Bush” (kinda like “not me” in the Family Circus comics) have a lot in common, and very little to distinguish them – at least on any issue that I actually care about.

I was amused by the episode where one of them said that we should pull troops from a foreign country and the other said that it was premature, and sent the wrong message to the nation and to the soldiers. If you’re not sure which one I’m talking about, that’s kinda the point. They both did it, within a few days of the other.

As our politicians push us faster and faster towards a police state, I find that I’m increasingly libertarian. However, I find that I’m reluctant to vote for a candidate who I *know* cannot win. Michael Badnarik seems to represent pretty closely what I think and believe, but I have to admit that I had to go look up his name, since I’d forgotten it since I read up on his platform. So, should I vote for him because it’s what I believe, even though I *know* that he can’t win? Is that irresponsible? Or is it irresponsible to vote for one of the major two candidates, who I don’t believe in?

Mr. Bush appears to have led the charge to strip away our civil rights. Or, at least, he was at the helm in a historic period when it was almost inevitable that those rights would be stripped away. Depends on your perspective. Mr. Kerry, on the other hand, seems to have only one quality, and that’s that he’s not Mr. Bush. Alas, that’s not a sufficient qualty to justify being the political leader of the world. Will he restore our civil rights? Of course not. But he might slow the rate at which they are stripped away. But how would one ever know?

And, so, fellow citizens, I urge you to carefully consider your vote, and don’t settle for the lesser evil.

Yesterday I discovered one of the reasons which I hate Windows, but which I had not actually ever experienced first hand. While installing the various applications that I needed for the new installation, I was downloading something I needed. Apparently I clicked somewhere I did not intend to (I had not yet installed Mozilla, so was still running IE). Within just a few seconds, the CPU was pegged and the network went wild. I yanked the network cable, and started to investigate. There were about 6 processes running that I didn’t know what they were. These included bargain.exe, optimize.exe, discount.exe, WindUpdate.exe, and a variety of other things that I don’t remember right now. The uninstallers actually started up additional copies of these things. It took me about a half hour to hunt them all down in the file system and in the registry and remove them all. I’m still a little uncomfortable with it, and will probably reinstall the whole thing when I get a moment. I installed SP2, which makes me a little happier with it, but it was with great trepidation that I put it back on the network. It’s shut off now, and I think I’ll probably run Etherape the next time I turn it on, to see if it’s making any outbound network connections.

This sort of thing really should *NOT* be possible.

I’ve upgraded my Windows laptop to XP. I was getting rather fed up with Win98, and, since I have two machines that came with XP, on which I use Linux, I figured I’d go ahead and use one of those licenses. The installation took several hours, most of which time it assured me that I had 12 minutes remaining. Very irritating.

And while I’m on the subject of irritations, right now I’m installing the stuff that came with my Creative Nomad MP3 player thingy. It’s a full-screen multimedia event. I can’t get to any other applications while it’s installing. Why would anyone *ever* want an installation program to be full screen and all-consuming? I want to get other things done while it installs. But I can’t, because I can’t get to anything else. And, since the installation looks like it’s going to take a half hour, at least, this is a source of much irritation.

Of course, most of these things are taking so darned long because it’s an old underpowered laptop. I’m sure that on hardware for which they were actually designed, it would go much faster. But still. It’s been at 5% for about 3 minutes now.

In a rather surreal moment, as I was updating a computer at $job today, I discovered that the two rubber duckies sitting atop the monitor were named Zuul and Vinze Clortho.

Weird.

One of the freedoms that John Adams spoke about was the freedom to travel without presenting papers. Indeed, this was one of the fundamental irritations that persuaded the common man to get behind the “Common Sense” pamphlet, and support the revolution in the first place. But, now, like the russians we mocked during the cold war, we have to present our papers before we are permitted to travel in our own country. And, it turns out, this is an enforcement of a “secret law.”

Huh? Secret law? So … ignorance of the law is no excuse, even when that law is secret and we’re not *permitted* to know about it. This is so obviously ludicrous I’m amazed that, even in America, we put up with it. Yet we calmly and happily do so.

Baa, baa.

So, for those of you who don’t read Slashdot, but care about our rights as Americans, you should read the Wired article, and John Gilmore’s site about the lawsuit. And, if you’re legally inclined, perhaps you’d like to read the suit itself.

I suppose I’m a bit of a cynic. I don’t seriously think that our courts will uphold the rights of mere citizens in the face of NATIONAL SECURITY, regardless of any logical tie between security and the ultra-secret law in question (or, in this case, lack thereof). What ever happened to government of the people, by the people, and for the people?

Last night I went to an event at my daughter’s school, meeting people, filling out forms, and generally getting ready for the school year starting on Monday. One of the documents required my driver’s license number. Another required my social security number. I was reluctant to give either, generating a … *ahem* … discussion about why I was not trusting enough to provide those numbers.

The issue is so much more complex than trusting someone. There’s the complicated philosophical issue of privacy, and the equally complicated issue of identity theft. Where is this document going to be stored? How many people, and who, will have access to it? What is the data retention policy? How are these documents disposed of, if and when they are disposed of? I doubt that the school even *has* a data retention policy, let alone expecting anyone there last night knowing what it is.

Wandering around the classroom last night, I had access (without even turning over papers) to several social security numbers. With those numbers, I could obtain credit reports, mortgages, credit cards, or pretty much whatever I wanted, given time and a few interpersonal contacts.

So, 6 years from now (or whenever) will that file still be stored somewhere? Who will have access to it then? How much more computerized will the whole world be then? I suspect that the value of a social security number will only grow as we become more digital.

Is this all just baseless paranoia? How about you ask the 4.5% of Americans (Federal Trade Commission statistical survey) who were affected last year, to the tune of $4,500 apiece, not to mention the hassle and time involved. We’re not talking about someone stealing your wallet. We’re talking about someone being able to do stuff as you. And the more digital we become, the more serious that gets.

So this has almost nothing to do with trust, and everything to do with understanding that the world works differently than it did 20, or even 10, years ago. However, explaining all this to someone who is upset that I don’t trust them is not particularly easy.

I’ve put up some of my photos from my trip to San Francisco, including photos of the Standford Court Hotel and of Grace Cathedral. Lots of very cool architecture in San Francisco. I expect that Ben’s pictures are a whole lot better than mine. The ones he showed me certainly were.