Trinity.

A lesson in economics and politics, on why in America the rich get richer and the poor do too, how in America we have a government limited by the people and not the other way around, why our economy when sick is stronger than any other economy in the world when healthy, and how attitude is nearly everything.

It’ll take a little time, but read it.  You’ll be glad you did.

(The photo is mine, but I think it’s appropriate.)

OK, I have watched the movie A Walk To Remember, and towards the beginning, there is a church scene, and the choir sings a song, it goes something along the lines of - ’let the light from the lighthouse, let it shine on me’

Does anyone know the name or a choir who sings it?  I like the song alot, and want to get a copy to listen to any time I would like.

http://www.massedi.com/mass_multiples/c3h18_horizontal.htm

will someone please buy me that?  there is a store here in my local area that has a couple of them used for 1500, but alas, I can’t afford it, yet :)

also, stopped in Jackson today  for work, passed that church, it is called, First Church of Jesus Christ Scientist.  So I am not sure it is scientology, but still an interesting name.

Wow, this weekend, I learned that I have come to depend on the Internet and electricty alot more than I think is comfortable.  What could cause me to come to this conclusion?  Well, let us start from the beginning.  Monday, I worked 12 hours, which while great for my paycheck, is bad for me in general, mainly because I am lazy and like working only 8 hours a day.  Forward to Triday.  Great day, Not the end of the month, so things aren’t hectic (I deliver copiers, and sales people tend to put in all their sales for delivery at the end of the month, so the first few days/2 weeks of the month are mainly pickups and some sales) and because of the holiday, as soon as we finished our deliveries for the day, we could go home - WOOHOO!  Got done around noon, instead of 3 as usual time.  Was lazy for the rest of the day.  Friday comes, and it storms a tiny bit, there were approximately 15 minutes of 60mph winds.  Power went out.  3 hours later, the apartments across the parking lot from us had their power restored.  I couldn’t wait!  It was only a matter of time before mine would be up!  Well, it came up about an hour later, or at least, it tried to.  There was some electricity, but not enough to run anything.  The lights kept getting dimmer and dimmer, until I lit a candle and could see again.  Well, no, I didn’t light a candle, I didn’t have any.  But if I had, it would have been brighter than the lights were.  So, a call out to the electric company was in order.  What is this?  An automated system that sends the report to their technicians.  Awesome!  Automation at its finest, I just call and report it, and they send a technician out right away!  Ummm, no again.  Power was off from noon:30 ish on Friday, and then Saturday rolled around.  I woke up excited, my room was so bright!  Darn, it was the sun shining in my window.  A very hot day, one that would have been perfect with some air conditioning.  Unfortunately, we still didn’t have power, so it was not quite perfect.  A friend of mine from work showed up, and gave me some relief, because his computer and network was down at his house, and needed it fixed.  I jumped on the chance to fix his computers (he also has air conditioning!) Fixed them just great.  Then I installed the drivers for the motherboard.  Then WindowsXP refused to boot.  Safe Mode attempt showed that it was having a problem getting past the AGP driver.  Odd, there wasn’t an AGP video card in his machine.  Oh well, I would think on it, and return home, praying for electricity the entire way.  It did not happen.  Then I had an Idea!  I have a laptop, and I have a battery backup.  So, the little juice that was coming out of the wall was powering my laptop’s ac adapter, and the battery backup was powering the cable modem.  YES!  I was online!  I could just tell that things were going to get good.  Then I realized, I still needed to get Dee’s computers running.  Off to my pile of miscellaneous hardware.  No good video cards.  Hmmm, then it hit me, my webserver has a GeForce2  video card in it, and being a webserver, it didn’t need a video card.  And it was AGP!  So, I gave the AGP card to Dee, because I know he can put a computer together, so popping in the video card shouldn’t be a problem.  Off he went, and I was singing a happy song to myself as I was able to get on the internet on my (linux) laptop.  Well, there were no updates at the electric company, so I called them a few more times, hopeing that perhaps my first few calls hadn’t gotten through somehow (hey, if power was out here, why wouldn’t it be there right?)  Oh yeah, the people across the parking lot had power.  Turns out, only our row of 4 apartment buildings had power.  I went to bed a very sad person without electricity.  I woke up the next morning.  The sky was overcast, it was going to rain again, and my roommate had heard on the radio that they thought the power was going to be knocked out again.  "Wouldn’t it being knocked out again, require us to have powe restored first?" I asked him.  He just shrugged.  Suddenly, I was excited, the lights started to get brighter, but as if on some cue, knowing my excitement was rising, bam.  Off went all power, and with it, the battery backup drained of its power, and laptop could run, however, there was no internet connection, so no need to keep it running.  Then I had a novel idea.  Let’s clean my room!  I mean, it’s been a while (I have pictures that I may post if I can get over the embarrassment of them) since I had cleaned it last, and so I went all out.  Broke out the Endust, and Windex and 409, and was about to break out the vacuum as well, but then, I realized, no power, so I was kind of crestfallen that I couldn’t vacuum.  I cleaned and cleaned.  Then Dee showed up, his computer still wasn’t working.  Neither was my AC, so once again, I hopped at the chance of fixing his computer (and basking in the wondefulness that is Air Conditioning.)  I simply reinstalled Windows (it’s so fun to do that)  and everything was up and running, he was happy, and his wife made me some corn on the cob (YUMMY!!!)  So, I came home, and glorious day it was, I could hear the sweet music of the air conditioner running as I exited Dee’s car and stepped onto the sidewalk leading to my apartment.  Ah, it was nice, although, I still don’t quite understand how or why the power was out for 50+ hours while the apartments across the parking lot had power after 3 hours.  Its crazy how things work sometimes.  Hope everyone else had a great 4th of July though.

