Category: Blog

Another week gone. Erika goes to GA next week… We just had a 5.3 earthquake.

The past week: Circle supper, UUFLB workshop Sat., mall, Rainforest Cafe Sun., started physical therapy Tues, Sealight Weds., more physical therapy today.

Pretty quiet-Bush’s polling numbers are dropping. I looked at them in more detail and the guy is definitely losing ground. In every category. I wonder why? Can you say Iraq, a lackluster economy, torture?

Michael Jackson got acquitted. Big surprise there. The jurors said that they couldn’t believe that the mother would let her kid stay with him. As if that has anything to do with him being a molester.

I picked up the Java 1.6 source, OpenSolaris and the latest Java 2 standard edition-if you don’t have it, get it-Sun uncovered a security hole in older versions.

OK, 3 weeks have passed. It’s been rather busy. Weekend in Cleveland, work, work, work.

The recap: went to my 25th HS reunion in Cleveland, I had to reschedule my flight because of weather, pulled an all nighter Saturday to make a 7 AM flight, meetings, Matt spent the next weekend in the hospital with gastroenteritis-same as last year, but this time he got misdiagnosed with pneumonia, sent to CHOC at Mission, where they gave him IV fluids. We should’ve done that last year…so we switched pediatricians. <sigh> Worked on all the reunion pictures-look here. There was a landslide in Laguna Beach. Made the 25th reunion page flash new pictures on a mouse over-pretty cool. Journey school had an open house-Matt got in!

I have a huge backlog of news topics-so I’ll try to keep it short.

Apache’s doing a j2ee server-this is great-open source is taking over. IBM lays off 10,000, GM lays off 25K-costcutting from the giants. North Korean nukes are here-way fun-then we invade Iran. Bush visits Russia-and makes pointless points. Torture and murder aren’t prosecuted-if you’re a soldier in Iraq. More ammo against homosexuality being a choice-gay men respond to male smell like women do. United defaulted on pensions-and we get to pay for it-woo hoo-and other pensioners get $47. Star Wars Episode 3 is out-big bank, PG13 for Darth Vader’s face melting. Paula Abdul had sex with a contestant-isn’t that conflict of interest? and who really cares? More proof that the world is ending-Maxim’s hottest women <yawn> Newsweek printed an example of Koran abuse, riots ensued, the White House yelled, Newsweek retracted, but it turned out that there were at least five examples of it-the one Newsweek used was by an inmate-oops. Pictures of Saddam in underwear-deeply insulting to Arabs, a violation of protocol-the White House doesn’t care. Laura Bush got shoved around and yelled at in Jerusalem-is this surprising? The nuclear option got tabled and the Dems caved on 3 of the worst nominees <sigh> Apple is switching to Intel chips-this may mean that OSX will be eventually runnable on PC’s-YAY-but it may take awhile-Apple likes making hardware-but the underlying OS (Darwin) is already there-I had it running on one of my servers awhile ago, but it doesn’t do much so I bagged it-maybe next time… A White House staffer edited docs about global warming to take out links to big oil-why is this not surprising??? That’s it-a big quickie of all the topics I had piled up.

Here’s the software I’ve downloaded: another update to Firefox-they find a bug, fix it, put out an update. A cool utility called Xpandesk that puts multiple desktops in Windows-it’s nice, but Firefox has some issues with it. An old copy of Lotus Agenda-just for archival purposes. Same thing with Ecco Pro… A new version of Eudora-maybe it’ll work with Exchange & Hotmail… Lomboz, PollinateIBM Monitoring and Metadot.

On to the reunion-it was bizarre-not much has changed-the real estate is so cheap. I flew in Thursday, had a nice pastrami sandwich at Corky and Lenny’s. Up early, off to US, Roger Coy was there, the class of ’55 gave $1.5 million for international studies, chat. Off to lower school, chatted with the nurse, ate lunch, did an indoor kite demo. Back to upper school, flew indoors, no one showed up. Baseball game & party, more chatting and pictures, a corned beef sandwich at Corky & Lenny’s. Up to fields, softball, more chats, more pictures, off to Eisele’s house, same thing, off to Laurel, same thing, off to Tavern Club, same thing, Eisele’s again, there ’til 3AM. I stayed up because I had a 7 AM flight, got on the flight, slept. An unbelievably fast weekend. I didn’t get to drive around, but I did take pictures of some houses for sale on the street I grew up on.

Another 2 weeks have passed-I’m busy, so no time to do this. Leaving for Cleveland tomorrow for a fast weekend-25th high school reunion.

OK, what’s happened in my exciting life? Like anyone cares but meeee…Blew off the Ren Fair, Erika got a fake Louis Vuitton bag, we walked to a thing at the local park, went to the UUFLB service auction, went to church, hung out with the kids in Long Beach while the women went to lunch, went to a memorial service at UUCLB, worked on a logo and 2 screen designs, fixed Erika’s computer, went to a pain doc and he thinks I have a ruptured lumbar disk. Ouch. Getting ready for the Cleveland trip, visited parents-they’re going on a trip to Africa and are having the Neptune Society handle things if one of them die. I also went to Fry’s and Guitar Center. I started getting the Christmas stuff packed up-Erika’s parents are coming over while I’m gone. Matt had an evaluation-totally normal. Goddamned doctors. Some chick crashed into a light pole outside our complex-she didn’t even try to stop-no skid marks, and the top of her car was like a V-not injured either. Erika said that the cops were looking at each other like, “what’s up with HER…”

I started writing down the news events I wanted to talk about-I was missing things that happened…So, here goes: It looks like the Scopes Monkey trial is back-only in Kansas this time. I just finished reading a book of essays by Stephen Jay Gould, and evolution figures prominently. I read another interesting critique this morning, basically saying that stating that intelligent design/creationism is a hypothesis, evolution is a theory and as such trumps. If the ID folks can provide tests and such that support and predict the evidence, submit their findings to rigorous impartial review over a period of time, then they might be taken seriously by the scientific community. Absent that, and providing unprovable and unsupportable assertions doesn’t even get them in the door. Given the current political and social climate in middle America, all of this is moot. ID and creationism will hoodwink an entire generation of students into thinking that religion is scientific. And they would be wrong. And the people who rammed this down our throats would be culpable for producing students who will go to college and fail biology.

Well, Tony Blair got reelected, by a huge margin. Well, only in his dreams. It was actually a significant loss of seats for Labour, and a minority of people actually voted for Labour. Looks like he will be out sooner rather than later…People were pissed about Iraq, but upbeat about the economy. And there was that nasty smoking gun memo. And the Daily Show was showing clips of people just laying into him. Just a matter of time before a no-confidence vote comes his way.

The FDA has put a policy in place that gays can’t donate sperm anonymously. This is ostensibly because they have a higher rate if HIV infection. Pshaw. Makes no sense-talk to hetero women in equatorial and southern Africa about that. And their HIV infected children. And all their dead friends and relatives. HIV is a scourge that doesn’t respect sexual orientation. It makes more sense to ask about IV drug use and unprotected sexual activity than it is to ask about what gender you like to have sex with. Besides, the people who are most likely to carry HIV are probably going to lie anyways. Seems more like a thinly veiled attempt to start the ostracisation of “unacceptable” groups of people. Just like the gay marriage ban would.

The whole runaway bride story has generated a lot of ink and hot air. Poor girl. The pressure got too much, and the pressure is more now. It’s silly to ask her to repay the search costs-she’s culpable for making a false report in New Mexico, but it’s not like the search was necessary to save her life. I suppose there’s a civil suit there, but not a criminal one… She’s also been the butt of endless jokes and skits. I really feel sorry for her. One of the problems with our media machine-once something like this gets latched onto, it goes into this otherworldly hall of mirrors. The only thing that breaks the mirrors is another story. I suppose there’s an interesting master’s thesis on pop culture or media studies in here somewhere.

On to science. Paleontologists have found a new transitional form dinosaur-one that was a meat eater but was moving towards vegetarianism. This is interesting, especially because I’ve been reading Gould. These sorts of fossils are pretty rare, primarily because the populations involved are pretty small until the new form gets established. Look at the frequency of human transitionals on the way to H.S.S.-we can barely piece the history together, and it only happened in the last 5 million years-these fossils go back 125 M years! The fossil had running legs that meat eaters need, but also has the start of the big plant cooker belly and grinding teeth of plant eaters. Fascinating stuff-especially in contrast to the anti-evolutionary bent of Kansan educators. How do ID proponents explain transitional forms? And the looong timescales?

I was listening to NPR 2 weeks ago-they had an article about recorded eyewitness accounts of the Shoah. I got upset listening to it, and I get upset writing about it now. A British journalist recorded soldier’s recollections of liberating the camps. I don’t know how anyone, anyone can deny the reality of this. Just the tattoos, fer chrissake! The shoes, the skulls, the ruins of the ovens! We can never, never, ever allow this to happen again. The problem is that the genie is out of the bottle. We notice genocide more now. Darfur, Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, Russia, Cambodia, on and on and on. But none of these, none, can compare to the methodological, coldly calculated, systematic industrial extermination of Nazi Germany. And it was not just against Jewry. Gays, gypsies, communists, the mentally and physically ill. Anyone who was deemed unfit to be part of the Third Reich was eliminated. I wonder what I would have done if I were there. I pray, pray that I would’ve helped people get out, as I am in the Aryan genotype and probably safe. God and goddess help us all. Yom HaShoah. Go here, too.

Even though it’s SOP in the Congress-this one is pretty irksome. Dickheads put in an amendment in the supplemental budget for Iraq (which should be a main budget line to boot) for federally mandated driver’s license rules. First off, it doesn’t belong there-they put it in because they knew no one would put up a fight. Second, the Feds shouldn’t be involved in this-it’s a states rights thing. Thirdly, it can be viewed as a precursor to a national ID, which is the most troubling aspect of all. Just a matter of time-what with the sunsetting Patriot act stuff coming up-I wonder what will be the trigger this time?

Google was offline for 15 minutes last week. Ouch. Looks like a DNS cache poisoning hack. Could also be their new accelerator product overloaded the system. And they got overshadowed by Tiger’s debut as well.

OK-one last one-save the rest for next week. A Baptist pastor threw out 9 Democrats for being Democrats and voting for Kerry-he’d been preaching this anti-liberal hate-spew for months, and it finally came to a head. Forty other parishioners quit in sympathy. This was going over the line, and a few days later he was forced out too. Thank Goddess for small miracles. The real issue here is much, much bigger than one bitty church in North Carolina. It’s the infiltration of political intolerance into the fabric of mainstream Christian religion. And by extension into the fabric of our culture. Not sure if this is an early salvo, but it really didn’t go well for the zealots. We’ll see-this may take some doing for them-they’ve gotten into the GOP machine, and the halls of power, but there are enough people on the other side that the next step may be difficult unless something bad happens to make the screws tighten. As always, it’s the Martin Niemoller poem that comes to mind:

First they came for the Communists,

  and I didn’t speak up,

    because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,

  and I didn’t speak up,

    because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

  and I didn’t speak up,

    because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me,

  and by that time there was no one

    left to speak up for me.

Now we should add gays, Muslims, Democrats, etc…

I blew this off last week too. Not like I’m a big name blogger or anything. Busy weekend ahead.

Got a new laptop last week-nice IBM-loaded it up with the usual plus laptop stuff. And here’s the so exciting journal recap: Earth day-put linux on dead laptop, asked for another one, went to cpk for dinner, then the ferris wheel-woo hoo! Practiced golf Sat., the marketplace-Erika’s looking for a Louis Vuitton Speedy 30. Shop atNordstrom Rack, ate at the Hat. Sun. church, meeting, owl, charo chicken. Set up my new laptop, Sealight PDF’s. Sat. funeral @ church, birthday party at bounce place. Beltaine-church-Erika led, lunch, vacuumed car. Upstairs neighbor got in a crash outside the complex, colin’s 4th birthday, stuff. Getting prepared for the trip to Cleveland-I’m doing 2 indoor kite demos.

I read a transcript from Democracy now talking about the dominionists-one of the guys was a Baptist minister and he’s against their agenda! I guess they want to drive everyone out except themselves. He did note that the laypeople aren’t the problem. And it’s funny that the First Lady jokes about the prez giving a horse a handjob… Signs of moral rot indeed!

Well-I had to give back the old laptop-I would’ve liked to take it home…maybe. I got an IBM T30-it’s nice. It came with XP and I installed a bunch of stuff on it-music stuff, games, eclipse, as well as the usual things I use to do my job-Office, Delphi, Photoshop. It also has a huge hard disk so I put all my data on it as well. So, I downloaded a bunch of Linux stuff for my dead laptop, and it went bye bye. What else did I get? Nothing much-Open Lazslo, Eclipse, IBM’s XML editor.

The week is over-what have I done? The same as every other week. <sigh> Well, I’m spending a weekend in Cleveland next month, and Erika is spending a week in Fort Worth in June. So that breaks up things a bit.

So, the journal sez: edited the SeaLight Fri., went to a circle supper, our babysitter got her car towed, class, golf practice Sat., kite thing on Sun.-flew a demo, OWL, the disk in my laptop died, and now it takes forever to boot. Working on graphics and 508 stuff, as usual. A UI review next week! Hopefully this will be the start of more.

Politics: They picked a new pope. Why is this in politics? Because the guy is hyper-conservative, and a former Nazi youth. Even if he didn’t like it, there is indoctrination there… The liberal Catholics aren’t liking this much, but they weren’t too happy with JPII too. We shall see-he’s 78, which makes this an interrregnum, and one that will probably look like JPII without the charisma. I give him 5-10 years, 15 max. Bush is still defending Bolton, and Powell and Voinovich have spoken up-this looks DOA. The Senate Reps are going to toss the nuclear option soon-but it looks like the moderate wing is going to be a bit squeamish-Frist only needs 5 votes to do it. It’s sick-and they want to get rid of judges by cutting off their money as well. It makes my blood boil-they want to do away with any semblance of checks and balances. The irony of it all is that a lot of the rulings they don’t like-Schiavo, for instance-are coming from conservative judges, Bush has a higher percentage of approved nominations than Clinton, if you count all judges-the Reps are limiting their counts to district and higher. The process is now highly politicized, both on the nomination and approval side. rrrrr.

Computers: more mergers-looks like consolidation. Interest rates are going to creep up as inflation does, gas is through the roof, the real estate bubble? Who knows-the problem is that the deficit looms-there’s a comic that talks about a guy coming out of a 20 year coma-the doc is telling him that Reps run things, and that the gov’t is bigger than ever with huge deficits, and that Clinton did all the things the Reps were talking about. Again, ironic, no? So, what did I pick up this week? MythTV, maim, google sdk, deep green, git, subversion, drupal. My laptop’s hard disk died-replaced it, installed Win2K, now it doesn’t boot. The MIS guy said trash it and get another one. So I’m putting Fedora on it to see if that’ll take. So far it’s going in OK-we’ll see.

Not much else-going to CPK tonight, earth day kite thing tomorrow-if it doesn’t rain. Maybe we’ll go to my parents’. Dunno yet.

Blew this off last week-busy doing animations. Sick, not much else.

The recap: Pope died, blew off class, went to storage & did taxes, went to Fascism Island and kids got haircuts, walking, downloaded the Cipher Manuscript, watched the funeral, was sick Friday & Sat., marketplace, storage again, church, Ruby’s, Tower, Goodwill, practiced golf Weds.

So, the aholes in Washington passed the bankruptcy bill. It’s really gonna mess a lot of people up. The Iraqui insurgency is ramping up again. The legislature selected interim leaders. There were big protests in Baghdad to get the U.Ass out. Like any of this will help one little bit. The Pope died and was buried in a huge funeral-the crowed jeered when tv screens focused on Chimpy. The cardinals go in next week to select a new pope-any unmarried male Catholic can be selected-too bad I’m married. I figure I’m still on the rolls, even though I haven’t set foot in a church in 10 years…and I don’t believe in Jesus at all… Even though JPII did good things, I’m thinking his legacy is mixed. The problem is that his conservative positions go against a lot of liberal churchpeople. Some radio guy got fired for questioning whether JPII would go to heaven. Hmmmm-I joked about that just to offend my wife… Who knows? I hope the guy Chimpy picked to go to the U.N. gets bagged, prolly not. Still wondering about the nuclear option, and whether DeLay will be around a year from now.

Bagged Napster-don’t like $1/track…50 cents, maybe. Got a kool Flash thing called ZoomQuilt, APR, activeGrid, openXchange, ace, cosmic, Sun Java App Server. I’m trying to get 2 computers and a big monitor for the kids from FreeCycle, but the guy hasn’t gotten back to me. It’d be fun to set up a MythTV box…

Not much else, Britney’s pregnant and going to live in Vegas, Anna Nicole showed her boobs on TV, the world is coming to an end. Oh, I forgot to mention that before???

My 25th HS reunion is next month-I’m going to give an indoor kite demo for the 1st-05Th graders. Got the rest of the schedule-praticing golf for it. Tonight is a circle supper.

Here it is, Friday, April Fool’s Day. This date should be like Friday the 13th-bad luck all around. I just got locked out of my account, I’m going to have to pick up Colin at school because Erika has Matt at the Dr.’s, what’s next?

Anyways, here’s the wrapup: back messed all week, finished my senior page, bagged class, went to the Dr.’s Sat., lotsa butterflies, dinner at Claim Jumper, church Sun., carnival, started walking 1/2 hour Mon., sore Tue., the usual work, family, etc.

Well, Terri Schiavo is dead. Finally. “Free at last, free at last, thank God, free at last”. The rancor over this is amazing, especially given that a majority of people think the right thing was done. Even conservatives. We’ll see what happens next… More hypocrisy. The Pope is dying too, endless outpourings of grief. Let the guy die in peace. One thing that bugs me is that all these Christians go on and on about how Heaven is where they want to go, but then turn around and don’t let people die and go there. More hypocrisy. Rupublicans keep going on about the “nuclear option”-killing filibusters for judicial nominations. We’ll see. Gotta say it’ll be immediately ruled unconstitutional…

New head guy at HP, more flaws in M$ software, more open source stuff. Same ‘ol, same ‘ol. Picked up a wav-mp3 encoder (actually a few), so I may actually start podcasting, a free FTP client.

Check this out. Everyone should read this report. It’s how we’re ruining our world. As if that’s news.

I messed up my back this morning-I’m having spasms every time I move. Ouch. Working on design, trying to write my senior page. DeBenneville Pines was nice-it snowed Friday. It took us forever to get there. It was really rustic, but not to the point of outhouses and well water. The Schiavo case looks over-the parents, the politicians and the religious right are tying themselves up in knots over this. It’s hypocrisy in so many ways.
Previously: loong drive to camp in the rain, then snow. Kids loved it up there-playing in the snow. It was nice. Drive back was much easier. It’s been raining on and off-2nd highest rain total. The rest is work, home, kids.

I’m troubled by the judicial filibuster issue. The right is so arrogant with their power that they’re willing to forget the past-they were in the minority, they blocked a lot of Clinton’s nominations, and filibusters are important to a minority having some say in things. Schiavo is very similar-pols are getting swayed by a tiny minority, and are willing to trample all over separation of powers to get what they want, but when the tables turn, they cry foul. Ridiculous. I’m tired of the whole thing.

Quest and CA settled. Yay! Sony released the PSP-not perfect, but a step towards convergence. Picked up RoseGarden and Spring. Finished off XHTML, found a nice body attribute to fix background graphics. I got an XHTML book out of the libe-I want to get the JavaScript and css set up-move this website to the 21st century…

Yesterday was St. Patties’ day-Erika bought me a green shirt and I forgot to wear it. Busted. One of Erika’s friends had a baby Tuesday. One of our church members has liver cancer and a short time to live. Congress passed a bill to drill in the ANWR. A judge in SF called the CA gay marriage ban unconstitutional. More people died in Iraq. More people died everywhere. More people were born everywhere. Couples made love. People fought. Life goes on. I’m busy working on icons for SQL Scanner. I have the yearly review coming up, and have to do 2. We’re going to DeBenneville Pines for an OC church retreat this weekend-it’s going to rain.

7 day recap: Erika went to a funeral Fri., movie day @ work, looked in on a Tae Kwon Do class with the kids, midterm Sat., went to a model train fair at the OC fairgrounds, walked around crystal court and ate at Ruby’s, late for church Sun.-was going to do childcare-no kids, work, OWL. Took the van in for service Mon., $1K later… Walked through Journey school Tue.-we’re applying-pray for us. Went to church for Sealight edit-Daga showed up but it was actually Weds…Back there on Weds.

Politics-well, I said something about all the politics I’m looking at right now. I was thinking about free speech as I came back from shipping a book for Amazon (do this if you have extra books, BTW). I guess you could say that we still have free speech, right? Yes, but if you’re restricted in receiving speech that is protected, it’s like a tree falling in a forest. There are some reasonable limits on speech, but I worry that they will get tightened if another 9/11 happens. It looks like Schiavo is finally going to get the rest she deserves. But now the US Congress is meddling. I’m tired of this sort of grandstanding-let the poor girl die. If it was 100 years ago, she’d be dead 10 years now…

I picked up folding@home. I wanted to get the Google one, but it didn’t work. I like these distributed apps. I had seti@home for the longest time, but it doesn’t work behind the firewall at work. I’m trying to get some of these as well: Gallery of Computation Really cool stuff. I got mediaWiki and friki. I finished making xhtml of my website, except for the resume-complicated markup, so I want to be careful.

Blake’s trial ended in acquittal, Jacko is still there, the case is looking interesting.

I lost what I did yesterday on a forced reboot-grrrrr. Basically the same ‘ol. I’m beginning to repeat myself.

Since the last time: went to parents Sat. 26th and Kidspace-mom whined about the kids’ long hair-whatever. Strolled on Laguna Beach after church Sun., OWL. Scanned in all the senior pictures, set up the main grid for US 80+25. Check it out. Scanned in me over time and made an animated GIF. Did lights for a church members’ Eagle Scout court of honor, went to CPK with Erika afterwards. Went to the Aquarium Sat. with family. Got sick Sun. took Mon. off. Kids have pinkeye. Erika had a tiny stroke, doctors said-had a PET today to check it.

Well, Villaraigosa is going up against Hahn-26% of people voted. Guess that’s a big whatever. Bankruptcy reform passed-bastard credit card companies have wanted this for years-they HATE writing off those loans. Debtor’s prison, here we come. Bush is giving a roadshow of SS reform-it’s sinking like a dead whale. The Lebanese are trying to make a difference, no matter what the Syrians say-hopefully it won’t devolve into civil war again… Itchy trigger fingers in Iraq, a freed journalist, and deliberate ignorance of their own rules adds up to dead people. And the freedom fighters roll on…

Eclipse is taking off. I’m trying to set up Jef Raskin’s THE-RIP, Jef. It was nice, but a bit crude-still early on. Looking for a good free OCR program-I have a ton of docs to scan. Picked up the Firefox update, Napster (which doesn’t like firewalls), a couple of shareware animation programs, deng, marvel, orbeon, freemind.

I’m enjoying the electronic senior page thing. I have the concept, the splash image, and am starting on the essays. Periodically taking stock of your existence is a good thing to do.

The Eagle Scout thing was also interesting. I haven’t been involved in that stuff since 8th grade. I know now why I left-the org is a great way to indoctrinate kids in good morals at a time when they really need it from someone other than their parents. The problem, though is the same as the solution-if you’re a free thinker, indoctrination is a bad thing. Helping kids figure out their morals is a better tack-this is the core of UUism-in fact they’re thinking of making a Scout-like org. I’d help. I mean really-“do my duty to God and country”, “morally straight”. Yuck. There are so many reasons why that is wrong, wrong, wrong. That sort of crapola may have been fine in the 50’s, but now it’s just looking small and closedminded. I’m sure hardcore scouts, Republicans and evangelicals would disagree. And they would be wrong.
Michael “jesus juice” Jackson “hurt” his back this morning and showed up to court an hour late wearing pajama bottoms-someone slept late…wonder if he was going commando-wish he’d gotten arrested instead. Blake’s jury is still out after 4 days-that always looks like a hung jury. Britney says she “let herself go” after she got married-and says she needs to lose weight. The insanity of weight (and celebrity) in our culture-she’s prolly what? 10 lbs above her before weight? That makes her still underweight…

End of Feb-buh bye. A month is the new week. Trying to work on the 25th reunion stuff and stay productive.

Took Fri. off-ran errands. Matt’s party was Sat. Quite a lot of fun. It’s been rainy, really rainy. Went to an indoor playground Sun. Mon. was a holiday-lazed. Erika had an early mtg. Weds. Went to Peppino’s yesterday. Otherwise been working on contacting alums. I got the scanner working. Whatta pain.

I found a cool site called the New Enlightenment. That’s about it.

I finally got the scanner working. I had to go to storage to get a cable, diddle around with settings on the adapter-I finally had to disconnect the disk drive to get it recognized. Then came the driver hassles. I finally got the right driver, and it still doesn’t scan above 100dpi! rrrrr. No matter-it’s working and I’m up to the F’s. I picked up the Firefox update, Skype, which doesn’t work behind the firewall and IBM webtools for Eclipse.

It’s fun to connect with old alumni-I chatted with Roger Coy a bit. I also enjoy the search process in finding those who haven’t registered.

Another week gone-one week closer to death. Matt’s been asking about death recently-we’re not really hiding much about it from him, but he’s a little scared of the whole thing. We haven’t told him that his grandfather is going to die soon…

The past week: dinner at the Elephant Bar Fri., class sat., cleaned the house, church Sun., OWL, meeting to edit the church newsletter Weds., had lunch with Erika-we don’t do that much anymore. My 25th high school reunion is coming up-I’m trying to put together a website for it. Working through converting the entire site to xHtml. Tedious.

Bush appointed Negroponte (of Iran/Contra fame) to the DNI post. He didn’t get a chance in Iraq, and was prolly Chimpy’s alternate. If you approve of death squads, you’re probably OK for a post in the White House. If you’re a gay prostitute, you’re prolly OK for a press pass. It’s like entering some upside down, inside out parallel universe. Four years isn’t going to pass quickly enough. Pray to GOD that there’s some impeachable stuff that gets acted on.

Not much tech stuff going on-M$ still keeps releasing patches, denying that Linux is going to win, making software that will only work with the latest OS. SCO is going to be delisted from NASDAQ-their strategy isn’t working. Didn’t pick up any software-heads down on this 508 and other stuff.

Not much else. Interesting getting in touch with these people from my high school, putting together a webpage of “who I am now” Gotta go. Taking tomorrow off, and Monday is a holiday. I have to go to storage & get my scanner & the yearbook, Matt has a delayed birthday party Sat., and it’s raining.

Listening to Hawkwind’s “Space Ritual”. I originally lifted this from a friend in ’74 or so. I barely remember it-a fog of drugs blurs my memories of that past. No problem-I like it OK, but still prefer “Blows”-Hawkwind is a bit repetititititive-not as much as Glass, and it has that whole late 60’s-early 70’s English vibe. Not bad. I’m working on Section 508 accessibility, so I have the Narrator on-annoying, but instructive to see how blind people would hear things while using a computer.

OK, on to the last week: Sat was class, and we went to Long Beach to see the in-laws’ new place, and had dinner with friends. Church Sun., OWL, Matt scratched a neighbors’ car, and got in huge trouble for it. Picked up the kids on Weds., and worked late. Erika did some cleaning this week-good for her!

I read an interesting article by a right-leaning pundit-basically saying that the U.S. is heading towards fascism-something I’ve read elsewhere-hey, if Lemmy thinks so, there must be some grain of truth to it. The budget is DOA-Chimpy actually thought Congress would be OK with cutting a zillion programs…think again. And the new stuff from the 9/11 commission-that there was ample warning of what was going to happen-the foundation for many supports of the admin are crumbling before their eyes-no matter what the rightists say. And then there’s the Gannon/Guckert thing. I think what’s bothering me is that the White House doesn’t really care about the truth-only about what’s politically expedient. That’s what led Nixon down the primrose path to scandal and resignation. We’ll see over the next few months where this all leads-probably nowhere-the admin. has half the country brainwashed.

Fiorina left HP, IBM sold the PC unit to China, takeovers everywhere, oil going through the roof, interest rates slowly going up-guess it’s time to do my taxes. Picked up jBPM, Priado Blender, gsNotepad, AGC simulation software, IBM ability software. The agc stuff is pretty cool-basically the Apollo flight software. Some guy had built the actual hardware in his basement (took him 4 years!), which got me on the trail-it’s all in assembler. I also updated my website to have everything in Georgia, added a home link to the top toolbar, and made the index and toolbar images transparent. It looks nice. Now I have to switch to xHTML… Uck.

Valentine’s day is coming up-we’re going out to eat tonight.

January just flew by-I think it was because I was sick for a week. Or maybe it’s because I’m getting older and time starts to compress. No matter. Life goes on, my kids get older-Matt’s going to start kindergarten next fall! I move more towards something that I don’t quite know what it is yet. Sorta like the song “Something’s Coming” from West Side Story (I prefer the Utopia version, btw). Anyways, Friday is here, not much going on this weekend-class, church-we should get out and do something else too. Dunno yet.

The past week: we went to the Bowers museum Sat. It’s nice, but small. I bruised my right index finger palm joint playing drums at the Kidseum. Fun, but ouch. They had a singing rock and a replica of the Mayan burial slab from Palenque-I love that piece. There was an OWL pre-meeting at the MV UU church. Matt’s going to go every Sunday for an hour or so until May. Important stuff, that OWL. Check it out if you have kids-you will need to bring sex up at some point, and OWL is perfect for it. We visited a Waldorf school for Matt. It’s a charter school in the San Juan district. I like it-I wish I had gone there K-8 then to U.S. Absolutely the best of both worlds. Look into Waldorf if you’re trying to find a school. Much more wholistic, but be warned-there are issues, and I would hesitate sending my kids to a purist one-they delay reading and there’s some doctrinal teachings that I’m not really OK with. Having said that, I like the school-excited, smart teachers, a looser curriculum than the purists, but it’s a charter and they’ve moved 3 times in 5 years. We’ll see how it goes-only 25 spots available. Busy working on Section 508 stuff. I got an email from the ethno chick at Claremont-the gamelan group is full. <sigh>

State of the Union speech this week-again we didn’t watch, and watched the Daily show. Uck. So much to get upset about. The SS stuff is just the tip of the iceberg. Iraq, detainees, torture, propaganda, suppression, the list is endless. Bush supporters must be like the 3 monkeys, led by one as well. rrrr. I’m listening to “Blows Against the Empire”. “Say goodbye to Amerika, say hello to the garden.” Uplifting stuff. And I haven’t even got to side 2.

Not much on the computer side. I got my SCSI disk back-got a new ribbon cable, fiddled with the placement on the chain, fiddled with adapter settings and voila, it’s back! Picked up cubeshow but can’t use it b/c of my video problems, got an opensource drum machine, asterisk, magnolia, object caml, zope. Also the Solaris x86 Oracle 10g, but it won’t install on version 5.10. Oh well.

Imbolc was Weds. We didn’t do anything. I did a bitty thing. I need to dive into the GD lecture, but I’m reading Consilience and the kids eat up my time. Waldorf celebrates these festivals. Yay. I was thinking about what Paul Kantner writes about in Hijack “Only the sun knows what we really need to know/Only the sun holds the secret/And more than human can we be/Cause human’s truly locked/To this planetary circle” Maybe I should do the whole sun worship thing-it really is the center of all things on this circle. Without the sun we aren’t. I wonder if those secrets are accessible to man’s consciousness. The Sun is so vastly different than us.

The Super Bowl’s coming up-woo hoo. The only good thing is going to be a kite thing beforehand that the Gombergs are doing. I don’t like watching football or pretty much any other sport, I don’t care about the commercials, either. Ossie Davis died-he was pretty old. The Michael Jackson trial started-what a sad commentary on our culture when a molestation trial is bigger news than everything else. But after O.J. and all the other celebrity crap, what else is new? I wonder what the Sun thinks about this.

I was sick, sick, sick last week-no journaling, or pretty much anything else-I had strep throat-I’m taking antibiotics now-upset stomach seems to be the only side effect. Erika is sick as well-same thing I think, but she’s suffering more. The kids both have colds, but they didn’t get strep (I hope)-Erika started antibiotics yesterday, so we have until Friday or so until incubation is over.

So, what’s new, you ask? Again, as if anyone other than me reads this. It’s so isolating to write this and not hear from anyone. I hear about once a year or so from someone that read one of the essays, but that’s it. Switching over to GeoCities probably has an impact too-I was on freehomepage for long enough to get the spiders visiting regularly, but I have no idea how long it will take for the spiders to find me again, if they ever do. Whatever-this is more for me to keep a history rather than for other people…

I started using the journals I get with the One Spirit daybook. One is a dream journal, and one is for general writing and ideas. I also looked over the lists I keep, and purged unused idea sheets. Now to update things.

What I did: went to dinner with one of Erika’s group, new Pilates class-don’t like the guy as much as Dana, went to the Cube, got new shoes for the kids, ate a nice pizza in Rancho Sta. Margarita, get a fever Sun., Mon., Tue had a sore throat & swollen glands, went to the Dr. Wed & got antibiotics, off Thurs., work Fri., class Sat., went to my parents for Matt’s birthday, more Matt’s birthday on Sun. Erika’s sick now.

Johnny Carson died. Everyone’s talking about it. Aunt Phoebe died too. Erika said there was a third, but I don’t remember who. These all go in threes. Back to Carson. NPR did a snip on him, with a quote about how nice and smart and funny he was. Duh. You don’t last 30 years on television otherwise. The thing is that he started out on the Tonight show on ’62, when there was still a thing called civility and intelligence in TV, and it wasn’t just a quaint, antique concept. That and the Tonight show concept is still not stale. You only need to look at the Daily show to see that. Requiescat in pace.

Inauguaration last week-didn’t watch. Either did Erika. Dude just makes me grind my teeth. “Peaceful transfer of power” indeed! WTF does that mean? Transfer to who? It’s not like there’s anyone new… Shoulda watched the Daily show to get a laugh out of it…too sick though. Same thing will probably apply in Iraq-or should I say, “U.S. in the middle East”. There’s a good reason the rest of the world pronounces U.S. “you ass”. Did it during Vietnam-doing it now. The Connie Rice thing bugged me too-admitting no mistakes and condoning torture just don’t cut it. Her and Gonzales will get through anyways-no one can stop this. It’s bogus.

Not much tech stuff gleaned since I’ve been sick-tried to get a copy of Slackware-maybe tonight-big D/L. Got alloy-a modeling thing for Java.

I pulled out my copy of the “Golden Dawn”. Think I’ll start in again on the First Knowledge Lecture, the Lesser Ritual of the Pentagram, and the Neophyte Ritual. Basically that’s the four elements, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the ten Sephiroth, and the two rituals. The Pentagram ritual is pretty short-face the four directions, do a pentagram, vibrate and visualize the diety name and archangels at that place. I may start an essay giving all this info away, as the book is complicated-it should be simpler. I’d like to do the same thing with Pilates, as no one ever describes all the exercises in the original contrology book-I’d also like to make flash cards for both…helps for learning, and to put on the floor during a workout. I did find the set in real format.

Well, 2 weeks into the new year. I’ve been rather busy with work & stuff to write this. One of the problems with doing it at work…no worries-it’s not like anyone reads this.

So, the past 2 weeks have been: took New Year’s Eve off-I think we cleaned, I don’t remember. Went to a sober party in Mission Viejo-woo hoo. It’s been rainy, really rainy, if you’ve been paying attention to the news. We had some hail. Shopped with Erika, set up an 18G SCSI drive and it promptly died. rrrrr. Played guitar at church for the kids. Work, work, work. Kids, kids, kids. Moved my computer under my desk so it’s easier to load cd’s. Decommissioned my NeXTStation for now-I wasn’t using it for anything but storage and it was a bit of a pain. Starting Pilates on Sat. There’s a gamelan at Pomona college-Pak Wenten runs it. I emailed the ethno chick there to see if I could get in. Hoping… Since I’m not doing kites, Erika might let me do gamelan once a week.

I’m reading more-The Diamond Age, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, A Good Old-Fashioned Future. I really liked The Diamond Age. All nano-tech and plot. Do Androids… is what Blade Runner came from. It’s different enough that I like it and wasn’t bored b/c I knew the story. A Good Old-Fashioned Future was short stories, pretty good, but I like SF short stories. I’m starting to listen to the music I d/l’d in Dec. The Roots of Gamelan is good-scratchy, but good kebyar recorded at the dawn of kebyar.

How about that Ashlee Simpson? That was the big thing going around, how much she sucked at the Sugar Bowl. Well, I nosed around and finally found a copy of it on BitTorrent. It only took 3 hours to download on dialup. BitTorrent is pretty cool, BTW-once you download something, people start downloading from you. That’s OK if you’re on broadband, but not so good on dialup, so I cut it off. OK, back to Ashlee. First I had only seen the end, where she’s screaming off-key and the song ends and everybody’s booing. So I listen to the whole thing, and she’s not bad at the start, but she’s also not singing with the backing track very well either. By the end she’s all tired out and has no voice left. I wouldn’t have booed her, but it wasn’t very good either. So the blogs and comments are all over the map, and her defenders are pretty much all tweenage girls, who can’t reason for shit, so they can only say something along the lines of “we love you, you rock, no one understands”, which doesn’t help her case much at all. She really needs voice lessons and extended touring to improve-both of which aren’t going to happen. This stuff is all manufactured product anyways-there’s really no sweat and soul and passion in it. What bugs me is that there are so many really, really good people out there making music, in all genres (even the ones I don’t care for ;-), that fluff like this is popular and selling irks me to no end. Hell, even meeee, as an amateur musician with cheap equipment could do better given time to do it. If I had the resources she has, I have no doubt about it.

What other pop culture rants? Maybe I should start talking about that too, along with the politics, computer and religion stuff-something to think about for the new year-bouncing back and forth from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Nope, nothing. Onward, then.

Well, the administration has to admit that there are no WMD’s or chem/bio in Iraq. And Chimpy doesn’t apologize for it. Really. I mean really. No such thing as “the buck stops here” in this administration. He’s blaming bad intel. As if they didn’t ask for bad intel. rrrrr. And then there’s the impending gutting of Social Security, for no good reason other than his Wall Street buddies. And appointing the worst possible people-including a guy who’s on record as calling people “queers” and “radical feminists” doing domestic policy-like he’s going to have every single American in his interest. It’s neverending. What’s next? God help us.

Not picking up much software-the new Adobe Reader. woo hoo. Apple has a new cheap iPod and a cheap iMac in a box. Guess they’re (desperately) trying to expand their market…

A guy at work asked me what religion I was. I get this question from time to time, and for the longest time I had a hard time answering it. I suppose I could say I am a UU, but that’s like saying “I like ice cream”-a fine answer, but not really specific, as UU comes in a lot of different flavors. So I told him I’m a cross between a pagan, a buddhist and a ceremonial magician. Of course the latter generated questions, as not many people have heard of that (the Roman Catholic mass is ceremonial magic, BTW). So I gave him some places to get started-primarily the Golden Dawn. I also looked it up on the web and got back a few online books as well. I’m also thinking of breaking out the Regardie book and starting the GD stuff again (this is the 3rd time). As far as the pagan and Buddhist parts go, I think about the Sabbats when they come around, I respect the God and Goddess and the rulers of the 4 quarters and elements, and I hold to the tenets of the 4 noble truths and the Bodhisattvas, so I guess I’m OK there. It’s so hard to say, though, as I mash up these disparate belief systems, and try to come to terms with the Christian literalists and understand the Moslem fanatics. I don’t know, and say something smart and useful that will help other people grow spiritually?

The new year is upon us. Hope it’s better than the last one-personally it’s been pretty good, but in general not very.

