Crescat Scientia

I had a lint remover. It was this little rolling wheel with tape on it. You could peel off the outside tape to reveal more tape. Very useful. I can't keep lint off anything in this house. But where'd it go???

So remember the inability to get to the circuit breakers? Our dining room circuit was blown for a few days (this isn't any sort of emergency), but we were to get the key to the basement yesterday. All would've been well. The universe doesn't work like that.

Around 2 p.m., a pipe behind our washing machine bursts and water begins gushing out. The workmen in the basement notice the water cascading down their new drywall, and frantically come knocking on our back door. We try to shut off the water to the stacked washer/dryer, but to no avail. So the workmen, communicating via cell phone, try many of the numerous water shutoff valves in the basement. After a few minutes, success! With one minor hitch: water is shut off to the entire building.

I call two of our landladies, CI and CC. CC is in a meeting, so won't make it over for an hour. CI calls a plumber. Meanwhile our upstairs neighbors notice they have no water, and come down rather upset about it. They are really not happy. :)

So CC shows up at about 4 p.m., and CI calls and says the plumber is on his way. Not quite that easy: he's travelling from Harvey. That's a south suburb, around 150th street or so I'm told. So he'll be here in a little while. We wait for several hours, and we eventually find out there was an emergency of sorts at the plumber's other job site, so he was delayed. CC gets bored, so she goes to the store. When she gets back, CC and I watch the show House at its special time at 7p.m. in its entirety.

At around 8p.m., the plumber shows up. They first go downstairs to see if there is any way to isolate the leak and turn on water to the rest of the building (who are pretty furious now). There is not. The plumber then says we have to move the washer/dryer and he'll come back when we've done that. I start unhooking the washer/dryer from the wall when Q shows up to help. That was no small feat either; I almost lose the tip of an index finger... We succeed with that, but cannot move the washer/dryer.

CC calls the janitor from a nearby building she knows to help. He first sees if he can isolate the leak, but to no avail. Then he moves the washer/dryer out. Now we wait for the plumber to return! Around 10p.m. or so, the plumber magically reappears. He works quickly, removes the busted section of pipe, and turns on water to the whole building. Hoorah!

Of course, our washer/dryer is still in the middle of the kitchen, not hooked up, and there is a hole in the drywall behind where it should sit. The next goal is to have the hole fixed (with some insulation inside), and return our washer/dryer to its rightful place.

Gah!

I want to go bike riding down by the lake, but my computer keeps reminding me that it's right around 0 degrees, with a wind chill of 15 or 20 below. Seems like I'd regret the idea pretty quickly. I think I'll have to wait a few days.

This place is so frustrating. When that interloper made his appearance, the landladies came over very quickly, and brought the contractors. They sealed up the basement, and the next day the contractors fixed the hole in the wall. A few days after, the landladies changed the padlocks on the side and back gates. They made sure to give us keys (but we almost never use these gates).

At some point between then and now, they replaced the door (and locks) to the basement. All nice and good, except we don't have access. Our circuit breakers are in the basement. Since we run space heaters constantly (because it's so drafty and cold), this presents a serious problem. Our first circuit has already paid his fare to Charon. (OK, that's over the top.) Let's see how long it takes, and how many circuits die before we get keys to the basement.

Oh, and did I mention our phone wiring is messed up? I think the contractors downstairs did it. Many times we'll get very short rings. The answering machine won't pick up. Grr!

I know it's sacrilege to talk about anything but chocolate. However, I've been into the strawberry cheesecake ice cream lately. I also discovered the cherry vanilla. Yummy.

The vanilla fudge is not so good.

87 percent of Americans can be identified by knowing only their date of birth, gender and 5 digit ZIP code. Any other men in the 60615 area born on August 14, 1980?

(The statistic comes from research of Latanya Sweeney.)

Hmm, I still find "hoi polloi" weird to read in English. I think it was that semester on classical Greek. In Greek, it's ὀι πολλοι. Seeing the "h" seems off.

A friend is going to be playing at the Double Door on Thursday. You should come. :)

My flatmate arrived home at 1 a.m., a little bit intoxicated. Scratch that, very intoxicated. Speaking of such, did you know that the National Women's Christian Temperance Union headquarters is located in Evanston? I just learned this.

