Category: Blog

10:49 am-A busy weekend-not much time to post. I have to go to school to sub for a hour this morning, so not posting a recap until later. My hip hurts.

1:14 pm-Still not time to post-work awaits. Kindy was fun-outside play and painting.

4:26 pm-Working on a splash screen and icons. No time to post. Listening to Aaron Russo rant.

11:01 pm-The day is over-Daily Show is on. Offline screen, went to CVS for cold stuff for Colin and Erika’s meds. Put kids to bed, pastrami dinner, 24, CSI Miami, quickie workout. And here’s the recap: Friday-Erika was up early-sat down in the car to wait-a cop came up behind her. Kids to school, drove to Long Beach, picked up 2 things for Matt at Barnes & Noble, job fell through-tried to sell the chick on Quest stuff for SQL Server. Drove to Belmont Shore, picked up peanuts at Polly’s, drove back home. Picked up Matt & Colin at school, library, Trader Joe’s. Cleaned house next morning, parents visited. Made pizza, ate cheap cake. Matt got a few gifts. Fried chicken for dinner. Church Sunday, annual meeting, cleaned more, kids to bed late, Erika came home.

11:05 am-Trying to post as often as Fripp-we’ll see how long this lasts. My life is much less exciting than his.

Right on time for school-kids left their coats in Erika’s car, made a frittata for Matt-I’d like to leave the house by 8:05 rather than 8:15…Erika’s working in the office today rather than subbing. Colin made a pile out of the straw in the kindy yard and jumped in it, followed by all the other kids-straw in my shoes. I declined to play tag-my hip got messed up yesterday by doing that. On to work after dropping a book at the library. E-mail, web, coffee, now on to work.

12:25 pm-Taking a break-got through starting a revibrate of one product for another-need more info from the dev team. A cuppa decaf and task switch. I sent an email to my parents telling my mom to stop her mean behavior and she replied not addressing it at all. She’ll prolly want to talk about it on Sat when they come down-not gonna happen-I said my piece, now she needs to change her behavior. I’ve put up with it forever, and it’s time for say enough. Erika gets so upset, and I can’t have that. Listened to Democracy Now-Israel refusing entry to Palestinian residents, American Airlines refusing passage & losing a lawsuit over it.

3:14 pm-Back to work after lunch-splash screens. Got dragged into a meeting (sleepy), Erika needed a check on $$$ so she could get warm coats for the boys, bill pay-ending up in OK shape this month-not like last month…Lunch-chicken soup and bananas. Cool Firefox plugin-FirebugOnward.

4:58 pm-Work day is done-splash screens are generated and sent, icon generated and sent-splash screen guy wants offline splash screen revibrated to Vista similarity. Not today, Monday. We’ll see if icon guy likes his icon (he did). No more on webification-long project, that. Three mini tasks first-Monday. Add button to wireframe design for web gig. Need to get domain name. Tea at 4:20. Listening to The ConstruKction of Light. I’m on a big Crim kick right now-that Fripp thing, I guess.Now home.

8:44 pm-Sitting in bed, waiting for dinner, computing. E-mail checked, listening to some odd ambient thing, reminiscent of Michael Stearns-probably a Webbed Hand thing. Kids to bed, easy. Wife packing for trip to Sacramento-Waldorf conference. Dinner sounds like it’s ready. The k sticks on this computer.

11:22 pm-Dinner, mini workout, practicing guitar. Sleep now-Colin joined. Erika has to get up early.

Another month duration-the holidays, basically, ate up all my free time. Whatever. Much the same-kids, school, work, home, church. Reading Robert Fripp’s diary, practicing my guitar, set up my recording rig in the bedroom. Tai Chi starting up again.

My exciting life: A month-here we go-school party at Dana Point beach, Matt, then me, then Colin got a stomach bug-I had the worst case-2 1/2 sick days. Office party, then department party at a murder mystery dinner theater. Day off, visit parents-fondue & presents, christmas, swim, hang out, days off, New Years-old champagne was good for 3 glasses, 20 year old Port, Erika got the Demon Bug, work Hawaii-themed event, new web design gig, Ikea, Japanese market (Mitsuwa Marketplace), the Hat, Sealight, Johnny Rockets, US alum reception.

