March 31, 2002
bad to worse
shit goes from bad to worse. the us really needs to do something, and do it fast.
i'm sure it'll only continue to get worse but with no one to report it, what will we hear?
bishop
today was an all-star day. we got up, rode some bikes on some single track--at a place i'd gone riding with joe a year ago--and then had a buffalo burrito (a huge veggie burrito) before going up to the happies to do some bouldering. then we came back to the white mt. research station and had some dinner before going to the banff mountain film festival. we checked out the dumpster of schatt's bakery but finding nothing went down south of bishop to some hot springs. yup it was pretty cool, tomorrow we're going to go to the owens river gorge to do some sport climbing.
i'm pretty annoyed, i pulled out the charger to my camera but didn't get it into the car so i've got a camera with a dead battery and no way to recharge it. suffice to say that i won't have many pictures from this trip.
March 29, 2002
down in bishop
dan and i made it down to bishop. we hooked up with joe lane and are going to hopfully get some climbing in tomorrow.
March 27, 2002
arafat isn't going to lebanon
arafat isn't going to the arab summit in lebanon because sharon said he wouldn't let him come back if there's violence while he's gone. i get the impression that neither arafat or sharon want the saudi peace proposal to go anywhere right now. they both seem to think that a better deal is just a little further down the line, and maybe they'll get to kill a few more people to "even up" the score. the only positive thing i see about it is that bush won't get to take any action against iraq anytime soon.
March 25, 2002
etc.
dan pointed the guy code of conduct out to me.
i spent 6 hours sitting in a cs236 lab trying to get an adding circut to work, i trashed two 74x86 (quad two input xor) ics in the process. arg, i've had my fill of that class.
sam let me know about the official info for that draft bill mentioned a couple weeks ago. as well as some insightful words (slightly) from the crackmonkey list.
tomorrow, the faint
March 24, 2002
suicide bombing
there's an op-ed piece in the nytimes today on the role of suicide in terrorism. the author made some good points, one bit he quoted really stood out:
"Historically, there has always been a gap between people's individual anger and what they could do with their anger," said the Harvard University strategist Graham Allison. "But thanks to modern technology, and the willingness of people to commit suicide, really angry individuals can now kill millions of people if they can get the right materials."
but he then goes on to fret about the "lessons" the palestinian suicide bombers are teaching the world.
If suicidal warfare becomes "normal," the Arab regimes won't be spared. Because once people feel empowered by this sort of thing, they won't stop with just the infidels — they will turn it on their own autocrats. And if it becomes "normal," it will be awful for Palestinians, because how their state is born matters, and a state brought about by suicide bombers will forever be deformed.
well i don't know if there's that big a difference between the revolutionaries in palestine and those back through history. giving your life for your country has always been seen as honorable. the israelis are more than willing to die for their country as they proved 3 times in the last century. it takes extreme circumstances to make the decision to kill yourself seem like the only choice. do you really think if palestinians had tanks, f-16s and apache helicopters that they'd be blowing themselves up?
March 23, 2002
etc.
dan and i went and hit up the keystone boulder today. i forgot my camera so i didn't take any pictures but it was pretty cool.
i bought a new hard drive for my laptop so i've been busy trying to get everything copied over, it's taking a lot longer than i thought.
a couple of cool links:
March 20, 2002
stripper songs
short time only: check out a very special profile on undies only club.
i'm trying to put together a compilation of songs about strippers. so far (wyclef_jean)-in_love_with_a_stripper.mp3 (the_faint)-worked_up_so_sexual.mp3 (bubba_sparxxx)-betty_betty.mp3 . your recommendations are welcome.
bye bye airelle
man i'm just all kinds of behind on this blog. i never mentioned that airelle came to town, and then she left.
March 19, 2002
website changes
the links to comics were taking up too much space so i moved them to the bottom and used img links instead of the text ones i had been using.
March 17, 2002
steve moved in
new, temporary, member of the katherine house: lil' gink aka steve gingold.
tried to cook some thai food tonight. couldn't get all the ingredients though so the pud thai came out kinda bland, the red curry was alright. i'll try it again soon and see if it gets better.
party and news
i forgot to mention that we had a little going away party for bill spaceman and dustin on friday. they're moving up to portland today, i'd love to be in the car with them. it was a real reno party--we were up till muther f'ing 7 in the morning.
last night was dawn's birthday party. as always she puts on an exellent show, good food and beer.
- cool editorials in the new york times:
- the actual text (and annotated subtext) of bush's bin laden remarks
- the role of aid in foreign policy
March 16, 2002
today in history
a little more history: today in 1968 some us troops rolled into a little hamlet named my lai, burned it to the ground and then killed five hundred of the villagers. only one person, lt. william calley, was convicted but served less than 10 years before being paroled by nixon.
