Friday's premeeting for today's offsite meeting.

Over the weekend, I discovered eBay. Please make it stop. 4 October 20014 October 2001 Hmm, MTBE growing in direct relation to work load.

I sold my car! Oh frabjous day! Caloo, calay!

There's construction going on in our building, and a few times a week the construction workers accidentally trip the fire alarm, and we have to evacuate or be fined at $50 per person per incident.

Recognize that thing hanging off the front of the truck?

Belle and Sebastien: "there's a lot to be done / while your head is still young"

I used to write plays. It's probably best I stopped. 5 October 20015 October 2001 I finally got ahead of the other Nat Friedman on Google. Who's feeling lucky today, baby? That guy has been a blight on my life for years.

Gourmet food store in Cambridge.

Passing through Harvard Square.

Joe in my living room, with the T outside.

My sister.

Harvard Square.

Joe rejoices in the autumnal foliage.

Alie at a roadside flea.

At a farmer's market outside Newburyport.

Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Guest photo by Joe.

Note the rabid, unfaltering determination on my face. 10 October 200110 October 2001 People were commenting that Joe has been too heavily featured in my pictures lately, so I decided to focus today's entry on Jacob.

Jacob at play.

Now, this is a little personal, but the thing of it is, Jacob was, until recently, struggling under the suffocating weight of a paralyzing bout of depression. It was truly awful for those of us who count ourselves among his friends to see how stricken with sadness poor Jacob was.

But over the weekend Jacob has, by unknown means, overcome the demons that tormented his young soul, and this week, Jacob is a changed man. Indeed, for Jacob the last two days, you might rightfully say that the snail is on the thorn and God in his heaven. The man would be clicking his heels at every street corner, if he were the sort of person who does that kind of thing.

Jacob at rest.

Co-incidentally, Sunday was Jacob's 23rd birthday. But of all his friends, only one was thoughtful enough to get Jacob a present. And let me just say, that person should be commended for his gracious thoughtfulness and striking good looks. But we're getting off the subject.

The point is, to acknowledge Jacob's tremendous personal strength, steadily increasing decrepitude and excellent taste in friends, I'd like to ask all of you to send him mail telling him, in no less than 200 words:

1. How proud you are of his recent turnaround.
2. What a great person he must be to have such caring friends.
3. That 23 is not so old, really, since, after all, Keats still had nearly three years left at 23, and good ones at that.

Your tender messages will be much appreciated (even more so if written in sonnet form).

Jacob at bay.

Update: It seems that Joe has ordered Jacob a present, but that it hasn't arrived yet. Further announcements will follow as events warrant. 11 October 200111 October 2001 My parents are in town this week.

Mom.

They're kind of different people.

Dad (and me).

What I mean is, they don't always see things the same way.

Exhibit A.

But they seem to be getting along alright.

World Bank black sheep Joseph Stiglitz co-receives the Nobel Prize. Strange days.

Deep sigh.

The Forbes Four Hundred: Five of the ten richest Americans owe their fortunes to Walmart. Three to Microsoft. 16 October 200116 October 2001 Dear Mr. Schwan,

Your absence at our recent dinner -- expertly and deliciously prepared by Mrs. Shona S. Blizzard-Derr -- did not go unnoticed, despite the abundance of good feelings, good humor and good food present at said event.

With fondest wishes,

Nat Friedman

Ettore has had some great pictures lately. Particularly this and this and this.

And Hoy's web site is just too disconcerting for words. Bear in mind that Hoy is about 15 years old... 17 October 200117 October 2001 So, Google runs another database update in about two weeks, and right now I'm the 13th result when you search for "nat". I only need about 10 more high-ranking links to bump myself onto the front page of hits, so if you're out there and have the means, please link to my page and help feed the vanity monster. :-)

In Brookline.

This Friday, October 19th, is Ximian's second birthday. Woo hoo! I still clearly remember when we were four people, three of whom were working out of my apartment in Central Square and sleeping in shifts on the floor.

During the summer, power went out on my street pretty frequently.

Oh, and yesterday we announced that Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus and cofounder of the EFF, has joined our esteemed board of directors.

On another note, why do people in big companies always say "intercompany politics," when they mean "intracompany politics?" Are these the same people who say "supposably?"

In the old days, we would have linked stuff like this off www.ximian.com. 18 October 200118 October 2001 As Evolution 1.0 is fast approaching, Miguel and I decided to do a little cheerleading for the hackers.

Gerald has some pretty impressive credentials.

Shudder: October 10th photo of ordinance on board the USS Enterprise. Already dropped on Afghanistan?

I liked the way the reflection turned out here.

You know what's kind of annoying? Sometimes, when you ask someone something and they say "Good question," it's pretty much impossible to tell whether they mean:

1. "That is an extremely insightful/creative/inspiring question."

   or

2. "I do not know the answer to that question."

(Oh God, this is turning into one of those web logs, isn't it?)

Scary fads: searching on eBay for "anthrax".

Art has some very good and very eerie photos of the WTO protests in Seattle last year. Do these look like scenes from some hyperrealistic video game to anyone else?

Haha.

You know, it just struck me: the preponderance of anthrax-related items on eBay isn't just a "scary fad;" it's a "scary scare fad."

And in a few months, when we've all forgotten about anthrax and the run on gas masks, we'll be able to say things like "That sad scary scare fad faded fast."

PAUSE - ONE BEAT

How obvious is it that I've been awake since yesterday? 19 October 200119 October 2001

Jamie Zawinski: "Can we have a fucking War On Larry Ellison yet?" 20 October 200120 October 2001 Yesterday morning when I rolled into work around 10am I'd been awake for over 45 hours, and I ended up passing out on one of the couches in the lounge. I slept a good eight hours there, and completely missed out on our 2nd birthday celebrations :-(. The whole thing was just way too reminiscent of college.

