We have chosen Ethiopia as our source country, and have begun the 15-20 month process (including wait time) to enlarge our family via adoption.

We would be happy for anyone to leave a comment of encouragement or personal experience if you are also an adoptive family.

Thanks for joining us on this journey.

Personally, the thought of any government organization demanding records without a warrant is abhorrent.

However, since the entire point of Twitter is to make your tweets public … then what is there to subpoena? They’re all out there – visible to the world… Unless the user has deleted them (and, from my understanding, they are “real” deletes (unlike facebook “deletes” which may or may not go anywhere)).

So, NYPD – why are you not just looking at the tweets that are available publicly? Why are you trying to demand data that may or may not exist, and without a warrant?

Lastly, to Mr Winer’s comment that “the government has no business investing taxpayer dollars in private companies”: there’s a couple big problems therein. First, since it was in reference to the Library of Congress, we should make sure that in addition to not “investing” in archiving tweets, they also not invest in archiving books, journals, newspapers, etc – after all, those are also coming from “private companies”. Second, if the government shouldn’t be investing taxpayer dollars in private companies, then where, exactly, do you propose the “government” get what it needs to operate? By fiat? By dictatorial claim? No – those aren’t good public relations moves. The government needs to obtain the services and goods it needs to continue its functions from private industry (or we need to abandon this whole ‘capitalism’ thing and go for a pure central economy wherein all produced goods and services are provided by the government).

Recently a new proposal has been made for Digital Preservation. Many of the proposed questions are interesting (including one of mine) – and I would strongly encourage anyone interested in the topic to check it out.

The topic has resparked a question I have had for a long time – why is important to archive data?

Not that I think it’s inherently bad to hold onto digital information for some period of time – but what is the impetus for storing it more-or-less forever?

In tech popculture we have services like Google’s gmail which starts users at a mind-boggling 7+ gigabytes of storage! For email! Who has 7GB of email that needs to be stored?! For a variety of reasons, I hold onto all of my work email for the duration of my employment with a given company – you never know when it might be useful (and it turns out it’s useful fairly frequently). But personal email? Really? Who needs either anywhere near that much, or to hold onto it for that long? And those few people who arguably DO need that much, or to keep it forever, can afford to store it somewhere safely.

I think there is a major failing in modern thinking that says we have to save everything we can just because we can. Is storage “cheap”? Absolutely. But the hoard / “archive” mentality that pervades modern culture needs to be combated heavily. We, as a people, need to learn how to forget – and how to remember properly. Our minds are, more and more, becoming “googlized“. We have decided it’s more important to know how to find what we want rather to know it. And for some things, this is good:

If you are a machinist, is it better to know how to reverse-thread the inside of a titanium pipe end-cap, or to go look up what kind of tooling and lathe settings you will need when you get around to making that part? I suppose that if all you ever do in life is mill reverse-threaded titanium pipe end-caps, you should probably commit that piece of information to memory.

But we need to remember to forget, too:

when you need to make two of these things. Ever. In your entire life. In the entire history of every company you ever work for. Well, then I would say it’s better to go look up that particular datum when you need it. And then promptly forget it.

The historical value, interest, and amazing work that is contained in the “Domesday Books” is amazing – and something that has been of immense value to historians, archivists, politicians, and the general public. Various and sundry public records (census data, property deeds, genealogies, etc) are fantastic pieces to hold onto – and to make as available and accessible as possible.

Making various other archives available publicly is great too (eg the NYO&WRHS) – and I applaud each and every one of those efforts; indeed, I contribute to them whenever I can.

I continuously wonder, though, how many of these records and artifacts truly need to be saved – certainly it is true of physical artifacts that preservation is important, but how many copies of the first printing of Moby Dick do we need (to pick an example)?

I don’t know what the best answer is to digital hoarding, but preservation is a topic which needs to be considered carefully.

I arrive at the airport a little before 1400 for my flight on Sunday. Adrian, my instructor, is an intensely friendly man. He’s originally from Zimbabwe, though has spent enough time in Kentucky that now his family think he has an accent

NexGen has a Piper Warrior – a four-place, low-wing, single engine airplane they use for lessons.

Things I did not know about operating an aircraft – you steer while you’re on on the ground with your feet.

Adrian opened the door and told me to get in first. That was not what I expected – that put me in the pilot’s seat. After doing a quick preflight, he started the engine, and we started taxiing… more accurately, while he radioed the tower for clearance, he had me taxi us out onto the runway.

So that was pretty cool .. but it got better: when we got to the runway, and the tower had cleared us, I got to take off =D

Adrian ran the throttle, and he took care of the trim tabs and explained to me what I had to do, but otherwise he let me fly for the about 30 minutes we were up – the only time he took over was for our landing. We toured around Lexington at ~2500 feet (buzzing up to nearly 3000 as I tried to maintain our heading, steer, look around, and keep us flying level-ish.

I got to see our house from 2500 feet, and a variety of other parts of Lexington that I think may help when it comes to driving, too.

Now for the bad news: I’m hooked. And the total time and outlay that getting my license will entail will be at least 40 hours of flying time (including different type of solo time), along with several hours of ground school. And all of that combined with needing to take a written test so the FAA will eventually be willing to give me a check ride so I can get my license.

