Live from Austin!

Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I’ve only just found out that there are terms for guys who really like hanging around with cute lesbians: dyke daddy and dutch boy.

Dyke daddy. I wonder if you can get that on a T-shirt?

I’ve got the wireless router accessing my dial-up ISP. Next step is to get a wireless card for the other Mac, then I can get cable modem…

It seems there’s some incompatibility between the router and IE on the Mac. Oh well, maybe a firmware upgrade’ll fix it.

Went to a bi brunch at Pho Pasteur in Harvard Square. Excellent food. Afterwards I browsed the music stores and somehow managed to avoid spending any money.

I hear that Harlan Ellison will be making an appearance at MIT. I’m very tempted to go, given that I’d probably class him as the greatest living American author—but as I think I’ve mentioned before, my general rule is to avoid meeting artists whose work I admire. And Harlan Ellison is known for being particularly prickly.

My results on the “How straight-acting are you?“ quiz:

Your score is 107

LEVEL 6—MOSTLY FEMININE

People are starting to place bets that you are gay. You do a lot of things and have a lot of behaviors that are the stereotypical gay feminine traits. You enjoy exploring your feminine side. Most people just assume you are gay, and go on with it, which is just fine with you.

I think that’s a bit much. On the other hand, everyone at school thought I was gay, and everyone at university thought I was gay, and that was when I was trying to act straight.

I wish I could burn incense in the office.

Gartner Group is warning businesses that they should ditch Microsoft IIS immediately, unless they like being subjected to virus attacks every week.

Got an SMC7004AWBR 4-port Wireless Broadband Router.

It’s broken.

It works, except that there’s no way to get to the main configuration screen. All the other navigator links work; I can set up firewall options, define a DMZ machine, and so on. I just can’t actually tell it my ISP or anything useful like that. I can plug it into my existing router and use it as a wireless access point, or alternatively it’ll do as a doorstop.

I’ve sent e-mail to SMC. Maybe they’ll have a simple solution by tomorrow night. If not, back to Micro Center it goes…

Oh well, at least I now know my Airport card works.

My Airport card arrived. Installed it in the G4, which was tougher than I expected. Getting the machine open was easy, though I had to unplug a couple of the cables. It also didn’t take me long to work out that the piece of green PCB attached to the Airport card had to be some kind of extra part for use in other computers (iBooks maybe?) and not something I had to use.

The bit that took the time, though, was working out why the card wouldn’t go in the slot. It turned out that the manual showed it being inserted the wrong way up, and there’s a pin which is invisible from the angle I was looking, which prevents you from doing that.

Anyway, I now have IEEE 802.11b support. Tomorrow evening I’ll go to Micro Center and get a wireless router and firewall.

E-mail to Ted Kennedy:

I’ll keep this short:

You voted for a bill authorizing acting President Bush to start a war, in whatever manner he sees fit?

What on earth were you thinking?

I expected better of you, of all people.

The bill in question was S.J.RES. 23, and Barbara Lee was the only person to vote against it, just like she was the only person to vote against giving the President unrestricted power to order the bombing of Yugoslavia.

I saw Time and Newsweek on the newsstand in Harvard Square.

Let’s face it, we all knew what this week’s cover picture was going to be. But just for once, I’d have liked to have been surprised. I’d have liked them to do something tasteful, something which treats the subject with dignity and sorrow, rather than exploiting it.

But no, we got big lurid photographs of planes flying into buildings and exploding in a searing fireball of aviation fuel.

They could have printed a plain black cover with the word “After”. They could have printed the names of victims. They could have picked out photos of some of the heroes who gave their lives trying to save others. They did none of those things; they went for sensationalism, exploitation and overkill; they forced America yet again to look at an image already seared into the collective consciousness. Maybe I’m misreading the national consciousness, but I just don’t think anybody needs or wants to see that fucking image again.

CNN is worse. They now have a seemingly permanent graphic “America at war” with the latest scare headline below it, and round the clock coverage as we play the “Where’s Osama?” game. Loving profiles of war hardware are interspersed with interviews with military insiders about how much butt we’re going to kick, where we’re going to kick it, when we’re going to kick it, and so on.

Of course, CNN would love a war. Especially a really big, messy one. Their ratings always go up in a war. You may think I’m being exceptionally cynical to ascribe such base motives to them, but just go watch the coverage for a few minutes and look for the subtext.

Yes, we’re at war. They haven’t told us who we’re at war with, but as soon as they decide, we’ll sure be at war with them, so keep watching. We’re going to kick some ass. We’re not sure where we’re going to kick it, or who’s ass it’s gonna be, but ass will be kicked, and you’ll see it here. Look at the shiny ships, look at the big planes. And now, a word from our sponsor, the US Army. Enroll now and bomb a raghead! So, when can we expect to start enjoying a real war? Let’s ask an expert in disinformation from the Pentagon, who helps us write our stories…

I don’t know anyone who wants a war. Like with the whole Clinton fiasco, there seems to be a total disconnect between the media and the population. Then again, the People’s Republic isn’t exactly typical of America as a whole, and there are plenty of people on the net who are willing to stomp along with the drumbeat.