bierfaristo blogs

Today there aren't enough superlatives in English language. I feel like I've awoken from a fevered and terrifying nightmare to see a bit of sun peeping through the windows. After eight devastating years of predatory mismanagement of the country, we are finally going to have a president that wants to lead and govern -- and not just derail the country, raid the treasury, and enrich his cronies.

Don't get me wrong. Barack Obama is not going to be perfect and, with our broken and dysfunctional government, what he can achieve will be even less. But simply for the sense that someone in the administration cares about trying to make things better, rather than always looking for an angle to screw the country with, what a difference that will make.

It's always painful to me to see how many people in our country disagree. So many people, conservatives and liberals alike, have spoken so eloquently about the challenges facing our country, the potential of each of the candidates, and their choice to support Barack Obama -- to see their thoughtful reasoning ignored and rejected by people who smugly say, "He's a muslim! He's a terrorist! He hates America!" when all of these points are unequivocally and demonstrably false. As Jefferson and the other founding fathers understood, you can't have a meaningful democracy if you can't have a rational discussion of the issues. Has education merely failed? Or is there a substantial body of people that is ineducable?

For the moment, its enough to take a deep breath and be able to hope again.

Yesterday morning, everyone was talking about WALL-E. Alisa and Daniel had gone to see it when the first opened, but Charlie and I didn't go. I'd just taught him how I make tortilla soup and we wanted to stay home and savor it. I tried to call Charlie to ask him if he wanted to go, but I didn't get an answer. I figured he was busy playing WoW on Lucy's computer.

For years, I had a home server set up in the basement, running either linux or openbsd. At one time, they provided real services that I depended on, in terms of routing or firewalling or offering file services. Lately, the only service I've been using was Muppyville, so when Lucy got her new computer, I shut down the server, installed Muppyville on her computer, and set it up to be the server. When I logged into her computer, I could see that the WoW application was running. But how to get a message to Charlie?

I figured maybe I could run an applescript that would pop up a dialog box. I tested it on my workstation, but it didn't work -- I got some error about no interaction being allowed. I did a google search to see if I could figure out what I was doing wrong and discovered some pages that explained how to use the speech synthesis from the command line. So I crafted a few messages to Charlie: "Hey Charlie! Want to go see WALL-E? Call me! [...] Hey Charlie! Call me or I'll keep pestering you!" Eventually, when it became clear he didn't know who it was, I sent a message which included my name and he called me. It had totally freaked him out.

Lucy thought it was one of the funniest things she ever saw. Charlie initially thought it was someone in WoW talking to him, but couldn't figure out how someone would know who he was. Lucy was still chuckling about it this morning.

We went to WALL-E for the 4:30 matinee. It was great! The reviewer at Salon panned it, saying, "The gloss of preachiness that washes over "WALL-E" overwhelms the haunting, delicate spirit of its first 30 minutes." I didn't get that at all. I think that if it had tried to preach to people, it would have ruined the story and it worked because it didn't try to.

The comic Rhymes with Orange is about frugality today. Unfortunately, their website runs two weeks out of date, so I can't send you to look at it. It has the caption "The Long Term Relationship" and shows a middle-aged couple in a card store holding hands. The woman says "I'll pick out yours. You pick out mine. We'll read them here, then go spend the five bucks we just saved on renting a movie." It's perfect.

The weather has shut down the public schools today. The University is closed until 11am. We got several inches of snow and sleet, which is changing over to rain. There is a skin of ice over everything, but its supposed to get up into the 40s. It's going to be a nightmare trying to get the driveway clear, but it doesn't look like it will freeze up for a day or two, so hopefully that will give us time. Still, its going to nasty getting into work today. Tomorrow, the weather looks fine for my trip to Boston.

A couple of weeks ago, I sent a brief note to Chris Sanders. He's the guy who conceived of Lilo and Stitch -- one of my favorite movies of all time. Over the summer, he set up a website to showcase his art and more recently he's been blogging Kiskaloo, a new comic he's created (which I think of as something like a cross between Non-Sequitor and Calvin and Hobbes).

I sent him email because the boys and I watched a show about prehistoric proto-mammals that looked like the kinds of things he tends to draw. I got a reply from him today thanking me for thinking of him and mentioning that he'd been really interested in a Gorgonops fossil at the natural history museum when he'd been a kid. It was fun to get a reply! Go Chris!

Mi vespermanĝis kun Normando kaj Zdravka en Montrealo hodiaŭ vespere. Mi veturis aŭte kaj, per la direktoj de Google Maps, mi trovis la ĝustan vojon facile.

Ili havas du gastojn en la domo nun kiuj ne tamen parolas Esperanton. Ni, do, plejparte parolis la anglan. Tre stranga estis paroli al Normando angle! Mia cerbo ne volis fari tion.

Zdravka preparis belan manĝon: salmon kun supo, salato, rizo, kaj banana kuko por deserto. Ĉio estis perfekta.

Poste, venis Boriso kaj ni parolis dum unudu horoj pri la kunfandotaj 2008 LK kaj TAKE. Morgaŭ mi vizitos la lokon kie ili proponas ke ili okazu kaj mi faros fotojn.

TGIF! It's been a tough week. I came down with a cold on Friday, so my last weekend was pretty marginal and the work week seemed endless. Still, I got a few things done.

