OK, I’m twisted, but the headline below just caught my eye (especially when it was on the main page with just text, but same headline):

So Bill, stressed out over the Longhorn delays? Losing sleep over this “linux” thingee (what’s with the Penguin??)?

Fire up a doobie! Science is on your side!

[Uh, Back to our regularly scheduled Blog….must…have…Doritos…]

As Kasia has noted, the new computers just are not as exciting as the old ones.

The updates are pretty much incremental, nothing like in the past.

Two computers ago, I went from a 368 with about, oh, 1M (yes, one frickin’ MEG) of RAM to a smokin’ 128M, 200 Mhz Pentium Pro. Now that was a jump worth getting excited about.

And my last computer – hit the 1Ghz mark. With 512M RAM – and a 80 GIG hard drive. Wowzers Batman!

I just recently bought another computer – a *sigh* Windoze box (why? One word: Photoshop. Gimp doesn’t cut it yet….).

Yet it’s sitting in three boxes, right behind my current work station. Too much work to do this weekend (yes – and it’s a weekend and I’m not diving into the boxes) and – to be honest – not enough excitement about the new box to warrant going there.

It’s a nice system, will last a few years, but…it’s the same as my current system, with each area a little bit better. I did spring for a flat screen this time, so that’s worth getting excited about, but that’s about it.

Basically, I got the new one to get more room, some more speed and more backup capability (RAID 1).

But no sea change. No paradigm shift blah blah.

Bleh.

I guess computers really are becoming mainstream, when even computer dorks don’t get excited about new hardware.

LISTENING TO:
Mudanin Kata
David Darling & The Wulu Bunun

Vocal music of a Taiwanese tribe with a master cello player.

Sounds odd; it is. Sonic, atmospheric.

I heard about it on NPR; had to get.

Got it today; glad I purchased same. I won’t play this every day/week, but this is a great CD. In a “sounds of the whales” type way.

Lovely.

All music

OK, here is my concept for what could be at least one of the presidential debates.

Yes, it’ll never happen, but … I can dream can’t I?

And I don’t think it’s really a bad concept.

Basic rules of the debate:

• Panel must ask questions that can be answered with either Yes, No or Pass – This eliminates the question within a question question that is sometimes necessary but still a pain in the ass overall. Example: “Mr. President, you recently said X and Mr. Y said Z. How do you respond? And how does this affect the thickness of ice on the Antarctic’s Ross Shelf?”
• The first word out of the candidate’s mouth must be Yes, No or Pass – Obviously, allowances will be made for “Can you please repeat the question” or whatever, but – basically – answer the question Yes, No or Pass (a blanket I can’t / don’t want to answer response, which is fine and an answer in itself).
• If – and only if – a candidate answers either Yes or No, the candidate can then qualify/defend this answer – This allows someone, for example, to go on record as favoring abortion but quickly following up with “Only in the case of incest/mother’s life in danger yada…”.
• If the candidate answers Pass, that’s it – mike cut off or whatever – Hey dude, you passed on the question. So shut up!

What’s gained from this? Mainly an avoidance of the following (completely made-up and yet totally believable exchange):

Q: Do you support a woman’s choice to terminate her pregnancy?

A:Now [panelist], that’s a great question. This touches upon the whole role of the child in our society. Under the Education Plan I’ve published, it makes it possible for…..

Yes, where is the answer?

Not there.

Yup.

It’s also a good method for our sound-bite, attention-deficit generation(s): A quick score card can show what was Yes, what was No, what was Pass for each candidate.

And it can apply some pressure to the candidates – if one keeps doing a Pass, the other can start answering Yes or No and sort of force the other(s) to put something on the record.

I dunno; not great concept, but makes it easier for the average voter, whomever that may be…

Grasses:

Well, not exactly a day in the county, but off the beaten path.

As part of this holiday weekend’s festivities (actually, the only festivity), we went to a garden center we had heard about outside of Benton Harbor, MI – Amber Waves Gardens.

Doesn’t seem that impressive, just a farm house surrounded by beds of grasses, but, wow, nice grasses.

And – at this time of the year, the seed heads of many of plants were out, which is a great sight.

The pictures – samples on the right, more in the gallery – really don’t do the plants justice. Part of this is the light at the time – not enough contrast, part was that the digital camera I had makes it hard to capture what you want (great little camera, however).

