Vacations of the Spirit

Google is like a dangerous drug.

2007-12-29T11:44:00.000-05:00

Google is receiving the exact same feelings of admiration, respect, and trust as Microsoft once received. (Yes, back before it was known by all as an evil monopolist.) Some would say that Google has already passed that point and it's already obvious to them that Google is teh eeeevil.

But I'm hopelessly addicted to Gmail. As much as I want to NOT place my trust in Google, it's there.

It's soooo easy! And nice, and elegant. (although, today I noticed they are adding more color and details to it, which could be the edge of an approaching crapification front)

I would really rather use something on the command line. Maybe mutt, or alpine, or even gnus in emacs. But so far as I can tell, there is nothing that rivals gmail's features in a local application, much less in a console/terminal/command-line-interface/text-only application. Even Thunderbird (if I wanted to use it) doesn't come close.

I want the responsiveness, the local control, and the privacy of a locally run mail reader. But I also want threaded sorting that works. In fact, I don't even want to see the heirarchy of messages on a thread. I just want to see the subject line and when I select it, I want to go to the newest message in the conversation... I also want to see the first bit of the newest message next to that subject line. I want spam filtering that works really really well. I want labels and filters that are easy to set up. For that matter, I want the whole thing to be easy to set up, without having to figure out the difference between MUAs and MTAs and MDAs. So far it's MIA.

So I'm thinking maybe I'll just learn how the whole mail system works and start using the traditional unix "mail" command. Maybe that will give me the base of understanding that's necessary to set up mutt and postfix and some sort of spam filter in a way that approximates what I want... and then, maybe I can get some serious work done.

Some people just can't catch a break...

2007-10-09T10:50:00.000-04:00

... or a rock.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Man still wearing jail jumpsuit caught in drug bust

A man recently released from jail couldn't wait to get his hands on some drugs. So he headed to Roosevelt Circle, a notorious drug market in Marietta.

But the dealers weren't real, and neither was the crack cocaine they sold.
They were undercover Marietta cops.

Robert Lafferty was among 20 people arrested Friday, police said, at three hot spots for illegal drug sales: Roosevelt Circle, Allgood Road and the intersection of Allgood and Fairground Street.

Lafferty was the only one dressed for his next stop.

He was still wearing a blue jail jumpsuit.

"His shoestrings weren't even back in his shoes," said Officer Mark Bishop, a Marietta police spokesman.

Goodbye Coffee

2007-10-06T21:22:00.000-04:00

For the past two weeks I have had no coffee. I'm drinking more tea than I used to, but still not nearly as much caffeine. Coffee was fun sometimes, but I'm glad to say goodbye to it. It screwed with my sleeping patterns. It made me manic and just slightly out of touch with reality. And every high point of raised mood would be followed a few hours later by a low point.

I've decided it simply isn't worth it.

I'm sleeping better. I'm waking up every day at the same time (even on weekends). And I feel more balanced and in control of my self.

I am curious about the idea of eliminating all overtly mind-altering substances from my diet. Right now--as I write this while drinking a beer--that seems a bit far off. Maybe I'll make some huge lifestyle changes. But if I do, it will happen gradually... one step at a time.

Burma / Myanmar

2007-09-30T09:02:00.000-04:00

I am amazed at the courage of these people, monks and citizens, who stand up to murderers with guns, demanding their freedom.

It encourages me that people will not put up with indignity and totalitarianism forever. Even facing death, they confront power.

I hope there will be a miracle and somehow the bloodshed will end with freedom for everyone there. But this seems unlikely.

(The picture of the monk is taken from Flickr user, honey-bee's collection. The original is available here. It and this edited version are distributed under the Creative Commons attribution license. The author of the original photo has made it available to anyone under the terms of that license, thus my use of it should not be seen as any sort of endorsement by that author of my opinions.)

My Wife's Blog

2007-09-12T00:44:00.000-04:00

Good stuff. Some nice pictures. Sadly, this one is real.

F1r57!

2007-09-12T00:20:00.001-04:00

This is my first post. A couple of things have convinced me to start keeping a blog.

This blog post
Hit my head pretty hard skateboarding last Friday, and it's got me thinking of trying new things.
I'm a dad now. Maybe my kid will want to read this stuff someday... humor me.
I used to write more and found it very therapeutic. Nowadays, all I write are emails (often arguing about politics with friends) and legal documents. It's been a while since I wrote free-standing prose.
Probably some other reasons I'm not thinking of right now.