Year: 2006

It’s Thursday again, I don’t know how I feel today-a little tired. Odd feeling. Sorta disconnected. I’ve been listening to Junky by W.S. Burroughs in the car-he’s reading it. It’s pretty cool, but I think it’s affecting my psyche a bit. I’m also listening to Democracy Now. It’s bad, bad, bad. Civil rights are going away, everywhere, if they aren’t gone already.

We went to DeBenneville Pines over the weekend. I took off Friday, we had lunch at Ruby’s and drove up just after noon. It rained on the way up-we saw 5 accidents-one big one close to home, and the rest on snowy roads-we actually witnessed one of them. I have no problems driving in the snow, they made us put chains on. It stopped snowing, and the snow was gone by mid-Saturday. The kids sledded anyways. Saw a lot of people, drank some, played with the kids. I got to read some of Steiner’s The Spirit of the Waldorf School. We drove home and went to the spa. The week has been pretty quiet. My routine is changing a bit-I play with the kids at school, poke my head in the school office, say bye to Matt in line, go to work, work, come home, put the kids to bed and work until it’s time to eat, eat, work until it’s time to go to sleep, sleep. Erika rearranged the bedroom. The boys got kids’ roller skates-now I have to get mine out of storage…I’m starting on a third job. Pascal/btrieve maintenance programming. I’m still getting my legs under me on it. I’m on a bit of a prog kick right now-listening to Hawkwind now, Utopia, Allan Holdsworth, Gentle Giant and Primus too. The boys like it too-we call it boy music. I’m also picking up a bunch of free Dead concert MP3’s from Internet Archive. I really love their “Anthem of the Sun” era material.

I didn’t write up any topical stuff-the Oscars were this week-we didn’t watch. Stewart seemed to do a good job. My wife was watching Project Runway, which just ended, but I don’t care. Britney’s pregnant again. whoopee. U.S. is leaving Abu Graib-there’s enough other places to torture people now… The Dubai port deal got abandoned too. But the Supremes stopped the ban on military recruiting at college campuses. That’s two wins, one loss. Augustine volcano in Alaska is building up a lava dome. And the usual death, disaster, crime, war in the news. whoopee.

I picked up Free Pascal, and a copy of Turbo Pascal 7.0 for the job I’m doing, also the Zend Framework and TransMac to try to find my copy of Turbo Pascal. I think I need Borland Pascal, though.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Just because you have video footage of something relevant, for example, doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

Here I am again, plus another week. Not much going-the usual. We’re going to DeBenneville Pines Camp for a UUCLB! church retreat this weekend-the kids are psyched-they packed their backpacks last week…

The recap: went to dinner at B.J.s with the Pembertons. Erika went to a stamp show, went to Alta Laguna park for a church picnic, got to fly my deca a little, ate at Texas BBQ Pit after-YUM!!! church Sunday, meeting afterwards, didn’t sleep well and was tired Monday, it rained, Erika got the car tuned up for the drive to camp, worked on computers at Journey school. I’m the computer guy there now.

Here’s a quickie week in review-I don’t know if I have the energy for more…Executions have stopped in CA. The CA Supreme Court ruled that a medical professional needs to verify that the process isn’t cruel and unusual punishment. And no anesthesiologists are willing to participate in an execution. Something about the oath they take saying “FIRST DO NO HARM”. A Dubai co financed by the emirate wants to buy a UK firm that runs several shipping ports. This has touched off a bit of light and heat for BushCo. Apparently the public and Congress doesn’t like an Arab run co knowing how port security operates. And it was approved over objections from law enforcement. Oops. South Dakota legislators have passed a law banning abortion, and the gov. is going to sign it. And immediately after that, Planned Parenthood is going to file a lawsuit, a judge will issue an injunction, and the thing will wind its way up the federal courts. I have no idea if this will end up on the Supremes’ desk, probably, the problem here is whether Robscalito will want to get into overturning the Roe precedent in such a sharp manner. I think not. Ohno won the 500M race, leading the whole way. He was happy, he skated well. A bunch of inmates took over a prison in Afghanistan, and BushCo visited. We’ve had riots here in LA jails recently too. TIA is alive under another name. Scary. Especially with the domestic spying stuff. Six months after Katrina, it’s still a mess there. The conclusion-don’t rely on the Feds for anything after a disaster. And a video briefing surfaced pre Katrina showing that BushCo was warned. Which means Bush lied when he said no one could’ve predicted it. Enough already. I agree with the assertion that in a more normal system, a vote of no confidence would’ve occurred, and BushCo would be out. <sigh> And now I just heard that the Patriot act passed. Dude. Get these guys out of here! 10 No votes. That’s just wrong. Shame on everyone who voted for this, especially the Democrats.

