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May 31, 1999
News
Information about Ty Davison straight from the horse's mouth.
News Archives
Years worth of mind-numbing details, ponderings, and events.
News Links
External URLs that have cropped up in the course of the News history.
May 31, 1999—Memorial Day
President Clinton's inept foreign policy and military strategy, now currently centered around Kosovo, simply cannot come to a favorable resolution. We've already killed too many innocents for that to be possible, but it wasn't really feasible from the beginning. Why? MacKiDo's David K. Every has a pretty good idea.Speaking of problems with the government, those looking to download Pretty Good Privacy, a strong encryption system capable of keeping communications private, can find a good download site—regardless of computer platform—at PGPi.com. My public key is available via most of the PGP Public Key Servers, and I strongly encourage you to use it in your email correspondence with me.
The lack of outrage I've found over the issue of the US government spying [See May 27] is terribly distressing to me. I'm afraid "outrage" is one of those politically incorrect emotional responses that's been filtered out of society in the last 25 years as we were "enlightened" to virtue of "tolerance." To be sure, there's plenty of room for acceptance of novel ideas (e.g., Burt Reynolds as a serious actor), different ways of living (e.g., in a tree house), and new technologies (e.g., Furbies), but good grief that doesn't mean that we must be incapable of determining right from wrong. There are actions and ideas which are wrong, and frankly, apathy is still a choice, and in my book, perhaps the worst of all evils.
I'm pretty sure that the men and women of the armed forces who gave their lives for this country didn't do it so that the government could disregard civil liberties. Most of them died believing in the core United States principle of freedom, an idea which can't exist solely in the abstract. Freedom must be lived and experienced if it is to have meaning, and that certainly includes a citizen's right to not have voice, fax, and email communications tapped without some kind of due process.
Ahem.
May 30, 1999
Italian night over at Bernard and Liz' place along with our friends Maurice and Debi (who are headed to Italy in a couple of weeks). Checked out various travel guides, maps, and art history books. Taken together it painted a very pleasant, awe-inspiring picture of Italy and its treasures. It was enough to make me want to visit Italy again myself, and I don't even speak Italian.Our move now only 23 days away, I've got most of our books in boxes and I'm paring household items down to essentials. If it's not crucial to day-to-day living, it's being boxed. That will probably leave the computer up-and-running for the next few weeks at least, but there will definitely be some down time during the transition. Expect a new URL and email address shortly, in addition to specific notice as to what dates Erin and I will be off-line.
May 29, 1999
My friend Shan and I hung out together yesterday while we updated the hard disk drivers on his Mac Performa. It was a painfree procedure involving only (1) backing up all files to a Jaz cartridge, (2) initializing the hard drive with Apple's Drive Setup 1.7.2, and (3) restoring all the files. The backup and restoration is really what took all the time, but that allowed Shan and me to carry on about politics, art, Jerry Springer, solar energy, and whatever else we could think of. A wonderful time, as always.I spoke with my mechanic yesterday evening. The Mazda's got a computer relay that was essentially corroded by the battery (apparently something of a common problem amongst these cars). This relay controls the fuel system, so if it's not working, I'm going nowhere. Hope to have the car back in action today at a cost of around $350. Could've been worse.
Erin's off at graduation ceremonies this morning. Only one more week of regular classes. We move in 24 days.
May 27, 1999
News is now reaching the general public that an online war of dark conspiracy and intrigue worthy of an X-Files episode has been underway for decades. The system is code-named "Echelon." Simply put, it represents a concerted effort on the part of United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to tap all worldwide communications whether political, military, business, or personal in nature. Echelon is designed to intercept and analyze voice, fax, and email data plus who knows what else. The big question right now is whether or not Echelon has been used on the above-referenced countries' citizenry in addition to everyone else. Most pundits seem to think the answer is "yes."Some may think I'm off my rocker and delving into paranoid fantasy here, so try this article from the New York Times [since removed] or this one from Australia's The Age or this one from Australia's NineMSN [since removed] or this one from TechWeb. Make up your own mind.
I say that because I've been whining for years about how individuals and businesses need to use strong encryption to block prying eyes. Indeed, almost exactly two years ago I wrote an Opinion piece telling everyone to use Pretty Good Privacy, a free high-powered encryption system that the government couldn't break. Approximately 3 people of whom I'm aware listened and began using the encryption. I'm willing to bet that ours are the only communications which have not been intercepted and analyzed since then.
To everyone else I can only reitorate my warnings: You must use an encryption system like PGP [download it for free] on your email or your privacy is essentially non-existent. Big Brother not only is watching you, he has been for a long time.
