Category: Blog

It’s Thursday-time for another entry. The once a week thing seems to be working fine-it doesn’t hurt that I don’t want to do anything right now…

Not much happened the past week: Thurs. dinner at the UUFLB RE teacher’s house for Ramadan, Pilates and a little tennis on Sat. (Erika’s not bad), church and lunch with Tracy and Hannah at the Rainforest Cafe-the food was totally late, and the usual workweek-working on graphics, icons, and a redesign. Erika got a new printer yesterday.

There’s been some fascinating work done with electoral maps this cycle. Ben Werschkul at the NY Times, Sara Fabrikant at UCSB, Mark Newman at UMich, Robert Vanderbei at Princeton, andSuresh Venkatasubramanian at AT&T Labs (I might find more, or not). Essentially people are taking the county by county tallies and trying to get a better look at how people voted. This is a useful exercise, and depending on the analysis, shows a few things.

There are four types of maps-first is the state by state you’re used to seeing.

This one is really useless, as all it shows is how the electoral college went-basically that Bush took the whole country except for the far West, the Northeast and most of the Great Lakes.

The second is a county by county breakdown, which is a bit more revealing-it shows that Democratic voting is clustered in largely urban areas, all over the country.

The third is the county by county, but shaded so that the actual vote tallies, red vs blue, run along a spectrum based on percent of red vs blue.

This is much, much more revealing, and shows that the actual vote counts of a narrow victory for Bush is true all over the country. There are very few places that weren’t fairly evenly divided Reps vs Dems. This makes for a purple map, rather than a red vs blue map.

Finally there’s the cartogram. This map has each county’s size changed to reflect the population of that county. This distorts the U.S. map to look something like some odd bird or a fish.

This one takes a bit of getting used to-it’s like the world maps that the “State of the World Atlas” did. Once unraveled, this view makes it much clearer to see how the U.S. is leaning. It highlights the fact that urban areas are much more left leaning, and the hardcore rightists live mostly in areas with smaller populations. Since urbanization is continuing, and rural areas lose population, the rightward drift can’t continue forever. Since it’s basically driven by fear anyways, and the Christian Right, their numbers will dwindle over time. The problem is that right now they’re strong, and are working really hard to consolidate their power. We’ll see-I like that Ashcroft has left, but the new guy doesn’t seem much better, three Supremes are going to be next-that’s going to be SO ugly. I’m still worried by the Dominionist thing-hopefully things won’t go their way-what with DeLay’s problems, and maybe more moderates will wake up and realize what’s going on. It just irks me that people can vote for this administration with all the bad things they’ve done. I guess they’re closing their eyes to it. The Dems need to think hard about how to court those moderates, and before midterms. There’s been reports of problems with voting, but in some respects this goes on all the time-now it’s just more prominent. I did hear that one state is going to recount, and I learned that Kerry’s concession speech means nothing legally.

Arafat died. Hopefully this will shake things up a bit, without too much violence. They really need to stop it. I learned a new term-Judaized Christians-means Israel right or wrong. Check out “We hold these Truths”-dude’s a bit of a paranoid Christian nutjob, but says some interesting things.

I picked up the new copy of Firefox-much better than aieeeee. I like the add-ons too. I also picked up some code to set up a Beowulf cluster, and Icon, which I haven’t seen in awhile, and a mapping program. I also got a copy of SuSE Linux in the mail, which is kOOl, because it doesn’t come on CDs for the regular version-I’ll use it as a base to make a CD version…

Gotta go to lunch-see you next week…

Another week flying by-I took Monday so that helps too.

And the big news-Kerry lost the election. It was close, just as in 2000-Ohio was the deciding state, though. rrrrr. Erika’s sad and sick about it. “Welcome to Redneck Nation/Jesusland”. Bob Harris said some good things about it.

So, since last week-I took Fri and Mon off-and got promptly got sick-100 temp and tired, sore throat. Didn’t go to class. Saw a baby Dr. on Fri. We went to my parents on Sat. & had a nice dinner. Trick or treating at Belmont Shore on Sun. Went to the Dr. on Monday. Erika’s birthday is today-we’re going to a dinner.

