Dem Ol’ Modem Blues

My four year-old Motorola Modem finally bit the dust.  Poor thing worked beautifully for years before going to heaven. 

So I trooped down to the ATT store and bought another one.  Plugged it in. Up popped the ID box, so I put in the 6 digit code and the Modem Access number and was good to go.

Until the next morning when I turned on the computer and the little yellow warning sign popped up on the bottom bar.  When I clicked on that it told me the PPoE had failed.  So I logged on manually, plugged in the ID numbers and was good to go.

Until the next morning when I turned on the computer and the little yellow warning sign popped up.  Called the ATT tech line and spoke with a very nice man named Steve or Joey or Fred in Mumbai.  He marched me through the same log on procedure that I had done two mornings ago, then assured me positively, absolutely that would fix the problem once and for all.  Which it did.

Until the next morning when I turned on the computer and the little yellow warning sign popped up.  Called the ATT tech line and got Joey this time and I explained the problem.  So he proceeded to march me through the exact same steps and positively, absolutely assured me the problem was now fixed totally forever.

Until the next morning when the little yellow warning sign popped up again.  This time I spoke to Carmen who concluded that something must be wrong with the modem; somehow, for some reason, it wasn’t holding onto the log-in information, and suggested I take it back to the ATT store and exchange it.  Which I did.

The new modem worked perfectly for a day or two then up popped the yellow warning flag.  So I was back on the phone to Fred in Mumbai who, yes, walked me through the same procedure and assured  me absolutely, positively the problem was solved. Which it was.

Until the next morning. 

This time I drove down to the ATT store, walked into the midst of a gaggle of fine young gentlemen, flung my arms wide and said, “I want to talk to the biggest, baddest, geekiest, nerdiest highest tech person in the house.”  A nice young man stepped up to claim that title and I explained what was happening with the Ghost Modem from Hell.  He was totally stumped. Had never heard of anything like that happening.  When I asked who within the whole ATT organization  could I call and talk to who might know what was going wrong.  “Oh,” said he cheerfully, “That would be the Tech units”

In  Mumbai.

One final call got me Carmen in Somewhere and while she was stumped, she did manage to route the log-ins through another program in my computer and so far it’s working. 

Until it doesn’t. 

BOT ATTACK

In an effort to make it easier for readers to log on and comment, on advice of another blogger, I decided to risk removing the Captcha requirement.  Which was fine, until it wasn’t, and a spam bot showed up.  So back goes the Captcha.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  I’ve left the comment section on “anyone” since there’s a lot of anonnymice who are not Crazies but are still anonnymice who might like to comment but are scared to do so.  And, like Spam itself, nothing deters some of the crazier Sewer Crazies.  So Captcha at this point will have to do with hopes that solves the problem.  

Your Sunday Poem

For a frosty morning in a time of crazy weather.  For thinking about living in the future we have made with our own busy hands, a catastrophe we are already starting to swim in.  This by Phillis Levin, from "Poetry 180, A Turning Back to Poetry," Selected and edited by Billy Collins.

The Blizzard

Now that the worst is over, they predict
Something messy and difficult, though not
Life-threatening.  Clearly we needed

To stock up on water and candles, making
Tureens of soup and things that keep
When electricity fails and phone lines fall.

Igloos rise on air conditioners, gargoyles
Fly and icicles shatter.  Frozen runways,
Lines in Markets, and paralyzed avenues

Verify every fear.  But there is warmth
In this sudden desire to sleep,
To surrender to our common condition

With joy, watching hours of news
Devoted to weather.  People finally stop
To Talk to each other -- the neighbors

We didn't know were always here.
Today they are ready for business,
Armed with a new vocabulary,

Casting their saga in phrases as severe
As last night's snow: damage assessment,
Evacuation, emergency management.

The shift of the wind matters again,
And we are so simple, so happy to hear
The scrape of a shovel next door.

What's In A Word, Anyway?

 Calhoun's Cannons for January 11th, 2013

" When I use a word, "Humpty Dumpty said," in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

                               Alice in Wonderland's Through the Looking-Glass

The new movie, "Zero Dark Thirty" has opened in theatres near you and certain folks in Washington are having a cow.  Seems that the movie, a retelling of the hunt for, finding and killing of Osama bin Laden suggests that it was "torture" that gave the CIA the needed information that led to bin Laden; No waterboarding, no bin Laden.

