Apparently that's not happening anymore: via web linkage, I discovered the blog of someone who appears to occupy Gautam's old room. Quoth the blogger: "I'd been wasted out of my mind at parties at 299, but long before I knew anyone or lived there. I randomly found the apartment through craigslist, only to realize that I had been there before."

Also notable: his favorite photo of a 299 party.

How the times have changed.

I've gone through somewhat of a reset about this blog and its role in my day-to-day activities. In a few weeks, my blog will re-appear at davepeck.org (which I recently purchased from the so-called Grand Poobah) and the focus will shift somewhat. I will continue to post interesting links to del.icio.us and will reserve my blog for those rare occasions when I actually have something substantial to say.

Upcoming in my online life, for those who are curious: another laptop battle, a small piece of AJAX software that some of you might enjoy playing with, a 'what dave likes today' music podcast, a photo website for my sister, and a bigger software effort underway with the good tom chi.

 

The orange band: general admission. The white band: the golden ticket. I stood absolute front and just right of center. I had Bono in front of me and (in the audience) Eddie Vedder directly to my left.

Tonight I wash my ears out with Fantomas, the Anti-U2. (Imagine you are restrained against your will at the Circus from Hell... and the musicians are satanic jazz metalists. Yeah, it's kinda like that.)

The last month has been quite busy: my team hits pre-version-1 on 5/2 and we've got miles to go before we sleep. I've also got a new software project up my sleeve that I'll post here just as soon as it's ready. In the interim, you might be interested/entertained by my various del.icio.us links.

I'm relaxing on the music front at the moment, with one exception: I'm going to start doing monthly sets with DJ Naha at the newly christened Trinity club in town. My understanding is that we will literally be performing from the pulpit.

Oh, and tonight I'm going to see a certain band's 2005 tour...

Check out three of my tracks from last night:

• First round (and, by luck of the draw, the track that opened the battle): Anion
• Second round: Laptop Party
• Encore: Luminous

As usual, Tom and I prepared our tracks collaboratively to generate new ideas in a short timespan. It paid off again -- last time Tom beat Kris Moon in the finals with a track called Diverge that we prepared together; this time I made it to the finals using Live preparations of two Void Stars tracks in the third and fourth rounds rather than my original intended battle trax (sometimes you've got to improvise based on circumstances.) Sadly, Tom went out in his first round last night even though he had, um, awesome flute samples.

Up-and-comer m.0 beat me in the final round so I came in second. This was as it should be: m.0 rocked the house pretty hard with some filthy four-on-floor sounds. He also had much better stage presence (something of which I have next to none) and a far more refined live/improv performance technique.

Second place earned me a free copy of Ableton Operator and a trip to the national battle to be held in Seattle as part of the annual Decibel Festival. That's pretty exciting; the nationals are in September so I've got plenty of time to improve my live performance techniques. (Though it is dubious that I'll actually be living here in September, another story for another entry...)

The sound system at Chop Suey was busted last night. Those on stage had to listen to the monitors. Every time I performed it sounded terrible to me. This was especially true in the third round where as far as I could tell my computer had frozen and my track had completely misfired without a beat. It was chaos in the extreme. On the other hand, KJ Sawka's track came over the monitors sounding tight, tight, tight. Somehow, I won anyway. Audience members claim that my track sounded awesome while KJ's sounded like a random wall of bass. That's certainly the opposite of what I heard on stage. But having been in the audience before, I've definitely experienced this strangeness first hand: when Tom dropped a track that he and I collaborated on in the previous battle, it sounded like garbage out in the audience but apparently was tight through the monitors. I happen to know that track was well mixed; it's hard to interpret the data to identify the root cause.

Anyway, it was fun. If you're just tuning in, you're probably wondering what these laptop battles are all about. Go ahead and check out the NPR radio spot from last week. Also of interest is a short video from the DC Laptop Battle held last month.

sdw: Just have faith! P != NP is just a theory.
jb: That's what the sticker on my Aho & Ullman says!

(Observant readers will notice the new rdf/rss/atom/del.icio.us links available from the navigation bar.)

Chu's sign has changed substantially since the dot-com era. I encountered his enigmatic protest daily when I worked for EQuill; I can still recall his old missive:

As the most famous of the Market Street crazies, Frank Chu enjoys a certain high status in the city; he's even an honorary guest at the new 12 Galaxies Nightclub.

I should be clear that I believe in the cause of Social Security. My concern is with its implementation.

It’s true that Social Security won’t collapse tomorrow, or even several decades from now. And it’s also true that we can’t accurately forecast demographic and economic trends far into the future – anything is possible. It may be that we’ll get past several dangerous-looking baby booms with only minor tweaks to the system.

However, this can only last so long. The mechanism of Social Security is fundamentally broken. The pyramid scheme might last for a while as reservoirs are accumulated and spent, but unless the working population increases without bound, eventually the system will fail. It’s basic logic; no combination of economic or demographic variables can permanently forestall collapse.

I think it’s safe to say that Bush’s interest in reforming the system is as much ideological as it is economic. I can’t disagree with the economic concerns, and I also feel that the sooner we fix things the better. Full-on privatization seems like a bad bet because people who do not invest wisely will be out of luck when they retire. We’ll find out what Bush is thinking on Wednesday night, I suppose. As for ideology: I think if Bush had true political capital he might try and do away with Social Security altogether. Luckily, he doesn’t. Social security will be around for a long time to come; the form will be different, but the underlying social philosophy is unlikely to change.

Driving Votes is still alive and well, though its mission has shifted from rallying democratic voters to helping forge a coherent message for the Democratic Party. A handful of talented DV volunteers have taken the reins of the organization; I think there are one or two full-time employees now. And, of course, there's still plenty of driving to be done: DV members have been active at high-level Democratic conventions in DC, New York, and San Diego.

My involvement is near-zero at this point; I still help maintain the technical end of the website, but that's about it. In fact, politically I find myself somewhat distant from Driving Votes.

Case in point: Driving Votes has thrown its weight behind There Is No Crisis, a non-profit dedicated to spreading the word about "Bush's Social Security Lies." At the heart of their argument: Social Security works just fine, thank you very much.

The catch, of course, is that there most certainly is a crisis. At its core, Social Security is a pyramid scheme. This works swimmingly if a small number of people at the top (today's retirees) receive payments from a large number of people down below (today's workers, via mandatory FICA deductions.) Therein lies the rub: right now, Americans are living longer and having fewer children. According to the SSA, in 1960 there were five workers for every retiree. Today it's about three. In 2030, there will be two. Unless the working population increases without bound, social security is guaranteed to fail. It's only a matter of time.

There are two questions to answer: how can we keep the system solvent longer, and how should we reform it for long-term stability?

There is a simple short-term solution: as demographics change, either increase the size of FICA deductions or decrease payouts to retirees. (This is unlikely to be politically acceptable!) Al Gore's "lockbox" (a.k.a. the Social Security Trust Fund) only gets us so far; even if we manage to remain solvent through baby boomer retirement, demographic trends are not in our favor.

The word "privatization" has the mystical ability to send my liberal friends into a state of panic. The truth is that Bush hasn't formally announced his plans; until he does, it's difficult to critique them. Time will tell whether privatization is great or disastrous. Meanwhile, it's foolish to claim that Bush wants to "provide a windfall to Wall Street and corporations" or that he's "lying about Social Security." Bush is right to want to fix our Social Security problem now: the longer we wait, the greater our financial obligation and the more our hands are tied.