I love long drives.  Especially long drives with no real destination and no time limits at all.  And since I’m temporarily (?) relocated 170 miles from my home-home, I have an added bonus that makes it much, much more interesting: I can drive in just about any direction and see landscape that I’ve never seen before.

Here in central Pennsylvania, there are some decent mountains.  Now I’ve been out west once, and the mountains here aren’t THAT decent, but they’re much better than the mountains in the Philly suburbs where I really live.  It’s an amazing thing to watch the daylight recede behind a range of mountains, where there’s a soft and fading blueish glow above the ridge, and it’s pure darkness below.  And there’s one stretch of road out here that I’ve driven that’s in the valley between two parallel mountain ranges.  It’s so sparsely populated, and driving that at night, it’s almost pitch black on either side, with a bright sky full of stars overhead.

Last night I went for a drive in the general direction of Montoursville, which is about 60 miles away.  There’s a bike shop there, one of the few shops in PA that sells Kona bikes, and of those the closest one to me.  I knew it wasn’t open, but I felt like going for a long drive, and figured I’d drive by and get a feel for where it’s at before going there one day this week during business hours.

The road from here to there is route 220, and I love that road.  It’s got an alternate route that’s only two lanes, with so much interesting mountainous landscape.  I set out, hit "random" on the stereo, and it picked "Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo" by MxPx.  I got that album almost six years ago, and was crazy about it for a long time, but for the past couple years I listened to it less frequently.  But it was perfect for last night.  I was feeling really melancholy and thinking of a musical selection to match, but this album is pretty upbeat (it’s pop-punk after all).  But the lyrics are also really introspective and some of them are pretty sad.  It fit.  "My words don’t come out easily, so I will tell you honestly... no one wants to spend eternity alone."

It was almost dusk when I left at quarter after seven, still completely light but fading, and it got dark 15 or 20 miles into the trip.  Route 220 eventually turns into a four-lane that’s 65MPH, and it was dark by then.  Driving 70 MPH (much slower than most of the traffic -- this was a drive for the sake of the drive, remember), I saw for a split second what appeared to be a raccoon walking across the road in front of me.  Another split second later I hit it, and it went right under my car.  I was fairly mortified since the biggest thing I’d hit before was a squirrel or rabbit, and this thing was about the size of an smallish-average dog.

Well about two minutes later, my radiator fluid light came on, indicating that the level was too low.  I took the next exit and pulled into a gas station, which was maybe 5 miles from where I hit the ’coon.  In that time, the engine temperature didn’t rise at all; the guage stayed right in the center, at 190 degrees, where it always is.  I looked under the car, and it was dripping from everywhere.  The radiator fluid reserve tank -- the one that never needs refilling under normal circumstances -- was empty.  I read through my owner’s manual a little, called my parents, and looked around under the hood, but couldn’t see where the source of the leak was.  The red radiator fluid was sprayed or pooling all over in the bottom of the front driver’s-side of the engine compartment.

I needed water.  Gallons.  This little Citgo gas station didn’t have gallons, just 1-liter bottles of spring water for $1.85 each.  I bought 11 of them.  I poured three and a half of them into the reserve tank, at which point it filled up.  After about 45 minutes of talking with my parents and assessing the situation, and realizing that there was a truck stop about 5 miles back toward home, I decided to drive back.  The engine temperature hadn’t risen at all, so I figured the radiator had to be holding some amount of water.  Right after I got back on the road, the fluid-level light came on again, but still the temperature didn’t rise at all.

At the truck stop, there’s a 24-hour service station but only for trucks.  But the guy was nice enough to come out to the parking lot and look under my hood, and got on the ground and was looking under there too.  He couldn’t tell where the leak was.  He sold me a $3 bottle of "radiator stop" but it didn’t.  Went right through with all the water we poured in after it.  So either there’s a big crack/hole, or a hose came off, or something, but dude couldn’t figure it out, and I sure couldn’t.

Here, they actually had gallons of spring water, so I bought two, which brought my total to about four.  I knew there were a couple stores in the 30 miles between there and home, so I decided to give it a try.

