Chopper Deaths in Iraq and My Brother

He's safe as he doesn't work with Apache's but we only found out tonight what happened. My Mom told me this evening that she heard about the crash this morning on her way to work but knew no details. I can't imaging how families of those on the ground working feel everytime they simply hear of more soldier deaths due to an IED or car bomb. Of course, it didn't help that Reuters recapped all the other major chopper crashes since we invaded Iraq. *sigh* I truly hope stories like this make you all appreciate your friends and family that much more. Life is short - love lots.

Know Thy Neighbor: Anti-Gay Petition Signers Outed in MA

The organization "Know Thy Neighbor" has finally posted the full list of those Massachusetts residents who signed the anti-gay marriage petition as given to them by the Massachusetts Secretary of State. However they are having problems with the amount of traffic visiting their site. If you can put up a MySQL mirror of the data, please contact them or, if this is of importance to you, give a donation:

NOTE: We are experiencing extremely high traffic. Access to the list of names will be limited while we work on increasing our capacity. Donations to help us cover these extra expenses are welcomed. If you can provide mirroring, please contact Aaron.

Do take into consideration that it has been proven quite a few people on the list were "duped" into signing the petition. Hopefully people will bear this in mind as they find out who on their block participated in signing such a bigoted proposal.

Send a Card: A Recovering American Soldier

I've seen the Holiday Card meme going around the past month and haven't really participated in it - I'm still trying to manage family holiday plans and gift-buying let along getting cards out. Perhaps next year.

However, my new sister-in-law sent me a note containing a address to which to send cards much more appropriate than me:

I'm sure many of you are currently writing cards to friends and family. If you can, please send an extra one to our American military heroes who are recuperating from wounds this Holiday Season. Please enclose a short note thanking them for their service and personal sacrifice. They are the protectors of our freedom, we must let them know that we appreciate their sacrifices.

Your small act of kindness will be greatly appreciated.

Here's the address...

A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20307-5001

If you would, please send a card & forward this message to your email friends.

As many of you know, my youngest brother Jonathan, (), is serving over in Iraq with his unit, not scheduled to come back until next XMas at the earliest. I can't speak for him but as his brother, I would like to think should he be injured in his tour of duty, he would appreciate any sort of well-wishing he received - especially during the holidays.

I know most of you who read this blog do not support the war in Iraq. However, I do know that many of you support our soldiers who are over there. My feeling on the current state of things is that we shouldn't be there, we violated a host of International laws, the situation is not improving but an immediate redeployment of all troops is stupid and irresponsible. I'd really like to se the US do a mea culpa, (never will happen), and as UN Peacekeepers to transition in and take over training, security, and rebuilding efforts. Regardless, we need to start leaving Iraq - the insurgency followed us there, we didn't go after them.

Nonetheless, in any letters or cards you send to recovering soldiers please try and keep politics out of it. Don't tell them you didn't support the war but support them - I'm sure many of them are depressed as it is. Thank them for their service to us and send them well-wishes for a speedy recovery.

I am continually disgusted, disillusioned, and disappointed with how we as Americans handled the return of our soldiers in Vietnam. Even now the current administration is making massive cuts in veteran support which not only effects those from past wars but the current conflict in Iraq. We can't forget what these men and women have done for us - even if we don't support the politics and government behind it. They signed a contract and are doing their job - many are just trying to make a living and don't expect to lose limbs, their livelihood and in some cases their will to live.

Happy Holidays to you and yours.

CFL Light Bulbs and Mercury Vapors

I was going around my house last week in order to survey our use of lightbulbs to determine what I need for CFLs or Compact Fluorescents Lightbulbs. CFLs are much more energy efficient than your average incandescent bulbs and last a lot longer.

This is part of my crusade to consume less energy and do my own part to sort of "atone" or practice what I preach. I've tried to start a recycling program in the house but it's not working so well - I need to refine my system instead of having two bulky recycling containers in the kitchen. I think I need a shredder.

Anyway, I was unscrewing the CFLs that we had and noticed they mentioned containing mercury. I was horrified and wondered if this was just a less green solution that I needed to rectify. This came up again in conversation with my brother Nate, (), over the weekend so I took some time this evening to do some quick research.