May 26, 1999
You know, some days are just better than others. Most days are better than this one. I awoke to read about the Santa Clara Country Supervisors rejecting the recreation panel's recommendation and authorizing a $4 vehicle fee at Rancho San Antonio. They're claiming that the fee is necessary to raise about $230,000 per year to supplement the operating budget of $17 million. That's a pretty weak excuse financially speaking, but it's the one they're giving.Philosophically, I'm opposed to fees at public lands. For people engaged in specialized applications like hunting or fishing, sure. For people who just want to go and enjoy the outdoors, no way. Nature isn't something to be bottled up and sold. Like libraries, fire departments, and schools, it public lands exist for the common good of society, and the idea that we should commercialize nature in this manner makes me ill.
The new fees won't take effect until next year, so I'll escape unscathed, but this change, coupled with the all the new housing construction around the park, ultimately renders the area a shell of what it once was: simple, tranquil, and undisturbed. And I hardly need add free.
On a more personal level, the 626 refused to start this morning. I ended up calling the auto club towing service and when they finally arrived at a little after noon, the Mazda started just fine. Lovely. Drove it to the shop, where it was in line to be evaluated. Unfortunately my mechanic, Gary, could find nothing wrong with it. He's holding it overnight to see if colder early morning temperatures are a factor.
May 25, 1999
Watched The Seventh Sign with Demi Moore as part of a screening for Erin's religion class. This is Demi "PBJ" (pre-boob job), so her acting is decent and the script is at least average. The picture is apocalyptic in nature and though it starts slowly (and close to incomprehensibly), it picks up in the latter stages and becomes more interesting. It's only 97 minutes in length, and very predictable, but the acting is good and the special effects credible. If you don't set your standards too high and your looking to kill off an hour and half, there are worse ways to do it then this science fiction flick.May 24, 1999
Watched the computer hacker thriller Sneakers, starring Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley. Excellent screenplay with the possible exception of an ending that was a touch anticlimactic. Nonetheless, direction is superb as is the acting. This picture isn't particularly "deep," but it succeeds on many levels. I'd rate it an all-around winner, and it's highly recommended.Also sat through the John Wayne spectacular Sands of Iwo Jima. It's a little long and the script contains some embarrassingly awful scenes which the acting ensemble does its best with. Wayne is surprisingly good in his role as Sgt. Stryker, and though the battle scenes are given the quintessential Hollywood treatment (which is to say they're almost entirely unrealistic), it could've been a lot worse. This film got four Oscar nominations in 1949, and though it was incredibly popular then, I don't know that there's a lot to recommend it nowadays unless you're a John Wayne fan.
(As a side note, if you've ever wanted to see the Duke dance with another man, here's your chance. The script forces Wayne to dosy-do with another Marine to teach him bayoneting skills(!), a move that earns my vote for stupidest scene of the movie.)
Turning to television, Erin and I have utterly given up on UPN's Dilbert. Love the comic strip and the books, but the animated TV show stinks. I don't think I've laughed so little in a half hour since I accidently tuned into Married...With Children.
On the other hand, UPN has a definite hit on it's hands with the quirky Home Movies, another animated show that, at least in the Bay Area, follows Dilbert on the Monday night lineup. It's not nearly as funny as most episodes of The Simpsons, but it's got its own edgy comedy thing going which is a lot more than you can say for Dilbert.
May 22, 1999
The Bay Area weather forecasters have done it again. At least this time the rain they predicted has given way to 85 degree temperatures and sunny skies. I swear these guys must moonlight as NATO bombing intelligence analysts. I might miss the beautiful weather when we move to Oregon, but I surely won't miss the inaccuracy of the forecasters.Of course that doesn't mean I won't take advantages of their mistakes. Thus, we hung out in the afternoon with our friends Shan and Heather, lounging and playing Bocce (aka Italian lawn bowling) in the glorious warmth of a beautiful day. Fun and relaxing—a great way to spend a Saturday.
For whatever reason, I've continued to give Waterhouse Securities the opportunity to set things right. As you'll recall, I've been trying to transfer money between two accounts for about five months now, and despite repeated assurances, nothing has been done. I've been promised action by so many people and gotten no results so many times that I'd have all my money pulled out already if I hadn't made the downer of a discovery that Bidwell & Co. charges $25 a year to handle IRA accounts. What kind of lameness is that? So now I'm thinking maybe Charles Schwab, though their commission prices sure aren't that great so far as stocks go. (Their no-load, no-fee mutual fund selection is excellent, though.) Maybe I'll checkout e*trade. I don't know. What a mess.
