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Journal Apr 2006

27 Apr 2006

It's funny, while driving Timmy to school, I realized (what I think is) a good analogy: liberal and conservative (in general, not necessarily political) can be compared to like gas and brake pedals in a car; you use the gas pedal to go faster to where you want to go, and you use the brake pedal to make sure you don't get there too fast or even crash on the way there. I guess part of that thought comes from Kevin Costner's description of the pedals in relation to the past, present, and future in the movie A Perfect World.

Speaking of cars, and in light of the current gas price situation, I came up with a slogan someone can put on a bumper sticker: "Prius is patriotic." (Not that I own a Prius (yet), but we're planning on the next vehicles (mini-van (yikes!) and sedan) being hybrids.) I looked up this phrase and couldn't find it yet, but maybe some enterprising individual can use it. It's a play on "peace is patriotic" (which I also like) and shows how conserving gas helps the country (and the planet) while unnecessary SUVs hurt it (both). Worst of all, of course, is the Hummer, and they even have the gall to show the Earth from space in their commercials, as if they're helping the planet. I partially got this idea from Rachel Maddow, who said if you drive a Prius, you are a patriot, but if you drive a Hummer, you ride with bin Laden. I told Maureen this, and she immediately pictured the image of bin Laden riding shotgun in Hummers as in the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland, where ghosts appear next to the rider(s) in the mirror image of the car before exiting.

Geeky news: there's a browser that I've ignored for a while until now, ELinks, a text browser that improves on Lynx by offering better layout and colors matching more closely the style of the document browsed (instead of just a user-configured theme). The screenshots look cool, but I have yet to actually try it out. I have a lot of failed dependencies to install first. In the meantime, I tried regular (non-enhanced) Links, and it does the layout with its own colors, but compared to Lynx, it doesn't use as good (smart) of a proxy configuration. For hyperlinks with title attributes, Links also prints [IMG] instead of the alt text of a graphic being used for a hyperlink and still shows [IMG] when alt is empty ("") instead of suppressing any printing. For decorative graphics and hyperlinks without a title attribute Otherwise, Links still does it correctly. Minor pet peeves. I'll use Lynx in the meantime and test my site on it.

(corrected 02 May 2006)

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

26 Apr 2006

I finished Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (the proper title of 1984) today, so naturally, I read the Wikipedia article on it for a discussion of the themes and related items. Of course, it is a criticism of totalitarian regimes (political dystopia), mostly socialist ones, though Orwell was somewhat of a socialist himself. The book is quite the source of concepts in popular culture like Big Brother and doublespeak (based on the book's doublethink and Newspeak). Plus, ironically named things like some of the legislation of today (Clear Skies Initiative, Healthy Forests Initiative) are called Orwellian in the same vein as the Party's Ministries of Truth, Love, Peace, and Plenty. I can't give away too much else without spoiling the plot. But for those with time who haven't yet read or heard it, I highly recommend the book or audiobook. I was able to borrow the audiobook (nine CDs) from the local library.

The Wikipedia article mentions the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as it applies to the language of control, Newspeak. SWH appears to be a validation for the Party's use of Newspeak: that the lack of appropriate words in the language will suppress the birth of ideas that would threaten the Party.

The Wikipedia article also mentions some other dystopia stories. Snow Crash deals with an extremely corporatist society. I have yet to read this one, but it sounds interesting (and a cuationary tale for today). Starship Troopers deals with a society in which only those who serve in the military can vote. I saw the film (loosely based on the book) and was mildly impressed (I had low expectations for it but realized the camp value while watching it), and I only found out about the original 1959 book. The film almost serves as a minor criticism of the book. Fahrenheit 451 actually doesn't describe an uncomfortable reality but one where books are outlawed. I saw the film version, which differs slightly from the book, but it still stresses the importance of ideas. It was also a text adventure game with modest still graphics, a game I never finished but which introduced me to the story.

Next I'm listening to the audiobook of Orwell's Animal Farm, only 3 CDs, also from the local library. Your tax dollars at work!

