Today's FoxTrot link got posted to the Linux mailing list at work. It's worth passing along. (But read it now, apparently they take these strips down in 2 weeks or so).

Bill Amend who draws it is a Mac fan, actually.

A friend of mine wrote about some newly developed photos from Sept. 12, 2001. I was not in NYC that day but just looking at fairly ordinary photos from then (if anything from that day can be called ordinary) I know that anything anybody dreams up for a Halloween horror movie could not possibly match the fear of not knowing whether my friends were dead or alive, even if I was 250 miles away.

For a while I worked in the Woolworth building (near City Hall) and came through the WTC PATH station in my commute. The Woolworth building used to be dwarfed by the twin towers but now it is the main landmark in lower Manhattan - seeing this new skyline, even casually in pictures, is still very unsettling to me.

It is pretty hard to write anything about this topic that hasn't been said a thousand times. But it is also hard to not write about it. Someone else's story is still not quite your story.

I was just trying to figure out some more links to add here.

And found this on how the "rich get richer" -- sites with lots of links to them already are found by more new people, hence getting even more links, not necessarily based on quality.

I am finding that the bostonite blog ring -- its in the links over to the right, I'm too lazy to cut and paste it here too -- yah cahn't get thaha from heaha -- often seems better at finding blogs I like than random poking around.

Maybe this area just attracts interesting people (pats self on back for obviously being one of the interesting people). And I think I found a blog of someone I know from another web site, but have never met.

I met a friend on Ryze who lives about four blocks from me but who I probably wouldn't have me otherwise.

So it is not always true that the Web's virtual communities break down live ones -- sometimes it can help build them.

Earlier today I was taking a walk, and complaining that the fall colors seemed a little subdued where we were.

Well, later, we took a drive into Lexington, looking for a store we ended up not finding. But got a bonus -- several trees bright yellow, and lit by the low sun, like torches! It is almost better when they are isolated like that -- it almost takes your breath away.

I've leaved most of 40-plus years in the Northeast but I will never stop being amazed by the colors of fall. Or at least I hope not.

Wifey wanted to go to Wilson Farms -- a lot of great stuff there, but a mob scene!

"Man Crushed by Shopping Carts: Cellphone-wielding soccer moms prove his undoing -- film at 11".

OK, the next Macarena? Well, I wasn't really asking for that, but I've kinda got hooked on The Ketchup Song., aka Aserejé.

Pretty catchy, although the video is more fun than just the audio track, which is completely and entirely unrelated to the attractiveness of Las Ketchup (they are from Spain, three daughters of a famous musician known as Tomate).

Hey, we all need some distraction right now, right?

This is really a summer song, which is why it made it big in Europe this summer and is big in South America now.

Buy the album and you get a bunch of other not as great songs, but also a DVD with the video and stuff.

I can't do the dance yet, but give me a few weeks...

Maybe somebody's done this, but Lulu-girl got me thinking about this idea again:

The Fear of the Day web site.

Each day, something new to be afraid of. Rare diseases, freak accidents, and the like.

You know how it is -- you're paranoid, but you just don't have the time to really do the research. I mean, who wants to worry about the same thing day after day, when you can have a new worry every day!

Maybe coming soon to a server near you ...

Computer transplant day. One of the ancient machines (we'll call it A) around refused to start recently -- and it had a 80 GB hard drive with tons of useful files. It also had a bunch of old, stupid small hard drives, making it hard to maintain.

I had another machine I could put it in (let's call that one B), but that machine's BIOS could not support a drive that big without an upgrade. Since it also had a slightly slower processor, I made a new machine from:

1) Machine B case/power supply
2) Machine B main hard drive
3) Machine A motherboard
4) Machine A big hard drive

This was the first time I'd tried to match a Windows 2000 boot drive with a new motherboard -- after spending forever detecting new things, it actually worked.
Also, this now gives one less Windows machine, since I'm moving over to Linux as much as I can. Some more work to do (move the better sound card from A to B, etc). I am thinking of moving the CD ROM burner that had been on A to a Linux machine.

Note: If you read and enjoyed this entire post, please seek immediate help.

I was feeling a little lonely yesterday so I went on the MIT online alumni directory looking for old friends -- found two email addresses for people I had not talked to in about 20 years, and sent them both mails. I was wondering if they even remembered who I was, but I got nice notes back from both of them within hours! One of them may come to Boston sometime soon.

So find an old friend online today!

What I want to know about Terrell Owens signing a football and handing it to his financial adviser:

How did he find a financial adviser he actually likes that much? Is he actually making money? How do I get in on this deal?

Just got back from visiting my mom -- a great trip except that our car hit a deer on the way back from visiting some old friends of my family and my old home town (Oneonta, NY). No one in the car hurt, thankfully. Deer hurt pretty bad, shot by trooper. Car also hurting but driveable. Odd thing was, we were talking at dinner about how many deer there are this year in upstate NY, and we saw about 7 of them in a group right after leaving the friends' house. So I was on the lookout for any on the roads, but this one was a little too fast for me.

All in all, I'm glad this was not worse -- I didn't see the deer afterwards, but the trooper said it was a 4-point buck -- pretty large, this could have been much worse.

On a lighter note, when we got home we found our cat Ginger had stolen both of my wife's toothbrushes, from a closed medicine cabinet. For some reason she is fascinated by them...

sooz has her photo blog up and running at capricious. Nice site, check it out.

On a totally unrelated note, installed Red Hat 8.0 as an upgrade on an old machine -- all went well except there is some kind of interrupt problem with the Ethernet card that was not there before. The desktop IS really nice looking -- but need to fix the networking before I can really check it out...

I love things that generate lyrics or whatever. Here's one for
Alanis Morissette.

Silly but fun!

Bruce Springsteen at the Fleet Center last night; fantastic! I've been a fan for most of his career, including my years in Joisey, but never had a chance to see him before. A really high-energy show ending with a special "Dirty Water" just for Boston. The setlist changes gradually from show to show -- I'm glad I saw this one instead of one of the first shows -- I think we got more and better stuff.

This show followed his appearance at the dedication of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill bridge, and he mentioned Zakim's long work against prejudice. Before moving to Boston I didn't really know about Zakim, but Springsteen's words were very moving.

He also put in a strong call for open debate on war with Iraq and for the importance of keeping freedom of expression even in times of danger -- as a lead in to "Born in the USA".

Even the day after I'm still too tired to really do a real review -- everybody always says his shows are intense, but it is hard to believe until you actually are there.

Here are some forum posts about the show.

From boston.com:

Our tax dollars at work

So my question is, is there any useful reason to be at Daytona Beach except for half-nude women? OK, I did go there once to visit my then-girlfriend/now wife, but I don't think that really counts as an exception...