(Oh and the post title is from Lord Byron. In the interest of fairness, let's also give Seneca his say. He said, "Nihil aliud est ebrietas quam voluntaria insania." Translated, that reads, "Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.")

On "Meet the Press" today were the former ranking members of the Senate and House Intelligence Comittees. (Daschle was defeated in 2004, so he's currently at Georgetown.) I'm sure you all know who I'm talking about: Roberts, Daschle, Harman and Hoekstra. The topic for the day was the NSA domestic surveillance program, and the banter ran down party lines. Everyone agrees that catching terrorists is good; only Democrats think you need to follow the law in doing so.

The administration has given at least 4 reasons for its authority: first, that the President has inherent constitutional authority, second that Presidents have done this before, third that the Act signed on September 15, 2001 gives him this power, and fourth that FISA is outdated, onerous and doesn't apply.

The first excuse is the one I understand least, but it seems to stem from his position as Commander in Chief and the oath he swears to defend the constitution. This has been interpreted as giving the President extralegal powers especially in a time of crisis. It's disingenuous not to remember this in context. The "domestic spying" program was begun very shortly after 9/11. No one knew what happened, or what else was going to happen. There was a palpable fear of another attack and an unmistakable grief. All the Congressmen (forgive the gendered pronoun) on the show unremarkably agreed that the surveillance program was necessary. And it has been argued that even in its current incarnation of murky legality, it was ok for a little while. When it was begun, it was an emergency. A very sad emergency. So the better question is why it continued. If the extralegal powers are intended for critical situations, and there is no imminent threat...

Regarding the second excuse, the example cited by Roberts was Roosevelt. Unfortunately this isn't as supportive of the Presidential power claim as Harman aptly pointed out the Truman-era Supreme Court decision that clearly stated Presidential power is "at its lowest ebb" if Congress has already acted. And here Congress has acted in the form of FISA.

The third excuse is very interesting. The Act gave the President power to track down those responsible in other nations. The administration specifically requested adding a phrase giving them power in the U.S. and Congress did not agree.

The fourth excuse is also questionable. Harman pointed out that the PATRIOT act updated the FISA in 8 different ways. It has been modernized, it is not onerous, and even if it were, it can easily be further modified. Daschle kept returning to the fact that this could've been done lawfully. If FISA was burdensome, Congress would have dutifully changed it.

What's so wrong about going to a court? The FISA court rubberstamps warrants. (There were a total of about 8 denied of thousands.) Russert played campaign footage of Bush from 2004 where he said that in wiretaps, he was seeking court approval. He flatly lied.

All this being said however, I feel my ideology clashing with reality. I feel like a guy I saw on Nightline or Dateline or some other indistinguishable nightly news program recently. He had lost his house, and he needed government money to rebuild. He was a doctor, obviously educated, and ideologically Republican. He had voted for Bush, and was a fiscal conservative favoring small government. He noted how helpless he was, and that despite his ideology, he needed the government and the government should act. The irony seemed to be missed by him, that there are others who struggle everyday with poverty and illness. A little bit selfish to think the government should help you when you build your house below sea level in Hurricane alley, but they shouldn't help someone who (maybe through their actions, but maybe not) has no access to health insurance or food. (Watch me turn into a socialist here...)

In my case, I'm ideologically something other than a Republican, but Roberts was the only one who could speak with some emotion. That gutteral appeal does contrast with my desire for social programs and civil liberties, but the irony is not lost on me. The Democratic party is utterly lost. We will not have a Democratic president in 2008. Of that I am certain.

Congress wants to hold hearings on Internet companies in China and their compliance with Chinese government censorship.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the Justice Department is trying (with subpoena) to get various information from search engine companies to reprosecute their pornography law. Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft complied. Google decided to protect the privacy of its users by fighting the subpoena.

If you want a potentially onerous law, why can't you do the research yourself?

I need to find a replacement for the pool team. Anyone up to it? :)

My parents are unhappy.

It's rather surprising it took this long. In our building, the basement has been under renovation for the full two years we've lived here. The landladies want to turn it into an apartment like the other floors, and then to sell the building as a whole. (The potential buyer we met would continue to rent out the apartments.)

The basement though has many windows, not all with functional locks, not very secure at all. And there's a stairway coming up to our apartment. You see where this is going... The top opening of the stairway has been shut over with drywall.

