July 2002 Archives
So a glimmer of hope came to me in my bid to build a house. Last Friday the neighbor who had been holding up the ground breaking on my property asked if the offer I made over 2 months ago was still on? Specifically would I help to fix his driveway in exchange for his releasing of any claims on my property.
Lets just say that I was more than willing to give him $2000 over two months ago to get this thing behind me - but now - after paying interest on a construction loan in excess of $3000 plus losing my interest rate lock and potentially having to pay another set of loan origination fees - I am a little more hesitant to give in on this. Forget the fact that it is entirely unfair that I have to pay a dime, forget the fact that I went over to this guy's home before purchasing the property to introduce myself, had coffee with him and 30 minutes later he had not said anything about these claims, forget all these things and you still have a practical question? What am I willing to do to take destiny into our own hands and end this thing?
Now, we could wait 30-90 more days for the courts to decide but then we would be paying more in interest and could potentially need to go to court ourselves against one of the parties in this initial suit. Needless to say its a bit complicated. I am hoping that by the end of the week it will be much simpler.
Finally a deadline.
Hopefully this will happen before
this.
Bush doesn't stop with drilling for oil in national forests and loosening restrictions on air polluters, now
he's after those damn whales and dolphins.
Although Navy officials claim no harm will come to marine life "environmentalists argue that with the convergence of sound waves from each of the speakers, the intense effects of the system would reach farther, as if the signals were 235 decibels.
Environmentalists fear the sonar will cause whales to beach themselves
Some biologists believe whales are irritated by sounds louder than 110 decibels and that a whale's eardrums could explode at 180 decibels."
There are some "protective measures that the Navy is supposed to take like "visually scan for marine mammals and sea turtles and to shut down the sonar whenever they are detected".
But this is just another case of those crazy tree-huggers trying to stop progress right? Well, no... when the Navy tested this new sonar system in March 2000 "at least 16 whales and two dolphins beached themselves on the islands of Abaco, Grand Bahama and North Eleuthera within hours. Eight whales died. Scientists found hemorrhaging around the brain and ear bones, injuries consistent with exposure to loud sounds."
In another incident involving low-frequency sonar in 1996, 12 whales beached themselves and died.
Oh well, at least those damn Russian subs won't be able to hide from us...oh wait Russia can't afford to make subs anymore, hell they can't even afford a sandwich at Subway.
What's next W. clubbing baby seals?
So its not really the real hood, it is still St. Paul's East side and there are still little naked kids runnin' around with (what I am hoping are pellet) guns. Having spent a month here in the "new" house I have come up with a list of differences between living in the city and living in the suburbs.
When comparing the suburbs and the city you will often find...
- ...alleys.
- ...people working on their cars in those alleys.
- ...more small businesses and family run restaurants as opposed to chains owned by McDonalds.
- ...more loose dogs running around.
- ...those loose dogs tend to be much larger in size and also of breeds more prone to rip your face off.
- ..."stoop-sitting" is much more prevalent.
- ...a wider variety of grocery choices. (within 5 block of my house I can get Mexican, Asian, and Indian groceries.)
- ...more crack houses or houses condemned for other reasons - you really don't see much of that in the 'burbs.
- ...far more naked children running around in the streets.
I am sure I will be back with more. I like being able to walk to places, I just hope I get where I am going before one of those dogs gets to me.
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I have something else to say here. Senility. I hope I remember before I go to bed. Its always tough for me to fall asleep if I can't remember something.
I apologize for bringing old news, I have been without internet access at home have stopped watching TV, and do not get the paper. Even so I would have thought
news of a proposed (passed) group of citizen spies equaling nearly 1 in every 24 U.S. citizens would have made it to me somehow. Why wasn't there larger coverage of this in the news media or among bloggers?
The focus of the recruitment efforts for this, STAZI-like new citizen "watchdog group" will be people with regular access to people's homes, businesses, and transport systems -people like mail carriers, utility employees, house cleaners, and truck drivers.
If you have problems with the link above please use
this one.
This is all part of the administration's development of the
Citizen Corps and I just do not like it. Look at that
site, full of propaganda and "patriotic images." The breadth of potential involvement opportunities is unnerving. I can imagine neighbors reporting neighbors, or old women reporting "those suspicious people with darker skin" and I fear that not much is going to come from this that will be beneficial- just more fear, suspicion, and less community among neighbors.
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I was quite surprised to hear it when an otherwise rational, mostly intelligent (except of r that whole Republican thing) friend of mine told me that the closest thing he has to religion is what he sees on the
John Edward show. He was actually planning to fly to the show to be on it - to surmise if it was real or not.
Now, this friend of mine claimed Mr. Edward doesn't do the whole "pshycic"-asking-vague-quesstion thing. But my research into him tells me otherwise.
This article covers an appearance on Larry King Live in which Mr. Edward uses the tried and true "I am getting an 'S' or maybe a 'T' type thing. I just cannot respect his "powers", sorry Jeff.
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A family was kicked off a plane for asking if the pilots were sober. [from
MetaFilter]
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It seems the folks working on
MIT's Blogdex project are remaining busy. I don't know how long they have been working on the
Social Network Explorer, but it seems that it is still a work in progress. It is somewhat interesting though with the whole concepts of "friends" of sites and then recommendations for surfers based on those friends most likely.
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy is now available on DVD. So is
Kids In The Hall - Same Guys, New Dresses
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I like many things about the
new concepts created for the site of the World Trade Center towers, (nice little site by the way) but I do not think they are being imaginative enough with the high rise buildings. Maybe you can't be, but I would like to see some structures that are as fanciful as the name "skyscraper". That being said, I like the
Square &
Garden concepts best for the structures and the
Plaza and
Triangle concepts for the use of garden/plaza/park space.
