Thanks to the international board of weights and measures we are getting an extra second this year. Normally I don’t like breathless reportage, but this article is pretty funny. Be warned, if you read it, you will use up your extra second. Of course if you have read this, you already have.
Florida kid takes a journalism class. The class is told to write an editorial on some world affair. The kid hops a plane to Kuwait and spends his Christmas break in Iraq. The US embassy is sending him home soon.
His comment? “Farris Hassan says he thinks a trip to the Middle East is a healthy vacation compared with a trip to Colorado for holiday skiing.
‘You go to, like, the worst place in the world and things are terrible,’ he said. ‘When you go back home you have such a new appreciation for all the blessing you have there, and I’m just going to be, like, ecstatic for life.’”
His parents? “His mother, however, sees things differently.
‘I don’t think I will ever leave him in the house alone again,’ she said. ‘He showed a lack of judgment.’”
I know elections don’t mean anything, but to hear people be this happy about it makes me feel better about the whole process.
“Say what you like; things are not perfect; there are countless problems; the “insurgency” is not going to disappear; the reconstruction effort is in shambles; there is corruption and thieving everywhere; errors and mistakes in everything. Yet despite all that, the political process is proceeding like a dream and the tree of freedom is taking roots, and that tree will continue to grow and grow and grow.”
I don’t know why but stories like this renew my faith in humanity (or perhaps divinity?). A mom was on the third floor of a burning building when she panicked and threw her not breathing baby out the window… into the arms of a man on the ground. He then “gave him mouth to mouth” and the baby started crying.
Just an amazing story.
And eight iraqi bloggers have gotten together to report on it. They are using Pajamas Media to combine their reports. They are from all different provinces which should give an interesting spread of opinion on how things are going. Of course it will be a while until the real results are in.
(n.b. You’ll have to do your own research for this one, too busy right now to post much. May not post much if at all until after the New Year.)
Here is an odd thing that I want to remember, but know I will forget. So I am posting it here, so when I forget and ask one of you, you will help me remember.
You can print mailing labels directly from Mac Os X Address Book. It will add any spouses and children you have to the end of the name line. This is a cool feature, but sometimes it doesn’t. It turns out that there is a character limit of 10. This seems like a bug to me, or at least something that they should mention some where. On the other hand, given that they don’t even mention the feature at all in any of the documentation, I guess it isn’t that odd.
The election is on Thursday. That was pre election voting (prisoners, ex-patriots and the like) that I linked to yesterday.
Of course elections won’t solve all their problems, but this will be the first government that will be in power for any real length of time, so at least they might be able to have the ability to look at a slightly longer term. Security is ramping up for the elections and I am sure that your every-day Iraqi is pretty happy that they don’t have to queue up in a target rich environment for elections for a while again.
Some of the considerations that local Iraqis are making when deciding who to vote for are really interesting. We don’t have the problem of the candidate we really wanted to vote for being killed over here. We do have the problem of more or less religious parties though.
It appears that there are a few hitches in the election process, but no major violence as of yet. Also many of the polling stations that were expected to be closed for violence are open.
Best of luck to them.
Best thing I have ever seen the EFF do. They are suing to stop Diebold from being approved before going though certain state mandated steps. I’m really glad to see that. There are few things more important than having voting correct, and using e-voting machines should make it more secure not less. The “it’s still new” excuse just doesn’t hold water. We wouldn’t accept the kinds of failure rates that these guys accept in medical systems, and new ones are made all the time. Why can’t we demand the same quality from our voting systems?
(Or maybe that’s just because I am going through a standards compliance process on a piece of medical software right now.)
Drop a foot of snow on Chicago and everyone comes out. How odd is that? Normally when I get home from Iai class, no one is out. Not so tonight. The streets were packed. People driving really slowly everywhere. Some guy offered to push my car, even though it didn’t need it! (Personally I think he was just trying to goad me into battering ramming the pile the snowplow made blocking the side street. Which I did. And it worked.) But even odder were just the tons of people wandering around looking at all the snow.
I think it must have been in part the fact that it is actually quite pleasant out right now. About 28 degrees and a steady snow with no wind. (It was windy and miserable earlier.) Walking back from my car (which I parked without shoveling thanks to some super nice person who shoveled out their car before me) I ended up stopping and chatting with three people. I never stop and chat with people. Normally they run from me in fear. (I am kind of imposing in my thug hat and coat, late at night.) The best thing though, was a severe lack of furniture in empty parking spaces. I suppose that will come out in the morning when all the jerks go to work. Still, Chicago the night of a snow seems to be a pleasant place to be. People helping each other out, shoveling walks together, pushing each others cars, and just talking and being nice. My faith in humanity is partly restored.
(Of course snow does have its disadvantages as well.)
Or, how my brain is wired. So I have been using g-mail for a while now. It is pretty good, has a number of advantages, and some disadvantages (the main one being that I can’t use it if my network is down). But today they did something that really has left me grasping and slowed down my workflow. They changed the name of a menu option. It is really odd, but “move to trash” is now “delete”. I kindof understand why they did it: they don’t want people to think that it will live in the trash forever, but still. My brain just can’t find the move to trash item any more, and it takes me at least ten seconds before it clicks and I think “oh yeah, delete.” A month from now I won’t remember this, but for right now it is quite annoying.
The kicker though is I know it isn’t just me. I’m sitting here and I hear from the other room “How do I move to trash?!” “It’s delete now.” “Oh.”
Just an odd design choice.
How cold is it this week? Cold enough that someone froze to death outside. Cold enough that when I went outside yesterday that someone looked at me funny because I wasn’t wearing a ski mask. Cold enough that wile waiting for the bus I had to stick my hands in my pockets. I was wearing gloves.
It’s been a while since I have seen this posted anywhere, and I was just reminded of it in an e-mail. So, in honor of our troops overseas, I bring you, Skippy’s List. This is a list of the things that skippy is no longer allowed to do in the army.
Elections are coming up in Iraq. Which party are you?. Man I wish that we had something like that in the US for our representatives. That would be awesome. Not so much the selection, but more the analysis, to see where the different groups stand on the same set of topics. You can occasionally find something with a couple hot button issues for that year, but never something with quite so many direct questions and answers.
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