More important than quizzes or year-end "best of" lists...

On January 6th, the ratification of the results of the 2004 election will come up in a joint session of the House and the Senate. Barbara Boxer was one of the 100 Senators who did not stand with the House Black Political Caucus in their ultimately futile quest to question the 2000 election.

I emailed Sen. Boxer through her website. This is what I sent. Senator Boxer is one of my two Senators, and I voted for her in 2004.

*** begin quoted material ***

In 2001, no senator stood with the Black Political Caucus to ask for an investigation of the potential malfeasance in Election 2000. The footage of this debacle in "Fahrenheit 9/11" was poignant and disturbing.

There is even more evidence than that which was present in 2000 that the 2004 election was "dirty." The systematic intimidation and disenfranchisement of Black, Brown and other Minority citizens from placing their vote has been seen all over the Red States. The use of "black box voting machines" in both Red and Blue States means that there is no audit trail to confirm that the will of the people has truly been heard.

We criticized, with righteous indignation, the manipulation and intimidation that supporters of Ukraine Prime Minister Kuchma and his hand-picked successor Yanukovich used to steal the Ukraine election from the obvious people's choice candidate Yushchenko. That dark incident has a happy ending, as Yanukovich has stepped down (albeit without admitting defeat) to allow Yuschenko to ascend to the post of Prime Minister.

Yet in the face of the very strange statistical anomalies that suggest something might have gone horribly wrong with the Election, the Bush Administration is preparing for a $40 Million coronation...er, inauguration...$5 Million more than what the US has pledged so far to relief for the countries affected by the 12/26 Tsunami.

On January 6th, I implore you...please stand up with the disenfranchised and sign the challenge to the election results. George W. Bush has already shown that he is more than ready and willing to appoint horrifyingly bad judges to the Federal Courts, and also that he cannot be trusted appointing Supreme Court Justices. The Right To Choose and the right to personal conscience regarding religion or lack thereof is threatened. And there is ample evidence that the voice of the people was not heard on November 2nd.

Please...I voted for you, in spite of disagreements with your position on Intellectual Property, Patents, and Copyrights. I knew that every Democrat in the House and Senate counts, and voted a straight Democratic ticket. Please at least give a chance to those who would investigate the irregularities of Election 2004.

The margin of victory for Bush this time was well within the statistical margin of error. There is something fishy going on. Please. Raise your voice.

Thank you very much,
S. Michelle Klein-Hass

Step right up! It's New Year's Eve meme quiz time! w00t!

LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER:	Innocence: Ghost In The Shell 2
WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW:	Eats, Shoots and Leaves
FAVORITE BOARD GAME:	Backgammon
FAVORITE MAGAZINE:	Linux Journal
FAVORITE SMELLS:	The inside of a Jewish Deli, particularly one with a bakery.
COMFORT FOOD:	Tamales
FAVORITE SOUNDS:	Taiko drums
WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD:	Taking a Math test
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING:	How lucky I am to have a cool husband like Richie
FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE:	Chow King
FUTURE CHILD'S NAME:	Childless by choice. Haven't thought of one for obvious reasons.
FINISH THIS STATEMENT: "IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY, I WOULD":	deal with my credit card and student loan debt and buy a house.
DO YOU DRIVE FAST:	I don't drive at all thanks to leftover effects from Chronic Fatigue.
DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL:	Depends on whether Richie and I have eaten a big meal or not.
STORMS -- COOL OR SCARY:	Cool.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR:	The Rapid Transit District, now known as Metro
FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK:	A good cognac.
FINISH THIS STATEMENT,'IF I HAD THE TIME, I WOULD LOVE TO':	I think I'd not change much...maybe travel more.
DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI:	Yes! Best part! Peel off the tough skin and what's underneath is really good.
IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE:	Nuku Nuku Pink
GLASS HALF-EMPTY OR FULL:	Half empty. But what remains is quite refreshing.
HOW MANY CITIES/TOWNS HAVE YOU LIVED IN:	If you count the Greater Los Angeles area as one city, I've only lived in one.
FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX:	Catseye Labs
FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH:	Sports sucks.
WHAT IS UNDER YOUR BED:	Nothing...we sleep on a futon that is on the floor. Best thing for my back.
TOILET PAPER/ PAPER TOWEL--OVER OR UNDER:	Depends on where it lands.
CREATE YOUR OWN!