That had been the Republican storyline from Creepy Veep Cheney who, you could just tell, was all a-tingle when he growlingly announced, like some cheap-suited gunsel, that sometimes it was necessary to go to the "dark side." Heh-heh.  He and his PNAC NeoCon cronies were all thrilled with the Jack Bauer "24" macho-man idea of torture and had their own manicured, soft handed Justice Department lawyers parsing out and approving each and every "medically supervised" turn of the screw.  And, now, like very bad pennies, and despite having history proved  them so wrong on so many levels, this same gang of Zombies are still turning up on the Sunday Yak-Yak Shows to defend their appalling record on torture and again flog their old, failed PNAC (Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran) schemes. Which always prompts my hollered query, "Can't talk-TV find anyone else but these wrong-headed dinosaurs?" 

Well, apparently not.  As far as the media is concerned, even Republican idea men who stopped evolving in the 10th century and are stuck in re-run mode are apparently the  only guest on the right they can find.  So we keep getting one endless rerun of  out-of-date  Republican Pax Americana with a gun.  And a waterboard.

Meanwhile, Democrats are also having a cow. Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have always contended that torture didn't work, that "no significant information" about the courier, the key link to bin Laden, came from detainees after they were subjected to torture.  Oh, excuse me, "coercive techniques."  They maintain that information about bin-Laden's courier came from a detainee before he was tortured.   Pardon, I meant to say,  "subjected to coercive interrogation techniques." And that the movie gives a totally false picture of what really happened.  Furthermore, Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, is demanding that senior CIA official, Michael Morell, who acted as a consultant on the film,  'splain himself for a message he sent to CIA employees that "some information" leading to the Al Qaeda chief  "came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques." 

Because, lurking in the middle of all this is an interesting, unarguable fact:  One unknown man, one unknown name -- bin Laden's courier -- turned out to be the one tiny key that lay in plain sight for years, yet turned out to be the one who unlocked the door to bin Laden's compound.

Which allows Feinstein and others on the Intelligence Committee to claim that "no significant information about the courier came from detainees after they were subjected to coercive techniques" because  "the detainee who provided crucial information about the courier in 2004, identified by U.S. officials as Hassan Ghul, did so before he was subjected to coercive interrogation techniques.  He was never waterboarded." All of which lands Mr. Morell in hot water and the defenders of torture on the hot seat.    

So there we sit.  Did torture work? Or did it hinder and delay? No? Yes?  And in the middle of it all, weasel-wording Humpty Dumpty and the meaning of the word "torture" and "enhanced interrogation techniques." And what, if anything, does "significant" mean, anyway? 

In his extraordinary book, "The Looming Tower; al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," Lawrence Wright made one heartbreaking, furious, frustrating fact very clear: In tracking bin-Laden and al-Qaeda, everything was both significant and insignificant at the same time. Information is information.  And whether information that is obtained by torture will turn out to be "significant" or "insignificant' can't be known until after the fact. 

Which means that spook-hunters have to be jigsaw puzzle experts, tapestry-weavers,  psychics, psychologists, sly and subtle master interrogators and  time-travelers, moving magically into the future on a thread from the past.

Or they rely hard slogging grunt-work, or on sheer dumb luck, or both -- one needle stumbled upon in a painstakingly sifted haystack.  Or not found, and because not found, the twin towers fall and thousands die.

And so we're left with war crimes on America's books, with only low level prosecutions completed, thereby assuring that no one in high office will be  held to account because America is always conveniently in need of "moving on."  And the only question left is, are we still enhancing our interrogations? 

In  a drone and spook-filled world engaged in limitless war-by-any-other-name, who knows?  I certainly don't, do you?    

    

Your Sunday Poem

By Robert Blly, from "Poetry 180, A turning Back to Poetry," anthology edited by Billy Collins. Available in paperback from your local bookstore. Go buy it today.  Get more poems into your life. 

Gratitude to Old Teachers

When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked.  Be we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?

Water that once could take no human weight --
We were students then -- holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.

Dat Ol' Time Religions

The Mt. Carmel Lutheran Church in San Luis Obispo will be holding a six-week series of lectures on Islam, Hinduism, Judiasm, Buddhism and Christianaity.

The series will be held at the church at 17021 Fredericks St in San Luis and will start Sunday, Jan 6 at 10 a.m. and will continue on the next six Sundays at 10 a.m. as well.  A series of experts will discuss the various traditions and beliefs of these world's great religions.  If you wanted to expand your spiritual knowledge, this is an excellent way to get a start.

Jan 6:  Tony Criscuolo on the Vedic tradition
Jan 13: Cal Poly religious studies professor Stephen Lloyd moffett on the split between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox in 1054.
Jan 27: Deborah Wilhelm from the Monterey Diocese on  Mary's place in Catholic theology and the role of women in the Catholic Church
Feb 3: Naiyerah Kolkailah, president of the Islamic Society of SLO County, on the Quran
Feb 10: Sozan Peter Schellin-sensi on Zen Buddhism.

For more information call Heather Ross at 544-2133 or email her at info@mtcarmelslo.org or check the website.