They’ll give you an idea of what they have.

I love ornamental grasses – easy to maintain, great summer, fall and winter interest (very unusual for most perennials).

I’ve a feeling the front yard is going to see less and less of fescue/rye grass and more oranamental grass.

Works for me…

For reasons that I can’t explain (uh, sure I can: “I’m an idiot!”), I haven’t been backing up all my scans and stuff like that in a regular manner.

I have a CD-RW disc that I’ve been copying the stuff to, oh, whenever I remember to do so (and feel like killing the hour or so doing so…).

Yep. Bad.

Backup shell script added. Following tests (running in background), will add to CRON.

200M of scans, backup up daily, keep at least five day’s worth of zips.

Done.

Well I feel better…

By ET, I mean us.

By that I mean, why the hell are we talking about sending humans to Mars?

Sure, President Bush is pushing for something like this, but that’s just election-year posturing for the most part. But I heard some guy on NPR yesterday – in town (Chicago) for some type of “Let’s get man to Mars” convention (I dunno what it was).

The guy was kind of a wing nut, but – still – there is an interest in putting people on Mars.

I just don’t get it.

Now, I’m probably more science oriented than the average person, and I strongly support the space program and all that. I fully understand that the benefits of a space program cannot really be seen in advance; you just have to do it because you’re curious and benefits sometimes appear.

For example, putting man on the moon was really an exercise in nationalism, kind of a key battle in the Cold War. Yet out of this came the integrated circuit, advances in computing, aerospace materials (composites, for example) and so on. But we didn’t go for that; the benefits were gravy.

All space exploration is like that. Will the current Saturn probe or the recently launched Mercury probe bring any benefits beyond more info about these far-flung bodies? Who knows? Who cares? The point is to understand more about these planets.

Again, everything else is gravy.

OK, what does this have to do with men on Mars, fer Christ’s sake?

Well, I look at it this way: Putting a man on Mars would cost (time and dollars) incredibly more than a unmanned mission. This can’t be disputed. I just don’t see the benefit – what we’ll gain – from sending one manned mission (for example) to Mars instead of numerous unmanned missions there.

Just getting a person there is a huge task; and – once there – that one mission will examine one area. Period. And roving is very limited due to the human factor. Need a certain amount of oxygen, protection against extreme cold, extreme warmth, cosmic rays and so on. And humans get tired, need sleep, need to dispose of waste and so on.

Unmanned probes are far less fussy. We could scatter roving probes all over the planet for far less than a single manned mission.

Sure, a human has better processing ability and can easily change the mission (not that rock, this rock is more interesting…), but the sheer volume of data points that can be gained by multiple missions – probably at a lower cost – make the whole manned mission to Mars talk silly to me.

To be fair, my argument is undercut by my own statement that one really can’t tell what benefits will accrue before it all happens. Yes, it’s possible the effort of putting a man on Mars – or what he finds there – will be so great that it will make all the cost/effort worth it.

Yet the same could be said about the unmanned missions. And – with more unmanned missions possible for same time/effort/cost – the odds of something good coming out of the unmanned missions seems higher.

WATCHING:
Fahrenheit 9/11
Michael Moore

Is this biased? Yes. Does it just portray one side of the story and attempt to belittle the other side(s) of the story? Sure. Does it dwell on just one part of a bigger story? Yep.

Is it exceptionally well done? Yes. Are the clips presented misrepresented? No.

Should this movie infuriate the World? Yes.

Yep, this it your standard Moore film, but an interesting examination of one facet of the war in Iran: His take on just why we invaded liberated Iraq.

Why?

It’s the OIL, stupid.

Agree or disagree, the movie raises a lot of points that are difficult to push aside, and – as I’ve mentioned – it’s done very well. Over the top at times, too maudlin at times, but that’s my bias.

Lot of facts that are hard to ignore behind the curtain of Moore’s ham-handed handling of some aspects of the film. Watch. Discuss. Be informed.

All movies

This is not an exhausive list, but just some things that have occurred to me recently.

I don’t care about:

The Olympics

While I’ve felt this way for some years, with the Olympics firing up again it just brought it to the forefront of my (little) mind.

