MatthewMaynard.net

No, I’m not referring to the lunatic’s earwigs that pair up with cell phones. I’m referring to the ridiculous cord hanging off my new Sansa MP3 player. I have it coiled up and stuck in the loop of the cheap plastic cover, hanging from my work key lanyard.

The headphone cords (white, of course, because everyone likes to imitate Apple (except me)) are the third cheapest item that came packaged with an otherwise decent MP3 player, the other two being the battery and vinyl cover. The headphones, while producing decent sound, are a tad too long, but worst of all, they do not store easily. They are ear buds, which means I have to coil them up and stuff them in some convenient (or inconvenient) place when I’m not listening. Oh, bother, as Winnie the Pooh might say.

What would be cool (and a way to upstage Apple a bit) would be to put together some quality earphones that link to a standard stereo jack via Bluetooth. That way I could dispense with the bothersome wires and enjoy my music and audio books all the more. Heck, you could even get away with ditching the quality if you want and sell it on the coolness factor alone. Who wouldn’t want to have wireless headphones?

But then again, all those toys take power, so you’d have one battery for the player and one for the headphones, and you would probably end up misplacing them somehow. But then again, if you combine those devices with rechargable batteries, the charging mechanism from a Sonicare toothbrush, and a clap-activated locating mechanism, you might have something that could win a technology award.

Maybe.

Hint: I was here yesterday.

8:00
Here we go. It’s cold again.

8:06
A nice artistic touch would have been to draw scenes from United 93, but hey. Six of one, half dozen of another.

8:10
“Why is a law enforcement team en route to investigate what happened to a naval vessel?” So sayeth Wife. True dat.

8:15
The State Department, much like today, seems too busy to do their part to fight terrorism.

Damn, Harvey Keitel is good.

8:17
Whoever is acting as Madeline Albright has the nasal drone down pat.

8:18
“Not sufficient provocation”?!?! Oh, and that Israeli-Palestinian settlement worked out very well too. Way to allocate your time, Bill.

8:22
I thought that drone was going to get out of there. And how many more Hellfires do you need to fire off before you realize they’re precise enough?

8:26
Where’s Hami Karzai in all this?

8:27
How many caught that white cross on one of the targets?

8:32
No wonder these guys left the takeoff to the pilots.

8:34
Hey, Sherry, how did you get back in the White House?

Oh, wait. Never mind.

8:38
Atta’s pretty stupid to be bragging like that. Too bad we were stupider.

8:43
Racial profiling, the framework of a mind too small to recognize its enemy.

8:46
At least Perez has his head screwed on straight.

8:49
“God Willing.” Ah, the verses that come to mind.

8:51
Minneapolis. I wonder how Lileks felt when he heard that. Probably much like how I heard Phoenix was involved.

8:55
Why did we need to ask permission to search the property of a foreigner in our land who had violated our law? Do we still need to do so?

If we do, it is a true miracle that we have not been hit again.

8:59
We’ll be back, after a word from our President.

9:19
I don’t need George Snuffleupagus’s analysis, thankyouverymuch.

9:23
I sense a cut scene. But that may be just me.

9:28
Their plan and their leadership was top notch. Their agents were fairly incompetent, but adequate for their purposes. This was sufficient, unfortunately.

9:31
Come on, which press agent was it that leaked that we listen in to their phone calls?

9:32
George Tenet, your proctologist called. He located your cranium.

9:37
Goodbye, General.

Did O’Neil know he was likely to die at his new job? I think he must have. Given that, he is all the braver for it.

9:43
I wonder what Mohammed’s first thought was when he saw God. I wonder if he remembered that conversation with the priest (assuming its not a dramatization).

9:45
The trouble with CAPPS warnings is that they were designed to stop the terrorists of the 1970s and never updated.

9:49
“On Guard” refers to 121.5 MHz, the pilot’s emergency frequency.

9:52
And so begins 102 minutes of hell.

9:55
Thermometer says 80. Bull crap.

10:09
The collapse is the worst part. Worst of all.

I’m not sure I believe this story for a minute. On the one hand, you have bin Laden, who probably snuck across the Afghani-Pakistani border, who has made a very good impression of the B-2 Bomber over the past few years. On the other, you have the CIA and the US Military, who could feasibly be presumed to want to spread disinformation in an effort to get bin Laden to poke his head up.

I can easily imagine this story being true or false. Now we know how the CIA feels when they are asked to make an evaluation on incomplete information.

8:00
I’m watching The Path to 9/11 as I write this. I’m getting the same chills as I did watching United 93 while they show Mohammed Atta and the Airplanes. I can’t look at the towers anymore without the chills.

I’m shocked at the simple mistakes that happened.

I hope they have Rick Rescorla in this.

8:18
It’s fascinating that the first attack, in 1993, was not a suicide mission. I wonder what they learned from that.

8:22
The cops just threw the homeless man out of the airport. They walked right by the real threat, just like the rest of us for so long.

