Power's back; I am too, sort of

Almaden survived the weekend powerdown just fine, though the climate control in my office seems to have been a bit weird today. And I survived a weekend without Net access — but I’m starting to look for a DSL or Cable ISP that serves my area and does a decent job. Any hints?

It’s going to be a busy week at work. I’m mentoring a new professional hire; on Thursday, I’ll be giving a presentation on privacy at the Silicon Valley World Internet Center Pub (y’all come…drinks are free!); and I’ve gotten started on a small Python programming project to help me deal with NNTP-based services.

And it’s also a busy week at home. This Friday is one of the two opportunities a year we get to throw away more than one can’s worth of junk in a week, and I have a lot of sorting to do. I don’t really have to worry about paper stuff, since they’ll always take an unlimited quantity of recyclables — but this is my chance to get rid of some of the other stuff which I tend to accumulate.

So I don’t expect to be posting much for the next few days.

Opting Out

Speaking of privacy, here are two handy links.

If you want to opt-out of the tracking that advertising networks like DoubleClick and AvenueA do to your browser, go to http://www.networkadvertising.org/optout_nonppii.asp, then click each checkbox and hit the “Submit” button.

And if you don’t like the X-10 pop-under ads which are suddenly all over the Web, go to http://www.x10.com/x10ads1.htm and you’ll be opted out of them for 30 days (it looks like the window still appears, but then it disappears all by itself). [Link courtesy of Dan Gillmor.]