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November 30, 1999

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November

November 30, 1999
I confess to being utterly baffled by the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. The WTO hasn't half the power the protesters are claiming. (I'm not sure that the WTO Secretariat can pick his nose with consensus from all 134 member nations.) Does WTO promote industrialization and trade? Well, yeah, but last time I checked that was a good thing. It tends to bring more people out of poverty, reduced family sizes, reduce abortion, empower people (including women and children), enhance democratic principles, etc., etc.

Protectionism is a bad thing. Isolationism is a bad thing. I'm not saying we should police the world or reestablish the Monroe Doctrine, but neither can we turned a blind eye to the events of the world, as two world wars proved pretty conclusively. The WTO helps facilitate trade between nations, and that seems like a good thing to me. (See 10 Common Misconceptions for answers to some WTO complaints.)

I read through the low-on-content-high-on-humor press release that GreenPeace put out. I was unimpressed. If this represents the leading edge of intellectual thought for the environmental movement then show's over, Elvis has left the building. Their "Practice Safe Trade" condom logo might offer a powerful (though slightly offensive) image, but it ignores that the WTO does not set the international environmental rules—that's up to individual governments. I shan't blather on about this, but suffice to say that my initial impression is that the rowdy protesters are getting the tear gas they deserve. (I concede, however, that when it comes to things going wrong in policing large-scale demonstrations, the authorities are rarely blame-free.)

Latest AtHome news is that my connection is slightly improved (though not much) after a lasercard fix in a server up in Washington. The real issue, it turns out, is that there just isn't enough bandwidth from Salem to Washington on the AtHome network. When will that be resolved? Stay tuned, I'm still calling and emailing to find out.

November 29, 1999
The car fix turned out to be nothing more than a jump-start, though I can't for the life of me figure out how the battery got drained to begin with. The 626's doors have a tendency to not shut complete sometimes and while that type of scenario could've emptied the battery via a continuously running dome light, I saw no evidence (other than the low battery) to support such a theory. And it wasn't like the battery was completely dead; all the lights and the radio still worked fine.

Sent off our first mortgage payment today, which was thrilling in its own perverse way. The interest is outrageous of course, but even that little bit that goes toward the principle makes the heart glad. And next year, when the interest can be used for tax purposes, I'll probably be even happier.

I still don't have my AtHome cable modem connection working full-speed, though I've talked with Tier 2 tech support several times. They've acknowledged a problem in one of their Washington servers, but getting that repaired seems to be taking awhile. Oh well, I'll be calling them again tomorrow.

November 25, 1999—Thanksgiving
I'm hoping it was just a little too much rain under hood, but for whatever reason, the 626 wouldn't start today. Despite my enjoyment driving the car, my patience with the beast is wearing thin. I've dumped a lot more money than I ever planned into the thing, and while I remain thousands of dollars ahead in the game, I can't fathom that we've still not achieved reliability with it. (And let's face it: An unreliable car is a next-to-worthless car.)

That unfortunate event aside, Thanksgiving at Ma and Pa's was full of its traditional yumminess. The food, games, TV, computer...the post-turkey nap...all the major events were here, and when it comes right down to it, it was a good reminder that a car is a really small thing given all the blessings in our lives.

November 24, 1999
Erin and I were thrilled to be paid a visit by our friends Dave and Sue who were down from Anchorage, Alaska for Thanksgiving. We grabbed pizza and chatted late into the night attacking subjects like racism, film, education, government, and so on. I sure wish we got to see Dave and Sue more often. Email is comparatively a poor substitute.

Earlier in the day, Bret stopped by to drop off his Power Mac for a little brotherly love from yours truly and to receive accolades for making it through another year. Happy birthday, bro!

November 23, 1999
In the midst of what's turning out to be a very busy Thanksgiving week, I've updated Photo Gallery #2 with all manner of house pictures. Don't know how representative they are of current-day reality (with all our junk piled everywhere), but what the heck.

November 20, 1999
In a weekend of dinner engagements, Matt and Ginger were over for dinner last night, which of course mean of a wonderful evening of conversation with its usual compliment of wide ranging topics, and this evening, we had our friend Dennis join us for a less-than-formal meal of pizza and Coke. Dennis and I watched the Blazer win over the Hornets then spent a good long time repairing his hard drive and playing a wide variety of networked games. (A lot more games than repair, ultimately.)

