I go away today on another interview series (Cleveland & Chicago). But, then again, my T1 is down this morning, so I couldn’t really update the page from home this morning if I wanted to. Alas, my laptop will be with me, so I can update when I get to Cleveland today (the power of Manila).

Of course, every time a dedicated line goes down here in NYC, it means another struggle with Bell Atlantic. This time, they couldn’t generate a trouble ticket when I reported the problem because the system was being backed up, then once they were able to generate the ticket, they didn’t have enough time to get to the apartment before I had to leave for the airport, and now, they’re completely unwilling to test all of the equipment outside of the apartment unless they are also guaranteed access inside the apartment (which is tough, since I’m in Cleveland). Bleah.

Something I’ve learned over my 3 1/2 years of med school is that living unrelated organ donation is an ethical minefield for doctors and hospitals. With organ shortages and presumed denial of donation at death, people go to great lengths to get organs for themselves and their loved ones, and hospitals have to at least try to screen out people who are attempting to circumvent the process.

The House is looking into hearings about the judges’ deciding not to disclose their disclosure forms. I agree with their motives here — “Judges may not have anything to conceal, but the perception is such.”

Jason Kottke has himself one of uReach’s free toll-free numbers, and has been inviting people to leave him dirty messages. Yesterday (12/14), he posted all of the messages that he’s received, and the actual presentation is quite cool. The messages, though, are quite tame; I, too, encourage people to call him at (877) 218-0260, if for no other reason than he’ll post the messages and we’ll all get a good time out of it.

Something like this is in the news every year or so, and it makes me wonder why people do it… it can’t be that exciting to pull people over. And does the guy have a fake ticket book? What happens when those people then show up to court? Weird.

Windows 2000 is released to manufacturing. I’m actually pretty durned excited by this — it looks to be a very nice upgrade, at least for the things that I do and the systems that I run.

There’s a tentative deal in the NYC MTA strike. (The deal is the only reason that I got to Cleveland; otherwise, I didn’t really see how I was going to get to the airport. I just hope the deal’s still in place when I fly back…)