Tyler's Turn Blog

I've been hanging a lot of pictures and such at our new store, which means I've been doing a lot of drilling to sink anchors in our 130-year-old plaster walls. These days, every time I use a power drill, I say a prayer for the people in Iraq.

The power drill is the torture device of choice for the thugs and criminals who run rampant on the streets of Iraq. Where Saddam once had large, well-funded torture facilities, the new paradigm is small operations. Militias will kidnap fathers and ask for huge ransoms, threatening to drill holes in dad and dump his body in the street if they're not paid. Or, they'll simply capture 'infidels' from other sects, torture them, shoot them, and dump their bodies as warnings.

While we debate the pros and cons of timetables for withdrawal and surges of troops in Iraq, we should remember what it is we've unleashed in that country. As we parse out the narrow definitions of 'civil war' and 'sectarian violence,' we should acknowledge that both involve thousands of men with drills in their hands and the will to use them.

The Qwest DSL in our entire town went down yesterday. And, since there are only two highspeed ISPs in Silver City -- and Qwest is by far the biggest -- that essentially meant the entire town was without Internet. It was amazing to see some of the ways we were affected.

I had the minor inconvenience of being without email and Web browsing. However, this meant I couldn't access my Calendar or my To Do list, both of which I keep online, so I can access them from work and home. It also meant our store was without radio, since we use Radio365. And, this morning, I discovered a time-sensitive email from a friend asking for some help -- I assume she got help from someone else, since I was out of touch.

Our Internet outage also meant I couldn't look up information online, which I usually do for customers several times a day. "Sukiyaki Sauce? I think it's pretty easy to make, let me see if I can find a recipe . . . oh yeah, the Internet's down." I did this a half-dozen times yesterday.

Another inconvenience: I've been waiting for a couple weeks for the local sign shop to have the acetate they needed to print our outdoor signage. Yesterday morning, they called to say they had the acetate and would print the signs that morning, but could I resend the art files in a different format. "Nope," I said, "the Internet's out. I'll have to sneaker-net them to you this afternoon, when my employee gets here, and I can leave the store." Of course, this was a minor inconvenience, since I'll hopefully have the signs today, but it means we're without proper signage a while longer.

Worse off, were the dozens of stores who process their credit cards online. I had several customers ask me if I could take credit cards, and say they'd not shopped elsewhere downtown, because other shops couldn't accept their money.

Silver City is just a tiny little mountain town, and it's not a big deal that our Internet went out. But it's kind of scary when you think about how damaging it would be if L.A.s Internet infrastructure was hit with a few well-placed bombs, or viruses.

The DSL in my town was down all day yesterday, so I didn't see this until a friend emailed me this morning. The view from my window was on Andrew Sullivan's blog yesterday.

We got another eight inches of snow last night, so I spent the first hour of my workday shoveling the sidewalks. Not that we'll get any customers today, but The Kumquat only closes for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Here's the current view: