I got a lesson in attitude this past weekend. Kelly and I went to Charleston. We had a wonderful time talking with Martha, the head housekeeper at the bed and breakfast where we stayed. She just had a super attitude.

Then there was Hyman’s Restaurant downtown – a place with attitude slogans all over the place. Some of the friendliest waitstaff I’ve been around.

We also saw the IMAX movie playing in town – “Shackelton.” It’s about an Antarctic explorer who’s expedition gets stranded in the ice. Against stupefying odds, he brings his whole crew back. It would have been very easy for him to give up, but he kept a good attitude throughout the ordeal and wound up saving everybody. Incredible.

It took me a few days, but I got the message.

Digital Amateur Television

I added some color to my webpage, finally. And those links on the side will actually go somewhere soon.

Stay tuned!

My brother Jeff has created SlashWOT, a website that’s a complete waste of time. If you’ve got too much going on right now, surf on over there and have a look.

It’s after lunch and I had a craving for a Coca-Cola. I remembered the building had a vending machine, so I walked on down the hall to get my fix.

Apparently I haven’t had a Coke in a while. The price was 90 cents for a 20oz. bottle. Here I was thinking two quarters would do it, but noooooooooo.

No wonder Coke is going under. This is ridiculous.

Today I finally stopped using Netscape. It didn’t come easy. Netscape was my first Internet love – a little window to the world, right on my desktop. And for free!

My Netscape loyalty stretches back to when there were only a handful of websites in the world. Okay, maybe not that far, but close. Mosaic was first, then came Netscape.

It was one of the few browsers to cover all the platforms I did. I could always find the stylized “N” on the desktop of whatever computer platform I chose.

But times have changed, and Netscape hasn’t kept pace. After years of neglect from Netscape itself, and then from AOL, it’s beginning to show its age. It frequently crashes on me. At least once a day.

So, I officially retired the Big N today. It’s been fun.

You might want to know, however, what I’m using to post this message. It’s Mozilla, the son of Netscape. You might remember that Mozilla was released as Open Source to much fanfare, only to see it’s development fizzle. Well, that was then, this is now. Unenumbered by pesky MBA’s pushing for impossible release dates, Mozilla has moved at its own pace.

And it’s beginning to pay off. Mozilla is closing in on it’s first official release. While it hasn’t been the smoothest sailing, at least with public expectations being so high, it has been a course of steady improvement.

I am now completely comfortable using Mozilla day to day. And I marvel how this open source project has quietly become the state of the art in web browsing.

Mozilla is a lesson in doing it right, without worrying about deadlines. It has aged like fine wine – slowly, but with exceptional taste.

I’ve heard far too many people claim that “we can never go back” and “things will never be the same” after the attacks last September.

Don’t buy it.

Why should we always be on edge for people who might do us harm? Why should we give up our cherished liberties, our freedom, our trust in each other?

I, for one, do not want to be suspiscious of everyone I meet.

I, for one, do not want to submit to a police state.

I, for one, do not want an even more powerful government.

I, for one, do not think the government can “save us.” Indeed, it is our government which got us here in the first place.

I, for one, find nothing patriotic about waging war.

If you drive a gas guzzling SUV, you’re supporting terrorism. That gas comes courtesy of a corrupt and oppressive Middle Eastern country. And no, sticking an American flag on it doesn’t make it any better.

We can feel safe. We can be safe. We can live as if we have nothing to fear.

Because fear is the underlying cause of all the mistrust in the Middle East, as well as elsewhere. When fear disappears, trust can begin. And trust builds friendship.

I reject fear. I reject war. And I reject the ludicrous notion that this country is on a treadmill it can never get off.

I have taken up the “hobby” of birdwatching. Not just birdwatching, but bird attracting. I spent ten bucks at Home Despot for a bird feeder. Another five bucks bought the seed.

One more Lincoln bought a PVC pipe to put around my feeder. The idea is that the PVC pipe is too fat for the squirrels to climb up.

I had a slimmer one up the past week and was all proud of myself for keeping the squirrels out of my feeder. Well, my gloating didn’t last long. I was typing in this spot yesterday morning when I looked up to see a squirrel camped out on the feeder. I chased that one away, only to find another one up there ten minutes later. That’s when I bought the extra-fat pipe.

When I first got the feeder, I reasoned that squirrels need to eat just as much as birds do. And they do….but not at the expense of the birds. After I came home yesterday afternoon to find the feeder completely empty, I knew the squirrels were to blame. And the new pipe seems to be working. I watched a squirrel storm off in defeat this morning.

I was still chucking at their misfortune when I found a new visitor to our back porch. It was a baby squirrel, still skinny. He wandered back and forth across the deck railing, watching me through the window. He poked his head into the plants we have on the rail, nibbling at the flowers. Every now and then he’d pick up a piece of pinecone from the rail and chew at it. Then it was back to the flowers.

I could feel the guilt begin to grow. This little guy was clearly starving and I had all this food. How could I deny him the right to eat?

It was then that I remembered the big bag of sunflower seeds in the garage. I picked up a plastic bowl, scooped the sunflower seeds into it, and headed to the back porch. The squirrel didn’t wait to see if I was friendly – he took off. I suppose that his fear comes from my scaring squirrels away for the past two days. I put the bowl on the deck after scattering a few seeds here and there. Now the squirrels have some food, and the bird feeder is still for the birds.

So, am I a sucker? Yeah, probably. I had no problem running off the fat squirrels that hogged the feeder, but this little guy was just too pathetic-looking.

You can’t claim to love nature if you don’t love all of it.
Squirrels included.

I’m on a mailing list for lucid dreamers. Every time someone new learns how to lucid dream, I remember the excitement I felt the first time I learned to lucid dream.

It is still one of the coolest things I’ve ever learned how to do.