May 19, 1999
George Lucas' epic Star Wars: The Phantom Menace opened today, and having seen it already, I'm sure I'm not spoiling it for anyone when I say that I sure was surprised that everyone died in the end.Hahaha. Just kidding. I've not seen the movie, and I have no idea what happens. Of course, that said, I do plan on seeing the movie in the next 2-3 weeks once the lines thin down a little. So far early reviews have been mixed, but I'm prepared to make up my own mind on the subject.
Apologies to those of you who might have received weeks-old email from me yesterday. My Internet Service Provider Slip.net, now an epitome of incompetence, had an email glitch earlier this month. For about the first week of May, every email I sent disappeared into cyberspace. Most frustratingly, it appeared from my end like everything was going fine. After fixing the problem with Slip.net, who get my vote as "idiots of the year," I resent all the email that they failed to deliver.
Guess what is now being delivered? Yes, that it. All the email that disappeared was sent out yesterday—weeks after the fact—by Slip.net, a company so out of it that their collective IQ has to be measured in negative numbers.
So again, my apologies to all those who were supplied with my email for the second time. I'll be leaving Slip.net, currently #7 on the FBI's "Most Totally Clueless" list, by this time next month. Given the myriad of problems I've had with them recently, it won't be a moment too soon.
May 18, 1999
It takes but a glance at the Main page's Link Exchange hit counter to drive home the undeniable truth: Davison Online is boring almost twice as many people—or the same number of people twice as often—as we did the year before. Having nearly 2200 hits in the last 12 months seems almost inexplicable to me, but then I remember Proverbs 18:22 and it gets a lot clearer. Surely that makes as much sense as anything else I can think of.Regardless, let me again offer most humble thanks to those loyal band of readers who, despite the mood swings evidenced by the hit-or-miss quality of my writing, continue to check Davison Online in the frequently fruitless hope that some decent new content has been added. I hardly need mention that you get what you pay for, right? Well, all the more reason to celebrate humanity's eternal optimism. If 2200 on the hit counter isn't a sure sign of that, I don't know what is.
Thanks again for tuning in!
May 17, 1999
The once dead microwave has been resurrected Lazarus-like and is now 'waving foodstuffs good as new. This makes the third consumer electronic piece which either Erin or me have fixed in the last six months, an astounding record considering we know next to nothing about repairing such things. This sure beats junking the devices and spending more money. I think our total expenditures to fix the items were $5 for a Panasonic answering machine fan belt (a glorified rubber band; most of that cost was "shipping and handling"), $13 for a bread machine fan belt, and $4 for a 15 amp 125 volt microwave fuse. Total cost $22 versus what it would've cost to replace all three items. I think we did okay.May 16, 1999
Erin solidified her summer school teaching plans yesterday. She'll be teaching 8 weeks at Clackamas High School, meaning we'll be looking to move into an apartment somewhere near there. I've been turning over the idea of putting my piano in storage since most apartments probably can't accommodate it. I'm not thrilled by this, but I'm not sure that we'll end up with much choice. Depending on how Erin's teaching applications for the fall turn out, we might be moving again in August or September (though it would be a local move), so at least the storage would have the potential of being short-term.We met with our friends Brian and Debbie and their daughter Erin last night. As always, conversation was lively and interesting and on a higher intellectual plane than is the norm. (It doesn't hurt that Brian is a superb biblical scholar and teaches philosophy.) Showing incredibly fine taste in computing devices, Brian and Debbie also told us that they had decided to get a grape-flavored iMac. This was decidedly heartening news since it means we'll be able to keep in contact via email in addition to phone calls. (Yes, I was also elated that it was an easy-to-use iMac and not a wires-everywhere, what-am-I-doing-wrong PC.)
Special thanks to our friends Maurice and Debi who were very kind and gave us a beautiful china hutch and a matching glass-case top. Erin and I have lived a lot of life with really inferior furniture—it tends to be less expensive—so even brief contact with wonderful pieces like these is enough to give us a buzz. I think Erin's already envisioning a china display, and I dare say, I think what she has in mind will look terrific. Do we have great friends or what? (A round of applause also to Bernard and Liz for trucking the furniture to us in Mountain View. We appreciate it!)
After spending most of the day packing books and taking apart cinder block and board bookcases, I finally got around to fiddling with our microwave. The 'wave hasn't worked since it dropped stone cold dead in the middle of a defrost cycle last December or so. I gave it a going over with a continuity tester, and it appears to me that it's simply a blown fuse. I had Erin's dad, Bernard, double-check my findings, and he concurred. Bottom line: If that's all it is, I should have everything cookin'—so to speak—by tomorrow evening. Get ready, Erin! Here come Chef Ty's famous TV dinners once again!