So today at about 9:40 p.m., I am watching Grey's Anatomy. I was looking forward to the show; I like it. (Nem says nurses take issue with it...) Then I hear some rather large pounding noises, and what sounds like tape ripping. I think NJ is doing something stupid, so I get up to yell at him. As I walk into the hall, by the stairway, I see two unknown arms peering out of the drywall. The arms are uncovered of a medium complexion. As I approach, they recede back into the dark stairwell. It would seem a young man climbed through an open window in the basement, climbed the stairs, and punched through our drywall. One must assume an opportunistic burglary would've ensued had the TV not been quite so loud. :)

I get NJ out in the hall, and he calls the UC police. They say to also call the CPD, so he does. Then he calls the landladies. The UC police show up first, and fast. There are three of them, one in plain clothes. One officer said he was at 55th and Cottage Grove, so it only took 5 minutes or so. The plain-clothed detective heard the report of "arms coming through the wall" and decided he just had to see this. All are very cheery. They go down to the basement and look around, with flashlights and guns drawn. (I must say it's a little bit scary to be 3 feet behind a guy holding a gun at his side, poised for whatever. I was going to tell them where the stairway is, but I decide to go back upstairs.) They are very helpful, and tell us we should hound the landlords, and tell us how to shore up the hole for the short term. They seem to believe that the intruder is a crack addict. After we all share some banter and amazement, all but one leaves. He fills out the report, with my help. He tells us a summary of the report will be available on Wednesday. He again is very nice and cheery. In the middle of this process, two of the landladies come, and they bring the contractors who are rehabilitating the basement. They nail windows shut, and generally secure the basement. This seems to be a weird occurrence to everyone. The officer tells us this may be the weirdest attempted burglary he's seen.

The UC officer tells us upon leaving that we should call CPD again. Apparently both departments really do need reports. An hour or so later, the CPD officer shows up. He is unaided, and seems green. He writes his report rather laconically, but warms up after a bit. He finishes after some time, and tells us that an evidence technician may come take photographs of the hole. The CPD report will be available in about 6 weeks.

It seems the evidence technician will not come. The contractors will fix the hole in the drywall tomorrow. Everyone's acting a bit crazy though. I would've been the one to greet the fellow had he not second-guessed his brilliant idea. It seems reasonable enough. But I guess I've had enough things stolen in my lifetime. I also used to have dreams where I walked around late at night, and saw a burglar out on the roof. (I lived on the second floor over the garage, and I could see the roof over most of the first floor out the window.) Quite scary dreams actually... But really now.

That dinner was actually pretty fun. I get to play a certain rôle for the second time this August.

I had a friend whose birthday was August 26... I haven't talked to her in a few years now. I had this really stupid way to remember her birthday. Shortly after she mentioned it once, I was opening a new checking account. The bank officer asked me to choose my PIN for my check card. So I used her birthday for half of it. You aren't supposed to use birthdays or addresses or such for PINs, but there's no way anyone would've figured it out. To do so, they'd have to make a list of all my close friends and try all their birthdays... Easy to remember (the PIN and the birthday!) and secure. Besides, I used another scheme for the other half of the PIN.

I still have the account, but the PIN has long since been changed.

I'm invited to dinner. Just me. It all seems a little artificial.

I'm in the usual place. Some people freak out a little bit too easily. (And Rob, I was no more than a foot away from you at 7 p.m. I don't think you noticed.)

I've tried this Google sitemaps thing now for a few months. At the very least, it hasn't hurt. I do wish more statistics were available.

One thing I can't figure out: why does Googlebot see my site as US-ASCII?

Where are the snowdens of yesteryear? Or for that matter, the good movies? The ones with ensemble casts, or at least developed supporting characters; the ones that brashly surpass the 170 minute running time, and that despite following so many others are based on some World War II story; the ones where almost all of the lead characters die? I just watched The Great Escape.

My sister's car was recovered Thursday after a high speed chase. they used it to steal from construction sites, dented in the top of the car with heavy stuff, probably totalled

Friday morning marked my return. I absolutely love flying in the morning. My flight departed at 7 a.m., so I was up two hours earlier. Unsurprisingly, the plane was only about half full. I had an empty seat beside me. The cabin lights were off the entire flight. Everyone was silent but for one oblivious infant in the back. It felt surreal.

It was 30 or so when I got here. Rather than 70 or so in Texas.

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