A little ego boo from ABC News...apparently we bloggers are one of their People of the Year. This, of course, has not escaped notice at blogger.com. I am sure I am also not the only person who has a blog who's linked to the story.

This just topped off a rather nice day all around, even though I didn't get much done.

w00h00! The last grade I was waiting on is in!

FINAL Fall 2004 scoreboard

Linguistics 1        A
Mathematics 113      C
Physical Science 1   A
Sociology 22         A


I might have had a C on Math 113, but the A grades balance the GPA out to 3.5 for the semester. This means that I am on the Dean's List again, and that I am now also on the President's List. This will mean my name will be called, I will go up on the stage and be given my pin. Yeah, a little trinket, but symbolic of something a lot more meaningful. This also means my cumulative 3.3 GPA will hold as well, or maybe even get better.

This feels really, really good. What a way to end the year, what a way to begin 2005.

Oh yeah...the Google AdSense ads are history.

I can't believe the retarded way that AdSense latches onto a single reference in one of my posts and then can't stop showing ads for that reference. I mentioned a Halloween/Cosplay idea and then I had tons of Ninja ads for weeks after the mention. Now there's tons of Martha Stewart ads. Great. Outtahere.

And the sum I've pocketed from these ads? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

AdSense...YOU'RE FIRED.

PS: I am very interested in running more affiliations with sites I can get behind completely. For example: No Sweat is a cool store that sells Union-made casual clothing. They are actually doing something constructive against the Wal*Mart-ization/Sweatshop-ization of the world. Drop me a line and I'll consider adding your button to the right-hand column of my site.

Another Geekback because I've had some probs posting today and yesterday with all the storminess.

1.) Of course, my thoughts are with the folks in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives, etc. etc. who are suffering after that huge tsunami.

2.) We had some serious rain here...of course it isn't anything like the situation in the Bay of Bengal but it's playing serious havoc here. The National Weather Service actually admitted that a TORNADO touched down in Inglewood last night. Usually when Tornado-like winds touch down in the Greater Los Angeles area they say it's "wind shear" or "straight-line wind force" or other weasel-words but they actually admitted we had a tornado here, at last. It sucks for the folks in the 'Wood...it would have been better if it happened in Beverly Hills or Brentwood where people who can afford to rebuild live. The big question that seems to be obsessing people here is will it rain on the Rose Parade? I don't care either way, but it seems like a lot of people would be bummed if it happened. The last time there was rain on the Rose Parade was in 1955. Exactly 50 years between rainy Rose Parades. Not a bad record, I'd say.

3.) I've got the hard drive for my headless ThinkPad server. 30GB of play space. Gotta love it. I plan to do some fun things with it.

4.) I know what I want as a grad gift: A flat iMac! A little birdy told me these rumors are all true, and we should see the econo-G4 by Summer 2005. This revives the wonderful LC/61x/61xx "Flat Mac" format that I have been a fan of for quite a while...my first color Mac was a Performa 460 that used to belong to Spumco, the studio that created Ren & Stimpy. They are saying that this sub-$500 beastie will have an iMac-style software loadout and a combo drive for that price. I am hoping that for a little more scratch you could get it with a Superdrive. Burn baby burn! I bet there are a lot of low-end PC makers who are sweating bullets right now. Nobody's going to be able to compete with this.

UPDATED

Well, http://www.plastic.com/ is down. The chat channel is still up, but the website is down.

It's unfortunate...Carl was dropping hints in channel that Plastic was going to lose its bandwidth, And apparently that's precisely what happened...his colocation facility cut him off before he had time to make the transition. He's looking at something like $350/mo costs to find a colo and set his server up there.

Anyway, it's pretty depressing that the site is down. It's one of the few places on the web where conversations about political and social issues where you have a good mix of opinions and most people are into an intelligent convo and not into trolling. I hope this isn't permanent. It's a great site...I'm hoping an angel or two will contact Carl and help him.

