Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

BBC: Halliburton, the company once headed by US vice-president Dick Cheney, is out of the running for a $600m US government contract to rebuild Iraq. (Thanks to Adam for the pointer.) The contract in question is the big infrastructure rebuild (the role that Bechtel played in Kuwait after Gulf War I). The article states that [...]

I was excited a few weeks ago to realize that our lawn needed to be cut. This may sound odd, but last summer and fall everything was so dry that I was afraid that the grass wasn’t going to come back. But it was looking long, lush, luxuriant, and I was happy. So yesterday I [...]

Another techblogger, Ed Felten, has been politically active lately. After his initial report on state level bills that go beyond the DMCA in criminalizing non-criminal computing activities such as encryption, he’s put up a page that tracks the progress of these new “super DMCA” bills. The Michigan laws, which have already been passed, are a [...]

According to Mark Pilgrim, I’m a peaceblogger. I guess it’s been so long since I posted about anything technical that my techblogging skillz are no longer apparent. (Apparently kung-f00 Google wizardry doesn’t count.) Thanks for the link, Mark, and may I also suggest The Green[e]house Effect; Greg is at least as much of a peaceblogger [...]

In the spirit of The Smoking Gun, I went looking for the Halliburton contract that was announced this week. What I found answered a few of the wilder conspiracy claims floating around, but still raises additional questions about disclosure and future business prospects for Halliburton. (Why are we interested in Halliburton? Remember, it’s all about [...]

As a former contractor on the DOD’s standard procurement system, I’m very curious to see how this particular contract award was explained on the official Congressional contract reporting form, the DD-350. Particularly Blocks C8 (how the contract was solicited to vendors), C3 (the extent to which it was competed), and C9 (authority for other than [...]

Of the posts in Blogdex’s top ten today, #1 is an ad for the Columbia House DVD Club; #3 is a tie between six stock listings on Netster and something called NAQ; and #13 is a 34-way tie (probably more, but I couldn’t bring myself to click Next) between different discounthotels*.net listings. I smell some [...]

A little long to print on an index card for easy reference, as someone suggested, but worth reading anyway: A warmonger explains war to a peacenik. My favorite part: WM: The main point is that we are invading Iraq because resolution 1441 threatened “severe consequences.” If we do not act, the security council will become [...]

Sad: Former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan Dead at 76. It may come as a surprise to casual readers (and as no surprise to a few close friends) that I don’t follow the machinery of government closely. I tend to kneejerk very handily in favor or disapprobation of whatever crosses my radar screen, but it wasn’t [...]

…I would have gone nuts by now. Honestly. I was thinking today about how crazy I was living by myself in the summer of 2001 during my internship, and how starting the blog got me through many of those dark nights (and occasionally on a road to self-discovery, though not often enough). I also thought [...]

Reposting from earlier today, during the blogoutage: Happy birthday to Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire, who turns 0×0023 today. (For all you Microsoft Excel users out there, that’s =DECIMAL(“000023″).)

Posts are going to my blog but then disappearing from the home page. This is problematic because Weblogs.com gets pinged anyway (though the RSS feed doesn’t update). Anyone seen this on a Manila site before? Also, the server that runs the editorial part seems to be falling over regularly, and losing many of my changes [...]

I took a bunch of photos of our back yard this morning, with the full intention of posting them, until I remembered that Lisa has the USB cable for the camera with her at her conference. (Mental note: buy another A:B cable, cheapskate.) It’s the kind of grey humid morning, just after a rainfall, that [...]

There are problems with my website today. If this note appears on my website, the problems are fixed and I can post again.

Well, not really, but he did have someone in a chat room ask him to take his shirt off in front of the camera.