Yo!  I’m #1 on Google and Yahoo for fhqwghads!

I’m going down to the shore for the 4th of July holiday, to the usual spot in OCNJ.  Should be lots of fun.  I might be leaving right now (from work), or I might be going home first and leaving tomorrow.  Don’t know yet.  I’ll decide when I get to the car I guess.

In the meantime, check out these links:

A visitor sent in this mini-itx page.  These are some of the neatest little computers I’ve ever seen.  Go to the Projects page to see more.

Also, Nuke the Moon.  This is hilarious.

Have a great holiday, everyone.

I was just daydreaming in my cube about the next time I’ll be able to hit the single track, and came across a good site for info on local trails and parks...
click here!
and here’s MTB slang dictionary... http://world.std.com/~jimf/biking/slang.html

Man.  As far as days go, today was pretty spectacular.  At work, I found out that I might be starting a programming project that will take until the end of the summer (when I leave and go back to school).  Which is awesome, because although I’m technically an engineer and I like engineering, I really love programming lately.  And this particular project would involve writing some C code to either replace a bunch of Perl scripts, or embedding some Perl into some C.  (I got chosen for this because I’m fluent in Perl.)  Now, if you’re not a programmer, right about now you’re saying either "What?" or "So what?"  But I am excited.

I also got 2 rad emails today from random people on the internet.  I usually get one or two of these a week, but sometimes less, sometimes a little more.  It’s definitely gotten more often since my site went from about 10 or 20 visitors per day to nearly 200 every day over the past year and a half.

In any event, getting these emails is easily one of my favorite things ever.  Complete strangers just emailing to say "hey thanks for putting this-or-that online," or "hey I like the site!"  That just rocks.  I feel so useful  : )

The first of these 2 particular emails was from another comp-E working at the Aviation Applied Technology Directorate at Fort Eustis, Virginia.  That’s so important sounding.  He wanted to say thanks, because by putting some info online about a Kenwood CD changer adapter, I saved him $60.  And he also gave me props on my musicbox.

The second email was really short, from a girl, and it contained the phrase "You sound like the perfect guy!"  I’m not really going to comment on that because I don’t want to sound conceited (and I don’t think it’s true... not quite anyway), but I’m saying, I just can’t complain when I get an email like that.

Oh, and I found my Unisys ID which I’d lost about 2 weeks ago.  That’s important because you need it to get past security on the way into any of the buildings; I’ve been scaling the walls and dropping in through open skylights for the past 2 weeks.  (Just kidding... we don’t really have skylights.)

