Year: 2005

Whew! That went by quick. A busy weekend, busy week. Hopefully I’ll get to sleep in tomorrow. We’ll see…

“And now, the week in review” Got my kite stuff out of storage, circle supper Friday with new families, Erika had to supervise the youth group, Jonah came over Saturday, we swam and made pizza. Erika got her mom and she stayed over. We went to the poker night in Emerald Bay. The dude had a zillion dollar house. We all got 100 chips and I promptly burned through mine trying to get other people to fold. I walked around, ate, got another 100 chips from a guy at the craps table, lost a little there, went back to poker, got another 100 chips, and proceeded to win. I took out an old lady in head to head and ended up with 850 chips. We changed them in for raffle tickets and didn’t win a thing. So what else is new… Sunday was the Seal Beach Kite Festival. Took Erika’s mom and the boys. Our tent is broken, so it took me awhile to put it up. Boys played, I did demos at noon, 2 and 4. Spark, the Ice Age thing and a mystery-I think it was Berlin… Everyone likes the Spark one. Tracy, Hannah, Darryl and Jessica stopped by & watched the 2 PM demo. Me & the boys ate, ran around, they got soaked, got some candy in the drop. We got our picture in the paper! (OC Register) We left, came home, showered and went to bed. We finally got the OK to ship backpacks to Houston, watched the boys Weds. for Erika’s Dr.’s visit. Went to a meeting in the new office-it’s nice. Had to leave early Thurs.-Erika’s dad has pneumonia and Erika drove him and mom there, with Colin, so I had to go pick up Colin and get Matt at school. We swam and there was a birthday party at the pool. An Elvis showed up-uck-young guy in the jumpsuit. It brought the whole “you’re either an Elvis person or a Beatles person” thing. I am so neither.

OK, here’s the news. DeLay got indicted-about time. He loudly proclaimed his innocence and attacked the prosecutor. Whatever. He has to step down as leader. Well, it’s about time. You have no leeway as a bigshot, and he figured he was above the rules. Same thing applies to Frist and insider trading. These guys are power-mad. The almighty dollar rules.

Japanese scientists got pictures of a giant squid, alive. Amazing photos-the tentacles are huge. And it was a small one. Cool stuff-they’ve wanted pics for a long time.

Rita missed Houston, flattened where it landed. More evidence of climate change. It did change direction at the last minute, but the small towns were 80% wiped out. More bad for that area, but not as bad as New Orleans. Etan Thomas (a basketball player) gave a blistering speech at the Saturday peace rally in DC.

Check this study out-it shows that the U.S., as the most religious developed society has the most societal problems. It’s still preliminary, and I question the level of correlation between religious belief and some of these issues-poverty and racial inequality seem more tightly correlated to violent crime, suicide was inconclusive, but std’s and teen pregnancy seem plausible given the recent stats showing no difference between teens taking abstinence oaths and ones who don’t. Though you could lay that at the media’s doorstep too…

the iPod Nano is getting cracked screens. Oops-I wonder if they did any tests before they shipped?

The fires in West L.A. county are still burning-smoky-one in Riverside is on 50 year old growth. It’s been hot and windy. Prime fire weather. Plus the heavy rains this spring. Not many buildings, though-people who live here know what to do…

Here’s the kicker: Bill Bennett has jammed his foot so far into his mouth you can see shoe leather out his ass. He said that aborting black babies would reduce crime. Ouch. Double ouch. Oops-I’ll bet he wished he could take THAT back. Even the White House has condemned his remarks. Sounds like a Pat Robertson quote too, doesn’t it? Idiots.

Alright-the software I’ve downloaded. winaXe, Advanced WMA Workshop, GNU Backgammon, Ocean-Free Software Library of the World’s Religious Literature, Zimbra Collaboration Suite.

Have a good weekend!

