A Pilgrim’s Digression

Though I have written little about the upcoming election in ‘08, I am as much a political junkie as ever. I follow politics mostly by reading mainstream news stories online, or listening to podcasts of the Newshour with Jim Lehrer and Washington Week. I don’t watch much cable news, though I listen to Fox News on XM in the car. And of course I still occasionally tune in to Limbaugh, Hannity, and the rest of the afternoon gang on AM radio.

What I find interesting is how little my own habits of following politics have changed over the past five years, despite supposed rapid change around me. I’ve never really developed a taste for blogs as a way of learning about political candidates or issues, for example.

Then I read in a story in the Washington Post today, Obama Tries New Tactics to Get Out the Vote, that “[Obama staffers] have posted more than 350 videos on his YouTube channel, twice as many as Clinton, and his videos have been viewed nearly twice as often as hers. Obama has more MySpace friends than any other Democratic candidate, and he lists more Facebook supporters than all other Democrats combined.”

Am I missing out on something here by being so “old media” in my tastes?

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The holiday is over and all my good intentions of writing more frequent blog entries this holiday season have passed on with it.  I don’t know what I would have written anyway.  It was a more uneventful Christmas than most, for reasons I don’t quite understand.

We skipped the family Christmas party this year, and apparently many others did as well.  My Grandma told me that not many people were there, which I suppose is a sad thing except that I really don’t enjoy it much.  My Dad skipped it this year, too.  My step-mother was sick, he said, and so they were staying home.  I can’t be judgmental about whether this was true or not.

Still, I felt some lingering guilt when I saw my Grandma for the first time since July.  I saw her December 23, and the first thing she did was hug me and say, “Well, I made it to Christmas.”  She was crying as she added, “I missed you so much.”

Her cancer is not spreading, but it is not exactly in remission, either.  The chemo is at best just prolonging her life, which I suppose is all one can hope for.  She looks the same.  She acts the same.  Her eyesight has deteriorated to the point that she is legally blind, whether as a result of the radiation no one knows.  She always had macular degeneration, but it seems to have progressively worsened.  Still, she cooked for the family Christmas Eve, and we all gathered at her house for our smaller annual get-together.

It didn’t feel the same, though.  I kept worrying that I hadn’t taken enough pictures, but I did not want to her to think I was deliberately taking pictures because I expected her to keel over at any moment.  For the same reason, I brought our video camera but left it in the bag, never even using it once.  I don’t want to admit she is going to die, either, and yet the whole time we were together, I kept thinking, “This might be the last one.  The last Christmas.”  Even if she is still alive next year, will she be healthy?

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This story sounds like it ought to be in the Onion. A married couple in Great Britain have been forced to allow a criminal convicted of assault to serve his home detention in their house, after he falsely gave their address to the court as his home address. He wears a security tag and is confined to the home for the duration of his probation, a situation the wife describes as having “turned our lives upside down.”

Couple Forced to Take in Criminal Lodger

As one person remarks in the comments portion of the story, maybe this is a new, experimental solution for prison overcrowding. Each home it’s own convict.

Really, there ought to be something the government can do about this situation. I can’t believe that a criminal would simply be allowed to move in with a couple ordinary citizens, against their will and at the command of the state. Stories like these really turn on the Libertarian streak in me. If our homes aren’t inviolate from the whims of the state, then where can we find refuge?

What really irks is this thug’s response to the wife’s protest upon his arrival on her doorstep: “I’m staying here until the tag’s off. There’s fuck all you can do about it. The courts have told me to.”

I sometimes wonder why we call Christmas a “holiday” when few people actually take a holiday at this time of year, from either work or the ordinary stress of daily life. In fact for many people, the stress ramps up over the holiday season, especially if one has children and a large, extended family spread out over the country. At this time of year, I always read news stories about the increased frequency of suicide and depression at the holidays, and these stories always attribute those statistics to loneliness and lack of family. Maybe we should look at other contributing factors to the holiday blues.
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Yesterday I heard this story on NPR about how hackers are increasingly targeting the Macintosh community. As a Mac user myself, I know quite well how easy it is to become complacent about Internet threats. Spyware, Viruses, Keyloggers…we have never had to worry about the issues that Windows users deal with as a matter of course.

Personally, I have always prided myself on the fact that I have never felt the need to buy an Anti-Virus program. I don’t feel so smug anymore, however. It seems to me only common sense that if you use a product which advertises itself as so secure that you don’t need Anti-Virus protection, you are simply inviting hackers and codesmiths to break your system and steal your data. Therefore for the first time, just this morning I bought and downloaded Norton Anti-virus for Macintosh.

There are no doubt going to be a lot of Mac users who take issue with this warning, pointing out the Macintosh’s inherent security features that prevent it from being attacked as easily as Windows. I agree, and I certainly sympathize with folks who are not used to buying an Anti-virus product and don’t really want to become used to another yearly subscription fee. However, I don’t think we can keep our head in the sand to this threat any longer. Apple is growing in market share and visibility (though when I went to Best Buy the other day to purchase the new OS X, Leopard, the sales clerk did not even know what I meant by ‘Macintosh’).

I feel like it’s better to be safe than sorry, to use a cliché. Some people put signs in their yard advertising that their home is protected by a security system. Ironically, Macintosh users have broadcast their superiority to the world at large to such an extent that everyone knows Mac users don’t use Anti-Virus or Anti-Spyware technology at all. It’s only a matter of time before someone takes advantage of our guard being down.

Brendan’s girlfriend broke up with him yesterday.  Keep in mind she denies ever being his girlfriend.  In fact, he said she broke up with him because he “lied” about her being his girlfriend.  Brendan is heartbroken and wants to get back together with her because, as he says, “she’s really pretty.”

This was the conversation Brendan and my wife had yesterday, after he got home from school, where he attends first grade.  He had a really bad day, apparently.  Lynn told him he should ask his grandpa for advice when he sees him at Christmas, and I concur.  He certainly doesn’t want to ask me for advice; I am as clueless as ever on that subject.

This weekend was a big one for my gnome Warlock, Holdwine. After more than a year playing World of Warcraft, I finally got him to level 70, the current level cap. It was a pretty intense weekend of play, and I drew some pretty intense aggro from the wife, as well, because of how much time I spent in the game.

For those of you that don’t know, “aggro” is a term used in the game to refer to the amount of “hate” one has built up on a monster. For example, you get too close to a monster and it “aggroes” or notices you and starts attacking. Well, players have taken that term and applied it to real life, specifically to their significant other.

“Dude, I’ve got to quit now and do some laundry. I’m really drawing aggro from the girlfriend.”

Similarly, players refer to “grinding rep” with the significant other. In the game, when you complete quests for specific factions, you earn Reputation with them that unlocks rewards.

“No play for me today; I’m grinding rep with the wife. I’ve got to do ten loads of laundry to earn time to raid tomorrow night.”

I have never heard of any female players who have aggro issues with their boyfriends or husbands. In fact I specifically asked in guild chat the other night if there were any female players with “husband aggro” stories. It must be a rarity. One woman responded, “The only husband aggro I get is when I’m playing on his account and he wants to play.”

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