September 2006 Archives

So this post is being made with my new Verizon Wireless Broadband PCM card while I sit in the Hartsfield Jackson International airport waiting to fly off to Chicago. The little card works well and is indeed fast--not as fast as a wired broadband connection, but very useful!

God, I miss having a President that has a brain and is articulate! President Bill Clinton tore into the Fox News Network with Mike Wallace's game of smoke and mirrors. He called names. He set the facts straight. The Republican noise machine, once again trying to re-write history, was silenced. You can read the entire transcript at Think Progress. Or better yet, watch the interview at this link.

And one final question which I've asked several times on this blog to a silent nation: Why the hell hasn't George W. Bush been held accountable for not protecting the nation on 9/11? That's his job--everything else is gravy!

CLINTON: What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since. And if I were still president, we’d have more than 20,000 troops there trying to kill him.

Now, I’ve never criticized President Bush, and I don’t think this is useful. But you know we do have a government that thinks Afghanistan is only one-seventh as important as Iraq.

And you ask me about terror and Al Qaida with that sort of dismissive thing? When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.

And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think you’re so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could.

The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaida was responsible while I was president.

And so, I left office. And yet, I get asked about this all the time. They had three times as much time to deal with it, and nobody ever asks them about it. I think that’s strange.

Source: Think Progress

Nothing too exciting to post for such an auspicious occasion. However, things are very, very busy.

Saturday I had brunch with a good friend who is in town from Florida. I haven't seen him in about a year, so this was great fun. I've spent the rest of this weekend running about like a mad man trying to accomplish all of my errands before I leave town for 3 weeks.

Monday I have to create a podcast for my upcoming Japan trip. I'm also taking a dear friend out to eat who is retiring this week! Though she will continue to live in town with her husband, somehow I will miss her, knowing that she is not working at the central office!

Tuesday I am giving a presentation to a group of visiting educators and then finishing the Japan podcast. Wednesday a couple of educators from Australia will be visiting my school. Wednesday night I'm flying to Chicago to present at a conference there on Thursday. Back to Atlanta Thursday night to spend Friday with our guests from Australia. Saturday will no doubt be a mad rush to complete packing for the 3 week trip to Japan which begins Sunday when I fly out to San Francisco.

I'll be back in town October 20th. But I plan to post to my blog as much as possible during the trip. I know that I will have access to internet in about 50% of the places at which I will be staying in Japan. The trip will be intensely busy and exciting I am sure.

This is my 999th blog post! My next blog post will be post number 1,000! My, oh my. It should be something significant, something meaningful, something profound! But what?! This will be hard...

Suggestions please!

I did a Google search and Google Earth search on Steindalsbreen, the glacier upon which I trod in Norway. I found pictures posted by others who also hiked upon the frozen tundra. Interestingly, aside from the glacier being snow covered and mostly sun drenched during their experiences, the glacier looked fabulously the same.

I then found it on Google Earth and was surprised. We had driven considerably south from Tromsø to get to the glacier! Here are come Google Earth screen shots. All of them are taken from north looking south. And, interestingly, I recognize some of the features! The distant earth shot is basically taken from the North Pole. You will have to click to enlarge the picture to see the marker at 61.41667 6.883333.

As Bush and his Republican party (although I am not sure who runs whom) draw closer to the election, we will hear more and more of their efforts to attack the patriotism of the opposition. This practice was rampant this week as Republicans foolishly and desperately said that those who oppose the absurd war this administration has engaged the whole nation in are unpatriotic and aid the terrorists. Yeah, right!

I am reminded of Samual Johnson who said:

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Not to worry. It's not a real cat. It's not a cat that has been the victim of a bad hair taxidermy. It actually only stands about 3 to 4 inches tall. When I actually owned a couple of cats, this was their pet cat. I kept the pet cat and got rid of the real ones. This one requires no feeding.

I love reading this blog. Sarabeth can be so, so... razor sharp!

The gem from President Bush’s Rose Garden press conference today:

"And one of the reasons he (Saddam Hussein) was declared a state sponsor of terror was because that’s what he was."

Since brevity is the soul of wit, President Bush didn’t give us the rest of the reasons. But maybe on some future date, when he’s in a more expansive mood?

