Who is Snape?

I found this fascinating (to Harry Potter fans) look at the character of Snape. It is written by one of my favorite authors, Orson Scott Card. All you Harry Potter fans out there do know that the new book is coming July 21, and we can finally have this story wrapped up. I won't be camping out for it, but Amazon is delivering it to me on the day of.

One of my favorite passages from the essay is, "As for Harry dying in the process of killing Voldemort -- well, she could do that, but she won't enjoy going through the rest of her life without a single literate person ever speaking to her again."

On a totally unrelated note I found this article about Palestinian children's television programming. I have attempted to form a post about it, but have failed.

Perspective

Now, if I could only get something like this in my apartment.

American, Canceled

I am getting pretty fed up with American Airlines. Yesterday, Dad was supposed to fly out from St. Louis to San Francisco. When he arrived at the airport they informed him that the flight had been canceled. There was no call to him beforehand that this would happen. The earliest they offered to get him out was tonight. So he missed one of the four days he is going to have with his newest grandson and west coast family.

Earlier this year as Mom, Dad, and I were flying back to San Francisco from Maui through Los Angeles we had a similar problem. We flew the red eye to LA and had an two hour layover. As we were sitting there at the gate we saw on the monitor that the gate had changed. Then in a few minutes the flight was canceled. They made no announcement over the speaker, just waited for the mob of angry people to go to the other gate. Of course everyone still wants to get to SFO, but there are no other American flights that can hold that many people. After a very tense few hours we did get them to put us on a Frontier flight from another terminal, that we barley had enough time to get to, and go through security. Of course our bags did not make it with us.

It is bad enough the way they cancel flights with no warning, and no replacement flight. But what really gets my goat is the contempt with which they treat those inconvenienced. They act surprised that you still want to travel to the same destination. Of course there are not enough seats on other flights to carry a full plane load of people. They make no attempt to contact those whose flight no longer exists.

I don't have these problems with Southwest, or any other airline I use. I cannot remember what else I was angry about, but in LA I recounted a litany of previous problems.

I am to the point that I will spend quite a bit more on other airlines to avoid American Airlines.

Noah

Noah Clayton Schrenk. Date: 06-23-2007. Weight: 7# 8 oz. Length: 19.0". Color Hair: Black. Status: Healthy.

Upcoming Family

Mom is flying in to the Bay tomorrow morning, and Kathy should be checking into the hospital in the evening. Hopefully this weekend there will be a new Schrenk.

Global Warming

My brother, Peter, sent this link out to some of the family and I think it is pretty clever. It is one of those ideas that after you hear it think, "that is so obvious, why didn't I think of that." The main idea is to tie carbon emissions taxes to an agreed upon measure of global warming. That way if warming happens, the tax goes up, otherwise the tax goes down. Seems very reasonable.

Fire Alarm

Having never lived in a large building before, I am experiencing my first late night fire alarm. The ringing is starting to get on my nerves. Overall it is about ten times worse then random car alarms going off late at night.

Wheelchair + Semi = ?

It could have been a tragic story, but instead the unexpected happened. No one was hurt. And this is the BBC article, so lorry = semi.

"He refused to believe there was a man in a wheelchair stuck to the front of his truck until he saw it for himself, police said."

Bocking

So bocking looks like it could be quite exciting. This video is mostly jumps, but it is also possible to run at a good clip with these. After 4:50 there is some cursing, but this is one of the better videos I could find. After that they just seem to blather, so there is really no reason to finish the video.

Busy Weekend

This has been a good weekend up in the Bay Area. Yesterday I spent most of the day scoping out windsurfing locations, and shopping for windsurfing gear. I found a store up near SFO that sells winter and summer board sports. Comparing the size of the windsurf gear to the kitesurfing stuff was almost enough to make me switch sports. For windsurfing you need a fairly large board, mast, boom, and sail. All of this together is quite a lot of volume. They sell the kites in a backpack, and the boards are small enough to fit easily into a trunk. I did end up buying a package including a Hifly Mambo board and a 6.3 m² X-Ride sail.

