A lot of store time...

At the conclusion of last night's dinner, the boys and I agreed that they'd open the store this morning, leaving me free to attend to the translation that was left undone yesterday afternoon. By some quirk of industriousness, I got started on the item early, which was a good thing, as at about 7:40 am or so, Drew calls and asks if I'd please go open the store.

Drew is so not a morning person.

Fortunately, I have only a little of the document left, so I save it, go to the store, open up, and finish the document between customers. I hate doing that, because I never quite settle into a comfortable groove, knowing that my full powers of concentration - feeble as they might be - are nonetheless focused on the task at hand. (Also knowing, from past experience, that translating "between customers" results in stupid errors that, although I catch them, leave me wondering if something Truly Goofy™ gets by my final review.)

I managed to connect to the Global Flyer web site this morning at around 9:15 am or so. For a while, getting into the site was problematical, as so many people were following the flight and wondering if Steve Fossett was going to make it all the way around the world. It turned out he was flying in our immediate vicinity at the time (within 0.2 of a degree of latitude, or about 12 miles, as he flew past my longitude), which meant that I might have had a good chance of sighting his contrail up at 44,000+ feet if it weren't for the 100% cloud cover that, later in the morning, started to deliver a gentle snowfall that didn't amount to much.

For the second night in a row, I've eaten at the kids' place, as I find it much more... humanizing than being at the house by myself, preparing a dinner for one, and eating it with only a television to keep me company. Tonight we had spaghetti with home-made meat sauce and freshly grated Parmesan.

I've got a new client with a relatively small job. (Of course, with a new client, there's nothing small about it.) It's a patent and will probably require some work over the weekend.

In the meantime, I've got some work to do related to the store and chasing paper.

Cheers...

Rather's revenge... albeit too late for his career!

From the Democracy Project:

"[Bradley Smith, a Federal Elections Commissioner,] says that a recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly may pave the way for significant federal regulation of the Internet, including blogs. [...] The possibilities that Smith lays out are chilling and, if enacted, could spell the end of blogging as we know it. Indeed, it could turn much of what is published on the Net into a samizdat-style activity.

Sound alarmist? Read on. It all stems, of course, from McCain-Feingold, the absurd and (pace the Supreme Court) unconstitutional curtailment of political speech in violation of the First Amendment. Both Senators, and the Democratic members of the Commission, favor regulating political speech on the Internet, lest bloggers and electronic publications enjoy an advantage over print publications. This is a huge power grab by elements of the federal bureaucracy who are threatened by New Media, and a first step by those forces to shut down political speech they don't like.

Of course, anyone with half a brain should see this coming. Laws such as McCain-Feingold, which was passed to the paens of Congresscritters waxing poetic about accountablilty and the evils of issue advocacy, are intended to do one thing and one thing only: put a cap on discussions of the pros and cons of candidates for public office.

Cheers...