So today, my dad was mowing the lawn like he does about every other day, and he stopped to sharpen the blade because it was leaving patches of uncut grass behind.  In the process of tightening the nut after replacing the blade, he slipped and nearly cut his finger off.  Ow.  So he went to the hospital and got stitches, and 3 hours later he comes home and resumes mowing!!

As I hear the mower start up, I think man, I should probably go out there and finish the lawn.  But my dad is stubborn, and I figured there was no way he’d actually let me do it.  A little nudging from my mom convinced me to offer anyway, and he didn’t even put up a fight.  I know my dad, and the only thing I can figure is that must have hurt like a son of a gun for him to let me do it.  Or something.

Anyway, I haven’t mowed any lawn in..... well, I have no idea how long it’s been.  Three or 4 years, easily.  So it was actually kind of enjoyable, in a character-building kind of way.  And you really appreciate things like a swimming pool a lot more after you’ve done something like mow the lawn.

Speaking of awesome music, I so should’ve included the new album by The Postal Service when I ordered a few CDs the other day from amazon.  Mark had been saying how good they were, but I hadn’t heard them.... then the day after I place my order, my brother is like "Yo, check out these Postal Service mp3s."  And they rock.  They’re like nintendo sound effects mixed with other weird stuff mixed with nice pretty melodies and action-packed storytime semi-lovesong lyrics.  You can download an mp3 of "Such Great Heights" on that site; it’s a good one.

I am thinking it’s a sign, that the freckles
in our eyes are mirror images and when
we kiss they’re perfectly aligned.
And I have to speculate that God himself
did make us into corresponding shapes like
puzzle pieces from the clay.
True, it may seem like a stretch, but
it’s thoughts like this that catch my troubled
head when you’re away, when I am missing you to death,
when you are out there on the road for
several weeks of shows... and when you scan
the radio, I hope this song will guide you home.

Come on people, that is emo 9000 right there, you gotta love it.

So in closing, I’d like to say that my 2 favorite song titles of all time are:

1. "Making People Apologize for Accusing You of Things You Actually Did," by Shai Hulud, and

2. "Like I Care," by Helmet.

I note with incredulity on your list of  "don’t like’s" the inclusion of all bibles not authorised by King James. This on the same list as "interpretation’s of the bible".  (sorry)

No doubt the KJ is a monumental achievement of world literature; no doubt it is a resonant and fruity translation for reading aloud with Shakespearian pomp; but accurate it is not. Many modern translations  simplify with commercial intent, but many, many others are based on original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts rather than the Latin Vulgate that forms the basis of the KJ.

As a consequence, the better 20th Century translations really are as close as we need to be to every jot and tittle of the original manuscripts. Despite its grandiosity, the many well documented inaccuracies of the KJ mean that it is little better than an interpretation itself -  your inclusion of I John 5: 7 shows how risky it is to pin your faith on one translation. DYOR.

Seriously, get (and read) a number of good modern translations; it might bring you even closer to the truth.

The "random" feature on my car mp3 player is the best thing ever.  This morning it happened upon the Counting Crows’ album "August and Everything After."  That album is so old, and it’s still so supremely good.  Now granted, I’m emotionally attached to it from having listened to it over the last 8 years or so, but still... music changes and styles change, but that album is really really good even today.

In looking over my photos from the AT hike, I realized that I have the same issue that my mom does when it comes to photography.  My photos tell many of the stories and events of my life, but they do it distinctly through my own eyes.  Which may seem quite natural, but as I reflect upon it sometimes it’s strange to realize that these stories of my life contain very few photos of myself.  And even though the objective beauty or "neatness" of a given photo may be its most important quality, it occurs to me that in the long run (i.e. after I’m gone), my photos’ personal value will have been much greater for me than for my friends and family, because of the dearth of photos of myself.  But they are after all my photos, so maybe that’s entirely sensible.

Speaking of photos, Garrett’s photos make me want to cry every time he takes a new set of them.  His latest ones of downtown Savannah are a case in point.  They’re all so remarkably vibrant and interesting.  It’s not that I don’t like my own photos, not at all, but Garrett produces like 2 or 3 beautiful photo sets each week.  He’s just consistently amazing.

