Travels and Images
WEEK 16 2003
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Picture of the Week
Lancaster
Weather
Saturday 19 March 2003
Saturday - I meant to get over to the recycling center
and drop a couple of things off, but mowing the yard, plus edging and weed-whacking
took longer than I thought it would.
My shoulders hurt this evening. The yard looks better. The flowerbed needs
a LOT of work now... My bulbs are starting to come up in the little flowerbed.
I read an article on line about the current filibustering about judges (Miguel
Estrada in particular) in congress right now. My impression of the article
is as follows: the author pointed out that it (the filibustering) was a good thing,
because it put a spotlight on something both Democrats and Republicans have
been carefully avoiding noticing in public - that the current judicial system not only enforces law and policy these days, but creates it as well.
Which is why it's such a contentious issue - if these judges were simply
trying murderers, embezzlers, students who download bad MP3's of eighties
glam-rock bands, then it wouldn't be a big deal. And so, since the chances
of the Democrat's getting any of their candidates passed, after this orgy of partisanship, is just as small as the Republican's current
prospective appointee's, a new system will have to be worked out. Either
no new judges, or a politically blind test (how?), or the legislative branch
will take back the power they have ceded.
I can't remember what blog I read it on. It may have been Glen Reynold's Instapundit or possibly Eugene Volokh's Conspiracy, though I don't actually see it there. Or some other page, lost to all of us now.
I probably got it all wrong anyway, I'm not a lawyer. And reality usually has a way of providing us with another, worse, alternative.
I note that for the second night in a row I can't get to some sites. Some
sort of internet foul up, possibly just Verizon. Ah well, I spend too much
time in front of a terminal these days as it is.
Downloaded and ran AdAware - it found three spybot type thingies. Including Alexa.
Weird. I don't download much of the sort of stuff you'd expect to find spyware
in, but who knows? There are still connectivity problems, so that wasn't
the problem.
Friday 18 April
2003
Friday - another long day. It's been a while since I missed
Easter at my father's, but a combination of things just made it impracticable
to be traveling at this time. Next week I'll get up there...
Work proceeds, slowly, as always. Results of some test cases are rather puzzling
- it could be a bug in the code, or that I am not using the right parameters,
or possibly too coarse a model, or just bad interpretation of the results.
Hmmm. Well, time will tell.
Since I'm not on the road, I get to dog -sit some friends pet's. We get along
pretty well - they enjoy their nightly walk with me, though it always seems
too short for them....
Thursday 17 April 2003
Thursday - long day. Dinner was at the "Downtown Bistro", and was good, if a bit pricey...
Wednesday 16 April 2003
Wednesday - worked late.
Tuesday 15 April 2003
Tuesday - work proceeds, slowly. Installed the power supply and the machine works again. Lots of dust inside there...
Somewhere I found a reference to a book that tells you how to cook, well, locusts and such. Unmentionable Cuisine. Yuck.
How big are science fiction space ships you ask? Or maybe you don't. In either
case, somebody named Jeff Russell had WAY too much time on his hands, (Canadian,
eh?), and came up with this page on relative Starship Dimensions
comparing just about everything (hyperbole alert) in science fiction to everything
else. Way cool.... Note that the home page doesn't work for me (Netscape
7.0) but the "zoom" tabs sure do. Thanks to Slashdot for the reference.
Monday 14 April 2003
Monday - the taxes are mostly done. I have
found a twelve dollar interest item that I need to include, or else risk
an IRS audit. Bah. Once more into the morass....
It has rained, nonstop to the best of my knowledge, all day. Not really hard,
but steady. There is snow predicted for the mountains, down to about the
4000 foot level. Cool.
Discovering that one of the PC's was nearly full, I spent a great deal of
time cleaning off dead files, and then defragmenting the disk. This took
hours. I also changed the allocations for the swap space ( we run BIG jobs
here ). When finished with all this I decided to do a reboot, so that
our next job would have a pristine OS state to work with. Well, it stopped
OK, but it won't boot.
Heck - it won't beep, buzz, or even burp. Dead power
supply, I'm guessing, so I picked one up on the way home and I'll try putting
it in tomorrow. Could be a bad switch or motherboard, but it's almost certain
to be the power supply.
Late breaking news: the twelve dollar item was for last year! Go figure.
As usual, Riley was more than willing to "help" with the taxes...
Sunday 13 April
2003
Sunday - Working on the taxes. Which are voluntary. Heh.
My friend paid for and picked up the Ebay car, and it's a beauty. By going
and looking at it beforehand, with a trusted mechanic friend, a lot of the
uncertainty in buying a car from Ebay was avoided.
Picture of the Week
Photo Notes: This image is all over the internet.
I'm not sure where it comes from, but it's one of the most remarkable photographs
I've see of this war.
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