Currently camping out at home, with just a computer in one corner and an air mattress in another. All I need to get by for a few weeks. (I'll be arriving a few weeks before all our belongings land). I don't miss the TV. Spending a month without it doesn't even register as uncomfortable. But there's one thing that has me climbing walls. I've got no guitar. Don't think I've ever spent a month without one - at least not since about age 10.

So it looks like I'm gonna' be hanging out in music stores. Nope, don't need one thank you. I've got more than enough, and they're all hand-picked over a lifetime; better than anything I'll find here.  But I just want to play something for a half hour so I don't go berzerk. 

My step-mum passed away this morning after a painful decline. Rest in peace Carol.

Given the present circumstances, I was spared from explaining to a 9-year old - Grandma went to heaven honey. But she's growing up and I'm no longer satisfied passing off that simplified explanation. Doubt she will be either. We used that for the kitties and the hamster. This is a bit different. 

Then I've got a dad that is missing his best friend. I'm left feeling helpless to say anything to anybody that isn't an inadequate cliche.

We all miss ya'.

Today the Senate joined the House in voting for a withdrawal of forces from Iraq. However, it ain't gonna' happen until at least after the next presidential election.

It is worth taking a moment to ponder when and how wars and military conflicts end. A war has never to my knowledge ended due to a popular vote in any body of any government.

A war ends when the cost in human lives finally proves to be an unbearable cost by one of the parties for whatever motive was used by that party to take part in the conflict. Or more simply one of the parties needs to capitulate. Unfortunately this is how it has always worked.

So today's vote has no meaning on the battlefield - except for one. It's a giant step towards capitulation.  This is the reason for Bush's request to add even more troops to the region. The only way that we can avoid capitulation ultimately is to force the other side to capitulate. Somebody has to cry uncle, and if it's not going to be us, then we better get busy and start killing people.

So how many would we have to kill to get them to capitulate first? They aren't fighting to bring democracy to the third world or to topple a dictator with imaginary weapons. Many of these fighters are fighting for their homes, for their creator, for the honor of their wives and daughters that have been defiled, and for their very lives from slaughter by opposing clans. Those are some strong motives. My guess is we'd have to kill 10% of the population to get them to throw in the towel, or about 2.6 million people.

Right now we're at somewhere around 750,000 (both coalition-induced casualties and sectarian strife) - or a little under 1/3 of the way there. How many US losses could we take before a forced capitulation? I think if they took out 1/4 of our forces, we'd be unable to continue - or somewhere around 40,000 people. They've currently taken out over 3,000, so we're less than 10% towards a total capitulation. Now these are just some wild numbers thrown out here because nobody can calculate the exact cost of lives lost and the precise value of motivation. But I'm only trying to point out that in the overall pattern of traditional human warfare, this one is likely to be far from over on the battlefield.

Just for comparison, it took 58,000 US deaths for us to capitulate in Vietnam, and 18 to flee Somalia - with an extremely weak motive to fight. Afghanistan folded at about 8,500, again with little motive to keep dying. It took around 2.5 million deaths to get Japan to surrender, and around 7 million to get Germany to fold in WWII. So this isn't an exact science - it all depends on the strength of the motive. Eventually, the deaths exceed the motive and death will keep occurring until that point is reached.

Just some things to think about as you try and figure out how and when this will all stop.  

All of the logistic headaches are starting to come to a close. My to-do list now fits on the back of an envelope. You've no idea how many reams of paper it took at the start of this ordeal.

At this point it's actually pretty simple. Get everything turned off and then get out of here. Take out the trash one last time on Thursday. Clean out the car so it can be sold (I'm letting a friend actually sell it after I go). Pack the bags. 

It's almost too simple, and that's scary. Have I missed anything? I mean like something major?

When I was younger and got close to a pretty woman, I would have certain reactions. I'll leave it at that. But don't hang up yet, this post is actually going somewhere...

You know you've been spending too much time in the social networks when you see a pretty girl in the supermarket and your index finger starts to twitch.  You want to click her.

Hi Jon, Remember me?

Jon is the problem solver. This is who you call when you get down to the end. Sold everything that could be sold, moved everything that's going to move; and you still have stuff left over.

Sure, I could fill up my car a few times and cart it off to Goodwill. Fill it up a few more times and cart it off to the dump. Borrow a truck from somebody to get the few remaining large items. But then I've still got a problem, because amongst that stuff are a few cans/bottles containing substances that cause grief. Paint, cleaning stuff. Some antifreeze that didn't fit in the radiator. In short, chemicals. They only accept these at the Sunnyvale recycle station a handful of weekends a year - and this weekend isn't on the list.

This is why you call Jon. One phone call.

I've got a problem. Please make it all just disappear. 

I knew it was a bit of a stretch to ask my employer to let me continue on my project from across the globe. Though these days, telecommuting has become a lot more common. It's not considered unusual to find somebody working in Silicon Valley from a farmhouse in Vermont. But a farmhouse in Burrawang, Australia turns out to be an unworkable complication for this particular job.

On Monday I was introduced to my "replacement", and today I was officially requested to tender my resignation, so I guess it's back to the job market once again.

