Happy Summer Solstice!

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

Happy Summer Solstice!

Here is my latest contact information:

robert
(note: no stable address yet -- see below for more info)
my Oakland voicemail number
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert
http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert
http://www.purl.org/net/robert

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News
  * Parting is such sweet sorrow, with the emphasis on SWEET.  Noelle has
    found a job in .  So, we're moving.  She'll be going out
    there in a week and I'll be out there within a few months.  (I'll be
    moving our stuff out there.  Damn, she's lucky! :-)  Noelle will find
    us some rental housing; once there's a stable address, I'll be
    preparing the move to there.  A lot of work ahead.

Lifestyle
  * Careers
    * She'll bring home the bacon, er, Fakin' Bacon.  I'm still looking
      for a job.  
      So, for the time being, Noelle will be the bread winner of our
      household.  Luckily, I have a spartan level of living.  Anyway, any
      job suggestions/leads are quite welcome!
  * Vacation
    * Travel
      * Utilitarian is the word of the day.  I went to Ca a couple
        of weeks ago.  I was hoping to have 2 interviews (thanks for
        Michael Abbott), but only 1 materialized, unfortunately.  So, it
        was a jobless vacation.  It was way cold in the Bay Area -- windy
        and overcast almost all the time I was there.  Ugh.  Nevertheless,
        it was nice meeting with people.  It was especially strange to be
        agreeing with everybody I met -- something that rarely happens in
        Boston.  And the relatively mellow drivers were a relief.
      * Yeah, it's French, I suppose.  In late February, we went to
        Montreal.  I had a terrible time trying to understand anybody
        there.  It was nothing like the French movies we've seen -- they
        seem to slur the words together and it's much harder to
        understand.  Contrary to popular belief, the people there were
        quite nice.  But, man, it was cold.  Every day there, it was below
        0F with one day with a high of -10F.  Burrr!  
  * Home
    * How will we manage to pawn this off?  There is strong likelihood
      that I'll be trying to sell this house (ha!).  Perhaps because it is
      in such poor shape, it will be more attractive to more people?  I
      hope that's the case.  In any case, the house is in a good location;
      so, the value of the land may make the transaction be more
      tolerable.
    * Back to renting.  Because housing prices in the Bay Area is
      outrageous, it looks like we'll be going back to renting.  And
      because it's unclear whether I'll have a job there, the price must
      be low enough for only one income earner to afford.
    * Where have all the tomatoes gone?  I don't know what will happen
      with the tomatoes and peppers we've planted after we leave.  How
      sad!  We started 'em inside in February and are coming along nicely.
      Oh, well.
  * Transportation
    * Dedicated follower of fashion -- carless fashion.  Despite Noelle
      getting a job in 'burbs (), we're going to try to stay
      carless.  We have two things going our way: (1) BART is much more
      bike-friendly since when we lived there and (2) there's City
      CarShare (ZipCar-like).  Our goal is to live near the main bus line
      that runs relatively late (10PM) and on the weekends and also will
      bring Noelle to her workplace in .  So, we're focusing our
      home search on a specific area in .
    * The main problem is the click-click-click.  It only happens when I
      pedal.  I'm pretty sure it's the chain, but if I have to change the
      chainring and the freewheel in addition, I cannot afford this right
      now.  Perhaps an Ashby BART Fleamarket special will fit the bill.
  * Food
    * The burrito experiments continue.  We've discovered one place that
      approximates Ca burritos -- Baja Bettys.  They do use
      refried beans.  And their hot sauces are actually spicy, which is
      nice.  I did experiment with burrito variations over the winter.
      Two things I discovered: oil in the refried beans is the key to
      good refried beans, and lettuce is crucial to the correct flavor.
      (Good lettuce is impossible to come by here in Boston in the winter :-(.)
  * People
    * Missing persons.  Last solstice message, some messages bounced.  I no
      longer have email addresses for these people:

        Louis Dunne
        Dwight Moody
        Michael Teixeira
        Sundar Krishnamurthy
        Sridhar Seshadri
        Amanda Dahl
        Marc Berkowitz
        Clayton Glad
        Tracey Layman (Ingle)
        Michael Stack
        Susan Norris
        Chris Golden
        Joyce Young
        Mike Hamrick
        Ben Morss
        
      If you're in contact with any of these people, please tell them that
      I am missing their email addresses.

Entertainment        
  * Movies
    * Cheap entertainment.  Catching up on movies is definitely one of
      the best parts of being unemployed.  I can go to matinees when
      Noelle doesn't want to see the movie.  (I saw "X-Men 2" which Noelle
      would never see.  The special effects were great, but that's the
      most I can say about it.)
    * MovieLens to the rescue.  So, we always have this problem when going
      to the video rental shop -- what to see.  There's just lots of stuff
      and it's impossible to go through it all.  My solution was to
      re-discover MovieLens.  It turns out, I had signed up for MovieLens
      years ago using an old e-mail address because I had (and still have)
      an interest in collaborative recommendation systems (it was
      GroupLens which sparked this).  And I've been using it to full.
      It's at http://movielens.umn.edu and it's free.
    * My recommended movies.  Since MovieLens can be your personal
      recommendation system, I'll only mention movies which MovieLens
      doesn't list and which I recommend:

        Horns and Halos
        War Photographer
        Ay, Carmela!
        The Handmaid's Tale
        Revolution OS