Ironic how it's now that I've really discovered literature (beyond Hitchhiker's) and also politics and government well after I studied them in school (and not that well, either). Well, I can truly tell my kids that all school subjects are important and actually explain why.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

25 Apr 2006

I work at a defense contractor, so naturally (at least in this era), I'm going to have a lot of Republican coworkers. One particular coworker had a truck with a BC'04 sticker on it -- now the sticker is gone, leaving a faint but discernible rectangular outline when viewed up close. I think it's a sign of the times. I was wondering how long some of my coworkers would hold out. That truck was one of the last in the parking lot for my building that still endorsed W.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

24 Apr 2006

A bit of geeky news today.

I just figured out: xterm windows (and Cygwin shells in Windows) have their window titles dynamically changed by simple strings printed to standard out. I took Cygwin's default in the bash shell and modified it (putting the working directory first and keeping the ANSI color scheme):

$ PS1='\[\033]0;\w [\u@\h]\007\]
> \033[1m\033[32m\u@\h \033[33m\w\033[0m
> $ '
$ export PS1

Pretty cool. It works in PuTTY, too. Also, there's a pretty interesting discussion of GNOME vs. KDE (the top desktop environments in XWindows in Linux, etc.) and a satirical one. If you have no idea what I'm talking about linuxreviews.org has a good primer and a standardization recommendation. I have yet to pick one for the near term. I've been using KDE since using Mandrake, and continued it with FC3, but Fedora really pushes GNOME even though, like most Linux distributions, it offers both. I'm trying out GNOME with FC5 just to see.

Lastly, for Windows users who like consistency and use both PuTTY and Cygwin, to get the same font size for both, try Lucida Console in both and font size 13 for Cygwin and 10 for PuTTY. I guess PuTTY's "point" size and Cygwin's (actually Windows' command prompt's) font size are measured differently. This is as much a reminder for me as well as a tip for others.

Apologies to non-nerds.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

21 Apr 2006

I got to try Fedora Core 5 on my desktop on a new SATA drive, and so far it's excellent. XP Pro SP2, by the way, doesn't have built-in SATA support, requiring drivers on a floppy (NOT CD!). When we had to eat dinner, I put it on "Standby" in GNOME, but it turned out to be the equivalent in Windows of "Hibernate!" Now if it has good wireless support, I can make FC5 the default OS in my laptop! Boo ya!

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

20 Apr 2006

There's a new version, 0.65, of DOSBox, an emulator for DOS (especially DOS games) that runs under various x86 operating systems and Mac OS X. I haven't used it that much, but when I get nostalgic about some of my old games, I know where to turn. ScummVM (latest version 0.8.2) is another program that lets you run old games (specifically LucasArts and similar games), but it's an interpreter, not an emulator, since it reads only the data files of the game and not the original executables for whatever operating system it ran on. PearPC (latest version 0.4.0) is an emulator, like DOSBox, but emulates PowerPC (hence the name, a pun on both PowerPC and Apple), that can run Mac OS X on x86 hardware relatively quickly (about 15X slower than natively on a PowerPC G4) and not as quickly on other hardware. For my more complete list of emulators and interpreters, check out my tech page.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

19 Apr 2006

Recently, a friend (who shall not be named unless he okays it) asked me what the difference is between Al Franken's show and Rush Limbaugh's. As far as he was concerned, Al is just the liberal version of Rush, and he said he actually listened to Al's show. Well, I don't know how much he did listen, but it probably wasn't enough. I'm not sure I can give a satisfying answer, since I never listen to Rush, just the clips they'll play on Al's show, but I'll tell what I can.

