The computer I built last fall has been operational for four months now and the thing runs like a champ. I don’t think I’ve asked my nurse to press Ctrl-Alt-Del once since I first powered it up. It’s amazing how stable Windows can be if you throw enough memory and processing power at it. How nice to have a system that does what I want without freezing, generating error messages, or slowing to a crawl. If anything, I’m not pushing the computer anywhere close to its limits.

We gimps in the developed world sometimes forget how good we have it. Most of us have relatively ready access to the basic pieces of equipment that we need to get by. Not so in Iraq, where kids with disabilities often go without wheelchairs and must depend on family members to carry them. Some charities are attempting to supply chairs to families in need. American prisoners construct the wheelchairs which are then distributed to Iraqis with the assistance of the U.S. Army.

As Iraq embarks on the slow process of rebuilding, I hope some attention is being given to making the built environment more accessible to people with disabilities. Since we bear responsibility for tearing down much of the country, we owe it to Iraqis to teach them principles of universal design. Giving out wheelchairs is great, but it’s meaningless if these kids and adults are confined to their homes because the schools, stores, and mosques are inaccessible to them.

I received Valentine cards from a couple co-workers as well as a phone call from my mom. Oh, and one of my Facebook friends sent me some virtual chocolate. Some might call that a rather lame Valentine’s Day. I call it better than average.

I know some of you will probably think much less of me after reading this, but I’m really digging the new Terminator series on Fox. I thought it would be a shameless attempt to exploit the franchise, but the writing and acting isn’t half-bad. Like the movies (at least the first two…the third is best forgotten), the show plays with the simultaneous fear and fascination that our technology provokes. Better yet, it has really hot women punching and kicking people. Knowing Fox’s proclivity for killing scripted dramas in favor of more reality programming featuring the beautiful and the feckless, I’d better enjoy the show while I can.

Members of the Writers Guild of America look set to return to work after negotiators struck a tentative deal with the studios, bringing a likely end to a three-month strike. As a regular viewer of the fake news programs, both Colbert and Stewart have impressed me with their improvisational kung foo. Colbert has been particularly good. This interview with anti-immigration demagogue Lou Dobbs, conducted entirely in Spanish by alter-ego Esteban Colberto, had me in tears:

Still, both shows will only get better once the writers return. I’m no Hollywood lawyer, but the proposed deal ending the strike establishes an important precedent by giving writers a cut of the digital media pie. And while this strike’s effects were limited to the entertainment industry, it demonstrates that unions still matter in this country.