Check it out, golks -- a balanced article by a clear liberal. It's hard to find liberal people who will volunteer the opinion, true or not, that Bush is not evil. Or that Kerry is just another politician who really will do just a few things better than Bush. And that I find most refreshing.
Was just reading a blog by a casual Python user, and he mentioned that one should keep a shell handy to run pydoc. I figured that would be one of those things that you have to download separately, keep up-to-date with your current version of Python, etc. But as a logical thinker, I know never to assume, especially when it's easy to find out whether your assumption is wrong. So I went to my shell and typed "pydoc" and... holy shit, it's just like a man page for python! Type "pydoc sre" and you get a man-styled page with a full description of the module, listing of the classes and functions with descriptions, and the not-too-useful Data. And... it comes with a built-in web server, which you can run on any port! So I've got it on localhost:3000 right now, and I see a list of all the modules that come with python, as well as all the modules defined in the directory where I started the server. This is gonna be getting some use from me!
First off, I just know the search engines are going to see the title "Homeless Blog" and think this is just the world's foremost blog on the plights of the homeless. So if you got here by actually searching for "homeless blog", because you were hoping to find some manic depressive heroin addict living on the streets of San Francisco who gets himself to the library every now and then to blog about his experiences, then it's time to go back to your search results page and try the next result.
Now, back to our story. My roommate has moved out, and taken his phone service with him. With a little finagling I was able to get his/our old number back (since he couldn't use it in his brand-new, bought-it-at-420-and-it's-already-gone-up-to-450 house in HoCo), but the interrupt in service is still sufficiently discombobulating to the DSL that Speakeasy has to order me a whole new DSL service, a process which takes 7-10 days. That means, yes, I have NO internet access at home.
I'm lying, of course. Some nice person in my apartment neighborhood has an open WLAN, so I can pretty much surf from home as before. But I no longer have my static IP address. So if you're reading this post as a recent one, you are reading it at its temporary home, my permanent Geocities website.
Call me an anti-authoritarian nationalist bigot, but I'm of the opinion that nothing good has come out of China since the revolution. Cheap labor taking away American jobs, intellectual property piracy, pollution, repression of speech, religion and all the rest, destruction of non-Han cultures, threats of war against peaceful, well-functioning countries for, well, being countries, etc.
Well, it looks like China may now actually be doing something to make the world a better place for a change. There has been quite a push to develop fuel-efficient cars, which is a wonderful thing, especially since China's increased car ownership threatens to hugely accelerate the already rapidly growing increase of fossil fuels and the accompanying increase of greenhouse gases. The push is at least partly motivated by selfish reasons, of course, but if they actually get something going which is better than what Japan, Europe or the U.S. is working on, that'll be a win for everyone.
I got the following scam mail. The disturbing thing about this one is that the subject of the e-mail has my actual name in it, not just the e-mail address. Where the hell did they get my name to match it up with my email address?
Hello Dear,
I am Barrister Jackson Dee,solicitor.I am the personal Attorney to Mr. Henri Guerra who used to work with the shell development company Lome Togo. On the 21st of April 2000,my client,his wife and their daughter were involved in a car accident along Hillacondji Express road. All occupants of the vehicle unfortunately lost their lives.
Since then I have made several enquiries to his Embassy to locate any of my client's extended relatives,this has also proved unsuccessful. I have contacted you to assist in claiming the money and property left behind by my client before they get confisicated or declared unserviceable by the security company,where this huge deposits were lodged.
Particularly,security company were the deceased had deposit value of $18 million dollars,has issued me a notice to provide the next of kin or have the deposit confisicated within the next three official working months.Since I have been unsuccessful in locating the relatives for over 2 years now,I seek your concent to present you as the next of kin of the deceased so that the proceeds of this deposit value at $18 million dollars can be paid to you and then you and me will share the money 50% to me and 40% to you,while 10% should be for expenses or tax as your government may require. We are only going to apply for the claim and after approval,the fund will be made cash to you in the security company's payment center in America, Europe or Asia as will be convinient by you.
All I require is your honest cooperation to enable us see this deal through.I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law. Please get in touch with me through e-mail or direct phone line: 00228 909 30 34 to enable us discuss further.
best regards,
Jackson Dee(Esq)
[Content taken from an e-mail sent on Friday at 1:00 a.m.]
