I F*&@ing Hate Snow

This was day one.
12-14-08

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This is today.
12-22-08

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The Apt

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M's Car

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I stupidly tried to get to work today.
Max Stop

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I-5

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The max was not running all the way to the airport. You could take the max to Gateway and then you could theoretically take a shuttle to PDX. There were supposed to be a shuttle running every 15 minutes to the airport. The reality was more like 20 mins to half an hour. This produced a line so long that after waiting 30 to 40 mins and two busses filling up and leaving me still standing in line, I gave up and called out to work. My boss was pissed.

The Line Part 1

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The Line Part 2

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The Line Part 3

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Journalist of the Year

It is with great pleasure that I announce Muntader al-Zaidi as "Journalist of the Year". I hope he (and his family) are spared. Here is a BBC Profile, a link as to the cultural significance, and sadly probable evidence of his coerced apology, torture, and/or death threats.

Flowers

Today sucked, for a multitude of reasons, none of which are ultimately important. What is important, is that I surprised M with flowers, which she loved.

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Sunday M and I finally acquired a washer and dryer for the house. We managed to snag one off of craiglist. Poor M had to drive 100 miles (each way) to get it, but we got it.

So we acquired this washer/dryer set for a scant $40 and got it home only to realize that the dryer plug does not match our outlet, the washing machine hoses leak and the dryer vent hose isn't long enough to reach the vent pipe. So today M went out (I was at work) and picked up new hoses, a wiring kit and a vent pipe hose.

Our $40 dollar washer and dryer unit just turned into $75, if you don't count the gas. Still a good deal though, since we were spending roughly $20 a week (2 adults + 1 kid) at the laundry mat. I still can't believe how much laundry a 9 year old can create.

Today after work I got to set it up and get it all running. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, but everything worked first try. I never thought I'd be so thrilled with getting household appliances.

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In geek related news I've been juggling several computer projects. First up, I got the new KDE 4.1 up and running in Debian. I had to pull stuff out of "experimental" to do it, but sometimes you gotta live dangerously... It's fucking beautiful. I've been running it for a couple of weeks now. I have some minor issues with the way stuff gets mounted now (everything is done with widgets) and I don't like not being able to stick stuff on my desktop in the conventional fashion (again, widgets) but it does work, cleanly and efficiently.

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I also got SELinux up and running (for an added sense of security) and I'm experimenting with Virtualbox. I haven't gotten all the bugs worked out yet, but as unholy as it sounds, I did manage to get WinXP to install and run in Linux.

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EDIT:
Virtualbox networking made easy here: SavvyAdmin.com

Artificial Intelligence

We are now one step closer to simulating the human brain.

Some of you know I am geeky enough to allot some of my computer's power to scientific/humanitarian efforts. One of the projects I am involved in is working towards AI. I just got an email tonight informing me that the first goal has been met. 100 billion simulated neurons, roughly the same as a human brain. If you're interested in the details go to Intelligence Realm.

Remember when...

Remember how we started a war with Iraq based on false pretenses?

Remember how we demanded that weapons inspectors go into Iraq, then they did and found nothing?

Remember how the president was supposed to get UN Council resolution authorizing a war before going apeshit and then didn't?

Well apparently the Democrats forgot. If the stuff I'm reading and hearing about this lives up to the hype, the passage of this bill will mean war with Iran.

It's H.Con.Res 362 and supposed to pass easily, maybe as soon as tomorrow. Google it. The pickings are slim, but there is some stuff there, or you can visit here Just Foreign Policy and get the basic gist.

We are so fucked if this passes.

The Spice Must Flow

*GEEK POST*

The petafolp is busted. I am so beyond excited by this news. A petaflop is one quadrillion floating point operations per second or 10^15. This much computer power is unreal, We're talking almost sci-fi levels of computer power.

This is the area of computing I want to get into professionally, cluster computing. I've been toying at home with this stuff for a few years now (of course on much less and lower powered computers, *cough ahem* as in like 3 old x86's). The rough idea is you build a bunch of computers and network them. Each computer is working on a portion of the task at hand.

Apparently in the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico, the DOE has set up this mammoth amount of power. It's called the Roadrunner project. It's a hybrid system that sports 2 different processors working together instead of them being identical across the board. It runs 6,912 AMD Opteron processors and 12,960 of a special version of IBM's Cell eDP processors (it's a modified version of what's in your PS3). It takes up 6,000 square feet, uses 57 miles of fiber optic cable and weighs in at 500,000 pounds.

It also runs Red Hat Linux.

Florida and Michigan

Ok, barring any changes by lawsuits it looks like the magic number is now 2118. I'm not positive my numbers are correct (I could be off give or take 3 to 5), but my math states that Barack Obama has 2041.5 and Hillary Clinton has 1864.
*EDIT*
I just checked numbers via different new articles and It looks more like Obama at 2049 and Clinton at 1873.
*EDIT Again*
Ok, I have no idea idea who's numbers are correct, the more I look around the more shit don't add up, so we will just say approximately correct. The point is, Obama's got it.

OPEN MIND Special: Race Relations in Crisis 6/12/63 - 11/13/92

Guests: Malcolm X; Morrison, Alan; Walker, Wyatt Tee; Farmer, James (Original guests) Update Guests: Farmer, James and Walker, Wyatt Tee

All the discussion about race in this political season reminded me of this gem. I have it on DVD at home and I thought I'd share it with you. The opening commentary is a bit annoying, but the original episode in B&W is amazing. A sitting round table discussion among adults where different ideas of political importance are hashed out politely and intelligently. When was the last time you've seen that?