Earlier Friday I had the pleasure of seeing my friend Garr and helping him transfer all his essential files from his old Macintosh Quadra 840av to his new Power Macintosh G4/450. Made a simple ethernet connection, and it was drag-and-drop from there.

November 18, 1999
Longtime readers know that I've been babbling about the need for email encryption for years, particularly in light of the United States-led effort to intercept private and public communications worldwide. This effort, code-named Echelon, sounds like the work of conspiracy theorists, but there is growing evidence that it's not only true, but it's probably worse than imagined. Some reports suggest that up to 90 percent of all electronic communications (fax, email, phone, etc.) is intercepted and analyzed by Echelon.

So what can you, John Q. Public, do about the situation? Three things come to mind: (1) Check out the American Civil Liberties Union's Echelon Watch web page; (2) contact your congressman and urge congressional oversight of this out-of-control espionage project; and (3) use Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) to encrypt your email. The privacy you save may be your own.

November 16, 1999
My second indoor soccer game in two days ended in a frustrating 7-6 loss in the final 30 seconds. We were missing several players and their absence was keenly felt in the second half. Despite all this, I played well, and scored twice—something wholly unexpected since I've not played much soccer in the last few months. Would've liked to have won the game, though.

November 15, 1999
Our friend Ginger came over and made dinner for us this evening. Not sure what we did to deserve such an excellent meal, but we appreciate it regardless!

Afterward, I filled in on Dad's indoor soccer team since they were down a few players. We won 11-1 or something like that, so it's not like my presence was necessary. Since I've not played in months now, I doubt I brought a lot to the game, but I guess I gave some guys a breather and as there's another game tomorrow night that may prove useful.

Cable modem speeds continue to be unimpressive. For the most part they're faster than my 33.6k connection used to be—in some cases dramatically so—but there are also numerous instances when the cable modem is slower than my old 33.6k and since speed is what I'm paying all the bucks for ($40/mo), I'm not exactly happy about the situation. I've been told that there should be an upgrade to the Salem area Internet backbone by the end of November and that speeds will increase dramatically at that time. I'll deal with it until then.

November 13,1999
Continuing our short-term trend, Erin and I watched Waking Ned Devine, a quirky Irish film featuring excellent music, several touching scenes, and some really dreadful screen writing. The overt message that greed is good—but not too much greed—is hopelessly mixed into a vague Irish spiritualism yielding a really underachieving movie. One wants it to be better since the acting is fine and there are, as I say, several moving and funny moments. Alas, it's not, and when all the shouting is over, there's not enough to recommend it.

Earlier in the day Bret came over to set up his weight bench downstairs, sort through a few of his things, and show off the dents in the back of car. Apparently, on Monday a doofus in a Ford Bronco rear-ended him at a stop sign doing $2200 in damage. Bret's been calling around, but it remains unknown as to whether or not the other drive is/was insured. On the brighter side, no immediate injuries.

November 11, 1999
Visited with my friend Joy today and did a some troubleshooting on their Power Mac 6500. A little extension conflict was marring the proceedings, but, that solved, the Mac ran like a champ. And speaking of champs, her son Skylar has grown amazingly since I saw him last. He's only 3 and half, but I swear he looks and talks like he's 5 or 6.

Upon my evening return, Erin and I watched the much-acclaimed Shakespeare in Love, a very solid production and moderately entertaining film which has been, to my mind, rather over-hyped. That's not to say that it wasn't engrossing or that it was terribly wanting. Indeed, there were numerous fine moments, and the actors probably had a ball making this. Just thought it would be a little bit more than it was. Worth seeing nevertheless.

November 10, 1999
Erin and I watched Out of Sight and Notting Hill, two well-made and strongly acted films. Out of Sight did the Tarantino time-bobble thing which, frankly, was hip a few years ago, but not nearly as interesting now. (I do, however, wonder if this would've been a total wash of a film as a linear story.) George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez are very good and the supporting cast is superb as well. Though the film has many fine scenes, it never really achieves greatness as a whole. The critics might have thought this was the unsung cinema treat of the year, but I don't agree. It's not poorly done; it's just inconsequential.

Notting Hill, on the other hand, well, no, it's inconsequential too. But I'm so in love with the romantic comedy genre that it's really hard for me to dislike this picture. I've always enjoyed Hugh Grant's stuttering Englishman routine (first seen in Four Weddings and a Funeral) and though I'm not a big Julia Roberts fan, she's very good here. She brings across a sweet mixture of confidence and vulnerability which I heretofore considered her incapable of delivering as an actress. There are some half-deep bits about the nature of fame and of love, and that's really about all that sets it apart from other romantic comedies. But, hey, that's more than enough for me. I liked it.