I don’t really want to talk about politics-tired of the subject. I’m reading the Daily Show book. Everyone is saying to buck up and organize. {sigh}

I got an update to Squeak, and mythTV. That looks cool-a TIVO on a Linux box… I also got some good management type docs.

Gotta go-gotta move some $$$ and get home for the dinner.

I normally don’t post more than once a week, but this article is chilling-it’s from Amnesty International and it goes into how the U.S is behaving in regards to torture and how AI says it should be repaired: http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR511452004. Read this. All of it. The kind of stuff the Bush administration is doing is why the rest of the world hates us, and why there are people who want to kill us, too. (Admittedly, the folks who want us dead is a pretty small number, but when you’re willing to die for your cause it sure makes up for being a little guy.)

It was rainy the past few days, but nice now. We need the rain, and although it’s a record for October, it’s still less than is needed to make the drought go away. Not much else-it’s Halloween this weekend-the kids have costumes and Erika is making hers-I’ve got my “costume” tshirt… We’re going to my parents on Sat., maybe see a movie and have dinner for our anniversary, Erika’s parents on Sun. for trick-or-treating. I still have to get another present and get the kids’ ones for Erika too. I’m taking tomorrow and Monday off, so it’ll be a little easier, even though we have a Dr’s app’t Friday afternoon. c’ya! Happy Samhain!

Here it is, Tuesday. I forgot to do this last week. I moved to GeoCities-they have less intrusive popups. Now I have to wait for the spiders to pick me up again. I left a redirect on the main page-that should pick some up.

The last 2 weeks: got my car smogged-and the new tag yesterday. Quick. We shopped for Halloween costumes, ate dinner at Peppinos-I had leftover pizza for 3 days! It’s been rainy here-heavy at times, and raining again tonight. Finishing up the questionnaire, revamped the UUFLB website-Erika disapproved of me doing it. We were going to go to a Guinness World Record kite thing in Long Beach, but Colin had a temp. Instead we went to a kid’s thing at the OC fairgrounds-rides and stuff. Shopped for Erika’s birthday and anniversary-we’ve been married 6 years next week! Erika has our minister’s son today. Thinking about going to Pilates class tonight…but I think Erika will be way tired… One of the guys I went to school with has updated his website-go visit it: http://www.bobharris.com. He’s pretty funny, and smart, too.

Well, we’re winding down to the end of the presidential campaign…It’s been ugly and very close, even now. All I can say is that the facts really do speak for themselves. If you’re undecided, read these articles: (thanx, Garry Trudeau)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/09/10/conservatives/index/index_np1.html

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=72659

http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44657

http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2004/08/19/letters/doc412532f09fbbe438621096.txt

http://www.iconoclast-texas.com/Columns/Editorial/editorial39.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38030-2003Jul23.html

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20041108&s=facts

After reading those, even the staunchest Bush supporter should have doubts and be questioning this administration. But questioning things is something not allowed in the conservative universe, so, what can you do? The polls are as tight as in 2000-no matter who wins, this is going to the courts. Maybe we’ll move to Halifax, I can keep my job at Quest…

I picked up some sound software. My wife bought some pants and got 100 free downloads at eMusic.com. I’ve snagged 50 so far, the rest are hers. Problem is that the download manager they give you sucks-one of the downloads worked-I switched to regular html downloading and it works fine-crappy software…There’s a bunch more music I’d like to d/l, but I don’t really want to pay…We’ll see.

End of the week. I’m tired-but it might be the pizza I ate…or not. Dreams, dreams, dreams.

Not much happening-I have to get the car smogged-yippee! Erika had meetings last week, I went to Fry’s on Friday, Pilates and the Harvest festival on Sat, church and the park on Sun. I finally filed all my cd’s. We got the “great parents” award at school. I’ve been trying to do Pilates a few times a week. Boy, do I live an exciting life!!!

What a mess this election cycle is-the idiotic non-debates-smirky and snarly, big jaw and haircut. The thing with the gay daughter, the thing with throwing out voter registration forms. Whatta joke. I’m moving to Ireland. No problem to keep this going there, and finding a good job shouldn’t be a problem either.

I got JBoss and the new Google desktop search. Also ldap and some lisp stuff. I also found a kOOl online RPG called the Kingdom of Loathing. I found a decent TCL tutorial online-it’s like Lisp, sort of. I also found a neat book called “The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs”. Looks complex, but worthwhile.