Source: 1115.org - West Coast Cap Peelers » » The Wit Of Bush

I have a thing about time pieces. I am not quite sure how this happened. The time piece must be unusual or minimalist. One of my favorite time pieces is a watch I bought for Y2K. Remember that scare! I think it was more an excuse to get a little crazed! (For those "too young" to recall, Y2K stood for Year 2000.)

Anyway, I bought a sundial on a wristband in case all of the computers went out on January 1, 2000, and it was the end of time!

During my first trip to Paris, I purchased a strange clock at a little gift shop near the Forum des Halles. The shop was not far from one of my favorite cathedrals, St-Eustache. Here is a close up of the gear works that make the clock actually work. I played with the photograph's levels a bit to give it a darker more metallic feeling.

I had to get out the book I printed from my last trip to the City of Lights to check my spelling on the names above. (Shocked and proud to report I spelled them correctly!) I must say, as it seems to go unsaid much too much, I took some extraordinary pictures on that last trip! Looking back at the book, I impressed myself! And now that I have a really nice new camera, my Canon 30D, a new trip is mandated! :o)

I have blown up and framed four pictures from that trip, which was now almost a year ago. Those pictures hang around the house, and I see them often, which somehow narrowed my memory of that glorious time.

Wow! It was a wonderful time. Seeing the pictures in the book brings it all back. And I loved the unexpected snow. Of course, you can see some of the pictures in the Photos Gallery linked atop of this page.

This is the remote to my tiny flat panel HDTV. I thought the thickness of the buttons looked very interesting as they reflected the sunlight coming in through the window. And then... there is the narrow range of focus. Snap!

ecto seems to find inserting both a class and a style object in the code a bit difficult. Maybe I'm missing something. I've had to hand edit each post after publication to make it function correctly.

Yes, ridiculous, I know, but I couldn't resist the title, "Cat & Mouse." You must admit it's better than "Felix & Apple."

The title really didn't occur to me when I was taking the pictures. The moment of genius happened after the flash--so to speak.

And I'm learning some new things about ecto and code manipulation as I try to afix the cat and mouse on opposite sides of the page. Otherwise, you know how they can be!

Maxed Out?
Yes! Back by popular demand: Another crazy, meaningless photo series! Not really, I lied! No one wants to suffer through another series of my inane photos. But...

I just purchased a 2x extender for my 70 - 200mm lens and had to try it out. So around the house I went in a flurry of flash. Additionally, I am playing around with a reflection-generating javascript. See?! Like? Let me know what you think as I'm not sure myself if I really like it.

This picture... of a knob on my piano. Huh?! Yes, actually.

I heard an interesting NPR report this week, an interview with a police officer who has a high tech police car. He talked about a new technology they had piloted in Southern California: two cameras mounted in the police car taking pictures of all of the cars they drive by. The pictures were digitized and the color, make, model and tag number of all of the cars was automatically entered into a database which was compared to a database of stolen cars, missing persons, and outstanding warrants for arrest.

In the 90 day trial period (I think I'm remembering that number correctly) the team would have normally found 3 stolen cars. With the new technology they found over 100! As the officer drives by a stolen vehicle the system immediately notifies him of the stolen car. I loath theft by taking. Stealing cars is wrong. Catching and prosecuting car thieves is a good thing. I was all on board.

Then the officer said something that got me thinking past the immediately obvious but superficial. He said that the system can, over time, learn where all of the "bad guys" drive, where they go, and presumably what they do based on their travel patterns. Well, if they can do this for the "bad guys" then they can do it for us "good guys" too.

Then tonight I flipped on the TV. I caught the end of some exposé-type show. The narrator said, "The average citizen is photographed over 300 times a day by surveillance cameras." As I travel down the roads to and from work, I pass a surveillance camera atop a tall pole every quarter of a mile. I have often wondered who authorized this. There was no vote. It just happened.

As far as I am concerned, all of this begs some substantive national discussion. Who is watching whom? How much did the equipment cost? How much does it cost to maintain? What is being done with this data? Who would want this data? Who would sell this data to whom and for what reasons?

I am one of the good guys. I've never stolen a car nor do I ever plan to. I'm not out there doing anything wrong and really have nothing to hide. But this is about much more than that. Who decides the definition of "the good guys"? With the Patriot Act, fundamental civil rights are suddenly a mushy vague and illusive vapor. And I'm being watched, my phone calls are being monitored, my banking transactions are subject to analysis (on and on)...by whom, and why exactly? As long as we fear an invisible enemy, who decides if you are "one of them?"

