Nanook's Nook

I’ve been hearing sirens for the last half hour.  They are loud and echoing through the neighborhood.  There are no police or fire vehicles visible as far as I can see.

Curiosity got the better of me so I called Shoreline Police non-emergency number and asked what was going on, they are “Looking for a burglar”.

I’m not going to pretend I know squat about police work but I would think if you were looking for a burglar you would want to be as stealthy as possible, not announce your presence every thirty seconds so said burglar knows where you are and heads the other direction, or stays in hiding.

Maybe this is just their way of saying, “Your tax dollars at work.”

If you are fortunate enough to be somewhere that electromagnetic clutter is thin enough to still receive Shortwave radio you will occasionally run across stations just reading off numbers.

I watched a movie, “Numbers Station”, that postulated that the purpose of these stations was to provide a mechanism for covert military or intelligence agencies to get information to their operatives in the field.

In 1960, this would have made sense, but today with modern satellite communications technology and modern encryption technology, it doesn’t.

Why would someone broadcast over such a wide area at such high power that these stations could be heard globally to provide very limited bandwidth for communications that would be so easily jammed when discrete directed satellite communications which is readily encrypted beyond recognition could be used?

None the less, the available evidence seems to support the movies premise.  Take a look at the wiki on the subject.  The evidence would also seem to support a second premise of the movie, that it’s common for such agencies to eat their own.  Maybe there is hope in that.

I am concerned about how our congress has reacted to recent revelations about completely unconstitutional and illegal domestic spying by the NSA and other government agencies.

They say it’s to protect us from terrorism.  There were ten terrorism related deaths of US citizens in 2012, 443,000 deaths related to cigarette smoking, about 30,000 related to automotive accidents.  I think we’ve got our priorities wrong.

I would also suggest that if we stopped trying to control other countries, stopped going in and slaughtering their people, we’d see this number go to zero, and we’d do it without domestic spying or other infringements upon the constitutional rights of US citizens.

Congress responding by trying to prosecute the whistle blowers rather than put an end to the illegal and unconstitutional activities of government agencies just adds insult to injury.  It’s rather like the episode of South Park where the bishop goes to the pope trying to end the churches abuse of children and the pope sees the problem as, “How do we keep the boys from telling?”

Somehow we need to reign in our government but how do you fight 2 billion rounds of ammunition and domestic internment camps. This is all in plain-text so no spying is required.

Earlier today, I had a problem with Eskimo North’s servers, and the way everything interacts, a problem with one pretty much made them all sick so I had a very difficult time trying to diagnose and correct the problem.

Those that know me know I’m prone to anxiety and panic and when I couldn’t quickly resolve the problem I felt panic set in.

But today was different, I said a little prayer, God please help me sort this out and with that I was able to get myself in a state where I was able to accept that, whatever happened, whatever direction things took me in, God would be there.

And that allowed me to calm down and take things methodically.  I shut down all the problematic machines, then brought things up one at a time, first the file server everything depended upon, then name servers and NIS servers, then shellx, ftp/www, radius servers, and so forth, until only one server remained and that was the new mail server.

I hadn’t allocated enough memory to it and when it got into heavy swap that affected all the other virtual machines.

For me that has always been the big challenge, handling the emotional strain when things go wrong, or sometimes just the sense of loss of things and more importantly people in my past that are gone.

Tonight, I watched a Beatles concert that was performed in Melbourne Australia in 1964, and memories of that time became so clear that it seemed like 50 years have just flown by in a second.

It seems like my time on this planet will be over soon, even if it’s another 50 years, which is unlikely, the last 50 have gone by so fast, and I’m afraid, afraid of the loss of other people I love, afraid I’ll screw up and not be with God, afraid I’ll never see my daughter or youngest son again, afraid of the pain of growing old, afraid of the world my children will inherit.

When I was young I used to swim in Green Lake and Lake Washington, now both of those lakes are so foul I wouldn’t think of it.  Green Lake is clogged with algae and other nasty things, Lake Washington is clogged with weeds on what used to be nice beaches in Kirkland.

I fear going to sleep because sleep lately has been plagued with nightmares. But I must, need to be up at 5AM.

So I feel like at least for an instant, when it mattered, I managed to get a little control over my emotions today, but now that it’s time to go to sleep they’re winning the battle again.

The time approaching Mothers’ Day was particularly difficult this year having lost my mother a few months ago.

It’s been really hard to stay focused and get things done, and the temptation to find comfort in things I know I can’t just to not feel the pain, that’s been intense but I’ve managed.

At times now it feels difficult to find meaning in life.  I ask the Lord for direction, and some days it seems to be there, other days not.

I’ve been having difficulty sleeping and intense, often frightening or otherwise emotionally overwhelming dreams.

I have been making some progress moving the business forward, improving Eskimo, but I know I could do a lot more if I were in a better mental state.

This year has also been a horrid allergy year, and although the crap I can buy over the counter claims to be non-sedating, for me it still is, and even if it doesn’t put me to sleep it seems to make focused thought impossible.

The fact that it’s been a year and still my youngest son won’t talk to me doesn’t help matters much or not knowing how my daughter is doing, not being legally able to know, and just all the uncertainty in the future all wears on me.

I keep telling myself God is good and God has a plan but I look around at all the suffering and hatred and greed and general craziness in the world and it makes it hard to have rock solid faith.  Still, I’ve made it through what seemed to be impossible and I know God was there or I never would have made it this far.

Well, it’s time for me to attempt sleep once again, I know it will be painful, broken, and disturbed but it is necessary.

Yesterday, when I went to get mail from the post office, police had 185th NE in Shoreline blocked off between 5th Ave NE and 10th Ave NE.  I saw a Medic leave from that area on the way back.  I was wondering if anyone knows what was going on?

A couple days prior I saw police on foot looking for someone on 6th Avenue.

It seems like there has been a lot of activity, and the police don’t like it when you ask them what is going on, and real investigative news media is non-existent these days, so I’m hoping someone out there might now.  It seems to me we’ve been forced to be our own media these days.

It also seems like police activity in general is way up, and I’m wondering are we having a big crime wave that’s not making the news as the result of this less than ideal economy or just what is going on?

  This was NASA’s image of the day and I just wanted it to stick around a bit longer.

I’ve added a new resource in the Christian Resources column on the left entitled, “Vision Journal”.

I discovered this resource while in prison.  They offer a free two year subscription and it’s a beautifully put together journal with some of the most concise lucid writings I’ve ever read.

They address real-world problems, big global problems, family problems, from a Christian perspective.

It’s one of the few sources of information, written from a Christian perspective, that both sources the Bible for answers and remains highly rational.

I highly recommend it.  They publish only four times a year but when it arrives, it is worth the wait.

I’m in a deep mental funk right now..  Found Bare Naked Ladies on YouTube (the musical group, not actual bare naked ladies), and found a song, The Old Apartment, where they break into an old apartment where they used to live and relish in the memories.

So many of the things from my life are gone, and there is no way to go back and relive the memories.