Over there So nothing from Salam the Iraqi blogger, in about a week. By one account at least the BBC revealed information about him that probably put him in danger. So he is probably keeping quiet. Or he may have just lost his Internet connection. Out of all the things to worry about in this war, I guess it is not very logical to worry about him, but I guess he's started to be a bit like the other bloggers I sometimes feel I know better than the people next door to me. Today's Jeopardy! had a U.S. Marine on it, and he won. These are filmed in advance -- is he over there now, too? So now I take a moment to think about all those who have a loved one over there, and who can only wait and hope.

Waiting still I have to work on a big-ass technical document today so I'm trying to put it off a few minutes, so I thought I'd give you an adoption update. We're still waiting. Everyone always wants to know how it is going, well, that's about it. Not good or bad, just waiting. The process just takes forever. Sometimes it is hard to deal with something that you expect to change your life that always seems far from real. But that's the way this is.

Yeah, I ain't got no ideas to blog about So I'm pasting in one of those silly things. But I like this one. I saw it at Lulu Girl's:

Mark is a Broccoli-Eating Pirate Monkey ...with a Battle Rating of 8.3 To see if your Food-Eating Battle Monkey can defeat Mark, enter your name:

Actually, I have been actually rather busy with real-world life things recently, so my self-absorbed self has somewhat been neglected.

Fresh air Window open, nice breeze coming in, cat looking out. Maybe Spring is not an illusion? Yesterday I walked to a place nearby where you can see the skyline of Boston -- pretty hazy, but still cool. Parents and kids playing in the park. After this winter, nice.

On Iraq I keep thinking I should say something here about the war. But it is hard to really say much except to wish for its swift conclusion, and to think about the troops who go where most of us would not dare, and for the Iraqi people who are so much caught in the middle here. There's a report of negotiations between the U.S. and elements in Iraq, attempting to arrange a surrender. I hope it happens. It would save a lot of lives and help the future of Iraq. As for the protesters: In many ways I agree with them, but I think the timing does not make sense. The troops cannot stop now; that would put Saddam in the driver's seat and that would be horrible. I do not however believe they are "un-American" or any such thing. And there will be many times in the coming months where these voices will gain new importance. Even a quick and painless victory for us in Iraq will only be the beginning of trying to find the real terrorists (we haven't, have we) and to heal the split with much of the world. The world isn't going to be an easy place to live for a while. And I am not very well supplied with easy answers to any of this.

Bad radio day Do you ever have a day when you turn on your car radio and nothing there works for you? The song lyrics bring you down, you try some jazz but it still doesn't work. I don't have a CD in my car, just tape (and no idea what is on most of the tapes, which are really from my wife when she drove this car). This is mostly because the car is nine years old (pushing 100K miles). It's a Suburu, but I won't praise it because then it will break down tomorrow. Sometimes I use an MP3 player -- but sometimes I put the wrong songs on that, too. It is a beautiful day today -- as I write this I'm sitting at a table outside the cafeteria in the sunshine. But it's an out-of-sync day for me. I was running really late so I told my wife I didn't have time to make a sandwich so I'd get something from the cafeteria (despite a recent frugality campaign). Even though half asleep, she runs downstairs as I'm getting dressed and makes a lunchbag, which I carry almost to the door before forgetting. Another example of why I just suck. I want to hit rewind on today. Or undo. Or something.

On the eve of war No matter what you think of the upcoming war, you should read what Salam in Iraq has to say in his blog. (It may load very slowly, obviously he's getting a lot of hits today). Somehow, this makes more sense than anything coming from any of the governments (U.S., Iraqi, British, French, you name it). Why does it seem that the U.S. suddenly gets interested in Iraq again when the current president is facing serious problems at home, only to forget about it a few months later. We have a very powerful military, and a lot of brave soldiers, but we never seem to figure out how to conduct foreign policy in a way that makes sense. The truth is that almost no one in the U.S. really cares that much about the people in Iraq, no matter what they say. Most of the anti-war faction doesn't seem too interested in how Saddam treats his people, and most of the pro-war people seem to feel that "we must destroy the country to save it". Tell me, how are things in Afghanistan now? Good, bad, indifferent? To be honest I don't know and you probably don't either. We as a nation have the attention span of a carp.