Issues and current events: I don’t remember. It’s nice to have this storage unit with all my music and Project Gutenberg. Dems take control. The escalation is worthless. James Brown died. Gerald Ford died-very few people said anything about East Timor. Robert Fripp is cool. I installed Vista on one of my servers. TV: watching Criminal Minds, Mythbusters, forgetting to watch Afro Samurai.

Links and downloads: DGM, gurdjieff stuff, manuals for my rig, more Tibetan tantras, Guitar Craft, guitar lessons.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “In North America, a couple of decades ago, it was common to hear residents remark, as they locked up for a short departure from home, that they never used to need to lock their doors.” Dark Age Ahead

Looks like 2 weeks seems to be the current duration-I basically blew off everything I had to do. I got a storage unit and put all my music on it-now I can listen to my music collection at home too. Much more convenient-now I don’t have to take my laptop back and forth from home.

My exciting life: get chairs at church ready for carpet cleaning, Ikea, Fry’s, Erika went for Bill’s funeral, Thankdgiving dinner at Pemberton’s, get Christmas stuff at storage, Charo chicken, put chairs back, swim-spa & jump in cold pool, Pep Boy’s, hiked in Wood Canyon with the boys, Erika’s mom broke her arm, school dinner and concert, church dinner, had lunch at the Snooty Fox, got a tree.

Issues and current events: did anything happen? The Iraq Study Group report, which Chimpy promptly ignored, more dead Iraqis, Obamamania. Samantha Bee got all creamy over him on the Daily Show last night. TV: We watch the same thing most weeks-the Unit, Daily Show, etc. Britney showing her nether regions. Nicole Richie getting popped for DUI-the Mallard Fillmore cartoonist too.

Links and downloads: Free Albums Galore, Webbed Hand Records. There are a lot of cool pathways from here…

Page 23, Sentence 5: “The Abstract Factory pattern in Design Patterns defines a method for providing this mechanism.” San Francisco Design Patterns

Well, I got to this a little sooner than the last time…No worries. Life moves along, Busy at work, home, school and church. Kids are on vacation this week-I have Weds and next Mon. & Tue. off.

My exciting life: Matt went to the dentist-he was saying his spacer was loose-and it wasn’t, Souplantation, meeting at school, more meetings, no one is showing up to Tai Chi class on Saturdays, visit my parents, Debs Park walk, Mission Viejo mall, Great Khan for lunch, edit Sealight, school lantern walk at Soka University, nature center walk & cookout, swap meet, Erika’s godfather died. Plus the usual school, work, home, church.

Issues and current events: the Dems picked up both the House and Senate. Woo hoo! And Pelosi is the first woman speaker. And she immediately puts her foot in it. No matter-it couldn’t be worse than the endless debacle in Iraq. As I was driving to Tai Chi Saturday, the Minutemen were out protesting the work center on Laguna Canyon. I’ve been listening to the Bardo Thodol in the car, and the big teaching for the living is to avoid ignorance, aggression, pride, desire and envy populating your unconscious tendencies-these are what drives karma and where you go for rebirth. On the way back the aggression of the Minutemen was palpable. On Sunday our minister was saying things about how our nation spends more than it makes-unsustainable-and I realized that we are a nation of hungry ghosts. TV: I moved the cable box into the bedroom-we spend most of our TV time in there. The kids really don’t watch much other than nick, animal planet and dvd’s. I got to see some stuff I don’t get much of a chance for. There was a Star Trek OS marathon on TVLand. Erika likes Celebrity Paranormal Project-but she also likes Most Haunted and the TAPS one too. Whoopee. She’s also been watching Hallmark and TBN movies-blecch. I know I’m not watching the Madonna thing.

Links and downloads: unrar, live music from Internet Archive, a lot of Tibetan Buddhist stuff, crazy guy named Ted, Cooper UI design newsletters.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “The new way of breathing was practiced, without bow and arrow at first, until it came naturally.” Zen in the Art of Archery

Well, I’ve blown this off for almost 3 months-busy, not really caring. When you’ve been blogging for 10 years, it’s hard to get motivated, especially when it’s clear no one reads it. I suppose someone will Google something and I’ll get a zillion hits. That seems to be the way things go now. In a youtube world, everyone gets their 15 minutes, but you can’t tell if that will end up being at 3am on a Tuesday. Onwierd. So, the past 3 months.

