confusion

I did indead go to Canada for one day. Flew from Dulles to Montreal on Monday and back on Tuesday—all for a two hour meeting with someone. Wow. Montreal seemed nice, but most of the time it was just dead. I guess maybe it was becaue it was Monday evening but the bars we went to (oh… too much Guinness!) where just dead. There was much bitching and moaning. But there was also much drinking and it was a good time. The three of us who when did manage to get up on Tuesday and make the meeting. But that’s all hush hush. Afterwords we went back downtown for some lunch before our flight. We ended up playing billiards for several hours. So if anyone askes me what I did on October 7th, I can just tell them—I played pool. In Canada. The other thing was that when we got back (at 9pm) another guy we where to meet was in town so we meet him and had a drink till close to midnight! Must sleep tonight.

Was logged into hell.com tonight, since I have a working internet connection from home again and I thought part of this conversation was cool:

violet : not much for patriotism, but i think I’ve been there before.
say hey : no i’m not all that for patriotism either…
say hey : new world people so often are though
say hey : sorry for assuming
beggs : the French are quite patriotic also…
violet : mostly Americans, though.
beggs : patriotism is the bane of many things in the world
say hey : true…. but most European countries don’t like to be too patriotic… they associate patriotism with fascism
violet : well… maybe not…i dunno.
violet : i can surely say that i am not sure.
beggs : the memories of world wars fought in your back yard will do that.
say hey : yep true
violet : must be a strange feeling…
say hey : what cultural event are you most excited about right now/
beggs : modern American patriotism is a opiate of fear and stupidity
beggs : the malicious leading the blind
…
say hey : kiss the past till it’s better
violet : i associate the American racist/hate/patriotism often with stupidity…there is no excuse for ignorance in this day and age.
…
beggs : possessing, like, 90% of the worlds wealth and the mightiest army in the world has given rise to a culture of lazy and ignorant people
…
beggs : people who blindly follow anyone they think will make them more money
…
violet : money is the only thing that really matters to people, when it comes down to it.
beggs : all of what Tocqueville said made American democracy great has been contorted to make the powerful more powerful..
say hey : is that true violet?… i know what you mean… but money stands for passions hopes and dreams ….
beggs : Money, power, prestige and sex
beggs : the four drives of the human species, according to my high school US history teacher…
beggs : a man uses the first three to get the last and a women the last to get the first three, pretty sexist
say hey : drives are deeper…. than that…
violet : the one thing that matters the most to me is being happy…imbalances make that rare for me.
beggs : I don’t know, you can “understand” a lot of history if you look at it through those drives. At least for the men
say hey : yeah i can relate to that Vi….
beggs : people associate these four things with happiness
beggs : people who have none of these find religion
..
violet : i could be living on the streets and still capable of an emotion.
…
say hey : yes true violet….
violet : money, power, prestige…
violet : i could be with out all those and still be able to have an emotion.
violet : …happy
…
beggs : but sex?
…
beggs : anyway. Money, Power, Prestige and Sex… it does not describe all drives—nothing can. But it fits most situations and people.
violet : true.
violet : the first three are meaningless to me. the last, is nice when it’s around.
say hey : yeah i can see how you can apply those 4 things to most modern situations and
violet : money is necessary, however.
say hey : money didn’t always exist
beggs : like Nietzsche’s view of altruism there is no way to prove it wrong.
beggs : but that does not make it right.

Coolest thing in my life right now? I am going to Montreal on Monday for a business trip. Unfortunately have to come back on Tuesday, but hey, what can you ask for. Maybe next time I will get to go to London for a business trip. Keep your fingers crossed.

Apparently there are still people in Virginia without power since the hurricane—misribella as they call it now. I think it’s all just a big conspiracy. See after the big northeast blackout this summer and all the trouble California had a couple years ago the power companies know that they are going to have to spend a lot of money on upgrading the entire power grid. A lot of money. So, if they dick around long enough every time there is a power outage they can make it look so bad that the government will step in and order them to fix the grid. Then they can go to congress and say; ‘we can’t do it without government money!’ See? It’s all just a big greedy conspiracy. That or I watched way too much X-Files as a teenager!

Oh yea, and I am finished moving. But I still don’t have DSL service—this weekend they said. So I have resorted to updating from work. Breaking my previous posts little… thingy. Anyway! Living with Sherman and Molly is quite fun. Though I don’t see much of Molly—Sherman keeps her locked up in his room. What would you do with a slave sheep?

Ok. Back to work!

Not that anyone would notice if I did not say something but I will not be updating the journal for a week or so. I move to the new flat tomorrow and the dsl service will not be online for up to eight days. I could update from work, but then I would not get to make this cool entry. Anyway, work is too busy anyway. See you in a week or so. Ciao!

Oh yea [gsfc.nasa.gov]. The wind is a blowing. And the rain is falling (sometimes down, sometime other directions!) Isabel is here!

Been a long time since we had a hurricane come through. I was at work when it started to rain this afternoon waiting for my boss to finish his demo of my system on the west coast. As soon as he called to say all was well the last few of us who where at work headed out. In good news the demo did apparently go well. Yea, all those long hours I’ve been putting in pay off. Not that it has not been fun or that there is not a lot more work to do, but hacking sendmail for fun and profit has been fun and should be profitable.

Back to the storm—oh, power just flickered!—I talked to my mom a little while ago and the projected path of the eye of the storm is only a mile or two from my parents house. While I was on the phone with her the giant tree in the front yard came crashing down and destroyed her car—flattened it! Yikes. At least it fell on the car, if it had gone the other way it would have taken out the house.

Not much other than that. Probably have tomorrow off. Was going to take a half day anyway to get finished packing. I move in two days! Just heard the worst of the wind and rain is supposed to come through between two and six am.

Blow baby blow!