Pictures, Finally

Today I was feeling under the weather, and finished up the last few hours of work from home.

This afternoon I finally got around to uploading some pictures from my trip to Asia. They are sort of in order, but I not tagged or titled.

I need to get back to sleep.

It's not a glitch. He's just that good.

I got a good laugh out of this.

Losing Face

The Olympics in China, a great achievement? The PRC held an impressive event, with thousands of athletes, and pulled it off without a hitch. That takes quite a bit of effort, like detaining or imprisoning any who seek to protest. It seems to me that there is a greater loss of face regarding accusations of cheating and crackdowns on any who don't toe the party line.

Because the continued affirmation that the passports say the gymnasts were eligible to participate in the Olympics is not holding up to scrutiny, the IOC may strip some gold medals from the Chinese team. Then what will people remember from this? The 51 gold medals won by China, or that they cheated to get them? If they are willing to cheat in such a apparently blatant way, did they cheat elsewhere?

This is all minor to the continued persecution of Christians by the government. With lists of stories directly related to the Olympics. Most major media outlets don't seem to focus on this persecution very often.

It would be much easier to save face if the actions of the government weren't always so apparently oppressive and underhanded.

The Birds

On my walk to work this morning, I encountered a flock of ducks grazing in the grass by the golf course. This is not an unusual occurrence. As the season has continued the little ducklings have grown up into adolescents. One of this chirped at me as I passed and then started following me. This got the attention of the flock and they too started to follow. It was a little surreal to have this team of ducks following me along, as most wild animals are so wont of fleeing from humans. As I got farther ahead the little guy finally broke off at a tree stump, and my morning was a bit cheerier.

While I Was Gone

I have taken several trips this year, mostly with family. Earlier in the spring, most of the clan headed out for a cruise around Hawaii. It had been a long time since I had been to any of the islands other then Maui. I really enjoyed seeing what the different islands had to offer, and it was a lot of fun spending time with the family. I have the collected family pictures up on my gallery, which is quite extensive. Usually I only put select pictures up, but I wanted them all for a while, and may need to remove some of the 947 pictures, to make it more manageable.

About a month before the Olympics I traveled with my parents to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Beijing. I have yet to get the pictures up online because my main computer is dead right now, and I am a little frustrated about that. Hopefully I will get those up at some point in the next two weeks.

I also recently traveled up to Minneapolis for a wedding of some friends, and will be heading out to LA for Jim and Krissa's wedding.

Whew, it has been a busy year.

So Very Clever

Recently I decided that I needed a better way to deal with passwords and accounts on computers and various websites. Yesterday I took the plunge and started using PasswordMaker to generate secure passwords in a systematic way. It is pretty cool because the passwords are never stored by me, and are different for each site. It took me a while to really wrap my head around the idea and implementation, but I think I have it now. The documentation could be better, and sometimes the interface is confusing, but I like having secure passwords. The biggest problem so far are sites that demand useless properties for the password, like one I have which needs two letters and two numbers, and has a length restriction.

The (not so) clever thing I did was email myself the settings file I made and then went to another computer to import the settings. I didn't think about it until I tried to log onto my email which now had a hashed secure password. Fortunatly I was able to regenrate the password, which made me a like this system better.

Leo Sale

I had a good and full Saturday at the Gateway Woods annual sale in Leo, Indiana. I saw a great many people and enjoyed catching up on current events. I am not quite sure how I have never made it out to the sale before, but I plan to return many times.

This is the first time I have been really paying attention to the Olympics, and they are really exciting. I have actually not been sleeping enough because they keep on going into the night.

Men's 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay

These Olympics are fantastic. It doesn't get much better then the US gold win in the Men's 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay. I am hyped up, and looking forward to more events.

Speedo LZR

Look for the swimmers at the Olympics to be wearing the Speedo LZR RACER Suit. It apparently costs $600 and takes 20 minutes to put on. We will see who is winning the Golds for swimming.

Search for "Olympics" on google to get an up to date medal count, currently China has 2 golds to the 1 gold, 1 silver, and 1 bronze the US has.