My exciting life: It’s been an alternately eventful and “same ‘ol” past few months. Luckily I keep an event journal so I can enumerate. Got an illuminated bocce set, Goodwill, Iridium flare, new computer at work, worked at school setting up laptops, Jerry’s Deli, Fry’s, swimming, got a bunch of dental work done-a crown. New computer, scooters and bikes for the kids, help put heavy blackboards in at school, swim, set up more computers, shop, Matt got a bee sting, big check, LA county fair, Matt had a temperature, recorded Bill Foster’s band. Kids stayed at grandparents-comedy show, try to set up school webcam, memorial for Joyce Dusenberry, set up church banner, Peppino’s, Goodwill, lunch at Bill Foster’s, Fatburger, book fair, kid’s birthday at a gymnastics place, SuperMex, started teaching Tai Chi, game night at church, kid’s fair, Ikea, Jerry’s Deli, teach 7th graders computers for 2 weeks, ripped my entire CD collection onto my nw computer, kids sleepover, Peppino’s, pumpkin patch, short cold. Jazz night at church, circle supper, set up altar for the Day of the Dead at church, prep for church painting, school harvest festival, Halloween-trick or treat at Top of the World, put church back after painting, remove banner. And the usual: work, school, church. Erika takes the boys to school most days-I miss playing with the Kindergartners. She has a blog, too, and is working part time at school. Listening to the Bardo Thodol in the car. I have a zillion songs on my computer, so it’s this amazing eclectic radio station when I put it on random.

Issues and current events: well, it’s been eventful on this front as well. Today is the day the GOP loses the House and maybe the Senate. Bush is now a lame duck president. Iraq is a quagmire, Republicans are getting kicked out of Congress and religious leaders are getting disgraced. But bread and circuses dominate the news cycle. Anything to distract from the real problems plaguing this country-corruption, corporate control, the loss of habeas corpus, a war no one wants, and we rank 53rd in press freedom. We are SO going down.

TV: Not much-I just heard Britney’s filing for divorce. Surprised it lasted that long… Doogie Howser’s gay. Getting South Park by computer, which is kQQl. Saw the YouTube of Kirstie Alley’s new body. Yow! I hate extreme makeover home-it’s tragedy of the day. Borat is amazing.

Links and downloads:Word count, visual thesaurus, cool clock animation, bunch of live stuff: internet archive, zinf, audioactive, dbpoweramp, alf, audio crusher, random mp3 player, mkw.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “A self-conscious giggle rippled throughout the group as they responded in unison, “Just about every room in the house.”Spoiling Childhood

Skipped last week-busy, trying to cut the things that are distracting me down a lot. I really like this Ubuntu system-elegant, functional. It does freeze up often, and it’s messed up twice on updates-slow kernel update and an x Windows lockout. Both fixed, tho’ the freezing makes me save early and often. In fact…time to sleep-I’ll pick this up tomorrow.

Links and downloads:Open Workbench, irfanViewer,

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.3
Mind:	7
Body:	8.2
Spirit:	5.6
Friends/Family:	6.9
Love:	9.1
Finance:	3.6
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

I lost the last version of this when Ubuntu froze. We finally got paid-whew-now back to work.

My exciting life:Erika had a seminar Sat., Church, swim, got paid, got a free computer from FreeCycle, Hennessy’s Tuesday, Festival of Arts-didn’t do sound, Peppino’s. Erika got her hair cut-she’s been growing it out.

Issues and current events:Lieberman lost-and is running as an independent-his own party-sour grapes-loser-he should run as a Republican. TV: Sunday-Mencia, Reno 911; Monday: Simmons Family Jewels; Tuesday: Dog, Supernova, Dead Like Me; Weds: Mythbusters, SupernovaTerror plot foiled-everyone’s running around like a chicken with its head cut off-good distraction from the REAL problems.

