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A saga of the election in the 6th Worcester District of the Massachusetts State House, between challenger Peter Durant (R–Spencer) and incumbent Geraldo Alicea (D–Charlton). The district is composed of all of Charlton, East Brookfield, and Southbridge, two of the four precincts in Spencer, and one of the four precincts in Oxford.

• November 2: Election Day. That night, as the votes are counted, the initial count has Durant leading by 2 votes.

• July 9, 2003: I purchase the FingerWorks TouchStream LP, for a total of $343.89 including tax and shipping. I purchase the one with QWERTY printing on it, figuring I’d learn to use it first and learn the Dvorak layout later.
• Vague Time after that: I do learn to use it, and I fulfill my life goal of learning Dvorak.
• September 23rd, 2004: I lose connectivity between the halves (the right half plugs into the computer, and the left half connects to the right half through a ribbon cable that’s not designed to be user serviceable), so only the right half of the keyboard works. Presumably, they didn’t test people folding the keyboard and bringing it back and forth to work often. However, I sent it back and they fix it, although it’s annoying to deal with not having it in the meantime.
• Q2 2005: FingerWorks goes out of business, as Apple gave the owners a deal too good to pass up. Apple hired the brains behind the operation and bought up the IP, which they’ve since slowly been putting to good use (from the iPod wheel, through to the iPhone/iPad and Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad).
• February 15th, 2007: Once more, the left half of my keyboard doesn’t work. I think that it’s more than the ribbon cable this time, as I think I shocked it with static electricity before it died. So, I sadly put it away hoping to fix it one day, and get used to working with terrible mechanical keyboards and mice again.
• October 20th, 2008: I try fixing a broken Dvorak-printed TouchStream keyboard (that the owner had managed to remove the ribbon cable from) by buying the ribbon cable and putting it in. Amazingly enough, I’m successful, and manage to purchase the keyboard from the owner for $200. (Fully working ones have been going on eBay for over $1,000, and a couple have gone over $2,000.) Happiness ensues.
• November 13: 2010: I finally decide to try seeing if I can repair my old keyboard, and see if it’s just the ribbon cable. I extract the cable out and test it, and not all the wires have connectivity. I order a new cable.
• November 17, 2010: Cable arrives. I insert it. Amazingly enough, the keyboard works and passes diagnostics completely. I now have a working TouchStream at home and one at work. I feel thrilled that it all works, and somewhat silly that I hadn’t tried it much much earlier.

I know that I could get well over $1,000 if I sold one of them on eBay, but I just can’t imagine selling one. They’re just so wonderful to use, and I spend a lot of time in front of a computer.

“If you were a Massachusetts state senator over the last 16 years, you were three times more likely to be indicted than you were to lose a reelection bid.”

For Christmas 2007, I received a TomTom ONE 3rd Edition GPS Navigation System as a gift from my parents. While I don’t often do a lot of traveling beyond my daily commute to work, I do occasionally, so it’s come in quite handy, particularly as we don’t have a cell phone with which to communicate with someone else en-route if we get lost. However, over the past two and a half years, roads have changed. The only significant change in the local area that I’m aware of is the 146/I-290 intersection, but it’s likely that other roads have changed as well, and the point of a GPS is to navigate me through the places I’m not familiar with.

S/MIME has what in my opinion is a flaw: There’s no authentication of the time that a message is sent. As far as I can tell, there’s not even any proposed extensions out there trying to fix this. As a result, when one signs an email message with a valid certificate, and then the expiration date of the signing certificate passes, one gets an error when one then later tries to read the email message, as the authenticity of the message can no longer be verified. (Signed code doesn’t have this problem, as the signer can have a third party add a signed timestamp to the code signature, so that the code can still be verified as having been signed by a valid certificate as of the date of the signature, even after the certificate’s expiration date.)

Today is our seven year anniversary.

Happy anniversary, Jessi!

One of the interesting aspects of entertainment (TV, Video Games, etc.) has been the discussion of them with other people. As watching of episodic content becomes less synchronized (due to DVRs, Netflix, and even to some extent regional/time-zone-based release dates), this is harder to do without spoilers for people.

So, I think it’d be neat to have Internet forums for such media have a feature where each user put in how far along they were in the series/episode/game/whatever, and only saw the posts done by others when they said they were up to the point. That is, the time basis for the forum is however far along in the plot one is, and so you can have “interactive” discussions with others who are at the same point, even when you’re actually experiencing the forum at quite different times.

Board of Selectmen

Moderator

Constable (2 seats)

John P. McGrath was on the ballot and won the first seat with 614 votes. Richard Fiske Jr. won the second seat with 10 write-in votes.

Tomorrow’s the big election day. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day. I plan to be standing outside at the polls (Heritage School) for most if not all of the day, holding signs and greeting voters.

This week’s Charlton Villager (6.3 MB PDF) has an article on the race, with our file photos above the fold. I’m not sure my explanation of why I voted on the police issue really gets through right (I could see the “I’m not supposed to be a robot” line being taken the wrong way), but in general it seems alright.

I’m curious what people think about pros and cons of electing positions that aren’t policy-setting. For instance, Charlton currently elects its Town Clerk, and used to elect its Town Tax Collector and Town Treasurer. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts elects its Auditor and Treasurer. I’m not sure how policy-setting the Attorney General and Secretary of the Commonwealth are, but they’re elected too and might fit in this category.

Many of these positions require specialized knowledge and training, and it’s not clear that voters always know who would actually do the best job. Although, it’s not always clear than an appointing authority (in the executive branch, say) would do the best job either.