Whitney Drake

The NY Times had a story on suicide in today's Magazine, "The Urge to End It." Which is a fascinating story that somehow read as a little more hollow given Thomas Disch's suicide July 2. (Or July 4th, depending on the blog post) I found out via Warren Ellis' Twitter post. And while there isn't anything in the news yet, it's certainly circulating around the writing community.

I admit, I hadn't read much of his work (embarrasingly, all I've read is The Brave Little Toaster), but I had heard quite a bit about him. It's always sad to hear that someone has gone through so much in such a short period of time - the death of his partner, threat of eviction. It's just.. so sad.

I had a bunch of things planned for todays post. I'd talk about my kids, how things are going... but every so often a news story catches me by surprise and forces me to rethink my plans.

Tim Russert died today, he was 58. He was working on audio dubs for this week's Meet the Press, and they believe he had a heart attack. Here's the YouTube video of Tom Brokaw announcing it on NBC. Stay away from the comments, though. People are idiots and are using the comments to gloat over the death of someone whose thoughts on politics they didn't agree with. Talk about poor taste.

I'll admit freely, that Meet the Press was not the Sunday political show that I watched. But that had little to do with Tim Russert, and more to do with the fact that at the end of This Week with George Stephanopoulos they have a segment about who died during the week.

It's always hard to see the media report on the loss of a fellow journalist - especially in the case of Tom Brokaw where he saw Tim Russert go from behind the camera as an executive to being in front of the camera (make sure you read some of the longer stories on Russert's life - his journey to Meet the Press is nothing short of astounding). They're expected to report on the loss of someone dear to them, all while it's still fresh in their minds and hearts. (To the YouTube commenter who chided Brokaw for showing emotion here when he didn't on 9/11 - on camera personalities have plenty of experience in reporting horrible horrible tragedies, even ones so close to home. Reporting on the death of a close friend is not something that they're trained to do.)

(To end this with a complete bit of randomness, I just saw the season premiere of Army Wives. If I hadn't been holding a sleeping baby, I would have been sobbing like a little girl. Damn, that is one well written show)

Router update: Everyone's having similar issues as mine, so it isn't a Vista vs the Router issue like I thought. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the router just isn't meant to handle as much traffic as we're putting on it. So we'll be getting a new router this week. (This week's posts, brought to you by my Palm Centro)