The idea was tossed around earlier in the forum about doing a flag. Now, I could put just a calm logo on it (and that would look good), but how much fun is it to fly a calm logo? I know that I live in a pirate ship, not a monastary! Anyway, this is not a final idea or anything even close to it, but I did a tiny bit of doodling… More talented artists are absolutely welcome to give it a go.
Maybe the snow will stay this time; as you can see there's a bit more coming down than the last few times. Leeta and I aren't getting our hopes up too high though, it'll probably melt again. At least the satellite is cutting through the snow most of the time.
Anyway, as you can see I also had just a little bit too much fun on Rachel's 4-wheeler… Because the snow is fresh/wet, I'm still getting traction, but at the same time it's slippery enough to do donuts. Want to place odds on what injuries I get this winter?
Damn I love living out here. The isolation gets to me from time to time, but it's just so much fun.
We just got in our first shipment of DVD blanks! We could have just printed cheap labels ourselves, or even used traditional blanks, but we wanted to “do it right”. These are true silk-screened DVDs, and the DVDs are shipping in full-size cases with inserts — so when you put them on your self alongside your storebought DVDs your friends aren't going to assume you're some kind of pirate.
Some of you probably already know that Canada issued a travel advisory* telling Canadians with a Muslim background to not travel in the US. This is due to the US policy of fingerprinting and detaining all ethnic Muslims, even if their countries had no relation to the 9/11 attacks and there is nothing in their history to suggest a tie to terrorism.
This was spawned in part by the story of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen and an engineer, but originally born in Syria. He was returning to Canada after a vacation with his family, and his flight routed him through the US — I'm sure many of you remember my earlier story about a business associate who was dragged off an airplane and detained in a similar situation. Anyway, agents grabbed Maher — literally grabbed him out of the waiting area.
Weeks passed and no one had any idea where he was. Not even his wife was informed, and there was no confirmation whether it was even US agents or if he'd been kidnapped. Eventually they found him starting to rot in a prison in Syria, where he will now quite likely die.
Maher had been first shipped to New York and imprisoned there. He was held for six days and was then able to make a call. His mother-in-law arranged for a lawyer, who was told that Arar was a terrorist. A single meeting was held, and when the lawyer returned, Maher was gone and they refused to say what had happened.
When the Canadian government intervened and demanded to know where Maher was, they were told he'd been deported to Syria, even though he was a Canadian citizen. Canada has many citizens from “questionable” countries — we are a country built on immigrants and refugees. We even have many refugees from the US (computer crimes and marijuana crimes). In any case, Maher had fled Syria to avoid military service (Syria is a “state-sponsored terrorism” country — Maher literally fled to avoid being forced to be a terrorist), and if he returned, he'd go to prison.
And that is where he sits now.
Even if you don't care about Maher one way or the other, take a look at what this means. This means that your government can abduct people (he wasn't arrested, he was literally in a crowd waiting for a connecting flight to Montreal, was grabbed by agents and tossed in the back of a van), not tell you for weeks where they are (remember, it was only after the Canadian government intervened that we found out he was in Syrian prison), and then basically execute you “accidentally” instead of sending you back home.
Messed up….
 Time to figure out why the winch isn't working |
 Well duh, it helps if you plug it in |
 Yay! The winch works! I can save people now! |
 Next project: the emergency siren and PA system. |
On other work news, I dug up my IAM to-do list from my old harddrive. Here's the current contents. As always, feel free to give suggestions for new features, either via IM or via the Whatever Forum.
Hmmm… Maybe I shouldn't be asking for more things to do. But then again, everyone uses the system a little differently, so I very much appreciate the ideas… Yes, I definitely did the grunt work and kick started the design, but I absolutely think there's shared credit not just for this community but also for the software that it runs on.
