[Send your own letter to Congress]

Dear [Senators and Representatives],

I am a constituent and I urge you to reject the Internet Blacklist Bills (PROTECT IP Act in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House). Please join Senator Wyden and other members of Congress, such as Representatives Lofgren, Eshoo and Issa, in opposing it.

As a Software Engineer and networking expert, I can assure you that this bill, if passed, would have devastating effects on the security and stability of the Internet. This poorly-thought-out legislation would allow a single individual to take down entire sites such as YouTube, Twitter or Flickr with one infringement notice concerning a single video or photo. YouTube has millions of visitors viewing millions of videos every day. Can you imagine what the Internet would be like if one person could single-handedly block millions of others from accessing legitimate content, with the force of law?

I was also very disappointed to learn that the hearing conducted earlier today consisted of 5 media witnesses and only one witness from the technology sector. This hardly seems fair and balanced; without a thorough understanding of the serious technical issues this bill creates, and the costs it would impose on nearly everyone but large media companies, Congress simply cannot make an informed decision.

Again, I urge you to oppose the PROTECT IP Act / Stop Online Piracy Act. Please protect our Internet from this very serious threat to free expression.

Best Regards,
[Des]

Dear BART,

I am appalled and extremely disappointed in BART's decision to terminate wireless service in some San Francisco stations and the Transbay tube on Thursday, August 11th, due to a planned protest. I have reviewed your press release concerning this incident (updated Aug 12, 1:08 PM) and I find your explanation wholly unacceptable, especially in light of the fact that the protest did not materialize. Indeed, the lack of cell service ultimately proved more disruptive to the evening commute than the non-existent protest.

While I understand and fully support BART's desire to minimize service disruptions and ensure the safety of its passengers, I remain unconvinced that interrupting wireless service is a reasonable means to achieve these goals. Rather than concentrating on the small minority of passengers intent on causing a disruption, you chose to impose a sweeping, over-broad restriction that violated the free-speech and free-association rights of every single passenger passing through San Francisco that evening. Worse, you provided absolutely no justification for the use of that specific tactic, saying only that it was "one of many … to ensure the safety of everyone".

Our court system has established many precedents on when, where and how free speech may be curtailed, and although I am neither a lawyer nor a judge, I believe such a broad action runs afoul of these precedents. Your actions set a chilling, contrary precedent -- one that aligns closely with the likes of Iran and China, which practice service disruption and censorship on a large scale.

Instead, you should have waited until the protest began to develop, using your agents and officers to observe the state of the protest. You should have targeted your response to the specific individuals trying to cause trouble, and managed the situation as it unfolded, only cutting cell service as an absolute last resort to contain an already-unsafe situation.

Finally, I find it extremely hard to believe you truly consider it unacceptable for individuals to engage in "expressive activities" in the paid areas of the station; as you must be aware, the 1st Amendment does not limit itself to so-called "free-speech zones". I am frequently approached by people on trains and in stations who are looking for donations to various charities, or signatures to various petitions, political and otherwise, and however annoying they may be, there is nothing wrong with this. I find your edict that "No person shall … engage in other expressive activities in the paid areas of the BART stations, …" to be disingenuous and absurd on its face.

I call on you to swiftly:

• Take a hard look at your Aug 11th press release, and revise both the content and the tone to reassure passengers that BART respects their freedom of speech and will do everything possible to accommodate it in accordance with our society's laws and values. Your release strikes a condescending and disrespectful tone that is inappropriate when addressed to the large majority of passengers who have done nothing wrong.


• Release a statement apologizing for the service disruption, and explaining clearly and specifically why you felt disrupting wireless service was necessary, and who was responsible for making this decision.


• Disclose all relevant internal and public-facing policies and documentation, and update them to ensure that intentional cell service disruption won't happen again. Such tactics are appropriate only as an absolute last resort to contain an already-dangerous situation.

Again, this was a shameful action that reflects poorly on BART and goes against everything our society stands for. I encourage you to take swift steps to correct this mistake and ensure you do not make it again.

Please reply at your earliest convenience.

Sincerely,
[Des]
BART Commuter

A close friend and I were chatting today, and the topic of homophobia came up. I remembered one particularly close brush with homophobes I had three years ago.

I'm a little surprised at how visceral the memory feels, even now. I still remember the frigid, dry air, the harsh fluorescent lights, fingering my phone in my pocket. I was quaking in my shoes, my heart pounding, wondering how it would end.

I hope nobody ever knows that fear again.

-- Des

Happy 50,000, Shiro! Thanks for all the fun drives, and getting me from point A to B.

Here's to the next 50k.

(I'm sorry I missed the photo op -- by the time I looked down, it was too late and I was in heavy freeway traffic anyway.)

-- Des

Wow. Once again, it's been over a month.

I've been reading and working my way through Getting Things Done, which has helped me crystallize my thinking on how to plan things out and accomplish some larger goals. I've already implemented a lot of it at work, but work is easy by comparison to implementing it at home -- at home, I'm struggling.

How do you Get Things Done when your todo list consists entirely of unappealing tasks you'd rather put off?

Also, IMO there are no good tools available for managing projects and breaking them down into smaller steps. OmniFocus comes close, but it has a few deficiencies that make it awkward to work with, particularly for hierarchical tasks. (Also, why the hell would anyone ever focus on projects? Focusing on contexts seems more useful, but OF can't do that...)

I've been slowly working to put together my own tool, but ... getting it right requires a lot of time and energy I don't really have. It'll get done, eventually, but in the meantime I'm stuck with pencil and paper -- or at least, OmniOutliner.

So in short, rather than doing the planning I should be doing, I'm fucking around with tools. Hooray for being an engineer. ;P

On the plus side, the whole collection and filing process is getting me a lot more organized at home. I'm 95% of the way through the piles of paper crap that accumulated in my college years, and the rest of it shouldn't require too much effort.

My goal is to have a todo list that is empty of mundane, "maintenance tasks", so I can spend as much time as possible on creative and social activities.

I doubt that'll happen anytime soon, but one can always hope.

-- Des

The colors of a summer sunset over the bay are really pretty.

-- Des

If you want to know what my life is like, look no further.

Really, that's all there is to it.

-- Des

I'm sort of in shock, still.

She had a seizure -- she'd had one before, at Christmas, but recovered fully. Then she was perfectly fine until she had another one last night... and I don't even want to think about what happened. It was over in less than 5 minutes; we figured out later she had passed on before we could even make it into the car.

I broke 95 on the freeway to the vet, but ultimately it didn't matter. There is nothing we could have done.

Phoebe, we miss you. :( Thank you so much for being in our lives.

-- Des

Facebook is the new Emacs. (A social networking site that has games? Really? As if Tetris in Emacs wasn't enough...)

And the old adage still holds true...

Emacs is a great operating system; too bad it doesn't have a good text editor.
Facebook is a great operating system; too bad it sucks at social networking.

[For the record, it sucks because it fails at protecting user data, which is important when collecting a lot of it.]

-- Des

Thank you, that is all.

-- Des