Burningbird

Day one being back

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 7, 2003

The weather was clear and hot during the trip, and the van had an air conditioner that either didn’t work well, or worked too well. The first day I wasn’t too tired and I thought about just driving straight through – 30+ hours – but I was concerned about hitting animals during the night.

The highlights of the trip were the ground squirrel colony, all of Wyoming, and my arrival in Missouri. The lowlights were the fact that I was allergic to the lotion the Park Hyatt provided, everything was at summer rates, and I passed too many accidents trying to make it through on I70 in Kansas City. And the spammers when I got home, of course.

I entered Wyoming at sunset, and the deep amber/red/purple light brought out all the nuances of the painted cliffs – astonishingly beautiful. I itched to stop and try to take a photo that captured the colors, but I remembered that supposedly I see myself as a writer, and perhaps it’s time to refocus more on writing, and a little less on photography. I was sorely tempted, though, when passing the plains, where literally the antelope were playing, just like in the song. Wyoming is at its most beautiful at times of great subtlety, at that first morning light, and that last evening ray.

Kansas was Kansas and hot and crowded with people heading home from the holidays. This combined with constuction delays slowed my travel and I didn’t enter Missouri until quite late. I really dislike driving I70 at night – the road’s bad and the truckers are worse – but last night was worth it because the car lights brought out the fireflies. The hills and the rocks and meadows by the side of the road were alive with fireflies, each adding their bit of glitter to countryside left gray and subdued.

If one wants to write fantasy, one should live in Missouri because I saw the dance of the pixies last night. Pixies, gnomes, and other creatures of the twilight live in these hills. I swear it.

When I got home I checked my email and when I saw that there were 15000+ emails, I knew we’d been hit by spammers. I thought at first it might have something to do with the hacker contest, because of the nature of the spam, but I think it’s your usual scum of the earth spammer. I was rather proud that I managed to handle the problem all by my little lonesome, including clean up the outgoing queue, my incoming email, and deal with the technology that led to this problem. Now, who said women can’t handle techie stuff?

Once I install new email software, the problem should be fixed, and I’ll be ready for the next server challenge.

I did do a lot of thinking on this trip, about some new things I want to do, about writing, Echo, RDF, and so on. I want to try something with RDF and Echo, but I’m not going to say what it is because if I do, someone with more time than me will do it first. I’m selfish enough to want to try this idea on my own, first, without someone else grabbing it before I have a chance. I guess this doesn’t make me a great team player.

I have an article of two for O’Reilly on RDF I need to finish, some legal paperwork to file and various other odds and ends. And I have a new domain – forpoets.org. I plan on dividing this into:

linux.forpoets.org
weblogging.forpoets.org
internet.forpoets.org
markup.forpoets.org
rdf.forpoets.org

And so on. I’m hoping that if this works out, perhaps there will be a book or two in this concept. Or not, and I do it just for fun. I am really strongly motivated to get in and start the RDF for Poets articles – before someone else grabs these and does them first.

Writing and technology aside, I’ll always have time for photos, but I want to make them less of a focus. And I want to start expanding the types of photos I take – something besides “photos for picture postcards”. However, there was a rest area in Colorado that I did take a longer break at, and grabbed a few pictures. You know me and water and reflections.

Burningbird Technology Web

Not the best welcome home

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 7, 2003

Managed to make it from San Francisco to St. Louis in two days, but I’m tired, Very tired. I have photos and stories, but unfortunately, I came home and found that the co-op server was hit. The open Sendmail door, unfortunately, but from the nature of what I’m seeing, it looks like the hit to our server was part of the hacker contest today.

If you’ve sent email to me in the last few days, hold until the all clear and then please re-send. If you need to talk to me, please put message in comments for now, until I get this fixed.

I’ve shut down email in the meantime until we have something else working.

Update From a comment left, it would seem that the hackers are also hacking the Movable Type comments.

Second Update Okay, have deleted all the outgoing emails in the queue – take that spam/hackers. And then I’ve assigned all incoming emails to postmaster to /dev/null, which basically discards them. I had 15,000 emails waiting me when I got home. I knew I wasn’t that popular.

Finally, I turned off relaying, which means people will get incoming email, including me, but no one can send using the co-op server. If you’ve sent me email, I’d appreciate it if you would resend. Tomorrow, if I can finally get some sleep, I’ll look at a replacement for Sendmail.

F**cking Hackers.

