Personal news, commentary and ramblings
James Houston took seriously the challenge by rock band Radiohead to remix their song “Nude”:
Houston explains the remix on the YouTube page. More information about the remix challenge is here. Radiohead’s original is also available on YouTube along with loads of other user-created videos.
Bike odometer: 2443
Van odometer: 152647
Weight lost (in pounds):Â 3
Aches & pains:Â none
Current reading: The Book of Totally Useless Information by Don Voorhees, My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk, CSS: The Definitive Guide (O’Reilly) by Eric A. Meyer
Recent listening: Chrome Dreams II by Neil Young, Jimmy Buffett, Fresh Air, This American Life
Recent viewing: Lakers vs. Spurs, Celtics vs. Pistons, Doctor Who, Face the Nation, Countdown, Hardball
Recent playing: Chain Factor, Fireflies
Recently accomplished:Â Voted, GPS rebate, cleaned cat boxes, cardboard recycling, new tires for Thomas, fixed flat on little bike, mowed lawn
Imperative To Do: Sell G4, get rid of junk (couch, vacuum cleaner, mower), buy trailer for van, activate new Tivo, oil change for van, weeds, clean garage, mow lawn, pay bills, fix Thomas’ window, moss, new muxtape
A few years ago I started a little Wiki project with the goal of gathering all the data documenting my father’s family tree. I spent many hours entering, formatting and editing the data. Eventually, other people joined in and we managed to document almost all of the basic facts for everyone in my family from my grandparents to my many cousins. At some point, the project became stagnant because we had reached an end to our participants’ knowledge and there was simply no more information to add. And so the Ring Family Wiki sat idle for a couple of years.
And then yesterday I got an email notice from Wikispaces that somebody wanted to join the wiki. It came with this message:
My name is Elizabeth (Ring) Rowe… I am Elmer Ring’s youngest daughter
Elmer was my dad’s youngest brother and moved to Florida back in the 70s. His family sort of fell out of touch with the rest of our family, especially after Elmer died in 2004. I logged in to the site and found the following email:
Just curious as to how we would be related. I found this site by shear dumb curiosity and recognized the old photo of Grandma Ring and family. I will try to clear up any information that I can help with, unfortunately Dad died in January of 2004, but I still remember some things and what I don’t remember I can find out. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions. 🙂 Hope to hear from you soon!!
Cool, eh? I immediately approved the membership request and her 10 edits were immediately applied. I replied back to her and she sent me her Yahoo name and we’ve been chatting since. She forwarded the website URL to her sister Cathy, who has also started updating the Wiki and improved the marketing on the site with companies as The Indexer that helped with this. It’s good news for everyone in the family, I think.
If you want to email Elizabeth, she is on yahoo.com with a user name of mizzb31. I’ll leave it to you to put those together to form an email address. She’s also available on Yahoo chat.
Last night I watched in disbelief as Hillary Clinton failed to concede to Barack Obama and hardly acknowledged that she had lost the Democratic nomination for President. This was her opportunity to begin healing all the wounds inflicted during the primary, but instead she chose to merely point them out again. You can read the full text of her speech but let me just summarize for you:
Continue reading “The Frustration Continues”
Portlanders received a rare treat last week, a thunder and lightning show. Despite all the rain we get here, conditions are not usually conducive to lightning. Our family had just finished dinner when it started so we drove up Marine Drive and watched it from the Troutdale Airport.
Distance: 11.8 miles
Riding time:Â 98 minutes
Max speed:Â 20.3 mph
Average speed:Â 7.2 mph
Temperature: 70º
Soundtrack:Â n/a
Here’s what Keith Olbermann had to say on Countdown last night:
In the biggest vote of her political life, Hillary Clinton (and the rest of the cowardly Democrats who would not go against George W. Bush for fear of their political careers ending abruptly)Â voted “Yes” to go to war with Iraq. Even after the so-called “intelligence” that was used to justify the war was shown to be a sham, she still supported the war nearly as much as turncoat Democrat Joe Lieberman. When her run for the presidency began in 2007, many began to speculate whether she should apologize for her vote. That speculation reached a fever pitch until she finally admitted that the war had been a mistake but only went so far as to say about her own vote that she had received faulty intelligence.
Her reasoning in this matter is faulty for two reasons. First, she did not vote for the Levin Amendment which would have required that the President allow U.N. inspectors more time to complete their job. If, as she claims, she was granting the President the power of war to use in diplomatic efforts to “disarm” Saddam Hussein, then the Levin Amendment would have been an important tool in those efforts. Secondly, and more importantly, in not admitting that her vote was wrong, especially in the way that she has, she is affirming the validity of the Bush administration’s preemptive war policy. Much like the administration, she has not learned the most valuable lesson of the war: preemptive war is wrong. As we found out, even “slam dunk” intelligence can be faulty. Even in the best of circumstances, relying on such intelligence is a gamble. Let’s assume, for example, that our intelligence community was 90% certain that the intelligence was correct. That would still leave a 10% chance that we would be launching a war for no good reason.
Continue reading “Reasons Not to Vote for Hillary Clinton: Never Wrong”