I didn’t push the engine much above 2200 rpm, which limited me to 45 mph (in a 65).  I coasted all the downhills.  I stopped every five miles to pour a gallon of water through and let the engine sit for ten minutes.  The whole time, the engine temperature didn’t rise at all, and the radiator didn’t steam until I stopped and poured some water in, and even then it didn’t steam much.  I’d pour about half a gallon in, and it would hold it.  But just above that amount, the radiator made a sound as if it was throwing up, and forcefully expelled all the water out the bottom of it onto the ground.  Then the radiator fans would turn on, and the other half-gallon seemed to pour almost straight through.

I got home that way in about an hour and a half, with no (other) problems.  Konstantin is one of those fix-the-car-himself kind of guys, so he’s going to look at it tomorrow, and unless he can figure it out, I’m taking Golfy to the radiator shop.  Fortunately for him there’s one in town that "specializes in Volvo - VW - Audi" repairs.  He so hates being treated like he’s on the same level as the other kinds of cars on the road.

Galileo is set to collide with Jupiter on Sunday.  At 30 miles per second.  Holy cow.

It’s sad, reading the article, though.  I mean thinking of that spacecraft floating through space all alone for all those years, so cold and far away, and only to be incinerated in the end.  Reminds me of Brave Saint Saturn, too.

Sometimes the bible really cracks me up:

Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk.  And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men.  Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?

But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?  Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.

And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?

They say unto him, Caesar’s.

Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.

When they had heard these words, they marvelled, and left him, and went their way.

The same day came to him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked him, Saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.  Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased, and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother:  Likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh.  And last of all the woman died also.  Therefore in the resurrection whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.

Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.  For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.  But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying,  I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

And when the multitude heard this, they were astonished at his doctrine.

But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together.  Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying,  Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them,  Saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?

They say unto him, The son of David.

He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying,  The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?  If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? 

And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

You can almost hear Jesus saying, "Next?!  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  BAM."

...well maybe not, but that’s the image I get.

From weather.com’s forecast:

Tomorrow night: Cloudy and windy with periods of rain late. Low 61F. Winds ENE at 20 to 30 mph. Rainfall near a half an inch. Local amounts approaching 6 inches.

Yeeeaaaaah.  Um.  Run.

Oh, man. I hate this. Even though it isn’t her fault in even the most remote way, I still want to blame her for this. Every time I meet a girl this happens! Well, I would say let me explain before I start to ramble, but to late for that.

(Intermission)

Now, on to the explaination. A while back, I made a promise with God not to date any girl that wasn’t a Christian. Mainly, He told me to stop dating for fun and to only date to find HER. (You know what I mean. Corny, but, hey, you can’t ignore God) So of course, my wife would have to be Christian for it to work.

So, anyway, in two weeks of my college life I have met this beautiful, smart, funny girl named Sara in my Religion class. Also, another bonus was the fact that she was a straight-edge like me. AKA goody-goody. So, I decided, ’heck, might as well ask’. So I did. I asked, "So, are you a Christian?" I knew that she went to church and everything, but now-a-days that doesn’t me squat. Here is her reply...

"Yes..."

(Inner me) ’YESSSS!’

"...kinda. I go to church and all, but that’s pretty much because I grew up with it..."

Nooooooooo!!!!! Why, why, why, why!!!!????

Well, I guess I should look at the bright side. At least I made a new friend that I can bring to Christ... I guess.

(Yeah, so I’m pouting. So what? Shut up)

I got the new Thursday album today.  They’re my favorite band, so, well, it’s a really really good album.  There will probably be a song of the indefinite time interval which is virtually never confined to seven days week from it, once I listen to it enough to get a favorite track or two.

Oh, and they thank homestarrunner.com in the liner notes.  That’s pretty good.  (That site is, of course, the home of Strong Bad and his emails, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past year.)

I always think of things that I want to post about during the day, or on the way home, but then when I actually get home I completely forget them.  And then there’s always like five things that have been building up that I’ve been meaning to post about, but just haven’t gotten around to.  I don’t know why that is.  Or why I’m saying this, instead of posting the things I’ve been meaning to post.

But now, I have new music to sleep to and I’m going to bed.

