The Star Spangled Banner

By Francis Scott Key

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?


On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner!  Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!


And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!


Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto:  "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Thursday 3 July 2003

Thursday - went to the beach. There was a message on the machine Wednesday night: "Hey, the weather is perfect, the rented place is on the cliff overlooking the beautiful ocean, and it is a huge place- why don't you come over?!?!"

Well, I sat there for a while, thinking of all the good reasons why I just couldn't, and then I called and said I'd be there in the morning.

Having packed, I left earlyish - seven - and was there by eleven. I couldn't get my friends on the cell phone immediately ( they were off picking berries in some seaside glen apparently..) so I was forced to sit on the beach, relaxing, and listening to the waves for an hour or so...

Wednesday 2 July 2003

Wednesday - stopped by Walmart on the way to work and picked up two UPS units. All they had were the 350VA units, and I would have preferred the 500VA, but that's Walmart for you. I'd stopped by the local Best Buy and Circuit City yesterday and they were out of stock on the APC units, the brand I prefer. Since one of the machines was still running a job I was going to wait until tomorrow to install them, but we had a power outage at about 3 p.m., for about five minutes, so I did it after that. I didn't install the software yet - basically I used the software once before on some Unix boxes, and it didn't really help much.

I noticed that there was a "voltage out of range" signal on my home pc. At 2:50 p.m today, for two seconds. So I guess it was a wide area outage. I do have an UPS on the home box, so that probably kept it up and running.

Tuesday 1 July 2003

Tuesday - back at work. A power glitch killed some of the jobs we'd hoped to finish over the weekend - I really need to get those UPS'es installed. Restarted them, played about with array passing in PVM, and interfaces in TCL/Tk...

Ok, this is interesting. GeoURL. A "geo tracker". Somehow it obtains the latitude and longitude of web sites, and allows you to geographically search for the closest. Or you can put in a zip code or something like that. We may see a lot more of this in the future. On the enlarged maps you can see who is blogging or at least has a web site in some of the most remote area's imaginable, for example, the Falkland Islands.

No, I didn't forget the link. It's left as an exercise for the reader....

Monday 30 June 2003

Monday - not much to say. I had an appointment in Orange that I barely made, with the terrible traffic on the I-5 and construction. Then I tried to meet up with another friend in downtown L.A., unsuccessfully, and then back home. I can say to you now - do not take the Interstate 5 through Los Angeles, if you can at all avoid it! Yuck.

Also, there is an In 'N Out Burger in Burbank. ( See, content, I promised you...)

Sunday 29 June 2003

Sunday - got up late, lazed around in the pool, went to Jasmine's for lunch, made a pass by Fry's, then went and took advantage of another friends hospitality for the evening.

Jasmine's is a dim sum restaurant, when the food is rolled about on little carts and you wave the servers down if it looks appetizing as they pass you. My friends small boy hates the place. Gamely trying to find something edible he bit into some sort of pork in a biscuit, which, judging from his face, was the worst thing he ever ate! Personally I thought it was an OK place, and I don't particularly like sea food.

Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: The new moon in the old moon's arms - or is it the other way around? Anyway, the darkish portion is actually shining by reflected earth light, which is bounced back again to us. Given that the moon is just about the color of charcoal this gives an idea of how much light is reflected off of the earth - primarily off the clouds, I would guess. The leaves are from an overgrown rose bush in the foreground...

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