Author: Tim Jarrett

Bush: Who said that, again?

Washington Post: A Sound Bite So Good, the President Wishes He Had Said It. The Post catches Bush lifting from Al Gore, of all people, in his famous comment about not allowing the budget to go into deficit “except during war, recession, or national emergency”:

In this space last week, it was noted that President Bush often tells audiences that he promised during the 2000 presidential campaign that he would allow the federal budget to go into deficit in times of war, recession or national emergency, but he never imagined he would “have a trifecta.” Nobody inside or outside the White House, however, had been able to produce evidence that Bush actually said this during the campaign.

Now comes information that the three caveats were uttered before the 2000 campaign — by Bush’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore.

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Take that, debunkers

Salon: Debunking Deep Throat’s debunkers. Hilarious article by Ken Hughes, associated with the University of Virginia Miller Center for Public Affairs project on the Nixon tapes. Hughes takes on a series of arguments made by two recent books that attempt to claim that Deep Throat and Bob Woodward could not have exchanged messages by marked newspapers and balcony flags by actually going to Woodward’s building and trying it out himself. A sample:

“If Deep Throat wanted a meeting — which was rare — there was a different procedure. Each morning, Woodward would check page 20 of his New York Times, delivered to his apartment house before 7 a.m. If a meeting was requested, the page number would be circled and the hands of a clock indicating the time of the rendezvous would appear in a lower corner of the page. Woodward did not know how Deep Throat got to his paper.”

Woodward’s a bit dim, Hughes thought, not for the first time. Deep Throat did not have to get to his specific copy of the Times. He just had to get his hands on a copy of the Times before 7 a.m. and leave it outside Woodward’s door. In American society, such work is often given to children. They are called “paperboys.” Or “paper carriers.” Or “newsies” by those with a taste for archaism.

Hughes had been a paperboy once, long ago. He knew the things that paperboys know.

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Ouch

Brutal marathon painting session last night, after the floor guys left. But at least 99.9% of the walls in the great room are painted. We ran out of paint, upper body strength, and patience at about 10:30 last night, and still need to get the corners of the ceiling with a trim pad and touch up a few spots. All things considered, though, not bad for 4.5 hours and some 25-foot walls. (Cathedral ceiling = hard to paint room.) My arms may talk to me again in a few hours.

The fun surprises of homeownership

We’re having a few floors redone in the house we bought. One of the floors is going to be replaced so that we can level it with a section of existing flooring in the adjacent space. The flooring guy ripped up a few boards at the edge of the flooring to be removed, and discovered that the floor had been “leveled” using a unique subflooring material: newspapers.

The

On the plus side, this dates the addition of the glassed in porch on the back of the house to within a few weeks of the 1984 Grammys. On the minus side, we now understand why that part of the floor was never quite level. 🙂

Silent blogroll addition

Quick shout out to Craig, whom I added to my blogroll yesterday. He’s a former coworker from my first job out of college—a very gifted programmer and occasional Slashdot contributor. Still in the greater DC area, he’s now working at a Maryland startup. And he doesn’t blog as often as he should. 🙂
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I’m a real homeowner now

Sorry about the lack of updates yesterday. I was busy becoming a real homeowner. To wit: painting the two-story vaulted ceiling in our great room. Walls to be done later today, assuming the floor refinishing guys knock off early enough to let the dust settle down (they’ll be sanding this morning).

Apologies to all who tune into this blog for scripting, Mac, music, or other stuff. This is really going to be the Jarrett House North blog for a few more days—at least until our things get here. I start work a week from today and from that point on should be able to think about things other than home improvement.

We’re there

As you may have guessed from the last two items, I’m in Seattle now, joining Lisa who’s been here since our closing on Tuesday. The house is…well, a little empty until our furniture gets here, but we’re starting to get things whipped into shape.

Lisa is currently deadheading some of the approximately one kajillion flowers in the back yard. Feels weird but good being a homeowner—and feels very good having WiFi (of course the base station came with me and not on the moving van), even if it’s another week until broadband. Gotta run to Costco and stock up now.

Weird parallel universe

Written Friday night about 11:10 PM EDT: I just spent a few minutes talking with my former seatmate. He had moved up a row and across an aisle, as we were sitting in the “narrow seats.” From there, I saw with amusement, he was making a wedding video on his TiBook with iMovie.

I just got into St. Louis—hey, there’s a first time for everything. Sitting in the gate waiting for Seattle. I found the only electrical outlet in the place. The other outlet is occupied by an iBook power cord.

But there’s no wireless signal, and there wasn’t any in Logan either. I have fallen into a parallel world where Apple laptops are almost as ubiquitous as WiFi hubs are in our, more connected universe.

