My Happy Life

Last week, I momentarily overcame my fear and trepidation and submitted my registration application for JournalCon Austin. Shortly thereafter I returned to my senses, and ever since I've been saying, "My god, what have I done?"

The Web Writers' Weekend brings together journal writers from across the country. Austin was selected to host the event this year.

This is all fine except for one thing. I ain't no journaler. I'm a blogger.

I know that we are all supposed to hold hands and sing kumbaya, because it's all one big, happy web. That's crap. Journaling and blogging are two different things.

Sure, there are some people that blur the line. Maybe it's hard to articulate the differences. Nonetheless, if I threw up a web page and asked, "Blog or not," nine out of ten dentists would agree. (Memo to self: register amiblogornot.com.)

So, I feel a bit like a spy infiltrating the enemy camp. Or the ugly American visiting a foreign land. It's a bit scary, but it could be an exciting trip. Who knows, I might even run into a few fellow bloggers along the way.

I have been dangled by my ankle--and almost dropped--over the edge of ecstasy.

Phew! This is to satisfy a dare. I'm sorry you people had to see it.

I just received news that Bill Kennedy passed away yesterday. I've been fortunate to know him as a friend, and privileged to have him as a mentor.

Dear Self, Your days are more productive when there is coffee in the cupboard.

Get out your rubber chicken and mojo hand. I have just discovered the weirdest, most mysterious bug ever encountered.

I signed off on my broadband installation yesterday morning, but later in the day discovered it was messed up. Frequently, the network would freeze up, and, after a delay, the CABLE indicator on the modem would start flashing, indicating (what I believe to be) retraining after loss of signal.

If I left the system quiescent, everything would be fine. Streaming audio would continue to stream. The occasional email message would come through. It was when I did stuff that started creating connections, primarily web surfing, the problem would occur. The problem was highly intermittent, but would eventually be triggered with enough clicky-clicky on links.

Now, here is the scary part. If I point my web browser to E-Bay, the page will not load and the failure will be triggered. No other web site does this consistently, and E-Bay does so without fail.

And if that isn't strange enough, it gets even weirder. This happens only when I use the Mozilla browser. If I use some other browser, such as Opera or Lynx, the page comes up just fine.

I am at a total loss to explain how, under the known physical laws of this universe, such a failure mode could happen. Therefore, the obvious answer is that it isn't happening, and I am just hallucinating.

Happy broadband to me!

It was over a year ago that I lost my broadband Internet connection. The cost of a business-class service became beyond my budget. Plus, my old ISP initiated a novel business strategy: let's act like a bunch of morons and chase off our customers. The parent company eventually crashed into bankruptcy, which I assume was the desired result of their "act like morons" business strategy.

Since then, I've been running across a 56K dialup modem attached to my router. It was serviceable, because I moved the servers out of the apartment and into a downtown data center. But, still, it sucks.

This morning, my cable Internet service was turned up. First thing I did was download a badly needed bunch of operating system upgrades. Next thing I did was point my browser to Shoutcast to tune into some of those delicious music streams I so badly missed. I was aghast to find I'd stepped into the middle of an empty ghost town.

It seems in the interim, the big Internet content providers succeeded in killing off the burgeoning Internet radio movement. Very few of the stations have survived. My favorite station had to abandon the open MP3 streaming format for a lower fidelity, proprietary system. I don't have a problem paying a subscription fee, but no way am I going to pay for a non-portable, proprietary format stream.

Why is it that whenever the big content providers get involved, it all goes to shit?

Six months ago I couldn't even spell blogger. Now I is one.

It's showtime!

For the past several weeks I've been acting as an unpaid, volunteer lobbyist for EFF-Austin, slogging through a couple of bills currently before the Texas legislature. The session ends in two weeks, so everything is now coming to a head.

I've been working on two bills, one on open source software and another on spam. In both cases, we're fighting some powerful interests who don't see things our way, like Microsoft. That, naturally, makes us the underdog. We are, however, doing what we have to do and our cases are strong.

It's been quite an experience, getting in there and watch them make the sausage. I've invested a tremendous amount of time, energy and sweat--and pissed off several clients in the process. Here's hoping it all comes to some good.

Link: Fear and Loathing ...

My entry for Austin Blogswap Day has been posted to Jeremy Kraybill's weblog. The idea was that on Monday, a bunch of Austin Bloggers would pen guest entries for each other's blogs. It was all great fun--except for a certain somebody who didn't get his homework done on time...

As previously threatened, I did attend tonight's public hearing on the proposed No-Smoking Ordinance for Austin. It was a surprisingly difficult experience. Further, I encountered an incident so bizarre and surreal, I'm still reeling four hours later.