Links and downloads:Django-online collaboration, DeGlitch, Exact Audio Copy, Free Image Object Packs,Nero-trying to fix problems with a church recording, Wave Repair, Sound Laundry, Pristine Sounds-this & Nero cracked it, sorta, Diskeeper-trying to shove Linux into a partition…, Crap Cleaner, Perfect Disk, BootIt NG-PD & Bootit cracked it-but Linux doesn’t write NTFS so I had to use fat32format, and recopy the disk in FAT32 to get Ubuntu to write to it.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Instead of living in a dream of hell, you will be creating a new dream-your personal dream of heaven” The Four Agreements

Another week, still no ca$h. Still looking after the dog. Work, home. And the biggie: Quest gave 10 laptops to the school!!! I was SO excited, I danced around my office. I have them almost setup-a few had minor issues. All with EdUbuntu except the server (Fedora) and a spare.

My exciting life: Visited my parents Sat. for my birthday, kids swam, long drive. Church Sunday, swimming again, walking the dog, work, that’s it. It’s been cooler-the rest of the country is baking now.

Issues and current events:Israeli ceasefire after bombing children-started up again-that didn’t last long-they’re sending in the ground troops. And endless talk with no real progress. I learned the intro to Steely Dan’s Josie-a snip I’ve always liked. When I got my guitar out the boys wanted to hear Puff the Magic Dragon, so I obliged. It made me think about the lyrics-they’re about growing up and leaving behind things you loved. It makes me sad-I guess I’m grieving the things I left behind. Also something about having boys and seeing them grow and reliving some of my youth. Castro is sick, Miami rejoices. But it doesn’t seem as if he’s going to die, but no one knows-no one’s seen him.

Links and downloads:
Wiki How-howto’s, RuneScape-an online game the boys try to play, Steve Pavlina-some guy who has some interesting things to say, rad rails-an IDE for Ruby on Rails, tv: SurvivorMan-this guy who gets dropped off in the middle of nowhere and has to survive for a week on practically nothing.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Boys often need us to show them that it’s okay to go into the cave and it’s essential that the boy feel good about coming out of the cave, (and we’ll be waiting) to be reaccepted and refined by his insights.” The Wonder of Boys

I’m making the format a bit more structured and putting more stuff in the links and downloads. I’ve been reading screeds by Seth Godin. He’s a marketing guy and has good ideas about websites and such. I saw a book in the libe while I was looking for books on Flash called The Big Red Fez. That led me to the other stuff he’s done. And I’m blogging in my underwear (my wife said to say that.) Not much else-we’re taking care of a friend’s pets while she’s on vacation. Woo hoo. It’s been super hot and hard to sleep.

My exciting life: a longtime, very old member of our church died. She was able to visit on Sunday twice before she passed-I think that’s no coincidence… Church Sunday, hot, swim, sick on Monday-very upset stomach and nothing made it better. We had a small blackout, cleaned the fishtank and the rest of the house, a friend of Erika’s visited, signed another year lease here, computer died. Walked the dog, the laptop is at home until the computer is fixed.

Issues and current events: Sharon is dying-not surprising-I wish they had just let him go when he originally got sick. Hussein was on a hunger strike-collapsed-feeding tube-final arguments-he’s berating the court-who knows how this will end? Oh, wait-they’re going to convict him and execute him. Lebanon isn’t just a proxy war…I said it was but of course it’s more complicated than that. Andrea Yates is not guilty by reason of mental defect-they tried but it’s too clear that she was psychotic.

Links and downloads: Hoax? Ad campaign? Billboards in NY, LA, Chicago. A PI show on Court TV?, Joseph Goldstein interview, Yoism-open source religion, Open Garden-MindTouch Dream, Deki, Experimental Game Lab, AJAX Code Camp, Squeak, World Community Grid, Hack your life, Simkit, Thinglab, An Early History of Smalltalk, The Decline of Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “With almost any body movement or any phrase in any language, you can indicate that you’d like to buy the item.” The Big Red Fez

So, I’m actually getting to this-maybe. I’m opening it first thing in the morning, and hopefully it will get done by the time I go home. We’ll see.

