I am posting my working notes on how to set up a computer.

... informal guides to what the French or the English really mean, when they are speaking their mother tongues, have been drawn up by other nationalities.

The guide also points out helpfully that when a Briton says “by the way/incidentally”, he is usually understood by foreigners as meaning “this is not very important”, whereas in fact he means, “The primary purpose of our discussion is...” On the other hand, the phrase “I'll bear it in mind” means “I'll do nothing about it”; while “Correct me if I'm wrong” means “I'm right, please don't contradict me.”

...

No less obvious is the fact that ideas about plain speaking do not travel easily across the Channel. As the Brits see things, a Frenchman who says “je serai clair”(which literally means “I will be clear”) should be understood as meaning: “I will be rude”. Also evident is the Anglo-Saxons' contempt for spectacular gestures à la française. The phrase “Il faut la visibilité Européenne”(“We need European visibility”) is rendered as: “The EU must indulge in some pointless, annoying and, with luck, damaging international grand-standing.” The British also suggest that the sentence “Il faut trouver une solution pragmatique” (literal translation: “We must find a pragmatic solution”) should be understood as meaning: “Warning: I am about to propose a highly complex, theoretical, legalistic and unworkable way forward.”

—Economist

The Little Yellow Dog. Walter Mosley.
(audiobook).
It took me about four months to finish this book on tape. The narrator has a pleasing voice and, at his best, does all of the characters' voices well. But the production seemed sloppy; many hesitations and misplaced accents and a few head-slapping mis-pronunciations slipped through. (Foilage for foliage, La see-en-gah for La Cienega, twice each, among others). That notwithstanding, the words and atmosphere were excellent, although I still can't remember which of Holland and Roman was Idabell Turner's husband and which was the brother-in-law.

...In America you can have either a flimsy box banged together out of two by fours and drywall, or a McMansion-- a flimsy box banged together out of two by fours and drywall, but larger, more dramatic-looking, and full of expensive fittings. Rich people don't get better design or craftsmanship; they just get a larger, more conspicuous version of the standard house.

...

Where the just-do-it model fails most dramatically is in our cities-- or rather, exurbs. If real estate developers operated on a large enough scale, if they built whole towns, market forces would compel them to build towns that didn't suck. But they only build a couple office buildings or suburban streets at a time, and the result is so depressing that the inhabitants consider it a great treat to fly to Europe and spend a couple weeks living what is, for people there, just everyday life.—Paul Graham

I received a flyer for the St. Patrick's Day parade. This is a downside of living across the street from the park: the parade goes right by, and streets are closed in a rectangle two blocks wide and fourteen blocks long. After the parade there is "a huge free festival" and a "children's ride and entertainment center." I plan to spend the day elsewhere. I mentioned the festivities to an Irishman, who said, "the coming of Christianity to Ireland should be a reason to mourn rather than celebrate."

Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork.
Robert Bork explains that Western civilization is disintegrating and the liberals are to blame:

I use the phrase ["modern liberalism"] merely to mean the latest stage of the liberalism that has been growing in the West for at least two and a half centuries, and probably longer. Nor does this suggest that I think liberalism was always a bad idea. So long as it was tempered by opposing authorities and traditions, it was a splendid idea. It is the collapse of those tempering forces that has brought us to a triumphant modern liberalism with all the cultural and social degradation that follows in its wake. If you do not think "modern liberalism" an appropriate name, substitute "radical liberalism" or "sentimental liberalism" or even, save us, "post-modern liberalism." Whatever name is used, most readers will recognize the species.

Bork on modern musical trends:

The difference between the music produced by Tin Pan Alley and rap is so stark that it is misleading to call them both music. Rock and rap are utterly impoverished by comparison with swing or jazz or any pre-World War II music, impoverished emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually. Rap is simply unable to express tenderness, gentleness, or love. Neither rock nor rap can begin to approach the complicated melodies of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, or Cole Porter. Nor do their lyrics display any of the wit of Ira Gershwin, Porter, Fats Waller, or Johnny Mercer. The bands that play this music lack even a trace of the musicianship of the bands led by Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and many others of that era.

He has similarly extreme and ignorant things to say about abortion, homosexuality, freedom of speech (Chapter 8 is "The Case for Censorship"), the rights of the accused, feminism, and other topics. I confess that I only skimmed the book, and surely overlooked some thought-provoking arguments. But I didn't have the stomach to sift through his hate and fear to get to them.

This kind of language coming from a shock-jock or person paid to to incite people and provoke false controversy would not be surprising. But I am extremely happy that his nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States was rejected. If he had written this book before then, perhaps the debate about his nomination would have been more honest and productive.

Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age, Duncan J. Watts
A good introduction to network science, with the chatty (and incongruously hunky—the cover photo does not look like a scientist) narrator giving glimpses along the way into how and why research happens. Covers basic taxonomies of networks (e.g., small world networks, scale-free networks) and then moves into dynamics (propagation, cascades, etc). The most important insight, for me, was a mathematical argument that successful cascades (when a thing, such as a disease or new song or the desire to purchase a product, suddenly and unpredictably moves from one small corner of a network to take over the whole thing) have more to do with the network than with the thing itself. It's not exactly a refutation of the "great men" theory of history, in which the characteristics of individuals are taken to have necessarily shaped the course of history. A direct refutation, I think, would say that, for instance, the end of slavery in the US was inevitable around the 1860s, and if Lincoln hadn't been the specific person to lead the change, someone else would have popped up. Cascade theory doesn't say that. It says that there are a number of different systemic changes that could have happened, and the characteristics that made Lincoln great were necessary but not sufficient for Lincoln to be a towering historical figure. But his career, and the end of slavery, appear inevitable in hindsight but were probably nothing but—other outcomes were equally or more possible.

Or, more mundanely, there are dozens of new consumer products hitting the market every year and while some can be accurately judged failures ahead of time because of their faults, many products are candidates for breakout success but random chance will determine that, say, the iPod will be the one. Anyway, it was a good book.

Stealing the Elf-King's Roses, Diane Duane
Starts out as an intriguing genre-bender: sci-fi/fantasy/detective story. But as it progresses it turns into a generic Diane Duane novel with familiar characters and a huge, cosmological, touchy-feely ending that feels stamped from the same template as, say, any of her early Star Trek novels. Much as I like elements of her writing, she seems to produce much stronger novels when co-writing. Even as escapist pulp, this was a bit disappointing.

Doomfarers of Coramonde, Brian Daley
The first novel of a very talented hack (and I mean that as a compliment here), it shows many rough edges in pacing, artlessly shifting points of view, and a desperately deus ex machina ending. Most of the elements of solid genre fiction are already in place, however, and it's not out of place in Daley's bibliography of entertaining, well-written, human stories.

Brian Daley is probably most famous for writing the Star Wars Trilogy radio adaptations, or for being half of the Jack McKinney pseudonym which wrote the Robotech novels. He died of cancer in the mid-nineties. Anthony Daniels' tribute, including the script of a tape the radio drama cast recorded for him but which was completed days or hours too late for Daley to hear, is certainly enough to water the eyes.

After vehemently disagreeing with just about everything I've read on Instapundit, typically because it was disingenuous partisan material, I was very happily suprised to be pointed (from the leftist Talking Points Memo's Special Bankruptcy Bill Edition) to an Instapundit post I completely agree with:

I assume that the Bush Administration is supporting this legislation, but I really don't see it as consistent with "compassionate conservatism." I see it, in fact, as consistent with the worst stereotypes about corporate-friendly Republicanism.

—Instapundit

He further quotes approvingly:

"If the blogosphere could mount an effective campaign for people to write to their senators, it would mark its emergence as a genuinely independent force in US politics." — Jim Bennett (Instapundit)

So one force that can unite the left and the right in American online political commentary is the aggressively greedy credit card companies. Well, if it starts here, and continues through opposition to other un-partisan villains (let me propose cable companies, spammers, virus writers, and possibly insurance companies, HMOs, and pharmaceuticals), maybe we can narrow the partisan gap a bit. Too bad the bankruptcy bill already passed all substantive hurdles.

Don't put your iPod shuffle in shuffle mode when listening to murder mysteries.

Mar 2, 2005
11:50 P.M.: CN, BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
10:14 P.M.: SHANGHAI, CN, DEPARTURE SCAN
2:54 P.M.: SHANGHAI, CN, EXPORT SCAN
12:37 P.M.: ANCHORAGE, AK, US, ARRIVAL SCAN
9:48 A.M.: SHANGHAI, CN, ORIGIN SCAN

I just ordered a new IBM laptop. I did this because my old IBM laptop is slow and heavy. It was a year old when I bought it used, two years ago. Actually, it's not even the same laptop. The screen on my Thinkpad A20m was glitchy, and it finally went almost full-time on the fritz last year in Copenhagen. I swapped its hard drive with Lars' unused Thinkpad A21m, so it's only the same laptop in spirit, not in fact. It works generally pretty well, but has a few problems: hibernate has never really worked; startup takes about 5 minutes, including KDE, and starting new applications can take quite a while. Once an application is running, however, it's perfectly responsive, so the irritation is intermittent, not constant. Battery life is poor, so it's more of a portable computer than a mobile computer. Continued dismay with this state of affairs, plus the realization that my travelling bicycle load (clothes, computer, a book, a lock) is 35 pounds, and an upcoming international trip, led me to finally promote the new laptop from the wishlist to the reality list.