October is here. Woo hoo-at least it ends with Samhain…that’s something. We’re planning to do a thing at the Circle Supper…Not much else going on.

The last week: we saw “Ladder 49” on Friday, OK, but a bit cliched. The subwoofers got a good workout, though. Erika went to a conference at UCLA Sat., we went to the cube, but it closed early, so we went for ice cream at the Spectrum. Sunday was church, we took a chick from one of Erika’s groups, had lunch at the Spectrum, and napped. The week has been normal-not much to say-working on the QC audit writeup, starting in on a GLBT church questionnaire.

So, the first set of “debates” is over. What did we learn? Chimpy is pretty smirky, and has trouble finding the right words-“those folks” indeed! Kerry did pretty well, Edwards did pretty well, Cheney is pretty snarly. We’ll see if these mean anything-I have seen a bit of a bump in the vote predictor, but not enough to make Kerry president. Domestic policy is next on the plate, and Bush is really vulnerable there. I filled out the sample ballot-the 3 strikes and casino initiatives forced me to read the actual text of the legislation. ack. Here’s a good way to pick out people when there’s no party affiliation and no bio: first pick women, then the non-incumbent, then the one with the most liberal-type job.

Mount St. Helens is acting up, and I have a link to a webcam-click here. This could take awhile to turn into something interesting. Right now it’s just foggy, but the cam hasn’t updated since 11 (it’s 1 now)-the webmaster just said that there’s a connection failure…

I picked up FireFox yesterday-just don’t trust aieeee-M$ isn’t updating it for non-XP users anymore. We’ll see how long that lasts… I got a PHP book out of the libe-I’ve read Python, Perl and now PHP. Perl looks like the odd man out here… Apache just picked up Agila, a BPM server engine from Cloudscape. Open source is just getting better and better. You can do anything you want with free software (except get support-you have to go to Usenet for that).

{sigh} I’m tired. I need out. We’ve been talking about moving to Canada, Ireland, France. This whole Dominionist stuff is bad, bad, bad. It’s a classic case of “They came for them, I didn’t stand up, who will stand up when they come for me?” Go to the link below if you haven’t already. If you’re a conservative and not a fundamentalist Christian, you’re out. No kidding.

Anyways, here’s how the week went: dinner with wife on Friday, made up a tshirt for our minister, went to my parent’s and the Huntington Library, had a play day at work Weds. I came in second in a few events-it was fun. Got to fly the Synergy too.

Debates are tonight, if you can call them that-basically a joint press conference. Analysts are saying this could turn things either way. The electoral vote predictor gives it to dubya right now, but it’s still in the weak category, which means within the realm of statistical variation. The next few days might be telling, depending on how the debate goes, and if either candidate either blows it or does well. It may also come down to media and handler’s spin. We’ll see.

Sun just released Java 2 v1.5. I also picked up FlexWiki, the Eclipse Visual Editor and db.*. The Java has some stuff in it that might slow down J2EE…Dunno why Sun did that.

Not much going on-I’m working on getting the QC audit up on the website. {yawn}

The Seal Beach kite festival was last weekend. Fun, but windy. I broke a line. Me & Erika were butting heads a bit too. Stress, mostly. We stayed at a hotel Sat. night, which was nice. Friday we saw Office Space at work and I won the DVD! Woo hoo! Go me!

You need to go here http://www.theocracywatch.org right now and read all of it. Do not stop, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Go there immediately. It outlines the Dominionist radical Christian right’s plans to make America a theocracy. Troubling stuff. I keep reading and get more and more scared that I will no longer have a home in the U.S. If Bush is elected in November, I will definitely plan to move to Canada. This is outright fear. I had the same fears in the wake of Patriot II, but that went nowhere so I backed off. Reading this, those fears are back, and worse. These guys are trying to change the fundamental structure of the government. That puts me on the wrong side of things, and I have no idea what happens then. Do I go to jail for practicing a non-Christian religion? Do I get discriminated against, disenfranchised, executed? It’s some scary shit.

