I knew that there were a lot of chemicals that when ingested could make you stupid. Drugs, sure. Lead and mercury, definitely. But apparently even thinking about oil makes people stupid. Consider the following: For weeks, republicans have been pushing the idea that either a) the Cubans are drilling in Cuban waters off the coast of Florida; or b) that the Chinese are drilling for oil in Cuban waters off the coast of Florida. The only problem of course is that this is demonstrably false. ...

I hope everyone’s having a great 4th of July (at least those of us in the States, folks from other countries can be forgiven for not thinking too much of it). July 4th, along with Thanksgiving, is one of my favourite holidays. That may surprise some folks. It’s not like the house is decorated in red, white and blue. I’m not wearing a flag pin, the Pledge of Allegiance makes me uncomfortable and I’m not that into fireworks. But external trappings aside, I consider myself to be a very patriotic person. I just don’t define patriotism as being synonymous with “flag waving. ...

Things making this weekend more enjoyable: Seeing a “Republicans for Obama bumper sticker on the car in front of me Finding that 5th Season is starting to carry beer and wine making supplies Gardening (more or less) Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks Receiving ~1.5″ of rain Sunday night… after taking the dogs on a walk Getting TurboGears to work through fastcgi Knowing that it’s only a four day work week coming up Presumably there were other things, but these are the ones that come immediately to mind 🙂

update: and for those that prefer a better interface, all of the pictures in gallery

I haven’t finished processing all of the Yellowstone pictures – it takes a bit of work to get the color balance set right. (THM – that’s why I always shoot raw on the D80. It gives me more freedom to get the image “right later.) But at least the first half is done. I’ll post the second half this weekend sometime.

It’s things like this that embarrass me when I tell someone I’m from Louisiana. The Louisiana House has voted overwhelmingly to pass the Louisiana Science Education Act which allows science teachers to use supplemental materials when teaching controversial subjects. For those who haven’t been there, in Louisiana, controversial subjects include: evolution, global warming, Keplerian astronomy and the round earth theory. Okay, I made the last one up – at least 85% of Louisiana households do believe that the earth is round. ...

A few years ago, I participated in a six month program to train leaders in information technology. I learned a fair amount, perhaps enough to be disillusioned, and ever since the program, I can’t help but look at organizations in terms of their leadership. Case in point, the grapevine of ex-employees from my former workplace says that three employee resignations were announced last week. One person only gave one week notice. By my rough count, that’s about 20 people leaving since January – or approximately 8-10% of the work force. Ouch! ...

Over vacation, I managed to convince K that we should get a new computer. Our old one was bought just after I started my last new job, so… February 2001? For most things, it worked pretty well: email, word processing and spreadsheets, etc were fine. It didn’t hurt that we were running Linux, so there was minimal pain for upgrading the OS (it originally came with Windows 98… can you imagine trying to run XP or god forbid Vista?). But given that it was reasonable for desktop use, it still had a few problems for some of the purposes I had. It was using USB 1.1, so a max of 12 Mb/s off to an external disk (instead of 480 Mb/s for USB 2). The hard drive was small and not mirrored, so if it died, we were in trouble. No DVD burner, only a 4x CDROM writer. Finally, you couldn’t do much photo editing because of the small amount of RAM and the slow speeds. ...

Testing, testing, is this thing on? “My fellow Americans. I’m pleased to announce that I’ve signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes. Er, wait, sorry – wrong decade. Sorry for the lack of posting for the past few weeks. K and I were out in Yellowstone and just got back last night (or was it this morning?). The advantage of Yellowstone is no news. No television, no computer, no phone. I suppose there was a newspaper, but we didn’t read it. So what’s been going on while we’ve been away? Has Clinton conceded yet? Have gas prices dropped yet? Is it still fashionable to conserve water in North Carolina? I guess I already know the answer about Clinton and gasoline. Since we’re on a well, I think water conservation is going to be a way of life for now on, so that doesn’t matter either. ...