<The meaning of life>

Friday, May 21, 2004

No WMD. Sure we haven't found them in the limited number of locations where we looked. But we have found that there was no infrastructure in Iraq for them to build the equipment required to produce anything in quantity. Our intelligence was falsified.

The prisoner mess is awful. But we have enough good people to get through it. The bulk of the military is CAN-DO oriented, and will perservere. Still, the leadership is not straight with us, and is fudging the costs. Pay for the military expeditions today, not on a 30 year credit card. Put a tax on fuel, since that is what we are trying to conserve. Put the revenues into the domestic treasury.

Go John Kerry, go. And I can vote this year.

posted by Nick 3:45:00 AM

Still tired. Furnace replaced. A/C now leaks coolant - TBD.

The 17 year Cicadas are out. There is a constant background hum -- like a distant electric motor buzzing. Occasionally a close-by bug will zzzz zzzz zzzz, but otherwise it sounds like some distant machine is straining.

Kids went through another year of school and have done well. The change since the beginning of the year is large. Youngest child has developed an independent streak.

I took a Java course. That is a complicated and difficult language. I have yet to master it. Did well in the course. Not enough time for playing with S/W.

Tried to squeeze in a hardware project. Not enough time left over for this.

House needs attention. Gutters, windows, yard. Oh, and a lot of painting waits to be done. Perhaps a new floor and a carpet in the basement.

Theory. Hmm. Not much contemplation on my part.

All of a sudden a lot of 1 GB email accounts are coming free. Must be that demand for advertising dollars, where the ad fees have exceeded the decreasing cost of the hosting hardware. There is something magical about 200 GB and larger hard drives.

Looked at HD TVs today while shopping for something else. Wow, the LCD 1 MPixel versions have the best pictures I have seen. Not cheap, but available.

I want to do a road trip across the country, to go to Vancouver this summer. I'll need a car DVD to keep the kids from going totally crazy. Maybe camping a couple of times. See the Grand Canyon.

We welcomed a new member of our extended family today. My sister-in-law and her husband have just adopted a little Chinese girl. They got back yesterday or so.

I am still mulling over whether or not to move to go back to work. Full time seems impractical. Doing something at home will require discipline. TBD.

Got a DVD burner. Made a first disk of concatenated video fragments. Now I have to learn how to do menus and text screens to break the action up into segments.

Xmas in Vancouver. Got to rent a new Dodge SUV. What a monster. But it drove well. Bumped off the return flight and stayed in Seattle overnight to get a set of free roundtrip tickets to use this year. Gee, we even got 1st class seats coming back.

Dad is 78. He had a neck artery blockage removed last fall and is feeling great. Today he said that he replaced the roof on the garage, himself. Wow.

As I said, time to go to sleep. Night.

posted by Nick 3:23:00 AM

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Free Space Field Random Thoughts

Friday, May 21, 2004