Here’s another week-mid September. Time continues to march-last week was short, so it was a bit odd. I have a small consulting gig right now-hasn’t really started up yet, but I’ll get paid in equity, so if it explodes I’m a rich guy. One can only wish.

Saturday was Pilates-tough workout. I got the book, and have the entire original mat sequence. The class is a bit different than what’s in the book. I’m not sure which I’m going to follow yet. I like the class, but the original mat exercises are very difficult and might be more beneficial if I’m careful about not doing the bits that are injurious. The dude was convinced that his system was perfect and everyone else was wrong.

Cleaned the house, had a babysitter and went to a UUFLB circle supper at the top of Laguna Beach. Very nice. Sunday was church and strolling along the beach. The week has been the usual-work, home. I’m getting up earlier because the kids are doing half days at school and we have to get them there earlier.

Been watching the hurricanes-I hope Cayman got through it-I used to live there, and experienced Gilbert, so I know from hurricanes. This sequence has been memorable-bang, bang, bang and another on the way. It must be global warming, and if not, a hundred year season. But we’ve been having hundred and 500 and thousand year events in a lot of weather categories… Makes you think-these should be essentially random, right? Anyways, Bush has been really bad for the environment, Clinton has been OK, poppy and Raygun were bad, Carter was good, Nixon was great-clean air and water! Just goes to show that he wasn’t all bad. The big problem, as always, is that big business doesn’t care about the environment until it comes to call at their doorstep, and then they try to shoo it away. But things like Valdez and Bhopal don’t go away. We really need to make the non-tangible costs of pollution and environmental destruction tangible. That’d get their attention. Quick. Won’t happen, though-the lobbies and the money is way, way, WAY too deep into the political process. With Bush it’s transparent, that’s why we notice it. The core problem is the 1886 Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company non-ruling and the subsequent ones that make corporations have the same rights as people. Take that away, and reverse the rulings that depend on it and we might have a chance. Corps are going to fight it TOOTH and NAIL. Worth a try, though.

Not much going on-Iraq just keeps getting worse and worse, the presidential race is useless, and neither candidate wants to say anything to alienate any voters-this election is going to hinge on how well each party gets out the vote in the battleground states and whether there’s some disastrous news in the run up to the election. The electorate is so polarized that not a lot is going to tip the balance either way.

I saw Bowling for Columbine last night (well part of it anyways). Moore is so good at making things real-the camera work makes you feel like you’re in the room with him. I hope he puts out F911 out soon. He says that it changes people’s minds. Dunno if that’s hyperbole or not-if so and enough people see it before the election it might have an effect.

Eclipse is getting bigger and bigger-everywhere I turn someone is making a plugin for Eclipse. I don’t have the time to work with it, but I am familiar with it and would come up to speed quickly if need be. I got a few books at the library in the last week-Python and Perl. Python is very C-like and Perl is sorta Basic like. I have no idea if I’ll ever do anything with them, but they’re nice to know. Next is PHP, C#, UML after that. I’m trying to get ramped up with web and modern languages. This stuff is the future, and I’m also getting some of the new modeling stuff as well-people are moving towards the LAMP stack, with Eclipse on the dev end, and a thin client on the front end-basically a web browser. I could see Eclipse being used as a front end as well…

The Seal Beach Kite Festival is this Sunday (9/19). If you live in Southern California, stop by. I’ll be there, and it’s going to be a lot of fun-big kites, Taiko drummers, trick kite demonstrations, candy drops, mass ascensions, etc. By the pier. Please come if you can.

{sigh}

I’m tired today-maybe it’s Matt getting me up at 6:45-I need that extra half hour. Maybe it was him waking me up to sleep next to, maybe it’s just that I’m generally more tired. I don’t know. I’m hoping Pilates will get me into better shape and make me less tired.

So, since last week, I’ve…taken Friday off-cleaned up storage a bit, went to the Harvest festival in Long Beach, had a nice Italian dinner, went to class-was sore!, went to Long Beach for my mother-in-law’s birthday, got to fly my Synergy for a bit, went to Chuck-E-Cheese & McDonald’s on Monday, day off Tuesday, but I went in to do a quickie demo & failed to get everything done in time, went shopping and to the library, and that’s it.

