Author: Tim Jarrett

Adam: the politics of talking

In a pair of good blog entries, Adam discusses the thought process that goes into participating in class discussions at HBS. For that matter, a lot of the thought process is the same at Sloan. I like the point about stale hands. I think the same is true about other discussion forums. There’s nothing more annoying that finding a discussion that was finished months ago bubbling up again because someone stumbled upon it and had to add his $0.02.
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iSync, therefore iAm

With my wireless dead, it took me a day to find out that iSync had finally been released (in beta). Pluses: great interface, reasonable speed syncing to my iPod and my .Mac account. Minuses: didn’t detect my iPod automatically when plugged in (there’s a “Scan for devices” button); my sync’d address book doesn’t show up in Webmail at my .Mac account; it wasn’t smart enough to figure out that I had manually exported a .ics file from iCal to my iPod and created duplicate entries.
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Rainy Seattle day

We got Larry safely off yesterday after wandering the Public Market for a while. (In case you were wondering, the Athenian Inn is long on atmosphere and view, short on staff and food.) We decided to go to see Mario on Sunday and napped and gardened yesterday prior to going to dinner at Arvind and Kim’s. Excellent company and Indian food.

It’s raining today so it’s a good chore day. Brining a chicken for roasting later, organizing the files, laundry, transferring prescriptions from Massachusetts. Ah, domesticity.
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Wireless gateway resources

Apple hasn’t adjusted its price points downwards on its wireless networking gear to compensate for the general industry trend. This is ironic, because Apple was a prime mover in making WiFi more popular and therefore driving prices down. The net effect is that I&8217;m wondering whether I should look elsewhere for a replacement wireless router.

I started trying to find a comparison matrix of the different models on the market through Google. Fortunately for me, the 802.11b/WiFi blog has already done the legwork to compare the feature sets, though their comparison chart needs to be updated to cover Microsoft’s entry into the market. Adam suggests the SMC model with print server in the discussion group (registration required). It looks like one of a couple of good entries.

Wireless hiatus

The good news: Doc got his base station back (the one that was lost a month ago at Linux World).

The bad news: my original graphite base station has bitten the dust. It continuously flashes amber and red lights (before now it would intermittently cycle into red and then back to normal functioning). It’s outside the range of known bad serial numbers, which means we’ll have to pay for a new one. Maybe I’ll have to put off that new DVD player for a month or two.
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Birth of the Bush Doctrine

Greg points to the Al Gore speech and points out some interesting parallels between now and 1991, when the campaign was under way and Gore was part of a team hammering Senior about the economy.

Because of Greg’s link, I finally went back and read Gore’s speech. And I have to say, I’m actually pretty impressed. The speech echoes my thoughts of the past six months:

At this fateful juncture in our history it is vital that we see clearly who are our enemies, and that we deal with them. It is also important, however, that in the process we preserve not only ourselves as individuals, but our nature as a people dedicated to the rule of law …

What this doctrine does is to destroy the goal of a world in which states consider themselves subject to law, particularly in the matter of standards for the use of violence against each other. That concept would be displaced by the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States.

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Lyric revisionism in service of products

Just heard the first commercial to use music from Moby’s new album 18 (as opposed to his completely licensed album Play): an Intel commercial using “We Are All Made of Stars.” To begin with, using Moby’s song for a commercial promoting burning mix CDs is pretty cool. However, they revised the chorus: Instead of “People they come together/People they fall apart/No one can stop us now/Cause we are all made of stars,” they substitute “We are all made of stars” for “People they fall apart.”

Why the substitution? I think it makes it a weaker song. Is it to avoid any mention at all of negative things, fearing that we weak consumers will freak out? It’s very sad, I think, that advertising agencies think so little of us. After all, Windows 95 was sold with a song whose chorus featured the line “You make a grown man cry,” and people bought it in droves. (Granted, they cut the song before the line. But at least they didn’t alter the parts that they played.)

Later: Just heard the commercial again, and damned if they didn’t play the song unaltered. So much for punditry.
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Food porn blog: the Julie/Julia Project

Pointed to by Scott Rosenberg: the Julie/Julia project. Julie Powell is cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking: “365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.” A series of priceless quotations, including my favorite:

“How in God’s name do people do multicourse meals? This is French Cooking for the servantless American cook, remember?!” (menu: Potage Veloute aux Champignons, Coquelets sur Canapes, Pommes de Terre a L’Huile, Crème Plombieres Pralinee)

Somebody give that woman a job at Gourmet. This is more entertaining reading than that magazine has been for a long time.
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Senate blocks firefighting initiative, saves trees

Follow up to my previous article: Greg reports that the Senate is sitting on Bush’s proposal to fight forest fires by giving the logging companies authority to clear old growth forests and immunity from enforcement suits under the National Environmental Policy Act. Tom Daschle has forced a “supermajority” vote to pass the bill, meaning that it won’t go anywhere for a while, if ever.
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Home improvement continued

Working from home this morning. Our long awaited window replacement contractors are here. They’re starting with the windows with broken seals in the skywall; next week, they’ll move on to replacing the old windows in the original part of the house. I’m amazed at how much work I’m getting done…