May 14, 1999
Another week, another 22 miles of running. There's a lot of debate amongst county commissioners right now about charging a $4 entry fee into Rancho San Antonio, something that would curtail my 4x a week jog-a-thons pretty dramatically. I'm philosophically opposed to charging people to enter nature preserves, but in a more selfish vein, if they'd kindly wait until June 21 then they can charge whatever they want. That doesn't stop if from being a terrible idea, of course, but this is the same society that has commercialized motherhood (via surrogate mothers), so it's pretty obvious that nothing's sacred anymore. I'll feel better if I'm already out of the state when the hammer falls on this one.Erin and I picked up a few stacks of produce boxes, and I began packing up our possessions this evening. (Nothing quite as handy as produce boxes from the grocery store when you're needing to move.) Generally speaking, I don't mind the packing process in that it tends to encourage the pitching of worthless items that I've held onto for no apparent reason. It's just too easy to accumulate stuff, I guess. At the same time, I really don't care for moving and unpacking all that much, but life kinda makes you take the good with the bad, so there you have it. I hope to have at least two of the cinderblock and board "bookcases" broken down by tomorrow night.
The latest journey has begun....
May 13, 1999
Erin and I have given our 30-day notice to vacate our Mountain View apartment effective June 21. We will be traveling to Oregon on June 22 and plan to move into our new apartment (wherever that ends up being) on June 23. Friends, relatives and sycophants! We will assuredly be needing your help to unload our various possessions and sundries, so if the promise of our eternal thanks isn't enough to prompt your participation in our special moving event, perhaps free pizza will. If you're interested in helping out, please let me know so I can order your favorite toppings. (Thanks in advance to those of you who have already volunteered.)I've been working since December of last year to get some funds moved over into my Waterhouse Securities, Inc. Roth IRA. Incredibly, Waterhouse has failed to manage even this simplest of transactions despite 2 letters, 5 phone calls and 1 fax. I have no idea why moving these funds is so hard, but apparently it is. May I recommend to all interested a brokerage firm known as Bidwell & Co. for all your investment needs. I've also got an account there, and their service and their pricing is stellar. I'm calling Waterhouse again tomorrow morning to give them a final chance to get it right. In other words, I expect to have my Roth IRA headed toward Bidwell by Monday.
May 11, 1999
As an added bonus to yesterday's already great events, Dave, Melissa and their son Jacob paid us a visit last night. We went out to dinner and afterward Dave was kind enough to let me bore him with details from the day's WWDC event. (Well, all right, maybe he wasn't that bored.)May 10, 1999
I went over to Apple to witness the latest on the MacOS from the Worldwide Developers Conference. I was not disappointed, and for anyone who is interested, the WWDC is traditionally broadcast via satellite, so there very well may be a downlink in your area. Something to check out for the next time this rolls around.In the midst of my Adobe Photoshop 3.05 education (which I mentioned a few days ago), I found a Mac Academy Training tape on the subject at my local library. In it, a Photoshop pro goes over all his tips and tricks as he explains various features. This has turned out to be even more helpful than the Dummies book, and I highly recommend you check your local library for these otherwise very expensive tapes if you're interested in learning Photoshop.
How I managed today's 5.5 mile run at Rancho San Antonio, I'll never know. I'll do it again tomorrow, then I'll take Wednesday off.
May 9, 1999—Happy Mama's Day!
Best wishes to all those Moms out there, and in particular, to my own mom who deserves oodles of gratitude for putting up with me and my brother throughout our formative years. How she put up with us, I'll never know. (Sedatives? Prozac?) No matter the answer, I'm thankful. So Mom, here's to you! You're the best! (And I'm not just saying that because you and Dad bought a Power Mac.)May 8, 1999
The Apple and Lucasfilm people have posted another Star Wars: The Phantom Menace commercial, this one featuring Darth Maul. It's a 4.3 MB download, but it's also the best of the lot for my money. Of course, I still recommend the full 25 MB trailer over any of them.May 7, 1999
I've continued my runs at Rancho San Antonio, and I'm now at 22 miles a week. I don't ancipate increasing my running too much more in the near future—this level is about wiping me out—but I am hoping to add some soccer or other activity on weekends. (Currently, I'm running 5.5 miles on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and taking Wednesdays and weekends off.)With Erin's help, I've also continued in my attempts to keep the daily calorie count below 2000. I don't think I've always succeeded, but I'm always close, and I think I've done it more often than not. Don't know if I'm actually succeeding in losing any weight, but I feel better overall both physically and psychologically.