I headed over to Treehugger and found the exact post I was looking for. The short answer is that incandescent bulbs produce much more mercury than the CFLs. Salient points:

Ironically, compact fluorescent bulbs are responsible for less mercury contamination than the incandescent bulbs they replaced, even though incandescents don't contain any mercury. The highest source of mercury in America’s air and water results from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, at utilities that supply electricity. Since a compact fluorescent bulb uses 75 percent less energy than an incandescent bulb, and lasts at least six times longer, it is responsible for far less mercury pollution in the long run. A coal-burning power plant will emit four times more mercury to produce the electricity for an incandescent bulb than for a compact fluorescent.

The source is an EarthTalk column in E - The Environmental Magazine.

ApacheCon US 2005: Arrived in San Diego

Well, here I am in (mostly) sunny San Diego at the Sheraton San Diego Harbor Island with a gorgeous view of the...harbor. Of course, I currently have my shades closed because it's 3:25pm and all I can see is blinding sunlight. I suspect it will get better at dusk.

I am here on behalf of HALO Worldwide who is managing media activities for ApacheCon US 2005 though this is a bit of a reunion for me. The show producer, Full Circle Productions, is run by Charel Morris - a dear friend, (who I have been horribly neglegent at staying in touch with), with whom I worked with at a previous ApacheCon, (2002 I believe?), and spent several years commiserating with while wrangling press at the BlackHat and DEF CON computer security conferences. My first working DEFCON was 1999, BlackHat 2000 and I stopped working with both shows after the 2002 season when I started working at MIT. I actually started working with ApacheCon at the first conference in Florida, 2000 when Sally Khudairi and I were representing the Apache Software Foundation via ZOT Group after having helped launch them the previous year.

So....here I am again. Looking forward to reconnecting with quite a few folks not the least of which include Charel, some fellow DEFCON "goons", and a plethora of open source pundits & ASF members/committers/contributors alike.

The flight was disturbingly good - Dallas is a gorgeous airport compared to my experiences with O'Hare and Detroit. I will never fly through them again if I can help it. I had a 3-seat row to myself from BOS to DFW and from DFW to SAN, I was sharing the row with 3 normal sized people. The key to not dying of sinus dryness as I had in the past? (Aside from water, that is.) Lip balm and something called Nose Better. A godsend.

I have a Members Reception to go to tonight and then the first ever F2F HALO meeting with the West Coast team since we started in September. I'm really looking forward to hearing Cory Doctorow speak as well as my former fellow Web Standards Project Steering Committee member Tim Bray. Jaron Lanier sounds....intriguing - he plans on speaking about whatever the attendees want based on the model of ApacheCon Lightning Talks.

Anyone else here...?

More Web 2.0: Technorati next?

Just went over to look at Technorati and read this:

The photos come from Flickr and Buzznet, two online photo sharing communities. If you'd like your photos to appear on our tag pages, join Flickr or join Buzznet and post your photos there. Just tag them and set them to be public and they'll appear on Technorati Tag pages.

The links come from web-based bookmark services Delicious and Furl. If you would like to contribute links to Technorati Tag pages, you can join Delicious or join Furl and post some links. Again, be sure to tag them for them to appear here.

Seems like Technorati is next in the tag trifecta - Yahoo! already has Delicious and Flickr...

Whirling, Wicked, Wild Wind

Wow. What a crazy day for weather. I got up this morning to take Will to daycare and it was snowing a nice, soft powder. Fast forward a few hours and the snow/rain line passes over Salem due to warm air from the Atlantic - NASTY. I held off walking the dogs for as long as I could. Meanwhile, I packed the car for a trip to CT to see the in-laws.

Finally, it was time to go pick-up Will, (), from daycare. So I put on the Naval raincoat loaned to me by my Father-in-Law, put on a baseball cap, slipped into my Big Mac boots and headed out into what turned out to be POURING rain. I went slipping and sliding in the 2in of slush that was my beautiful powder just this morning. Absolutely horrid. Then the wind began to blow - hard. Then it turned to sleet and on my way back, we had returned to full-blown snow. Boy was it coming down, again. I got the dogs into the car, grabbed a few things from the house and locked up.