Art actually identified which movie we were watching from that picture. I was pretty impressed.

Harvard Square.

Today has been so incredibly beautiful.

Preferential diffraction in action.

It's a shame I have to spend the rest of the day inside, working.

But at least I got to see a little of the Head of the Charles regatta.

People on the bridge watching the race.

The best part about that last photo is the expression on the girl on the right's face.

Ximian is going to be shipping this shit as soon as possible. :-).

Ian Peters in his natural habitat.

Before I switched to Galeon, some more random bits of mail showed up in my Mozilla bookmarks file yesterday. Time to switch away from Reiser; maybe to XFS.

CNN is reporting that 80% of the population of Kandahar has fled the city. This is a city which previously had 198,000 occupants.

I found my apartment on the terraserver:

My environment. (796x580)

Those images are from 1995, so things like the Fenway movie theater don't show up. Perhaps you can see why I no longer need a car.

Sometime last weekend both my shoelaces broke, so I'd been walking around laceless for the past eight or nine days. Which was a nice, liberating feeling -- not dissimilar from roaming the city in slippers. There was this kind of "the whole world is my comfort zone" quality to it.

Anyway, yesterday I went into a shoe repair store to get replacements, and the nice old guy running the place gave me a free shine.

Nice shoe guy shining my shoes.

I don't know what's going on in this picture but I couldn't stop laughing. 22 October 200122 October 2001 In the tradition of our recent and well-publicized cheerleading pictures, we crawled out of our hermit holes yesterday to find out what Joe Average thinks of Evolution. The resulting photo montage speaks for itself.

Here's a behind-the-scenes shot:

Me, making posters in Harvard Square. (Photo by Ryan)

Thanks to Joe and Ryan for their help.

Electric sheep published the first part of a strip called The Spiders, about the Taliban.

Belle and Sebastien: "Big pockets for the pharmaceuticals it takes to fix her brain."

So, yesterday Joe and I went to the mall to get some new pants.

And I noticed they make the pants larger these days: baggier legs, baggier in front, baggier behind. You know, for the kids.

So, I'm liking the new pants. Very comfortable. Very cool looking.

These kids know what they're doing. 23 October 200123 October 2001 The world can be such a sad place. To the animators who worked on this cartoon: You total prostitutes. What are you doing? You're artists.

Another all-nighter tonight. That makes four in the last seven days. Ah, to be young.

Through the screen out my bedroom window.

I think the masking in that photo looks really cool at full resolution.

Today Miguel flew to the Microsoft PDC conference in Los Angeles. This is from a mail he just sent me:

I have been walking around with my Mozilla shirt, trying to look intimidating, but I think the new haircut I got is making people think `Oh look, isnt that cuuuuuuuuuute'. So I got a baseball bat, lets see who is cute tomorrow morning.

Miguel, how do you feel about me posting excerpts from your private mail to my web page?   :-)

Peter Teichman celebrates another packaging victory.

Did I mention that we released support for Red Hat 7.2 mere hours after it came out? Go team go :-). 24 October 200124 October 2001 On the tail of yet another all-nighter this morning. That's five in eight days... 25 October 200125 October 2001 Lain: "The other side is overcrowded. The dead will have nowhere to go."

In the antiseptic space elevator.

Today, in an effort to take it easy and recover from the last two weeks of sleepless hell, I said to myself: "Self, this is a good time to catch up on your personal email." So I've spent most of the afternoon replying to my unread mail from 1997.

Here's a nice example:

From: Mike Dakin <mdakin@mit.edu>
To: Nat Friedman <ndf@ALEPH1.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re:
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 11:37:26 EST

Hey Nat,

Did you find my sock!?

I returned/went to sleep at about 4, hence I did not see this
until now. I found you, but you were alseep. I should be back
later today, or early this evening. I will attempt to find
you again.

 -Mike

. . .

From: Nat Friedman <nat@nat.org>
To: Mike Dakin <mdakin@mit.edu>
Subject: Re:
Date: 25 Oct 2001 14:46:58 -0400

Hey Mike,

Sorry that it took me so long to reply to this mail.  No luck finding
the sock so far; perhaps you can supply a description?

Regards,
Nat

If you mailed me anytime since 1997, please be patient: I haven't forgotten you.

Another summer gone.

This is cool. 26 October 200126 October 2001

I think they were trying to say something.

Things have been so beautiful lately.

I've really enjoyed David F. Gallagher's photos of Milan lately.

I organized my CDs today.

That's the kind of day it was.

My uncle is in this remake of Bonanza that shows on PAX every Sunday at 9pm. He plays a French cowboy they call "Frenchy." Yeah.

So anyway, tonight I was sitting in the living room watching Frenchy argue about the Cholera epidemic that was sweeping the Ponderosa, and talking to my littlest sister on IM. And suddenly, my other sister called and said, "Hey Nat, I'm standing at the T stop outside your apartment. Look out the window."

And so I stand up and can see her waving up through the window, from across the train tracks. And there's my uncle on TV. And my other sister on IM.

Joe Shaw: "We are truly living in The Age of Aquarius." 29 October 200129 October 2001 Another long, deadening set of meetings today. The kind of meetings that pool the blood in your legs and make your skin feel like it's made of chalk.

Joe hacking in the lounge.

I bet if he tried, Joe could get a bit of an Aphex Twin look going on. 31 October 200131 October 2001 I cannot believe how low the Evolution 1.0 bug count has gotten.

We went to Cafe Algiers yesterday.