What's New? 2000-01-01

What's New? 2000-01-01

Thursday 10 August 2000
Cleaning out the digital attic I come across two photos taken by an old friend, "KMPeterson" of Boston, in 1998. These were taken in San Francisco; the photo at left is Rose and me at the It's Top Coffee Shop, the one at right is at the Japantown bowling alley. Kris and I used to spend a lot of time together at Boston University, but our most memorable adventure was our annual sleep-over the night before the Boston Pops concert on the Esplanade on the Charles River. (The powers that be have decided that the good citizens of Boston can't be trusted to sleep overnight under the watchful eye of a dozen police officers, so another unique facet of a great city has been snuffed out.)

Thursday 3 August 2000
In 1993 a stealth group of engineers from Apple Computer and Novell took on a challenge many thought impossible: to make the Macintosh operating system run on Intel Corp. processors.

Wednesday 2 August 2000
Digging through the digital dump of my hard drive. Read all about Technomad dealings with sub-normals. See the pictures I unearthed of the Zimmermann Legal Defense Fund Rogues Gallery. Sing a song about Pretty Good Privacy.
And although it was a long time before the current controversy about the FBI Carnivore surveilance of the Internet, it seems as long as there's been an infrastruture there's a governmental body trying to tap it. In 1996 it was worries about anonymous remailers.
Even the Pentagon was assessing the value of the Internet to the intelligence community.
CypherPunks were considering using Apple Computer's CyberDog technology to fight the Governmental Access to Keys.

Tuesday 1 August 2000
Rose, Tim (Ranger Lefty, my partner during Burning Man 1998), Isaac, and I went to dinner in the Castro. Isaac was acting up so I took him for a walk. By the time I got back agreed to me going up for a week. So our coverage of Burning Man 2000 is off and running! Anyone know where my headlamp and parachute-as-tent are?

Monday 31 July 2000
It's been two years since we purchased The Dollhouse. It's amazing how times flies when one is raising a toddler. I love you, Rose and Isaac.

Wednesday 21 June 2000
Happy Solstice (and happy 88th birthday, Omi Marga). Tomorrow we'll be returning to my Mother's place in New Jersey.

Monday 19 June 2000
Isaac is 18 months old today. It seems like such a very long time since he was terribly ill in "Casablanca" (from a flu he caught in "Barcelona"); that was only six months ago. We're celebrating in Palisades (New York), where I'm attending the CPExchange Working Group at the IBM Executive Conference Center (on behalf of "PrivacyRight").

Wednesday 9 June 2000
I've just started a (mostly-work-at-home) contract in San Mateo. I'm stunned by how bad the traffic has become since I last had an excuse to drive south on the peninsula. Both 280 and 101 are like parking lots. I can't believe that this is a way of life for some/many/most folks. Give me work in the city any day!
You may have noticed that these pages have been updated in fits and starts. You have been hit by a digital avalanche. I apologize. I've been having problems uploading via my home aDSL connection (and Pacific Bell has been damn little use in debugging it). I've been making periodic updates, but I only occasionally dump them all to the web server. Hopefully things will get a little smoother, perhaps with some hardware swaps in the networking hardware.

Wednesday 10 May 2000
Hey, we're back! Now I'm really behind on updating my web pages :-) I'll get on it.

Saturday 8 April 2000
Tomorrow we're going to take a three-week trip to "London", "Paris", "Brussels", "Amsterdam", and "Münster". We're trying to take Isaac to visit his great-grandmother at least every half-year. I can't be reached by cell phone (not taking it) or email (not checking it). I'll read all the email upon our return.

Wednesday 1 March 2000
Okay, here we go again. I'm digging through my collection of travel photos to finally bring you web pages about our family trip to Austria. We stayed at the alpingasthaus Bergheimat, in the Alps, above the town of Mühlbach am Hochkönig.

Monday 14 February 2000
I frequently receive unwanted joke mail (hey, after you've been getting email for twenty years you've read it all) but this untrue urban legend made me chuckle:
Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong is best known for saying "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Before reëntering the lunar lander for the return to Earth he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs.
Over the years many people have questioned him as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant. On July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. He finally responded.
It seems that Mr. Gorsky had died and so Armstrong felt he could answer the question. When he was a kid, Neil was playing baseball with his brother in the backyard. His brother hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbors' bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorksy. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, he heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"

Saturday 21 January 2000

You know you've lived in San Francisco too long when . . .