By the time I got to daycare, (normally a 5min drive - took 30min), it had snowed about an inch. There was lightning and thunder every 5min and traffic was going even slower. I thank the frogs above that Will didn't fight when I put him into his carseat. We drove onto the highway, (128S for you locals), and it was moving - no joke - 5mph. Then the visibility dropped to 5ft. So I called the wife, (), and said we should probably stay home which is where I returned.

After a late lunch and a few television shows for The Man, he decided to go down for a very late nap. It's amazing what a CD of lullabies will do. He didn't nap well at daycare so we just played on the floor a bit while he chilled out. The dogs are passed out too. I am awaiting Kirky's return - she just called and said she was just outside the station - hadn't even gotten to the first stop. The MBTA Web site says that one of the trains ahead of her was involved in a Train vs Car accident so she's running late. Brilliant.

Web 2.0: Del.icio.us scooped up by Yahoo!

I was just chatting with my brother Nate, (), who heard from one of his pals that the tag/folksonomy master service del.icio.us was scooped up by Yahoo! today. (Of course, he heard via Digg which, while a story itself, is quickly overtaking Slashdot as THE source for tech. exclusives or at least fast news tracking.)

In a conversation with Greg Burd we concluded that Six Apart may be next. Yahoo! may purchase them to compete with Google's acquisition of Blogger and BlogSpot or.....Google may take them to simply augment their "blogging" division and so Yahoo! can't use them to compete.

could see the same for Technorati - Google is pretty set with their BlogSearch beta and their Google News however Yahoo! is pretty much lacking in the blog-search area. Maybe LinkedIn as well - I see it as one of the more successful Social Network products out there. Any other "Web 2.0" services ripe for acquisition? It's really interesting watching Yahoo! and Google go at it - very reminicent of the DotCom days just without the unproven vapourware.

New Will pics from last 4 months!

OK, so I can't count but I've added them. Check 'em out! Damn if he isn't the cutest kid ever.

New Fire; iTunes

Just got back from another fire in Lynn. Smaller building and not as many clients as last night. More later.

Just noticed that iTunes Service is now selling more TV shows. Not much to interest me but "Monk" if TiVo misses an episode. I may download the pilot and first episode of "The Office" but I hear the UK version is much better. My sister-in-law will enjoy Desperate Housewives since she's in the middle of a move and Kirky, (), might enjoy some of NBC's older fare. I might grab a few episodes of Law & Order, Season 1. I wonder how this will effect DVD sales of TV shows.

Last Night's Fire

As promised, here's an article regarding the fire we reported to last night.

No! You MUST like this show!

I'm a bad parent. Let's get that out of the way now. As parents, Kirky, (), and I watch a lot of television. As such, we also watch a lot of television with Will, (). Very slowly my TiVo is being taken over by kid shows - Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go, Thomas and his Friends, Sesame Street, Clifford, Bob the Builder, Blue's Clues and Little Einsteins. But there's one show I've been taping that I want Will to love....because I love it - Jack's Big Music Show.

Will loves music. In fact, being an 18mo old, he doesn't understand much about what he watches. He just likes the music and dances. Little Einsteins is a predictable favorite. He was a huge fan of Baby Einstein's Baby Neptune - we used to be able to play it before bed and he'd snuggle into our laps and pass out. Dora, Diego, Blue's Clues, and Sesame Street all have music that he loves. I swear I'll never get the "Elmo's World" tune out of my head without some industrial-strength pipe cleaners.

Jack's Big Music Show is about this muppet named Jack who goes outside to play in his "clubhouse" with his friend Mary and his dog Mel. Mary plays the accordian and while she speaks, Mel does not - though he is very proficient on percussion. Jack mostly plays guitar and other string instruments.

The show is interspersed with videos by Laurie Berkner and her band as well as one of my favorite "groups", The Schwartzman Quartert - 4 identical muppets singing acappella. I LOVE them. I have a huge soft spot for acappella ever since high school when I was a baritone in our Madrigals group. Although I haven't done any community singing since, I truly, truly, love to break out into such tunes and Jack's Big Music Show has rekindled that.

