NOT the Bean's new doorknob.

Early this morning (i.e. before 7AM), I replaced the Bean’s doorknob with the one from my closet door.  The new one? It does not lock.

4 year olds do not need a door that locks.  ESPECIALLY when they use it to act out in anger.

On a related note, my wife will now be able to lock herself in the master bedroom closet when she can’t take the kids anymore.

What did you do before 7 AM?  What do you WISH you had done before 7 AM?

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There’s something I really enjoy about returning from a trip overseas. With every step from baggage claim to my car, I shed worries and thoughts of work, my steps growing lighter and more energetic. I climb behind the wheel and on my drive home notice sights and street signs I normally take for granted. Everything clamors for my attention but nothing distracts me from the thoughts of finally returning home.

I pull into my driveway and cannot wait to get inside the house and wrap myself in a warm cocoon of familiarity, hugs, and loving words. Every time I return is better than the last. It almost makes me want to leave again just to get the feeling of returning home. Almost, but not quite. For now, I’ll just enjoy myself and spend my time with those I care about most in this world.

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Lauowolf pointed me to Mary Robinette Kowal’s post on A Month of Letters challenge.

The idea is simple – in the month of February, commit to mailing one piece of correspondence for every day of the month that the postal service runs in your country.  You can mail postcards, letters, packages.  You can hand-write them, you can type them, you can make a ransom note out of words cut out of the newspaper, if you want.  You can send one out each day of the month, or mail them in a big batch once a week.  But send out REAL MAIL, and brighten someone’s day.  (Challenge part 2 is writing back to everyone who writes to you – I’ll leave this as an extra mission for you, should you choose to accept it.  This message will NOT self-destruct in 5 seconds.)

I’m going to participate, but so far I’m short on addresses of people to write to.  If you’d like to receive some REAL MAIL from me, send me an note with your address to rossruns@gmail.com – I promise not to share it or sell it, just like I promise that if you send me your address, you’ll get something from me in the mail!

And hey, if you want to participate too, awesome! Lauowolf is gathering peoples’ names together to get a circle of ex-Voxers and others in on the fun – if you want to participate, head over here and send Lauowolf your address (the email address is buried in the post on that link), and you’ll get some addresses in return to help you on your way.  And don’t be dissuaded by a whole Month of Letters – if you can only get out 1, or 2, or 5 letters, those are that many more that will go help put a smile on someone’s face.

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The Fantasies of Youth

Did you ever want to run away and live in a museum?

Not me! Although I enjoyed “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” as much as the next kid, the MoMA always seemed like an impractical choice for a stowaway.

No, I’d run away to THE MALL.

Picture it: Spend all night playing the arcade games, stuffing yourself silly in the food court, reading in the bookstores until your eyes crossed, and finally, crashing on a Serta mattress.

What do you mean “You’d get caught”?

Why do you think I took this job as a night watchman?

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• Even when you try to take care of tech problems in a proactive manner, they’re still a pain.
• Hard drives click when they’re angry. They chirp when they’re sick. When they take 2 hours to transfer data to a backup that should only take 20 minutes, you better dig yourself a hole because you’re going to be holding a burial service very shortly (either for the hard drive or the first unsympathetic person who makes a comment about how you should have backed up more often.)
• Having a backup is great. Even better if it is an automated one.  But knowing how to properly restore from said backup without accidentally deleting your data is key.
• No matter how much backing up you do, you’ll always overlook something.
• Settings and applications don’t get backed up. Make sure you know what was installed and how to restore your computer the way you like it or you’ll be pulling out your hair for hours days weeks. I recommend running Belarc Advisor (Windows only) to generate a list of everything you’ve got installed so you don’t overlook anything later.
• It’s OK to feel naked without your computer. It’s not OK to go around naked without your computer. Unless you’re in a nudist camp or the comfort of your own home.

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They say you can’t go home again.

They’re wrong.

In fact, with that D-Hopper you’re holding there, sliding through dimensions is as easy as falling off a log. Easier even, given how hard it would be to find a— no, strike that. You still have trees, here.

I could go home at any time. Back to the thick, choking air, noxious and burning in your lungs. Back to the toxic swamps under blood red skies. Back to the cancer that awaits, creeping inside you with every breath.