So if y'all know of anybody looking for software pros down under... (or if you just need somebody that can get the job done...)

I've no longer got a TV in the house, so I figured it was as good a time as any to turn off my cable service. Yay! Finally! I've wanted to do this for ages. I looked on my recent bill and found the web address. Hmmm. Maybe I can do this on the web and avoid being put on hold listening to elevator music for 45 minutes. 

No such luck - service cancellation isn't among the supported forms. But right there at the top of the page it says:

Great! It's late enough I might get through in maybe twenty minutes instead of 45. So I call in and negotiate the voice mail menus to the service disconnection tree. I'm then greeted with

"Our offices are currently closed. Our office hours are 8AM to 7PM, seven days a week. Please call back at your convenience."

My convenience would be right now. So I guess they really aren't there for me 24/7 after all...

The movers were great, but it was easy to notice when their day was coming to an end. All the cautions taken earlier in the day started to make way for the unspoken 'Just get it in the truck. I want to go home.'. 

So I had to abandon my hands off policy. They were looking for something flat to stick on top of the bicycles, which were on top of the boxes. About six inches of space at the top of the container. One guy grabbed a painting and wrapped some paper around it to fill the void. I immediately pictured opening the container at the other end and finding a handlebar stuck through the thing.

Perdoneme? Esta pintura es quince mil dolares! Una caja, por favor...

('Scuse me, but that's a fifteen thousand dollar painting - please put it in a box.). My Spanish isn't perfect, but I know enough to get by. All work came to a halt momentarily while they digested the implications.  A couple even took a critical artistic look at the painting in question, rather than just as an object to pack. You mean some of this stuff isn't just household junk? Si, es muy bonita. Yes, It is very beautiful. From then on, they began to treat everything with just a bit more respect. 

There's a 40 foot cargo container sitting outside my house. Tomorrow everything that's inside the house is going into that big box. The task of sorting and packing has been non-stop for weeks, but now the pressure is really on. Anything that isn't in that box tomorrow has either got to fit in my luggage, or it's just not going. 

I've got a few piles of stuff to go to Goodwill. Anything they don't want is going to landfill. Also, I'm going to be here another two weeks, which complicates things further. I'll be camping out at the house, but with only a few changes of clothes and no furniture. I'm keeping the computer running, but since I don't have a laptop currently, that means I've got to put a desktop system into my luggage. That's about a third of my alloted luggage. It's a logistic nightmare trying to plan this mess.

I'd love to pack up the desktop system and use my work laptop, but my employer still hasn't decided whether they're going to keep me on or not, so for planning purposes I have to assume that my work laptop is staying at work. I thought about picking up a cheap laptop, but there wasn't enough time in my schedule to configure the thing. 

Anyway - I'm buggered. I could work non-stop for another 8 hours and still not get everything done. But it's time to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow. At this point it probably doesn't matter if I'm done. The movers will be here in the morning. By this time tomorrow, the container will be on its way. I've got until they close the doors and drive away to deal with any remaining issues. Tick, tock.

G'night.  

Just when it seemed like things were cooling down after decades of cocaine wars in Colombia, they find themselves facing an even deadlier enemy. Chiquita. The banana folks. The Colombian president wants U.S. Chiquita folks extradited to stand charges after reports that they financed hit squads in that country and are responsible for importing several thousand AK-47s from Israel.

The weapons and money were used to kill anybody that threatened the crops or distribution channels. Gee, it sounds just like the cocaine wars. Except we're not talking about white powder and smuggling empires. It's a return to the politics of banana republics that plagued earlier generations of Central and South Americans.  

My Linux server has been my trusty friend and companion for about the last 12-13 years - with only a couple of down days to replace power supplies and perform system upgrades. A year ago, you would have been reading these pages on that same box. It's seen me through good times and bad. Rich and poor. Oh what times we've had. Any time - day or night; it was always there to greet me. And from there to reach out to the larger world. All of my thoughts and ideas have passed through it at one time or another.

But it's time to turn it off and pack it up to ship away. I've handed off the task of serving up web pages. I've handed off the task of receiving my daily spam. But the Linux box has still remained at the center of my world. It's my development workstation, where I try out all my new ideas and test them before I unleash them on you folks. It's also my gatekeeper, keeping the bad guys out; and the hub around which I built my wired household. 

But something else happened in the last ten years. All of my favorite development tools have been rewritten to run on Windows. The whole LAMP stack (minus the 'L' for Linux). Apache, PHP, MySQL. Emacs. The GIMP. Even bash. That's all I need to create webapps. And I've even got awk and sed for when I need to get down and dirty. 

So I can do all my web development from a PC running that horrible operating system from Redmond and not miss a beat. Any old laptop will work. At least it's enough to get me by until I can boot everything up again half a world away.

But the sadness slowly drifts over me. It's time to unplug.

Sigh...

I lamented the passing of CNN Headline news a year or two ago. There seems to be nothing left but self-serving talking heads talking about the latest sex headline.

It's not like I have a lot of time to stay informed at present. My days are filled with working and packing. But at the end of the day, I've been channel surfing to find something - anything, informative. Nothing to be found on the airwaves.