On an entirely random note, last Thursday was an awesome day.  (I wanted to post about this before but just didn’t get around to it till now.)  First of all, since I was off work Monday-Wednesday for the hike, Thursday and Friday really had no choice but to be awesome, because they comprised a two-day work week.  But on Thursday, there was a Unisys student employee event in the cafeteria from 2pm-5pm.  There were a couple speakers who talked about what it’s like to work here (hey, this is my 4th year here, so I know by now...), and then there was a scavenger hunt.

My first thought upon learning that there would be a scavenger hunt was, "You have got to be kidding me.  What are we, kindergarteners??"  But it turned out to be a hunt for things like Unisys’ 2002 revenue ($5.6B), the number of raised-dots on the metal techroom doors (it’s 11x17x2 dots), and the FCS date of our ES7000 server to Microsoft (I don’t remember, and I don’t feel like walking down to that end of the building right now... sorry).  So it was pretty fun.  But what really rocked is the fact that me and my man Mark teamed up and conquered it, beating the other ~60 co-ops/interns, and won $20 movie passes.  Then, they brought out ice cream and big bowls of caramel, chocolate syrup, cherries, sprinkles, and nuts, and we all made sundaes.  You just can’t beat that.  And when there was a bunch of ice cream left over, me and Mark decided to take it back to our hallway and hook our group up with it.  We’re going for intern and co-op of the year awards : )

Two guys who I’d never met before were going to see Finding Nemo right after work, and they invited me and Mark.  Well Mark had just popped 2 tires on his car the night before, so he had to get that taken care of.  But I went, and it turns out both these guys are Christians!  Super phatty.  Anyway we went in, and Finding Nemo was playing in 3 theaters.  We were about 10 minutes late, so we walked in and it had already started.  But when it was over in about 45 minutes, we walked out and realized that we had gone into the wrong theater!  So we went into one of the other ones where a new showing was just starting, and watched the first half after having already seen the last half.  It was rather a strange way to watch a movie, let me tell you.

Oh... it’s finally summertime here!  After 2 months of rain nearly every single day (there were something like 4 non-rainy days in 2 months...ugh), we’re finally getting a break this week.  It’s forecast to be sunny and 80° or 90° pretty much all this week, even into the weekend.  Amazing.  So, the song of the week is Summertime by Mae.

Just a cute old photo of my sister that I found a while ago.... it’s from 5 years ago.

The National Weather Service has issued a Severe Weather Alert for today and tomorrow in my area... here’s a snippet:

THE ATMOSPHERE HAS BECOME QUITE MOIST AND UNSTABLE... AND IT WILL BE EFFICIENT IN WRINGING MOISTURE OUT OF ITSELF DUE TO ENHANCED RISINGMOTION.

"RISINGMOTION"??  And "wringing moisture out of itself"??  Who comes up with this stuff?

I’m about sick of hearing that there’s "escalating violence in the middle east."  If someone kills lots of American civilians it’s called terrorism, but if someone kills lots of Isreali civilians it’s called "escalating violence."

Fortunately, someone in the current American administration has some balls.  As much as I like president Bush, he’s being way too politically correct and not nearly honest enough when he speaks about this situation.  Colin Powell, on the other hand, said today that we all want peace, and when the terror attacks stop, responses to such attacks will no longer be necessary.

The difference between what he said, and what nearly everyone else is saying, is that he isn’t pretending there is a moral equivalence between the two sides.  Arab terrorists attacking Israeli civilians is in no way "the same" as the Israeli government hunting and killing the members and leaders of Arab terrorist groups.  Fighting terrorism isn’t the same as committing terrorism, and anyone who pretends otherwise is a liar.

I watched the movie 25th Hour last night.  It’s a Spike Lee joint starring Ed Norton, about a drug dealer who gets busted by the police.  The movie depicts the 24 hours before his jailtime begins, with flashbacks to earlier times to explain things.  Ed’s character (Montgomery aka "Monty") is struggling to figure out who dropped a dime on him, suspecting his girlfriend.

(Warning: I’m going to give away some of the details from the movie now.)