November 7, 1999
Bret came over and we sorted through more boxes (his and ours, since we're storing a few of his "extras"). All the rooms continue to slowly but surely take shape. My office, in particular, is getting a lot closer to final form, and since that's where we ended up stashing a lot of the miscellaneous items, I'm liking that a lot.

X-Files season premiere was yet another "To Be Continued" which was annoying. Wasn't terrifically keen on the episode, either. Didn't find it all that gripping; it just seemed like a compilation of stuff from previous shows. Not that I won't tune in next week, of course.

November 6, 1999
Erin and I sat down to the six hour A&E presentation of Vanity Fair last night. (Taped a week or so ago courtesy of my brother Bret.) Although a period piece much in the style of A&E's excellent Pride & Prejudice, VF suffered from a terribly choppy story line and bizarre cinematography. One can only handle a lack of establishing shots and a wealth of extreme close-ups so many times, and VF had way more than its fair share of each. There was also an almost surreal shower scene toward the end of the saga which came on so suddenly as to leave the viewer (or this viewer anyway) stunned. Perhaps our expectations were unfairly heightened by the excellence of the previous A&E offering, but on the whole, despite some excellent acting, Vanity Fair was a disappointment.

November 4, 1999
Ah, a banner day in which we saw the successful fix of our VCR and the addition of a new cordless phone. Nothing like a few extra material items to make a person happier and more spiritually fulfilled!

The VCR tracking problem turned out to be a case of two packing popcorns nestled inside. It wasn't exactly high tech surgery on my part, but I'll take whatever credit there is. The darn thing works and it didn't cost us any money. For that, I'm grateful.

The new cordless phone, on the other hand, cost us a bundle (as cordless phones go). But the Panasonic KX-TG2570B is worth it. At least it is to us. For starters, Panasonic makes kick butt cordless phones. That's not just my opinion—well, it is my opinion, but this is really the only phone of theirs I've tried, so what do I know?—it's also the judgment of every salesperson I talked with regarding cordless phones. This particular cordless is a winner in oh-so-many ways:

There's a lot more stuff, of course, including Caller ID and Call Waiting functions, but suffice to say that this is a terrific phone. I bought it via the Internet from AbleComm. They not only had the lowest price, but shipping was free.

Obviously we've not had the phone long enough to know whether it's the greatest thing since sliced bread or not, but early testing leads me to believe that the phone might make good on its promises, a welcome departure from my ongoing cable modem experience.

November 3, 1999
The cable modem situation has improved in the sense that my email is back online, but otherwise it remains unimpressive. I had once brief glimpse today at the possibilities, though: I did a download averaging 70K/sec! Normal 33.6k connection downloads for me were in the neighborhood of 3K/sec, so you can see that today's "fluke" was a bit of a head-turner. On average, I'd say that the AtHome downloads run between 12K/sec and 20K/sec. Not bad compared to a 33.6k modem, but not anywhere near the "up to 100 times faster" claims that are being made.

Nonetheless, I've noticed better system stability and faster Internet times across the board. I think this is due in part to the "always on" part of cable modem setups, because the 20-30 second dial-up part of the traditional phone-based connection sequence is eliminated. I confess to liking that part a lot.

The security of cable modems has been a big deal. Basically, File Sharing stays off while the cable modem is hooked or else anyone on the Internet could (theoretically) hack my computer. It also makes me curious about setting up an over-the-Internet file sharing experiment of some kind, but perhaps I'll wait until I get Mac OS 9 (which also has AppleScript over IP built-in) before I try that.

November 1, 1999
I now have AtHome's cable modem installed, and at first blush the results are, I'm sorry to say, underwhelming. The web browsing is definitely faster than my 33.6k dial-up connection, but other problems abound, and during peak hours (roughly 6 PM to midnight) all Internet access is lame—in some cases worse than my 33.6k.

Here's the current run-down:

So, at the end of day one with a "faster" Internet connection, I've got to say I'm not impressed. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I'm not sure. Or perhaps this is a configuration issue which will be solved in the next few days (in the case of the email, it better be!).

The AtHome installer guy told me that they're currently building a new Internet backbone specific to the Salem area and that bandwidth for the service should increase dramatically by the end of November. At this point, I should hope so.

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