BunkBlog

Olive oil is good for you. Like you didn’t know that, right?

Good thing we use lots of olive oil in our cooking already. Like in the frittata and foccacia we made for dinner last night. 🙂

Fullerton is installing free wifi in the downtown area.

One thing in the article which trips me out is that Fullerton is handing laptop computers to every student in 3rd through 8th grades. I don’t understand the rationale behind that. In that age group, one would hope the schools would be more interested in the “Three Rs” than in broadband wireless access. No matter how much of a technophile I am, I still think the basics are important to build on.

According to Om Malik, Six Apart to buy Live Journal…

So, I can’t escape Movable Type, can I? I changed my site to use WordPress because I didn’t like the way MT was moving (Pay up, bitches!). I keep my LJ paid up even though I use my site to post mirrored items to it. Why do I do such a bizarre thing? Because LJ has features nobody else does. LJ has threaded comments and userpics and mood icons and all that jazz, but most importantly – Livejournal has Friends Pages. Having a single-stop place to look at an aggregated list of posters you like to read is a Good Thing, and not one that Typepad has any interest in implementing. Also fairly important – LJ has no ads and lower fees for paid accounts. TypePad does not have a free user level, so I can only imagine what they’ll do with the five million free LJ accounts. If they’re doing this to gain users, they pretty much have to let the leeches hang on.

If SixApart buys LJ, I hope they leave it alone as a wholly-owned subsidiary, rather than merging it into the Typepad mess.

Just a few thoughts bouncing around my noggin:

• People in San Angelo accelerate like sailboats.
• We finally got MTV2 on our local cable and they seem to have stopped showing videos. WTF?
• Why in the world am I tired? I’ve only been up 13.5 hours, I have no business being tired.

Cya

Disseminated by superflow

A few months ago, I had a dream in which LiveJournal and everyone on it went completely nuts for a day. The entire world had turned upside-down and inside-out and nobody was their normal self anymore. And it was such a good read, that I think it should happen for real.

January 27th is the birthday of Lewis Carroll, author of ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. Alice fell down a rabbit hole into a place where everything had changed and none of the rules could be counted on to apply anymore. I say, let’s do the same: January 27th, 2005 should be the First Annual LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day. When you post on that Thursday, instead of the normal daily life and work and news and politics, write about the strange new world you have found yourself in for the day, with its strange new life and work and news and politics. Are your pets talking back at you now? Has your child suddenly grown to full adulthood? Does everyone at work think you’re someone else now? Did Bush step down from the White House to become a pro-circuit tap-dancer? Did Zoroastrian missionaries show up on your doorstep with literature in 3-D? Have you been placed under house arrest by bizarre insectoid women wielding clubs made of lunchmeat?

Let’s have a day where nobody’s life makes sense anymore, where any random LJ you click on will bring you some strange new tale. Let’s all fall down the Rabbit Hole for 24 hours and see what’s there. It will be beautiful.

For consideration: this only works if you spread the word, of course, but three and a half weeks is forever in LJ Meme Time.

Reuters has a wire story about a proposed final solution to the terrorist detention problem.

The Defense Department, which holds 500 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, plans to ask the U.S. Congress for $25 million to build a 200-bed prison to hold detainees who are unlikely to ever go through a military tribunal for lack of evidence.

Um, if they’re never going to trial, doesn’t that mean they’re … presumed innocent? I guess that pesky Constitution has been thrown out permanently. Another part of this proposal is to give the prisoners to Afghanistan and other “partner” countries, which all seem to have a distressingly poor record of human rights abuse. Go, USA!

Code 46 was the movie of the evening last night. I’m a pretty fair afficionado of future tales, and this one was not so good. I think the director was trying too hard to make the movie look like Bladerunner, and the writer was trying too hard to change the language of the future to some Spanarabichinglish goulash. When you notice the Spanish and Arabic and Chinese words too much, they aren’t really natural, are they?

Anyway, the story was decent, but Tim Robbins was doing his best Keanu Reeves impression throughout the film. I know he can emote better than that. What was really entertaining was watching the “making of” featurette and hearing them talk about how Robbins and Samantha Morton had such great chemistry together. Apparently they watched a different movie than I did. For an “idea” story, pretty good; for an engaging piece of cinema, mediocre.

It’s been twenty years since the year 1984 ended. In memory, I finished re-reading the novel 1984 yesterday. It seems Orwell was about fifty years off in his predictions, looking at his explanation of how the societies of Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia coexisted.

Orwell made the assumption, common to many novelists and (especially) politicians of his time, that socialism/communism would be an unstoppable force for change in the coming decades (remember he wrote 1984 in 1948). The doctrine of fear and hatred and constant war, on the other hand, sure seems like it’s moving in. Using words for their opposite meaning is a fun little game, as well – anyone feel more secure with the Homeland Security Department’s announcements of fear and dread?

War is peace

This is a requested design this time: We Learn Korean So You Don’t Have To. I plan to add one that changes it to “because you can’t” tomorrow, since I don’t think the DPRK is a really credible threat in most people’s eyes.