Al tells the truth, and you can verify it, usually with links from his show's free website to stories in the mainstream online press and official government documents; the other stories required only a simple Google search to find. Randi Rhodes goes even further and says don't take her word for it, look it up. Links to sources are on her free website too, and they're almost always there; when they're not, again, a Google search will do. Both Al and Randi are not only the anti-Rush by telling the truth (as well as opinions that you may or may not agree with), but they'll actually play audio from various administration figures and conservative hosts like Rush and O'Reilly and debunk them when they lie or mislead (they don't always). Al even has a long-time friend, Mark Luther, the "resident Dittohead," debate him on the meaning of various Rush audio clips, and yesterday Mark and a former Dittohead, Jim Derych, debated one such clip (they only had time for one after Derych discussed his book).

While Al and Randi do comedy (no worse than Jay Leno or Jon Stewart), Rush delivers something arguably described as hate speech, even if he may more often tell real news or express sound ideas. He's said things like:

And he'll preach "moral values" (read: anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, and anti-narcotic) despite having been married and divorced three times (where Al jokes maybe here the "three strikes" law should apply and reminds us that nothing is more of a threat to marriage than divorce) and almost making himself blind on OxyContin. (Al's been married to his only wife for over 20 years and joked about his doing coke with the SNL cast just to make sure they don't do too much.) I would venture to guess that when Rush is not saying something disgusting like the above, he's being perfectly reasonable if somewhat opinionated.

Al and Randi know that not all members of a party are good or bad, they either serve the public or they don't. I hear about the foibles of both parties on their shows. Except usually a Democratic problem is usually being too entrenched in their positions, too tied to corporate interests, or not loud enough or just not having power in Congress (under GOP rule, Dems can't hold hearings). And nothing's wrong with Rush being a conservative or a Republican (if you can validly call him either). The problem is that he supports a president who betrays both conservative and Republican traditions, not to mention Christianity or the Constitution.

True conservatives have a heart but try to watch how they spend, but W has brought us into a nine trillion dollar debt because of this expensive war in Iraq and multiple tax cuts that by far mostly help the rich and are, except for the first cut, during a time of war, while cutting programs that help lift people out of poverty or even provide adequate health care or medicine, including not fully funding his own (flawed) program for education punishing (instead of helping) failing schools and based mainly on metrics like standardized test performance. Republicans believe in smaller government and a strong military, but he's expanded government regulation on people to satisfy his socially conservative base (okay, he's lowered it on corporations for balance) and stretched our military thin by the debacle in Iraq, including stop-lossing reservists and National Guard members in Iraq that should have been home taking care of Katrina victims.

And true Christians believe in love, peace, giving to the poor, feeding the hungry, caring for God's creation (creatures and the planet), and comforting the sick, as Jesus would do. The problem is that a small minority with the loudest voice has narrowed moral issues to mean only the most divisive wedge issues, abortion and gay marriage. And as much as abortion is a horrific thing, the abortion rate has gone down, and much more quickly under Clinton than under Bush because of a reduction in poverty under Clinton from 15 down to 11% (back up to 13% now). Abortions are still going down because of a decrease in teen pregnancy and comprehensive sex education.

What do liberals, progressives, and Democrats believe in? Liberals believe in personal freedom and corporate regulation (within reason), and fair treatment and fair punishment. Progressives believe in improving the human condition by treating the real problems of this world like poverty, hunger, and oppression by way of fair trade, fair wages, and fair aid. Democrats believe in all of the above, generally, plus national and global security, fighting only necessary wars (if there are such a thing), and putting country above party. They're still not immune to corruption, and that's why a one-party government like the one we have now is inherently dangerous. But at least in one-party rule under someone like Truman still produced bipartisan commissions for federal oversight. Otherwise, an opposition party has a purpose, and that is to keep a check on the majority power.

Here's the big problem in our world today: the corporate media. There's this myth among conservatives that the media is liberal. But those of us who know, thanks to the best news sources, public media (NPR, PBS) and nonpartisan media (C-SPAN), and watchdog groups like Media Matters for America (headed by a "reformed" neoconservative activist, David Brock), the Center for American Progress's blog ThinkProgress, and the nonpartisan Factcheck.org or CREW, know that this myth is just that.

