HeiBlog

July 28, 2004

Protest at Boston University Medical Center

Filed under: Observation — Tyler @ 6:42 pm

Well, we were expecting a protest today here at Boston University Medical Center. One person I talked said they were expecting about 1,000 - 2,000 people. At around 6 the Boston Police had blocked off the entrance to the parking lot behind BioSquare (where the new bioterrorism lab is supposed to be build). About 20 minutes later the crowd turned down Albany street crossed in front of my building and turned up West Newton.

There might have been about 200 people. The protest was not specifically against the bioterrorism facility (which will contain a Level 4 facility, the source of most of the protest here in Boston) as I had expected. It was more of an anti-medical research protest. There were anti-animal testing, anti-animal cruelty, anti-terrorism facility, and some pro-Nader folks bring up the rear. Up the middle of the group was a white thing which I think represented anthrax. Very peaceful and organized, a bit anti-climatic though. At least we still have the right to protest, even if it requires a permit and police escort.

Protest at BUMC

July 24, 2004

Searches justified?

Filed under: Rant — Tyler @ 5:02 pm

I should have written about this earlier. Maybe it is just my ignorance, but are the searches that the MBTA is conducting during the DNC legal? My guess is that is falls under the roof of public safety which I can accept. Up to now it seems that police are mostly just looking for explosives and are just wiping random bags (every nth person, n being a number that the assigned officers agree on) to check for residue and bring in some bomb sniffing dogs. They have also apparently opened a few bags that are “suspicious.” Okay so the selection of people is random, but the MBTA still says that they will stop people who look suspicious.

Two things pop into my mind. What happens if they find something illegal, same some marijuana for example. Has probably cause been fulfilled and can that person be prosecuted? I would hope not. The other thing that comes to mind is the disturbing trend away from full, publicly debated policy (aka laws) to ad hoc policy. It sees that we are increasingly being asked to trust the enforcers of the law, when no solid outline of their bounds has been laid out. I know that this type of enforcement as been practiced for years by the EPA and for things like emigration and customs where an agency is given an area of responsibility and given authorization to pass policy in that area. Should this be extended though to to the areas that could send people to jail and cause them to be held without due cause?

Maybe I am being Chicken Little, but it just seems that things are going downhill, that we are still living in fear and this is being used as a mechanism to centralize more power with the government. I’ll gripe more on this later. Thanks for listening.

July 20, 2004

Times I enjoy being male

Filed under: Observation — Tyler @ 7:49 pm

Who else can play “push the spent chewing gum around the urinal drain” and not touch the gun? Not that you would want to after it had been in there for a few days.

July 18, 2004

All in the Timing

Filed under: Outing — Tyler @ 1:10 pm

Yesterday evening I saw a performance of “All in the Timing” by David Ives, presented by Theater @ First Community Theater at the First Congregational Church of Somerville. The play consists of six short comedies (it looks as if Ives wrote 14 and theater companies choose the ones they want to perform): “Sure Thing”, “Words, Words, Words”, “The Universal Language”, “The Philadelphia”, “Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread”, and “Variations on the Death of Trotsky.” All were very funny and well acted. The bits are fast and in some cases the word play multilayered, as is many-times the plot. A central theme for the “playlets” is timing (as the name implies). What if you could rewind time and have a second chance? Have a chance to think about your own death? Ives asks these sorts of questions.
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July 4, 2004

The tale of the lost Bluetooth headset

Filed under: Interesting bit — Tyler @ 4:39 pm

One day on DealMac I noticed a Bluetrek Bluetooth headset on sale for $30 shipped. This is cheap considering that these things usually retail for $80–100. I check some reviews and it seems that the headset is okay, but not great. Figuring I would enjoy not having to deal with a corded headset to my cell phone and I could mess around with some VoIP on my iBook. So I order it, get the email that it has been shipped. A few days pass and one evening when returning from a night of drinking I think I see a delivery notice from UPS. It’s gone the next morning, so I check the tracking info. An attempt in fact was made, but I can not get the tracking number from the online retailer, it is “hidden for my protection.” No problem I think, I just get the next InfoNotice number. I’m busy in lab anyway so I don’t think to just call the retailer for the tracking number.

For the second and third delivery attempts I don’t get a notice. So I check the tracking info thinking that it will just be held at the transfer station. To my surprise it has been reassigned a temporary address, was rerouted to Rhode Island and then to Somerville (normally my parcels come through Watertown), and a delivery attempt was made in Cambridge. So I am thinking that somebody is trying to steal my package. I call the retailer to put a trace on the package and get the tracking number. The woman I talked to was very helpful, she called UPS, but they would not know all the delivery information until the next day.

The next morning I check the tracking info and see that the parcel has been delivered a second time (both times it was signed for). So I call UPS. Their information shows, the address change, the station transfer, the two deliveries, and a hold at Watertown. Now this package is too large for quantum law to apply to it, so I’m wondering where it is. Talk to the Watertown transfer station, no dice, but I get the number to the the dispatch at the Somerville transfer station. The woman at the Somerville station traces it to a Cambridge address 32 Vasser St. I’m thinking “MIT? How the hell?”. She gives me the number to the MIT mail room. The women I talked to there had no record of the package being received and forwards me to the first delivery point, 400 Main St. (another mail room), though she was the person that was listed as signing for the parcel. The guy I talk to at the first delivery point is quite helpful and promise to get back to me. In the mean time I call UPS to put a second trace on the package. I get to the second tier of customer service and try to see if I can get UPS to take responsibility. The man I talked with was very careful with is wording and basically said MIT was responsible. I thinking “Okay, I might have fun with you later.”

Nearing the end of this sage I get a call that the package had been found. What had happened was the man the package was addressed to had changed his campus address, so the guy in the first mailroom bumped the package. Now I never got answer on why the recipient and address were changed. So, 8 days after the original delivery attempt I head over to MIT to get my package. After I wonder around the basement of 32 Vasser St. to find the loading dock I finally find someone who knows what I am talking about. Sure enough it had a second label on it. My only real consolation through this whole affair was everybody was just as confused about the parcels path as I was. Maybe I should just put my ethics aside and send things to work. Lessons: Nobody will do your work for you and persistence does pay off.

July 3, 2004

Staying small, staying local

Filed under: Outing — Tyler @ 11:37 pm

I am not sold on big fireworks displays. For the last 5 years my sister and her family has trudged down to the Museum of Science to watch the Boston Independence Day fireworks display from roof of their parking garage. I went with them last year and I must say the experience was disappointing. This was the year that the Boston Pops concert was being simulcast by CBS and not A&E. There were commercial breaks and the fireworks were not until around 10:00. There were mostly young families on the roof and my sister had a 6 and 3 year old of our own to deal with. We were all very grumpy and the whole experience was a downer for all. So we will not be going this year.

This year we went to the local fireworks display. Okay, the show lasted just 15 minutes and there was no live orchestra. They were shot over the high school practice fields and there were maybe only 2-3 thousand people around. They were nothing fancy, just plain old fireworks. But, we were about 500 ft from the launch area, you could feel the concussion from explosions. They started on time at 9:30, we could walk back to my sister’s house in 10 minutes. The kids were asleep by 10:30, in their own beds and not their car seats. Add on a wonderful dinner prepared by my sister and brother-in-law and in the kids and a perky friend of my sister and you has a wonderful day. Not decided yet if I will venture the crowds this evening. That though is better done without kids. I’m starting to see why people move to the suburbs when they have families.

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