I don’t know what to talk about-politics is so far beyond the pale, what with Zell Miller’s toxic hate-filled ranting and the NYC protest crackdown-and there’s not much going on with computers-I decided not to get a Palm-I’m really not going to use it-not really, but $27 is a hard price to resist…I did, though. I’d still like to get a MP3 player-the one I have is 16Mb only and requires Win98 to download stuff! Oh well. Not much else-busy trying to get Rep Mon & 3 SharePlex instances working for a demo. Do you like the cute cursor image? I found an easy JavaScript for it…

Mid-week. Labor day-Friday & Tuesday off. We decided not to go anywhere & instead stay in Seal Beach the Sat. before the festival on Sep. 19. Erika has a girl parts scan on Friday, so I get to take the kids to school. They’re changing schedule next week-1/2 days only, less $$$. I’m so out of money that this is a good thing, it’s about $50 less. We went to a First Nations fest on Sat. at the OC fairgrounds-they had some neat stuff, but I didn’t get anything, even though I wanted to. I also went to Pilates on Sat. AM-it was short-we learned the Hundreds and that’s it. I was a bit sore on Sun. but not much. Seal Beach Kite Festival coming up-9/19…

This week is the GOP convention-we’re ignoring it, though Erika is watching the Daily Show as the least objectionable presentation. I agree with that, but I dislike the conservative POV so much that it still bugs me, even though Stewart is making fun of them. It’s such a sham, they try to say hey, we’re nice guys, when their actions are speaking so much louder than their words.

Apple just came out with a new iMac. It’s pretty cool, but looks a lot like the same thing on the PC side, except in white (monitor only, all the HW behind the flat screen). I’m looking for a cheap iPod-eBay has 2, but they’re still a few days away from the end of the auction, so they’re still underpriced. We’ll see. I also saw some plans for converting an xBox into a Linux PC-a neat idea-a computer for $150…I’m thinking about getting a cheap Palm-they had ’em at Fry’s for $35, I’m not sure if I need one yet-I stopped using my Newton, but the Palm is a good price and form factor…but most of my stuff is in my One Spirit Book of Days, which works fine (bulky, but fine)-I’d need to put it in my license plate purse…Then I could get rid of my bookbag…We’ll see.

Well, Labor Day is rearing it’s head, summer is over, and another year is sliding slowly away. I’m still young enough that a year is still a long time. We went bowling over the weekend-the kids enjoyed it. It’s been awfully nice here-usually by this time it’s hot, but not this year.

(Thursday) Not much going on-working through the main QC audit doc filling in verbiage for each of my findings, waiting to see when I can do more FST stuff. Erika is taking yoga classes, the kids are in school, I start Pilates class on Saturday. We’re planning to go to Palm Springs over Labor Day-I’m taking Friday & Tuesday off.

Not much going on-working on the final QC audit general guidelines, I added Section 508 compliance rules. FST is on slow right now-I’m waiting to see what they decide to do and then I’ll work on that some more.

I got sick over the weekend and lost my voice-stayed home Monday. Went to a friend’s kids birthday party Saturday.

Watching the Olympics-the opening ceremony was really kOOl-they’ve done some other cool things as well-having an event at Olympia, NBC actually showing niche events like badminton, judo, rifle, etc. is pretty neat too.

It’s Wednesday-a bit of a quiet day. I’m working on the general recommendations for QC. I’m attending several online seminars as well. Kids are fine, but Erika is having a bit of a bad patch-she had some abdominal pain Saturday and spent the day at the ER-they didn’t find anything. rrrrr. Then she got an infection yesterday and got a bunch of antibiotics. I updated my webpage-can you tell?

I read in interesting survey about webpage design-mostly to do with blogs and layout and usage of various HTML features-of which I use none. I guess that’s because this website was designed in ’95, basically at the infancy of the web, and I don’t feel that updating it to use CSS and XHTML is worthwhile. For new sites, yes. For businesses, yes. For a bitty personal site that has some pictures, essays and a blog, no. If I started it today, I probably would, just to make it a bit more maintainable. It would’ve been easier to implement the header and footer changes if I had them in the CSS…No matter.

I got a copy of Bricolage and a beta of Cloudscape/Derby. Like I’ll have any time to play around with them.