8:27
We couldn’t see the enemy, we were forced to follow rules, we were treating it like a crime when they were treating it like a war. That’s why they got their hit in and we were the ones who caught the sucker punch.

8:31
That was a satisfying clip from the Stupid Terrorist Tricks reel. But hey, back to our way of life, nothing happened, no need to worry.

8:34
“Don’t they have a right to be protected from terrorism?” Tou-che! Thank you! Why are the Republicans the only ones who say that?

8:39
Guncotton + Nitroglycerine? Isn’t that Cordite? Didn’t the Brits come up with that about a century ago? Well, at least we know they go for tried and true stuff, the experimental stuff. A good lesson to remember.

8:43
The difference between us and them is that their torture methods are routine, ours are an exception.

8:45
Spiders. I love the metaphors in this docudrama.

8:50
Ramzi Yousef is Sunni, Crazy Mahmoud is Shia. I don’t care either way. If they want to kill me, I don’t care. I just don’t care. I want them stopped. Is that too much to ask?

8:58
He went back for his laptop? How stupid can you get?

9:04
Gotta love the Marines.

9:13
Uncle and cousin laugh as if its some game, killing people en masse. These people must be stopped. They must.

9:15
Ishtiak is screaming about how we don’t know these people. This film, if it does nothing else, should how us just how dangerous these people are. It should make us know these people.

9:22
This scene is known to be a composite of about a dozen different occasions. If this is how all these occasions went down, there is no question why the towers fell. They fell because we treated it like crime, not war. There’s nothing new here.

9:30
Yousef is a blameshifter. Blameshifters never admit they’re wrong. And he’s too cocky by half. No wonder he got caught.

More tomorrow.

9:34
Or not. John Miller makes his appearance. If there was ever a moment when I wished journalists knew the martial arts, it was this moment.

9:37
CTU Langley. Too bad that’s not Mary Pat Foley.

9:41
Is Massoud played by Billy Dee Williams?

Okay, maybe not.

9:45
Still with the indictments. Like John Adams in 1776: “Fat George has declared us in rebellion. Why the hell can’t they?”

9:50
Political fallout? Typical. Finger wagging. Typical.

9:55
Sandy Berger must be filling his document-loaded shorts over this. Clinton too.

9:55:30
Are there men in Washington? No. Austin? Yes.

10:00
Patricia summarizes the entire previous decade’s fight against terror.

10:06
Ah, Madeline. What depth of martial skill, what sense of law and justice. What devotion to measured responses.

10:09
No wonder Clinton hates this show. It reminds everyone of how much a slimeball he is.

10:15
Life continues. We celebrate birthdays despite terrorists. But at least we have one eye on them at all times. I hope.

10:19
The flaming ring of fire. Haven’t we seen that somewhere before?

10:26
Ahmed Ressam has obviously never heard the sniper’s adage: don’t run, you’ll only die tired.

10:32
At least they managed to break up a New Years attack.

10:37
When does it end? When they realize God will not reward them for murdering their fellow man. It might be a little tough to convince them of that.

10:38
The chills are back.

More tomorrow.

Saturday mornings in the Maynard home find us cooking bacon, omlettes, and other good foods. Most of the time we watch hunting shows while eating, but with our current lack of cable we find our attentions turning to other entertainment sources. Like politicians.

We went to get our driver’s licenses yesterday, and register to vote, so that morning we’re looking at our big race, Junior Senator in VA. The two suckers candidates are George Allen and Jim Webb. One is recovering from a major gaffe, the other is a Democrat retread from the Reagan years.

I never like to vote against something, I always try to find reasons to vote for something. This year’s Democrat position – vote for us because the other guys are jerks – strikes me as lacking. Can’t they find reasons for me to vote for them?

So, off we go to the candidate’s web sites, looking for such material.

George Allen: First thing I see is his new ad calling for energy independence. Good stuff, he communicates that he understands the energy problem, and has ideas on how to solve it.

Jim Webb: First thing I see is a “Join our campaign” form. Our? I’m not running, nor am I campaigning for him. Second thing I see is a picture from the Katrina disaster (wrecked cars, ruined house) with the words “OPERATIONAL LEADERSHIP”. Apparently, he was a leader in recovering from the disaster. Funny, I don’t recall his name in the stories. The caption is about how the Bush and Cheney team have ruined New Orleans. But why should I vote for him, instead of against the President (who isn’t running anyway)?

Below that is his new ad with Reagan. Yes, Ronald Reagan. Apparently, he’s a leader because he’s a scholar and soldier, and Ronald Reagan liked him. Funny, I thought the dead only participated in Chicago elections. Apparently, Nancy insisted that Webb’s campaign pull the ad, which is scheduled to start Monday. As of this writing, he’s ignoring her.

Point: George. And if Jim had any points in his favor, I’d take them away. His actions are completely lacking in class, and I don’t want that type of person representing me in the Congressional chamber renowned for its respect and temperament.