Recap: since it’s only been a week, probably shorter than the last few. Sealight Friday, finished up the week at vacation Bible school with a Saturday service (it was an SDA church), went swimming, Matt lost a tooth, church Sunday, thunderstorm Sunday night-Colin didn’t like it, Matt didn’t wake up, the usual weekly work schedule-I’m starting on the process of getting a new desktop computer and an OSX/Vista testbed. The summer is just rolling by. The kids watch a lot of Animal Planet. And swim a lot too.

Issues: Plame suing Bush, Cheney, etc.-this is a much more effective way of going after them-a civil case has a much lower burden of proof.

The Israelis and Hezbollah continue to pound each other, and the Lebanese and Israeli citizens are bearing the brunt-in a lot of ways, this is a proxy war between the U.S. and Iran.

I’ve been watching Rockstar Supernova-Tommy Lee is entertaining-there were 3 of these talent contests on last night at the same time-can you say “summer doldrums”? I also found a cool show called Dead Like Me, which was on Showtime a few years ago and got cancelled-not bad-it’s on Sci Fi Tuesdays. Meerkat Manor Fridays, Avatar Fri or Sat., Mind of Mencia Sun, Eureka looks fun, South Park Weds. And of course the Daily Show and the Colbert Report M-R nights…

Bush’s first veto EVER was on expanded stem cell research-a move to rally his base given increasing criticism by GOP members-since everything he touches turns to garbage and midterm elections looming, he’s gotta do SOMETHING. And the tired legislators are trying to shove dumb flag burning and gay marriage bills through, which go nowhere FAST. Whatever. He’s doing nothing about Lebanon, which isn’t surprising either.

Bush gave the German chancellor a neckrub at the prep to G8-she didn’t like it-in a normal setting that could be considered sexual harassment… What was he thinking? Nothing probably. With Condi nowhere to be seen and Laura living in a hotel, I guess he figured he could get some… ;-> Blecch. He is SO puppet boy.

Links and downloads: Winfreyism-I read this awhile back and think it’s an astute criticism, flamenco-a search interface project, cute dancing video-by a guy who traveled all over the world-sorta dumb, but in some ways sweet, all in one computer tools, Danah Boyd-I saw a thing on her on cNet? she’s pretty kQQL, Jazz Guitar Online-free licks and lessons, Edubuntu-I’m planning to implement this for school-I saw a thing on how Ubuntu is the best client OS, so I got this one for the kids-installed it on a server here and it looks pretty good so far, Guitar lessons-Googled and found this on the rock guitar side.
Page 23, Sentence 5: “For the public and reporters, Bush’s formative years-which he extends to age forty-are out of bounds.” Worse Than Watergate

OK, I’m going to try to do this weekly again, we’ll see. When you’ve been doing it as long as I have, it does get tired from time to time…

OK, here’s the past 2 weeks-took Friday and Monday before the 4th off, inventoried computers at school, looked after kids-Erika went on a church thing, saw fireworks at Aliso Viejo, played with rc cars, racquetball, tennis, swimming with boys, church-problems with recording, made up a bitty database app, kids are going to vacation Bible School this week, ran sound for the concert band at Festival of the Arts.

Issues-Israel bombs Lebanon in retaliation for kidnappings, Gaza too. I’m reading a Stratfor thing on this. It’s all about security for Israel…, More sectarian violence in Iraq-everybody’s pretty sure civil war is here or on the way, World cup-Italy won-bad head butt and ejection-whoopee. N Korea fired some missiles-saber rattling-it’s working. Train bombing in India-no one’s taken credit-Al Qaeda? It’s their style. White House to follow Geneva Convention-about time-but prolly won’t make any difference… Ken Lay died-coincidence? Some key witness in London died too. It’s been hot, fires in So Cal. Big surprise there. John Dean’s new book-striking. Saw him on the Daily Show and a clip on Olbermann. His old one looks good too… And the House just renewed the Voting Rights Act. Huzzah!