If anything, the media is actually slightly conservative. The only liberal media outlets are Air America Radio (AAR) and various alternative weeklies. Even the so-called liberal New York Times got it wrong when it let Judith Miller beat the drums for war against Iraq. It's the editorials that swing left. And the Washington Post's editorial board sways conservative (though the reporting is generally good). If the media were truly liberal, you would hear from it about James Guckert (a.k.a. Jeff Gannon) who asked loaded, softball questions of Scott McClellan while working for a fake news service, getting almost 200 consecutive day passes to the White House, and managing a military-themed, male prostitution website. (It's not a smear if it's the truth!) You would also know that Bush's victory (if you believe Ohio wasn't rigged) was not, by any account (let alone all), a mandate, by definition (clear authorization (by voters in this case)). You would also have known about:

all well in advance of the mainstream media and sometimes the mainstream press, if they reached those at all. All of these topics were covered either on NPR/PBS or AAR, or both, and they've been verified by official sources or the mainstream press (when they get it). Good blogs like Daily Kos will cover these too, and likewise link to their sources, as well as promote community. I think I have links to all of these stories in my journal too. If by liberal media you mean reporting everything, then the media should be liberal. Instead the stories are chosen by a handful of media corporations with their own interests (ratings that translate into profit) in mind. That's why when the occasional "liberal" story comes through, because it's "sexy" enough (while not pushing away their stockholders or political friends too much). If by liberal, you mean "sensationalist," you're probably right.

Unlike Rush and his clones on AM talk radio, the AAR hosts don't want you to use them as news sources even though they do serve that purpose well. They'll refer you to the good mainstream and nonpartisan sources that you should rely on. They'll also point you to watchdog websites that provide transcripts, audio, and video of their subjects. What the liberal hosts of AAR do best is provide a forum for progressive people to talk reasonably to each other and to the occasional conservative guest without it being a shouting match like in the cable commentary shows or worse, on patently obvious conservative bastions like the Fox News Channel or the rest of AM radio (despite claiming "fairness" or "balance"). The best the AAR hosts do is provide a balance and an alternative to the organized, two-decade monopoly infrastructure built by the conservative machine and worsened by Clinton's signing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (probably the worst thing he did in office). But they don't always agree with each other, and listeners don't always agree with them. There are no talking points (as far as I know) like the ones people like Bill O'Reilly deliver without shame, including the actual heading "Talking Points Memo." (Randi actually gets the GOP talking points mailed to her since she's worked on talk radio for over a decade, and she was assumed to be conservative. Sometimes she'll read them on a Friday to let you know who will be smeared on the Sunday talk shows.)

AAR isn't perfect, either. I've got my criticisms of Al and Randi too. Al's show had better comedic balance and ego balance when he had a regular co-host, Katherine Lanpher, a political independent from NPR. Sometimes he'll mix news and comedy a little too much, but most jokes are running, and regular listeners will "get" it. Also, when he has live shows while on tour around the country, you'll hear the audience respond to the jokes. Randi repeats her jokes a lot too, but her only real problem is putting lots of pop culture references in them. Once she had a comedy played that seemed to advocate violence against the president, but she never advocates violence, and her staff produced it. She doesn't screen these (usually nonviolent) pieces before they air so she can react genuinely, and yet she apologized for it because her name is on the show. But of course, I caught Scarborough Country (Randi calls it "County") where they used the Fox-like subtitle "Air America Hate Speech?" Al and Randi take calls from either side (unlike Rush), and Al handles himself okay while Randi takes them on cautiously but standing her ground, even allowing them to make their point (before she breaks it down), unless they start off by insulting her without (legitimate) provocation.

But because I listen to both NPR and AAR, I'll usually hear both sides of an argument, either from guests or callers, and I won't always agree with Al's or Randi's opinions. I agree even less with Mike Malloy's opinions, since he refuses to take back Republicans who want to come back to the Democratic party when they've realized what the GOP has become, though he does seek the truth and expose corruption in the GOP and the history of the Bush family.