March 15, 2002
phone number
apparently i had neglected to put senator richard bryan's phone number, (775) 686-5770, on the last post.
March 14, 2002
starting up the draft
in reply to an email i got from jeanne jo
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 19:47:59 -0800
From: andrew morton
To: Jeanne Jo
Cc:people on the original cc
Subject: Re: check this out
well actually it's not a draft in the '70 sense, there's no lottery. everyone between 18 and 22 would be required to spend between 6 months and 1 year in military training. women would be allowed to volunteer.
notable problems:
* conscripts would be paid 35% less than people who volunteered.
* if you have student loans, you'd be forced to begin payment on those while serving.
* conscientious objectors are also required to complete the military training.
better than just forwarding this email would be to contact your elected representative in the house. if you're in reno you've got a real obligation to do so. jim gibbons is on the armed services committee and can vote against this before it ever makes it to the full house.
congressman jim gibbons (775) 686-5760
give your name, address, and politely tell them that you don't ever want hr 3598 to see the light of day.
i don't see a matching bill for the senate but you might want to call our senators and tell them that you oppose the attempts in the house to begin compulsory military service and mention hr 3598.
senator harry reid: (775) 686-5750 - senator richard bryan: (775) 686-5770
it'll take you all of five minutes to call all three of them and you'll have the nice warm feeling of democracy in action. of course if you're one of those don't vote people, you'll probably head for canada and this won't affect you in the slightest.
andrew
On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 04:15:23PM -0800, Jeanne Jo wrote:
> So, I've been told that the house of representatives is trying to pass a bill reinstating the draft without anyone noticing. And its true....http://allsouthwest.com/HR3598/bill-Text.html. If this bothers you as much as it bothers me then please forward this to other people. Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
lets go nuke us some japs
fifty seven years ago this week we fire bombed tokyo. depending on whose numbers you use somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 people were killed. for comparison, the nuke dropped in hiroshima killed between 66,000 and 80,000, but that doesn't even begin to count the thousands who died early deaths because of the radiation.
March 12, 2002
i haven't posted much in
i haven't posted much in the last couple of days because i've been pretty busy with a leaking water heater. james and i (read: james) pulled the old rusted one out and replaced it with a brand new one for a whole lot less than the plumber wanted to do it. so three cheers for james.
March 10, 2002
reno_climbers mailinglist
i setup a reno_climbers mailing list. i'm hoping it'll be a place for people taking a road trip or going outdoors to find someone to split gas money with. if you're interested sign up.
March 08, 2002
in a bad way
this is one of the worst ways i can imagine dying
programming
i've gotten a ton of stuff working in the last two days, unfortunately none of it is paying.
all the files on my freebsd box are now mirrored with vinum, it was kind of a project but it's good to know that the odds of a repeat of this summer's hard drive crash are greatly reduced.
as a project to learn python i wrote a program to create the karnaugh maps we've been using in my cs236 class. i'm really impressed by how easy it is to write simple but powerful programs in python, i'll probably start using it a lot more now that i've got a handle on it.
March 06, 2002
peps
bob and i went to alberson's tonight to buy beers and ran into the spaceman and his dutch ladyfriend. hopefully i'll get to hang out with them before she leaves.
server status update: the ethernet switch at my house went out for most of the day today, taking down katherinehouse.com and the mail.drewish.com. i've put an old 10mbs hub in it's place and tomorrow i'll be trying to get the switch warranteed.
March 05, 2002
killing kids
so now the palestenians don't have a monopoly on attacking kids:
Also Tuesday, a bomb went off in the yard of an Arab high school, lightly injuring seven students and a teacher. Israeli media said a previously unknown group, apparently consisting of Jewish extremists, claimed responsibility.not like either side has had any moral high ground in a long time.
driving
this weekend i went down to visit my grandmother. we did some cleaning and eating. i drove my grandpa's truck back, it's wierd having a viehicle again. i'm going to get that station wagon taken over to pick 'n pull by the end of the week.
i had a bit of a spending spree today, i got a new stereo and speakers for the truck (i plan to do a month long road trip and consider it an investment in my sanity) and a new cell phone (after having the old one for 3 years the antenna finally fell off).
this evening we went dumpstering as part of dan's dumpsterumentary. i took some pictures.
March 01, 2002
news from all over
the new version of morpheus is out but it's very beta. it's using the guess the gnutella protocol which seems like a step back to me. hopefully be quick about releasing updates.
i guess there really is a place for everything on the internet. some guy put up a whole series of lego porn. for some reason, as much as those guys at slashdot love legos, i don't think i'll see this posted there.
good old rafe over at rc3 has really done a good job of summing up my feelings about the recent israeli attacks on the palestinian refuge camps.