Oh yeah, I backed everything from my desktop Linux daily drive onto my laptop. It's time for the big upgrade project on the machine. It will go from a dying 20GB hard drive to 120GB, and a DVD-/+RW to replace the dead Lite-On DVD-ROM. It will also go from being just my daily drive Linux box to being the central server for my network. File services, print services...everything. It's going to rock. I just am not looking forward to actually doing the work.

(This is a Letter to the Editor I sent to the Los Angeles Daily News this afternoon. In case the Daily News hasn't the guts to print it, I'm reprinting it here on my blog.)

They gave their lives for us? No, they gave their lives for a lie.

I cried when I saw the cover of the Sunday Daily News today. (12/26/2004) The much-suppressed picture of the flag-draped coffins was front and center, along with the names of Valley-area soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice in combat. Dead boys and girls. And the banner headline read, "They gave their lives for you."

No. They did not.

They gave their lives for a lie, concocted by the Neo-Con cabal who has had an obsession to unseat Saddam Hussein since well before September 11th, 2001. They gave their lives for the lie that Hussein had awesome weapons of mass destruction...nuclear, biological and chemical...and that they were ready, willing and able to project those weapons to Israel and Europe.

What did we find when we stormed into Baghdad? Nothing. Sure, there were conventional weapons, and lots and lots of explosives. Explosives that we didn't keep track of, and which now are being used against us by Al'Qaeda cells that streamed into Iraq after we invaded. Were these Al'Qaeda cells there before we arrived? Nope. Osama bin'Laden's pointman in Iraq is a Jordanian citizen who could not have entered Iraq while Hussein was still in power.

The foreign fighters have succeeded in radicalizing a good chunk of the disaffected young Sunni Islamic male populace, who are more than happy to fight on their side because they have a reasonable expectation that they have no future in a Shia-dominated future Iraq. They have made places like Fallujah deathtraps not only for American military units and the units of the dwindling "Coalition Of The Willing" but also for their fellow Iraqis. Yes, we managed to smoke Saddam Hussein out of his spider hole, and eventually there will be a show trial. George W. Bush can then turn to his Poppy and say "I got him for you!"

Eventually this war will end for the US, not with a bang but with a whimper. Iraq will be left in a state of chaos, with Shia fighting Sunni endlessly. The Iraqi oil that might have been one of the main motivating factors of the invasion will probably be off limits to us Yankee Imperialists. The Shias will have Iran on their side, the Sunnis Osama bin'Laden and his Al'Qaeda machine. The unstable, war-torn Iraq would be a threat to the stability of the entire region. Nobody wins, everybody loses.

We had Saddam bottled up in Iraq, unable to do any harm to his neighbors. His murderous sons and heirs apparent, Uday and Qusay, would be similarly bottled up when Saddam finally went to his grave. UN sanctions made damn sure of it. Instead of projecting sufficient force to smash Al'Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we went on this fool's errand in Iraq. Al'Qaeda remains a force to be reckoned with, and the hamfisted, brutal way we have prosecuted the Iraqi War has given Al'Qaeda plenty of recruitment propaganda.

And we did it all for a lie. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. He had no WMDs. Yet 51% of Americans bought the lie and gave Bush a second term. Clinton got an impeachment trial for a simple marital indiscretion. As the old liberal saw goes: "When Clinton lied, nobody died." One need only look at the cover of today's Sunday Daily News to see that when George W. Bush lied, hundreds of our boys and girls and thousands of Iraqis died. And continue to die. That's why I broke down in tears today. They died for a lie.

¿Yo te quiero tamales...y Usted?

That's certainly one good thing about living in a predominantly Latino community...no shortage of tamales. They are especially traditional for the Christmas season. Another one of Richie's students' families dropped by today to bring us some of theirs. I got some Mole sauce together and we ate like Aztec Emperors. Yum! Yeah, maybe we're barely scraping by, but there's perks to teaching music, apparently. This year's been particularly good for these kind of gifts from Richie's students.