Syncretism at 30,000 feet

Written Friday night around 9:25 PM EDT: I’m currently about 30,000 feet in the air, having left Boston behind about fifty minutes ago. I’m not thinking about Boston. On the contrary, I’m losing myself in Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and Sonic Youth’s Murray Street. I’ve just finished reading Chapter 33 in the section called “Hesed,” in which the narrator Casaubon describes the taking of his girlfriend Amparo in a Brazilian syncretic rite of possession by spirits, while listening to “Rain on Tin” and drinking a glass of American Airline’s “house merlot.” Powerful syncretic ingredients, these. You find yourself drawn in…

I’ve always done this, seeking explanation or maybe escape in external sources when major things like life changes are happening. Maybe that’s why I’m a link-pointing blogger. It’s not enough to proceed from first causes, what you yourself know, like those diarists with their LiveJournals; you have to connect yourself syncretically to everything around you. Maybe that’s the difference between Radio users and other bloggers. We aggregate, synthesize, syncretize right out of the box.

As Eco’s narrator says at the beginning of Chapter 34:

Diotallevi was to talk to us often about the late cabalism of Isaac Luria, in which the orderly articulation of the Sefirot was lost. Creation, Luria held, was a process of divine inhalation and exhalation, like anxious breathing or the action of a bellows.

“God’s asthma,” Belbo glossed.

Good man, that Belbo. He’s a born blogger. Give him a login on Instapundit.

The sunset and two twenty-something sarcastic youths are in the seats to my right; the window and the wing beyond, and darkness, to my left. Ahead the West Coast, my vocation (or is it an avocation?), behind the East Coast, my roots and my life to date.

I am breathing clearly, no anxiousness at all. Am I still creating?

Amazing how slow a day is…

Amazing how slow a day is when you’re killing time. I have an 8 pm flight that I’m trying to get changed to something earlier—so Lisa doesn’t have to pick me up at 1 am.

In the meantime, I’ve: had donuts with Charlie and Carie (on whose floor, surrounded by boxes, I slept last night—their lease is up today), seen part of “About a Boy” (giving up halfway through—I don’t think I can watch a Hugh Grant movie again without restraints), browsed through Borders and HMV, had lunch at John Harvards (where the bartender very nicely spotted me a free pint of Pale Ale as a farewell gift) and tea at Tealuxe. In other words, messed about. I hope the flight can be changed, as I’m running out of ways to mess about.

Packed, loaded, and ready to go

Ten hours later…

The moving team took a long time because their central office screwed up the permit. The van spent ten hours double parked, which meant that one of the three movers had to spend all day with the van.

Enough. The van is loaded, I am spending the night on someone else’s couch, and I have to wait until 8 pm to fly out tomorrow night. Gotta fill a last day in Boston. I think I know how to do it.

Waiting for the packers

The apartment has everything off the walls and most of the stuff that’s trash has been thrown out. Now I’m just waiting for the packers. It feels weird to be here and dialed up rather than wireless. I decided I’m carrying the base station with me, though. No way I’m going two weeks without wireless in Seattle, even if it’s still 56K.

Hell is late June in South Boston

Yahoo! tells me it’s 92° F outside, and I believe it. I was just lost for about two hours in South Boston trying to find the AT&T Broadband office so I could return our cable box.

South Boston is a little different from Boston proper. I walked the wrong way (thanks to bad directions) over a bridge that led over a railroad boneyard and under I-93, and to the home of the Boston Herald before I found my mistake. The drop location was on West Broadway, but I had just looked up the same number on Broadway—the street number didn’t exist, but that didn’t stop Yahoo from cheerily giving me directions on how to get to the grittiest part of the road under the I-93 overpass. Then the AT&T wireless operator couldn’t give me a direct number for the drop location, so I had to go through menu hell and patiently explain to the “customer service representative” that I just wanted to know how to get to the drop location.

Eventually I got turned around and headed the right way on West Broadway, past the boarded up church and parish of St. Peter and St. Paul (est. 1844), a bakery (closed), a low income housing complex (boarded up and quiet), a liquor store with elaborate murals for independence for Northern Ireland and the Dropkick Murphys logo. I finally found the drop location, turned in the box and remotes, and turned around and started back. Thank God for the otherwise unremarkable sub shop along the way back, or I’m pretty sure I would have dropped dead of heatstroke before getting back to the T.

Whose bright idea was it to make cable dependent on set top boxes that had to be returned to the cable company when terminating service? Every AT&T Broadband location I’ve ever found is in the ass end of nowhere.