Yes, I can go home again. But why would I ever want to?

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In my first apartment after college, in 2001, I had my computer connected up through Time Warner Cable.  One day, they shut off my internet.  When I called to inquire, they said the a record label associated with the RIAA had reported me as in violation of copyright infringement for sharing copyrighted music files.  I think they had a list of about 40-50 tracks they specifically had called out as hosted by my computer available for people to download.

This was before all the RIAA lawsuits started. TWC told me to remove any file sharing software and public access to my music and they would reinstate my internet connection.  No harm, no foul.  I got off with a warning.

Had this been 2-5 years later, I could have been hit with a $3000-$5000 “settlement fee” for the same offense.  Or if I fought it? I might have ended up with a $2 million judgement against me, like Jammie Thomas-Rasset in 2007.  I got lucky.  I don’t download or share music anymore.

Piracy today is rampant.  If you could persuade teenagers to be honest with you, most would tell you they don’t buy music – they have tools to rip the tracks off of the audio in Youtube videos, or they torrent them, or download from sites like the recently-shut-down MegaUpload. Some people boast of terabytes of music in their archives – an amount which would cost any normal purchaser thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to acquire “honestly”.

SOPA and PIPA are obviously flawed measures, and would do a much greater order of magnitude of damage to the internet than any benefit they’d provide to the RIAA and MPAA.  But lobbyists and lawmakers are going to continue to push and push for these kind of regulatory actions because of all this piracy.  The recording and motion picture industries are mired in old technology, and they believe they cannot survive if the piracy continues.  (Whether they actually can or not is something I’ve not seen enough information on to have a firm opinion about, but I suspect that there are enough innovative groups and labels out there that are getting by without the frivolous lawsuits that the RIAA and MPAA’s whole arguments are thrown into a doubtful light.)

So if SOPA and PIPA won’t work, can we eliminate piracy by means other than legislation? Probably not. Especially not if the public mindset continues to be “Everyone’s Doing It”, and people believe they’re immune from reprisal because they’re “just one in a million”, or they’re “just downloading one movie only, and not even a good one at that” (both arguments I’ve actually heard for justifying piracy).

Killing piracy is like curing poverty – idealistically, it would just require enough people to care enough to take action (or stop taking action, as the case may be) to effect change.  Realistically, if parents don’t govern their kids’ behavior, colleges don’t crack down on their students’ activities, and ISPs don’t punish ALL offenders, the number of incidences of piracy is not going to decrease.  And the only way to really get ANY of that to occur is to make piracy not only so illegal, but so prohibitively costly to NOT monitor and protect against it that ISPs, college campuses, and individual families begin to comply.

The men and women in Congress know this.  Every day, lobbyists from the RIAA and MPAA hound them with this truth.  And so they work to develop bills like SOPA and PIPA to fight back.  Yes, these bills are horrendous and could break the internet as we know it today.  If they do come to a vote next week, they probably won’t pass.  But that doesn’t mean they’re going to just go away.  Just like music and movie piracy, the legislation to combat piracy is going to keep popping up, rearing its ugly head until the lobbyists can ram through something to help out the record and movie labels (assuming anything can, at this point).

So stay strong, stay informed, and keep fighting against censorship, but be aware that it’s going to be a long battle ahead.  Oh, and if you can, consider obtaining your music and movies legally instead of bootlegging them.  It’s not going to end the piracy, but I’d REALLY hate to see your name on the next lawsuit filed by the RIAA/MPAA.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqpztnBbqeM

Now that you’ve seen my plea, will you take the first step to becoming a hero?  And if you aren’t eligible or have already signed up, would you please consider sending this post to friends and family to help convince them to sign up, too?

Note: If you are not a US resident, you can still register with a Cooperative Registry. Over half of all transplants involve either a U.S. patient receiving cells from an international donor or an international patient receiving cells from a U.S. donor. Go to http://marrowdrives.org/bone_marrow_donor_programs.html and look for the “International Bone Marrow Donor Organizations” to see if there is a participating organization in your country.

Thanks to Ross MacLachlan for permission to use his tune “Obama Vitality Rag” in this video. Download the full track for free, and check out the rest of his work at http://www.notjustragtime.com/

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