Happy Winter Solstice!

[http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert (robert)]

Happy Winter Solstice!

In case you lose my e-mail address or contact information, please
confine your searches of me to:

http://www.whowhere.com
http://www.findmemail.com
http://www.emailbook.com
http://www.everythingemail.com
http://everythingemail.net

You can look me up by my work address/e-mail or my home address.  Of
course, you can always use keywords, too, which should be pretty obvious.
(See http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert/keywords.html .) (Note that you
may get a sneakemail.com address for me.  I use this to control SPAM.)

I signed up for several free url redirection services (in case any one of
them goes under); so, I can be accessed through any of these:

http://.home.dhis.org
http://.jwdx.com
http://.wzr.net
http://dummt.mainpage.net
http://.femini.st

Also, you should be able to find me through http://www.hotbot.com,
http://www.cutedoggy.com, http://www.vivisimo.com, or
http://www.savvysearch.com using appropriate keywords.

I have a few other alternative email addresses as well:

http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert

Note that my cyberpass.net account is no longer active.

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I'm working hard at being mellow despite all the tension and impatience
around me here in Boston.  I feel proud when cars honk their horns at me.
The longer they lay on the horn, the more relaxed I feel.

You'll notice that I have a different e-mail address.  I finally bought a
domain name.  I had been thinking about this particular domain name for a
while and was happy that it was available.  In any case, I bought it to
see if there was any way on Earth that somebody would pay me to hack on
open source/free software.  (The web site, has not yet been set up.  Under
construction, I suppose...)  Also, I'm hoping to make this alternate
address my permanent email address instead of http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert over
the next year.

Noelle and I went to London, England earlier this year (March).  It was
cold, but the rates were good (although they're probably much better now).
It snowed once while there, but it quickly evaporated.  (Needless to say,
the weather in jolly olde England was much better than anywhere in New
England.) It was my first trip off the North American continent.  They
kept wanting to look at my passport -- I guess I look suspicious?  (And
this was before September 11th!)

I also went to Seattle with my parents, mostly to visit my sister, but
also to visit 'Greeners there.  Some of it was boring, and my nephews were
quite frustrating at times, but it was good catching up with everyone's
lives there ('though, due to my annual mailings, most of them already knew
about my life!).  I really loved Seattle and reinforced how much I missed
the west coast -- there people are just so different.

Speaking of travelling, Noelle and I will be in Ca from January
19th through January 28th.  We'll be flying into LA, but will also be
spending time in the SF Bay Area.  If you didn't already receive an e-mail
about this, and you want to know about the future details, please contact
me.  I'm really dreading going through all the security checkpoints.  Ugh.

We went to New York City on December 1st (Noelle's birthday).  We stayed
in Milford, CT (my dad's home town) and took the train.  It was unusually
warm on December 1st -- about 67 degress farenheit.  It was a really nice
day for December.  Anyway, we went to The Natural History Museum of
America.  I wasn't that impressed.  The Smithsonian Natural History Museum
was my favorite -- we went the year before last.  The most disturbing
exhibit at Natural History Museum of America was the human genome exhibit.
According to the interactive surveys there, people seem more than willing
to freely give their genetic future to the corporations.  It's very scary
and makes me worry for the future of the world.  We did get to dine at
Angelica's Kitchen.  During all the trips I took to NYC ten years ago, I
never got a chance to go there.  It's a seasonal and organic vegetarian
co-op restaurant.  We went whole hog and had dessert and everything.  It
was truly yummy.

We spent New Year's day (and New Year's weekend) at Kripalu, the yoga and
health center in western Ma (Lenox).  We actually didn't enroll
in any yoga programs there (I can't do yoga due to my hands); we did the
Rest & Relaxation program.  We got to go sledding there (that was a blast)
and we attended a massage workshop.

"Wasn't this mentioned during the house inspection?" I think I've heard
this phrase at least once a year everytime someone comes over to work on
the house.  Perhaps there will be a day when I don't hear this. The leaky
roof has finally been fixed.  It's nice not having to worry about where
the water will come out next.  We also managed to get a back door storm
door installed.  This may help with winter heating bills. (It's
undoubtedly due to the economic slowdown.) I'm looking forward to getting
more repairs done this Spring.  I may end up doing it myself if I get laid
off or my company goes under by then.  You never know what the future will
bring.

My work had a 15% lay off in early September.  I was not among them, but
it did leave me as the sole vegetarian in the company.  (As many of you
probably don't know, only 40% of all workplaces accomodate employees with
special/religious-based diets.) In any case, if any of you knows of any
cool Linux-based jobs, please tell me about 'em.

Noelle's garden was fruitful this year, at least, tomato-wise.  (Tomatoes
are fruit, right?) We also get a lot of string beans and pole beans (given
to us by our neighbor).  The kale didn't do as well this year, and there was
no arugula (rocket) at all this year.  We got a couple of pumpkins which may
very well become pie!