Link and software fest: paperclip trader guy, borg, mumps, euler, you os, free mind, cmap, TimeLine

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Brothers and sisters quarrel for the same reason that corporations quarrel-they seek power over one another” The Seat of the Soul

Been bagging this for awhile now. Busy, caring less about it. I mean, who reads this anyways? I know that’s not why I do it, but still, it’s like talking in a vacuum. Especially since blogging is so huge. You’d think some recognition would happen at some point. Whatever-I guess that’s a desire to have my effort appreciated. Maybe a dash of narcissism and “hey look at me” ism. I’m also deadly poor-nothing at all left from my paycheck.<sigh>…and this company not paying me…

OK, here’s the last 3 months, quickly. helped parishioners, police thing at Irvine, church auction, San Diego Wild Animal Park, kids had chicken pox, got tadpoles, fish. Free advertising for: Johnny Rocket’s, 24, Soka University, See’s Candy, BJ’s, Goodwill, Joyner Park, Ruby’s, KNEX, Hennessy’s, Charo Chicken. And the usual: work, school-Matt had a nice Kindergarten graduating ceremony and a nice celebration dinner and a park gathering, church (we have an assistive listening system now), swimming, play with kids.

Here’s what I have for news before I bagged this: fox news reporter is the new press secretary-big surprise there, sun’s ceo quit-they’re realigning, 20th anniversary of chernobyl-and it’s still a no man’s land, galbraith dies-whoopee, moussaoui gets life-big surprise there, mexico legalizes all drugs in small amounts-time to “make a run for the border”, porter goss resigned-big surprise THERE, nsa spying-taps phone co. lines and the SWIFT monitoring-happening BEFORE 9/11-no big surprise here.

And here’s the links and downloads:Project Linus (as in Peanuts), Freedom from Religion Foundation, easy Eclipse, Image Magick, Sketch up, expression beta, ie7 beta, google web toolkit, archStudio, jMax, pureData, Hibernate, Ant, spring, jUnit, CruiseControl, Emma, jDepend (a tear of opensource development tools), flat Calendar, xnu, gnu pg, stego magic, solipsis, lyx, miktex (teX tools), jupe, pixie, shaderman, aqsis, bmrt, povray (rendering tools), wikicalc, mediawiki, pmdbelarc advisor, monkey chow guy

Went to church-Erika made a bookshelf, we went to the library to get a reading certificate for free lunches, In ‘n Out, bookstore, Trader Joe’s, taxes with TurboTax, church, play football with kids, swim, meeting at school, work review, raise, and the usual.

McClellan quit. Guess he got tired of lying. 100th anniversary of the big San Francisco earthquake.

Some downloads: Yahoo widgets, photoshop actions, panopticon, subversion, and 2 links: 75 helpful web design resources, OK-Cancel

Up super early Friday so I could leave early, take Erika over so she can go to a church education thing in San Diego, clean up, interesting earth realm thing, headache, laze, visited Tamiya and watched Rodney race, a tank battle, go to church to setup for casino night, no childcare, so I took the kids to Playmates, up late, church, get Erika, Colin was sick, kids visited and a health fair, Sealight, and the usual. Matt had the week off-spring break.

Not much-more civil war in Iraq, generals are calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation, a new thing about Rumsfeld OKing abuse. RedHat bought jBoss.

I don’t think I downloaded anything…Turbo Tax…

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Yet there was spirituality in Spinoza’s atheism, since he experienced the world as divine.”

<sigh>, another week has passed. I just don’t know where the time goes. Not much happened this week-a birthday party at a local park, kids got wet, church, Erika broke her toe-dr’s, played in another local park, kids got wet, it’s been rainy, picked up Naked Lunch at the library, and the usual school and work. Been posting to experts-exchange.com. I have some things about the sun and lenses about to bubble into an essay.

The only real news that I’ve noted is that Tom DeLay quit. About time. I mean, really. When you’re facing corruption charges, no one trusts you. He denied it’s because of that, though. C’mon, dude. Face reality. Apple released a beta of a thing to dual boot Intel Macs. Pretty cool. Libby said that Bush authorized intel leaks. No duh. More immigration protests, more unrest in France and new protests in Nepal. Where next? Iraq? China? Saudi Arabia? Here’s a cool article: An Atheist Manifesto. I don’t agree with all of it, I don’t think science has everything that I have experienced buttoned up yet, but it’s a solid piece.

