Category Archives: Personal

The Post-Xmas Phrase Parents Learn to Hate

The post-Xmas phrase parents learn to hate: “Some assembly required.”

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Notes on Travel (Pitfalls of Orbitz Dept.), Xmas in the Dark, and an Uncertain Number of Septic Tanks

Assuming the existence of some future point when I have more energy, I will explain further why our bedroom is now in a different part of the house, and why my desk is in that room too. The story involves architects, a contractor, vast sums of money, permits, the acquisition and filling of a 10×15 climatically controlled storage space, the expectation of permits, an as-yet-undetermined number of real and proposed septic tanks, vast sums of money, the partial destruction of our kitchen, the Sisyphean expectation of the final permits, and of course random and unpredictable delay.

Meanwhile, however, as we appear to have hit a period of delay until the waveform number of future septic tanks collapses to an integer and either produces a permit or a lawsuit, I have cancelled my plans to cancel my plans to go to England for two weeks of Xmas revel with the in-laws. Rather than stay here and grade exams, I will use my ticket. [Much more than you probably want to know about the dangers of buying air tix online in the extended entry.]

I am not the only person I know who abandons Miami when the weather is at its coolest (ie just warm), driest (ie just a little damp) and most perfect in order to go spend a fortnight in the exciting outskirts of Didsbury, a suburb in the outskirts of Manchester, England, which is a somewhat dark and wet and cold and dark and wet and cold place at this time of year. After all, my wife and children do it too. But they are 50 to 100% British, so they may be genetically predisposed to enjoy four daily hours of what is euphemistically called “sunlight”. (Lest I be suspected of Manchester-bashing, it's a great town, and often very nice in the summer time.)

I intend to keep adding to the blog while in Didsbury, but as my internet access will be POTS rather than broadband, and metered POTS at that, I may have fewer posts, and they are likely to have much more about England and the rest of the UK than is the normal fare here.

Continue reading

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Off to Amsterdam

The whole digital world is converging on Geneva for the WSIS talks. Proving again that I am incapable of herd activities even when it would be good for me, I'm going to Amsterdam to participate in a Round Table of the “Experts Group on Telecommunications Law” being organzied by the always impressive IViR, the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam . The modest paper title I was assigned (in 20 pages, please!) was “International and National Regulation of the Internet”. But what they really wanted to hear about, it transpires, is about ICANN/ITU and what it means for registry regulation. Short answer: wrong question.

It's a short, brutal trip: out today, back late Sunday. I imagine there are good Internet cafes in Amsterdam in which case I will keep the blog updated…and then change all my passwords when I get home.

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My e-mail is Down

I route all my e-mail to my university account, and the machine there is having a Very Bad Day. All of my directories got changed to a 'read-only file system' overnight, and basically, nothing works. Mail sent to me is either in a holding pattern, or lost, until further notice. Update: Fixed, as of this evening.

On the subject of mail, I'm getting so much spam these days that it is overwhelming my procmail filters (I still use PINE to read my mail—it's virus-proof). More and more junk is getting through. As I tighten my filters, some legit messages are being tagged as spam, which means I end up having to wade through the trash folder to rescue them which is a serious waste of time.

Because I've been online a long time, my address is in every spammer's directory there is. I'm seriously thinking of starting over with a new address and configuring all my existing ones to auto-reply a .gif file with a picture of the new address—in order to foil bots. (I put my e-mail address in the published text of articles, and I want a way for readers to continue to be able to contact me.) I know this is unfair to people with visual impairments who depend on readers to read their mail to them. That and being pretty busy with other stuff, are my excuses for putting up with the flood for now.

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Off to FSU

I'm off to FSU to give a paper on national ID cards, and won't be back until late Monday. Getting around Florida is actually more difficult than going out of state. But at least there are some direct flights to Tallahassee. In January I'm going to Gainsville, and it turns out that it's not so easy to get there….

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Travel Notes

There are things I learn from traveling, and things I re-learn.

Learned: MIA — never good at the best of times — has managed to get worse. In order to serve the herding needs of the security services, you now have to walk three times as far to get to low-numbered “C” gates … which is where the flights to NY leave from. It now feels even more like Laguardia at its worst.

Re-Learned: When we’re having lovely weather in Miami, the rest of the country, is having seriously crummy weather. Example: my flight to NY started its decent to JFK, only to abort rather suddenly. Seems the winds were gusting at 70 MPH, which is too much. So we got diverted to Baltimore to re-fuel before trying again.

Re-learned: NY streets are a lot cleaner than the NY of my childhood memories.

Learned: The conference hotel looks out onto the site of the World Trade Center. It’s even more depressing that I would have thought. It feels very odd to look down from the 52nd floor onto the small crowd milling about outside the fence.

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