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June 26, 2006
Rain, rain, come again
The first half of the story from last night (before wading through the 4' of water by the metro station), was that I'd gone down to the Kennedy Center for a free performance by and then documentary on The Refugee All-Stars. It was thundering and lightning downtown when I left, and I decided to walk... to Farragut North station (not really that far of a walk, outside of torrential downpour situations). It decided to pour like a goddamned mofo, but it was a perfect temperature, the rain was wonderful, and the lightning show was spectactular (for DC).
I was a bit of a spectacle on the metro. Everyone stared at me when I sloshed through the door. I informed them that it was still raining outside. I wonder if they noticed the folded-up umbrella sticking out of my pocket?
After getting to my home metro station, I found that I had to wade through hip-deep kinda-scary-looking, rushing, manhole-cover-loosing, muddy water to get home. It probably wasn't the smartest thing I've done this month, but I don't think it wins the dumbest-thing-I've-done-this-year award.
Regardless, my current moleskine notepad has finally had its baptism, but I fear my cell phone will never quite work right again. :|
(...It was worth it.)
(my pants from that night remain outside. This is, generally speaking, still one of the least interesting ways your pants can end up soaking wet and draped over the railing on one's front porch)
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June 20, 2006
I miss republicans
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June 19, 2006
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a documentary about the 2002 coup in Venezuela. I don't know how I've missed seeing this for so long. It's available for watching via google video and for bittorrent download
There's of course some doubt to its.... evenhandedness, but regardless, it reveals the scary power of media to distort and thereby alter reality.
Posted by griffjon at 09:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2006
Spam
I am getting SWAMPED with empty (zero-length-body) spam messages. Like, 1-5/minute. I added a procmail filter to auto-junk any email without a body:
:0 *$ B ?? < 1 spam
But I still find it annoying, even though it no longer technically affects me. Is this some badly-configured virus? Some bot checking for bounces?
Posted by griffjon at 11:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 15, 2006
It's worse than we thought
So, I've been using CVS for this summer class to keep all my reading, presentation slides from the prof, articles for my paper, and writings themselves, in sync across my home laptop, my travelling Linux laptop, and my thumbdrive (and my work computer at times, and a private directory on my website).
Though it comes with some annoyances when handling big annoying docs in directory structures and not plain text files, it's made my life a lot simpler (no more counting files in a directory, sorting by most-recently-modified, etc.)
So yeah, I'm working on my paper at the GTown building (the roof has a great view of the potomac, electrical outlets and open wireless!), and I just raised my arms and shouted towards the Potomac "I LOVE CVS!"
I especially love the automatic version numbers. I am on rev 1.2 of my paper. It gives me a sense of accomplishment.
I think this qualifies me for dorkiness, beyond geekiness.
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June 14, 2006
Ah, religion
I think this means that Fox is approaching singularity.
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June 13, 2006
House Hunting
I looked at two places Sunday, one is in an excellent location near Eastern Market/Capitol Hill (10 minute walk from the Red line at Union Station, and the Orange and Blue lines at Eastern Market!), for cheap! It's a tiny room in a large rowhouse, with some good common areas, full of non-profit save-the-world types. They had a house outing to the Darfur rally, so I feel I'd fit in well there. And it's cheap. But tiny.
The other place is way out in Takoma Park, about 10-15 more minutes of metro riding, but closer to the metro station than my current place. This also means no walking home at all, and no cheap taxis home late, which kinda sucks. BUT, the HOUSE IS HUGE. It has a wrap-around porch over the front and side, enclosed in the back. It has a humongous basement (with a DJ booth installed) and a ginormous backyard. The inside is quirky and rough around the edges. It had its radiators ripped out and is now all central heat/AC (that's not happy). There are literally 5 bathrooms on the ground floor, 2 (1 private to a room) on the second, and sadly none on the 3rd floor where I'd most likely be (converted attic).
I'm waiting to hear back from the E.Mkt place first, as it's cheaper and more metro-convenient; but if it falls through, I'm jumping on the TkPk place.
House hunting is a really bizarre thing in DC, as there's such a constant flow of people coming, leaving and moving around based on work changes and DC in general. For the shared-house crowd, of course, it's generally self-selecting for non-profit types and grad students, so the open houses are almost always impromptu parties and networking events. At the E. Mkt place, one of the housemates is ivankara's girlfriend (I know him through the PCV IT crowd, her set up pcvs.org from Mauritania where he served) (and they evidentially met through house hunting themselves!), at a place a few weeks back I ran into a current roommate of a friend who'd changed jobs, and a girl who was thinking of volunteering in Jamaica with the Jam. Assoc for the Deaf, who I worked with a bit on IT.
Anyhow, I should be reading, outlining, doing laundry and beginning to box some stuff up, not blogging.
Posted by griffjon at 11:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Fun with neocon
[Sarcasm follows]
Just read a piece about a policy in Ghana that had unfortunate side-effects of increasing the abortion rate, increasing children born out of wedlock, and complications or deaths during childbirth (to young mothers). Obviously, if the religious right in America is concerned about reducing these effects in America, we only have to take the reverse policy decision that Ghana did. No, it wasn't teaching sex-ed, making contraceptives available, legalizing abortions, or taking religion out of schools, it was making female genital mutilation illegal (often more euphemistically called female circumcision or clitoridectomy).
Looking at the immediate consequences of this policy change, I think leading republicans such as Frist should take up legalization of FGM as a moral issue to reduce abortion rates.
[end sarcasm]
That being said, I think it's an important lesson that changing a culture's values is hard work and will have lots of unintended consequences. FGM is one of those (few) issues that's abhorrent enough to make it worth the fall-out (IMHO).
Of course, as friends have pointed out, this is the group of mouthbreathers that delayed a vaccine for HPV, the cause of over 90% of cervical cancers which kills almost 5000 American women each year, out of fears that it might increase promiscuity. One wonders what will happen to an effective HIV treatment, or if FGM isn't too far.
I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but the neocons just seem to invite them.
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