In my part of the "garden" (just the small area around the front of the
house), the lamb's ear is doing well, but my hen&chickens (a type of house
leek) doesn't look so hot.  The St. John's Wort never came back.  (We
think the local urban skunk ate it.)  The echinacea does continually well.
We'll probably spread the seeds around to see if it can beat out the
weeds.  Also, Noelle planted a tomatillo plant against the house and it
did remarkably well.  In fact, it was alive 'til the end of October.  We
got several tomatillos, but they were all very tiny.

The Plimoth Plantation Rare Breeds and Heirloom Seeds celebration was held
in May.  This year, due to the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, there
were no animals there at all.  But we bought more New England native
plants and seeds there.

We frequented the Coolidge Corner Farmers market over the summer.  The
timing was kind of a pain 'cause they close up at sunset.  (Being a public
transit traveller doesn't help, either.)  But we managed to get some good
local veggies and bread.

We managed to get to the Ma-based Garlic & Arts Festival.  This
festival had even more varieties of garlic than the Vermont-based one.
Needless to say, I went hog-wild.  We should have enough to last through
winter (at least).  While out that way in Ma, we worked our way
to the very corner of MA, to North Adams to visit the Ma Museum
of Contemporary Art (MassMOCA).  I didn't like it quite as much as the
Lincoln-based Decordova Museum, but it was still pretty cool.

In May, we took a long trip out to the Asparagus Festival in western Mass.
It was highly disappointing -- we ended up having to buy some asparagus at
a road-side stand.  But we wouldn't have discovered the Garlic Festival if
we hadn't gone.

Boston No Kidding, the social activities organization for people without
children, and the project I had begun soon after arriving in Boston, has
had many ups and downs this year.  The high was in October when a member
had a dinner party (in Concord, MA).  I think 14 people attended.  And
other events have been getting organized without me, which I'm happy
about.  For some reason, Lori Copeland, the other person who was helping
me with stuff, has virtually disappeared.  However, another person, Anita
Kite has appeared and has been helping me out.  (She and her husband moved
to the Worcester area from Cupertino, CA, in the SF Bay Area.)

The Lucy Parsons Center is Boston's radical bookstore.  I've been
attending more talks there this year than last.  Back in April, Noelle and
I attended a talk about "Summerhill", the radical, free school in England.
Of course, we're not going to have children, but I do believe that
education is important.  Certainly, the Boston school system totally
sucks, and I'd like to have an opinion on what the alternatives might be.
At the beginning of November, I went to a talk about "The Future of
Anarchism" there, too.  Mostly, Barry Pateman (from Berkeley) talked about
history of anarchists and anarchy.  Someone from The Spartacus League went
there and tried stirring up trouble ("what have anarchists actually
accomplished?", etc.) but it didn't work.  I think this particular set of
anarchists were too mellow :).

I've been more lazy about my pro-choice activities this year.  I did take
Good Friday as a vacation day so I could help defend the Brookline Women's
Clinic.  I've still been consistently showing up the second Saturday of
every month to protest the anti-choicers in front of the local Planned
Parenthood.  (I am really happy that there's a clinic close by.  That's
something I never had in Berkeley.)  Although I did do one tabling event
(Jazz River Festival -- no, I'm not a jazz fan), I haven't participated in
any NARAL call-ins or surveys this year, 'though Noelle and I attended the
Chocolate Madness fund raiser earlier this year (despite the fact that
there were no vegan desserts which I could eat).  And I've been completely
out of the loop with the Boston chapter of Zero Population Growth.

I haven't changed my bicycle much this year, although my horn finally died
and I put a more winter resiliant ping-bell on instead.  My horn actually
died while doing a Critical Mass Bike ride -- I kept beeping during the
parade and it kept getting quieter and quieter.  I wish I could have a
horn 'though, too, because often cars just can't hear my "ping".  I've
been generally riding a lot more and I plan on riding more this coming
winter than last winter.

Noelle and I have been attending very few Boston Vegetarian Society
events.  We've only attended a few third Sunday talks -- they generally
have not sounded that interesting.  The most interesting was the talk
about the WTO, NATT, and FTAA and animals.  We haven't attended any first
Wednesday dining out events, mostly because Noelle gets frustrated with
the picky vegetarians who attend ("Does that have wheat in it?"  "Is that
fried in oil?").

Here are some of the notable movies we've seen this year:

Waking Life
Haiku Tunnel
High Fidelity
Human Resources (French)
The Closet (French)
Earth

I finally signed up for high-speed internet.  I wish I had done this long
ago because it ameliorates the problem of the severe lack of good radio
stations around here -- we listen to good radio over the internet.  I
figure that signing up for high-speed internet is sorta like getting
cable, but for radio instead of TV.  (Getting sound to work under Linux
was not easy.  And RealPlayer is a real pain.)

