Blog Master G

As I mentioned on Monday, today is the Virtual March on Washington. And it appears to be a huge success: There are so many people calling that many others, including me, cannot even get through to my senators. This real-time “antiwar room” is very cool:

MoveOn: Demoacracy in Action

Lots of additions today to my archives section, including these classics:

• the (original) gabe zone (1995)
• the gabe zone (1996)
• Vassar Computer Store (1996)
• Jewett House (1996)
• Gabe’s HTML Credentials (1997)
• Capitol Enquiry, Inc. (1997)
• Vassar Class of 1999 T-Shirt (1998)

What befuddles me is that it’s been 8 years since I put my very first personal Web site online (how funny is that site?). I’m really glad I recovered all these files from my 7600 over the weekend and can share them with the world once again.

The Worst-Case Scenario 2003 Daily Survival Calendar sits on my desk at work. Today’s lesson is by far the best, especially when contrasted to other days like “today in survival history,” “how to escape when tied up,” “how to take a punch,” etc.:

How to Foil a UFO Abduction
1. Control your thoughts.
   Do not think of anything violent or upsetting — the extraterrestrial biological entity (EBE) may have the ability to read your mind.
2. Resist verbally.
   Firmly tell the EBE to leave you alone.
3. Resist mentally.
   Picture yourself enveloped in a protective shield of white light, or in a safe place. Telepathic EBEs may get the message.
4. As a last resort, go for the EBE’s eyes — you will not know what its other more sensitive areas are.

Unlike other tips and how-to guides, this one could actually come in handy. I think I will laminate this one and carry it with me. Always.

Beginning at 5:38pm EST (2:38pm here in California) on Wednesday, I will be participating in the Virtual March on Washington by making the following phone calls to my senators and to the White House:

Senator Feinstein
202-224-3841
5:38PM Eastern Time
February 26, 2003

Senator Boxer
202-224-3553
5:43PM Eastern Time
February 26, 2003

The White House
202-456-1111
5:48PM Eastern Time
February 26, 2003

You can help, too! (Note: the times listed above are the times when I’m scheduled to call, so be sure to register for your own call times.)

MoveOn.org: Virtual March on Washington Headquarters

Here are the talking points I’ll be using:

• inspections are working
• the US does not have support of the world
• war is expensive; redirect the money to domestic problems like education & healthcare
• people die in war
• it’s all about the oil; why isn’t the US leading a charge toward North Korea?”

(Thanks, Dan, for passing along.)

My friend Dan has a good idea: A blog caption contest. Follow the link below and you’ll see my entry in the contest, too:

The Accidental Blog: Write your own caption.

I am typing this blog entry from the floor of my living room on my Power Mac 7600/120, which I’ve not used in years — yes, years. One of my projects for the weekend was to get this machine up and running again. Several years ago — I can’t pinpoint exactly when, but it was early on during the Treasure Island years (1999-2002), this computer decided to conk out. It simply would not start up. After lots of effort — trying to start up from CDs, alternate hard drives, Zip disks, etc. — I even went so far as to buy another Mac: the shell of an 8500 (I wanted to determine if the problem was with the motherboard and not the drives; it wasn’t) — I eventually gave up for a while. I didn’t know “a while” would be several years.

So yesterday I transferred my disk drives, RAM, and video RAM back to my good ol’ 7600 and tried to start her up using an OS 9.1 CD. I had a moment of success, then nothing. So I tried again today and it worked. But I couldn’t install a new OS. I eventually dug up my disk drive and a disk with OS 8.5 on it. I happened to have a copy of OS 8.5 installation on my secondary drive that I was able to install onto the primary.

Why all this trouble for an old school Mac that I haven’t used in years? First, the data. I have several drives full of writing, old emails (August 1995 through June 1999), old Web site (oh, just wait for this ideal candidate for my archives section), photos, college papers, etc. It’s all really important to me. Second, the software. Jen and I are gearing up to begin preliminary production on my dad’s next book, and a Mac running Quark is the only way to go. And with the recent move, the upcoming wedding, honeymoon, and other travel, we don’t exactly have a couple thousand extra bucks to buy a new Mac.

Using this computer brings back lots of memories. And reminds me how much of a Mac guy I am at heart. It’s good to take this trip back down memory lane. But wow, does my Web site ever suck when viewed via a Mac running Netscape Navigator 4.08. (My first stab at posting this before switching to BBEdit caused Netscape to crash.)

Here’s the very first email I ever sent to Jen when I was editor-in-chief of Vassar’s The Miscellany News and she was applying to be a news editor (oh, how times have changed!):

Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997
To: jedeane
From: Gabe
Subject: news editor position

hi jen,

jen h. told me that you’re planning on applying for news editor. i just want to remind you to e-mail me your cover letter and resumé ASAP, since your interview for the position will be tomorrow night.

see you in shakespeare land tomorrow!

-gabe

Oh, the formality!

Back in December I wrote about my longing for my old QBert watch that I owned as a kid. Today this guy in Pennsylvania did a Google search in an attempt to find someone who might be interested in his old watch. Guess whom he found? Yup, for 40 bucks plus shipping and handling, the watch of my youth will be mine once again. And I’ll be its second owner.

• QBert watch 1
• QBert watch 2

How cool is the Internet? Ye ask and ye shall receive.

This is so cool (the aerial photos, that is; not that there were fewer protesters than originally estimated):

Photos show 65,000 at peak of S.F. rally / Aerial study casts doubt on estimates of 200,000

Be sure to check out the photo special and the incredible high-resolution photos.

I’ve always liked to collect quotes. Who doesn’t? Until now, though, I’ve never had a centralized location to store said quotes. Sure, they’ve traveled over the years from scraps of paper to my PDA to Yahoo! Notepad, but now, at long last, there’s a section of my Web site dedicated to housing my favorite quotes:

gabeanderson.com: quotes

You may also notice the new “Random Quote” sidebar below my right-hand navigation. That’s also something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time and have finally gotten around to doing. Surprisingly, it was much easier than I ever imagined:

select * from quotes order by RAND()

Yup, that’s it. Well, that’s the SQL part of it anyway, which is, of course, wrapped into a PHP include file and refers to a new quotes table in my content database that stores all the text. But you get the idea.

Each click on a different area of my site or a reload of the browser will display a randomly-selected quote. The full set of quotes can always be seen in the quotes section, which randomly displays the order. The idea being: The bigger the list grows, the less precedence those quotes at the bottom would otherwise get; but with the random display, there’s fun for the whole family with every refresh..

This is a great parody of modern life in terrorist-fearing America:

Ready.gov – Be Informed – Killer Germs – Visual Guide

Here’s a snippet:

Don’t get so preoccupied with biological weapons that you forget to put on deodorant.