The quartet is voiced by Robert Bowker, Paul Langford, Jeffrey W Morrow, and Johnny N Rutledge all well known for their vocal prowess. The main trio is voiced by Jim Henson alumni - Mary is voiced by Alice Dinnean, Jack by David Rudman, and Mel by John Kennedy. Dinnean has done Muppet Wizard of Oz, Sesame Street, Bear in the Big Blue House and even the "Smile Time" puppet-themed episode of Angel. Rudman, (also an Executive Producer of the show), voices the popular Baby Bear, Cookie Monster, and the Two-headed Monster on Sesame Street. Kennedy, appropriately, voiced "Animal" from The Muppets so it's fitting that Mel be the drummer.

A frequent visitor to the show is the incredibly talented singer/musician/producer/composer Cathy Richardson who brings musical versitality and seamless, fun interaction with her puppet counterparts.

I so want Will to like this show but it's just not happening... yet. I think this vicarious experience is just me mourning the end of the muppet show and trying to find close-enough substitutes. That's probably why my heart jumped when I saw an add for PBS's "It's a Big Big World this morning. It's created by the same guy who did Disney's "Bear in the Big Blue House" and it's main character, Snook the Sloth, is very much like Bear:

Snook, an energetic giant tree sloth is your host and guide through this new world. His friends include: Smooch and Winslow, two rambunctious marmoset siblings; Wartz, an eager-to-please singing tree frog; Madge, an ancient she-turtle with the map of the world on her back; Burdette, a bird who thinks she knows it all; Bob the Anteater, who has a complicated relationship with the ants; Ick, a braggart fish; Oko, an old monkey trickster; and more.

No news on who does the voices yet...I'll look into it.

Anyway, back to the bad parenting. we watch so much TV with Will because otherwise he goes for the laptop, remotes, mouse, cell phones, telephone and kitchen appliances. He never seems to want to play with his toys. Perhaps they're too young for him at this point and he's bored? I mean, he's only 1.5 yrs old....it's not like we have rattles for him. Perhaps we need to start reading to him more.

It's the Little (Flash) Things

How bad is it that I find it really cool that Teen Titans has maintained continuity between Kid Flash and The Flash in Justice League Unlimited using Michael Rosenbaum to voice.

Baby; Starbucks; Work;Balancing Act; Fire; Party

I'm home after a long day. It started with the Little Man coming into bed with us about 6ih and him half-asleep rolling from Mom to Dad to encourage playtime. Mom went to get her flu shot and straght to ork, I eventually pulled myself out of bed, got Will dressed, fed, Sesame-Streeted and off to day care.

Got home and settled into some work before my weekly Starbucks with boss, collegue and friend Sally Khudairi. I switched from my autumn favorite of a Pumpkin-Spice Latte to an Egg Nog Latte. I think I'll switch back. Had some great mind-meld conversations about ApacheCon activities next week and headed back to wrap up.

Finished a deliverable for a late afternoon client meeting and did some cleanup around the house. Got the dishwasher loaded, 2.5 loads of laundry done, living room and hallway picked up and vaccuumed and the dishwasher loaded, set-off and counters cleaned. Tonight was the ARC Monday Night Disaster Action Team Holiday Party so at about 3:45pm I put Kirky's awesome "Corn Pudding with Chourizo & Mushrooms" in the oven.

Somewhere in there I managed to get showered and have some back-and-forth with Sally prior into our conference call. Kirky & Will got home as I was headed out the door. I did leave Kirky a note as well as Will's night clothing downstairs so he was ready to go when he crashed.

Then comes the fun part. I left Salem at around 5:05pm and raced down Rt. 1 into Boston. My goal was to get to Red Cross by 6pm prior to my conference call starting. No luck. I think I made it to Mass. Ave just over the Harvard Bridge when my call started. So when I finally got to the parking garage, (driving with phone to ear via shoulder is quite entertaining), I had to balance phone to ear while donning my Grill Gloves as the pyrex was still piping hot. I chose to leave my helmet, hat and boots behind. I could always come back if there was a fire.

While still participating on the call I managed to go across the street to Bertuccis to purchase a gift card for the Yankee Swap and finally got into the office. I looked ridiculous - I also suspect I was making a great deal of noise throughout this entire process.