45 degrees and cooking OK, finally a day looking something like spring. Know what I'm going to do? Clean out my car. And I'm actually looking forward to it. I really feel like getting rid of that "car full of junk and sand and salt" feeling. And I'm going to get it washed, for the first time in, well, a long time. The mourning dove is singing outside now. At least somebody things winter isn't going to be permanent around here!

What's the big deal about pings? The previous entry mentions a test of a new function of blogrolling that works with movable type and other blogging tools to automatically ping blogrolling when I create a new entry? So who gives a shit? Well, I think this is a cool example of distributed computing. Before, blogrolling had to periodically go to weblogs.com, which is pinged by many bloggers to tell that site the blog is updated. Then blogrolling marked that blog as "new" in all the lists created by different bloggers and displayed on their pages. This meant there was a delay between me updating and you seeing that I've updated on, for instance, jen's weblog. Now, I update and it appears almost immediately there. This is a good example of how systems can work faster, and often better, when functions are distributed. Now blogrolling users don't technically need weblogs.com to keep track of each other. Now most folks are not exceptionally fascinated by immediately knowing that I've updated. But lots of other computer systems need that speed more. Weblogs guy Dave Winer wonders how big the blog universe can get before weblogs can't handle it anymore. This kind of distributed updating might be one answer. Of course, blogrolling.com will have the same problem. But you can have more than one blogrolling. Maybe many. This doesn't mean that weblogs.com would go away, but it might change its role. This would mean that the universe would no longer be completely "connected" in terms of updates (at least at the current speed), but it might be faster for each "galaxy". These kinds of tradeoffs are just part of life. I also have the feeling that the blog world is getting out ahead of a lot of the rest of the high-tech world in developments. Stay tuned.

Ping, ping My blog is now supposed to update blogrolling with an automatic ping. Let's see if it works.

Sleep I used to sleep really well. But a combination of medications, worries, and allergies seems to have done a number on that. So I'm having one of those "sleep studies" done; the ones where you go in and actually sleep (or try to) when hooked up to all sorts of monitoring equipment. The idea of that always seemed strange to me, but we'll see if it works.

A Bruce deuce

Saw Bruce Springsteen last night at the Dunkin' Donuts Center (hah!) in Providence. This was only the second time I've seen him, the last being in October at the Fleet Center in Boston.

I thought the Boston show was a great, but I think The Boss topped it last night, the only downside being the absence of Patti Scialfa who was ill.

The Arena Formerly Known as the Providence Civic Center is an old, cramped building with few restrooms and tiny corridors, and it was a pain to find parking.

But the tiny arena was perfect for Bruce. By the end of the show the crowd was almost deafening and he had it wrapped around his little finger, with a lot of help from the band, especially Clarence Clemmons who got more of a chance to work out than in Boston with songs like "Spirit in the Night".

He opened with "War" but as usual made his plea against the Iraq war as an intro to "Born in the USA".

Bruce usually does a special song for the place he's playing, and last night he spoke in remembrance of the victims of The Station nightclub fire, recalling how he'd played so many small clubs like that. And then he did "Bobby Jean" -- one of my favorites. It's a great song closing with a wonderful soulful sax from "Big Man" Clemmons (a massive weapon of musical destruction, indeed). The closing lines:

Now we went walking in the rain talking about the pain from the world we hid Now there ain't nobody nowhere nohow gonna ever understand me the way you did Maybe you'll be out there on that road somewhere In some bus or train traveling along In some motel room there'll be a radio playing And you'll hear me sing this song Well if you do you'll know I'm thinking of you and all the miles in between And I'm just calling one last time not to change your mind But just to say I miss you baby, good luck goodbye, Bobby Jean

Life often leaves us with words unsaid. Do you have a Bobby Jean?

