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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ No entry. |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ Until Tuesday, September 11th, my brother worked at Lehman Brothers across the street from the World Trade Center, in the World Financial Center building, which was connected to one of the towers by a pedestrian bridge. That Tuesday he was running a little late on his way to work; he commuted about an hour and three quarters each way by train. Praise God, the reason I'm speaking in the past tense isn't because he was killed, but simply because he won't be going back to work in his former office for quite some time. He emailed me some snapshots that were taken when he was allowed back into his office in the WFC tower, to remove any useable office stuf and personal effects, until whenever the WFC is again made habitable. Here are some thumbnails that point to the full-size pictures, which are 50-60KB apiece, along with the titles he gave the pictures:
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ My brother gave me permission to quote from a couple of email messages. I found them evocative, since they're from someone who looked at the WTC towers every working day for the past few years, and who has sincere reservations about continuing to work in such a tempting terrorist target as Manhattan. Even before the terrorist attacks, he referred to the WTC towers as "a kook magnet." On 9/25 he wrote me: I am worried that America is trying to turn its back on this, and try to go "back to the way things were". Also I see a lot of people who basically agree with the Arabs that this is our fault and we deserve it, and the best solution is to apologize and kowtow to their demands (re: Salon.com). I have lost a lot of faith in my fellow citizens. I feel that only another horrible massacre will wake up this country. And I wonder if I will be one of the victims next time. I have some great books about that part of the world. I have been studying these issues for years, and know more history and background there, I think, than 999 out of 1000 people. I am very pessimistic about the situation. It's very easy to lose a war, if you refuse to admit you are in one. Well, it turns out that America was quick to declare war, but only in the nebulous and open-ended sense of our decades-long, ineffective wars on drugs and poverty. These are wars that have no defined battlefields, faceless enemies, and no way of determining when to declare the war over. As the news satire website The Onion put it in a tongue-in-cheek headline, "US Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We're At War With". My brother wonders if he'll be one of the victims next time. I wonder, too. This morning I received this from him: So, we just had a meeting with the CTO. Looks like our group will be moving to 180 Water Street in Manhattan. That's a couple of blocks from the South Street Seaport. Too close for comfort, if you ask me. I really like it here in New Jersey now. And I don't really like the idea of my desk sitting more or less at the center of the bulls-eye..... There was an article in today's NY Times about the smell over there.... some office workers left nauseated at 1PM on Friday..... it's not constant anymore, it comes & goes, and shifts with the wind... but it will be there for a long time. Some people think they can smell the bodies.... I think that's mostly their imagination now, but I remember the first day - that nasty burnt rubber and plastic smell..... I don't want to be there. I don't want him to be there, either. LATER... I'm posting this for future reference — it's a Register article that talks about the dates that the Borg has determined for various operating systems to become officially and irrevocably moribund. Check out the entertaining concept of an Operating System License Downgrade Program. Hmph. |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ Today I got an email from Trend Micro asking if I would like to subscribe to their Trend Micro Weekly Virus Report. I might do that, since these days it's wise to take virus activity very seriously indeed. They also offered a couple of cute JavaScripts that pull data and provide some links from the Trend Micro website. I put their real-time virus map on the bottom of my page, and the alert center in my left column next to the Thursday entry. This stuf might actually come in handy. Incidentally, the virus map doesn't display in Opera with my current security settings, but the virus alert does. Internet Exploder, with default security settings, displays them both. I see that Trend Micro offers some cute free tools, as well; basically they seem to be free scans performed over an internet connection. They offer these for Outlook, Exchange Server (when you're logged into the server as an admin), PCs, and wireless devices. There's also a "risk assessment." Hey, free is good. Sure, they'd like you to buy something from them, but in the meantime they actually are providing some worthwhile stuf free fer nuthin'. And you know me: Free Is Good. |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ I took my daughter to see Cats and Dogs. Cute. Personally I favor cats myself, but I had to admit that Lou, the puppy protagonist, was a cute little guy. Rachel liked it a lot, and I enjoyed its goofy exuberance, and its low, animal-height camera angles. Some cute lines made us laugh out loud a few times. Side note: is Jeff Goldblum genuinely strange, or is it simply coincidence that one adjective that could be used to describe any character I've ever seen him play is "quirky"? |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ This morning I found an email waiting in my inbox from our friend Mike Barkman: Hi Pete... The virus stuff is a good idea -- but it slows the page down considerably. I'm on DSL but it all depends on the load on their servers. Cheers ... /Mike Hmmm... good point. Though I wonder if it might also have to do with the dozen thumbnails in Monday's entry. So in the interests of scientific inquiry, I've removed the JavaScripts to a new page, referenced at the top of the page beneath Fluf Archives. Mike, what does that do to the page load time? Personally, I would expect the graphics to slow things down more than some extra (JavaScript) text, but of course that extra text is calling data from other servers. So... let me know if that made a difference. LATER... And this morning in la Reg, an interesting little blurb on the Borg's product activation scheme for WinXP, and how one side effect may be to drive some of the former "pirates" (i.e. small business and home users who install more that one copy per license purchased) to the freeware alternatives, like Linux or Open Office. Quoth the Reg: Businesses who've bumbled along casually copying and have therefore stuck with Microsoft software quite frequently won't have the budget for going legit at Microsoft prices, so they'll be inclined to take a look at cheaper or free alternatives. They won't in general go warez, because that would be stealing, and they don't tend to think of casual copying as stealing - more, sort of, borrowing. Microsoft might see some slight increase in licence sales for Office through WPA, but it could also find it's inadvertently given Sun and Corel a leg-up. So let it be written, so let it be done. |
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Top of Page Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ No entry. |