Another thing that's been making me feel good is that I've finally(!) started to figure out Adobe Photoshop. I checked Deke McClelland's Photoshop 3 for Macs for Dummies book out of the library and have been making the most of it. (For the record I hate the "for Dummies" series name. I'm not a "dummy" and even if I were I'd rather not be insulted by my reading material.) The first 120 pages or so were utterly worthless. Indeed, the book could be literally dozens of pages less if Deke would just stop cracking jokes and tell the reader how to use the program.
That said, many tools are easily and well explained. I now know more about Photoshop than ever, and though I won't be a professional graphic artist any time soon, I feel a lot more confident in my abilities with the program. Happily, a lot of that knowledge is transferrable to other Adobe applications like After Effects and Premiere.
As they used to say on the A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together.
May 6, 1999
This is a little sooner than anticipated, but Davison Online will be moving to a new URL and Erin and I will be getting a new email address shortly. In summary, Slip.net service has gone to hell in a handbasket. Last week I was denied FTP access without warning (rendering me unable to upload or download my web pages). This annoyance was immediately followed by a screw-up with the email server whereby I had to manually change Eudora Pro preferences back and forth depending on whether or not I wanted to send or receive mail. (Tech Support also had the gall to post a voice mail message blaming this on customers incorrectly setting their prefs. Strange, it worked with that setting for the last two years. You're saying now it's my fault?)The straw that broke the camel's back, however, was today's discovery that none of the email I've been sending out this week has gone anywhere. Sure it goes to Slip.net's email server—Eudora Pro tells me that much—but from there -poof!- off into the nether-regions of cyberspace. So far as I know, nobody has received any of the mail I've sent this week, and this is, it goes without saying, totally unacceptably from a personal or professional point of view. When you tack on the virtual impossibility of getting through to tech support, well, see ya!
I'll be posting information about the new URL and the new email address shortly. I'll also email—if Slip.net will be so kind as to let me—the changes to everyone in my electronic address book.
May 3, 1999
Lucasfilm and Apple released four Star Wars: The Phantom Menace QuickTime commercials this afternoon, and as everybody out there might expect, I downloaded the lot of them. These are smaller, 30 second and 1 minute clips compared to the 2 minute 30 second trailer that was released a month or so ago. While there is a lot of new footage, if you're only going to download one Star Wars QuickTime movie I highly recommend downloading the most excellent trailer versus any of these commercials. (Even the teaser trailer is better.)In fact, I was pretty disappointed with the commercials. In every case they struggle to fit the material into the allotted time. It's a real shame how they've truncated John Williams' score, for example. More than that though, the voice over narrations border on awful, and one can only hope that nowhere in the new movie do these show up, otherwise we'll be listening to some major dialogue clunkers. Thankfully, I think these voice overs were specially created for the commercials and won't be found anywhere in the actual film.
Ultimately I hate to say it, but I think it was a mistake to release these commercials. You can't possibly prime the Star Wars pump any more than it is, so there's no point in an ad campaign. The trailer itself has been downloaded 10 million times according to Apple. Clearly there is no lack of interest. But in however slight a way these commercials give out more of the plot. I've made an effort not to find out what's going to happen any more than what Lucasfilm officially wants, and I already feel like I know the entire storyline. I sure hope I'm wrong.
May 1, 1999
Having had a couple of days now to play around with Adobe GoLive 4.0, I'm prepared to call it a major success if only because it no longer seems to crash at random intervals like version 3.11 did. For those interested, I upgraded to GoLive 4.0 from PageMill 2.0 at a cost of only $99. That might sound a little expensive depending on your budget, but rest assured that this is the best HTML editor out there. (And iMac owners take note! PageMill 3.0 shipped with your computer. Upgrade today!) My understanding is that Adobe is offering this upgrade deal until September 1. Normal retail price is $300.Having encountered this kind of success with GoLive, I ordered another Adobe upgrade yesterday, After Effects 3.1 to After Effects 4.0. For those who are not familiar with it, After Effects is the premiere desktop film/video special effects application. Indeed, parts of the new Star Wars movie were done in After Effects. Me? I want it so that I'm ready when broadband (meaning high speed) internet connections become the norm. Web site design will be all about video at that point, and it's a time period that I think is not too far off. (Okay, I confess I also want After Effects so that I can spice up my own movies when I start making them in a few years.)