Not many downloads: Groovy on Rails. G’bye.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Scopolamine is often effective in dissolving resistance, but it impairs the memory,: an agent might be prepared to reveal his secrets but quite unable to remember them, or cover story and secret life info might be inextricably garbled.”

Here we go again. The week has flown by. Erika’s dad is in the hospital. We have NO MONEY. Please give-generously. Thanks. This is bad. Not much happening-working, school.

And here’s the week: movie at work, visited my parents, art thing in Pasadena, watched Monster’s Inc., church, The Witness, Charo Chicken, rainy, no money. Blew this off until Friday, took the day off so Erika could do her thing, went on the walk at school.

Not much this week-increasing my online activism, HUGE marches against HR 4437. This isn’t the way to solve undocumented immigration. We can’t say “close the borders” and “we need cheap labor” at the same time.A strike and riots in France. The Chief of Staff quit-it’s about time the White House got new people in-ha-and this isn’t it.

Some downloads:commonSense database, scratch, Easy Mobile Programming, gConvert Icon editor, Jabber 2.0, RIFE, ruby on rails, sinedots, Lens pro, Eye candy-I needed to do a glass button effect…

I blew this off last week. Busy. No time. My laptop died. Working 3 jobs, kids, school, church, that’s about it. And I just noticed that last week was the 10th anniversary of my first post! Yay! Go me! A lot of things have happened since then, and there’s a 2½ year gap.

The last 2 weeks-nothing much-watched Harry Potter, church, lunch with Tracy & family at Hof’s Hut, saw their new house, Ikea, work, Erika was sick last week, ate at Chili’s, parent’s meeting at school, speedcleaned the house, edited the SeaLight, interesting revelation in the shower, kids ate at work, there was a health fair at work, my laptop died (got replaced yesterday), had a so-so mexican dinner, went skating with the boys while Erika shopped, played racquetball too, church, had dinner with friends, and work, sleep, school, play with kids, Spring Equinox, tried to give blood-still no, as long as they don’t have a test for mad cow.

Milosevic died-looks like self-administered OD. A lot of people turned out for the funeral. The world baseball classic came and went-whoopee. A huge cricket event->400 runs in a day match. Found another case of mad cow in the US-Colbert said a funny about it. South Park lost Isaac Hayes because of the Tom Cruise closet ep-and they promptly skewered $cientology even more. Ouch. That wacky Pat Robertson is at it again-this time saying Islam isn’t peaceful & extremists are Satanic. Whatever-no one’s listening anymore. Puffy McMoonface and Chimpy are getting tough questions now-Chimpy called on Helen Thomas! first time in three years. Dude. Jessica Simpson snubbed the White House. Hee. And Saddam gave a big speech at his trial-it is such a joke now.

Downloads: Music Notepad, Tidy, jSynthLib, IBM Ajax Toolkit Framework

Page 23, Sentence 5: “For straightforward behavior, practice in Dhyana may be dispensed with.”

It’s Thursday again, I don’t know how I feel today-a little tired. Odd feeling. Sorta disconnected. I’ve been listening to Junky by W.S. Burroughs in the car-he’s reading it. It’s pretty cool, but I think it’s affecting my psyche a bit. I’m also listening to Democracy Now. It’s bad, bad, bad. Civil rights are going away, everywhere, if they aren’t gone already.

We went to DeBenneville Pines over the weekend. I took off Friday, we had lunch at Ruby’s and drove up just after noon. It rained on the way up-we saw 5 accidents-one big one close to home, and the rest on snowy roads-we actually witnessed one of them. I have no problems driving in the snow, they made us put chains on. It stopped snowing, and the snow was gone by mid-Saturday. The kids sledded anyways. Saw a lot of people, drank some, played with the kids. I got to read some of Steiner’s The Spirit of the Waldorf School. We drove home and went to the spa. The week has been pretty quiet. My routine is changing a bit-I play with the kids at school, poke my head in the school office, say bye to Matt in line, go to work, work, come home, put the kids to bed and work until it’s time to eat, eat, work until it’s time to go to sleep, sleep. Erika rearranged the bedroom. The boys got kids’ roller skates-now I have to get mine out of storage…I’m starting on a third job. Pascal/btrieve maintenance programming. I’m still getting my legs under me on it. I’m on a bit of a prog kick right now-listening to Hawkwind now, Utopia, Allan Holdsworth, Gentle Giant and Primus too. The boys like it too-we call it boy music. I’m also picking up a bunch of free Dead concert MP3’s from Internet Archive. I really love their “Anthem of the Sun” era material.