This is not really my holiday...that was settled when my dad died on 12/24/1975. Even during my Christian period I didn't celebrate...the people I "fellowshipped" with kind of looked down the nose at Christmas. Christmas was an adapted Pagan holiday, and actually commemorated the Roman god Saturn and the Zoroastrian demigod Mithras. It was one of many holidays coopted by the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th Century of the Common Era. We celebrated the traditional Jewish holidays instead...Passover instead of Easter, Chanukah instead of Christmas, and Rosh Ha'Shana.

One thing about the holiday...I was able to get some laundry done while most of the building was away at Christmas Day Mass. Usually it's pretty competitive on the weekends here for washer/dryer time.

Tomorrow I want to stay clear of the malls. I've bought enough crap to last me.

We might actually get some rain tomorrow, so maybe this will be the time to do the fixes/upgrades I desperately need to do for my "Daily Drive" computer. I've been waiting because static electricity has been so bad with the cold Santa Ana condition we've been having.

(warning: there be geekspeak ahead...skip the next two paragraphs if geekspeak impaired)

I have everything I need...a 120GB hard drive, a Pioneer DVD+/-RW drive, and a USB2 card. I'm also going to see if I can use the onboard sound and just move the sound card over to my Celeron 466MHz Windows computer, which needs to bypass the internal sound desperately. It's got an Intel 810 motherboard with very poor shielding for the sound circuit...you hear crosstalk from the IDE controller bleeding into the sound. Bleah! I mean, I do want to eventually migrate off of Windows forever. Microsoft might force my hand...I hate XP and am damn pissed that they are going to stop supporting 2000 next year sometime. There won't be a W2K SP5...SP4 is it. They are planning a "Security Rollup" for 2K next year, and that will be that.

I hope that some sort of Open Source virtualization technology finally happens for Linux...something that would allow me to run W2K as a "guest OS" on top of Linux, due to security concerns. I know that VMWare exists and works but unfortunately it's just too expensive and they don't really support Debian Linux which is becoming my Linux of choice. Win4Lin is somewhat less expensive, but they are very .RPM centric and they only support DOS-based Windows like 95 and 98 and 98SE. Hopefully Bochs or something like it and whatever "glue" it would need to run Windows will get to a point where I can use it. It's either that or I'm going to just dump Windows, period. Once Microsoft stops supporting 2K, I'm up a creek without a paddle. XP is just too damn slow and encrusted with tons of garbage. XP Home has neutered networking, and so on and so on.

Anyway, if you celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a good one.

Another edition of Geekback in the house, yo...

1.) I know all the people who live in the Midwest, Northeast and anyplace it gets colder than we do are going to think me a total wimp, but it's too damn cold and windy for my tastes tonight. What's more, the Cold Santa Ana condition is kicking up tons of crap that is making my sinuses cry Ave Maria. I was supposed to meet some LAVC friends at the Skirball Center for the Einstein exhibit, (Thursdays are free admission days/nights at the Skirball) but that's in the Sepulveda Pass and no doubt it would be like being in a wind tunnel.

2.) I found an interesting thing to add to my collection of O-Bento. It's easily the most functional Bento box I have yet found, but it's not from Japan or Korea. It's from Venezuela. It's got a thermal outer container that holds two containers inside of it...the whole package is about 3" tall and it's a flat cylinder...about 7.5" diameter.

Wait, I don't have to tell you, I can just show you:



Pretty amazing, neh? It's definitely in the "I can't believe it's not Japanese" category. The "About us" statement on the website of the company who makes it says they distribute to Asia amongst other areas so perhaps this wasn't necessarily meant for domestic consumption but rather for Asian markets. Why did it show up in a discount store in Panorama City, California, USA? Dunno. It's just kewl.

3.) Still waiting for my grade in Linguistics 1. I'm going to be waiting around annoyed until I find out. I think I'm going to try emailing my Prof and see if he has the goods. I just don't enjoy being kept in suspense about something like that.

4.) It's weird about the Holidays...there seems to be this new kultur-kampf developing over how one greets another during this period of time when so many cultures have celebrations. Now "Happy Holidays" isn't enough...there is a new trend where a certain loud group of Evangelical Christians are peeved when people don't say "Merry Christmas" to each other. They are peeved about shops and malls and whatnot with their "Happy Holidays" displays. They want CHRIST back in CHRISTmas, dammit, and they are on a jihad to get it back.