Hey Anthony, have you made plans to ride out the hurricane?  Forecasters here are predicting a direct hit on ’Happy Valley’ (and it is really?  I always wondered....hmmmmmmm)  Well, just don’t get too adventurous trying to get photos, ok?  And being in a basement apartment but not near a creek (are you?) I guess you don’t need to be concerned about flooding.  Anyway, just thought I’d do the ’Mom’ thing and check in on your being safe.  lvu

You can listen to the entire new Thursday album, "War All The Time," on mtv.com’s The Leak.  (OK, the name "The Leak" is probably at least somewhat wack.  But the idea isn’t.)  This, a week before the album is actually released.  Of course, I’m a big geek so I pre-ordered my copy of the album 2 weeks ago  : )  But that’s just because Thursday is pretty much my favorite band.

In other exciting news, my musicbox now displays the temperature of the CPU on the LCD screen.  The new motherboard I got for it a few weeks ago has temperature sensors built in, so I installed the i2c and lmsensors packages (and they installed without any problems whatsoever, which is highly unusual on a Linux system).  Also, I realized 2 really obvious ways to make the screen scroll much faster: 1) copy the lcdwriter program into RAM before executing it, and 2) only do the LCD initialization once, at boot time, instead of every time I write any characters to the LCD.  So with those 2 improvements, it scrolls just a shade less than real-time -- it’s really really fast and smooth.

Single-subject notebooks are five dollars at the HUB bookstore on campus.  Let me just take out an extra loan so I can pay for freaking copybooks with it.  And the "3 subject" notebooks have 120 pages.  Three subjects in 120 pages?  Right.  Maybe if your major is turf management.

Last week I saw a "Jesus fish" that I’d never seen before.  It was just a sticker, not an actual physical raised thing, but it was rainbow colored.  Disgusting.  Way to fly in the face of what Jesus actually said about homosexuality, and pretend that he believes it’s acceptable.  What a giant load of crap.

And, continuing in my rant about the terribleness of Penn State, let me just say that 95% of the teachers here have a serious deficiency in their teaching abilities.  You can’t just give tons and tons of technical detail without putting it into the perspective of a bigger concept, yet that is exactly what many teachers do.  And most of the time, it’s compounded by the fact that the teacher only knows English as a second language.  That is so absurd there aren’t even words for it.  You should not be allowed to have a job in America that requires you to communicate with Americans as your primary duty, unless you can speak American English as well as an American can.

Well, it has finally happened.  I actually got called up for active duty.  Sounds cool, huh?  Like I’m actually doing something?  Wrong.  It’s flood control.  Flood control for a place that’s not actually flooding.  It might flood.  It could possibly flood.  Ya never know.  So pretty much I’ve done nothing but miss class (My third day of college no less) sleep, fill sandbags, and wait until they think the levee might break.  I say, what the heck, it’s Martinsville.  I don’t think the headquarters for the KKK is worth much of saving.  Either that or I’m just being cynical.  Probably me just being cynical because even though I live right down the road from my armory, I can’t go home and am stuck doing nothing.  Fun, fun.

Penn State is the worst college of all time.  Here’s a quick sampling of the seemingly-infinite pool of reasons why:

If you need them to do anything financially or administratively for you, there are 2 things I can guarantee about the result: 1) it will be at least a month late, and 2) it will be completely incorrect.

The number of students attending Penn State is inversely proportional to the amount of parking available in Centre County.  The more students attend, the more parking lots get replaced with buildings, and the more streets become off-limits to parking.

They blatantly lie to you by saying that the education you receive at branch campuses is comparable (let alone "equal") to that of main campus.  Branch campuses are 10x easier, you learn 1/4 as much, and you’re 100% unprepared for what awaits you when you set foot in State College.

Moving right along, my photos section has an awesome new feature: you can post comments on individual photos!  I’m really excited about this one.  So for example, you could check out the photos of my new mini musicbox system, and post comments to the effect that it’s the coolest computer system on the planet.  (Note: there is currently a little bug whereby if you post a message in the framed view, it sends you to the slideshow view afterwards.  It’s a harmless bug, and easily fixed, and fixed it will be, but I wanted to let you know that I know about it.)

I blinked and summer has faded to once again an (almost) empty nest.  How has 16 weeks passed so quickly?  We helped you move back most of your treasures and possessions to your home-away-from-home a couple of days ago and today your room here has an echo in it.  Praying a good year at Penn State for you.  Stay focused but also enjoy your last year of college life.