I got a Thinkpad before because of the reputedly excellent linux support. In practice, it's not awful, but it's not excellent either. The quality of the machine was generally good, except for the video screen that went on the fritz, but I did buy used over eBay. IBM's eraserhead pointers are excellent, and I cannot stand the touchpads. So I settled on a new X40 fairly quickly, and it is at this point that our mini-saga begins.

Ordering over the internet on a Sunday went fine, but I didn't get an email receipt. I called Monday, was on hold for maybe five minutes, and then talked to a very nice person who explained that the machine was back-ordered 10 business days, and the wireless card I had specified 20. When I explained that I had only picked that wireless card out of the four choices (three, because two choices had identical text) because it was the only one with a model number, allowing me to verify linux compatibility. "Intel Wireless Card" is not helpful to a linux user. He got a nice technician on the line, who said that he had exactly what I wanted already in stock ("except - you sound like a savvy guy. Can you - " "yes, throw the extra memory in the box and I can install it myself."). I mentioned that I never got an email, and that the order number I had retrieved out of my browser cache didn't work. He set me up with a correct order number, and made sure I got an email.

And the next day, Tuesday, I got another email. With a shipping date of April 5, over a month in the future. So I called again, waited 5 minutes again, and talked to a very nice lady who said that I should ignore that date, and that my computer would ship in five to seven business days. I said, "I noticed an offer on the web site to ship a computer the same day, if I order by 3 pm. It includes exactly the computer I want. Can I cancel this order and do that instead?" "No, sir. The shipping label was printed yesterday, so you cannot cancel your order. And that would not ship for one to three days anyway." "So where it says 'ships same day,' that's simply not true?" "Correct."

Great. I did read the fine print, and it says that IBM will ship the same day the order is completed, and completing an order includes, in their definition, processing the credit card, which takes one to three business days.

Then I got a few more emails, and a UPS tracking number, with which I have been eagerly following the progress of my new hardware. (It's mine, I figure, because my credit card was charged Tuesday.) Today my RAM arrived, and some shipping information for the rest materialized on UPS's website. As you can see above, UPS isn't especially careful with time zones or date lines.

So this seems to be pretty much the inverse of Dell. The product is, I assume, excellent, but the ordering process is third-rate. Specifically:

• The order status page uses more warehouse language than user language. My order is for a "** EXP X40 INTEL PENTIUM M LV 1.4 12" XGA 256 40 802 BG" and "RECYCLE FEE FOR PRODUCT WITH 4 TO 14 INCH DISPLAY". There is no link to show any more information about the product I ordered; I would have to go back to the ordering screens and try to match the part number. I didn't even realize that the laptop doesn't have a DVD drive (it's only 2.9 pounds, so I guess they cut these things at that price range. Hopefully I'll be able to install linux from a USB device. And you know, I was just thinking yesterday that after putting a whole audiobook (The Little Yellow Dog, Walter Mosley), three CDs, and a bunch of Salon member-only downloads onto my new iPod Shuffle, I still had 100 mb or more to spare. Fortune smiles, I guess.
• Every date estimate I've gotten has been wrong one way or the other. Better that the reality is early instead of late, but accuracy would be nice.
• It was never clear when I would actually be charged.

Aside from that, it's going smoothly and I'm excited.

I've taken my new bicycle out for two rides now, both out to the beach. The first was to Ocean Beach, 17 miles round trip. The second, last Sunday morning when there was hardly any traffic, was also past Lindburgh field but then I turned into Mission Bay and chased some of the crew teams around. (Since Mission Bay is a bunch of peninsulas, islands, bridges, and public and private parks and resorts, a few hundred yards on the water can be four miles on a road.) I went a total of 27 miles, in about 2.5 hours of rolling time (with a fair amount of slow cruising). Planetbike sent a new bicycle computer to replace the one that fell into an elevator shaft, and it works very well. My butt and back started to get a bit stiff by the end of the trip, but I was afraid to slide the seat around until I get a grease pencil to mark its position so I can return to positions that I liked. I still have a tendency to wobble, especially at higher speeds where I have to pedal harder, but it's certainly a fast bicycle.