The reason why the trend to "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" happened in the first place is because we aren't homogeniously Protestant Christian in this country anymore. Truth be told, we never were. But the idea that the US started off as homogeniously Protestant Christian is a cultural myth, one taught as recently as the 1970s.

Being raised Jewish in a culture dominated by WASPs was no big deal until I hit Junior High. (Now called Middle School...wow, that dates me!) Sherman Oaks Elementary School had a very large Jewish population, and the "Holiday Musical" was always scrupulously set up to feature the least-religious Christmas Carols and balance them out with Chanukah songs, some in Hebrew, some in English. It was only when I arrived, disoriented, at Van Nuys Junior High that I found out that I was a cultural minority.

I never got the "Christ-killer" crap from people but I got more subtle ugliness from some of my schoolmates when I mentioned the family Chanukah party and stuff...things that one need not have thought twice about mentioning when you were going to a school where half of the population was Jewish and half was something else.

I think what I'm just going to do next year is wait for someone to wish me the best of their given holiday season, whatever that may be, and then say "And the same to you, sir/madam."

BTW happy Oshogatsu. Well, I'm a bit early, yet. But have a happy one, anyway.

More food for thought for those of us still mourning 11/2/2004:

The Politics of Victimization, by Mel Gilles.

From the "too much bloody perspective" department:

I used to hate Martha Stewart. So much so that I was actually quite happy to hear she had been convicted of stock chicanery and was going to spend time in jail for her misdeeds. However, a funny thing happened after she got her sentence, and it was disclosed that other male co-defendants wouldn't see a day behind bars...I got a bit of sympathy for her.

Her most recent missive seems to show that she's evolving as a human being during this brief stint in stir. I quote:

I beseech you all to think about these women -- to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in prison where there is no real help, no real programs to rehabilitate, no programs to educate, no way to be prepared for life "out there" where each person will ultimately find herself, many with no skills and no preparation for living.

Amen, sista Martha. Hopefully her new-found concern for women behind bars will translate into some actual work for social justice once she is released.

Perfect fear casts out love: how Bush won and America lost.

This is perhaps the best illustration of what actually happened on November 2nd in the Red States. Basically George W. Bush scared 51% of America into voting for him for a second term. He also owes a whole bunch of Christian Religious Extremists a whole lot of favors...favors that the majority of Americans are going to be quite upset about.

Let me just point you to the link and let you draw your own conclusions.

Haven't found out yet about whether or not I got that ace in Linguistics 1...keeping my fingers crossed.

Fall 2004 scoreboard:

Linguistics 1        Pending
Mathematics 113      C
Physical Science 1   A
Sociology 22         A

I expect that I will get an A in Lx 1. At the very least, a B. If I do get that one remaining ace, I will be back on the Dean's List, and furthermore, I will get onto the President's List for being on the Dean's List three times in a row. I will also receive a spiffy golden electroplate pin I can wear on my robe when I graduate.

Yeah, there's that C, sticking out like a sore thumb. Nobody's perfect. But it's still a victory. It will be a victory even if I don't make the Dean's List. Losing would be to have a D or an F there with Math 113.

w00t.

I suppose this should be filed under the category "what do you expect from Slashdot?" Slashdot ran an article about Jeri Ellsworth, the creator of the C64 Commodore-in-a-joystick video toy. What should happen but a chorus of "yes, but is she hot?" Speculation about her gender preference, whether or not she was born female, etc. etc. followed. There was nary a serious discussion of the feat which allowed for an entire Commodore 64 to fit in the space of a joystick. Someone mentioned that Ms. Ellsworth had also created a more fully fledged C64 workalike for a German company, but that was the only real sniglet of info amidst the chorus of Fap! Fap! Fap! in the article. Fucking idiots.

This is the kind of shit which made me try to start up a geek news site for women in this very namespace. True 'nuff, when I had the original MsGeek.Org up, it was a gang of Slashdot crapflooders who went after the site, and eventually forced it off the air. I'm thankful that The Wayback Machine preserved the site.

