Where the hell have I been?

Well, for starters, Lila Zoe Maller was born March 19 at 3:30am. She and Michelle both doing great. We’re in a new apartment, having moved in one week before Lila was born. My temporary desk is still only partially set up and I still haven’t found all of my reference books. On top of that, my office is under construction. We’ve had a steady stream of guests, which has been wonderful, but I feel like I haven’t gotten any work accomplished in a month.

The trick to getting settled in and back to work after a move has something to do with not having a baby.

I’m also behind on my email, since Lila was born I’ve received over 600 pieces of spam. More and more seems to be evading my spam filters through various misspellings and obnoxious address harvesting letters. I’m doing my best to catch up, if I haven’t replied to your letter, please don’t think I’m ignoring you, there’s a mountain of crap to sort through.

A few observations about baby stuff:

• The diaper Genie is a brilliant hack. I have a pretty clear image in my head of the garage invention that preceded it. My proverbial hat is off to whoever it was who thought this up.
• Baby socks are just insanely cute. Folding them almost makes me giggle. However considering how much laundry we need to do these days, the thrill will likely wear off soon.
• Babies grow fast. It’s only been 2 weeks, but Lila is already substantially larger than when we brought her home.
• Music for Airports is apparently also music for babies.

partially back online…

It’s official, in fact we’re already halfway there…

movin’ on up…

Now all that’s left to do is clean, paint, finish packing, move, have the baby and figure out how to be parents. Oh and squeeze work in there somewhere. After that I can relax.

The site’s still getting hammered. I’m simplifying and removing SSIs while trying to make sure things still work.

Calling CGIs from SSIs makes the web server choke on it’s lunch.
Calling CGIs from SSIs makes the web server choke on it’s lunch.
Calling CGIs from SSIs makes the web server….

I’m feeling a bit dumb at the moment, compounded by the fact that I’ve been meaning to make that process more efficient but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Well, now I have. Thanks Bill, sorry for gumming everything up.

Over the past month or so I’ve been emailed about a dozen Nigerian scam letters. The first one freaked me out and I forwarded it to the FBI. But as more and more came, they became entertaining, sort of like the Rejuvenique Infomercial.

I just found The Spam Letters where these Nigerian money scams have helped create a very entertaining exchange. This site would make a great book. via Dog Door of Death

The Privatization of Our Culture A deliciously reactionary read. found on the always excellent Follow Me Here

Worthy thoughts made public are immediately beyond their thinker’s control. Free and open ideas survive, closed and restricted ideas accelerate their eventually disappearance. Sometimes quality will free an idea, but not always. Thoughts are as alive as the beings that have them, and judged by faster and more merciless evolutionary laws.

All the money and all the lawyers in the world can’t shove the genie back into the bottle.

I would spend much more time worrying about intellectual property issues if people would stop killing each other in the name of various gods. When/if the world settles down again I look forward to focusing on important things that seem otherwise trivial by comparison.