The big news was that I finally persuaded ELNA to buy an advertisement. We bought a small text ad. It took me weeks of persistant effort to make the case that we should advertise at BoingBoing and that we should advertise Esperanto Day there. But after investing perhaps 20 hours of focused effort over a period of weeks, I was finally able to bring it off. The ad is live at boingboing as I write this. I keep hopeing that Esperanto Day will eventually develop a life of its own and begin to gain momentum without requiring constant effort on my part. It feels like it could be close, as every day, I'm finding new references to it here and there.

I've been so focused on getting ready for Brazil that I haven't been thinking much about our upcoming family vacation. I've wanted to have my presentations ready to go, so I've been completely focused on that. I'm nearly there.

I've got two presentations roughed out: one about using reasoning problems in class and another about using technology to support local group activity. I'm relatively pleased with both of them. I'm about half way done with the last one, which will be a summary about local groups in the US. I've been struggling with how to deal with the meat of it, but I think I've got it figured out.

Someone who claims to be representing European linguistic policy has set up a website that has a FAQ page that disparages Esperanto. It says:

How about an artificial language? By definition such a language is no one?s native language, and words with no relation to a history or a living culture are not precise enough in meaning for legislation.

I sent them a email this evening:

I believe it is a very foolish and short-sighted policy to discriminate against artificial languages, saying that they have no native speakers, history, or culture. The statements in your website go beyond foolishness, however, and disseminate false and misleading statements to the public. By including these statements, you demonstrate profound ignorance on the part of yourself and the organization you represent.

D-ro Read has written a nice followup on the LAN party. I thing he's exactly right. For many things, discussion on the Internet(s) will work fine, but at some point, you can be a lot more productive when you have everyone face to face. The work on the webpages was critical, but there were several other things that took place that are probably equally important.

Getting everyone up-to-speed and on-the-same-page is a lot easier face-to-face. As everyone worked, we could listen and one person would explain to another what we were doing, or how something worked, and join in if what that person was saying was different than what we thought. This back-channel communication was really valuable for achieving concensus on building the site. We also could easily change modes, from "work" to "discuss" to "play". This leads to my next point.

Mi alvenis bonorde ĉe Aŭstino eble dudek minutoj frue. D-ro Read renkontis min ĉe la pakaĵreklamilo kaj portis min al sia domo. La komputiloj alvenis bonorder ankaŭ. Mi starigis sendratan retkonekton kaj ĉio funkcias.

Dum la semajnfino, mi ne plu skribos ĉi tie: Mi skribos ĉe mia blogo ĉe la nova E-USA retpaĝaro.

For English speakers: I've arrived in Austin and for the rest of the weekend, I'll be posting in my blog at the new Esperanto-USA site we're working on.

Board members are supposed to write quarterly reports regarding their activity related to the ELNA board. I didn't write one last quarter (I think only one board-member did), but this year I resolve to do better. Below is what I submitted.

Hodiaŭ Lucy kaj mi iris al la Amherst urbocentro por partopreni la Amherst Paca Solenaĵo. Ni portis niajn ŝildojn kiuj diras "ESPERANTISTOJ KONTRAŬ MILITO" kaj oni bonvole akceptis nin. Kelkaj homoj interesiĝis pri Esperanto. Multaj ŝoforistoj rigardis dufoje kiam ili vidis kaj ne tuj komprenis la ŝildojn. Ŝajne neniu kredis ke ni varbis por Esperantan Armeon. La reago de la plejmulto estas subtena: oni svingis la manon, indikis supren, aŭ blekigis siajn aŭtojn.

I wrote about learning Esperanto with this book and wanting to make it available via Project Gutenberg. Our first request was denied because the laws make the rights unclear, so we solicited a letter from the publisher that would establish the work as public domain. We got a reply, forwarded the letter to PG and, on Christmas morning, the email giving us clearance was in my in-box! The project is on!

Ekde mia juneco, mi kaj mia frato esploris prepari italan pasteĉon. Mi ŝatas pensi ke mi nun estas spertulo: mi povas komenci kun faruno kaj tomata pasto, kaj post horo kaj duono, jen bongustan italan pasteĉon. Kiam mi estis junulo, mi studis en Hispanio. Mi loĝis kun maljuna virino kiu preparis por ni ĉiujn manĝojn. Mi decidis danki ŝin per preparo de italan pasteĉon. Ŝi iom dubis ĉu ŝi lasu nin fari tion (iufoje, usona knabino kiu restis ĉe ŝi preparis ovaĵon, kiu estis bruligita "kiel karbono", ŝi diris). Sed finfine ni konvinkis ŝin. Mi kaj mia amiko vojaĝis al magazeno kaj aĉetis ĉion necesan. Estis tre malfacila trovi ĉion: oni vokas aferojn malsame en malsamaj landoj. Mozarela fromaĝo oni ne havas: ni devis uzi "francan fromaĝon". "Pepperoni" oni ne havis: ni devis uzi ĉorizon. Sed ni trovis ĉion necesan, preparis la pasteĉon kaj montri ĝin al ŝi. Ŝi miris kiom bona ĝi aspektis: "Que presentaci

There were only six esperantists (seven, including the 3 month old infant) who came to the Zamenhof Banquet this evening. Still, it was a pleasant dinner at China Dynasty. Last year, I had to drive two hours, but this year it was only 15 minutes from home. And I got to read my speech, which was well received. Originally, I was planning to do a potluck where we would make a pot of stone soup and maybe even have a little theatrical stone soup sketch, but this worked out perfectly well.