Year: 2005

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.