This morning I was invited to the annual Shoreline service of the Bay Area Christian Church down in Mountain View. The service ran from 11-1 and was interesting. It seems that every year this church rents out the Shoreline Amphitheater and has a big service. Afterward many people have their picnic lunches, listen to music, and fellowship.

This afternoon I carted my gear up to Foster City to test out my new board and rig. There was some sort of big carnival going on in the park next to where I windsurf, and the street was closed off. I eventually found another way around. It took me a little while, and some help to get my gear ready for the water, but when I did it was great. This is the biggest sail I have yet used, and the board is about as small as I have tried before, but for the first hour and a half there was enough wind to really get going. I am pumped, and will be looking forward to trying out new areas now that I am not tied to the rental location. My arms are very tired, and I want to get and learn how to use a harness soon. I will probably pick up a used sail to try that out on, because I will be pretty sad if I fall through my new sail.

I Can See My House From Here.

Well, not really. But I can see Times Square, Coors Field, The Monte Carlo, Orange Bowl Stadium, the Palace of Fine Arts, and San Francisco from the Golden Gate Bridge. This new Google maps "street view" feature is impressive. As this service gets rolled out more it will make it a bit easier to find that address that you have never been to. Although, I have to say, I couldn't really find anything to see in Miami from the car.

I look forward to my virtual vacations through the internet with this. And when the Google van drives by, be sure to smile.

Processing

I just finished watching "Garden State" and I enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. It was very well done, the music, script, camera work, and especially the acting. It will take a little while longer to process it.

More Hydrofoil Goodness

This looks like quite the workout. It also looks like a lot of fun.

The Sheriff's Office

Tonight I rode my bike up to the entrance of my building and there were two men standing at the door considering the resident list. This is not unusual. "Perhaps he doesn't live here anymore," one says. As they hear me behind them they turn around and ask if I am going in. After answering in the affirmative, one of them flashes a badge, "We are with the sheriff's office, perhaps we can enter with you." So I let them in and cart my bike upstairs as they take the elevator.

24 Hours of Games

Between my two trips up to KublaCon I believe that I managed a little over 24 at the convention. Today I had a game arranged to play right when I arrived, but after that none of the planned events really caught my interest. After wandering around looking for something I was almost ready to leave, and was doing one last walk through of the open game area when I found two people looking to play Power Grid. We rounded up one other person and had a good session. As I walked away from that table I found a few people setting up Pirate's Cove. So we had a fun time adventuring on the high seas. I pulled out Bang! after that and we played games until after 2:00 AM. I even got to play the expansion Dodge City for the first time.

I call the weekend a success.

KublaCon

Today I spent a little over 12 hours at KublaCon up by SFO. This is my first game convention and I am having a blast. St. Louis doesn't have any game conventions to my knowledge. I mostly played a variety of board games and then a game of Exalted from 5 to 10.

I think I will head back tomorrow after church for some more. I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Hydrofoil

It doesn't even look real.

Honor Killing

Du'a Khalil Aswad, 17, killed by her family and neighbors. Killed for being seen with a Sunni Muslim man. Suspected and therefore guilty. So called "Honor Killing". I see only dishonor in this. I cannot fathom how dark is the heart of man. Now with technology those involved can use their cell phone camera to record these actions and share it with the world. Because stoning a young woman in your community is something that needs to be boasted about and shared. A culture so warped that a fundamental change is needed to possibly make any progress.

CNN reports, "The killing is said to have spurred the killings of about two dozen Yazidi men by Sunni Muslims in the Mosul area two weeks later."

Hate cannot be conquered by more hate. Romans 12:21 "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

Pressing toward the mark

Ben has a blog, titled "Pressing toward the mark", about his trip to New Zealand. I added a link to it over on the right, but thought I would mention it here. He has some great pictures of mostly plants and has some nice long posts. Check it out.

From Vegas

Right now I am in McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. I was pleased to find that they offer free internet. So flying through Vegas or Phoenix is a fairly pleasant experience. I have never been to Vegas before, and my current trip here consists of this one hour layover. Looking out the plane window the city seems to consist of massive sprawl, the Strip, and not much else.

You are now leaving Las Vegas.