February 2009

Dear Client,

With the swearing in of the new president, we as a nation are full of hope. How long that lasts will in part be determined by how many campaign promises he breaks. :-) One rather clever site, politifact.com, has put together a list of those promises and is keeping track of them. They appear to be objective and are a good source of information. Democracy cannot be a spectator sport if it is to survive. The Internet makes this process of monitoring a lot easier.

One item we’re following is the lawsuit against the government for unauthorized surveillance against Americans. Another whistle-blower has now reported that every single phone call, fax, and email Americans make is copied into a huge NSA surveillance program. And this has been going on for some time. It would appear that George Orwell was only off by 20 years.

And the Obama administration will continue to defend the Telco’s in the warrantless wiretapping lawsuit in San Francisco. It would seem that once a branch of government grows beyond constitutional limits, even reason no longer prevails.

On better news, one of the most talented phone hackers has finally reached legal age and stepped over the line, and is now in jail. He will likely spend several years behind bars. Blind since birth, he was to phone hacking what the kid in the Who’s song ‘Pinball Wizard’ was to pinball. Sadly enough, he could have been gainfully employed. Thirty years or so ago another blind young man was caught manipulating the telephone switches and was so good the regional Bell Telephone company gave him a job. He could tell when a switch was starting to fail long before their testing equipment could.

On a personal note, we have been increasingly plagued by gophers over the last 3 years on our 2 acres. These little critters create havoc and can be quite destructive. Smoke bombs were effective for a while, but they started getting smart and would plug their tunnels so the gas wouldn’t permeate the whole tunnel. Plus, the bombs have continued to increase in price until they cost much more than a trap. The infestation covers about 5-6 houses (each with 2 acres), and when we’d kill one, another would just come in from a neighbor.

We considered a propane mixer which injects an air/gas mixture into the tunnel and then ignites it. This kills the gophers and collapses the tunnels, an added bonus. But these are quite expensive. Then we came across a site—www.nogopher.com, and got some traps and a DVD the site owner offers. Even better, Gordon Ray lives just a few miles from us. He came over and demonstrated his traps and gave my neighbor and myself some training in gopher behavior. He set several traps and I had two dead gophers the next morning, and the same for my neighbor. Highly recommended!

Now if I could only find a gopher trap big enough to nail a pesky rabbit. :-)

Best wishes!

Sincerely,

Ben Conner