Musicbox v2.0 rocks your world.

Hey fellas (I just like to start like that because it sounds like something out of an old John Wayne file):

Have you heard of a computer symptom where the floppy drive (A drive) on many PC’s (I threw the ’ in for you Anthony) just keeps running and running with no floppy drive in it and no program running.  At first I just thought it was that the ribbon cable was reversed, but then I saw it start on about 5 other systems at the same time.

Any ideas?  And no, my employer is too chicken to check out Linux on the desktop at this time so that is not a viable solution right now.

Painfully putting up with windows, -Pat

Saw a bumper sticker that said "Brake for moose... it could save your life!"

Now what kind of person, when they see a friggin’ MOOSE in the road, isn’t going to brake??  Just who are these people trying to convince?

This week is so hectic.  It’s my last week of work, and school starts next Tuesday.

I think this is the busiest work-week I’ve had all summer.  There is so much to finish.  And I need to pack all my stuff up to move it back to school on Saturday morning.  I’m trying to get some packing done each night, but there’s so little time and I’m pooped after work.

I just got an awesome new tiny -- super tiny -- computer, that’s going to become my new car mp3 player.  But the audio drivers aren’t working correctly so I need to solve that.  I’ll have lots of photos of this little guy when he’s done.

I have a new, old song of the week that I really like.  I also have about 4 more songs that I can’t wait to post.  One awesome new band that I’ve recently come across is Straylight Run.  You can download a bunch of mp3s on their website, and you should.  It’s nice, laid-back music with dark piano sounds and not much distorted guitar sounds.  The band was recently formed from 2 guys who’d left Taking Back Sunday, one guy from Breaking Pangaea, and one of those guys’ sisters on piano and backup vocals.  Their music is really really pretty.

So much to say and so little time..... what else......

I wore a long-sleeve shirt on Sunday night.  That makes me so happy, because that means that fall is coming.  I love when the seasons change, and fall is probably my favorite season.  It will make me extremely melancholy, but that’s ok; that’s a part of it.

There is much more I’m sure, but I am out of time.  I just wanted to say some of this because I felt bad for neglecting my millions of loyal readers these past few days. </sarcasm>

Argh.  All this nonsense in the news about Mars being so close to the Earth has got me all excited about seeing it.  But what I haven’t seen in any of these news reports is a simple statement pointing out the fact that Mars looks just like a bright star.  It’s not like you look up in the sky and say, "Oh, look, Mars!"  No, you look up, and you say, "Um... where is it??"

I got a handy "all sky map" which shows, well, the whole sky... including Mars.  I went outside and found it.  And it looks just like a star.  To me, it doesn’t look "red" or "orangish" like the reports say.  It looks white, or maybe a little yellowish, sort of like......... what’s the word................ a star.

I’m not an astronomer or anything.  I don’t know a whole lot about stars and constellations.  Without this map, I wouldn’t have known that there isn’t supposed to be a big bright spot where Mars currently is.  I do have a 150x telescope, which makes the moon look really really big and close.  But even through that, Mars looks just like any old star.

One week of work/summer left, then back to school.  I’m excited; I miss school.  OK that isn’t exactly accurate... what I miss is State College.  I miss J4 and beeffalo.  I miss hanging out with people.

But I’m going to miss Unisys during the school year.  I’ll miss working with Mark.  That’s one thing that made this summer way better than all the previous ones working there -- I had a kid my age working on the same stuff as me, in the next office as a matter of fact... and he’s into the same music I am, and we’re constantly messing around.  I’ve never IMed someone so much who was so close to me.

I’ll definitely miss being able to get gigantic 35 amp diodes like this one, from the power guys.

My project this week was to finally get my musicbox to the point where I could turn the car off and re-ignite the engine without it rebooting.  It turned out there were 2 problems in one here.  The first is that during ignition, the car battery’s 12V becomes more like 9 or 10 volts, and the computer can’t run on that, so it reboots.  The second problem, which I only learned about after fixing the first one, is that the car’s accessory power line actually switches off for a second while the engine is turning over.  Since I use the accessory line to control a relay that turns the computer on, the computer turns off when the accessory line isn’t at 12V.

