Month: September 2002

I finally took the time to go through my latest backlog of weird random links (see below); I’d attribute, but now I’ve no idea what I found where. 🙁

– A smaller circle of friends – “But when the shock wore off and the frenzy of activity diminished, I began to dwell on Cal and Doug themselves, how they had died, all that they would miss as their kids grew up.”

politics…
– a letter to Ashcroft
America may want to rethink a system that creates so many hardened criminals (I miss reading Tom’s copy of the Economist.)
– Noah Johnson’s Protest Record, August 22, 2002

tech…
– oddbook
– fontbitch, defined
– We’ve got blog – online
– Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution
– Computer Use, Musicians, and Injuries

misc…
– Simple ways to relieve stress
– Poetry daily
– barcode generator
– olympia pet parade – “Ashlynn is the daughter of Dan and Jeanne McFarland of Lacey.” I need to e-mail Dan, one of these days….

and for C…
– The center for wireless telecommunications
– Wireless Technologies: where are we? (with guest experts David Kotz of Dartmouth and Joel Hartman of the University of Central Florida)

virgo month of leisure yeah, I wish.

– when patriotism wasn’t religious (warning: new york times link)
– dailybiorythm.com
– why socialists don’t believe in fun (orwell)
– webmanix hosting (we have a winner!)
offered with no comment: I gave you a bigger brain for a reason. Start using it.

– enough.

I had this big long rant half-written in my head this morning while I was in the van, but I forbore from writing it down. which was probably not a good idea…but I’m likely to work my way back to about the same words, given a few paragraphs.

tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the…well, at the time I thought the word “Situation” summed it up well…but that doesn’t quite convey what I mean. then again, if you’re reading this at the turn of the 21st century, you probably know what I’m talking about anyway.

today, in contrast, is my birthday. it’s also my grandmother’s birthday – she would’ve been 89 years old today, if she were still alive. she died in 1995. (corrected 9/11, after remembering it was the same week I started at the Museum.)

six years ago last week, one of my co-workers at the Children’s Museum of Tacoma was in a 42-car pile-up on Interstate 5 in Federal Way. she was the only fatality, after 2 weeks in a coma. I’m sure a lot of people will always think of the towers and what happened last September when this season comes around each year. as for me, I always think of Becka, and being in the closed museum, and feeling lost, because someone so good and funny and thoughtful and ordinary was dying.

the people who died a year ago tomorrow were not patriot superheroes. like Becka, they were ordinary; they can’t have been anything else…just people going to work, living their lives, doing what they would’ve done any other day of the year.

I am 28, not very old, I know (older than Becka was when she died) – still, I’ve lost people who were dear to me in one way or another:

– James Melvin Nelson III, father, 1983
– Josie (whose last name escapes me today), sister’s godmother, 1987 [note 2010-06-29: found this today and realized I wrote down entirely the wrong name. Should be Abby.]
– William Harper Dillon, maternal grandfather, 1995
– Susanne Elizabeth (Kellogg) Nelson, paternal grandmother, 1995
– Rebecka (Becka) Smith Ozias, co-worker, 1996
– William Fernandez, uncle, 1999
– James (Mel) Melvin Nelson, paternal grandfather, 1999

I can tell stories updated link June 29, 2010 about each of those people. somewhere, there’s someone who can tell a story about everyone who dies, whether it’s in a nationally mourned tragedy or at home, of a heart attack, or in a 42-car pileup on the interstate.

now I feel more elegaic than rampant (as I did this morning)…maybe tomorrow will bring back that emotion, but for now I’m merely going to remember Dad and Josie Abby and Grandpa Dillon and Grandpa and Grandma Nelson and Becka and Uncle Bill, remember what they were like and what I learned from them.

I have this long piece in my head about death and remembrance (which is always going to be my lot on my birthday, I’m afraid), but I’ll save that for later today…maybe after a tasty Thai dinner and some cake. 🙂

– “To be ungoogleable is to have never existed.” or to have a very, very common name, like my baby sister: searching on her name yields “Results 1 – 10 of about 5,180.” even if she was there, it’d take me half of forever to find her.

which is by way of saying…happy 22nd birthday, Elizabeth Nelson!

(I imagine that now makes her potentially a little more googleable.)

– Dorothea is looking for a denim jacket for her husband

I think nice looking men’s denim jackets are still thought of as too 80s. which is unfortunate. (although possibly true) however…I don’t know if this is at all useful, but my denim jacket is a men’s jacket. it’s a geek giveaway – when C worked at a computer store, several years back, his boss gave him a Microsoft jacket, which I promptly nicked, because at that point it was just as hard to find women’s denim jackets. it’s not distressed, but is very pale, which was what I wanted. I still need to find a nice patch that will go over the embroidered Microsoft logo…. so it is possible.

update: C suggests going to a place that sells “workman’s” clothing (or hunting clothing, I assume) – someplace that carries Carhartt’s clothes.

(why not a tweed jacket? y’know, with the leather patches? or is that even dorkier?)

random personal aside: I always loved my friend Greyson’s denim jacket – he’d painted it years ago (in the 80s, probably) with a gorgeous Celtic twisty snake design…the same design he had tattooed on his calf. (I miss Greyson a lot.)

– CallCenter
– EzVoice
– big honkin’ list
– Telecommunications Supersite

but what I’m really looking for is something like real voicemail, which takes a message while the phone is busy – or heaven forfend, notifies one while one is on the computer (and by inference, tying up the phone). is this possible?