Until the country comes back to its former glory of non-divisive politics and fruitless sloganeering and broad-brush name-calling in place of real debate, no matter which party comes into power to change this, I can take comfort in the fact that there are other people who think (mostly) like I do. And I'm only taking notes on AAR for my own sanity and memory and for friends and regular readers of this journal (both of you =)) to see what issues I find important, at least until the mainstream media mostly does its job of reporting only all of the important stories.

When we get back to civil discourse and honest debate in the media, especially on commentary shows, I can ramp down my religious listening to AAR and rely on just NPR and PBS. I probably still won't trust network news, and cable news less. And I can vote each candidate and ballot measure on their merits. Maybe I'll even register Independent just to be able to talk to conservatives and Republicans that may claim partisan posturing (I'll still be true blue progressive, though, which means voting for Democrats, good moderate Republicans, and any third-party candidates if ever they finally build a third party from the grassroots up to the national level). In the meantime, I can get my real news from fake news shows like the Daily Show (oddly enough), progressive action items and success stories from AAR, and what should be mainstream news from NPR and PBS. And vote for checks and balances.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

18 Apr 2006

There's some progression on the galleries. They'll go up to the wedding. It'll take at least another week to get it updated to Evelyn's birth.

Also, I've been listening to Richard Matthews' reading of George Orwell's classic, Nineteen Eighty-Four. I'll report on that when I finish the audiobook.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

17 Apr 2006

We had Easter in Claremont again, and also in West Covina with the Cailipans. Timmy and Evelyn did an Easter egg hunt (mostly Timmy, but along with mostly older kids), and we had a cake for Maureen's 30th birthday, actually this coming Saturday. Evelyn almost started walking in Claremont, but still needs more standing on her own first, which she's also starting to do.

The priest at OLA gave a sermon on whether our faith is strong enough to withstand scientific and archeological discoveries. He also slammed The Da Vinci Code as some money-making scheme and announced a talk on it later in the week. I think he's missing the point of that particular piece, but I agree with what I saw as his larger point. His question was whether our faith would be shaken by, for example, an archeological discovery of the body (bones) of Jesus. It's doubtful whether it can be conclusively, scientifically proven, but accepting the premise, the question is whether the Resurrection happened exactly as it was in the Bible or not.

I'm not a fan of Biblical literalism. Numbers and ages are definitely questionable; even the year of Jesus' birth is more likely 6 or 5 BC, which by definition sounds paradoxical, but is mostly an adjustment of calendar systems. I know many of the major events like Red Sea actually being red and the flooding of the Earth (or at least Mesopotamia) are scientifically possible, and there is a historical account of Jesus' existence. I do believe, as most Christians and probably many non-Christian theists do, that with God, anything is possible. However, in this era of recorded history, obvious "miracles" may do more harm to the faith than good. Faith that requires proof is weak faith, but faith that is unexamined is cheap. And the true (and important) miracles we see today are probably not the sensational ones covered in the news but the personally experienced ones that are for an individual, and that individual alone to change how he or she sees things or lives his or her life for the better.

So what are we left with? We have several versions of recorded testimony of Biblical events in the Bible, some of them contradictory, and none written in English, so translations can differ. We know that there may be other Gospels or any other books that were not included in the Bible for whatever reason, and all of the Gospels were written decades after Jesus' crucifixion, so eyewitness testimony was probably scarce if at all available, though there can be other written records around that time. And we know that the writers of the various books of the Bible were men with inherent biases of the era, especially sexism. There are possibly some women writing as men, but not likely if their style or content differed significantly from that of their male peers; the "editors" of the collection of books that comprise the Bible may exclude these. Because of this bias against women, the role and importance of women in the Bible is quite dampened, at least in the Catholic Church, one of its most valid criticisms; we Catholics should learn from this and appreciate the women who do good work in the Church and may rethink its current structure.

Science is simply objective truth baed on observable fact. Conclusions may be wrong, but there is a systematic method for findings. And just like Biblical authors, scientists are human. But taken in their purest form, faith and science are orthogonal. Faith shouldn't be used to prove or disprove science, just as much as science shouldn't be used to prove or disprove matters of faith.

