Month: January 2003

Real quick roundup of the anti-war rally; Meet G████ at 10:00am at Metro Center. From there we grabbed some coffee and a bite to eat before heading down to the mall for the rally. There where quite a few people already milling around on the mall. It was freezing cold—the high for the day was only 24 degrees Fahrenheit. Despite the weather there was a really good turnout, around 250,000 people.

Th speakers started around 11 o’clock, including Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Jessica Lange and Rep. John Conyers Jr. I have to say I don’t agree with much of what most of the speakers stand for, they used the anti-war rally to speak about various causes that have nothing to do with the war, but that’s the way these things always go. (though I will say there was far less socialist influence than at the anti-war rally I went to in England before the Afghan campaign began.)

By 1:30 the key-note speakers where done and the front of the crowd had begun the march to Navy Yard in Southeast. The march took over an hour, and at one point while G████ and I where at the top of a hill the crowd stretched as far as we could see in front of us and behind us and we where near the front of the crowd when the march started.

On of the best moments of the march was when we passed a group of seven or eight people all dressed up and sipping champaign on a second story balcony with a white board that they had written “hippies go home” on. The crowd stopped in the street below the building and chanted “we are home.”

The protest went off peacefully without any violence or mass arrests. The media gave it better coverage than the last rally in October, so maybe more people will see it and public opinion in favor of Bush’s warmongering can be changed. I don’t think that war is a priori bad in this case, but I think that if the Bush administration really does have evidence of Iraq having these weapons of mass destruction (which I don’t doubt Iraq does have) then they should be taking this evidence to the leaders of the free country and giving it to the weapons inspectors so they can show the world that there is in fact a threat, that we need to use force to deal with this situation.

Anyway, the rally was for a good cause and was a success. Afterwards G████ and I went over to Fado’s and had dinner then bar hopped across Adams Morgan. All in all a good day, that my body is complaining about today.

Well, it’s official, effective January 31, 2003 I will no longer be an employee of Lockheed Martin, and on February 3, 2003 I will be an employee of Inphomatch, Inc. I get to jump right into the pot and start programming and working on requirements gathering for a new project when I start. Get to put all those software engineering classes to work… Ouch! Painful memories of professors who compare engineering to making cookies! Thats gonna leave a scar!

I have some vacation/floating holiday time at Lockheed that I want to use up before I am gone, so I thought I would go to England to see C███████—no such luck, I have to be at Lockheed on the 31st for paperwork, et al and to get tickets I could leave no sooner than the 25th. That is not a good window for C███████ with classes just ramping up for the new term, so I will have to wait till this summer to see her. Trying to hook up a backup plan to go see A█████ in NY for a few days. Might as well use the vacation while I have it!

Anyway, I am REALLY looking forward to actually doing some programming for a real project, I have not ever been so ready to start a job, if it was not for the need to show Lockheed some common courtesy I would show up at Inphomatch on Monday! Oh well, I’ve been doing nothing for three months, two more weeks is not going to kill me. Hell, fist time a deadline hits me with 24 hour days I bet I start whining about having too much to do. The grass is always greener!

Bush is pushing the courts to declare affirmative action unconstitutional, this is a good thing in my opinion. Affirmative action is a concept past it’s time, now it is a vehicle for, not against, discrimination. I understand that there is still discrimination, but affirmative action promotes one set of discriminating practices in an attempt to eliminate another set. I am all for equality, a color/sex/age/religion blind, uber-PC society but now that affirmative action has run it’s course and opened doors for those who needed them opened forcefully it is time to let time itself fix the problem. Affirmative action was a satisfactory solution for an overwhelming problem, now before it has a chance to become an overwhelming problem itself, it is time to move on.

Bush is also proposing a cap on medical malpractice lawsuits. I think he is a little off here. I fully agree that there needs to be something done about the sky rocketing cost of insurance for doctors which in turn leads to higer health care cost for us, which then causes our insurance to go up. But capping malpractice at a quarter million is not an idea I favor. I think that if a doctor does something that causes a patient to be be disabled and unable to work or become permanently disfigured then the person may well need more than a $250K to live off for the rest of their lives. However I think a million would be more than enough for almost all cases here, with the possibility of judicial discretion to increase that amount in rare extenuating circumstances. So I think an upper limit on rewards is a good thing—STOP THE GREED!—but this should apply to ALL civil cases, not just malpractice.

Bush doing good? Somebody pinch me! I must be dreaming… Then again all this is insignificant in the face of his continual warmongering, and the opinion polls are starting to show we are heading to a new Vietnam era like division in America. Not there yet but getting closer, whole cities are passing anti-war resolutions now! (that said there is an anti-war rally in DC this weekend, come join Codejunkie and me! Go to A.N.S.W.E.R. for more info.)

listed on GeoURL now. Click the green button –&gt Vive la metaspace!!!

Ok, the site was down for the past 36 hours—anyone notice? No? Didn’t think so. Well anyway, the reason was (Warning: Geeky stuff ahead…) that on Sunday afternoon while I was editing some pages I got disconnected. I think it was a problem with Verizon as I could not check my email or other web sites either. I did not think much of is and just turned the computer off and read some of my book before heading to work. Then Monday afternoon, while at work, I pointed my web browser at confusion and what came up was a banner saying that my account had been suspended and that I needed to contact the host. One trouble ticket later and I was informed that I had been abusing the system with ‘vim’ and as a result my account was suspended and I would have to pay $100 do get it turned back on. $100!!!! Abused by vim????

As best I can tell the problem was that when I got disconnected my vim process did not die, (I should have realized this.) Said vim process then apparently decided it needed 100% of the processor to do absolutely not a damn thing! This prompted my hosting company to smite said vim process with much authority and then punish the wicked by suspending my account (kind of akin to purgatory!)

Anyway, I have to admit I got a little rude with tech support by email and they have decided to wave the fee this time. But I best watch out—the next time they smite me it will be with furious vengeance and great wrath!