It's raining here. That may not seem like such big news but the weather this summer has been more like the SF Bay Area than normal New England. In other words, it hasn't rained. In like two months.

Back in the spring we got a long stretch of wet weather, which was good, cause we'd been in drought conditions for most of the winter and we needed the water. Then, just as the drought status was lifted, it stopped raining.

So now, two months later we're back in drought. A lot of communities have "no watering your lawn" bans so the grass is burned brown like the hills in California. Sleeping Lions.

It's rained lightly for a few days in the past week, but just around noon today it started to rain steady, and it hasn't stopped.

There's an odd irony to this. The forecast is for it to rain alot this weekend. I'll be out of town at Rick and Jo Ann's wedding. As much as I want to be at their wedding, there had been a little frowning because I wasn't going to be around to work weed watch on this big holiday weekend.

I finished my final shift today at noon today, just as the rain started to fall. If it rains alot this weekend, there will be no weed watching. I might not have been able to work anyway. And... I'd worked alot of extra hours this past week to make up for the lost hours this weekend, so I won't end up losing the time that I would have lost even if I'd been here!

 My TiVo died. Well actually the modem died, but without the "Daily Call", alot of things don't work right.

It happened almost two months ago and I've been struggling through the summer, recording things the old-fashioned way of inputing the date, time, and channel manually. But it turns out you can't set the clock manually, so I figured I was doomed. The clock setting on my TiVo is drifting, and once it gets too far out of whack -- or daylight savings ends -- that'll be the end.

TiVo offered to exchange the unit for a new (or refurbished) one. But I would have had to send them the old one, plus almost $300. The new Series 2 TiVo only costs $400. So I've been trying to decide what to do.

The new TV season is approaching fast. West Wing, Buffy, and more. Gotta do something about this.

But then tidBITS to the rescue.

In a recent issue they wrote about a third-party-add-on company for TiVo gadgets. They not only sell replacement modems, but better yet, they tell how to get and add an ethernet port. With this I will be able to get my Daily Call via my broadband connection. Plus it will give me access to the internals of my TiVo via telnet and ftp, and I'm sure that has potential.

So the ethenet card is in the mail. It will arrive this weekend, and I can install it after I get back from California.

 I'm a little embarrased to admit that this product naming stuff makes sense to me. And I know from experience that coming up with unique, powerful product names is REALLY hard these days. So any help you can get.

Sounds that come to a full stop (p, b, t, d) connote slowness, Lexicon found; f, v, s and z are fast, and z is fastest. That is ideal for Prozac and Amazon, connoting speed of recovery in the first case and speed of gratification (or shipping?) in the second. Voiced sounds in which the vocal cords vibrate-such as d, g, v and z-sound both larger and more luxurious than voiceless sounds made with just an explosion of air, such as t, k, f and s, the researchers claim.

 Here's an interesting article from the NYT that says the environment isn't in such bad shape after all:

There is, however, one problem: this litany is not supported by the evidence. Energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so. More food is now produced per capita than at any time in the world's history. Fewer people are starving. Species are, it is true, becoming extinct. But only about 0.7 percent of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not the 20 percent to 50 percent that some have predicted. Most forms of environmental pollution look as though they have either been exaggerated or are transient — associated with the early phases of industrialization. They are best cured not by restricting economic growth but by accelerating it.

 I've seen a couple of references to this incident. It seems that the police were just out of control. And yet I've seen no reference to is in the maintream media.

We brought our children to a peaceful protest, we stayed in the back and we were walking on the sidewalk.... [The police officer] looked at me, and drew out his can from his hip and sprayed directly at me... the spray hit my right eye and our three year-old who I was holding in my right arm. In the same motion he turned the can on my wife who was holding our 10 month old baby and doused both of their heads entirely from a distance of less than 3 feet.

 Kevin Fox:

"Ooh, honey, is this diamond engagement ring your Grandmother's?"

"No, it's my Grandmother."

Eew.

 New tactic in fighting P2P:

"It was just 20 seconds of the song, repeated over and over. At first I thought it was a glitch. Then I realized someone had posted this on purpose."

 A New Hope: Ashcroft's minions are turning on him.

The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday.

 Ed Cone's weblog:

I composed a poem for the children this morning:

The end of summer
such a bummer
you could load a truck
with how much this sucks.

 Figuring out how to make warning signs for hazardous waste sites, that need to last 12,000 years.

This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.
This place is a message and part of a system of messages.
Pay attention to it!