If we can believe that, at least symbolically, the stories in the Bible are true and that it doesn't matter for our faith whether certain events happened exactly in the Bible or indeed at all, then our faith is much more pure, impervious to discoveries that threaten the factual events in the Bible, and evolved into something that saves us (and others) both in this life and the next.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

13 Apr 2006

I turned in my taxes today. It's like turning in a final paper or project or take-home exam. To make it easier, I made a spreadsheet in the free, Excel-compatible OpenOffice.org Calc.

I'll probably upgrade the server (and my laptop) to FC5 soon. For those considering such an upgrade who want to see the included packages and version numbers, here's a list of RPMs included with FC5. I'll probably follow the new FC install guide by Mauriat Miranda, as usual.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

12 Apr 2006

Okay, I'm really finishing my taxes tonight. It's all done, including California, but I'll sleep on it and check them in the morning.

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Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

11 Apr 2006

I'm finishing my tax returns today! Or maybe tomorrow. Hopefully you're done too. It's too bad California doesn't have fill-in forms that you can save (in case you need to modify them) with the free Acrobat Reader. Hopefully your state has one where you can, just like the federal forms.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the past:

10 Apr 2006

I'm not sure why I waited this long to do taxes. It doesn't take long, and I've had almost all of the materials since February. Plus, the new fill-in forms from the IRS website can be saved as new files containing the filled-in data using the free Acrobat reader. At least over this time I was able to rearrange and organize the office and my various papers, receipts, and bills. I also cancelled all my unused credit cards. Less productively, I got website code, style, and layout improved for faster page and journal development. It'll just take longer to get my rebate. If I still get one, that is.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

07 Apr 2006

Today's UrbanDictionary word of the day is "table banking:" using your credit card at a restaurant and having people pay you their share as if they were an ATM. I've done this a lot, and I have noticed that it saves me trips to the ATM if I do it often enough.

Major cosmetic changes at this site, including the addition of gallery page 4 from mostly 2000. See the announcements archive for details.

Also, Maureen and I have been together for 10 years today! We had lunch today at Niban, where we had our first date (with a friend buffer, on 10 Mar 1996). Obviously, that's not what this anniversary celebrates, but our first Easter together where we first declared (admitted) our love for each other. Awwwwww. (It's all true, though.) After that, I got to do all the sappy, romantic things I've always wanted to do in a relationship like hold hands, buy flowers and gifts, and stare at each other for hours on end. My grades went down a bit at first, but they went back up the next quarter since Maureen's good studies influenced me positively.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

06 Apr 2006

Ah, I finally redid the gallery structure and updated Timmy's and Evelyn's mini-sites. Most of you may not notice the difference except the file references everywhere, the full-frame thumbnails in the gallery, and the additional pictures in Timmy's mini-site beyond 2002. I'll get to work filling in gaps in the gallery (namely number 4) and appending pictures newer than 10 Jun 2001.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

05 Apr 2006

I'm in the process of restructuring the gallery to reference pictures outside of its folder structure, instead to another folder where pictures are organized and named by their dates. That way, Timmy's and Evelyn's mini-sites can reference those easily and not have to duplicate storage. Maybe then I can also fill in the gaps in the gallery.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

04 Apr 2006

I finally posted the pictures from Tahoe on Timmy's mini-site (since the trip was for his learning skiing). I'll fix the gallery soon too.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

03 Apr 2006

Maureen's addicted to web-based Sudoku and other free printed and printable Sudoku puzzles. You've probably seen these in the paper or something. They're really popular now. I haven't getten bitten by the bug, but for those with Palm PDAs, there's a free Sudoku game for Palms by Andrew Gregory.

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Selected notes from The Al Franken Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Selected notes from The Randi Rhodes Show and related stories (indicated times are Pacific) (why this is here):

Other news and opinion from the day:

Other news and opinion from the past:

Past Journal Entries: 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001

2006 Journal Entries: Aug Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan

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