I finally got around to burning some of the CD’s I have backlogged. It meant getting a ton of conversion software: dbPowerAmp, 4Musics WMA to WAV Converter, lame, razorlame, oggDropXPd, MPC utilities, Xilisoft MP3 WAV Converter.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “Portrayal of nine full cycles here enforces comfortable comparisons of between- and within-cycle variation, and also exposes an apparent growth trend (perhaps it is merely improved observation) in the wingspan of recent cycles.”

Things are going along-had to hold off work because of PO issues. Started up again. Not much else.

What happened in my exciting life: edited the Sealight, meetings, went to Sharky’s on Friday, church, day off Monday, went to Ikea, watched the Olympics, Matt has the week off. WooHoo. Go me. I’ve been sleeping part of the night in Colin’s bed, having vivid dreams and my RLS goes away too. Odd. I guess I’m sleeping better there, and Erika says the dreams are because it’s a kids bed. Dunno.

I decided to post some things to experts-exchange.com, mostly in the religion and philosophy area. I don’t have enough expertise in anything else, other than Tai Chi, kiteflying, some sports, analysis & design and UI stuff-nothing highly specific, which is what e-e is good at. So I immediately got in an argument with a guy about Epistemology. And this guy isn’t much on making arguments, so I’m making arguments and he’s just not saying much in support of his position at all. I finally got fed up and wrote a big flame, deleted it and stopped talking in the thread-no one seems to know philosophy, even though the thread is all about that… I hope further ones aren’t like that…

Here’s my obligatory Olympics paragraph. Ohno lost again, as did Bode. Ohno just didn’t skate smart races-we’ll see how he does in the 500.Bode has had an off season, though his one ski save was spectacular. Curling is huge this time-millions of hits to the u.s. curling website. Ice dancing is gay. I just don’t see the appeal-but then I don’t see the appeal of Dancing with the Stars and the DanceSport™ bit too.

A big Iraqi Shiite mosque was destroyed-riots ensue-civil war is impending. And this is surprising to who? The Administration most likely. Everyone else has seen it coming-just need a few things like this to tip things.

Bush didn’t know about the sectarian divide-From Kos. Typical. Channel 4, so this is likely a true account. The dude is so clueless. Someone else was saying similar things about the infamous “al Qaeda determined to attack U.S.” security briefing. I’ve been listening to Air America on the way to and from work. Can you tell???

One of my co-workers sent a clip of Frank Caliendo from Letterman-the guy said some funny stuff about the Chimp Man-his impression is dead on too. Sad, but funny, and true.

Software-not much-the torrents are slow-I get eclectic stuff-I did pick up FLAC and free rip mp3.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “But the place I feel I’ve had the most impact is on the silver screen.”

Here I am again. Another week gone, gone, gone. <sigh> I’m tired. I slept in today and I’m still tired. Dunno.

Here’s the past week: Matt did great with getting fillings. He got smoothies afterwards. Erika had a meeting, played with the kids at school-they play HARD. Parents visited for Matt’s birthday Saturday, went on a walk in Laguna Canyon. Church, Olympics, kids went to the jacuzzi Sun and Mon. Got a card and flowers for Erika on Valentine’s, she got the candy. And work, work, work. I’m also helping out with the computers at school, as well as updating the website as necessary. We’re probably going to change things up a bit there as well.