I didn’t write up any topical stuff-the Oscars were this week-we didn’t watch. Stewart seemed to do a good job. My wife was watching Project Runway, which just ended, but I don’t care. Britney’s pregnant again. whoopee. U.S. is leaving Abu Graib-there’s enough other places to torture people now… The Dubai port deal got abandoned too. But the Supremes stopped the ban on military recruiting at college campuses. That’s two wins, one loss. Augustine volcano in Alaska is building up a lava dome. And the usual death, disaster, crime, war in the news. whoopee.

I picked up Free Pascal, and a copy of Turbo Pascal 7.0 for the job I’m doing, also the Zend Framework and TransMac to try to find my copy of Turbo Pascal. I think I need Borland Pascal, though.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Just because you have video footage of something relevant, for example, doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

Here I am again, plus another week. Not much going-the usual. We’re going to DeBenneville Pines Camp for a UUCLB! church retreat this weekend-the kids are psyched-they packed their backpacks last week…

The recap: went to dinner at B.J.s with the Pembertons. Erika went to a stamp show, went to Alta Laguna park for a church picnic, got to fly my deca a little, ate at Texas BBQ Pit after-YUM!!! church Sunday, meeting afterwards, didn’t sleep well and was tired Monday, it rained, Erika got the car tuned up for the drive to camp, worked on computers at Journey school. I’m the computer guy there now.

Here’s a quickie week in review-I don’t know if I have the energy for more…Executions have stopped in CA. The CA Supreme Court ruled that a medical professional needs to verify that the process isn’t cruel and unusual punishment. And no anesthesiologists are willing to participate in an execution. Something about the oath they take saying “FIRST DO NO HARM”. A Dubai co financed by the emirate wants to buy a UK firm that runs several shipping ports. This has touched off a bit of light and heat for BushCo. Apparently the public and Congress doesn’t like an Arab run co knowing how port security operates. And it was approved over objections from law enforcement. Oops. South Dakota legislators have passed a law banning abortion, and the gov. is going to sign it. And immediately after that, Planned Parenthood is going to file a lawsuit, a judge will issue an injunction, and the thing will wind its way up the federal courts. I have no idea if this will end up on the Supremes’ desk, probably, the problem here is whether Robscalito will want to get into overturning the Roe precedent in such a sharp manner. I think not. Ohno won the 500M race, leading the whole way. He was happy, he skated well. A bunch of inmates took over a prison in Afghanistan, and BushCo visited. We’ve had riots here in LA jails recently too. TIA is alive under another name. Scary. Especially with the domestic spying stuff. Six months after Katrina, it’s still a mess there. The conclusion-don’t rely on the Feds for anything after a disaster. And a video briefing surfaced pre Katrina showing that BushCo was warned. Which means Bush lied when he said no one could’ve predicted it. Enough already. I agree with the assertion that in a more normal system, a vote of no confidence would’ve occurred, and BushCo would be out. <sigh> And now I just heard that the Patriot act passed. Dude. Get these guys out of here! 10 No votes. That’s just wrong. Shame on everyone who voted for this, especially the Democrats.

I finally got around to burning some of the CD’s I have backlogged. It meant getting a ton of conversion software: dbPowerAmp, 4Musics WMA to WAV Converter, lame, razorlame, oggDropXPd, MPC utilities, Xilisoft MP3 WAV Converter.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Portrayal of nine full cycles here enforces comfortable comparisons of between- and within-cycle variation, and also exposes an apparent growth trend (perhaps it is merely improved observation) in the wingspan of recent cycles.”