Not a lot else-time to go into a phone meeting.

I actually got to this in a week! Go me! Not much happening-work, kids. I’m actually getting into the pool and swimming-it’s the only workout I can do-if I go to the gym the kids want to come and I can’t take time off-this is basically the story of my life-no time to get anything done because I’m either at work or with the kids. Not that I mind, but it would be nice once in a while. So, we had a nice French dinner on my birthday-Erika got me nice diamond earrings, but took them back because they weren’t screw on. I have a pair of opal ones I got in Australia that I don’t wear for the same reason. Anyways, we dropped the kids off at one of their teachers, and drove around looking for a nice place to eat. Finally we ended up at San Juan Capistrano, walked around and had a nice dinner of rabbit and duck. Saturday we went to the Orange County fair, took Erika’s mom-she stayed overnight-boy were we tired! So we went to Long Beach for church on Sunday to see our friend Denise talk. Then we went to lunch at the Pike and got really bad service. And that’s the past week. Yippee!

Not much else going on. Trying to think of ways to get money-I need ca$h-I’ll be running out soon.

Not much going on politically-Bush and Kerry are trying to gain voters, and the polls are still running Kerry’s way, but it’s all going to come down to a few thousand people in a few states, so that’s what both candidates are focusing all their time, money and effort on. It makes for a campaign that panders to those people in a mad rush to what they’re interested in. Issues and policy don’t have a lot of importance in a campaign like that.

I got a copy of Ingres, and am looking forward to Cloudscape-everyone is running towards open source as fast as they can. I don’t mind-I like to collect software anyways. I think this means working on Ingres and Cloudscape software…We’ll see-Erika is bringing lunch so I’d better go.

End of July, my birthday today-I’m 43. Woo-hoo. Not much going on-Erika and I are going out to dinner tonight.

Not much is happening-I’m down to twice a month on this… So, the journal sez…7/17-Saturday, we went to Pasadena for KidsCity at the Rose Bowl-hot & crowded, back to my parents & swam in the pool. Colin was sick the next week-they both are trying to get out of school by saying they’re sick. took the 22 & 23rd off the go through storage & purge things to take to a church garage sale-got rid of my NordicTrack and Ampeg SVT-50 cab 🙁 We also went to the Sawdust festival on Friday. Sunday was the Redondo Beach kite festival-we stayed at the Marriott on Saturday to make the day easier. We swam & ate at the mall there. The fest was good-I nailed my demo-even though I haven’t flown it since last year. I’m starting to actually go swimming and doing water aerobics to improve my shape in prep for Pilates class. I broke the rear latch on Erika’s car-we had it fixed, as well as a few other things-it came to $1,000. Ouch. Erika teased me on Tuesday night & I got really mad-I was just like in grade school being tormented by bullies-she didn’t understand. Not much else.

Well, the Democratic convention is over. Big whoop. Kerry actually did pretty well with the acceptance speech, but that Odama, he’s someone to look out for in the future. The polls are running pretty tight for Kerry-the solid states don’t change much on either side, but the swing states are totally up for grabs-Kerry’s stuff about helping manufacturing and outsourcing and healthcare might do the trick, especially if he can drive that message home and Bush doesn’t. He really is vulnerable on those issues. I read an interesting article on fracture points in either party-the GOP does a good job of hitting them for the Dems, but the Dems don’t, and the GOP definitely has some weak points where the Dems can slice some voters off. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. I’m convinced that my vote doesn’t count-California is pretty solidly Democratic…I’ll just vote & sit and watch it play out. I really don’t want the ugliness of 2000 again, but if it’s that close, that’s what’s going to happen.