Who really is in charge? Are we still a government of the people, for the people, and by the people? Is the expense of surveillance truly cost effective? Would some money be well spent addressing the cause of people stealing cars so as to reduce the number stolen? I think, in the world according to Tim, we need to have a deep national conversation about all of this because I suspect that tyranny and loss of freedom slips up on a nation in very slow and measured ways. No one just pushes a button, or can they do that now, too?

This is so odd, it's fun. Who thinks up this stuff and then spends the time to execute it! Don't get me wrong: I guess I'm glad they did!

I hate corporate America. Repeatedly my experience is that they only care about money, not people, not the service they provide or fail to provide. What makes me more angry is that, like our government, I'm powerless to even address the issue to them.

A land line is not allow outgoing calls. The online form to report the error takes a couple minutes to fill out before it reports to the user that it doesn't work. I try it again in case I messed something up. I didn't.

I then use my cell phone to call the number to report the phone line failure only to spend at least 5 minutes listening to a bunch of recordings and having to respond to them, confirm the response, correct the incorrect response, even when much of the information I'm forced to listen to has nothing to do with my problem. Wasting my time!

So, the phone company doesn't care about people. The insurance companies I had to call last week to report a change of address don't care about people either. They had a similar system. In all of these scenarios I never talked to a human being.

I'm way into high tech but only if it's faster and more efficient for me to accomplish my objective. I guess corporate America feels the same way, which is why we have to suffer through this inattentiveness. All they care about is more profit at the expense of service and people. This is a classic example of using connectivity to disconnect people. It's wretched! It's so 1984 the book!

People talking to people is a required business operational expense. I can only imagine if at my school, instead of calling and talking to a person, people were forced to call and waist their time listening to recordings and leaving recorded messages. I'm infuriated.

Yes, you will be delighted to know that Rocket Apes is the last post in this silly series!

I'm singing in the bowl. I'm singing in the bowl...

This coffee mug was born in the mountains of North Carolina and has always been one of my favorites!

In fact, he joined the family about two years ago this month. You can check out the pictures from that trip at this link, buried deep in my photo journals.

Yes, this is indeed a pink pig (with polka dots) piggy bank.

I hope each episode will be available through the iTunes Store!

Star Trek purists, take a deep breath! On Sept. 16, the iconic ‘60s series will return to syndication for the first time since 1990, but with a startling difference: All 79 episodes are being digitally remastered with computer-generated effects not possible when Gene Roddenberry created the show 40 years ago. The news could cause Roddenberry loyalists to have a collective cow, but the longtime Trek staffers in charge of the makeover say they're honoring the late maestro's vision, not changing it. ...

Source: Insider - tvguide.com

Once again my mother laments how boring my "blob" has become--that's her highly technical term for my blog. I'm not sure if she uses it pejoratively or if it's a term of endearment for her. Perhaps it just reflects her desire to at least appear to remain aloof from the bits and bytes that swirl my world. Anyway, I just stay too busy and have been a bit neglectful of my splot in the blobosphere.

So for the next few days I will send the world some crazy picture I have taken. Mom will appreciate this one as will my cousin, Peggy, who made me this ceramic piano for me as a Christmas gift many years ago. She probably has no idea how I cherish it. I learned to play the piano on an instrument like this and have kept this remembrance all these years atop my digital piano in my digital media studio to juxtapose two identical yet completely different worlds.

The little smily dude was a gift from a little sixth grade student many, many years ago when I was a classroom teacher. And the polka dot bow tie he is wearing... well, it was once worn by a chocolate Easter bunny before his head was tragically and unexpectedly bitten off and devoured--last season actually!

So, here's number one in the series of "Sorry You Asked!"

(Click to enlarge)

I have always enjoyed the area in Atlanta commonly referred to as Virginia Highlands, or the Highlands. It is known for its quaint little shops, neighborhood feeling, and nice restaurants and bars. A couple restaurants I frequent from time to time are in the Highlands.

About a month ago, I went for breakfast at the American Roadhouse Grill. I was horrified. Every single tree beside the street was completely cut down, and there had been many lining both sides.

I have no idea what "improvement plan" has been set in process, but it looks vile beyond belief! It now looks completely unrecognizable! For my friends who have moved from Atlanta, look and weep.