Tuesday, 29 May 2001

Memorial Day came and went without any real incident, and that includes going to see Pearl Harbor, which we didn’t do on purpose.  Neither Kat nor I has any real interest in the movie, although I expect that I’ll rent it (or better yet: borrow it from the library up the street!) when it comes out on disc, skip to chapter before the battle sequence starts, watch the attack, and then hit the eject button.  Well, okay, maybe I’ll watch the sequence twice before I eject it.

I have to say that living within a block of a library which has DVDs for checkout is really darned cool.  I’ve at long last seen Casablanca and the entirety of His Girl Friday, for example, and also caught up with some of Ken Burns’ Jazz, U-571, and Topsy-Turvy, to name some recent titles.  All free!  Publicly supported libraries: an idea whose time should never go.  Bruce Sterling agrees, so you know it must be true.  If I’m going to be taxed by the government, and of course I am, libraries and public schools are kind of thing which I want my money to buy.  Wouldn’t it be cool if we could check boxes on our tax returns indicating where we want our tax money to be spent?  Especially if the converse were true: anyone getting a refund should check boxes indicating the programs which should have to pay for the refund.  I’m not suggesting that these choices be binding, at least not at the start, but it would be a fascinating snapshot of what Americans consider to be important.

Geek moment: DSL arrived in the Manor Meyer last week, and my home networking hardware came in today.  Next up: wiring the house, setting up a Linux box to run the show, and migrating Web and mail services onto it.  By the time it’s all done, hopefully before the week is out, Kat might actually be able to send e-mail again…

• Tuesday, 29 May 2001 was published on Tuesday, May 29th, 2001.
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