(no subject)

Wired the phone and one end of the network into the basement this morning. Could not find the clips to close the jacks or any of the two other punch tools (cheapo plastic) that I own when I went down the other night to do it. Menards, my home away from home, didn't have any, so I had to run down to Acme Electronics to pick one up. Very cute guy waited on me, but the area looks like a war zone, Washington is all torn up, and both the Monte Carlo and the steak house on the corner had windows missing (remodeling whilst the construction kills business is my guess.) One phone line works, one line is still having trouble somewhere within the house, so that line is on a solo phone at the moment. Still need some banana plugs. 
The ones they had at Acme had the tiniest holes for the wire...

Great Op-Ed piece in today's NY Times by Mark Danner, all about will, terrorism and the American way:

'In Afghanistan, the targets are running out. Such are the frustrations of the powerful; Joseph Conrad, writing
of an African "heart of darkness" a century ago, well understood: "Once, I
remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even
a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. . . . In the empty immensity of
earth, sky, water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent."'