I didn’t watch the Oscars (there’s a war on), but if Bill Simmons promises to watch with his mom and stepdad and write about it again each year, I promise to never watch again, ever.

Ralph Peters in the New York Post:

We are not going to be lured into a “Stalingrad” in Baghdad. Ignore the prophets of doom, who have been wrong consistently. As this column has steadily maintained, we have time, but Saddam doesn’t. If we have to sit in a ring around Baghdad for several weeks while the last resistance is dismantled in innovative ways, then that’s what we’ll do.

I’ve been thinking that for a while, a war of attrition would be the smartest tactic for taking populated cities while minimizing damage to people and infrastructure. Speaking of which, it’s amazing that the lights are still on in Baghdad.

The Command Post has become the best source for news on the war. It’s a blog collective with people all over the world helping filter the news into a coherent timeline.

Bowling for Columbine won the Oscar for best documentary. Too bad it’s not a documentary. (more here and here and here and here)

Update: And here and here…

Watching the all-live coverage from reporters embedded with various military units includes the constant sense that we could see something absolutely horrible, suddenly and without any warning. This is very real.

Satellite images of Iraq.

I wonder how many of people protesting in Times Square are watching the bombing of Baghdad on any of the televisions which are all over the place there.

Anyone care what I think about Iraq? Nah, I didn’t think so.

Award for lamest news report: Runner-up, CNN’s overhead war table. Painstakingly recreated from any number of old war movie cliches. The undisputed winner is MSNBC’s interactive map. When the anchors clicked it, little animated fires appeared under their cursors. War as SimCity. Fox is going to do well in the ratings game simply for avoiding this sort of lameness.

I’m going to be very tired tomorrow and don’t expect to get much accomplished for the next few days.

Bruce wrote to ask if I was ok since the site hasn’t been updated since last month.

Yes, I’m fine. Lots of things going on. Lila and I had a miserable cold for a week. Being sick is a drag. Caring for a sick baby sucks. Caring for a sick baby while sick yourself is beyond exhausting. Scratch 5 days there.

I’m an Inc. Joe Maller Inc. was officially incorporated in the State of New York on March 3, 2003. Several states can file all the initial paperwork online with one of the most illegible web forms I’ve ever seen.

Packaging for Joe’s Filters is closer than ever. I now have silkscreened CDs and DVD cases, the rest of the printed stuff is being finished up now.

I’m speaking at the BOSFCPUG meeting this Friday March 14 in Boston (Dedham) Massachusetts.

I figured out and wrote a three-step workaround for serving Named Virtual Host sites with Rendezvous and Apache. I’m trying something new with this one and sending it around to see if someone besides me will publish it. Someone will. Update: Someone did.

Working on a few other sites besides my own. One is nearly autonomous, two others are in various stages of completion.

Stuff broke. There was a server glitch with Joe’s Filters last week which was likely my fault, I suspect an accidental synchronization which temporarily hosed the db connections. Once I noticed (thanks to everyone who emailed) I was able to fix everything in about 20 minutes with only one residual screwup to fix that night.

Our new stroller broke. This one got replaced by Buy Buy Baby, but having seen exactly how poorly designed the new Maclaren Techno XT strollers are, I expect this one will also break soon. Hopefully we won’t be too far from home this time. Lila will be a year old next week, and we’re on our sixth stroller. Reminds me why I don’t miss having a car, since there are too many accidents all the time, and then you need Car accident lawyers to get a proper compensation when this happens.

Speaking of cars, my drivers license expired and I can’t get a new one without my social security card. Which I haven’t seen since fourth grade. The joy of visiting the Social Security office to get a new card has yet to be fully experienced.

Our two-month old vacuum cleaner broke but then fixed itself. I threatened it with a screwdriver.

I finally found an LCD monitor for under $200. The price has gone up a little, but after the rebate mine was $199. It’s being used as my second computer/server monitor, the amount of desk space recovered by giving up a 17″ CRT is fantastic.

My back hurts. I’m not sleeping enough. I’m tired of cold weather and I’m looking forward to spring and sandals and seeing the color green again.

Still working on more filters.

Finally saw Princess Mononoke and now I have a Kodama obsession.

I went to the Daniel Pearl memorial a few weeks ago. Dr. Judea Pearl, Daniel’s father, was there and spoke first. An interfaith service, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s speech was one of the most hopeful things I’ve heard in a while. Reverend James K Karpen read the Paradoxical Commandments which were apparently among Mother Theresa’s last words and the first I’d heard of them. Gil Morgenstern’s violin communicated centuries of history with a piece that drifted between soft poetic moments occasionally fractured by discordant notes like chips in smooth marble. I’m glad I went.

Too many of my sentences start with the letter i.

Following current world events is very frustrating. I’m grateful that so much of my life up to now was lived in relative peace. It’s going to be a very long time before that can be said again.

Helping a friend research a past employer I realized that quite a lot of everything created during the Internet boom is totally gone. Barely any record of people and thousands and thousands of sites just completely evaporated. All that excitement, all those lives spent. Sometimes the past fades slowly away, other times it just vanishes.

I almost wish I’d just kept making books and drawings.