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The micro machines shown in
these photos are no toys - they are much cooler. They are being shown next to tiny mites to show just how small they are.
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HIV muppet causes Republicans across the U.S. to grab their bibles and start condemning them thar bad people with the HIV. They should first try to understand the situation in South Africa. South Africa alone it is estimated that in 2002, 300,000 people will die of AIDS" and "40 percent of women of child-bearing age there are infected with HIV". Of course if lawmakers gave a damn (read: if this epidemic was in Europe or not concentrated among Africans the racist right might actually care to spend some of their recently insider-traded money to help the situation) there may not be such a desperate situation now.
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MoveOn.org has
published information on the
President's Vice-President's finances. Some things seem a bit shady. There is of course the making of over $36 million in the year 2000 but also the fact that the minimum size of the "accounting irregularities" that occurred while Cheney was CEO was $100,000,000.
[All of the previous links were found at
MetaFilter and reposted here as real live content]
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After years of promises that the oil refineries built on their land would benefit all the citizens of Escravos, Nigeria but seeing none of those promises come to fruition, hundreds of Nigerian women storm 4 Chevron stations and hold them until more jobs we given to local workers and improvements to the living conditions in nearby villages were made. [Story from
Yahoo News]
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After reviewing my own stats I am convinced that designing and developing for IE 5 and up and Mozilla 1.0 (5.0) and up is the correct decision.
Google's June browser distribution info further bolsters my view. Their
stats on operating systems make me feel like not spending too much time testing for Macs either but for the fact that many of my friends in the "online community" are using them. Plus I do respect Macs a bit more now that OS X is in wider use. From what I have seen it is a huge improvement over all other operating systems out there with the possible exception of XP (I still like XP's interface much better - but don't get me started on its layer-over-layer, outdated architecture it still uses)
With that said I am doing some housekeeping and you may notice some minor changes to the Alt Text. You may also notice the similarity between some of my modifications and some that
Jason has made. I swear these are mostly coincidental.
I would like to go on record that
Mozilla is now my default browser. All I have to say to defend myself is: tabbed browsing is da bomb.
[Web stat images from
Google Zeitgeist]
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In other news Alt Text and Amazon.com were finally able to put an end to their hostilities. With Amazon's announcement that it is opening its
new web services, essentially allowing developers and site publishers from using Amazon's data in ways that better fits their needs. This doesn't erase all past wrongs (especially as far as their patent stances go) but it does go a long way towards opening things up a bit. Plus it is really hard to hate them while admiring their site for so long.
UPDATE: There has already been a new site created that looks and acts like
Google but has all the data of
Amazon: meet
Amazon Light
Geeky quotes form IRC and instant messaging software are fun.
This site's QDB (Quote Database Home) is a collection of such quotes. Here are
some of the top quotes. Some are really funny. Some, I am thankful, I do not understand.
Some favorites:
one,
two,
three,
four,
bonus
These remind me a bit of
this AIM conversation that I posted last year.
In the last week I have had occasion to return to old college stomping grounds and walk its halls and malls. Being back there (it isn't too far -
The University of Minnesota -
Twin Cities Campus - and more specifically still
The Carlson School of Managment ) reminds me of the good times I had in college and got me thinkin' - school wasn't that bad. In fact, it was pretty damn fun. I should go back I think. I could get an MBA or a Masters in Education. I wonder...
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If you are currently without cause you may want to
help save the Guthrie (a theater here in Minneapolis set to be torn down).
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This site make me happy. I don't know why.
We have sold our townhouse and are now living in a small (1 bedroom) in St. Paul. We wait now for the legal wrangling of our future neighbor and the jokers who sold us the lot we intend to build on. Hopefully we will know the outcome in a week. I hate all this waiting. (especially since it will likely take between 100 and 120 days to build our new slightly larger home (still 1 bedroom though). So now we must root for the jerks who sold us the lot to prove that our neighbor has no claim on the lot at all - then we build. If the (nicer) neighbor wins we are going to have to get lawyers involved ourselves and sue the previous sellers. Not fun.
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I would much rather have a president who is in bed with an intern than one who is in bed with big, filthy business.
... if not dedicated. I really admire his dedication. He is always looking at ways to improve his site and the sites of other around him. Sure I look for these improvement opportunities too, but when he finds them he actually acts and changes things. Me I just make lists of things I should do.
On my list for the past 3 months has been many of the changes he has made to
Kottke.org in the last 3 weeks. I am very impressed and hope to make some changes and additions soon. Plus there will be more posts. I am turning off the TV for the summer and so I hope to have a lot more time with which to get back to 2 things I love but don't get time to do much of lately, surf/write/create on the web and camp with my wife.
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On a side note - I don't have phone service or an internet connection at home for the first time in, well since the internet started pretty much. I miss the internet much more than I miss TV. Now if I could just get that central air thing I would be set.
... I hate moving. Especially when I am moving to a house without central air during the hottest weekend of the year.
I like sweating but I hate sweating. Its not bad when you are playing sports or exercising but not when I am standing up in my house and that is the extent of my exertion. I hate not being able to escape the heat.
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There is a new
Two Towers trailer at Apple.com
Alt Text has been included as one of 10 weblogs in a study/project in developing an open source search tool called
latent semantic indexing (LSI). From what I have seen it is pretty promising. Some of the results may not contain the keywords you entered, but use the LSI algorithm to determine relevancy based on like words and topics.
There are still some holes in it as it is in development. It works with keywords only - there are no phrase searches allowed. Words that appear in only one post are not indexed, and the interface leaves a lot to be desired, but it is a very cool idea that I hope spreads.
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My dad on
President W's recent surgery: "They are looking for his head."
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Electric SUV coming (to California) from Toyota