The recap: went to a UUFLB circle supper on yule, took Thurs and Fri off-moved some stuff to storage, shopped with the kids, went to church and wrapped presents Christmas Eve, opened presents-I got a Namco TV joystick, both sets of parents came down for dinner, church and practice the song for Sunday, Monday off & purges the kids’ toys, rainy, messed up my elbow, went to the Dr.’s.Everyone is still reeling over the tsunami, and Chimpy pledging $35M. Pah. Give them as much as we gave hurricane victims this past summer. Social Security and taxes on the chopping block. Pah. Wait until those chickens come home to roost.

Picked up Litestep-a cool taskbar replacement-not enough time to play with it, though. Also Ampl, FitNesse, IsaDora and Private DiskLight.

Quiet because it’s between holidays. Happy new year.

Happy Yule! Today is the shortest day/longest night of the year. Light a candle to help the Sun through.

Not much posting lately-busy and not that interested, to be honest…

Here’s a wrapup: making a buncha music cd’s from eMusic, flew an indoor kite in the Seal Beach parade-super hard work, plus driving there on Friday night, it was rainy and I was sick, took a day off and cleaned out our outer closet, got our christmas tree, Erika’s first priestess died, I went on a commercial shoot for the Weather Channel-I was an extra, and wrangled kites-fell down on my elbow-had an endless drive back-it was in Calabasas, moved my in-laws to a new apt., super tired.

The commercial shoot was very interesting-the last filmic experience I had was for a PBS kids show called “Dragonfly TV”. It was small and pretty relaxed. This was a full shoot, with all the trappings-craft, lunch, trucks, real film, the whole hierarchy. For the extra bit, I stood on top of a hill with a few other people and they shot my butt. Woo hoo. Ten or so takes later, we sat down and waited. For anyone in the business, this is normal. Finally they had us all back to try to put up this big Indonesian train. There was no wind, so they had a fan. Anyone who flys kites knows that this is pretty much useless, especially with a train. They did a few shots of that, failing miserably but prolly OK for film, and then it was lunch-a good lunch. After lunch I wrangled kites, putting up two at a time. I fell down launching one and banged my elbow-it still hurts. They would film an extra or principal launching the kite, we would launch, and they would film the kite in the air. There were the inevitable snafus, as the other guy doing the kites wasn’t a top single line pilot, and would have difficulty with the more tricky kites. The wind ended up being light and variable. The other guy brought his daughter, and they flew dual lines as a pair. Again, they weren’t top-flight pilots, and crashed several times. I flew my zero wind deca on 12 foot lines, and had nary a problem. I think they filmed it a little, but I was concentrating on keeping the kite in the air. I actually got it into a nice stable backflip at the end, but had trouble getting it out, and gave up. They were on to another shot, and I called it a day. The drive back was really bad-it took me almost 3 hours to get home-it only took an hour and a half to get there. I’m having problems with my right hamstring when my leg is bent and in the same position for any amount of time, so I was in agony the whole way home. I got $250 for it, though, which pays for gas and a nice gift for Erika. I’ll put up a note when I find out when it airs.

What else? I’m SO done with politics, every bad thing just makes it worse. I’m just sick of it all.

I burned a bunch of CD’s, installed Solaris on my third server. I got a few versions of Oberon and Modula 3, some J2EE dev tools, the mapmaking tools for cartograms, Java struts and faces dev tools, Java source, a wiki and some pdfs.

Skipped last week-Thanksgiving. Not much went on-other than the usual Thanksgiving stuff.

Recap: took taichi instead of Pilates Sat. 11/20-sub wasn’t there. Took the boys to see Spongebob that afternoon. Setup a standalone Disney games bit on their computer-now they play that incessantly (my wife called, and one guess what the boys are doing right now… Last week: picked up some more eMusic albums-I have a few months worth of stuff to buy-at $10 a month it’s not bad to get 40 songs-that’s about 2-5 albums per month-$2-5 per album-not bad… Took Weds. off-went to L.B., had breakfast and shopped a bit. Thanksgiving-went to friends in L.B. for dinner-kids were great. My parents came over Fri., cleaned and went to see “Polar Express”. It’s a gorgeous movie. They still have a bit to go on the facial animation-things were flat and restricted-I think it has to do with limiting the amount of flex points. The faces need to be more mobile and detailed. They have to work on finding the optimal amount, size and placement of polygons to make the faces “come to life”. Don’t remember Sat.-no class, I think I just lazed around with the kids-my hip was acting up. Sun. I stayed home and cleaned the front bedroom and closet-we have mice so Erika is freaking out about cleanliness.

I’m still sick of politics-I finished Michael Moore’s first book and am working on the latest-if his polemics contain even a shred of truth, Chimpy has got to go, but half the country is marching in lockstep off the cliff, lemmings that they are. Nothing to do now but wait and see what happens, and maybe try to effect change at the midterms. Iran is next on the invasion checklist. Yuck.

I got some kOOl life programs, a copy of 7 zip, mapresso, JDK, Wiki and axis and working on a copy of GnuWin and Solaris 10. I love open Source. The problem is time, of course-I’ll put GnuWin on this computer so I can type Unix commands, and my last computer will get Solaris 10. The rest, who knows?

Another week passed. Woo hoo! Go me!

Do you get enthusiasm or cynicism from that? Whatever. How about from that?

I guess I’m tired of things right now.

The last week: had lunch with the kids on Fri., Pilates and helped out with a church dinner and saw the Stepford Wives on Sat., church and fun at home on Sun., and the usual week. I’m having problems with my hip-saw the Dr. yesterday-she gave me more pills. My hip still hurts-especially when I’ve been sitting and get up. One of the pills totally knocks me out-I took half and it helped a bit.

Politics still sucks-we’re mired in Iraq-the deficit is ballooning and Chimpy wants to cut taxes. I saw the Clinton library dedication this morning. No nutcases came out of the woodwork to blow it up… I got 2 of Michael Moore’s books out of the libe last night. Guy may rant, but he says some right on things.

I got a copy of Firebird, metakit and the map studio. I also picked up an Amiga emulator. Like I’ll have time to play with any of this. I may get to play with Eclipse more, though. That’s really the way to go.