Your co-worker tells you he has eight body piercings - none are visible.
When someone says "TENDERLOIN", you don't think steak; you think danger.
You make well over $100,000 and you still can't find a nice place to live.
You think anyone who drives a car to work is decadent.
You keep a list of companies to boycott.
You would never dream of crossing a picket line.
You take the bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English.
You realize there are far more Rainbow flags in the city than the California state flag.
Old friends you haven't talked to in years suddenly call. "Do you have a spare bedroom for a weekend?"
You think anyone wearing a George Clooney haircut is visiting from the Midwest.
You can't remember . . . Is pot still illegal?
You go to your office manager's baby shower. The parents are named Judy and Becky.
You give a "thumbs up" gesture to a car with a FREE TIBET bumper sticker -- and you mean it.
You have a very strong opinion where your coffee beans are grown, and are willing to fight about it.
A really great parking spot can move you to tears.
You know that anyone wearing shorts in June is just visiting from Michigan.
A man walks on MUNI in full leather regalia and crotch-less chaps. You don't notice.
You curse those damn tourists - but always stop to help a cute person who is looking puzzled at a city map.
When you drive under an underpass, for one moment you think "earthquake".
Your boss runs in "The Bay to Breakers" . . . it's the first time you have seen him nude.
Your child's 3rd grade teacher has a nose ring and is named "Breeze".
You haven't been to Fisherman's Wharf since the first month you moved to the Bay Area.
You are thinking of taking an adult education class, but you an't decide between Yoga, Channeling, or Building Your Web Site.
Your new neighbors go to temple, but you are still not sure if they are Jewish or Buddhist.
You realize the only Republicans you know are your Aunt and Uncle in Michigan.

Saturday 1 January 2000
Welcome to the twenty-first century (despite what the date geeks say).
As is our custom, each New Years Day at high noon we meet with a group of friends at the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Rain or shine we cross the span and share hot cider and sweets on the north side. This year we also had some delicious loukoumi (Turkish Delight) and mulled wine.
It also seemed like a good time for a family portrait.

Thursday 30 December 1999
I don't have the resultant web pages finished yet, but we just returned from a trip to Barcelona (Spain), Casablanca (Morocco), and the Canary Islands (Spanish colony). It's good to be back, and to have everyone recovered from a rather strenuous bout with the flu of the century.

Friday 11 December 1999

In the beginning the hacker ethic included spending time reporting bugs, giving something back to the computing community at large.

Emmett Gray - the author of the excellent site-mirroring tool Fetch-O-Matic - and I have been doing the email dance for several years now. I discover a bug, Emmett sends me diagnostic code to get at the problem, and on and on until we determine what code changes need to be made. Well, I finally made the README:
V 2.3 (December 11, 1999) is Y2K compliant (now using 4-digit year for file modification dates), accommodates the changed file ordering in Jon's Commands 2.1 (while maintaining compatibility with earlier versions of Jon's Commands), and fixes an obscure bug (thanks, Mickey).
Heh, heh. I live for fixing those obscure bugs. You're welcome, Emmett.
As part of AT&T's buyout of TCI Cable they reordered our channels but neglected to update the program which produces the guide listing on their web site. We're getting gibberish. Sometimes all one has to do is mention a problem:
From TVGuide Feedback: Thanks for bringing the problem to our attention. We've updated the listings and you should see your updated listings in a couple of days! And I did.

Wednesday 9 December 1999

The net seems to have come of age.
In the last twenty-four hours I painstakingly mapped out a multi-airport itinerary, juggled the individual choices for each leg of the trip, generated the airplane tickets, went comparison shopping and purchased a Nikon CoolPix 950 digital camera, and then tracked the package from their loading dock to the delivery into our hands.
While I was in the web neighborhood, so to speak, I updated the page devoted to the Kodak DC-120 digital camera, which - in our house at least - just became obsolete.

Have you found errors nontrivial or marginal, factual, analytical and illogical, arithmetical, temporal, or even typographical? Please let me know; drop me email. Thanks!

