Category: Uncategorized

You can hear for yourself (mp3 player required).

And, just to clarify for the mainstream news media hounds, chaos and disorder and mayhem IS NOT THE SAME as anarchy. Please get it straight.

Clearly the topic of the day is Hurricane Katrina. But first, some context. Over the weekend, I had heard that the storm was heading inland and that New Orleans (among other towns) were, more or less, bracing for impact. So with that in mind, on Monday I headed north to a good friend’s camp, to hang out, let the kids run around, and help with some minor construction work.

So I remained largely ignorant of the impact and devastation of this storm. It wasn’t until a telephone call with my obviously shaken wife on Wednesday that it began to dawn on me how bad things are getting. entire towns have been wiped of the map; millions of people are now homeless; the sporting goods (ie, gun) section of Wal Marts are being looted; martial law has been declared; 80% of New Orleans is underwater. The list goes on and on. Total devastation, and the chaos that goes hand-in-hand with a population of house-pet automatons, utterly ill-equipped to deal with such devastation.

I have long been convinced that society as we in fat America know it cannot sustain itself. I don’t mean to be “gloom and doom” here, but the fact is, our lifestyle of extravagance, cars, cheap and plentiful produce in February, has a cost. And we are beginning to see some of the evidence of this cost. Ironically, many Americans believe that this cost is measured by the immediate impact of Katrina upon gas prices. This of course is short-sighted at best. America’s (and the world’s) addiction to petroleum may well be the direct cause of Katrina, not to mention last year’s tsunami, the terror attacks of 9/11, and who knows what other cataclysms of tomorrow.

The question in my mind is not if, but when our social structure collapses, and how I and those close to me will deal with said collapse. I have no doubt that it will get ugly, especially when Americans so deeply rooted in gun culture will release their fear, anger, and desperation through violence.

The martial law bit worries me, for what I hope are obvious reasons to any of my readers. Things Political continue to spiral downward, where those in power seek to consolidate that power in response to tragedy, riding the crest of untold suffering.

For those geeks who don’t know, Google Talk is live, and it works with GAIM, which is my favorite Linux jack-of-all-chats client. Actually, Google Talk uses the Free Jabber protocol, which seems to be a very good choice. I’ve known about Jabber for years, and it is supposed to be very cool, but I haven’t yet had a chance to try it.

You need a a GMail account to use this. And gmail is by invitation only, but if you need a gmail account, let me know. I have several invites left I’d happily pass on.

My Google username is freakwitch, so you should be able to figure out how to contact me by email or google talk from that.

Well, my laptop came today. The power jack was loose, so they tightened it, dusted the fan, updated the BIOS, checked it, cleared it, and shipped it back.

Problem is, sometime between the time it was tested and when I got it today, it was damaged. I got it, and the machine didn’t power up correctly, the LCD screen was dead, the WiFi modem won’t power up, and the metal casing around the USB jack on the side of the computer is visibly bent.

So, I get to ship it back to Toshiba. They apologized profusely and are putting a rush order on this 2nd repair. My best guess is that either a) the technician damaged it when he put the machine back together; or b) it was damaged in shipping. No way to tell.

Well, good news. Just found out that my laptop has already been repaired and is on a UPS truck in New England. It is scheduled for delivery tomorrow. w00t! And if it is indeed repaired correctly, kudos to Toshiba for taking care of this promptly and professionally. I should have contacted them first, when I noticed laptop weirdness from the get-go. Ah well.

To extend that thought a bit, while customer service amongst retailers is going in the toilet, the service from manufacturers seems to have increased to compensate. The rules of the game seem to be shifting, but it’s good to get a new awareness of said rules.

So if all goes well, I’ll have my laptop back tomorrow. This rocks! Now if I can only get to the new Ubuntu install. Gee, it’s only been out since April…

Though I see a new version of Ubuntu is scheduled for October release. It’s possible I may just wait until then and reinstall…. who knows.

In the meantime, I’ve been using my old desktop machine, which is (believe it or not) a 400MHz Celeron machine running PCLinuxOS, or rather an old version of that. I really need to reconfigure this machine as well; there are 2 hard drives and I want to back up all the data, wipe them clean, repartition them, and reinstall everything. But for tonight, I just opened up the case and vacuumed the prodigious amount of dust out of it. I even took out the power supply, opened it up, and vacuumed that. Sheesh. No wonder the fan was loud.

Also, Freakwitch’s new drummer is back from his vacation, so we have rehearsal tomorrow night. Looking forward to that.

Bob Moog has died. For those who don’t know, he was to synthesizers what Leo Fender was to guitars.

I just found a new paper that look interesting: From free software to street activism & vice versa: an introduction. From the abstract:

Contemporary societies have now endorsed computer technology, to the point of turning its use into an attractive social duty. But while some computers power market-economy, other machines remain busy with myriads of software alternatives, counter-initiatives & community offensives. What follows is a quick walk-through some of the cracks in the official computer picture; a surface exploration of the convergence between digital alternatives and political subversives.

