The city mask
Downtown Chicago accompanied by the 12 Monkeys soundtrack—that’s some trippy shit. But I like it. The city is a strange place. It does strange things to people, I think. It puts me in a mode: defensive, wary, cunning, observant. Maybe it’s different for other people, but I certainly see people with their masks on. I hope they get home to their houses and apartments and take them off.
My new DSL connection gives me the opportunity to have a useful linux box connected to the net. With a static IP, no ports blocked, and 768 upstream (1500 downstream), it’s pretty legit. After trying several distros, I’ve found a rather unknown flavor called MEPIS to be the far-and-away best. It runs from a CD, installs nicely the hard drive, is based on Debian, and includes both desktop and server apps. I highly recommend it.