 530 am -- Up early, but probably not for long. Crickets, I don't remember hearing crickets recently. They were probably there and I didn't notice them. Or maybe they're temp sensitive and have been quiet due to the heat. The sky is brightening in the East. It's a different location than I was expecting the sun to rise. Maybe I'm remembering seeing sunrise back in the deep summer and now it's moved S on the horizon. Looking out the window just now, it's started to rain. Sky is ovc, wind light, OAT 70, which is warmer than I'd expected.

830 am -- I think maybe I WILL go on water testing this morning. I wasn't gonna but they now tell me that the DES person will be there and I want to ask some questions. Also Dad says they do additional tests and I'd like to see that too.

12n -- Meryl Richards, an intern (Sophmore, Dartmouth, Environmental Engineering) came along from DES. She did additional tests for water temp and oxygen level at 1 meter increments, and used a plankton net to take sample of solids in the water. She said that the green algae could be Cyanobacteria, which would be bad since it has numerous bad effects on animals and humans ("don't let animals drink the water and don't let humans swim"). But one of the Lake guys said that last year's test came out negative for the CyanoB. and that it was something harmless. Meryl took a sample and said Andrea would let us know if it's bad. I got Andrea's card and plan to give her a call.

 Could this be start of something?

"Information Wave Technologies has announced it will actively deny the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) from accessing the contents of its network...

Due to the nature of this matter and RIAA's previous history, we feel the RIAA will abuse software vulerabilities in a client's browser after the browser accesses its site, potentially allowing the RIAA to access and/or tamper with your data."

 Much cooler this morning than it's been. OAT 76 right now. Earlier this month, when I was loving the coolness, it was 10 degress cooler, so I guess this is not a repeat of that. Fall should hit soon. I remember that it used to get chilly in mid-to-late August. I would always be disappointed because I thought it was unfair to have summer be over before Labor Day.

 Interesting article on clever ways to filter for SPAMs.

"...discovered that "per" and "FL" and "ff0000" are good indicators of spam. In fact, "ff0000" (html for bright red) turns out to be as good an indicator of spam as any pornographic term."

 A weblog of Geek Gadgets: gizmodo.com

 For my latest rant on "Living in Ashcroft's America."

Now he wants to create concentration camps for anyone he declares an "enemy combatant".

LA Times: "Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants."

Perhaps it's time for this guy to go.

 I am so tired of being hot!

Today is like the 6th consecutive day of 90+ temps. And it's forecast to stay this way through the weekend.

 We're in the midst of another heat wave here in NH. Yesterday's high was 96, it's already hit 95 today, and it can still go up. A couple of weeks ago we had a break in the temp that I (naively) thought might be the mid August seasonal shift arrived a little early. But nope. We're back in it now. The forecast is for more of the same throughout the rest of the week.

There was a story in the news yesterday about Heat Wave actually being the worst natural disaster.

"Heat waves come on subtly, raising summer temperatures just a little higher than normal and then receding. But they kill more people in the United States than all other natural disasters combined."

 Not that anyone is reading this... but some of you may be wondering what "doing weeds" is.

Well I'm working part time this summer for the NH Lakes Association doing a survey and educational thing at the boat launches on Pawtuckaway Lake.

It involves hanging out at the launch ramp for 4 or 5 hours, 5 days a week, and talking to everyone who puts a boat in or pulls out, about exotic, invasive weeds. It's part of a grant from NOAA and NH DES.

 Audio and slides from Larry Lessig's talk to the Open Source conference.

"If you're explaining, you're losing." -- J.C. Watts

 What a day! Weeds in am, then to Ossipee, then a quick trip to Wolfboro to check out the airport -- disappointing -- then back for more weeds as a overnight fishing tourney launched. I did 39 boats in 2 1/2 hours this afternoon.

I'll head back out tomorrow am to see the finish of the tourney.

 Getting ready to head out for a long day. Weeds in the morning, then to Ossipee for the VAA meeting at Joe Dion's, then back to do more weeds.

I'm thinking that on my way back from Ossipee this afternoon I'll stop by Wolfboro and the Lakes Region Airport. It is one of the most distant apts on my list for the NL. Maybe I'll get enough material for a short article.

 It's been awhile since I posted here.

I stopped using Blogger back when their system got hacked and it came out that they were storing passwords in plaintext. That kinda annoyed me, so I abandoned them.

I'm feeling more forgiving now than I did back then. Also I'd like to be able to use one of these CM systems rather than having to manage the entries manually.

Stuff I'm involved with:
EAA Vintage Chapter 15
Prescott Park Arts Festival

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