I've had a HORRIBLE evening. It was, evidently, about 9:00 before I decided I ought to, for the first time, break open the packet they gave us travelers and find out the details on just how I would be flying to the Island Country the Hurricanes Forgot. That is important fact #1. Important fact #2 is that Henry has started moving out. The dining-room table that I last remembered seeing the packet on is now in his new, envy-inspiring house. His house, in HoCo, takes a good half-hour to get to.
I searched everywhere in the apartment: I pawed through the mess of stuff in the living room near where the table used to be. I looked I don't know how many times through the papers on my desk, my knapsack, and the area around my desk, occasionally shooting accusing looks at another yellow envelope leaning against the wall which invariably protested that it held stuff related to my car, not the flight stuff.
After what I judged to be a sufficient amount of time and coverage, and after calling Henry on his cell, getting his answering service, and telling him, yes, that I feared my airline ticket (or whatever it should turn out to be) was in some box in his house, which is in Howard County, and takes a good half-hour to get to, I decided that it would be less painful to drive to work and take the small chance that I had actually somehow brought it back and left it there. So I headed out, realized just as I got on the Beltway that I had forgotten my badge and wouldn't be able to get in the building, and then "saved" myself by jumping onto 295. South. Which doesn't have an exit until 410 in Riverdale. So I'm not really certain I saved myself any time at all over just going all the way to work. Anyway, I came home, got my badge, went back to work. No packet.
Well, I came back home, and found Henry, who evidently has better paws than I do, throwing my packet at me while he continued to organize the area I where his table had been, and which I had pawed through, but evidently not as thoroughly as was necessary. So it could have been worse. I told him I was going to make him drive me to his house, which is in HoCo and takes a good half-hour to get to.
Of course, it was now almost 11:30 and I hadn't eaten dinner, so life was sucking pretty bad. I mean, I can go long periods without food, but coupled with stress, it's just that much more aggravating, isn't it?
So now I'm fed, but haven't even started packing, and it's 1 A.M. The flight leaves out of BWI at 9 or something, so you know what that means. Whee.
The good thing is, all that is essential is for me to get on that plane with at least two changes of clothes (though more would certainly be better) and I don't have to worry terribly much about anything until Monday, when I have to worry a little bit about catching the plane back.
Every now and then I get the urge to look up a name from my childhood on the Internet. Usually the names I'm looking for are people I knew; sometimes they are people I didn't really know. The name "Jewel Upsher" popped into my head (because I've just met someone named Gem, so that's sort of along the same lines), and I wondered what he might be up to, since I think I remember him as a bit of a breakdancer in my high school days.
Well, he was shot dead in 2001. I don't know what to say; I think there's something to the fact that he was someone I didn't know personally; I was in one of the two worlds at my high school, the world that included most of the college-bound, and that was mostly white. He was in the other world. We walked through the same doors of the school in the morning, but had mostly different classes, and pretty much sat at different tables in the lunch room.
My attendance of the Pittsburgh Public Schools forced me to confront that other world, or perhaps to think of all of us as belonging to one world with differing degrees of safety, stability and wealth you would be exposed to as you moved from one place to another. Well, now I'm an adult, with a job with an employer who gets to choose what people will be in my work environment, and with the choice to live where I want. It is now unquestionably another world, and that other world is something I read about in the newspapers, but have virtually no contact with. That's good for me, of course, in terms of my personal safety and quality of life, but not good for the people in that other world.
Last night I had a dream. Turns out that when I bought my new beige VW Golf TDI, I had forgotten that I had bought a nice white small Mercedes, probably also a diesel, some time earlier. Evidently I had just neglected it for a while and, in the dream, I had just remembered it, and wondered what I was going to do with it, not to mention the 3rd car, the Nova (which I still have, in fact). There was a bit where the building I was working in was getting hit by a tidal wave, for some reason, which I sensed was going to be a bad deal but not catastrophic, might cause damage to my new obsession, the white Mercedes, but I guess it wasn't like the Benz was something I really depended on.
I'm not a person who's really obsessive about cars, I don't think. But wow, that car really seemed like a long-lost love.
I have never considered buying a Mercedes. I do know someone who bought one on e-bay -- a white one, even -- and told me all about how he got it.
I got a nice /. moderation (5) on my comment about what conditions allow innovation to take place (esp. MS's thoughts on the matter versus reality). I attribute my rating to: 1) putting some thought into writing it, 2) having it as a top-level comment, and 3) posting early. I decided to respond at all because when I first saw the article, there were NO comments. I knew that meant I had a chance to get a good positioning. Referring to a recent post is always a plus, too.