January 2006 Archives

It never ceases to amaze me how bigoted our local legislators are! The front page article in today's Daily Local News proves it. Our local PA house representatives are cosponsoring a bill that will define marriage as a union of a man and a woman. Again, they have proven how much they can ignore the pressing problems of the environment, education, taxes, and their illegal pay raises by putting up a smoke screen just like their neo-con leadership in Washington. What most don't think about it is that this is not just a gay marriage issue. It also puts in jeopardy all domestic partnerships, same or different gender. It basically codifies that only heterosexuals that enter into their definition of a sacred union can be recognized as legal and legitimate. What's next? No purple shirts? No hair parted in the middle? No green sneakers? You laugh, but what stops them from doing something so silly when they think that they can legislate something so bigoted? And, the leading line of the article shows just how intelligent these legislators feel that their electorate is:

If marriage isn?t defined as only a union between one man and one woman, state Rep. Arthur D. Hershey believes people will want to marry animals.

It is these narrow-minded people that also said that it was alright to own slaves, since they were just sub-human, dark-skinned people who were much better off in bondage than in the jungles of Africa.

Only a few hours left of freedom before the Spring Semester commences. I actually got some things done today, despite the lingering server problems (finally resolved) and not being able to access our research server at school (gave up). I still have just three classes on my schedule plus my 10 hours per week internship. Hopefully by day's end tomorrow I will know if I can take the fourth class or not. I am still thinking that I am crazy asking for permission to be tortured :-) We'll see. It was a great day for progressive thought. Al Gore's speech today further energized the base and hopefully has some affect on those who are either on the fence or still believing the lies. I thought it quite appropriate that it was given on a day, honoring a man who fought for the rights of people of color in our country. Time to get the tangles out of my hair :-( Got to look perfect for the first day of classes!

Well, if I could read, I would have seen that I had a class conflict. It makes me mad that the one fun course I wanted to take is the one I have to drop :-( ESS125 Volcanoes ESS371 Advanced Meteorology GEO404 Senior Project in Geography GEO584 GIS Applications Oh well, there is always next Spring. I plan on still being here in graduate school and I do want to take the class. Granted, the three classes I have are probably a full load, but I would like to take a fourth. My options? GEO521 Suburbanization GEO524 Population Process HIS500 Methods and Materials of Research Well, actually there are hundreds of courses I could take, but I want to take something that will either go towards my masters program or will enhance my achievement of that degree. The first two would satisfy the former. The last one, though, is like walking into a blast furnace naked and asking for more. Mary took the course as an undergraduate with the same instructor. It basically sucked every minute out of her semester to get an A in the course, but she gained so much from it. Any wonder why the professor's nickname (one that he thoroughly enjoys) is Satan? I think I'll have to stop over and see him on Monday to investigate the possibility of partaking in hell. I had a great day in the field today, working with Hal. I always come back feeling like I learned something when I work with him. Always fun! I had to beg to get into Advanced Meteorology already oversubscribed. We also talked about continuing research during the semester. My goal is to get published at least once before year's end and I will do it, dammit! Back to work!

Where did the time go? It seems like finals were over just a few short days ago and now break is all over in just three days. It is going to be a busy weekend, with many little projects to get finished. I will have one more fun thing to do tomorrow, going out to do some field work with Hal. Mary is off to a political planning conference for the weekend, so it is just me and Dan until Saturday evening. I did finally take my overdue library books back so I can register for what I think is a lighter load than usual for the Spring Semester: ESS125 Volcanoes ESS371 Advanced Meteorology GEO404 Senior Project in Geography GEO584 GIS Applications I figured with my internship on the Environmental Council that four classes would make more sense. The volcanoes course is my fun class - I just love the professor. I consider her a teacher's teacher and, to be quite honest, I am mainly taking the course for that reason. Her classes are such a pleasure to take! In fact, it is not even a required (or elective) course for me. Advanced Meteorology will also be fun. I am going to have to prod Joby to do more numerical forecasting! Anyway, time to get back to work!

Oh well, what was supposed to be one of those transparent to the user server upgrades has turned into the upgrade from hell. Most of my personal web site is down for the count (with the exception of the WP blog) as well as one of our client's web sites. My high school alumni site is crunching right along, too. Email is up fine, too, not with the addition of SpamAssasin and on-the-spot virus scanning. Go figure... So, I'll take this pause in the chaos to do some of the things that I need to get done in preparation for things coming back online normally. Update: 1530 - email is up on all servers; still 4 virtual servers to be config'd

We had a schedules crossed. Oh well, anyway, the server upgrades will be tonight (Friday) from about 6 - 10 PM EST. All of our websites are affected, but the live scanner stream will be up throughout the downtime.

Take a minute in the next day or so and get in touch with someone you haven't thought of or seen in a long time. Trust me, it will be worth it! I had lunch today with a high school classmate of mine, Tom McKee. Talk about a trip down Memory Lane! Just spending a couple of hours with Tom left me with such a good feeling. We talked about high school and life since then, peppering it with wondering where someone was now or filling in a blank in each other's memory of a person, place, or event. This experience is the whole reason I started the web site for my high school alumni, the reason why it really works! And, Tom, the next lunch (not with 37 years intervening) is on me! :-)

I am finally getting around to getting server upgrades up, including more memory and disk space. With the upgrade, of course, this and other servers we host will be down for about 4 hours this evening (5 - 9 PM). Nicest new feature of the upgrade will be the addition of SpamAssasin to the suite of tools here. I cannot believe the amount of wasted bandwidth that can be attributed to the spammers. I am hoping that this will assist us in combatting the idiots. I am doing a fun thing today - seems only fair that I do something purely enjoyable during semester break. I am having lunch today with a high school classmate who I haven't seen in almost 37 years! Tom and I hookep up via email and phone a couple of years back via the high school alumni site that I built but ahdn't managed meeting face-to-face until today. We only live about 10 miles from each other, too. So, look out Kildare's! We're invaded your tap for lunch today!

With another page off the calendar and a leap second to boot, the year 2006 came in and we luckily had no calls overnight. I know that other parts of the county were not so quiet, but it appears as though the partying in our township was self-contained and did not spill over on to the roadways. The weather, while cold, did not include the earlier predicted elements that would have made driving more hazardous. It looks as though Mother Nature put the brakes on it, instead leaving it for the first full nights of the New Year...

MOTORISTS SHOULD WATCH FOR SLIPPERY TRAVEL LATE TONIGHT AND MONDAY MORNING. THERE IS A POSSIBILITY OF SIGNIFICANT DISRUPTIONS TO TRAVEL MONDAY MORNING, SO BE PREPARED FOR ANY BARRIERS TO SAFE TRAVEL BY MAKING APPROPRIATE TRAVEL PLANS.

Let's hope that the weather prognosticators are wrong again. January is traditionally the busiest month for our fire company, especially with accidents. So, please, do your part to prove the statistics wrong. Drive safely and be safe in your homes and workplaces, too. We would much rather sit in the fire house waiting.