Here we are again. Fall equinox, another week gone. Big weekend ahead. A thing on each day-circle supper, Church poker night, kite festival. woo-hoo. Got DSL set up, and running. I also got some webspace for podBlogs and webcam… nice. Now I need a wireless router. Work is busy-real artwork this week.

The recap: worked out Thursday, went to a birthday party at an equestrian center Sat., ate at Hometown Buffet later, early at Church Sunday to set up, child care, swim-Matt got in trouble, I got in trouble Monday and Weds-this time for electricity bill messup, ate at Peppino’s. A JetBlue plane had a messed up front gear and landed in a shower of sparks, no problems-kudos to that pilot.

Oracle is going to buy Siebel-lots of m&a activity right now. I wonder if we’re on the block? Oracle is looking to compete with SAP-we’ll see. Peoplesoft seems to have been swallowed successfully-Siebel is close to Oracle HQ, so it should go pretty easily too.

Hurricane Rita is bearing down on the Gulf coast. It was the 3rd strongest Gulf storm ever, but it seems to have weakened as it hit some cooler water-to a category 4. Still a killer. Oil prices are up. People are running-mostly because of Katrina. We’ll see. New Orleans and the outlying areas are still a mess.

Got Eclipse test performance tools platform, Firefox 1.07 (a 1.5 beta is out there too), net Transport to rip a realVideo stream, xMing to try to xWindows into my Linux and Solaris boxes, and Croquet, which is a new OS from Alan Kay.

Back into the swing of weekly postings-things are more back to normal. Next is moving the office. I have a checklist, plans, our office location, but no exact date. It’s either 10/21, 28 or 11/4.

The week in review: ran errands, Matt got in trouble, no church on Sun-had to scramble to find someone to setup, parents on Sun., mini golf, swimming, worked out on Mon. That’s it.

So, here’s a report from the U.N. that is just more justification of how things are going: World Social Situation 2005. I haven’t read it yet-scraped it, and looked at the summary. Basically it says that things are getting worse, and we can blame ourselves for it, and it’s only going to get worse unless we do something about it. Take action, folks. On this and on everything else.

Here’s a rant about Katrina. It just seems to be getting worse. The Feds don’t care, and help is coming from regular people. If this had happened in Florida, it would’ve turned out differently.

Mike Brown from FEMA quit. Not really surprising, given the amount of heat he was taking. Now he’s blaming it on higher-ups. Everyone involved has to take blame. Sorry. Shoulda thought about all this a long time ago.

The Roberts confirmation is going on-the dude is a slippery as an eel, and just as smooth. He should sail through, and it should go down party lines. He’s a fair trade for Rehnquist.

The only software I’ve picked up is IBM Easy Website Builder.

Slowly going through my record collection-I just finished up book 1 of 4 with Immortal Memory. I’ve really got some challenging stuff here. And I haven’t even gotten to Glass or Alva Noto.

It’s been a month and a half since I’ve posted-things are finally settling down a bit. We moved to an apartment in Laguna Beach mid-August. It was a ton of work. Now we’re in a smaller place that’s more expensive. The bit about ca$h still applies-we need money!!!Anyways, we’re getting settled in-Matt started Kindergarten Tuesday. Colin is really sad about it-he wants to go too.

OK, here’s a longish recap: visited parents, swam, got sunburned, went to a baby shower for our minister, had to install XP on my computer-was really slow, packing, Erika got a UU chalice tattoo, we moved-kids went to Wild Rivers and kite day at Seal Beach, more LBCCB, work day at Journey school, party at Emerald Bay, got DSL for $14, started Tai Chi & dropped it-no Yang. Got a Yamaha QY-10-fun. Got a flat tire-it failed, I was having a bad shimmy and it was the tire… That’s it! We ate out a few times, the usual work, shopping. So, what else is there? I laid sod in our yard, we haven’t finished unpacking, Matt loves school.

And here come the rants.

