I didn’t expect to be updating my ‘blog today; I thought I’d be too busy working on my privacy presentation for tomorrow, or maybe hacking my Python program. But I got the presentation done early this afternoon, or as done as it’s going to be until I decide to revise it ten minutes before showtime, and I find that if I program late in the evening, I have a hard time getting out of that mode so I can go to sleep. So here I am.

Besides, Diane is in a class this week and asked me to write something in my ‘blog so she’d have something to read during the dull parts. To be honest, I’m not sure that this particular entry is going to be much more interesting than the class, but how can I say no to such a charming requestor?

But really, today was a quiet day; I concentrated on doing work at work — I even managed to submit an expense account that’s been on my queue for a week, so perhaps American Express will not be unhappy with me.

Hormel throws in the pig.

Still looking at broadband alternatives for the house; people on DSL Reports have some good things to say about Earthlink and LinkLine and Raw Bandwidth. Nobody seems to talk much about the cable alternative, at least not on this site — anyone using @Home in Los Gatos?

They claim that it’s going to be cooler tomorrow evening. I hope so; it’s amazing how fast it got hot. On Monday evening, I was joking that we might have to turn on the furnace; tonight, I thought we might need the A/C, but the house peaked at 75 degrees, and now we have a cooling breeze coming through the windows.

And on that note, I end tonight’s command performance of Defenestration Corner. Good evening!

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.]