Why is it that the majority of geekboys have to be such fucking misogynists? I mean, I know some who aren't, but so many are. Y'all ought to be ashamed of yourself, assholes.

Hooray! Hell week is over!

The Physical Science 1 test felt pretty good. It did have math in it, but it wasn't so much to trip my affective filter. I have reasonable confidence that 60 out of 80 questions, or more-or-less 80% of them, were answered correctly. I think I might have that ace there.

Let's see: if Linguistics 1 and Physical Science 1 turn out to be aces, I will have my third trip to the Dean's Reception and the President's Award. If not, I suppose it's no big deal.

I think I might look into joining the honors society Spring semester. They meet on Tuesdays and Tuesday will be my day off on my Spring schedule, so this will be the time to do it.

Anyway, on the agenda for the next two weeks is fixing broken computers and cleaning the house in anticipation of Oshogatsu. I've really gotten to liking that holiday...it's easily one of the most spiritual commemorations of the season, and it's also a time when Japanese Culture is on front-and-center display in Little Tokyo. I've taken to calling it Otakushogatsu because that's basically what it is for me...a time to satisfy the Japanese Culture geek in me.

It's interesting...the closest thing to Oshogatsu is Rosh Ha'Shana, Jewish New Year. Both the Japanese and the observant Jew look to the New Year as a time to reflect on what one has done the previous year and to look within oneself to assess one's faults and strengths and make amends for wrongs one has done. I think this year I've been pretty straight-up with people...nothing I'm really ashamed of, and a lot I'm proud of.

On a lighter note, here's a couple of those quiz thingies people keep pointing me to:

You Are Reverse Pocky

Your attitude: rebellious and clever Non-conformist, but curiously a trendsetter With you, up is down... and it's a wild ride!

What Flavor Pocky Are You?

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

Happy Anniversary to the new MsGeek.Org!

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of moving my blog from Slashdot to here. So far, I like this setup a lot more than the Journal setup on Slashdot. It would be nice if there was the kind of community associated with Live Journal here, but hey...you can't have everything. And besides, I do have a limited presence on Live Journal anyway. Too many of my friends are on LJ to not have something going on there.

Anyway, tomorrow's my last final...for Physical Science 1. Hopefully that will go well.

From the "More Luck Than Brains" department:

I got my C in Math 113. I didn't do as badly on the final as I thought. 62. Not a grade I'd normally be proud of, but after the test on Tuesday when I thought I went down in flames it was appreciated. I must have gotten more right answers than I thought I did.

I feel a hell of a lot better now. Whew!

"Soy una perdidor...I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?"
-- Beck

I totally went down in flames on my Math 113 final. It's like I got the test and found everything, including the instructions, written in Greek or Armenian or Mandarin Chinese. I basically had a panic attack and was almost completely useless.

I'm really in a bad way now. I'm writing this at God isn't even up yet O'Clock because I couldn't sleep. This is really fucking depressing.

I might have to repeat Math 113. Through some quirk of fate I got a passing grade on Math 112 but I'm not sure if the halfway decent grades I got from the other two tests and my classwork is going to pull me through after flaming out so bad. The final is 35% of the grade. The other two tests are 55% of the grade. The other 10% is online tests and miscellany. I pulled Bs and Cs on the two tests. This last one is going to be an F for sure.

This means, of course, that cap and gown time in June might be postponed. Until 2006. Great.

Needless to say I'm totally fucking depressed. Never mind that my Linguistics 1 final felt like I nailed it, never mind that tomorrow I do my presentation for my Sociology 22 paper I already got an A on. Never mind that after my Physical Science final on Saturday I have two weeks to breathe until it all starts up again with Winter Intersession and Psych 1.

Hmm...looking at the Winter Intersession book, perhaps I could take Math 113 then. However, this teacher is someone I don't know. Two classes during Winter Intersession? Can I hack the pace? Yeowch.

