约翰·麦凯恩的副总统候选人

今天下班回家，打开电视，CNN 上报道 John McCain 的副总统人选 Sarah Palin (莎拉·佩林)。

刚才想起来写点什么，到网上“古狗”了一下“约翰·麦肯”，结果找到一堆“约翰·麦肯罗”、“约翰·麦肯兹”，到新华网上看了一眼，McCain 翻成了“麦凯恩”。

麦凯恩这招挺聪明的，显然出乎民主党这边的意料，至少这边的这些电视评论“头”们似乎没有什么有深度的话可说。显然这位阿拉斯加女州长不是一个毫无建树的“漂亮脸蛋”，从电视上有限的介绍来看，此人不是一盏省油的灯，对共和党内部的腐败份子也不手软，在阿拉斯加很有人缘。前面在 Larry King 节目上那个共和党女 talking head 拼命鼓吹说她是全国最受欢迎的州长。如果民主党那边一味轻视此人，最终一定会吃亏。

我想，麦凯恩这招势在调动共和党人的热情，至少在一定程度上是会有所成功，至少一个年轻漂亮的女副总统会让人眼睛一亮。不过，就我个人而言，此次总统选举的候选人个人并不重要，党派也在其次，最重要的未来四年我们自己的生计如何。全民医保是最关键的一件，其次能源政策，综合经济政策，伊拉克战争的走向，这与我们每个人的每日生活都息息相关。就 John McCain 数不过来的家居、一年五百万等等，他将来的政策能够有益我们这些离“五百万”相去甚远的人群吗？我想等我一年挣到五百万的时候我或许会支持 John McCain 做总统。

Larry King 之后是 AC360，安德森又出现在新奥尔良。三年前卡特琳娜飓风来袭的时候他也在那里，三年之后飓风古斯塔夫（Gustav）又“兵临城下”。三年前新奥尔良的悲惨画面而今尚历历在目，如果今年再受灾害，就是苍天瞎了眼了。如果真的噩梦又来，共和党的末日政府能够指望得上吗？或许我们都该“吃一堑长一智”吧！

I Pity John McCain

John McCain is a tragic figure of sort.

He spent decades building a reputation as a maverick of Republican. He was winning in the 2000 Republican primaries before he was tared and feathered by Bush and his cohort of scum bags. Then he has to swallow all that defeat and resentment of Bush to hug him. Does anything get more disgusting than that? All just for this one and only chance to get into the White House? What a shame.

The 29th Olympiad Closed

The games have ended. The closing ceremony is done. I have just done watching the closing ceremony thanks to the monopoly of NBC on the TV broadcasting rights in this country. I believe it when the NBC host said the Beijing Olympics was the most memorable among the many Olympics he had been involved -- at least it should be as memorable as any one of them.

All in all, it has been a very successful Olympiad. I didn't realize that Ann Arbor, this small mid-western college town, had so much to do with the Olympics. There are many memorable moments even for me who don't care much about sports. Particularly, Michael Phelps will be remembered for his 8 gold medals in swimming. Usain Bolt will be remembered as the fastest running man. The US has won the most number of medals, while China has won the most number of gold medals. As some NBC commentator said on the screen, everybody won.

Then of course, not everybody has won. I hope that people would also remember Liu Xiang. He is a hero who went down on his battleground. Beijing and its people have endured a lot to make the whole event a success. Then there are those who got swept aside by the enormous force pushing the Beijing Olympiad. It's one big world, but people definitely still have different dreams.

I believe people with the kind of patriotic opinions like Nie Weiping are in the minorities. In that respect, I admire what Lang Ping has been able to do after her career as a player.

China has impressed the world. But on the other hand, the effort to impress has been obvious -- that may or may not be the intension. Also impressive is that China has tried too hard. Especially their effort to project an image of torleration is silly: They tell the world that they allow protest but then make sure no one is capable to follow through with the registration.