To fix the dropping-voltage problem, I took the small sealed lead-acid battery out of my UPS to put in the car.  (I also bought a car battery to replace it with; my UPS is now running on that.  It’s supposed to keep a single computer with 15" monitor running for 18 minutes when the power fails; with the car battery, it kept my 2 computers, 19" monitor, and stereo running for about 40 minutes the other night, before I got tired of waiting around and went to bed.  But it would almost certainly keep them running for a day or so.  If this had become its own post, it would have been titled "What the UPS companies don’t want you to know.")  I planned to hook that battery up in parallel with the car battery, so that when the engine is turning over, there’s extra voltage to keep the line up for the computer.  However, the cranking engine would steal that voltage too, unless I put a diode between the batteries.  So current can flow from the car battery to the smaller battery, but not vice versa.

To fix the second problem, I needed a way to keep the accessory line on even when it’s off.  Or at least, a way to make the computer *think* the accessory line is on.  So I built a simple RC circuit.  I googled and came up with this (the circuit on the right).  My version is slightly modified: I used a generic NPN transistor, not specifically a 2N3053, and I didn’t put a diode around the relay coil.  I used a 47µF capacitor and a 100-kohm resistor, which gives me a time constant of about 5 seconds.  So the computer will run for up to 5 seconds without the accessory line actually being up... because it takes the capacitor 5 seconds to discharge through the resistor, and that current hits the gate of the transistor, which switches the transistor "on" thus completing the circuit from +12V to ground through the coil of the relay.

Exciting, no?

Hey, how ya all doing?  Yeah, I’ve been gone for a while. Take a guess where I was.  Disneyland?  No.  California?  I wish.  Japan?  Oh, if only possible.  No, I was stuck in the God-forsaken wasteland that is Fort Sill, Oklahoma. 

I finally had to go back and finish my job training.  I now officially know how to shoot a 155mm howitzer cannon.  I actually already knew, but I never went though actual training to get a little slip that says "Congratulations, your now smart enough to be considered a true solider", though the term "smart solider" is a slightly broad term in it self.

Yeah, so I pretty much spent all summer getting yelled at by Drill Sergeants, showering with a bunch of other guys, learning something I already knew, and sweating in the Oklahoma heat.  (Also we had to wait for another platoon to finish there training, so we did three weeks of training in six)  All in all it was fun, but I’m more then happy to be back home.

P.S. Oh, and the part about it being fun; that was sarcasim.

Life is good when you open your freezer and see 3 containers of Breyers Reese’s ice cream.

In other news, I’ve had the new Thrice album (The Artist in the Ambulance) for about 3 weeks now.  There is only one way to describe this album: hard.  Really really hard.  It’s pure metal.  Their first 2 albums were hard, but not purely metal; there was a lot of less-heavy stuff, and a lot of non-yelling vocals.  There’s much less of that kind of variation on this album.

The first few times I listened to it, I was just like, "Wo.  It’s so metal.  Too metal."  It was boring.  But this third week of listening to it, my perception changed.  As I’m getting to know the songs better, the intricacies are becoming more noticeable, and I’m starting to love it.  It’s still pure metal, and really really hard, but it’s amazing metal.

With most music that I listen to, it takes a few listens for it to grow on me -- I often hate it the first couple times, and then end up loving it.  This album was just an extreme case of that; it took a few weeks instead of a few days for me to begin to really like it.  I was going to post last week and say, "I’m sad to have to report that the new Thrice album is just a crappy metal album."  I’m glad I gave it more time, because now I realize that it’s a superb metal album.

As an added bonus, the liner notes are individual sheets, one per song, and each one contains lyrics and commentary by each member of the band.  I read through them all the night I got the album, and I totally felt like I was there in the studio... it’s really neat and insightful, and I think all bands should definitely do this.  Here’s two of the blurbs from the notes on the song "All That’s Left:"

-i had some trouble with this song at first.  it’s pretty simple as far as structure and guitar parts and I’m so darn used to riffing my head off for the entirety of songs.  i couldn’t really get past the fact that the song is super strong without any crazy guitar parts or a screwed up structure cause i felt like i needed to do something more.  i got past that.  it’s probably one of the most memorable songs we’ve ever written and i’m very proud of it. T

- this was one of the first songs to be written for the record, but one of the last songs to be finished.  dustin came very close to killing me while working on this song, but i love where it ended up.  we added the megaphone to the second verse literally 10 minutes before we had to fed-ex the song to be mixed.  i’ll always remember dustin sitting next to me in the control screaming "treason" into a megaphone pressed up against his guitar pick-up. B

Also, there are really awesome photos on the front of each of the cards.  They’re random inner-city scenes and skylines and stuff, but with a really retro / grainy look to them, like they were developed a long time ago.