This paper looks like it covers similar ground to some of my own writings on the subject, though most of my writings are more informed by marxist theory than anarchist theory. Gonna read it now, maybe there will be more comments.

I stopped at a gas station today after hiking to get something to drink. I noticed that the bottled water was nearly as expensive as soda. Think about it: Maine is full of springs and bottlers. The cost to extract fresh water from mother earth, purify it, bottle it, and distribute it to the public means I’m paying $1.29 per half-liter, which converts to $9.77 per gallon.

This means, as my friend Yo has pointed out, that gasoline is still by far the least expensive liquid one can buy at a gas station, unless they happen to have big gallon jugs of windshield washer fluid for a buck or two.

Think about it: they are getting water from a well, and gasoline, despite everyone bitching about the price, despite the huge costs to drill deeply for crude, process it into gasoline, and distribute it, is still about 1/4 the price of water.

Even with gasoline prices higher than ever, it is important to remember that in America we do not pay what it actually costs to produce. Gasoline prices will continue to go up, since we are past the critical mass of peak oil. It is becoming more and more scarce, and the economic well-being of those in power depends on it. Eventually, it will get too expensive and the economy will crash until we can find alternative ways to ship products than by truck, plane, etc.

Hold on tight, folks. We’re in for a rough ride, I just don’t know how long it’s gonna last.

OK, so my laptop hassles continue into their 4th week. In mid-July I ordered a replacement cable from an online retailer; I ordered a cable that their website said would work with the Toshiba M35 series (I have the M35X-S149). A few days later, the cable came, but it’s not the right one. So I got them to issue a pickup, I sent the cable back, and expected the correct one to be sent out immediately, which is what the phone operator said would happen.

10 days pass.

Still nothing.

So I look, and my checking account has been credited for the original order, minus a restocking fee. WTF?

I call them back, they say they will refund the restocking fee, which of course takes 5-7 business days to show up. Meanwhile, I’m still here, waiting for a laptop that will work. So I ask the guy if there is anything he can do to expedite the order, as all I’ve ever wanted is a cable that works. He puts me on hold for several minutes, during which my cellphone dropped the call. I call him back, and leave a voicemail saying to call me back to let me know what’s up.

Another week passes.

So today, I call back to find out what’s up, and they tell me they cannot refund the restocking fee. Excuse me? I’ve already been promised that refund. So after going round for 30 minutes, he finally agrees to refund the restocking fee, but the correct cable I need is out of stock now. Of course. So I just told him to refund it and I’ll go elsewhere for the order.

Now, call me crazy. But I have an extensive background in retail. Whenever we made a mistake, we would always do backflips to make it right. Is retail changing that much? I had a similar unhelpful retail experience the last time I ordered computer gear online. Perhaps it’s just that I’m ordering stuff online; without an angry customer screaming in the face of an employee, it’s easier for a phone operator to go by the book, and stick to “company policy.” And of course, the fundamental policy of any company is to extract as much cash as possible from its customers, while minimizing its expenses in relentless pursuit of profit. Mechanistic thinking at its finest.

So, I think now I’m off to the place where I got the laptop, to have them look at it and see what they can do with it. I should have done this weeks ago.

Yesterday, August 6, 2005, was spent among friends revelling outside, sitting around the bonfire, playing music, and generally celebrating. This is in stark contrast to those who happened to be living their lives in Hiroshima, Japan, exactly 60 years previously. Those people, no matter what their plans for the day were, may have noticed an airplane flying overhead around quarter after 8 in the morning; shortly thereafter there would have been a bright flash. People who saw the flash would have been instantly vaporized by the heat, torn apart by the shock wave, or left to slowly die in agony from radiation poisoning. Before it was over, 140,000 people were dead, not including the countless people whose lives were degenerated by the radioactive poison in the Hiroshima ecosystem for decades after the blast.

This, of course, was the first ever use (and along with the Nagasaki blast a few days later, the only time such weapons have been used) of a nuclear warhead. This event would, of course, change foreign relations for decades to come. The biggest
impact of this event, I believe, is that the world had to come to terms with the idea that when dealing with the United States government, the world was dealing with a government that was without question willing to use nuclear weapons to further its agenda.

Think about that for a moment.

We who were raised and educated in the US were programmed to believe that Truman made the decision to drop the weapons in order to hasten the end of the war, to save “1 million lives” that would be lost when the US tried to invade mainland Japan. As if instantly vaporizing over a hundred thousand people can be rationalized away.

And even more twisted is the fear of nuclear attack from the “Ruskies” that proliferated all through the cold war. The main fear is that They(tm) would do to us what We(tm) have been unafraid to do to others.

Paranoia will destroy ya.

Anyway, Truthout has a good writeup on this grim anniversary.