June 26, 2003
reno wrap up
got back from reno on tuesday night. i had a blast while i was down there. did some climbing, stayed up drinking till 11 in the morning (man i really do miss the bars that don't close at 2:30am), played slingshot paintball, went dumpstering with dan, ate at ss super indian and sushi pier, saw the atomics play. all it all it was a great trip.
as i was leaving it looked like i'd lost my camera, halfway up to portland dan called to tell me he'd found it in a box of dumpstered bell peppers. my mom will be bringing it up next week when she comes with my grandma to visit. so look for hte pictures sometime shortly there after.
June 25, 2003
bad planning
thomas friedman call the bush crime family to task for it's bad planning.
As one Marine officer said to me: There is something to be said for doing war on the cheap, but if you want to do war on the cheap, "pick a country that doesn't matter."
June 23, 2003
broken upgrades
spent a good part of the day trying to get the server working again. it had crashed in the middle of a operating system upgrade. i'm assuming it was due to lightning (i wouldn't be suppressed if the ups at the office is bad). what was really annoying was that it'd been almost 80 days since the last reboot. anyway, i think every thing is back to normal.
June 17, 2003
summer break
school ended last week, and i've got another week until summer school starts so i'm in the middle of my one week vacation. i decided to come down to reno to see the family and friend and try to get an little work in. anyone who's in town that want's to hang out outta drop me a line.
June 15, 2003
no ranger left behind
i'm really excited about howard dean's bid for the presidency. i like his rhetoric, his policies are sound and even if he doesn't win i like to think he'll help shift the democratic party back to the left where it belongs. and at this point, as one person put it, i'd vote for a trained dolphin if it'd get bush out of office. so the last thing i want is some republican-lite like dick gephardt up against bush. was it harry truman who said that given the choice between a republican and a democrat that acts like a republican the people go with a republican every time?
well, i'll make a little confession, in 1999 the thought that bush could become president seemed laughable to me. the idea that a drunk driving, draft dodging, awol, coke addict who got into princeton on his father's coat tails with a sat score 600 points below average and graduated with a c average could be come president seemed so ridiculous that i felt safe voting for ralph nader. at least nevada was so solidly bush that my vote made no difference. i sure hope that it's clear by now that there is a difference between the republicans and democrats. maybe ralph will do us all a favor and sit this next one out.
this time around i'm not going to underestimate that little moronic son of a bitch. if you're not already worried, read this. bush is looking to raise $20 million in the next two weeks:
Members of both major parties said Mr. Bush might, in those two weeks, come close to matching the $26 million raised by all nine Democratic candidates during the first three months of the year....
...Republicans involved in Mr. Bush's campaign said they were expecting to raise $170 million...
i'm going to let you in on a little "secret". most of that money won't be coming from mom and pop republicans, it'll be given to him by the people that brought you the bush/cheney energy [company enrichment] plan. believe me, you don't pony up $200,000 just to for an "I'm a Ranger" t-shirt. you do it knowing you'll get it back, be it a tax cut or a government contract, there will be no ranger left behind.
For Democrats immersed in a highly competitive primary fight, a weak showing at the end of the quarterly fund-raising reporting period on June 30 could undermine their standing with Democratic leaders and party donors.
i've never given any money directly to a political campaign before but given my previously stated excitement for dean i've put my money where my mouth is. i contributed $25 to dean's campaign. i don't know exactly how to do it but we've got to get people fired up. contrary to what w and his christian coalition buddies might think it wasn't divine intervention that put him in office (it was the supreme court but that's another rant all together). i'm really looking forward to seeing the confused look on his face when we kick his ass out of office. now if you've got any in seeing that you've gotta pony up. $5 to edwards, $10 to kerry, what ever, hell you can even send dick gephardt a check. the important thing is to show your support.
June 14, 2003
freeway art
as part of portland's rose festival they've blocked off the park block in front of my building and setup an arts festival. krista and i wandered through it on friday to check out the stuff. one artist in particular really caught my eye. john margaris started working as an electrical engineer but got laid off and decided to go to california and become a painter. he did a series of paintings of abstract highways based on parts of his daily commute.
go check out some of his paintings. i'll warn you though, the website is a bit clunky and the photos of the paintings really don't do them justice. if i had the grand and a half to buy one of his pieces, i'd do it in a second. humm maybe i ought to try to trade him a website for a painting...
June 12, 2003
the downward spiral
the new york times has an editorial that lays the blame for the latest round of escalations between the palestinians and israelis squarely where it belongs.
Nobody expects Israel to tolerate terror against its people. But terror can be more effectively rooted out if responsible Palestinian leaders like Mr. Abbas are strengthened, not undermined. It is easy to see why Hamas would like to make Mr. Abbas look irrelevant. But Israel should be doing all it can to strengthen his hand because in the long run that is in Israel's own interest.
June 10, 2003
June 05, 2003
want to get pissed off?
go read michael kinsley's article in slate on the role of rich's new tax cuts in the new class war.
June 03, 2003
what to do with free tv?
in the wake of the fcc's decision to further deregulate the broadcast media the latimes asks is it worth saving? if television is just a for profit enterprise why not just auction off the air waves to the highest bidder? one source estimated that $400 billion dollars could be raised.
calling it what it is
paul krugman is calling the bush administrations wmd's claims what they really were - lies.
June 01, 2003
c++ unit testing
[most regular readers will be best served by ignoring this post completely. i've read enough positive things about the test driven methodology of extreme programming that it's got me looking to setup a unit testing harness for use with my cs projects. i put this list of links together for future reference and a resource for anyone searching through google.]
the first thing i came across was perl's test::simple library and it looked great but unfortunately i didn't see any easy way to hook it to a c++ program.
after a bit of googling i came across CppUnit which looked promising but the syntax didn't appeal to me half as much as perl-test so i kept going. the next hit, CxxTest, had syntax much more to my liking but lacked the power of perl's regular expressions.
a bit more poking around got me a very attractive option, using the perl test and expect libraries. i'd perl REs but the would be that all the tests would have to be done through the standard input and output.
i'm going to have to mess with both CxxText and Expect/Test to see what works best. right now i'm envisioning using CxxTest for testing the underlying data structures and Expect/Test to test the user interfaces.