So all in all, I’m thoroughly impressed with this album.  The artwork/commentary/layout is super unique and interesting, and the music just rocks really really hard.  If you like metal, and/or earlier Thrice albums, I think you’ll like this album a lot.

Twenty-four more to go,
and it will be tomorrow.
One more day older,
one more day closer
to some sort of end.
Ten a.m.,
and I’m already ready to say,
"let’s call it a day."

Get me out of this bed,
and tell me what you meant
when you said...
"Everything will be ok."

The parking lot sea and me
wait patiently...
to hear the still small voice
beneath the noise.
The traffic and sirens say,
"run away,"
but the trains say
"stay, we’ve been around,
and it’s all the same...
only the names change."

Just hold my head
and tell me what you meant
when you said,
"Take heart child.
Be still,
and quiet.
Know your burdens
are mine.
And dry your eyes;
there’s so much more
to all of this
than you can see.
So close your eyes tonight,
and trust in me."

Hold my head,
and tell me what you meant
when you said,
"Trust in me."

-Brandtson, New Favorite Pastime

With her there’s no pretending to feel the way I feel.
I’d never second guess myself if everything was real.
She could keep a secret. She could make the plans.
She would miss me when I’m gone, but she would understand.

I wonder when I’ll meet her. I wonder when I see her, will I know.
Another day without her. Another holiday I’ll spend alone.

If ever I might need to hear her voice a while.
I could call from far away, and she would make me smile.
Are you really out there, waiting around for me.
I know I’ll be here for you. If this is meant to be.

One day I know I’ll find her. I wonder when she sees me, will she know.
And on that day I find her. We’ll be the two that never let it go.

- Brandtson, Circa 1991

Yeah, those two songs are pretty much me nowadays.

Today I’ve gotten lots of hits from someone, or some people, on the amazon.com network.  They’re all at the same IP address, but that’s likely a firewall IP; the hits are from multiple different user agents (different browsers and operating systems), so I tend to think it really is a few different people.  Most of them show up as direct hits, but some are from wiki.amazon.com (which appears to be a private host) with a query string about Red Hat Linux and mouse wheels.  Anyone from amazon care to say hey and shed some light on my confusion?

So New York City is without power.  One time, in how many years?  Boo-hiss, boo-hiss.  I have just one thing to say to you big babies: move to Kilbertsville, then talk to me about power outages.  Twice a month is the minimum -- the bare minimum -- that power goes out here.

But on the serious tip, this is actually a big deal because it’s not just NYC; it’s a half-dozen states plus some of Canada.  Word so far is that a single point of failure between upstate NY and Canada is to blame.  Exactly how one failure could take portions of so many states offline is hard to imagine.  It’ll be interesting to learn the details.

Last night on Marketplace, there was a commentator talking about a federal law mandating 4 weeks of paid vacation for all American workers.  He presented it as an idea that the 2004 presidential hopefuls should espouse.  His exact words were, if a candidate runs with this as a campaign promise, "you’ll be elected in a flash."

I’ll take it.

In another story on the program, the mob a union of Verizon workers threatened to encourage Verizon customers to switch to AT&T unless they get their way.  Now there’s a brilliant move... your company is hurting, and you’re unhappy with some aspect(s) of your employment situation.  The solution: drive business away from your company.  Yeah, that’s sure to improve your job situation.  It’s just one more example of how unions are one of the most backwards, corrupt, and mentally-challenged institutions in America.

I was at someone’s house last night trying to show them your web site but I couldn’t find it.  I searched for what I thought would be key words (anthony, truth, linux).  Do you put meta tags in to make your site easy to search for in google, yahoo, etc?

I have the link to your site on my work computer, but I couldn’t remember the URL.