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Thursday 10 August 2000
	Cleaning out the digital attic I come across two photos taken by an old friend, "KMPeterson" of Boston, in 1998. These were taken in San Francisco; the photo at left is Rose and me at the It's Top Coffee Shop, the one at right is at the Japantown bowling alley. Kris and I used to spend a lot of time together at Boston University, but our most memorable adventure was our annual sleep-over the night before the Boston Pops concert on the Esplanade on the Charles River. (The powers that be have decided that the good citizens of Boston can't be trusted to sleep overnight under the watchful eye of a dozen police officers, so another unique facet of a great city has been snuffed out.)
Thursday 3 August 2000
	In 1993 a stealth group of engineers from Apple Computer and Novell took on a challenge many thought impossible: to make the Macintosh operating system run on Intel Corp. processors.
Wednesday 2 August 2000
	Digging through the digital dump of my hard drive. Read all about Technomad dealings with sub-normals. See the pictures I unearthed of the Zimmermann Legal Defense Fund Rogues Gallery. Sing a song about Pretty Good Privacy. And although it was a long time before the current controversy about the FBI Carnivore surveilance of the Internet, it seems as long as there's been an infrastruture there's a governmental body trying to tap it. In 1996 it was worries about anonymous remailers. Even the Pentagon was assessing the value of the Internet to the intelligence community. CypherPunks were considering using Apple Computer's CyberDog technology to fight the Governmental Access to Keys.
Tuesday 1 August 2000
	Rose, Tim (Ranger Lefty, my partner during Burning Man 1998), Isaac, and I went to dinner in the Castro. Isaac was acting up so I took him for a walk. By the time I got back agreed to me going up for a week. So our coverage of Burning Man 2000 is off and running! Anyone know where my headlamp and parachute-as-tent are?
Monday 31 July 2000
	It's been two years since we purchased The Dollhouse. It's amazing how times flies when one is raising a toddler. I love you, Rose and Isaac.
Wednesday 21 June 2000
	Happy Solstice (and happy 88th birthday, Omi Marga). Tomorrow we'll be returning to my Mother's place in New Jersey.
Monday 19 June 2000
	Isaac is 18 months old today. It seems like such a very long time since he was terribly ill in "Casablanca" (from a flu he caught in "Barcelona"); that was only six months ago. We're celebrating in Palisades (New York), where I'm attending the CPExchange Working Group at the IBM Executive Conference Center (on behalf of "PrivacyRight").
Wednesday 9 June 2000
	I've just started a (mostly-work-at-home) contract in San Mateo. I'm stunned by how bad the traffic has become since I last had an excuse to drive south on the peninsula. Both 280 and 101 are like parking lots. I can't believe that this is a way of life for some/many/most folks. Give me work in the city any day! You may have noticed that these pages have been updated in fits and starts. You have been hit by a digital avalanche. I apologize. I've been having problems uploading via my home aDSL connection (and Pacific Bell has been damn little use in debugging it). I've been making periodic updates, but I only occasionally dump them all to the web server. Hopefully things will get a little smoother, perhaps with some hardware swaps in the networking hardware.
Wednesday 10 May 2000
	Hey, we're back! Now I'm really behind on updating my web pages :-) I'll get on it.
Saturday 8 April 2000
	Tomorrow we're going to take a three-week trip to "London", "Paris", "Brussels", "Amsterdam", and "Münster". We're trying to take Isaac to visit his great-grandmother at least every half-year. I can't be reached by cell phone (not taking it) or email (not checking it). I'll read all the email upon our return.
Wednesday 1 March 2000
	Okay, here we go again. I'm digging through my collection of travel photos to finally bring you web pages about our family trip to Austria. We stayed at the alpingasthaus Bergheimat, in the Alps, above the town of Mühlbach am Hochkönig.
Monday 14 February 2000
	I frequently receive unwanted joke mail (hey, after you've been getting email for twenty years you've read it all) but this untrue urban legend made me chuckle: Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong is best known for saying "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind". Before reëntering the lunar lander for the return to Earth he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky." Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However upon checking, there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs. Over the years many people have questioned him as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant. On July 5, 1995, in Tampa Bay, FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26 year old question to Armstrong. He finally responded. It seems that Mr. Gorsky had died and so Armstrong felt he could answer the question. When he was a kid, Neil was playing baseball with his brother in the backyard. His brother hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbors' bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorksy. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, he heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