From the "Skin of my teeth" department:

Yes, I boned the Math 112 final, but not by an huge amount. I had a few better grades so basically when all was added up and the worst test score thrown out, I ended up with almost exactly a C grade. A few less points and it would have been a D ^_^; but I lucked out when all was said and done. It was close, though...^_^;;

Anyway, tomorrow is Math 113 and Linguistics 1 finals. ^_^;;; I gotta study, so I'd better wrap this post up.

I'll probably not get a chance to post tomorrow, so you'll be hearing from me Wednesday. Ganbatte.

Yesterday was hectic...waking up at 6:30 to make sure I'm at my second-to-last meeting of Physical Science 1 class, then running over to a local event where some of Richie's music students were giving a recital, then going to two hardware stores looking for the parts needed to fix our shower. Did we get to any math study? Nope. Bleah. Has Professor Castillo gotten to grading my Math 112 final, which I'm pretty sure I boned? Nope. Am I frustrated? Damn right.

Tonight's the family Chanukah get-together, on the Westside. I have the responsibility of making our traditional meatballs. I really need to do some laundry. And oh yeah, there's studying for my remaining finals.

At least after this week I get to rest for a couple of weeks. No, wait, there's long-delayed computer repairs and cleaning up the apartment. Then in January I have a class during Winter Intersession. Then in February, Spring Semester starts up.

I hate being overscheduled.

What? Only 56%?????

Even with the shitty time I had with the Math 112 final...I don't even care if I passed, dammit, I'm glad it's out of my hair finally...I can't believe I'm only 56% geek!

Then again, I never get 100% geek on any of those "geek test" quizzes, because I'm such a...well...different kind of geek. I might try to program a geek quiz that not only tells you whether you are a geek or not, but what kind of geek you are. Someone should watch Otaku no Video sometime...the Gainax boys understand that there is no such thing as a single kind of geek.

Anyway:

You are 56% geek

You are a geek. Good for you! Considering the endless complexity of the universe, as well as whatever discipline you happen to be most interested in, you'll never be bored as long as you have a good book store, a net connection, and thousands of dollars worth of expensive equipment. Assuming you're a technical geek, you'll be able to afford it, too. If you're not a technical geek, you're geek enough to mate with a technical geek and thereby get the needed dough. Dating tip: Don't date a geek of the same persuasion as you. You'll constantly try to out-geek the other.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

Grade report: Fall 2004

OK, my first grade is in for this semester, and it's a goody...A.

Surprise! It was Sociology 22, the one I was afraid was going to get me a crappy grade because I was constantly sparring with the Prof about politics. I think I got the only A in the class, actually, because I was the only one who took the time to do the "A" paper.

If I can get A grades in both Physical Science 1 and Linguistics 1 I can get a C in Math 113 and still come out with a 3.5 GPA for the semester. Meaning I get to go back to the Dean's Reception next semester, and a spiffy pin to wear on my robe when I graduate. And that nice little notation on my transcript as well...w00t.

Oh yeah...RIP "Dimebag" Darrel Abbott. I wasn't a big fan of Pantera nor of "Dimebag"'s new band Damageplan, but my husband is a musician and this hit really close to home. If an idiot with a gun can sneak into a venue and blow someone on the stage away point-blank, no musician is safe. Oh yeah, "Dimebag" had a brother in his band...the drummer, Vinnie Abbott. Imagine watching your brother get blown away on stage by a jerk with a gun. Pretty horrifying.

See you, guitar cowboy...

A little bit more web silliness...



And yes, I had to color him blue. PenPen is blue because the sale of IBM Personal Systems Division just went through to Lenovo. Lenovo ThinkPad. Bah! Sacrilege!

Hint to those wanting to play Secret Santa for me...the Neon Genesis Evangelion "Platinum" re-releases are up to something like DVD #4. SKWAAAK!

One little bit of odd news...

GNU's Not A Good Pet!

A guy got killed by his pet Wildebeest (also GNown as a GNU) at his northern Indiana farm. Richard Stallman could not be reached for comment.

From the "Kerry said it would be like this" department:

George W. Bush hasn't even been inaugurated for his second term, and already he's got the Mother Of All Budget-Busters (MOAB-B?) to drop. John Kerry warned America that it would cost trillions of dollars to partially privatize Social Security. Guess what? It will.