Interestingly, his bodyguard’s name is Konstantin, and they even got the nickname version correct (it’s Russian, but pronounced "Kost’-ya" with English characters).  It was funny to hear Monty call him a "fat Russian something-or-other" and then hear his response, "it’s Ukrainian!"  Funny to me, at least, because similar exchanges happen all the time (in jest) between me and my roommates Konstantin and Dimitry.  Except they’re both pretty skinny so the jokes are never about their weight (more like their Russian mafia connections).

There were at least 2 scenes that were incredibly similar to scenes in American History X, which (IIRC?) is also a Spike Lee joint, and definitely also stars Ed Norton.  The first was when Ed is confronting the boss of the drug ring (the head of a white supremacy group in American History X).  He is standing with his back to the door of the boss’ room, facing the boss who’s behind his desk, and he points and says "When I walk out that door, I’m out, you hear me!?"  The line is nearly if not completely identical in the two movies.

The second scene is towards the end, when Monty is just about to go to prison.  He’s with his two best friends (and his dog), and he’s asking one of them (Frank) to "make him ugly" by beating him up, for his own good when he gets into prison.  (Because he’s a pretty boy, you know, and they "don’t do well" in prison.)  Frank stands up from the bench he’s sitting on, and is like "no way, you’re crazy, I won’t do that!"  The other friend Jacob is just like "what??" and he’s still sitting on the bench for a few seconds.  Frank and Monty are yelling back and forth at each other, moving into the center of the little street they’re on, and eventually Jacob gets up and is like "Monty, stop this!"  At this point, Monty turns around and yells at Jacob to shut up.  The camera is switching quickly from person to person to side-views and it makes the scene very intense.  Well in American History X, the scene where Ed is yelling at his mom’s Jewish boyfriend is very similar; he turns around and yells at his sister who was pleading with him to stop, just like Jacob was in 25th Hour.  The same fast-paced somewhat-disorienting camera techniques were used too.

In 25th Hour, Frank does end up beating Monty pretty bad -- he’s got him pinned on the ground and he’s beating his face pretty hard.  It’s an incredibly sad and emotional scene as Frank is sobbing the entire time, and Monty isn’t fighting back at all.  I actually thought he was going to die.

The thing about this movie is, I thought it had a decent moral, because throughout the story his friends are talking about how he deserves to go to prison because he’s been living off the suffering of other people.  So even though you identify with the main character and feel bad for him, you’re sorta like "well, yeah, that’s what you get, you jerk."  However, at the end as his dad is driving him to prison, he’s like "Monty you just give me the word, and I’ll head west" and that’s what he does.  The last ten minutes of the movie depict the rest of Monty’s life out west, with his dad narrating from the present, saying things like "you go west, and you never come back... you don’t write, you find a job and you make a new life for yourself, the way it was supposed to be... I’ll miss you, but I believe in God’s kingdom, and I’ll be reunited with you and your mother... just not in this life."  And it’s sorta sad, but then it’s like "yes!  he got away!"  But then it’s like "hmm that moral really stinks: live your life as a drug dealer, get busted, then run from the law and start a new life and it works and you’re happily ever after."

But THEN, what’s really confusing is, the very last scene is back in the car as his dad is driving him to prison, presumably right after he said "you just give me the word, and we’ll head west."  So you sorta don’t really know, did he go west, or not?

I got my first paycheck of the summer last week... it’s nice to have money again.  April and I went to Maggiano’s for lunch/early dinner yesterday, and I think it was spectacular.  That is easily my favorite restaurant.  They didn’t have Chicken Mushroom Cannelloni, which is what I had the only other time I was there, and I was sad because it was amazing.  But I had Chicken Scallopine Marsala and it was good too.

Well April loves to shop, so she said that we have to go to the mall if we’re going to be in KOP.  But she ended up not buying anything, and instead I bought a bunch of new clothes.  I literally can’t remember the last time I bought clothes.  I just never do it.  I get clothes as gifts (Christmas / birthday etc) and as hand-me-downs from Brian (who somehow is still growing at 27...) and that’s about it, but my family has good taste so that has worked out pretty well for me.

Anyway I got 2 pairs of pants and 2 short-sleeve button-down shirts, and they are all super.  Three were from the Gap, all on sale, and one from EMS that wasn’t on sale, but was still reasonably priced at $26.  The pair of jeans I got are apparently "vintage" jeans.  Vintage, that is, as in "look at me I’m so vintage my jeans even say so with a big 1969 label!  I’m hip!  check me out!!"  Fortunately, a little utility knife action took care of that.

