Year: 2008

It’s rare that I finish an entire book in a single sitting. But I just did: I picked up Ron Paul’s The Revolution and started reading it, and was so enthralled that I blew through all 180 pages in one shot.

My political views are very much in the Libertarian camp, with some mixings of Constitutionalism. I seldom find anyone with whom I agree completely in politics. Even Laralee and I have our differences, although luckily she’s not a staunch Republican or Democrat. But reading Ron Paul’s book, I found that I agree with him on nearly every level, in every point he makes and every example he cites. His book is powerful, and it should be recommended reading for anyone who is watching what our nation is becoming and doesn’t like it.

When pollsters have shown up at my door, or called me on the phone, these past few weeks to ask who I’m going to vote for in the November presidential election, it’s always fun to tell them “Ron Paul”. They’re flustered because he’s not one of the choices: there are only two choices, right? The black guy and the old guy?

And despite the fact that Ron has withdrawn from the presidential race, I’m going to vote for him anyway. I suspect I’ll be joined by a million others who supported him in his unusual– but very eye-opening– bid for the presidency last year. There are a lot of people who resonate with what he’s proposing, and quite honestly it’s been a long time since I’ve agreed so wholeheartedly with what a politician is spouting.

Read the book. Vote for him. Join the revolution.

Tom is always fond of posting song lyrics, and so I thought of him as I was listening to some Queensryche at work. “Spreading the Disease” just came up in my playlist, and the lyrics seem unusually apropos in the current political/economic environment:

I’ve landed a new client for Zing, and they’re asking me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This isn’t anything new or unusual– it happens fairly often when I start projects. What makes this one a bit different is that the client is a law firm. And they take their NDA quite seriously.

My favorite part of it is the clause discussing confidential business information and how I’m not supposed to disclose it to others. But rather than saying I just can’t disclose it “electronically”, they specify all of the ways I might do so:

Wow, that’s pretty comprehensive. To think they’re worried I might post their information on a BBS, or perhaps on a Gopher site somewhere. Hah! Those technologies are so 1990.

I’m on some kind of goofy retro computer game kick, where I’m figuring out how to install and play those silly computer games from my childhood. Back in the 80’s, when we had an Apple IIe, I was such a geek it was breathtaking to behold.

That’s me playing Brick Out, which was provided gratis with the Apple, probably to demonstrate its amazing low-resolution graphics capabilities. I later wrote my own version of the game, just to test my programming skills.

As time went on, I expanded my game library on the Apple. A perennial favorite was Night MIssion Pinball, which provided countless hours of entertainment for Dirk and me. So today I figured out how to get that classic game working on my Linux laptop.

Woo hoo! There’s nothing quite like four-color CGA graphics and 1-bit sound cards. But hey, that’s the kind of debris you’ll find on a trip down memory lane.

It’s child’s play to mock Bush’s complete lack of public speaking skills– he’s made so many inane gaffes in his various off-the-cuff speeches it makes one think no one could be such a poor wordsmith.

One would be wrong. Sarah Palin may be more vacuous and a worse speaker even than Bush. Take this transcript as an example, from her recent appearance on CBS with Katie Couric:

Holy. Cow.

Look out! It’s Putin, rearing his head into the air space!

It’s good to know that– at least at some level– Congress still listens to the people who elected them.

From a New York Times article today about the stalled bailout negotiations:

I was one of those constituents– I wrote to my Senators and told them the bailout was a lousy deal. I received a nice boilerplate e-mail response (“Thanks for your concern… I take all of these e-mail messages very seriously… yada yada”). Although I’m sure they didn’t actually read my message, I hope the sheer volume of people like me gave them a clue that they’re treading in dangerous territory.

Woo hoo, here’s a fun e-mail from another satisfied customer.

Whee, sign me up for a $17,000 bill to help the rich guys on Wall Street and the morons who picked up mortgages they couldn’t afford.

So Digg just raised $28 million in venture capital.

I’m not really sure what the heck they’re going to do with that… I mean, Digg is basically a web site with a database and a comment system where tens of thousands of people go to discuss interesting news items. The hosting and bandwidth bills are probably pretty steep, and of course you’d need a staff (half a dozen?) of server administrators, but beyond that it’s kind of nebulous what $28 million would do.

I guess I’ve been running on a shoestring budget far too long. I’m going to see if I can raise a few mil in venture capital to keep boomflag.com running.

Tom and I spent four days backpacking in the Wind River Range, part of the Teton mountains in northwest Wyoming. What a spectacular trip.

We had some interesting adventures involving blowing out a tire and almost getting stuck fifty miles from civilization in the sagebrush, pouring rain and lightning above treeline, and of course a night in the tent while the rain lashed at the fly and thunder boomed overhead. And by our calculations we hiked around 27 miles, both carrying 50-pound packs up steep grades and across boulder fields where the rocks were the size of cars.

A good time all around.