Is anyone else getting disturbed

Is anyone else getting disturbed by the increase of religion and religious influences in government? Ok, ok....so maybe the main reason I keep a close eye on this issue is because the religion I choose to practice is unrecognized by the current administration. However everywhere I seem to look lately, decisions and statements are being influenced by politicians religious preference.

The first and likely the most eggregious is the statements of the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore who said "that homosexuality is abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature, and a violation of the laws of nature." and allegedly quoted scripture to back his view. Of course, this is the same judge who has fought to have a 5,280 pound monument depicting the Ten Commandments in Alabama's Judicial Building.

The next issue is President Bush and Sen. Joseph Leiberman's "Faith-Based Initiative". I think faith-based charity and aid organizations are great - they do some excellent work. But please let the public support them on their own - they've been doing a great job so far. You want to fund charity and aid organizations? Then figure out a way to define these specific religious organizations as such. Don't open the government to linking itself with any specific religions.

Last, but not least, is the religious nature of our Attorney General, John Ashcroft. This is our nation's chief law enforcement officer - someone who, of all people, should go by the book and not personal moral or religious beliefs and he's holding Bible study in the Justice Department.

The seperation of Church and State was done for a reason. We need to keep that seperation because not only does it effect US citizens, but it also effects how the world sees us. Frankly, I don't think it would be wise to be perceived as a Christian state when it comes to international affairs due to the precarious nature of our current relations with *ahem* the axis of evil and surrounding countries.

Due to my extreme laziness

Due to my extreme laziness crossed with my sick desire to be online all the time, I wrote a script that, should my firewall get rebooted and DHCP a new IP while I'm away from my home network, it would be emailed to me. I wrote it primarily because I'm going away this weekend and I need full access to the Windows 2000 machine running WinFax. This way, along with PCAnywhere, I can send and receive faxes just as if I were at home.

Phew. I've been taking a

Phew. I've been taking a break from the 'ol blog for a few weeks. I've been keeping busy with working on the upcoming National Health Federation Natural Health & Fitness Expo as well as contributing a bit to the next generation of the Web Standards Project. But most of my free (ha ha) time has been spent working on a home network.

My brother came over last weekend and helped me fix my ailing Windows 2000 box which died one night when I decided to turn it on after sitting quietly under my desk for almost a year. Seems I should have cleaned it first as the amount of dust in it caused a HUGE spark to issue forth when I flipped the switch, rendering the machine unusable. Nate came to the rescue and bought me a new case and power supply, came over and got it running again.

Then we really started to play: I had gotten some old Pentium machines off MIT's Reuse mailing list and we tried to install OpenBSD on it. Well, it didn't like our hard drive so we installed FreeBSD instead and setup a firewall based on recommendations from Marty Schlacter.

We, of course, did a lot of tweaking of our own and I'll probably writeup some sort of documentation with Nate, just so we can give back to the community. My next goals are to successfully install Tripwire, setup a VPN between my network and Nate's (across-state), and to get Firewire working on FreeBSD so I can setup a second machine as a fileserver with multiple storage drives.

Whilst looking for a birthday

Whilst looking for a birthday present for my wife, I found this excellent review of Chef cutlery. If you've never heard of America's Test Kitchen - find out about it. In Eastern MA it's on WENH, New Hampshire Public Television (Ch. 11), Saturdays at 11am and according to their schedule, it will be coming to WGBH, Wednesdays at 7:30pm in April. They also have a companion magazine, Cooks Illustrated which we subscribe to. Why do we like the show? It's the "Consumer Reports" of the cooking world.

Just received an email from

Just received an email from Amnesty Intl's "stoptorture.org". Here's a snippet:

The first five people listed above have been sentenced to death by the Jingmen City Intermediate People’s Court in the central province of Hubei, China. All five were condemned to death on 29 December 2001 in connection with their membership of an unofficial Christian organisation, the “Huanan (South China) Church”. They were tried with 12 others who were sentenced to between two years and life imprisonment.

Now, I'm not Christian but as Evelyn Beatrice Hall said in her 1906 "The Friends of Voltaire", "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it''. Thus, I direct anyone reading this to go sign the petition against this action.

(Footnote: This was said by the author to be a rewording of a quote from Voltaire's "Traité sur la Tolérance" or "Essay on Tolerance": "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." If my French were better, I'd find the exact place in the essay where he says this.)

*Looks under rug* - "Nope,

*Looks under rug* - "Nope, No Ken Lay here!"

I am stunned. I'm not

I am stunned. I'm not a big football fan and did plan to watch the Super Bowl - but only for the commercials. And I've been extra swamped with a client and have been working day and night through the weekend. But once the game started, I became intrigued and stayed through the entire thing. Never have I been that engrossed and supportive through an entire game since I stood on the sidelines as an equipment lackey for the UMass Marching Band. And may I say it's quite poignant that the PATRIOTS won the Super Bowl this year ;)