Critters Photography

What the squirrels think

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 6, 2003

I didn’t take many photos on the trip home, but I couldn’t resist a colony of ground squirrels at the last rest area in Utah.

Ever wonder what a ground squirrel is thinking?

Political

Fireworks

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 4, 2003

I’ve decided not to go to the fireworks tonight. I spent much of this morning and most of yesterday walking around, and don’t want to walk again tonight. Besides, I’ve seen the San Francisco fireworks before.

I did visit the Golden Gate Bridge today and the mood, which should have been full of silly sunshine and good times was made somber because there were more soldiers than usual out today. At the entrance to the old Fort at the base of the Bridge there was one stationed, looking closely at all the people entering the old site. What did they expect? That someone was going to fire up the old 1800’s cannon and take a shot?

This reminded me of a link to a Washington Post article that AKMA pointed to, about the distrust between the US soldiers and the local Iraqi police force. I was stunned to hear such animosity from our soldiers. Stunned, but not surprised. The soldiers don’t want to be there, people are taking shots at them, they didn’t find weapons of mass destruction, the Iraqi people don’t really want them there, and everyone is hot. No electricity, jobs, no education, no life for the people in Baghdad, and they’re supposed to be grateful? Can’t spit on Bush, but the soldiers are close by, so they’ll spit, or worse, on the soldiers, and the situation is going to get worse before better.

If this is how the soldiers’ attitude is, after only a couple of months – what’s going to happen in a year? Two years? We said we would never get into another Vietnam: fighting against a people that don’t want us, for a people that don’t want us, and in a land that is hostile to us. We said we would never get into another Vietnam, and we did.

But this isn’t stopping Bush, as he dons his true blue American work shirt to go talk to the troops this 4th of July. This was after his belligerent talk yesterday about ‘bring em on’ to the Iraqi people. Stan Goff had about the best comment on this*:

This de facto president is finally seeing his poll numbers fall. Even chauvinist paranoia has a half-life, it seems. His legitimacy is being eroded as even the mainstream press has discovered now that the pretext for the war was a lie. It may have been control over the oil, after all. Anti-war forces are regrouping as an anti-occupation movement.

Now, exercising his one true talent ‘blundering’ George W Bush has begun the improbable process of alienating the very troops upon whom he depends to carry out the neo-con ambition of restructuring the world by arms.

Somewhere in Balad, or Fallujah, or Baghdad, there is a soldier telling a new replacement, “We are losing this war.”

Happy Independence Day, Iraq.

*also pointed to by Frank Paynter

Travel

Today’s Digital postcard

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date July 3, 2003

I walked the length of the Embarcadero today, at least most of it. Combined with the heavy lifting yesterday, and all the driving, and I’m more than a little tired. Tomorrow, no exploring, no salsa dancing, though I may go out tomorrow night to watch the fireworks.

(Sorry to those on the Salsa dance watch.)

Instead, on this quiet day, I plan on hanging around the hotel, taking it easy, and working on a couple of things for the co-op server – including getting suexec working and trying to figure out the Movable Type timezone problem. Besides, I’ll avoid the hordes coming into the city for the fireworks. Last year, the streets were impassable and both bridges blocked with traffic.

However, I will make one more trip to my beloved Dog Beach in the morning.

This afternoon I spent some time at the Ferry Building and at the Thursday Farmer’s Market, though I was disappointed at the size of the affair – a couple of booths, a few customers. The Ferry Building itself was worth the visit. I love clean architecture, with large and open spaces and a minimum of geegaw.

The fog rolled in again tonight, which is good as it will help keep the weather a bit cooler tomorrow. It’s fascinating to watch the fog roll into San Francisco. It starts at the Pacific side, and then rolls over the Castro area, while another band comes in past Golden Gate and over the Presidio, spreading into the Bay, like cotton batting being rolled out for cutting. While this is going on, the rest of the city is under bright sunshine but the breeze stays cool, with a hint of the moisture surrounding the city.

San Francisco really is a place for couples, because there is nothing more romantic than walking along the beach in the fog, listening to the waves break against the shore and watching the pelicans fly gracefully past.

You can keep your diamond rings, your champagne and soft music, fancy words of lust and love, and satin sheets and candlelight. I’ll take the sand, the sounds of the ocean and being wrapped in the fog, sharing a stretch of beach with someone as content with the silence as you are.

You might jokingly say I’m a cheap date, however I’m anything but – I’m in love with perfect moments: with events and emotions and comradery and companionship that are just so. A diamond ring is easy by comparison.