I’ve been slacking on my chores because I get up, get Matt to school, work, get home from work, put the kids to bed, eat, and work until bedtime. It’s tough-I had to take the morning off because it all caught up to me. I also have RLS, so sometimes I have to take a sleep aid, and my shoulders are getting better but still twinge a bit from time to time. Wrestling with the kids at school is fun, but my shoulders feel it.

OK, I’m actually keeping track of current events again. Coretta King died, and the funeral was big and long. A huge contrast to the one her husband got. Chimpy was there, and got jabbed by all the liberals, politicians included. Her daughter ranted about a cancer in the body politic and secular. It was a bit odd and out of context-disjoint and jarring. I kept going “what is she talking about” and “this makes no sense”. But it ended up she was going apocalyptic on us. Yuck.

Betty Friedan died. This was less noted than King, but no means less important-she was a linchpin of the modern women’s movement, much like King was for the black civil rights movement.

Borland is getting rid of dev tools. They’ve been signaling this for a bit, but need someone to buy them. They’ve been dying on the vine and getting superseded by Eclipse. Glad I don’t have to worry so much about that right now…

The Winter Olympics are this week-we watch it after the kids go to bed, and watched curling this morning. They liked it. Nothing really is striking me, other than that men’s skating is progressing, I loooove short track speedskating, and I wish I could ski more.

And the big one-Cheney shot a fellow hunter in the face trying to shoot quail. The guy’s in ICU, had a heart attack. There’s a bit of a dustup because he didn’t let local law enforcement see him until the next day. He gave a softball interview to RNC TV (aka Fox News). He had been drinking (no one has one beer at lunch.) There’s a parody of the Aerosmith song-“Cheney’s Got a Gun”. Heh™.

More torrents, CSound, Dojo, sajax, scriptaculuous, lava rnd.

Page 23, Sentence 5: “We cannot do that; we can only develop the outdated will, that is, through an intellectual education we can only develop intellectualism.”

The past week just flew by. Didn’t even upload the last bit. Busy working, tired.

We went to a Kindy meeting, ran sound for a memorial service Sat., church Sun., Matt had cavities and got fillings. Not much else. We didn’t watch the Super Bowl. I think I’m getting tired of doing this-just too much going on-working 2 jobs…It’s helping finances a bit, though…

I didn’t speak to events last week-just stopped writing. There’s so much going on-not like this is anything new. Does the domestic spying surprise you? It shouldn’t. It does have do be combated-there is NO justification for violating the law-NONE. Every justification is just an excuse-talk to MLK, Lennon, anyone who was spied upon in the 60’s. I like the hypocrisy of invading Iraq for the hypothetical threat of WMD’s, and then insisting on diplomatic means to resolve Iran’s nuke program. The whole cartoon thing is amazing-my feelingis that the Islamic street is being deliberately whipped into a frenzy. They were in bad taste, but the hypocrisy of saying bad to make fun of Islam, OK for us to make fun of everyone else is amusing. Sorry guys, can’t have it both ways. Can’t remember more right now…

I’ve been doing a lot of torrents. Dance, Picasa, FreeMind, WikiCalc, some others also.

And it is now the end of January. I’ve been quite busy-several projects and I picked up a second job working for a Florida company on a contract that I can’t say much more than that I’m doing graphic design for a web interface. Not much excitement-I’ll go over that past 2 1/2 months next.

And here’s the past 2 1/2 months. The kids are sleeping in their room, I’m the webmaster for Journey, physical therapy hurts and worked after I got a cortisone shot, sound for Dorothy Nolte, church concert, LBCCB, lantern walk at school, marketplace, visit parents, yule, christmas, got a pool cue, rc car, cool islamic hats, rainy, Tracy got married and Erika did the ceremony, kite Sunday, second job, new computer, wireless net, school workday, Matt’s birthday.

The normal events of life, basically. Playing a lot of pool. Matt loves kindergarten. I’m the chair of Building & Grounds at church, doing sound. Thinking about trying to write & do music, etc.-read a thing-even if it’s crap because then you’re actually doing it rather than talking about it.

Well. Haven’t picked this up for awhile…