Microsoft’s “Genuine Advantage” secretly phones home to Redmond

According to this article on slashdot.org Microsoft's "Genuine Advantage" tool which is aimed at reducing piracy just so happens to secretly dial home once a day according to the linked article at Yahoo News.

Click 'more' for the rant…

Happy Anti-christ day!

6/6/6 only comes around once; here's a post to commemerate it:

<style-sheet ripping images deleted>

Two From University Lake

Here are two photos from University Lake

This one was taken yesterdy:

I took this one 5/25 after taking photos around Goose Lake:

Took this one today from my window (has nothing to do with the lake)

Introductory post

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to read my page. I am a 39 year old occasional writer from Seattle Wa, currently living in Anchorage Alaska.

I have started this blog with a few different purposes in mind -most of them personal.

One purpose is as a keepsake; a reminder of what I'm doing and thinking. Probably the worst thing about living with Major Depression is the way in which it saps my memories. By writing in this blog, I hope to have a personal record I can refer to later. For this purpose I'll be taking and sharing a number of photos. Someday I hope to have the money to take up photography in a serious manner, but until then I like taking snapshots with my pen-cam.

Secondly, to practice writing. That one should be pretty self-explanatory.

Third, to share links and commentary on current events and links to stories that are not covered (or marginally covered) on the mainstream news. This is the reason which will probably be the hardest to accomplish.

Finally, if nothing else this page gives me a place to upload various and sundry 'witty' photoshops.

Rage is seething

These are times where it is very obvious that individuals have little to no power, and that those who make the decisions which affect us all neither have our interest at heart, nor are accountable to us.

In times like these, where the anxiety level is high and the options to control events out of any individuals' hands, its' no wonder that people "snap" and try to assert some measure of control by taking the lives of others; others that usually and tragically have little if anything to do with what is going on in the life of the shooter.

Currently, nobody knows why a man intentionally mowed down five people in his car, killing a child in the process. While the 46 year old man's mother claims that he has had depression for years, as someone who has lived with depression -and around people who also live with depression- I can tell you firsthand that there has to be more to the story than simply forgetting to take your paxil.

In Seattle, a normal and seemingly healthy ameteur drummer and pizza dellvery person walked into a house in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood and opened fire on the people having a party there, killing several before killing himself in front of the police. While it's emerged that Kyle Huff has had a history of rowdy behavior -including shooting up an art statue- there is nothing to indicate that he would eventually turn the gun on other others.

These two events only have one thing in common: both are reactions to living in a time where one has no power to effect positive change in the larger scheme of things. There may be more shootings, there may not be -I don't know.

What I do know is this; people realise that they are powerless, and people are going to start acting out as a result of that realisation, in ways that are bizarre and anti-social. With any luck, this resentment will result in people getting together to create a Cultural Alternative to the Survivor Nation which works to find meaning and purpose in our culture -hopefully doing so in a way closer to Woodstock than to Altamont.