Saturday 21 January 2000
	You know you've lived in San Francisco too long when . . . Your co-worker tells you he has eight body piercings - none are visible. When someone says "TENDERLOIN", you don't think steak; you think danger. You make well over $100,000 and you still can't find a nice place to live. You think anyone who drives a car to work is decadent. You keep a list of companies to boycott. You would never dream of crossing a picket line. You take the bus and are shocked at two people carrying on a conversation in English. You realize there are far more Rainbow flags in the city than the California state flag. Old friends you haven't talked to in years suddenly call. "Do you have a spare bedroom for a weekend?" You think anyone wearing a George Clooney haircut is visiting from the Midwest. You can't remember . . . Is pot still illegal? You go to your office manager's baby shower. The parents are named Judy and Becky. You give a "thumbs up" gesture to a car with a FREE TIBET bumper sticker -- and you mean it. You have a very strong opinion where your coffee beans are grown, and are willing to fight about it. A really great parking spot can move you to tears. You know that anyone wearing shorts in June is just visiting from Michigan. A man walks on MUNI in full leather regalia and crotch-less chaps. You don't notice. You curse those damn tourists - but always stop to help a cute person who is looking puzzled at a city map. When you drive under an underpass, for one moment you think "earthquake". Your boss runs in "The Bay to Breakers" . . . it's the first time you have seen him nude. Your child's 3rd grade teacher has a nose ring and is named "Breeze". You haven't been to Fisherman's Wharf since the first month you moved to the Bay Area. You are thinking of taking an adult education class, but you an't decide between Yoga, Channeling, or Building Your Web Site. Your new neighbors go to temple, but you are still not sure if they are Jewish or Buddhist. You realize the only Republicans you know are your Aunt and Uncle in Michigan.
Saturday 1 January 2000
	Welcome to the twenty-first century (despite what the date geeks say). As is our custom, each New Years Day at high noon we meet with a group of friends at the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge. Rain or shine we cross the span and share hot cider and sweets on the north side. This year we also had some delicious loukoumi (Turkish Delight) and mulled wine. It also seemed like a good time for a family portrait.
Thursday 30 December 1999
	I don't have the resultant web pages finished yet, but we just returned from a trip to Barcelona (Spain), Casablanca (Morocco), and the Canary Islands (Spanish colony). It's good to be back, and to have everyone recovered from a rather strenuous bout with the flu of the century.
Friday 11 December 1999
	In the beginning the hacker ethic included spending time reporting bugs, giving something back to the computing community at large. Emmett Gray - the author of the excellent site-mirroring tool Fetch-O-Matic - and I have been doing the email dance for several years now. I discover a bug, Emmett sends me diagnostic code to get at the problem, and on and on until we determine what code changes need to be made. Well, I finally made the README: V 2.3 (December 11, 1999) is Y2K compliant (now using 4-digit year for file modification dates), accommodates the changed file ordering in Jon's Commands 2.1 (while maintaining compatibility with earlier versions of Jon's Commands), and fixes an obscure bug (thanks, Mickey). Heh, heh. I live for fixing those obscure bugs. You're welcome, Emmett. As part of AT&T's buyout of TCI Cable they reordered our channels but neglected to update the program which produces the guide listing on their web site. We're getting gibberish. Sometimes all one has to do is mention a problem: From TVGuide Feedback: Thanks for bringing the problem to our attention. We've updated the listings and you should see your updated listings in a couple of days! And I did.
Wednesday 9 December 1999
	The net seems to have come of age. In the last twenty-four hours I painstakingly mapped out a multi-airport itinerary, juggled the individual choices for each leg of the trip, generated the airplane tickets, went comparison shopping and purchased a Nikon CoolPix 950 digital camera, and then tracked the package from their loading dock to the delivery into our hands. While I was in the web neighborhood, so to speak, I updated the page devoted to the Kodak DC-120 digital camera, which - in our house at least - just became obsolete.