第二十九届奥林匹克运动会 · 北京 · 二零零八

昨晚北京奥运会开幕。张艺谋的开幕式不同凡响，无论世人怎么评论。

不过，在中国人举国骄傲的这一刻，我却无法分享同样的亢奋。中国现在也许确实是有钱来充分表现国家的实力，但是这种举国上下把奥运弄成象节日一样，感觉上中国用力过度了些。北京街头的砖墙能够遮住那些强拆的民房，却不能掩盖北京的心虚，那不是一个“和”字能够粉饰的。中国走出秦始皇“焚书坑儒”的疯狂和愚昧，才会真正走向自信。

“爱情”

看着电视上几个年轻的歌星以各自不同的词汇高唱“爱情”，感觉有些滑稽。

少年的时候，“爱情”是一种砰然心动。

青年的时候，“爱情”是爱人身体的甘美。

其后的中年不是一种状态，而是一个不知不觉的过程。这个岁月的“爱情”大概象珊瑚礁一样，那眼中所见的美丽其实是无数珊瑚虫尸体堆砌而来，脆弱，无助。环境污染已经在全世界范围威胁到珊瑚的生存，“爱情”的处境似乎也如是。

秦始皇“焚书坑儒”

晚上电视历史频道播放《China's First Emperor》，现在正演到秦始皇焚书坑儒一段。

中国这一段历史，确实真有决定中国以往所有读书人命运的意义。从此，泱泱大国不再尊重思想、言论，一切都受强权主宰。从这个角度来说，秦始皇也是中国人灾难的起始。从这个角度来说，张艺谋影片中的“英雄”，以及周恩来这样的“人民公仆”从根本上来说也都是皇帝的帮凶。

“多难兴邦”

看 CCTV-4 的新闻联播节目，不知一次听到“多难兴邦”这个词汇，不知怎么，听得心里面很不舒服。说这种话的人立场似乎是在统治者那边，对于百姓而言，平平安安才是真的。灾难对于人性是一种检验，然而没有人希望靠灾难来给人性的坚强和民族的团结加注脚。尤其是共产党政府说这句话，让我觉得他们的心与受灾百姓的距离。他们身居庙堂高位，行事之间总是把形而上放在首位，这是所有政府都有的问题，而共产党的这种倾向比别人尤甚。

四川地震与“六四”十九周年

四川地震已经三个多星期了，“抗震救灾”早已经从救人转入对灾民的安置状态。都江堰等一些地方开始有一些因学校教学楼倒塌而死亡的学生家长开始聚集，手举着死去儿女的照片在政府楼前抗议。纽约时报的 Nicholas D. Kristof 在他的《Earthquake and Hope》一文中还说看到中国有希望变得更加开放和自信。然而时隔不久，中国政府却又回到以前那种自闭状态里，开始用对付上访者的办法来对付这些家长，同时又开始对国外记者的采访加以限制。本来中国政府的行为和形象在此次地震后受到民间自发的救灾活动的影响开始有所向开放转变，但是稍遇挑战，马上就表现出自闭症状，看来距离真正自信还远。

今年是八九“六四”十九周年，多数人的心都还在地震上，这一天不觉之间就悄悄地过去了。然而我们不应该忘记这一天。共产党也不应该忘记这一天。共产党结的这个结，到哪一天共产党能够解开了，那也就表明中国有了立于世界文明之林的自信。

Experiencing AT&T High Speed Internet Services

I have been an AT&T high speed Internet (ADSL) customer for a number of years. Back in 2000, I was excited when Comcast, the only cable TV company in town after a number of years of consolidation in that industry, started to provide residential high speed Internet services. I was a cable TV customer then, so it was natural for me to take their offer immediately when it became available in our subdivision, then a relatively new development of some 200+ houses. The next year, Ameritech, then the mid-west baby Bell, pulled DSL near our subdivision and started to advertise their ADSL service for $14.95 a month or something like that. Cable Internet was something like $39.95 so it only took one call from an Ameritech salesman to convince me to switch. Over the years, Ameritech became SBC, which became AT&T -- which by the way says a lot about the value of the AT&T brand. The original 768/128Kbps ADSL service has evolved a number of offerings going all the way up to 6/1.5Mbps, comparable to cable's advertised data rates. I have stayed, in fact, upgraded my subscription along with that evolution.

Over the years, I have always wondered about, and posted the question to AT&T sales people, why they do not offer voice over IP phone service. I guess it is only a rhetorical question as I do understand the implication of that to the existing business structure in AT&T. AT&T has the resources to play catchup or buy up an upstart to offer VoIP. Anyways, when I learned that AT&T started to offer ADSL service without attached phone service, I decided to switch again.

I called up AT&T customer service, inquired about the high speed Internet service without home phone service attached. They told me to call the AT&T high speed Internet service and to ask for Dry Loop service. So I did. The lady on the phone was very nice. She gave me a 10-digit account number and told me that my phone service would be stopped in about a week or so, and the Internet service might also be interrupted for up to 24 hours. I was a little surprised that it would take that long for such a simple change which should take a computer probably 5 seconds to complete. But then again, I was not too surprised either given my past experiences with the phone service giant.

