Welcome to my mystery lost-and-found grab bag of barely describable stuff containing the things that often bounce around my mind and keep me awake.  Dip your hand into the unknown without fear and discover something new.  Don't be afraid.  Fear is the mind killer.  Sweet dreams are made of these.

Frankly, I decided that I need a place to purge lost and unblogged things.  I need a better junk drawer of ideas.  I hate to leave loose ends lying around.  I am compelled to follow-up and even make corrections.  Sometimes things will make sense to you and other times an inside joke is going to fly right over your head.  I don't care.  You'll figure it out sooner or later, or not at all.

I've started a thematic Project Playlist for my Insomniac entries.  Listen here.

Yesterday was my nephew's birthday.  He was born on 08/08/88.  I haven't seen him since he was a toddler and he's a grown man now.  I always imagine that fate made him a lucky person.

Someone in Finland @ 192.100.116.142 [saprx01x.nokia.com] methodically scanned my entire blog yesterday as if they were copying the contents of it.  It wasn't a denial of service bot requesting the same file repeatedly.  I watched as that one IP address seem to spider and then request each successive entry every 2-3 seconds.  That single IP caused my page requests to jump about 400% compared to any average day of traffic.  Given the topics of my last two entries, the paranoid in me is not that surprised.  My frellin' ISP provides satellite systems for the Department of Defense.

 

Protect America Act

Apparently, I'm not alone in my disappointment with the Democratic party legislators concerning the "Protect America Act of 2007 (S. 1927)."  A constitutional lawyer and civil rights litigator whose opinion I cited last year about the "Military Commissions Act," Glen Greenwald, has gone from relative blogspot obscurity to a regular columnist at Salon.com.  He was on Democracy Now! on Monday and C-Span's Washington Journal on Tuesday talking about the implications of this new law of Bushworld.

Here are some of the links I was too tired and frustrated to put in Sunday's "Protect America Act?" blog entry and some newer related links:

• NSA's Echelon program - the SIGINT precursor (wiki)
• FISA - Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (wiki)
• The controversy over warrantless surveillance (wiki)
• Greenwald on Democracy Now! (video and transcript)
• Greenwald on Washington Journal (real video link)
• Greenwald "Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism" (Salon.com)

 

NASA

Also yesterday, the space shuttle Endeavor successfully launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida for mission STS-118.  I use the adverb successfully because I think people sometimes forget that two space shuttles have been completely destroyed killing everyone onboard since the start of the shuttle program more than two decades ago.  I watched Challenger explode during the launch phase and Columbia disintegrate during the re-entry phase of both of those missions.

I still get nervous watching the launch preparations and the launch itself.  Endeavor will dock with the International Space Station on Friday afternoon (eastern).  Read about the poignant 21-year-long wait for our teacher-in-space, Mission Specialist Barbara Morgan, onboard Endeavor.

 

42 - the answer to everything

I'm really happy that I was able to go grocery shopping today.  Honestly.  I bought about two dozen packets of Kool-Aid.  It's also tedious not having entirely edible food in the house to eat.  So, grocery shopping is awesome as an idea.

If I were to complain about it at all, I'd just say that shopping in the middle of the day when it is 95F/35C/308K degrees outside is not the best environment for schlepping Banquet frozen dinners around town.

1. You put the item in your shopping cart, then
2. Out of the cart, onto the cashier's station.
3. Off the station, back into the cart.
4. Out of the cart, into the trunk of a car.
5. Out of the trunk, into the house.
6. Off the counter and into the freezer.

After all of that, both me and my frozen dinners were too wiped out to be of any use.

I did buy several pairs of shorts, a six-pack of socks and some sunglasses from the Dollar store to outfit myself for future forays into the daytime public at large.  I was cajoled into buying stuff because of a back-to-school tax-free special sale.  I already have a number of really great shirts that the widows have procured for me during their volunteer work at the battered womens' shelter thrift store.

If you want to know how I felt today, watch the movie "Powder."  In addition to simple physical pain, I was extremely uncomfortable walking around the crowded stores during the daytime.  I was absolutely agoraphobic.  The only nice thing was that we (my neighbor and I) spotted Rocky (our pineapple guy) working in the Winn Dixie grocery store and we chatted with him for a few minutes while he stocked produce.

If Rocky can deal with all the Soylent Green people during the daytime, then there may be hope for me yet.  I still prefer the night, though.

[ headphones ]  - Insomniac's Project Playlist

  Protect America Act FBI NSA NASA STS-118 Barbara Morgan Soylent Green