So I’m trying to rename a folder on my mom’s computer, and Windows keeps telling me it can’t, because access is denied, because "the file is in use."  Which means that some other program left some hook unreleased after it closed, which is annoying.  I open up the task manager and exit all the miscellaneous stuff that isn’t a background process, and I still can’t rename it.  Sometimes Windows is just dumb like that, and I know from experience that rebooting the PC will make it work.

But as I’ve got the process manager open, I notice that "System Idle Process" has accumulated some ridiculously large number of HOURS of processor time.  I run net statistics server and learn that this system has been up since May 15th.  MAY FIFTEENTH!!  That’s over 20 days!  I don’t know what my mom and brother are doing... or NOT doing... on this machine, but that is way longer than I can manage to keep my Windows boxen running without a reboot.  Granted, I have some as-yet-unresolved problem that causes random lockups, but.... well, but nothing, that is the point... Windows machines don’t stay up that long.

Well, apparently some of ’em do.

I’m currently #5 on Google for brick fence photos.  Woohoo!

This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen:

Update: Apparently that site took the cat clip offline, so I found a few more:

http://txc.net.au/~mapie/funny_cats_1.wmv
http://217.215.221.13/cam/mov/funny_cats_1.wmv
http://www.hamncheez.com/videos/funny_cats_1.wmv
http://www.strandgeck.com/stuff/funny_cats_1.wmv

Last night, me and Kris went to see Elliott at the Church (technically, the First Unitarian Church) in Philadelphia.  It was an r5 show.

Elliott was good.  I like them.  A lot.  But I am really excited about the other band they’re touring with, called Mae.  (You can listen to a few of their songs on their mp3.com page.  And you should.)  I can’t really think of any band that they sound like.  They have some of the softness and prettiness of Plankeye, but they don’t sound anything like them.  They have some of the fuzzy guitars and moog sounds of The Rentals, but they really don’t sound much like them, either.  Their sound is mostly-upbeat rock music, very catchy, and fun.

One of the other opening acts, which I think is a much smaller, local band, was called Riding Bikes.  The name leaves something to be desired, in my opinion, but I really liked their music.  Very Saves the Day -ish, and I love Saves the Day, so there you go.  These guys didn’t have any merch at the show, so that’s why I figure they must be smaller/newer or just local or something.

You know what’s cool about wearing a white T-shirt to an indie show?  You’re guaranteed to be the only one there wearing one.  Everyone wears black or dark or yellow or something.  Actually, this was a pretty diverse all-ages crowd, and I saw probably 5 other people in white.  But that’s still incredibly few in a crowd of 3 or 4 hundred, and it’s always that way.

In closing, I’d like to say that this weather is so depressing.  I heard on the news last night that since May first, there have been 24 days of rain and 2 days of sun.  And also, despite the really bad drought we had last summer/fall, most counties in my area are 7 or 8 inches ABOVE normal rainfall level for the past 12 months, INCLUDING that drought period in the stats.  Which means that in the past 2 months there has been about 7 or 8 inches of rainfall.  Which is crazy.

My website has been offline since Friday night (give or take a few hours, depending on your location).  During most of that time, my domain name wasn’t even resolving, so if you sent me any email between Friday night and today, I did not receive it.  If you’re reading this, then it’s "back online" from your location.  For most people, it should be fully accessible sometime today or tomorrow.  For others (like me, at home and at work) it’s not yet online, and I had to hack my hosts file to get it to come up.

Ha!  I finally found a way to SSH into my linux box at home from work.  Darn corporate firewalls.  Anyway... now I can hopefully find a port to run the webserver on that’s 1) not going to upset Comcast and 2) able to pass through the firewall here.  I can’t say I blame Unisys for having tight security, but I can certainly blame Comcast (along with nearly every other ISP out there...) for prohibiting webservers on the standard HTTP port.  Paying $40/month for an "internet connection," that’s really only half a connection, is crap.

In unrelated news, the Lancer is the new Neon.  Ugh.  As if it’s not painful enough to have to see billions of them all over the place, we have to see them "souped up" too...