Year: 2005

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.