Events

The National Hurricane Center reports this hour that Tropical Storm Zeta, only the second January tropical storm ever recorded, may become a hurricane. It probably won't, but it's already so close as to make the distinction irrelevant to any ships in the area. I'm putting this in the Politics category as well as the Weather category because I believe it's one more example of the increased tropical activity predicted by the global warming hypothesis and ignored by current U.S. policy. For those of you...

Our stupid Webcam fell again:

As promised, here is the world's ugliest menorah:

Welcome to another year of the Blog. Anne and I wound up at the Majestic Hotel right in the middle of our old neighborhood, and then we rang in the New Year at a (relatively) new bar on Clark Street, whose name escapes me. Lots of fun. Forgot the Champagne, though. New Year's Resolution: 1024 x 768 (I'm using my laptop). Complaints about the weather: None from me. It's 4°C (40°F) right now, which for a Chicago New Year's Day is delightfully warm. However, this guy that I saw on the way home from the El...

For my last post of the year, I'd like to announce that the Inner Drive Technology Comprehensive Testing Facility is now complete, except for the Lab Cam, which should arrive from Logitech in about two weeks. (The dead one is visible in the upper-left corner of the photo below.) Inner Drive's World Headquarters is now ready to face whatever challenges we may in 2006. Happy new year, everyone!

I'm not the only one suffering techno-poltergeists this week. Anne just got this message from Google: Lockdown in sector 4! Our system indicates unusual usage of your account. In order to protect Gmail users from potentially harmful use of Gmail, this account has been disabled for up to 24 hours. Googleing the email found that Google's own tools can trigger this lockout. Did anyone notice the theme of all the technical issues we've had lately? An SBC router crashed, a Webcam fried, a voice-mail account...

From 5pm Thursday until 9pm Friday, machines hated me. I do not know why. Thursday afternoon, I added my dear mother to my mobile phone plan. This is her first mobile phone. I suppose she was waiting until they perfected the technology. Clearly they haven't; but my carrier, T-Mobile, uses GSM technology, which is the most advanced available commercially at this time. Clearly, however, giving my mother a mobile phone caused the Anti-Technology Gods to frown upon me. First, T-Mobile deleted my voicemail...

First, from the Strange Editorial Priorities department: these were the headlines on MSNBC's top headlines today: WP: CIA program withstands furor The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10644533/ West Coast gets more rain The West Coast was expected to end 2005 with a bang of winter weather: two storm fronts that could bring as much as 10 inches...

Correction, 25 January 2006 12:00 CST/18:00 UTC: The problem described below turned out to be a bad individual camera. Logitech was great, replacing the bad camera with a new one, no questions asked. The new camera has been running without interruption for several weeks now. The original blog entry follows: I can't believe how much time is being sucked away from me by this broken Webcam problem. I am now on hold with Logitech, and though my call is very important to them, they are experiencing...

A quick check of email showed me a notice from NOAA that the 27th tropical storm of the most active season in recorded history had formed: ...LATE SEASON TROPICAL STORM...THE 27TH OF THE YEAR...FORMS IN THE EASTERN ATLANTIC... AT 1 PM AST...1700Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM ZETA WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 25.0 NORTH... LONGITUDE 36.9 WEST OR ABOUT 1070 MILES...1720 KM... SOUTHWEST OF THE AZORES. And we thought the season had already ended. Wow. This is truly historic.