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.