In an effort to phase out my desktop computers, I bought a laptop off of
ebay.  I am very happy with it.  I installed Windows (yuck!) so I could
run my speech recognition software.

For the geeks among you, I have switched to using GPG instead of PGP.  I
was sorta forced into it because my father has decided to start using
PGPfree and, with 2.6.X, I was unable to decrypt his messages.  I am happy
about the switch because GPG is more featureful and easier to use.

During the cold of winter, I decided to upgrade my machine to Debian
GNU/Linux 2.2.  I was expecting it to be an easy upgrade, but, because my
system was so heavily customized, it was somewhat difficult.  But I think
each upgrade will be easier and easier since the Debian developers are
creating packages faster than I can download and compile them myself.

I made a presentation to the Boston Voice Users group, a loose users group
of speech recognition technology in mid-November.  I've only been using
this particular version of the speech recognition software (Dragon
Naturally Speaking Preferred 4.0) for about 2 months.  So, it was pretty a
sketchy, unorganized presentation.  And I learned a lot from the audience!
In any case, I agreed to do it since I was the only one in the group with
speech recognition installed on his laptop.  I got a number of
compliments, so I think it was helpful.

I've been occassionally going to a massage therapist (masseuse) in an
attempt to help my hands.  I'm not exactly sure whether it's helping or
not.  I also bought another massage tool (in addition to my existing
battlion), the ArmAID.  It does give me immediate relief, but I'm not sure
whether it's helping my tendinitis long-term.

I've been fairly regularly attending the informal RSI Support Group held
at a bookstore (fortuituously) on my way home from work.  I settled my
workers comp claim years ago, but I attend mostly to help other people.
(Although, I have gained some information for myself there occassionally.)

I made a sad discovery this year: the cheap refillable Sheaffer fountain
pens which I completely depend upon for my organizer system (and also
because they are easier to write with with my RSI) are no longer being
produced.  I made a mad dash to buy up all the refillable ink cartridges I
could before they finally disappear as well.  (Apparently, Bic bought
Sheaffer and, I guessing, completely obliterated their refillable fountain
pen line :-( .)

I took an Assertiveness Training Class during the summer.  I figured that,
due to stresses and frustrations at work, that it would be a wise
decision.  Unfortunately, I feel it wasn't helpful at all.  I think I
would need an "Assertiveness Training for Highly Sensitive People" class
for it to be more effective.

Evergreen had a Boston Alumni Gathering which I attended.  It was held at
Glen Kreikenbach's house in Somerville this year.  He and his boyfriend
have a way cool house.  It is huge and is in a very nice neighborhood.
Noelle and I were wowed.  We also met some nice people there, but for some
reason, we never heard from any of them :(.

Last January, three months after it happened, I got my refund from the
City of Boston after overpaying my property taxes by accident.  I guess
I'm not surprised by the level of bureaucracy in Boston at this point.  I
am surprised that I got my my refund at all!

The Birkenstocks I bought when I drove out to Ca with Brian in
1987 finally died.  The soles had to be replaced.  I went ahead and had
the soles replaced, but it wasn't until the next day that I remembered
that most Birkenstock soles are made with leather!  Since it was too late
to change, I let it go through, guilt and all.  Next time (in 14 years?),
I'm just going to buy a new non-Leather version.  (By the way, I was told
that Birkenstock supports anti-choice groups.  I did some on-line research
and have concluded that this is an urban myth.)

Noelle spent a few days with my parents at Salisbury during the first week
in July.  I only spent some time on July 4th itself.  It was nicer than
staying in Boston on the 4th.  All sorts of people come around 'cause they
wanna go to Boston Pops on the Esplanade (something that I, needless to
say, have absolutely no interest in attending), and there are lots of loud
sounds throughout the night making it impossible to get any sleep.  By
contrast, in Salisbury, the gentle rolling of the waves kept me sound
asleep, sorta like one of those expensive relaxation tapes.

I haven't been to any anti-war rallies yet, but I did attend an Anti-War
Teach-in sponsored by Boston Anarchists Against Militarism.  It was fairly
sparsely attended, probably because there had been an Ecofeminism
Conference going on at Boston University and another teach-in at
Northeastern University.  Anyway, it was mostly interesting, but with
G.W.'s approval rating being so high, it's unlikely that war in
Afghanistan will cease any time soon.

Last year, some messages bounced.  I no longer have email addresses
for these people:

Michael Teixeira
Sundar Krishnamurthy
Scott Fraize
Paul Goldenberg
Marc Berkowitz
Clayton Glad
Bjoren Davis
Olele Peter
Tracey Layman (maiden name)

If you're in contact with any of these people, please tell them that I am
missing their email addresses.