That was more than a week ago. Yesterday, my home phone service went away but the ADSL link stayed up. I was again a little surprised. I thought may be I was lucky.

But it happened today. Lynn called me at work and told me about an error message saying that there was a problem with my AT&T high speed Internet connection.

I called AT&T DSL tech support, gave the lady my 10-digit account number. She asked back if I was Mr. so and so. I was confused but said no, I was not. After a short conversation she realized that my account number was wrong and she has no way to pull up my information on her computer. She had to transfer me to another department to get the account information sorted out. A gentleman picked up my case and we started trying to figure out what was wrong with the 10-digit account number. He had to pull another person from another department in to help with the mystery. When we finally dug up my information form AT&T's database, my account number was nothing like the 10-digit given to me and written down a week ago. The AT&T gentleman told me that there was a problem on my line and AT&T would have to dispatch some one to my house on Sunday.

Came home in the evening, I tried to get online and up on the browser came this error 102 message saying something like AT&T has found a problem with your high speed Internet connection. I realize that the error actually means that my DSL link does not have a problem. There is obviously something missing in the setup of my DSL line that AT&T is blocking my outbound IP traffic. That AT&T should be able to fix over the phone.

So I called up AT&T DSL tech support line again since the error message said they were available 24x7. After fighting with the nice female computer voice for a while, I finally got through to a gentleman. His name was Kevin. He spoke with a slight Indian accent.

Kevin started very nicely, talking to me like he was talking to a 300-year old man who never touched a computer in his life. After I told him about the error message, he started asking me questions. It was all the usual stuff, did I have a MAC or a PC, what operating system was I running, how did I connect to the Internet, etc. Then he asked if I had a router. I did but I was not going to get into that kind of complicated situation. So I decided to lie. I told him that I did not have a router. It had to be something simple that had nothing to do with the router.

Kevin told me to open the Control Panel. That suggested that he had enough technical details to troubleshoot the problem. So I played along. He asked what I had in Network Connections. I told him that I had a Local Network Connection and nothing else. Kevin said "Aha!" excitedly. He started telling to Add a New Connection. I was going to play along but I had to put a PC running Windows on the modem. That took a minute or two and Kevin grew impatient with my slow response to his instructions. Finally I got the PC ready. Kevin told me to connected to an IP address, use attyahooreg@sbcglobal.net in there as the user id and my 10-digit account number as the password. It dawned on me that it was a registration process. After that was done, I got to choose my user id and password. My ADSL service was restored. Kevin was quite excited that my problem was resolved and asked me repeatedly if I was completely satisfied with his service. Honestly, I was quite satisfied. However, this whole issue was caused by this simple registration process that no one at AT&T told me about. AT&T ADSL service apparently was able to connect me to their web server to display an elaborate error message, which means that they could probably told me to register my account then and there. Then again, this registration process makes sense to a new AT&T ADSL customer. For an existing customer making a change in the service, this whole process could have easily been taken care of by a computer.

Presidential Election Primaries Coming to End

The 2008 presidential election primary season is coming to its end today. It looks like Barack Obama is going to win the Democratic Party nomination. It's too bad for Hillary Clinton. She was so far ahead of the rest of the Democrats in the beginning. I guess she didn't have an adequate plan to deal with Obama's win ever since Iowa.

However, to me, this extended primary season, at least on the Democrat's side, is a good thing. There are reports of the candidates visiting Montana on NPR today. To think of it, since Montana has always had its Democratic primaries in the end of the season, its choices have not been counted as much. Is that a good thing? Not to me, at least. So I really don't get all those cries for an early ending of the contest. Maybe people in Montana don't care who gets the nomination. But permanently exclude the later primary states from the nomination process can hardly be called democratic.

With all Obama's change slogans, I still don't know if he has the real ability to get things done when he gets elected. There has been op-ed articles in the News on the similarities between Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. I admire the 39^th president of the United States as a person. But today's world demands more than good qualities from a president, especially after Bush leaving this country in such bad shape.

There is also a danger of putting ideology before getting things done. My wish is that people in this country will get universal health insurance coverage during the next four years. Withdrawing from Iraq should not be the first priority of all, even thought that is an extremely important issue.