As long as the only choice is mindless entertainment, I wound up two nights ago watching the house design competition.  Gawd-awful, but at least it isn't pretending to be informative. Last night I succumbed to pure fiction - Catwoman and Gothika. 

Tonight I started surfing again. Whoa - what's this? TV news? Really? CBN (that's Christian Broadcasting Network) was actually engaged in the act of reporting important current world events. Not the daily media circus and sex scandal. With Pat Robertson as the anchor. Now I'm no fan of fundamentalist dogma, but wow. They've got real news. Nobody else does. Tonight Pat topped off the headlines by talking very lucidly about the immediate state of the world economy and the possible effects of other countries dumping dollars.

Who would've thought?

OK, to be fair, there's only so much inspirational Elvis and 700 club I can take before the gag reflex kicks in. But information is information - I'll take that wherever I can get it.

Ohmigosh, I forgot to mark the date on my calendar. 50 years old. My how time flies. Did anybody send you gag gifts about being over the hill? They sure did when I turned fifty.

Ya' know - I was going to send you a card with a really big surprise in it, but I seem to have misplaced your address. If you read this, could you please let me know how to get it to you? Thanks ever so much.

Laura, I like the new hairdo.

The house is pretty much sold. No time to celebrate - at this point, it's just another item to check off the list of things to do. Now it's time to pack the bags. I've got a little over 3 weeks left. Have to get the movers in, sell off the rest of the furniture that isn't going, and then find a home for anything that's left over - even if that home happens to be a landfill.

Yet another chapter coming to a close. It's still unclear whether I will be able to retain my employment from half a world away. Could go one way, could go the other at this point. Meanwhile, I'm still putting in regular work weeks while trying to accomplish all this other stuff. 

Then there are the little details - hundreds of them. Closing out utilities, transferring financial arrangements. Figuring out how to sell the car and perhaps of some importance, how to get to the airport.  

While going over offers on the house last night, it struck me that the Silicon Valley economy in general - and the housing market in particular; aren't quite as stagnant as everybody would have you believe.

One potential buyer went over plans to extend the family room to put in a home theater; and questioned the ability of the roof to support a large bank of solar arrays.  Ah yes - I know where he's coming from. I have all the data.

Would've done all these things myself had it not been for that unfortunate little foray into the music business.  

After a few weeks of exploring the virtual world of Second Life, I finally decided to cash in my chips and walk away. It's a fascinating world - in fact I'd love to say that it's a microcosm of everything that is wrong with our sick society; which is why it no longer interests me. In your face advertising, gambling, prostitution, crime, and of course anything having to do with sex. Sounds just like America. Except there's not much else. OK, there are a lot of buildings - where people go to find sex or have sex. If you get lonely and try and find some people, you'll find them. Having sex or trying to have sex. Notice a common theme here? If you try and approach a single person in the 'street', they'll either fly away quickly (because they're sick and tired of having sex), or you'll likely get shot with some kind of particle disruptor or attacked by a swarm of killer bees. These are really nasty, incidentally.

It'll cost you about $5 for the hardware and software to actually have sex (but of course the sky is the limit if you want to upgrade). Don't buy the cheap one, get the Xcite. I could give you twenty reasons, but the most important is that the Xcite is interactive and you can tweak the size and color and uhm 'hardness'. The cheap ones come in a single skin tone and are one-size-fits-all and you can either put it on flaccid or stiff. Nothing in between. No refunds, and you can't sell it later. The Xcite will react if someone touches your privates (and you allow them to arouse you). There's also a female version and they all interact automatically. OK, that's the basic hardware. You also need to be around 'pose balls' to have sex. These are little blue and pink balls that you'll find everywhere, and they play a little (possibly x-rated) animation starring you. Usually the guy gets the blue ball and the girl gets the pink - but of course there are variations. Different balls have different poses. Doggie, missionary, 69, on the desk, etc. If you want to run a sex parlor, you'll need a bunch of these puppies. They cost about a dollar each. If you don't want to run a sex parlor, you're going to be awfully lonely - because that's where everybody is going.

But the cruel irony is that you won't be able to get it up in the free sex clubs where everybody goes to try out their hardware. Too many people - your system won't respond in a timely manner. They call it 'lag'. The only way to truly exercise your hardware is in private with a call girl (for about $5 for a half hour). They're everywhere, because this is the one profitable business you can run in SL without owning land (which will cost you somewhere upwards of $25, depending of course on location, location, location; and an account upgrade to monthly fees of $5 on up depending on how much land you want). Get out your credit card.

I probably should qualify all of this with 'so I've been told', because of course I would never do these things.  

But there's an upside to all this. There's a future for Second Life yet. We give all the sex offenders and perverts in our jails second life accounts and let them live out their twisted perversions. They'll be ecstatic that they can do whatever they want with like-minded people and get so absorbed in the fantasy that it might just keep them off the real life street. 

I'm getting sick to death of seeing nothing but Anna Nicole on the news. You'd think she was royalty or something. C'mon folks, let's call a spade a spade. She was a scheming bimbo.

It would be nice if they could move on already and report some real world events.