  * Radio
    * Expansion and shrinkage.  Sadly, CNET Radio is no more.  At least,
      not in its original form.  But, I've discovered
      http://publicradiofan.com and it totally rocks.  Now, I'm not stuck
      listening to 7 years re-runs of Fresh Air.  Yey.
  * Books
    * And yet I re-read books.  Despite my being so hopelessly behind in
      my reading.  I re-read "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse" by Kurt
      Vonnegut.  I really wish someone would make a made-for-TV movie of
      the story "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse".  It's really called for in
      these days of extreme right-wing twits.
    * No, I don't buy from them!  Yes, I do use Amazon, but I have never
      bought anything from them and do not intend to.  But, after
      discovering that they use Net Perception's recommendation system
      technology (which drives both GroupLens and MovieLens), I dug up an
      old e-mail address that I had signed up to Amazon with, and have
      been using it for giving me recommendations.  I've entered
      everything I own into it that it actually has in its catalog and
      rated it all.  I'm impressed how books recommend music which
      recommend movies which recommend household hardware which
      recommend kitchenware which recommend software.  I've actually
      discovered new stuff.  I just hope they never cut off invalid e-mail
      addresses :-).
  * Television
    * Only the good shows die.  "Monk" hasn't been on for several months
      now (we don't get cable) and "Scrubs" are all re-runs.  Ugh.  But at
      least there's "NOW with Bill Moyers".  That show is the only reason for
      owning a TV.  (Although, you must admit that a lot of it is
      public-radio/public-TV biased.  For instance, the coverage of the
      FCC decision on media ownership was a bit too much and it was
      obvious that NPR/PBS has some personal stakes in this issue.)
  * Comics
    * The Republican Matrix.  Amazon recommended a bunch of Tom Tomorrow
      comic books.  Ah, so many comics to read.  Sadly, Amazon doesn't
      know anything about a political cartoonist well-known in England named
      Steven Bell.  I heard about him on a Working Assets Radio show.
      (Interestingly, you can access his books via the Amazon UK site.)

Politics/Society
  * Ecology/Environment
    * Overpopulation
      * A not-so-great Friday.  I went to the Brookline women's clinic to
        defend it against the gaggle of anti-choicers marching on Good
        Friday.  Apparently, everybody forgot about this so there were
        only two of us standing there.  Luckily, they didn't become
        violent or anything.  (I was told that the police in Brookline are
        notoriously uncooperative with the pro-choice side.)
      * Passing on.  Since I'll be moving, I'm trying to pass
        responsibility of Boston No Kidding! to someone else.  Thankfully,
        one fellow has been particularly vocal in the group and seemed
        like the ideal candidate for passing the baton onto.  There seems
        to be an established No Kidding! chapter in the San Francisco East
        Bay.  It'll be nice to be a participant rather than an organizer.
      * Winding down the protests.  My posters are all falling apart,
        mostly due to all the precipitation during the last 12 months.
        So, it's just as well that we're moving.  I know there is a
        Planned Parenthood in  (that's where I got my vasectomy).
        I doubt that it could be as crazy as it is at the Boston Planned
        Parenthood -- I don't think I'll need to protest the anti-choice
        people in .  Perhaps I can be more cooperative and become
        an official Planned Parenthood escort.
  * Labor
    * RSI
      * Back to my roots.  I guess, since I'll be in the East Bay again,
        I'll probably be joining the East Bay RSI Support Group again.
        I've been discovering that if I do low-weight-bearing repetitive
        exercises, my hands feel better.  But I still would like speech
        recognition...
  * Misc
    * Don't desert the dessert.  It looks like our last and only event at
      The Lucy Parsons Center will have been The Anarchist Vegan Dessert
      Potluck.  It was interesting.  I made a dish I got from an Indian
      recipe book (but veganized).  It didn't come out that well -- it
      needed more sweetner.  Also, it was a little too gritty.  I thought
      that I should bring something out of the ordinary so as to minimize
      redundancy.  Oh, well -- live and learn.  The other desserts were
      quite good and we had to leave before some of the more scrumptious
      desserts arrived.  Too bad!
        
Health
  * RSI
    * Talking to myself.  Since I was continually unemployed, I kept up my
      role in the Boston Voice Users as the main contact person.  But,
      since I'll be moving, I'll have to give that up.  There are plenty
      of people to pick up the slack -- I think it'll be OK.
    * There are some good things about Boston.  One of them is Bromfield
      Pen Shop where I got all the nifty do-dads for my fountain pens.  I
      hope I can find something like it in the San Francisco Bay Area.  If
      worse comes to worse, I can always order stuff through the internet,
      but that's highly inconvenient.  I'll probably build up my supplies
      before leaving Boston.

Technology
  * Software
    * My personal projects
      * Speech, speech.  I've been too busy lately to work on my speech
        projects.  I can't tell you how guilty I feel about not working on
        them.  Perhaps when things are a little more settled I'll have
        time to hack a bit more on it.
  * Hardware
    * Networks
      *  is civilized.  Surprisingly.  DSL is available in a number
        of places in .  I'm so ready to drop Verizon like a rock.
        My DSL service was down an _entire_week_ with no dial-up back-up.
        (Dial-up is an extra service with Verizon with an associated
        extra fee-per-month.)  Thankfully, I discovered a free local dial up
        service (at 14.4Kbps!).  They kept saying it was only going to be
        a couple of days of outage -- it turned out to be an entire week.
        It looks like Speakeasy covers all of the areas in  that
        DSL is available.  I'll definitely sign up with them with a static
        IP address.  Then, I can run my own web server and email server
        and be completely independently.
  * Telephones
    * Can't be completely wireless, unfortunately.  We decided that a cell
      phone is going to be our main telephone.  It costs about the same
      _except_ that I'll ultimately need to a get a physical line for
      internet access.  Unfortunately.  If there's a neighborhood Wi-Fi
      network, then perhaps I can avoid this (but probably won't be able
      to run my own servers, then); but, I suspect I'll need a telephone
      line.  Sigh.