Blogging ups and downs I see some people sometimes post notes that they are taking some time off from their blog to deal with life. I don't blog every day, and there have been stretches of a few days when I did not blog, either because I was depressed or just very busy. But I don't want to take time off from this to work on life's problems -- in many ways, this is my way of working on problems. I think I need to stay here -- some of my better friends are "here", for one thing. Another thing: Hidden posts, posts left in draft state forever, because they need to stay private. I was thinking of doing that, but I guess I just don't trust the system that much. I always say you should never commit anything to writing you would be terribly upset about seeing made public. In some ways there are some thoughts I wish I could make public, but I know that's not the write right thing to do.

It must be true Big Alien Cats Thanks to Tony Osborn for this link.

Cat burglar We had one of those little packs of furry mice for cats in a kitchen drawer. Our younger cat Ginger knows where the mice are kept and is always excited when the drawer (actually, almost any drawer) is opened. The last couple days she's been showing increased interest in that drawer. This morning, when I came downstairs, the drawer was open and the mouse box and the paper inserts, etc., were strewn around the living room. No mice were to be seen, but then we found about 6 of them under the fridge. So now we are trying to find out where a safe place to store cat mice is in this house, if such a thing exists.

Is this really a good idea? Massachusetts is considering further limiting the drugs doctors can prescribe for Medicaid patients, to save money. This plan includes psychiatric medications -- not only antidepressants but antipsychotic drugs, including requiring special permission for prescribing multiple medications for an ailment in some cases. Now there may be some doctors out there who are over-prescribing. But the problem is that for many patients with depression, more than one drug often makes sense. And the newer drugs, in addition to being more expensive, are also often more effective with fewer side-effects. So for those patients who don't do as well with limited, older drugs -- what happens if they can no longer work, need more frequent doctor visits, or even hospitalization? Setting aside the question of fairness in providing medical treatment to those in need, it seems like the state is going to end up paying a lot more for some of these patients than it is saving. And those antipsychotics -- I think I'd much rather pay more taxes than wonder if some poor soul wandering the streets isn't getting the best antipsychotics available. Think about it.

Be informed For National Women's Month snazzycat's home page is featuring facts on dangers faced by women, a different fact with each reload. Go visit -- some serious food for thought.

Seattle Just got back from a three-day business trip there, the first time I'd been. I liked the city a lot, more than I really expected to. Maybe it was partly because it didn't rain at all -- normally unusual, but I was told they are having an odd dry spell. It was really starting to be spring there, flowering trees in bloom, and the grass very green. By most folks standards it was a bit chilly (temps in 40s much of the time) but coming from our freezing New England it felt really nice. I don't know what gives a city a "feel" exactly, but it had a good one. It reminds me of Boston in a lot of ways. (If you are in Seattle and reading this, say hi!) We went up in the Space Needle; it was lots of fun. And I took a brief walk up Queen Anne's Hill. Neat houses, many with wonderful views. The neighborhood goes on my list of places I'd have a house if I had unlimited money, along with Gramercy Park in New York, a lot of places in San Francisco, Mount Desert Island in Maine -- well, you get the idea. The flight in took me over the Canadian Rockies -- a treat in itself. So already this year after hardly traveling on business for two years, I've been to New York, San Jose and Seattle -- a pretty good run The big trouble with going to the West Coast is the damn flight back. From San Jose I did it during the day. This time I took the "red eye". Both times, my body ended up very befuddled. I get jet lag really bad and I really don't get reset for several days. As I get older I think I'm becoming more like my cats -- curling up in the same place all the time ain't that bad.

Watch cat

Ginger likes to watch TV sometimes. She seemed to like Bruce Springsteen for a while ... but then as usual she stretched out and went to sleep