Still going after all these years.
Yesterday afternoon Weblogs.com broke 2000, not 8 months after it broke 1000. Any bets on how long it will take to break 3000? Or is this upspike due solely to the war and will this stand as an all-time high water mark? —As always, you can download the total historical record in convenient, Creative Commons-licensed Excel form here.
Which vision of April?
Morley: “April is in my mistress’ face.”
April is in my mistress’ face.
And July in her eyes hath place.
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.
Mr Eliot: April is the cruellest month. (Killer layout, apologies for the inevitable Tripod popups):
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Much to my amusement (and everyone else’s chagrin), almost everyone in my March Madness group except one is out of the running. We crashed and burninated, indeed.
Aaron Swartz writes at the Google Blog that he’s going to start a new topical blog, this one about everyone’s favorite paid-listing engine Overture:
Today is the Google Weblog’s last day. It’s been fun writing it, but it’s time to face the facts: Google simply isn’t relevant in this day and age. Sure, they were good and popular once, but now they’re nothing but a pale shadow of their former self.
The real action is over at Overture, which is quickly gaining the hearts and searches of the Web community. The techno-elite have Overture.com as their start page, and often use the verb “to overture” in their sentences. There really is no place for Google in this world, which is why this will soon become the Overture Blog.
Hee hee. It’s a joke, right, Aaron?
Dave: “On this day six years ago I started Scripting News. Welcome to year seven of my humble weblog, and praise Murphy.…UserLand Software started in April 1988, fifteen years ago.”
Heartfelt congrats to Dave on this propitious anniversary. Scripting News was what inspired me to restart this page in earnest; I was unaware that there were any other blogs around when I began. And (as I’ve written before) the first version of this website was written in Frontier… and it’s still running in Frontier today.
My good friend Jim, who I sang with at UVA and in the Cheeselords, is getting ready to hike the Appalachian Trail. As a management and technology project manager for the last few years, he has found the right way to go about the planning: tongue in cheek.
I have ultimate confidence in my ability to walk this thing because I have engineered a most excellent AT Planning Spreadsheet. I have an Executive Dashboard up front, based on my company’s “7 Keys to
Success” management methodology; a risk log; a menu planning tool measuring such dimensions as “calories per dollar”; and a pace-o-meter, which will allow my support team at home to track where I am at any given time, whether I’m at risk of missing milestones, when I should pick up my next mail drop, and so on. I only need to do the actual walking now.
Jim leaves Sunday. Godspeed, Jim, and maybe I’ll be able to get East to see you at some point along the trail.
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 Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root was awarded a “contract” without competition to put out oil fires in Iraq. As we all know by now, that should be task order, not contract. And calling it noncompetitive is interesting; this is the first time I’ve seen that confirmed in print. Oh, to get my hands on that DD350…
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 set my self up for a day of lawn care, I got the mower out. And after a few rounds discovered that it was “luxuriant” the same way the hair of a man with a comb-over is “luxuriant.” Only when I clipped the sparser-than-I-realized grass back, I found not bare scalp but moss. And dandelions.
God, dandelions. Bane of my existence. At least I found a curiously satisfying way to attack them (shovel, at a shallow angle under the center of the dandelion, to cut the taproot, then the whole plant comes up with a gentle tug, without harming the surrounding grass). I’ll need to keep watching for them; the taproots will continue to send up new plants until they exhaust themselves, and there will always be new ones that pop up. But I’ll be ready. After all, vigilance is the eternal price of a lawn.
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 bit scary…
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 as me, and he has the political bona fides to go with it.
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 the Harken-Halliburton Presidency.)
Summary:
Details, including a discussion of how I found this data, are here.
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 full and open competition).
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 changes coming to the authentication process at Blogdex.
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 an irrelevant debating society.
PN: So the main point is to uphold the rulings of the security council?
WM: Absolutely. …unless it rules against us.
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 until I spent time talking with Lisa about her former career as a Congressional staffer and public policy maven that I understood how pivotal Moynihan had been in shaping intelligent, humane public policies during his career. His like will not come again for a long time, I’m afraid.
Bad: Use a firewall, go to jail. Ed Felten points to legislation pending before Massachusetts and Texas (among other states, including Georgia) that would extend the DMCA to criminalize the “possession, sale, or use of technologies that ‘conceal from a communication service provider … the existence or place of origin or destination of any communication.’” Firewalls, anyone? Encrypted email? NAT (such as is performed by a wireless hub)? Not if you value your liberty, ironically. Call your state representatives and let them know they’re being idiots…
Funny: The Index of Evil at Warblogger.com. A brilliant application of Weblogs.com, this one uses the hourly changes feed and scans all the newly updated websites for four keywords—“bin Laden,” “Ashcroft,” “Hussein,” and “Poindexter.” While their methodology may be suspect (surely Saddam is more commonly used?) their intent is sterling. And the Index may be syndicated. If I have time, look for an Ashcroft ticker to appear on this blog soon…