Two Cents and a Thousand Words

Ever have anything you’ve wanted to see on the Web? I’m expanding my list of projects I want to do in the future now that the mainesites.net domain is actually working. Leave me a comment if you have an idea!

I wouldn’t call it ‘wardriving’, but I did do a little exploration today driving back to UMaine from home.

I had 7% left on my laptop battery and I popped my wireless card in. I drove through downtown Bangor and out to the mall, thinking there wouldn’t be any open networks. I actually found one without even stopping at the side of the road. Sometime I’ll have to walk through downtown and see if I can pick up any more – but that’s after I read more info about the whole hobby.

(I didn’t surf on the network, by the way, and I don’t know where exactly it was coming from – I just found that there was one on my site search.)

This could be fun.

The blogroll address for my blog is now http://justin.mainesites.net. Please update your rolls from the previous http://justin.lighthouse.rackhost.net (I get tired just saying that) links. Of course, if you want to get here, justinrussell.com is still the easiest way.

Look for more MaineSites in the future!

Right now, I’m sitting in the middle of the Union listening to TGIF jazz music (remember how much I like TGIF jazz?) and I’m writing a blog entry. I’m writing a blog entry. I’m surfing Leoville, checking my e-mail, and writing a blog entry. No Ethernet cord, no power cord; just my laptop and my newly-activated Ethernet access thanks to IT. The whole Marketplace is wireless, I guess. Isn’t that just incredibly cool?

WIRELESS ROCKS!

I woke up this morning as I usually do, got on my computer as I usually do, checked my e-mail as I usually do, and got on the Internet.

Well, at least I tried. The network was down. Turned out a piece of UNET equipment had failed, but it sure scared the heck out of me. Made me wonder for a minute what would happen if the Internet went away.

I saw a lot of people’s reactions today; some thought that it was overpublicized, some thought we should drop it, others hailed the celebrations. I dunno. I did mostly normal stuff. I thought some about what had happened a year ago, and I watched Dr. Mark Heath’s video from CNN. The high-pitched squeals of either the respirators or the police sirens filled with soot is the one sound I’ll remember most from a year ago.

I still remember the moments coming back from NMD 295 and hearing about what had happened. I still have the six hours of MSNBC footage on tape that I caught twelve months ago. I still remember the feelings I felt that day.

Three days after one year ago, I wrote the following.

The events of the past few days have made me reconsider myself and America in general. My views will change after this tragedy. I’m no longer worried as much about Big Brother; now FBI’s Carnivore e-mail monitoring program seems reasonable. Of course, this event will inevitably bring back the stereotype discrimination that we as a country have seen and dismissed in the past. I truly hope that our country’s leaders pursue a reasonable resolution to this problem through various kinds of intelligence. I will say, however, that I do not favor war in order to combat this kind of attack. We are currently mourning the loss of thousands of lives within the course of an hour or two. We should stand tall and not cause thousands of other (mostly civilian) lives to be killed on the other side of the world. We are all people. We have different beliefs, we have different values, but we are all people. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s simply wrong to kill other humans, no matter what the reason. As we’ve seen over the last couple of days, not all results of this attack are negative. If possible, I would like to go down to New York and Washington and personally thank each firefighter, policeman, EMS worker, and other volunteer that has worked on the tragedies. They are the true American heroes. I also hope this makes our politicians realize how trivial many of the partisan arguments they debate really are. And please, think of those in need. Donate your time, money, service, or blood to the Red Cross or other organization. Hundreds of sites have set up collections, including Amazon.com. Let’s learn from our mistakes and make our country stronger than ever.

My beliefs haven’t changed, even after a year. United we stand.

Let me say right now that I will be blogging tomorrow. I’ll be watching digitized videos I’ve saved from a year ago and I’ll be writing what I remember in my blog. It’s basically a journal, after all.

The hype everyone seems to be expressing lately is asking whether tomorrow will be a normal day. I can honestly say that I hope it will. What do you classify as normal? I consider it living our lives as we usually do. Sure, something tragic happened a year ago tomorrow. The sheer intensity of that day and those that followed will stay with me forever. However, I take a bit of issue when people automatically say that 9-11 was the worst event ever in US history. As my Technology & Society professor says, that’s often said without a historical background to support it. However you would like to remember tomorrow is fine by me, but just remember that there are plenty of other days worth remembering. Many of these figures come from The Heritage Foundation.

• January 28, 1986 – Challenger explosion
• April 20, 1999 – Columbine High massacre
• April 23, 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing
• November 22, 1963 – JFK assassinated
• April 4, 1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr. assassinated
• June 6, 1944 – D-Day (4,900 dead)
• September 17, 1862 – Antietam (5,425 dead in one day on American soil)
• August 6 and 9, 1945 – Atomic bombs dropped on Japan (tens of thousands instantly dead, tens of thousands more die later)
• December 7, 1941 – Pearl Harbor (2,388 dead in a few hours on American soil)

Is any day really ‘normal’ anymore?

If you agree or disagree with me, please leave a comment. There’s bound to be some difference in opinions among readers, and remember, the freedom to voice our opinions is just one of the many things that makes this country great.

If you run Windows XP on your machine, go to Windows Update and install Service Pack 1 NOW.

There are some pretty nasty bugs floating around, one of which was demonstrated on tonight’s TSS. It’ll allow people to delete arbitrary files from your computer when you click a link in a web page or HTML e-mail. Find out more about the flaw at one of these two sites:

thescreensavers.com

GRC.com

I really like instant messaging, but it has its drawbacks. I don’t like it when people leave without any sort of acknowledgement that you’re still there. I admit that I’ve been guilty of this a little in the past, but I’m going to change.

In other news, has anyone else been really bored lately?

The song I have stuck in my head right now (actually, over the last week) is Keep Fishin’ by Weezer. The video is equally cool – it has the Muppets. You can see it at their site. They’ve always had a history of great videos (including the one for Buddy Holly). Today I bought their latest album, Maladroit, and most of the music is really good.

You can listen to a stream of it at MP3.com.