I just downloaded a prototype of Looking Glass from Sun-it needs Linux, so I’m going to have to free up a computer somewhere. It looks amazing-you can tilt windows and make them partially transparent. I also got a copy of machinima, which is a toolkit of making animation using Quake II. Now if I can find some time to play with it… I also got a copy of Blender, which is open source 3d drawing. And the new version of Eclipse, and Beehive, and IBM’s interface builder. Open source ROCKS! Who knows if I’ll ever get enough time to use all this stuff, though

Well, it’s mid-July. I’ve been rather busy, so I haven’t had a chance to write this for awhile-I doesn’t help that I do it at work, where I have to squeeze it inbetween regular work tasks-usually it stays open while I work on other things, then I forget about it, then it’s time to go home. I wouldn’t be able to do it at home for the same reason, though, so the point is a bit moot…

Lessee, what’s happened since the last round? (I’m glad I keep a journal, otherwise this would be tough, like counting strokes in golf after finishing a hole). Erika spent the 24th in Long Beach for UU GA, she loooved it. So much so that she’s thinking of going into the ministry-she spoke at church last week…everyone liked it. I get to play guitar there this Sunday… We spent that Friday afternoon at an office party at a park in Irvine-I got to fly my kites a bit-people complimented me on it. We went to Sunday service that weekend at GA as well-a lot of people. We took apart the bunk bed in the kids’ room to prep for Erika’s folks coming down. July 1st some guy crashed his car into the fence around our complex. I’ve been waiting for some kind of crash here-people go really fast and it’s a bit of a blind curve as you come over the top of the hill, especially if you’re going fast. Erika’s parents spent the weekend of the 4th-Erika fixed up the room, we got a comfy chair and turned on cable inthere. Erika got sick last week-she took a bunch of antibiotics, we went and got an ultrasound and she had a ruptured ovarian cyst. Ouch. They gave her drugs. We didn’t go to Seal Beach to fly kites. That’s about it. I decided to only take Pilates for the fall semester-Erika wants to take some counseling courses. She also wants to figure out what to do about the ministry bit… The kids are swimming a lot. Colin is feeling more confident in open water, and Matt is working on taking the arm floats off and swimming. I don’t particularly want to swim, so I just stand around and help them out.

I’ve been thinking about the whole digital convergence thing lately. I also read an article by this chick who’s complaining about juggling several handheld devices. So, I came up with a feature list for a phone/computer. It also has a docking station, so you can hook it up to a keyboard/video/mouse, with networking and ports. I’d also like to see the docking station be a base station, so you can hook it up to a phone line and it works like a normal cordless phone. Most people only use their computer for what? Email, web, writing docs. They use their PDA for what? Addresses, calendar, notes. Their phone? Voice, phone book; calendar and camera in new phones. The jump to a phone/PDA is really already here, the jump to a more generalized handheld computer isn’t that far. The limiting factors are display size, input modalities and battery life. Display size is coming, batteries will follow with fuel cells, input modalities need work-you can’t really use a mouse, keyboards are cumbersome, and Graffiti and stylii aren’t the answer. Kids are really good at 10 key alphabet and the simple thumb rocker are OK, but I don’t really want to mess with 10-key. I think it’s going to take a revolution in voice input for this to really work. VR glasses might be good too.

Politics-there’s a cool website that tracks the polls for electoral votes. Right now Kerry is ahead, but a lot of his wins are in swing states. The country is so evenly divided that this is going to come down to a Florida situation again. That’s going to be ugly. I’m bugged by the concept of all this ugliness-the problem is that the people who want to hold elected office aren’t the ones we really want in there-the money and power are just so corrosive and it’s such a nasty process. No one is a gentleman (or woman) anymore, but I guess that reflects the electorate as well-no one pays attention unless there’s shouting or the equivalent. I guess the aphorism about the people getting the government they deserve is coming true in spades. Yuck. Makes me want to move to a tiny desert island where the only government is a tribal chief who just has to resolve disputes between tribesmen. Problem with that is that they have the “other people” problem. Well, I guess you trade one icky situation for another. Maybe Bali is better-the people are peaceful and happy, the land is lush and fertile, and the government, well, the government is corrupt and repressive, but far away. It might be that anywhere you go, it’s different, but really the same. Until everyone has gotten over their attachments, I don’t think there’s any good chance for a true peaceful society. We had a chance, but in the transition from provincialism, agrarianism and industrial society to post-industrial society we forgot that separation and fragmentation breeds tribalism and the “other people” problem. OK, if everyone is like me, then the problem is solved! heh. Time for evolution to try something else.

A bit late this time-last week was not that busy, but I didn’t have the time to write anything.

So, not a lot going on-I’m finishing up the UI audit, the UU General Assembly is this weekend, and next weekend is the 4th of July-Erika’s parents are coming down to get away from the insanity of Bayshore drive on the 4th.

