I'm returning to Boston today to pick up Sailor (that's pick up Sailor, not pick up a Sailor). We've bought a bunch of toys and figure we'll go on a shopping spree over the next couple of days as we figure out what she does and does not like. We have already been warned that she enjoys shredding toys. Frisket has stealthily hid her most precious toys under the bed.

I found this headline alarming: Officials flap as birds fall from sky, moreso because of this headline Austin shuts downtown after dead birds discovered. Canaries?

I have nothing to contribute to the web-wide outpouring of words over the Apple iPhone. It looks cool, if it weren't $600 and on Cingular AT&T Wireless, I might consider it, however I just adapted to a Nokia E70 over the past couple of months and generally like to run my phones into the ground. So, the next opportunity to switch to the iPhone will be some time in 2009. Should it last that long. Perhaps by then Apple will have come to their senses and opened up the development platform. Odd to tout its OS X operating system in one sentence, and then pronounce that users cannot install their own applications in the next.

The year has gotten off to a slow start. I spent several days over the weekend working up a redesign for this site which I plan to launch this weekend. Given my utter inability to do design well, I'm utilizing the Yahoo! User Interface stylesheets as a base and sticking to a couple of colors. I'm sure it will still look like a three year old's attempt at web design. As part of that work I moved the daily bookmarks posting from del.icio.us to distractions. My thinking is that I'm going to try to make that a rolling aggregation of bookmarks, listening list, etc. It's slow going, I'd rather walk the dog(s).

As an interim thing: one activity I'd like to do, one area I'd like to make better use of technology, is the whole social-whatever space. Eventually there'll be a badge here somewhere listing these, but in the meantime I'm using the following services and would like to network or link or whatever the appropriate buzzverb is with anyone reading this site who also uses the services (and if you don't, consider signing up). Don't know if they add value or not but won't be able to learn until I'm linking to more profiles than my dogs.

epc's social networking links

• epcostello on del.icio.us
• epc on flickr
• epcostello on LinkedIn.
• epcostello on last.fm
• epc on typekey
• epc on twitter
• epc on mybloglog
• epcostello on bloglines
• epcostello on Google Reader
• epcostello on Google Calendar (note: sharing is restricted to free/busy info unless I have added your email address to my calendar)
• epcostello on QUBE
• epcwork on AIM
• epcostello on Skype
• epc on Upcoming

I ceased using Friendster as part of a mass-unsubscribe when they fired a blogger. I don't have a facebook nor myspace profile and don't plan to. I can't think of anything else to add that I actively use at the moment.

I stopped writing about politics years ago because it upset my mother, and I don't have that pithy, quotable style that makes for a marked contribution to political discourse in this country, and I didn't want to be on the receiving line of the right-wing whackjobs whose eliminationist rhetoric and cheap threats against those who disagree with them (and the administration) serve mostly to shut down moderate discussion, leaving only extremism on either end of the political spectrum standing.

But, I have to say this: I am both just old enough to remember Viet Nam and just young enough to not remember much. Certainly much of what I think I remember is influenced by what I read, heard, and watched later after the war. However I do remember a classmate crying because someone close to them had been KIA. I do remember the refugee girl from Cambodia who spoke no English and had the look of terror in her eyes. I remember the effects of the war on those around me, even though we were all of six, seven, eight years old.

So I have to say this: the prosecution of this war has just been criminal, treasonous even. The corruption, the disdain the administration has demonstrated for common-sense approaches to rebuilding Iraq after the invasion, the contempt the administration shows today for members of Congress, for the ISG, the people of the US is treasonous. It is damaging the safety and security of the country, and this latest escalation (sorry, according to Condoleeza Rice it is an augmentation), if deployed and managed the same way we've been managing the war to date will just make things worse, and result in more US KIA.

We've already wrecked Iraq as a country, and we seem to be doing little to genuinely rebuild it other than to convert our payments to the IRS into dividends for shareholders in Halliburton.

The President represents 1/3rd of the government, not the entire government. The people have the right and ability to constrain the actions of the President through Congress. I do not know what other to suggest right now than to bend the ear, twist the arm, express concern to your local representative and Senator to shut this down, work with the UN to rebuild Iraq, and bring our troops home.