Yo también soy inmigrante

Some second- and third-generation immigrants joined the marches and demonstrations yesterday. I didn't, but I was thinking about friends and family members who are first-generation immigrants. I wondered if Jodi's grandfather was part of the Pittsburgh events. He's an Irish-American immigrant. Two of my own grandparents (a"h) were Ukrainian-American immigrants. And of course many of the people I grew up with in Miami are first- and second-generation Cuban-American immigrants.

If you want to see more photos, check out the Immigrant Nation photo pool on Flickr.

(Photo: "No Child Left Illegal" by Alexander Steffler)

Code monkey fix headphones

I was beginning to think that my left ear was going bad faster than my right. Today I realized that my beloved Sony headphones were just getting a little bit clogged up. So I opened 'em with a paperclip, took off the screens, and tried to clean them. The holes were too small for a paper clip, so I ended up using a 33-gauge lancet. It was too small to work properly, but I eventually got 'em cleaned out and nearly new.

And all of a sudden, I could hear the chords on the left side of Jonathan Coulton's "Code Monkey" (a wonderful song, even without my left ear)! Frabjous. And next time I'll either use a thicker-gauge wire or I'll just buy a new pair. Yes, it's terribly thriftless of me, but ten bucks versus fiddling around with sharp bits and possibly puncturing the drum of the headphones? Probably a good idea.