This comes at a time when record budget deficits are spooking US creditors into selling dollars and buying Euros. This is only more grist for that mill.

I'm hoping that there might be an elector revolt on the 12th, when the Electoral College goes to cast the vote that really counts in the US system. Most States have laws against "faithless electors" but I wonder if those that don't could swing the total Kerry's way. Anyone who's a real conservative, and not a radical Fascist like the cabal of "neo-Cons" that Bush has brought into power along with him, has to be fuming over something like this.

George W. Bush. "What, me conservative?"

Curiouser and curiouser...could the sale/Joint Venture of IBM's Personal Systems Group be a prelude to Apple being bought by IBM? Cutting the PSG loose would be a necessary prelude to an IBM/Apple deal as far as Antitrust issues go. Speculation available here...the story's at The Register, so take it with a grain of salt.

Anyway, I'm back after a really fun (but really short) trip to Santa Barbara. Donald Burr is starting a new job today in Santa Maria...it's a contract position for 3 months, but hopefully it might become a full-time gig. He's had to move in with a couple of friends to take the job, and Saturday was the last big blast before the move. I should have been back home finishing up my papers and my math homework but this was way important. The Santa Barbara contingent are like family to me, and since much of my immediate family are dead at this point I need to keep these folks close to me. Donald was very, very appreciative of my presence at the party, which was held at the Something Fishy Teppan-yaki restaurant. Good food, good friends...a little slice of heaven.

Speaking of a slice of heaven, Chad gave me a little gift. A headless ThinkPad 570. It doesn't have a CD-ROM drive -- you need a dock for that -- or a hard drive, but the old 10GB drive in BlueTomato is perfectly at home in it. Basically it's going to become a server sitting on one of my DSL Extreme IP addresses. I've never administered a Linux server before so I would enjoy the chance to do it. A headless laptop is perfect for such an application...it sips power. It doesn't have a battery, and actually it doesn't need one, because it would be plugged in 24/7.

Anyway, no more flights of fancy until after I get done with finals. Too much is at stake.

If you look carefully at my Anime-style portrait, the laptop I'm shown with is supposed to be my trusty ThinkPad 600e. Yes, I'm a serious fangirl about IBM. My first PC was a five-slot original 640K IBM PC. (Thanks, Uncle Steven.) IBM got even easier to like as Lou Gerstner and Sam Palmisano transitioned the company from "Evil Megacorp" to "Not-So-Evil Megacorp" and saved their bacon in the process. Their status as Linux's biggest cheerleader only reinforces my fannishness about IBM.

Now the bad news. IBM may be selling its Personal Systems Division. Either that, or they might spin off IBM PSD in a joint venture with a Chinese firm, Lenovo, formerly known as Legend Systems Group. This includes the ThinkPad, folks. The Bull-Goose lappie. The Goddess' own laptop, at least when She's running Linux instead of MacOS X.

Now the only laptop game in town is going to be the Apple PowerBook and Apple iBook. No x86 laptop comes close to either Apple or IBM, and now that IBM will be bowing out...well, Apple's going to 0wnz0r the market.

Oh my god, they're killing the ThinkPad! You bastards! I wonder who sold Sam Palmisano the crack he was smoking when he made the decision. Darl McBride? Or maybe Steve Jobs?

Oh, would that this were true!

the notorious 'Bush Arrest' hoax

Note the URL. I was careful about linking to this until I was sure that there was no obvious malware on the site. It's interesting how carefully the hoaxers emulated the CNN.com website, right down to the directory structure.

Then again...are we really ready for President Cheney? [shudder]

All hail Zerg!

As was leaked a couple of months ago, Ken Jennings was finally defeated. It's cool that the mighty Ken was defeated by a woman from Ventura, Nancy Zerg...props for my SoCal homie!

One weird thing: Ms. Zerg looks Vulcan. I'm serious. Take a look.




Ms. Nancy Zerg






T'Pol, with her clothes on.



Did they have to recruit an extraterrestrial to beat Ken Jennings? Enquiring minds want to know! ^_^