The shirt design is similar to the ones they sell at DLI, but DLI doesn’t do mailorder. 🙂

Forty cents is all that stands between me and a commission check from CafePress – my first in over two years. This has more to do with the change in the minimum check amount (from 10 to 25 dollars) than any slacking of interest in my exclusive wares, or at least that’s what I tell myself.

Well, this has been a full weekend. I’m almost glad to go to work tomorrow – they don’t expect me to do as much there.

Friday, we had the “open one present” wait for Alex. He was about to explode by the time we called it “eve” and said he could open one. He got a cool RC Corvette in that round. Circuit City’s “get it free after rebate” system is a good thing for parents.

Friday evening, we headed out to my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law’s house (don’t try to figure out how this makes us family – it’s Texas). They are some of the most fantastic people around, and they wanted a house full of people for Christmas. We were happy to oblige them. Our contribution to the potluck included baklava, cheese and crackers, and a veggie tray. Somehow, we came back with more than we took over, including some presents for Alex and us’ns.

Saturday morning, we put the turkey in the oven. Twenty pound monster, it was. We put lemons and limes in the body and a tangerine in the neck; that was the moistest and most succulent turkey any of us had ever had. Alex got to open all the presents under the tree, and then more presents when the relatives came over in the afternoon. After all was unwrapped, he asked plaintively, “Why didn’t Santa bring me what I asked for?” As if he didn’t have a bushel of presents. His Oma (Dutch for grandma) contributed 25 bucks to his college fund, which will have a more long-lasting effect even if he doesn’t appreciate it yet. Much eating and drinking and sitting by the fire ensued. Everyone left with jars of homemade cranberry butter (which has no butter but can’t be called jelly because it lacks pectin) and most were given other leftovers as well, including more baklava and pumpkin pie.

Sunday saw the rise of the after-Christmas sales. We’ve already got most of the shopping done for next year’s presents, at least for the kids. It’s a very liberating feeling. They’re even wrapped and in the closet now. Mostly, this is just a good idea to avoid adding more work to the time which coincides with Finals week next year.

More photos of a cute boy and his toys are coming soon, no doubt.

We’ve posted more Christmas photos on the site. We’ve got pictures from Alex’s pre-K holiday program, the light displays here in San Angelo, and some of Alex looking cute.

I love how the SecDef is able to twist things so he sounds like he’s on top of stuff.

bq. I have directed that in the future I sign each letter.

Um, who is he directing? Apparently he needs to tell himself to do things. The voices need to be assuaged somehow.

I’m thinking a double batch of baklava for January’s big event, but I’m flexible. Maybe several kinds of cookies instead. Or a super-duper cheesecake.

In other news, my cow-orkers really need to stop trying to interest me in inane chatter. Interesting conversation, I’m all over. Crap about sports or local “celebrities” – please make it stop.

Thank you, please drive through.

And today marked the third (of three) test finals for this semester. I hereby declare the 2004 school year officially done. One more semester, three more classes, five more months, and I shall be a college graduate. No measly Associates “degree” like my benighted veteran friends think of as an accomplishment, but a real-life, everybody believes it’s real, oh-my-jebus how did it take me until 2005, Bachelor’s of Science degree.

Now, I just have to wait for my grades. Two in Maryland, one in Romania. Anyone want to bet which one is not last?

My annual (or so) Black Forest Cake is online for viewing. We only gave half of it away this time. Oh, yeah, semester break is gonna be pigout time.

Of course, this photo was taken before Alex picked all the cherries off the top. Little monkey.

Microsoft has a Google Desktop competitor now. Um, wasn’t that the point of the astoundingly slow and useless “indexing” feature they forced into Windows XP? I’ve never seen an increase in speed in the search results from an indexed drive compared to a non-indexed one, but um…why would Microsoft come up with an add-on program for something that they claim is already built into the OS? I guess they know it sucks too.

Meanwhile, the indexing feature on *nix boxes works fantastically well, indexing things without slowing down the machine while you’re using it and delivering search results in milliseconds. Hmm…

One of the cool things San Angelo does every year – Christmas lights along the river. I was able to get some pretty decent pictures of several “days of Christmas” themed displays, as well as this Santa’s Toy Company display.

Well, I’ve finished my homework for the semester. The “big project” (a massive 10 page research paper) is complete, with much websurfing for source materials. Next week, 8:00 am for each of three days, are my finals. Although alloted 3 hours each, I’ve never spent more than an hour on one of my finals and I’m only one semester from graduation, so I doubt this will change next week.

Amusingly, the one closed-book final I have is for the most basic class. I finally got around to taking my freshman science classes this semester and next semester, and that’s the only test which doesn’t allow open book and open notes for the final. Go figure. I guess I’ll have to open that book for the fifth time since buying it. 🙂

The gallery has a few more photos from this week.

This cheesecake was quite yummy. It has cranberries in the middle of the cream cheese, and a little egg nog in the batter too. Mmm….

And, I think we have just about enough darned pecans!