I took Friday the 11th off-moved a bunch of stuff from a closet in the house to our storage. After that me & Erika went to see Harry Potter without the kids-yay! It was good-we’ll probably get it for the kids when it comes out. I made sweet & sour pork for the first time in YEARS-Erika loved it, except for the tomatoes…

Sunday the 13th was kite club at the beach-I didn’t take vids, tho’ I was flying better. Steve LaPorte was there with a stack and a new quadline that he wants to be convertible to single line. Erika got very sunburned.

Last week was quiet too-Matt has a temp on Thurs so he stayed home, we went to a wedding on Sat. and visited Erika’s parents on Father’s Day.

And today is the solstice. (actually yesterday at 6) We’re not going to do anything, even though we should. Maybe just a quick prayer to the lord and the lady for a good summer, and thanks to them and to the elements/directions for all they do for us, and maybe a candle and some incense.

And I really want a bocce ball set. Am I getting old or what? We also got the catalog for Saddleback College and I’m planning to take Tai Chi again and I’m thinking about Pilates… Since we’re going to be here for at least another year, it seems like a good idea.

Here it is, another Thursday. Not much going on-Erika’s spending the whole day watching people file by Raygun’s casket in D.C. Exciting.

I was playing with the kids last week and messed up my back again. I went to the Dr’s and got some nice pills that make me sleepy. I took Thursday off and slept. Damn things made me groggy for 2 days.

Went to my parents on Sat. Swam. The kids like it, but it’s such a long drive. They’re going to Europe for a month.

Erika’s dad had his first chemo on Tuesday. Erika picked him up. She called later and he was feeling OK. Let’s hope that continues through this first course. Next is radiation. We don’t think they’ll operate unless things start looking operable.

All this Reagan tribute stuff is such a exercise in soft filtering and misty wanna-call-em-memories. The dude was so not Mr. Perfect. The contra thing, Sandinistas, his inaction on AIDS, Reaganomics, massive deficits, supplying chemical weapons to Iraq and arms to Iran, Star Wars, Grenada, his confusion of movies with reality (and all the other senior moments), the October surprise fer chrissakes! Dude didn’t care about the poor, blacks, or basically anyone outside of his circle unless actually confronted with it. I will give him credit-he was a master of television, he had a folksy aura that people connected with, he wasn’t wishy-washy, he had a Teflon back. At least Democracy Now is looking at these things…

I’m taking tomorrow off-we’re going to clean out local storage and put it in longer storage and see Harry Potter without the kids. Sunday is kite club Sunday. And on and on.

A bit early posting this week-not much going on so I decided to get to this…

It’s June, and I’m feeling a bit sluggish. Yesterday was Memorial Day, and it might be because it was holiday… We’ll see.

So I went to the Discovery Science Center with Colin on Saturday-Matt was at a birthday party-at a bouncy playground. We had a great time-I wish it was bigger, like the Exploratorium.

Sunday was church-an interesting guy spoke, but some guy from across the street, bible-toting, said some things about the member who died this week, then started in on the usual born-again shit about accepting Jesus. He finally was stopped by the service leader, but I was ready to bounce his ass. That stuff is just not OK. It seems that some born-again Christians, for some odd reason, are compelled to do this whenever and wherever they can, with complete disregard to propriety and respect. It irks me-and in so many ways is exactly the same thing that our fearless leader is doing-absolute certainty that everything he believes is absolutely true, with no respect for and tolerance of differing viewpoints. He doesn’t even hear them-and I don’t bother trying because I know it will do no good. I did pull out my pentagram as I walked by him, though.

We had some friends over Sunday as well for barbecue and swimming. Monday was lazy-we went to see Shrek 2 in the afternoon. It was OK I guess, a pleasant diversion. The boys enjoyed it, even though we had to sit apart. We thought about taking them to a memorial at one of the local cemeteries, but we decided they were still a bit young for that.

Erika has to take her Dad to treatment today-I get to pick the boys up. He’s not feeling well-he has cancer and is starting chemo and radiation soon. It’s in stage 2b, which is hopeful. We’ll see…a lifetime of smoking and drinking is finally taking its toll.