Why the apathy? I don’t know exactly; it’s a number of factors:

• Since the whole pretense of the Olympics as venue of amatuer athletes has gone the way of all sponsorship, it’s hard to get excited about drama behind an individual getting there and all that. Sure, the Eastern Block countries went this way long ago – and the U.S. and others were fraudulent in their own ways – but now it’s just another Super Bowl. Super Bore is more like it.
• As I gotten older I follow sports less and less. So that’s an issue to deal with.
• I read a comment on a blog somewhere to the effect that the Olympics became less interesting with the end of the Cold War. I think that’s true, to a degree – the “us” vs. “them” competition added a charge to the the event, at least for the U.S. and Soviet countries. Remember the 1980 “miracle” hockey team?

Network TV – or much TV at all

It’s summer, and time for all the summer reruns, test programs, special programs (the Olympics and shows such as “America’s Funniest Game Show Bloopers” or what have you).

There isn’t much to watch, and – frankly – I don’t miss missing whatever I’m not seeing. Know what I mean?

Current Pop Music

Just haven’t been listening to the radio recently, and when I do – there’ s little to listen to.

How many more times do I have to hear “that” song by Nora Jones (i.e., any song; they all sound the same) before I slip into a permanent coma?

I’ve had the radio on for a couple of hours so far today; right now the first interesting song played is on right now: A Led Zepplin song from the 70s or so. (A nice song from Modest Mouse before that, however – I’ll give you that).

Or maybe I’m just grumpy…

Gallery Additions:

Yes, it’s the time of the year where you go, “Eep!, where did the summer go? I still need to do [list of chores].”

So I’ve been doing a lot of that.

Refinanced the house – finally!, got a quote on a new furnace (getting ready for when summer wanes), got the blade on the lawnmower sharpened, so it wasn’t just “gumming” the grass and so on.

Many little tasks, each taking little time, all adding up to large blocks of time.

Now if it would only rain so I could do the late-summer fertilizing, I’d be a happier camper…

It’s actually been a crappy summer weather-wise this year. Cold and rainy in the early part of the summer, and it never really got those nice sunny days that plants need to really get established.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

Beyond that, working hard and enjoying (? is that the right word?) all the frivolity that is surrounding the whole election process.

Unfortunately, it is sad that the process is so comical – because the results can be so devastating.

Still, how can you not crack a smile – or laugh because you’d otherwise cry – at the scripting, pandering politicos and their often frightenly rabid followers?

It’s just sad…

I guess it’s a wonderful thing that we’re trying to bring this brilliant form of government to Iraq. Yeah, that’ll work well. Look how well it’s worked thus far. Not a pretty sight from any point of view (Republican, Democrat, American/Anti-Amercian, Iraqi leadership, Iraqi warriors and so on).

It’ll be interesting to see how all of this plays out in an historical light, like going back and seeing the actions/re-actions that led to the carnage that was WWI.

On an unrelated note: Today’s spam percentage: hoving in the high 90s. Yes, spam filters catch virtually all of this, but…why? Tell me e-mail’s not broken is some fundamental way.

WATCHING:
Mystic River
Clint Eastwood, Director

Well, not the feel-good movie of the year, but a great story well told and with some great acting.

Sean Penn and Tim Robbins both grabbed Oscars for their (very different) portrayals of of individuals on the fringe and on the edge.

Between this movie and Good Will Hunting, I really don’t have a burning desire to move to Boston…

All movies

It’s frustrating, but reality.

There just isn’t enough time for the things worth doing. And – at the same time (pun intended) – I end up doing things that suck up time and don’t need doing (like writing this/other/all entries??? History will judge.)

A short list of what I haven’t had time for lately:

• Watching TV – This is a good thing, to me
• Read more fiction – I’ve been in a fiction slump over the last few years, and I miss it. But I like to read books in big chunks (100 or so pages at a sitting), and the large chunks ‘o time just are not there.
• Catching up on new trends – By this, I mean tech trends. I just can’t get up to speed on OO programming or XML/SOAP and so on. I’ve done brief bits of those (and a million others) over the last couple years, but I still want to immerse myself there. Not happening. Good example: I’ve been doing some data loads lately. I suck at dataloads. I chaff at doing them because I suck, but I enjoy doing them, because they are so necessary and the payoff is so great – press “enter” and suddenly files are downloaded, opened, parsed, passed into databases, files written. It’s a form of alchemy.
  
• Just enjoying the damn moment – Hard to do; easy to overlook; essential for sanity. But – hey – sanity’s overrated, right?