zen.org Communal Weblog

A recent New York Times article (need an ID?) seems to suggest that TiVo is in some trouble. Uh oh. I guess I better get our TV Hack finished.

This morning I looked out the back window to see if there were any cats out there, cause of course the various repellents must have worked.

There was one cat, a real mean one, sitting right on top of the little gel granule things. Right on top. On the wall. FFS.

We got our annual renewal of the Motor Tax due when you own a car in Ireland. The envelope received today (January 17 2005) included this insert, which proves that they have a delay problem of their own:

Important Notice for Online Motor Tax Customers

Your January renewal notice has issued earlier to facilitate your application to have your online motor tax processed before January and in doing so avoid any postal delays normally experienced by customers at that time of year. We guarantee that if we receive your application by Friday December 17th your disc will be posted before Christmas.

I am not a cat person. They make me sneeze. I don’t really like their attitude. With that prelude, I have just finished putting down about 4 different kids of cat repellent in our back and front yards. A woman who lives up the road (2 doors) seems to like cats. She says they’re not all hers, but they all hang out there (I guess it’s the cool cat’s house, and they can have a party whenever they want. She probably even buys them beer). So we have a ton of cats–like 15–that go tromping through our front and back yards all the time. And poop. Everywhere. It’s freaking nasty. P, when he was younger, would pick it up and play in it. And our shoes….argh.

So I put down some scatter crystals on the back walls and anywhere that cats walk into our property (they smell like citronella and look like chopped up lime jello). Then we sprinkled a mixture of flour, cayenne pepper and dry mustard where the cats *really* like to poop. Coated that area. And put down some crushed chili flakes in other spots, like under the rosebush that the birds like to hang out in. So we’ll see.

On the upside, it was a gorgeous day today. Sunny and blue sky, and relatively warm (like 7 C.) So we went out for a walk, bought some onions in the market in the park, and had bagels for lunch. Played outside for a while. You can always tell if it’s a nice Sunday cause our street is lined in cars on both sides. We’re one of the closest streets to the park and since the market is today, people park here. It gets a little crazy, but it’s nice to see so many families out for a walk.

Apparently Jimmy is on attempt 670 of quitting smoking. Wanker.

I’ve adjusted our WordPress server in an attempt to block trackback spams. It involves tricking the server to inject a comment into a post, used primarily to throw up a bunch of product plugs and ad links. Gah. Some folks have put a lot of effort into combating this sort of junk. The goal is to give us all some sort of shelter from the commercial-ridden world we live in. I wonder if this post will be the equivalent of cutting an artery to beckon the sharks?

My mother sent me a cool link to a list of places in and around Dublin who stay open 24-hours a day.

I need to get a few more birth certificates, cause in Ireland they require a birth cert with freaking everything you apply for. While looking online for how to to it, I found the Massachusetts Registry of Vital Stats. What a massive rip off! If I want a certified copy of my birth cert, it’s *at least* $28. Each. Man, Ireland only charges like 6 euro, and even with the exchange rate, it’s not *that* expensive. I’m too scared to go find out how much California charges for a copy of our wedding cert.

Mothering Magazine this month has an article on how to create a peace file for your child. Basically, if your child (and I’m not just gonna say son, cause daughters will be part of the draft at some point) gets drafted and files for CO status, they need some type of documentation to show that. Mothering suggests tons of things, like teachers letters, photos of the child at peace rallies, homework/essays where peace is the main theme, etc. You get the idea. I think it’s brilliant, but also damn scary that we need to do something like that.

In the mid-1990s, I picked up maintenance of a mailing list set up by some folks at MIT. Called CACI: Children Accessing Controversial Information, it was intended to offer a forum for parents, teachers, or just about anyone else to talk about the free anarchy of the Internet and its potential impact on children. With all the fear of porn and pedophilia lurking at every corner on the Net, we thought it’d be a fairly active list.

This is how the list describes itself:

CACI, Children Accessing Controversial Information, is a mailing list for
discussing children accessing controversial information through computer
networks. Can children be prevented from accessing materials which are
controversial? Is preventing access even desirable? We believe censorship is
not the answer. What alternatives do we have or could we provide? How do we
talk with children about these issues? What can we say to concerned parents
and school administrators? How and by whom are community standards set? We
hope to form a community of people interested in discussing these issues and
developing helpful materials.

For the last few years, however, it’s been pretty stagnant with only short bursts of conversation. I wonder if everyone is just so firmly set in their beliefs (filter my computer, don’t filter it, porn is good, porn will rot my child’s brain) that they see no need to talk about it and learn from others?