The Life of a Sysadmin

So:

Arlo Maxwell Reginald Cristofaro, ne Trombone, was born on Saturday July 1st, 2006 at 2.26pm. Clara had a pretty damn good labour once things got going, and horsed him out after only 13 minutes of pushing. As labour stories are, by ancient right, public property, I'll let her post the details.

Both she and Trombone^WArlo are doing quite well. They've both learned how to nurse, and I've learned that the index finger does a lot to calm him down. We've managed to pick up a couple hours of sleep here and there, so we're not too punchy.

For those who haven't seen, here are a couple pix:

Oh, and you know what also calms him down? A slightly modified version of Fat Joe's Lean Back:

My Arlo, he don't know how to dance
He just leans back and he fills up his pants
He does the Rockaway! He does the Rockaway!

It also sends Clara into hysterics, so that's good too.

Note that the snide comment about NetBSD is just a joke...couldn't come up with anything else to say. Everything else, of course, is the gospel truth.

Last day at my old job was Friday, and as a going-away present I got not only a lovely universal gift certificate from my co-workers, but this t-shirt from the sysadmin I hired a little while back:

Arlo and Clara are doing well:

I have been peed on twice now, which I'm told is fairly good for the first week of a new parent.

before I go back to changing diapers: from the ever-excellent Secrecy News comes a link to this report from retired US Army General Barry McCaffrey on his visit to the Guantanamo Bay prisons.

The report is well worth reading. As summarized in the newsletter:

"The JTF Guantanamo Detention Center is the most professional, firm, humane and carefully supervised confinement operation that I have ever personally observed," he stated.At the same time, "Much of the international community views the Guantanamo Detention Center as a place of shame and routine violation of human rights. This view is not correct. However, there will be no possibility of correcting that view.""There is now no possible political support for Guantanamo going forward," Gen. McCaffrey wrote.

McCafferey acknowledges in the report that "During the first 18 months of the war on terror there were widespread, systematic abuses of detainees under US control in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Some were murdered and hundreds were tortured or abused. This caused enormous damage to U.S. military operations and created significant and enduring damage to US international standing."

Yet nowhere in this report does he seem to realize that the U.S. also was condemned for its lawlessness:

The great value of the platform of Guantanamo was that it was a military space in which no Federal District Court had primary jurisdiction. For that reason alone, Gitmo has over the past 45 years been the location of choice for US migrant refugee operations (no appeal to the INS process) as well as other secret operations. No applicable foreign law, no foreign diplomatic intervention, no Federal Court civil orders, no nosy intervention by a US Ambassador -- only the exercise of unilateral military power and the tool of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It was the perfect deal. No more.

The mourning of the loss of a place over which no court had jurisdiction, into which no "nosy " US ambassador could look, is entirely unbecoming of any democracy -- let alone one that views itself as the Great Vending Machine of Liberty. Yet this point flies right past the nose of a man who gives an otherwise straightforward and unblinking account of Gitmo's failures.