The call was 3/4 the way through when we got a call of a fire in Lynn. A 40-unit apartment complex. Woah. After waiting 10min I finally bowed out of the call albeit not as gracefully as I would like. However MAJOR kudos to our client who is fully aware and very respectful of the work I do for the Red Cross. I ran back to the garage to grab my gear and hopped into a truck.

We got as far as Beacon St. before we had to turn back to pick someone up. But since it was the holiday party, there was a massive amount of BC students there and all the cases were finished quite quickly - tho the complex had about 1/2 as many as originally thought. I'll post an article on the fire as soon as I can find one.

We headed back to HQ for our party. About half of the corn pudding eas eaten - not bad. There was lots of sugar from the BC students and some homemade hummus, meatballs and Shepheard's Pie as well. We filled up and did the swap. I ended up with a nice BC Latte Mug. How a propos.

I got my Red Cross nametag pin tonight....more and more official ever so slowly. I may go in tomorrow to help call 700 volunteers for a disaster drill. But I have a bunch of deliverables on my plate. Plus it's late and I need to take The Man to day care in the morning.

Winter is fire season - the holidays even worse due to lots of PAPER-wrapped presents, overloaded sockets, lit chimneys in addition to the heater accidents and stuff. Be careful, be safe, and be aware. I hope never to respond to one of your homes due to a tragedy but if I do, you'll be taken care of.

XMas Cookie Marathon

Well, the yearly marathon started last night as Kirky, (), made up 2 batches of dough. Today she's managed to bake about 800 cookies total with 6 different flavors. Tomorrow will include 3 more types for a final count of over 1000. What's really amazing is she does it without baking a sweat while her father and I sit in the livingroom watching TV, occasionally going into the kitchen to wash all the dishes so she can reuse things for another batch.

It's been an interesting challenge with Will, (), around our feet. Jim took him to get a haircut this morning for a while, then he had his morning nap right when he got back. Before lunch, another long walk with the dogs, a hearty lunch, another nap and a trip to the library so mom could drop off library books. But between those distractions he was ALL OVER the place. All he really wanted to do once he got a taste from the "broken cookie tray" is get his hands on another cookie.

So we kept moving them back from the edge of the table, pushed the chairs in etc. We'd continually catch him climbing up on a chair and trying to nab one. At one point when we were all distracted and sitting in the livingroom, he comes strolling in incredibly non-chalantly with a Snickerdoodle Swirl and I swear he looked right at us deadpan until we recognized what he had done. Then he barely raised an eyebrow, stumbled back a foot or so and proceeded to shove the whole thing in his mouth - or as much as he could get in there before the cookie crumbled and the dogs did cleanup. This is an 18 month-old...just 1.5 yrs old. Man.

I really should have taken him to the park today to run around but it's been so cold and for some reason I've been really tired lately so I've kicked back more than I should. The rest of the day was a bit of a "No" fest. I'd personally rather distract him with something else than say no but 1) he's really very determined now 2) He's getting better with his "performance". The first few times he'll pretend he didn't hear me. Then he'll wait about 5 seconds and try again. After the final, more firm "NO" he'll crumple to his knees on the floor, lip starts to tremble and he squeezes out a thimble worth of tears over his reddening cheeks. This is all accompanied by a brief slow, stuttering cry that stops pretty quickly once he realizes we're not falling for it.

So tomorrow is more cookies, a Costco run, I'm going to try my hand at a holiday letter, (take *that* Bill O'Reilly), and perhaps do a few things for work. I need to help Kirky make a batch of her Kielbasa Corn Pudding for my ARC DAT Team Holiday Party this Monday night and maybe I'll try to get outside with the man for a bit - if I can brave the cold.

IMDB: Public Movie Lists!

'Bout the FRICK time. The Internet Movie Database finally made it so you can link publicly to your "My Movie" lists. So I hereby post mine:

• Must See (In the Works)
• Must See (In Theatres)
• Must See (On DVD)
• Must See (Waiting for it to be on DVD)

Gawd, I can't remember the last time I kept up with movie trailers and news. This gives me an excuse. Yay!!