I was sad to learn yesterday of the death of Compay Segundo, the legendary Cuban musician from the Buena Vista Social Club. He was 95 years young, and I mean young.

Two years ago, I was among the lucky concertgoers who saw him perform at the NC Museum of Art. I was totally blown away that the performer up there just making his guitar absolutely sing was also ninety-three years old! And he was on tour even, giving these energetic performances night after night.

The man certainly knew how to love life, that’s for sure. I hope to be as full of life at that age as he was. He was known to chase skirts, drink rum, and to smoke cigars well past the point he should have known better. And yet, he lived life better at 90 than most people do at any time in their lives.

Hats off to you, Compay. Thanks for the music. It was your fountain of youth. I’ll spin the Buena Vista Social Club CD, close my eyes, and try to remember how sweet that sweet guitar sounded in person.

Here’s a nice profile of Compay from the Miami Herald. Scroll down near the end to read it.

Another Tour De France has kicked off. It’s the centenary; 100 years of cycling. And once again, Lance Armstrong is in the hunt for another win.

Man. There are few times I wish I had cable TV. College basketball season is one, and the Tour De France is the other. I just can’t get enough of it! I would love to watch a Tour in person someday.

A great story in the race is how fellow American Tyler Hamilton is also at the top of the pack, in spite of riding with a broken collarbone. Talk about cojones, hombre.

Now to wait until the race resumes Thursday to follow the action via the Outdoor Life website.

The torrential rains we’ve been getting the whole year have driven bugs into places they normally don’t dwell. For the past few months, Kelly and I have been battling ants, spiders, and other weird insects which have taken up refuge from the floodwaters outside.

Now I come into work to find the place crawling with catepillars. There were hundreds of catepillars crawling around the floor. Everywhere you looked.

Enough with the bugs, already!

I was surprised to check my email this morning and find NOT ONE spam message. It was so shocking, I had to check to see if I got legitimate emails, too. And I did.

So it sees my using ASSP and some Postfix regexp rules is doing the trick in battling spam. I can’t remember the last time I came in on a Monday morning and didn’t have a mailbox full of stupid spam.

I ported my first Linux application to the Zaurus tonight. The app is SBaGen, a tool for creating binaural beats. These beats can be used to synchronize one’s brain hemispheres, allowing the sound to lead the mind into various levels of awareness.

I have long been interested in the effects of binaural beats, having played around with the ones that Cool Edit can create. As yet, I’ve gotten nothing from them other than a good buzz once I was done. The problem with using Cool Edit is that I’m chained to my desktop computer, which is forever etched into my mind as being associated with work. Needless to say, this is not the frame of mind I want to be in if I’m trying to relax!

Thus, having something portable that generates beats is a great leap forward. Now I can carry it around anywhere I go and customize the frequency, too. I’m no longer stuck in front of a keyboard.

I’m pleased that the app works well on the Z, seeing how the Z doesn’t come with a floating-point processor and the app uses sine waves. Now the only thing left to do is to package it up in an ipkg (the Zaurus package format). Maybe later I’ll try my hand at adding a pretty Qt-based GUI.

The latest news says the White House is claiming the CIA signed off on Bush’s claim that Iraq was attempting to buy enriched uranium, a claim which was later proven false.

Now, by their very nature, intelligence analysts know which way the wind blows. It doesn’t take a genius among them to see that questioning the Boss’s reasoning isn’t likely to help their career chances. Back in the service, we called such questioning a “CLM,” a career-limiting move.

It likewise shouldn’t take a genius to realize that intelligence is supposed to flow from the bottom up – not the other way around. The Emperor insisted on wearing his new clothes, and there was no one bold enough to call him on them.

I find it kind of sad that the office where the Buck once stopped has now taken up the game of shifting the blame. What I would do to see some accountability in public office.

That the intelligence regarding Iraq buying uranium from Nigeria was forged brings to mind all those Nigerian Bank Account scams that constantly fill my inbox. I think I’ll doctor up one of those Nigerian scams to include Uranium, just for fun.

The local Triangle Linux Users Group, of which I am a member, had a keysigning party last night after our meeting. I traded paper with dozens of members in an effort to build a GPG web of trust.

Even with my cryptography background, I feel utterly clueless as to all the ways GPG and PGP can be used. Keyservers, keysigning, and webs-of-trust are all foreign to me. Perhaps that’s why I had difficulty explaining it to Kelly last night.

I think we’re doing something right, though, since our efforts have placed us at the top of the list at Biglumber.com, one website that keeps up with this sort of thing. How to take advantage of this fact is anyone’s guess. I’m still clueless. 🙂

By the way, an effort to find Doc Searl’s GPG key in Google produced interesting results. Our of 318 pages returned, my humble website is result number two. Google works in mysterious ways.

I haven’t had much time to post lately – and that’s a good thing. I am quite happy with where I am in my life right now.

Work couldn’t be better. I work with a great team of people who appreciate what I do and vice-versa. I am really doing well with my customer calls, each one getting more comfortable for me. And I am learning a lot!

Life outside of work is going wonderfully, too. Every day, Hallie finds some new way to capture my adoration. Swimming lessons have been a real treat: Hallie absolutely loves being in the pool. She is also growing more attentive to the things we show her – usually giving me a laugh when she realizes I’m trying to teach her something. What a joy to be a father!

While we could be making more money (and who couldn’t), we certainly are happy, and that goes a long way.

Just returned from a wonderfully relaxing trip to visit our friends the Naylors at their Lake Gaston lakehouse. It marked the first time in a week I had seen my girls, I spent time with in-laws I don’t see too often, and like always, Ralph and Suzzanne were truly incredible hosts.

The weather was nice, too, which meant hours of sailing, both alone in the Sunfish as well as with two crewmembers in the Oday. During the times the roar of Jet-Skis wasn’t present, you could’ve heard me making that sailboat freakin’ purr, baby! (I can’t knock the Jet-Skis too much though. They looked like the best way to beat the oppressive, 95-degree heat.)

During a late-afternoon sail with me at the helm, I was really feeling it. “This sucks!” I gloated to Ralph and Neil. “I’d much rather be sitting in front of a computer screen right now!” I swear if I had the opportunity to sail every day, I could live to be 150.

Saturday night brought fireworks right to our doorstep, with a professional show from the island a few hundred yards off the dock. When things got popping, Hallie woke from her sleep, bringing me back inside console her. With a wide-eyed girl staring at the booming coming from the window, I conceded defeat and took her to the kitchen window to watch her first fireworks show.

The Fourth is, obviously, the celebration of our nation’s birth, and I took time to reflect on our country. Though I’m often at odds as to how it’s currently being run, I keep in mind that its the people like those around me who make this country great. Lurking at a place the present terrorist paranoia can’t reach, a current of freedom still runs strong. Friendship and kindness are still extended to strangers. I am hopeful that this country which owes so much to the huddled masses landing on its shores will once again remember its role as leader in this world.