Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Monday, 28 January 2002

# 11 PM

I mailed out a ton of stuff: mostly bills. I wonder how the amount of money I currently waste on parking tickets each month compares to the additional surcharge on the rent to get a space behind the building. I wouldn't be surprised if it's about the same.

Also, generated and sent off letters to various junk-mail companies requesting to be removed from mailing lists. I'm tired of getting credit card offers which can't even be thrown out for fear of having someone fish them out of the trash and send them in. The thing is, this shouldn't be necessary in the first place. We don't put up with opt-out when it comes to electronic mail; why should we put up with it in paper mail?

(opt-out.cdt.org is a great resource for doing this sort of thing. Just fill in the form and it will give you a series of letters to print out and sign. Of course, I had to do it five times because Mozilla decided to crash every second time I asked it to print the page.)

It's raining outside. This morning, apparently, it was sort-of snowing in Granite Bay where my boss lives.

Time for dinner, then fill in backlog of time sheets so I get paid for this month...

# 3 PM

The Christian Science Monitor has an article today about a growing public debate in Arabic-speaking countries over the link between political oppression and militancy. Definitely worth a read.

(You're probably thinking, isn't that the propaganda sheet run by that bizarre sect that thinks all disease is illusory? Yes and no. It is run by that bizarre sect (the Church of Christ, Scientist) but it's an independent, secular newspaper with high journalistic standards. They report all sorts of stuff that doesn't make it into the big media outlets. I haven't read it long enough to get a good sense for the spin they like to put on events; it's definitely different from the spin you get from more popular sources. There is one religious article each issue, but it's clearly labelled as such.)

# 5 AM

Wheee, I love it when I discover two different Mozilla bugs (122104, 122109) in the course of writing a journal entry.

# 4:20 AM

Wheee... seems like every time I report bugs in Mozilla they turn out to be duplicates of bugs with much smaller numbers.

Wheee... five copies of a Windows mail worm sent to a mail alias I probably shouldn't be on anymore, but still am.

Wheee... sorted most of the papers cluttering this place up, filed them away carefully, and labelled all the file folders. I've been needing to do that last for years. Some of the labels are silly: "Mathoms", for instance, right next to "Useless Manuals."

How long should one hang on to old bank statements for? I've got every last one of them since I moved to the Bay Area back in 1999. I doubt I'll ever need them, but I hesitate to throw them away...