On the A-Infos Radio Project site is a lot of interesting stuff, including these 2 mp3s of Derek Jensen talking about civilization and related problems. His talks are always so great. He talks in a really nonlinear way, and is very entertaining despite the fact that he's talking about dead serious stuff that is really disturbing, like details of how our culture is destroying the natural world.

"It is my judgement in these things that when you see something that is
technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do
about it only after you have had your technical success."
- J. Robert Openheimer, when asked about development of the H-bomb

(quoted in the new issue of Harper's, in an article about cloning)

Very belatedly, I have been, for the last hour or so, scanning through the archives of the indymedia tech solidarity mailing list, trying desparately to gain some wisdom from the past. From October 2002 to May 2004 there was lots of activity and several projects worked on, discussed, contemplated. Ecuador seems to have been a success, though mistakes were made. the Argentina shipment, I understand, ended up in Paraguay instead, for customs reasons (?). The Brazil one never happened, for customs reasons. Other projects that there were hints of: Guatemala, South Africa, Beirut.... ? then after May of last year, the list just fell silent. What happened? Actually March of 2004 is when things started tailing off. Did people just get so burned out or disillusioned by the Brazil and Argentina projects that they gave up on the whole concept, except for rabble with his Venezuela project?

Why did I ever commit to this Bolivia project without doing the research to find out how freaking hard it is? Why did I not look at the list archives before and realize that these other projects involved many many people all over the world cooperating and working hard together? And somehow I thought me and Kim and Luis were going to be able to do it all ourselves? I should have known in the beginning that without more people helping it was going to be doomed to failure.

I just feel like shit. Will this be yet another unfinished project in my life? I feel like there are so many things I never followed through on. A friend that became an employer and then became a non-friend, back in the disillusioning and disorienting dot-com era, once said that another friend of ours told him that I wasn't good at finishing things. Was he just making that up to try to goad me into doing more free coding for him, or did the other friend actually say that? I never asked him, and if I did, I don't know if he would ever admit to saying that about me.

I know that if I look back on my life there ARE important accomplishments that I HAVE completed. But the failures and incompletes are the ones that stick out. That's just human nature, to amplify the memories of pain over the pleasures. But I do feel like I need a completion soon to get my self-esteem boosted back up where it should be.... if, at least, some others would step in and say "hey yeah, don't worry, we'll help out and get it done WITH you," then I could feel good again. How does one inspire that in others? I can get people excited enough to throw 20 bucks in a hat, or maybe spend an afternoon screwing together computer parts, but beyond that, I don't think I know how to motivate people... I need people to spend hours on the phone with customs officials and freight fowarders, writing grants and talking to NGOs and lawyers... I need people to OWN this with me.... cuz I can't do this alone. I thought maybe I could be I can't. I just can't and I shouldn't have even tried. I'll go insane if I try any more.

sigh.

I'm not religious or a believer in fate, but it's definitely uncanny how 3 different things have come up that are making it difficult for me to leave Portland next week like I planned: 1) The Bolivia computer project has hit some snags regarding shipping - i was hoping they would be on their way by next Monday, but now I don't know; 2) a small health situation that makes it advisable for me to not do much heavy lifting for a few days, which makes it hard for me to pack all my stuff up (both what I'm taking with me to Tucson and also what I'm storing here); 3) I plan to take the train, but Amtrak has these rail repairs happening in California that mean I may not be able to even get to Tucson.

So, it's weird. Am I meant to stay in Portland a little longer?

At least the weather is kind of nice (knock on wood), so I'm not like miserable about that while wishing I could escape to the desert. Still, it's very frustrating.

This open letter from local "hippie lawyer" Alan Graf to Tom Potter, the new mayor of Portland, about city police treatment of protesters, is really great. Graf is famous for defending protestors who've been wrongly arrested and abused by cops, and for suing the city for the same. His team won a $300,000 settlement a few months ago for a case dating back to the start of the Iraq War protests. Perhaps his successes, the new mayor, and the new police chief will all come together to make some noticeable difference around here.

Basically, we're probably doomed, and sooner than you think.

I spent most of inauguration day in the portland web radio studio helping out with our coverage. The contribution that I am most happy about is some interviews I did on the air with 5 different people in 4 different countries: Spain, Germany, Brazil and Bolivia. I talked with them about what people in their country thought of George Bush and the U.S., and it went very well. Best of all, we used internet telephony, so it was free. My friend Lenara in Porto Alegre used her internet phone to call, but for the rest we used Skype. The tech setup was pretty jury-rigged, as we didn't have the time to prepare an actual "phone patch" sort of a set-up. Instead I ran Skype on my powerbook with a line out, and used the built-in mic to talk to the caller, while holding up the regular studio mic close to my mouth also so I could be heard by listeners. It made for an odd posture, and others in the studio couldn't really take part in the discussion. But it was still very cool. The only other problem is the net lag, but we lived with it

For the last week or so I've been experimenting with a new, for me (actually the concept itself is only a couple years old), anti-spam measure called greylisting. The basic idea takes advantage of the fact that most spamming software doesn't retry when a message is temporarily delayed. So if you make all mail wait a while, and make a record of whether they already tried, you cut out most spam. You also keep a record of what sender/receiver pairs have already successfully undergone the process, and you don't delay them for future messages.

Well it turns out that it seems to work really really well. There's some kinks to iron out, but the fact is that it cuts down on 95% of spam. Some of my users are reporting various problems, but I think I'm working them out. It's really almost eerie how well it works, because the total volume of email is just so much lower coming into my email box. As far as I can tell I'm not missing anything, but it feels like I might be, because there's so little email -but that's because most of my email was spam before. Which, as a user pointed out, is sad, isn't it? I'm sure it's true of everyone these days.

I'm really happy to report that we're already halfway finished with building the 100 diskless terminals that is our goal, after only 2 days out of the 6 days planned.

Of course, more time will be needed making the terminal servers, but I think with the this week spent researching what software to put on them, we will have plenty of time next weekend to get them done, along with the rest of the terminals.

This is really exciting to see things go so smoothly and quickly, and it's been great to see so many volunteers show up.
The story I just posted to portland indymedia is here: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/308252.shtml

Three other geeks joined me at Free Geek tonight to start assembling the computers that will be sent to Bolivia and Venezuela. It is great to finally be doing this, after over a year of planning and organizing. The low turnout was understandable, as it was a Saturday night and everything outside was sheathed in a coating of ice. The city is basically shut down and hardly anything is moving.
Hopefully tommorrow more will make it down there.

Despite these obstacles, just the four of us built 12 diskless terminals in about 4 hours. At this rate we will easily have 100 made by the end of our 6 days. Of course making the terminal servers will be the hard part. But I figure we will finish up on the 24th, and then on the 30th, we'll palletize everything that's going to Bolivia, about 50 machines, and on the 31st load the pallets onto the truck. This is my naive hope, at least. And then on February 1st I head to Tucson! The Venezuela machines, I'm not sure what will happen. Maybe they'll get stored somewhere till that project is ready to ship, which might be later in February.