I’ve followed (and used) Lawrence Lessig’s work in Copyright legislation for quite a number of years. If you don’t know who he is and what’s he’s doing, I recommend taking a look. Wikipedia has a pretty decent biography, or you can view his personal website, or even read his blog.

Most importantly, however, I’d like to urge you to take a bit of time and watch his presentation entitled Follow the Money. It’s a well documented and well reasoned argument making the point that our government is no longer functioning correctly due to it’s increased and continued dependence on special interests and lobbying. This issue is bipartisan – it’s not just a liberal or conservative problem.

In the presentation, Lawrence talks about how to change this situation we’re stuck in… how to make a difference. He’s at least got some ideas, and he’s put them together at the site change-congress.org.

Take a look, and then send a note to your representatives and senators letting them know that this is something that’s important to you. Or not, if you prefer to continue to getting screwed over.

I went out to see if I could find one of those new MacBook Pro’s in person and see what it felt like – if the new keyboard was significantly different and exactly what it was like to use a trackpad without a specific physical button.

Well, the U Village Apple Store is completely shut down right now. They’re reopening on October 25th when they complete their renovations. They’ve been “renovating” for a while now – the interior has been this sort of unduly cramped space for ages. You could go in and get something, but it was almost useless as a “I want to just browse through the goods” sort of thing.

Even closed, the Apple store had a fellow sitting out on the bench across from the closed store, prominently wearing an Apple ID badge that you see on their employees. He immediately spotted me and struck up a conversation, asking what I needed. He suggested that I could see the new Macbook Pro’s at the Mac Store or maybe Best Buy. I’ve sworn off ever going to the Mac Store again (after multiple repeats of incredibly horrific service prior to the Apple stores existing in Seattle). So.. I headed to Best Buy up at Northgate.

Unfortunately, Best Buy wasn’t much of a help either. They had out the new Macbook Air (sweet!), but only the older models of Macbooks and Macbook Pros. I asked the sales dudes (who repeatedly asked if I needed anything – pretty much standard BestBuy), but their answer was “Yeah, we got em. We’ll have them out after we sell off these remaining macbooks.”

Thanks guys, but I’m not buying an older generation Macbook just so that I can look at and feel a new Macbook Pro to see if I want to buy one. I was polite, not snarky – although I did tell them I wasn’t buying one just to see the new model. I’d be annoyed at Best Buy, but frankly that was right in line with my expectations – so why bother.

Maybe I’ll get back to the Apple Store in UVillage next Saturday. I can see the new Macbook Pros and what they’ve done with the remodel at the same time…

I saw a posting last week on Meet at the Pig talking about this CCTAB thing and that they were looking for people to apply to participate in it.

I didn’t even know something like the Citizens’ Telecommunications and Technology Advisory Board (CCTAB) existed until I saw that notice. The writeup at Meet at the Pig was excellent and it seemed like a really good thing to get involved with.

I submitted my resume for consideration (it’s an unfunded position – I’m not switching jobs) and got a ping back today asking about interview times early next week. I was told the interview was an informal chat – I haven’t a clue what they’re even going to be asking about. But, like anyone else, I started doing some homework. Their web site was actually a bit tricky to find, even with Google. Fortunately some-how one of their minutes got indexed into the greater google mind-meld, so I was able to track it down. They have agendas and minutes with notes going back a fair bit, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading. They even started podcasting their minutes that I found while digging around, although I didn’t spot the link in the last few minutes to pop it in here.

There’s a lot of interesting projects going on – public wifi, fund matching for community technology programs, an effort of make seattle government more transparent called MyNeighborhood Map, SeattleChannel, the HDTV cutover, cable & fiber provisioning for internet access in the city… I suspect it’s larger and deeper than even that.

It’s got me thinking about grand views and where I think the city government can touch to make Seattle better… and what “better” actually means.