Category: News

Since my day was rather unventful, I’ll instead comment on an article I read online. Immigration checkpoints have been established in the DMZ in South Korea to facilitate travel to North Korea Having stood in the incredibly tense atmosphere that exists at the border, this is a symbol of detente that is hard to believe. While the restrictions are tight on those who travel north, from my conversations I would believe South Korea is happy to have this program. The desire for reunification is strong everywhere in South Korea, so a program like this, that helps open the border, must have gone over quite well. My only fear is whether it helps prop up a dysfunctional regime even a day longer than necessary.

For those of you who had evil genocidal dictator next on your death pool, congratuations. Milosevic was found dead in his cell in the Hague this morning, finally sending him to the place where he belongs. May he face some form of eternal damnation for what he’s done in his life.

While the details will only emerge over time, the Board of Governors has adopted President McCormick’s recommendations to overhaul undergraduate education. This is truly a great moment for Rutgers, as the creation of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences executed back in 1981 is finally completed. The largest single change – all undergraduates in New Brunswick and Piscataway will attend the same undergraduate college together, with a single honors program, the same degree granting requirements and admissions standards. While various specialized schools (the business school, engineering, and the land-grant programs within Cook) will still exist largely as they do today, the rather odd situation that you take most of your classes with students across all campuses yet are subject to different requirements and standards will largely come to an end.

It took two hours and a replacement of the cable line in to the house, but I’m finally back online. It has never felt so good to have access to so much useless information.

Tuesday evening I decided to double down, roll the dice, go for broke. I visited the Piscataway Cablevision office to pick up a new cable modem, and figured since I was there I would pick up a new digital cable box.

The fun started when I got home. The new cable modem didn’t work. The old cable box stopped working as well. The new cable box didn’t work either. The TV worked, in that it received a signal, but didn’t work, in that the tuner has been permanently set to channel 3.

When I was joking that if I had to choose between no TV or no Internet, I’d choose the Internet, I didn’t mean that I was willing to give up both.

I may have made reference to the article about the 15 year old teen who died after kissing her boyfriend who had eaten peanut butter earlier that day. An update from the coroner says it wasn’t an allergic reaction that did her in.

Optimum Online wasn’t all weekend. All weekend my service was down. I know the tricks about cycling the cable modem, fiddling with wires, throwing electronic devices against the wall, etc., all to repair them. But this is ridiculous.

I’ll be calling them when I get home, because there’s nothing wrong within the house. Unless the cable modem itself is hosed, there’s nothing I can see that’s wrong.

I’ve been dealing with an ingrown toenail for well over a year now.

In late December 2004, I went to a doctor in the Bridgewater area who cut it out and treated it for an infection. It hurt like hell for a day or two, but eventually mostly healed up.

And then six months later it had grown back in. I went back to him, and again he cut it out. Again it hurt like hell, but healed.

And by December of this year it was back. A third time. And I was ticked off, annoyed that it was back and afraid of having to go back to the doctor who would again cut it out and again have it hurt like hell.

I got smart and tried a different doctor. He cut it out. Except this time it didn’t hurt at all. Seriously. The only real pain was during the initial needles for the local anasthesia. After it wore off, no pain.

And now I’m hoping this will finally be the last time.

Cablevision has really been sucking it up lately. Since Monday, my cable modem has been offline for 10 – 12 hour periods at least four times, including today. I realized how dependant I’ve become on always-on Internet access.

Susan Crawford makes a point on unbundling similiar to mine.