Cidade de Deus

I just finished watching City of God and was blown away by the picture. I had in passing heard some good things about it, and had it in my Netflix queue for a while. It is a very stark look at violence and drugs in Brazil during the 70's. The characters and the sense of time and place are astounding. It makes me wonder just how close to the real story it comes to portraying.

At The Game

I just got back from the Cardinals v. Dodgers game. It was Cardinals up 4-0 at the top of the ninth when we left, but looking online now it is in the 10th at 4-4. Looks like Yogi Berra was right, "It ain't over 'til it's over."

It was my first time at the new Busch Stadium, and I have to say that it is nice. There was an impressive thunderstorm going on, and the game was delayed twice. The upside was a nice wind, and a very pleasant evening for those under the awning.

The InBev sky hasn't fallen yet, things seem fine in Budweiser land.

Back Online

Ahh, I hate it when people just stop blogging. Their site just sits there with no updates. How rude!

I am hopefully back to blogging, and will try to get back to my old posting pace. Once I had not posted for a while, it was harder to go and post because of the guilt. It has been so long now that I don't even feel the need to post everything I missed. Clean slate, new beginning.

Not So Weird Science

I stumbled to an interesting wired video about chemistry sets today. Even when I was young I had a home chemistry set with some perhaps not so safe experiments. How sad that kids now cannot experience the same chemistry that kids have for decades before.

A whole new world

Electro^plankton directed me to this guy singing both parts of the Aladdin song. I deem it impressive.

Pictures from the Drive East

I finally uploaded some pictures from my drive from California to Missouri. We drove out of Redwood City to make stops at Tahoe, CA, Wendover, UT, Salt Lake City, UT, Arches National Park, Moab, UT, Grand Junction, CO, Boulder, CO, Denver, CO, Council Grove Lake, KS, and Manhattan, KS.

Have a joyful Thanksgiving everyone!

Schooling

I just stumbled upon this story about a parent and their experience with their 7th grade sons science class. The man was driven to take up home school teaching of science the next year. I am a little surprised at how long it took the man to actually find out why his son was getting a C-, but when he did find out it was because 80% of the grade was having an "organized" science notebook. It also seems clear that the teachers main goal is to prepare the students for the state wide standardized test. Well, you can get the whole story from his post.

I am very thankful that most of my teachers throughout my schooling experience were very good at what they did. The ones that were excellent and engaged me are very memorable. I would visit them after class, and be involved during class. I didn't realize then just how lucky I was. The ones that approached the poor teacher described here I grated under. Assignments that were silly and lessons that were insipid drove me nuts. In middle school and high school I never got any Cs, but I did get at least one D because I just couldn't stand the teacher and the pointlessness of the assignments.

I kind of dread the school system I will have to deal with as a parent. If nothing shakes up the current system, who knows what it will be like in the future.

Tetris Mania

Slip Sliding Away

My senior year in high school I did some volunteer work at the City Museum in St. Louis. They had a large slide from the second floor to the first. I enjoyed going down quite a bit, as did many of the visitors. Perhaps in the future there will be more of this. Judging my this link, perhaps it is not so far away.

Rickrolled

Following this link may annoy you.

Long Time, No Post

I haven't been in the mood for much blogging, partly because things are fairly busy.

A few weeks Daniel came up and visited for a few days. I took two days off of work and we headed up to San Francisco. We hiked about ten miles exploring the city. Then in the evening we met up with Ed and Kathy Wyss and their family for dinner in China Town.

The next day we visited Ocean Beach and Golden Gate Park before driving up to Muir Woods. I hadn't been up to see the coastal redwoods for a few years, and they are awe inspiring.

My last trip to LA went well, it was very busy. I stayed with Joe and Sue Klotzle. Joe and I walked down and along the beach during the day, and it was packed. Saturday evening we went to the Hollywood Bowl to see the LA philharmonic. Sunday afternoon the Aberles took me to The Museum of the American West in Griffith Park.