M$ finally named Longhorn to Windows Vista-this is old news now. They also just released WinFS to beta. It looks OK, with cool transparencies and layouts. Problem is that it doesn’t address a lot of what’s wrong with Windows-secure code, outdated and bloated software, closed architecture, outdated UI. Linux-not sure either-though it has more promise. We need something simpler and with a more intuitive UI-it’ll eventually need to land on phones, eyewear and rollable screens. We’ll interact using voice, fingers and head motions. Having to train someone to use a computer means something’s wrong.

CAFTA passed. This is a mess-NAFTA was nothing, or nothing but bad, depending on who you ask. And it’s all tied up with immigration issues. Having a free trade zone is useless if it doesn’t regulate working conditions and environmental issues. Hmmmph!

OK. Here we go. So the guy from FEMA is so fired. Bush is taking heat, and some guy said on air to Cheney-“go fuck yourself”. What am I talking about? One of FEMA’s 3 biggest potential disasters, after a New York terrorist attack and a big California earthquake. FEMA’s batting .667…wish they had actually listened to their own forecasts… Here’s a scathing rant from a guy in London: When, America, when?. Here’s a story from 2 EMS folks: The real heroes and sheroes of New Orleans-I’m actually not 100% sure of the veracity of this story, but it’s convincing… It’s hard to say more-Katrina has flattened more than just New Orleans. Democracy Now! has been hammering this story too. Team Chimpy has been lying, even when the cameras have clearly contradicted them. We’ll see how this plays out. The problem is that the human cost is so high, and the displaced so overwhelmingly poor and black, that everyone wants to turn away when all the body bags are counted. The White House is desperately trying to force the media to not take pictures of dead people-sorry, too late. My wife is trying to get school supplies to kids in Houston. Regular people are the ones that are making the difference here.

Rehnquist died. Chimpy nominated Roberts to replace him-a good conservative-for-conservative swap. He’s light on experience (sound familiar?) and paper trail, and may not be able to handle the job, but he will get confirmed easily. Whoever he nominates for the O’Connor slot is going to have a tougher time-since O’Connor was a swing vote there’ll be pressure to nominate a moderate. I think Team Chimpy is completely unable to do that-they so live in la-la land…

Here’s the software I downloaded: IBM Able,rob fantastic mp3 encoder,old next apps, synergy,google talk,rife,adieu,ibm htp,espeaking,enigma sim,NetStumbler,Guitar scales,derby,jsf,cpaint,asterisk,uima,gnu source installer.

Here we go again. And I put it off another week… Not much has happened.

Here’s the recap: bounce place party, kites at Seal Beach, Polly’s, Erika’s car died, went to LBCCB practice, gig at Festival of the Arts, got new apartment, OC fair, edit SeaLight, RainForest Cafe, birthday party, bought furniture, reading Harry Potter, bowling, ate at Pick Up Stix.

We watched the ’04 Nathan’s hot dog eating contest. And we wonder why people hate Americans, and why there are so many grossly obese people here. Just a symptom, naturally, but makes a nice exemplar…

Rove is getting hammered. When the White House and his lawyers start stonewalling, evading and changing their positions, you know for sure that he did something. What he did, I don’t really care, someone needs to take responsibility. I think what bugs me most is the Republican attack dogs using completely specious arguments to deflect things. Just annoying.

Here’s a blast from the past: the FBI is keeping files on liberal groups like the ACLU. I thought that went out with the 60’s… I guess not, what with an Administration stuck in the 60’s…

John Roberts is the nominee for the Supreme Court. Now this guy is truly a blast from the 60’s-as is his family. Unbelievable. His wife is a pro-life warrior. He has 3 years on the bench. He has no opinions. I don’t like him-he’s too clean. The right loves him, the left is mostly silent. He’ll sail through, but I don’t think he deserves it.

Here’s the software I got: free VMS, a new version of FireFox, Pure Data, Daisy, Java Blueprints, Clam AV.