Sigh.

That’ll run ~$6650 … if I go as quickly as I can. Taking too much time between lessons will help to reduce retention, so I’m probably more realistically looking at about $10k to complete my license.

I’m accepting donations, though

If the point is to “leave no child behind”, why are waivers being granted over a decade later?

And why are there 28 more states who are planning to “seek flexibility” with regards to NCLB?

Seems like that’s MAJOR proof that it was distinctly NOT the best thing we could have done as a country to address education.

Along the lines of freshnews, I have launched an rss aggregator/launch service at datente.com.

There are several categories of feeds (imperfectly broken-up, but it’s what makes sense to me) that display in quasi random order. And on the front page is a smattering selected randomly from the master list.

I would love suggestions of feeds to add, and maybe even new categories, too.

Being terminated over charging a movie to your room? Seems harsh (getting the $9.95 back from the employee would seem to be easier) – but breaking the rule is breaking the rule.

Being terminated over buying gum? Ok, so I WOULD terminate somebody over that … but I hate the stuff

But it’s repulsive, revolting, and wrong
chewing and chewing all day long
The way that a cow does*

There are a host of ways listed in the article – that I find truly shocking – to cheat on expense reports: blank receipts? buying gifts and then selling them on eBay? double-billing? Wow. The sheer effort taken by some people to cheat is astonishing!

Where I work now has a corporate credit card issued to every traveling employee. The only time we submit non-AmEx charges is if a place doesn’t accept AmEx: it’s just way easier to use the corporate card than it is to try to give all the supporting documentation of a personal card. Plus, there’s the benefit that it’s not my personal limit that is being affected if a customer delays in paying a bill.

Everyone that works where I do now also follows the expense guidelines we have – don’t exceed the IRS per diem rate for your region (on average). If you want to eat someplace nice for dinner – that’s fine. Just eat someplace less expensive the next day. Sticking within the rules isn’t that hard … so why would you want to try to evade them and end up with employment history issues like termination on your record?

The N&O called me this week for a brief interview, and some of what I had to say is in an article published today by Aliana Ramos, along with the following preliminary information about the crash:

The private-plane crash that killed an Apex man this week probably was not caused by mechanical failure, according to early findings by an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

…

Aragon’s plane went down about 12:45 p.m. Sunday, minutes after radioing to air traffic control that he was departing. A pilot who was in the air at the time told investigators that Aragon’s plane appeared to be lower than usual and losing altitude before crashing.

“The entire airplane was consumed by fire,” Rayner said. “The engine was significantly damaged; the gears are melted together; the instruments have been destroyed.”

…

Aragon was alive immediately after the crash and managed to separate himself about 10 feet from the plane, said Deep River Fire Chief Larry Kelly. A trio of area residents managed to reach Aragon before the fire department arrived and helped to remove some of his clothing.

“They helped to keep him calm until we could get there,” Kelly said. “He was conscious. I was able to talk with him to find out if anyone else was in the plane. He was in a lot of pain. He did not give any indication of what happened.”

My prayers are with his family especially today.

Apple as $70 billion in cash on hand.

Google is buying Motorola.

I think Apple should buy Sprint. And they should stop distributing the iPhone via Verizon and AT&T in the US.

• guarantee a distribution channel for media which Apple proffers
• boost Sprint’s value
• accelerate the deployment of 4g (and better) network technologies (a la LightSquared)

It would also give, in my opinion, a strong leg-up for Sprint on their suit against AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile.

My current web server is running 32-bit CentOS 4.9. Eek! That is old.

Since upgrading to a new release of CentOS is now becoming more urgent, and upgrading is really reinstalling a new OS, I’ve started to look at new hosts. I’ve considered Chunk Host, but while their entry-level service are Okay, they’re not really in line with what I need at this time. Likewise, I have review iWeb‘s offerings, but unless I go for a colo, they’re not going to suit my personal needs well, either.

My requirements for a new host are the following:

• CentOS 6 x64 (for a variety of reasons – this is not a religious thing: I have evaluated other distros/platforms, and this is the best option for me)
• at least 250GB of storage (>500G preferable)
• several CPU cores (a minimum of 2, 4 or 8 would be better)
• at least 4GB RAM
• decent amount of available traffic (though I don’t anticipate major traffic patterns for some time)
• at

What I am planning to run:

• Apache (ports 80 and 443) hosting several domains
• MySQL
• Plone (on 8080)
• PostgreSQL
• sendmail for several domains
• SVN
• Trac
• WordPress with some plugins (one of which is a little CPU intensive)
• a backup store for myself (hence the storage requirements)
  • OS media
  • personal files
• continued mirroring of m0n0wall
• oh – and it’d be nice if it was in the same rough price range as what I’m spending now on far less (2GB 2CPU 60GB on one host, and 512M 4CPU 20GB on my other host – total ~$45/month)

So far, I have found a couple viable options – but have not 100% settled on them yet.

I am curious as to what alternatives may exist in this area that I have not yet seen, and would appreciate any suggestions