years ago (a bit more than 10 i think) i had a honda magna 700 motorcycle which was a great bike. after a couple of years i realized that i wasn't riding it enough to keep my skills up (for this area) so after 3 close calls (2 due to me, 1 due to "the other guy") i sold it. yesterday, i heard that an old friend of mine that had been an HD rider for a very long time was t-boned in a intersection not too far from here by a 16-year old driver. he was an expert rider (regular sturgis attendee and so on) and was extremely careful. apparently, "the other guy" is still out there.

- every 4 years the president will try to achieve lasting achieve peace in the middle east (go ahead and schedule your
hotel rooms 4 years in advance to get the best rates)
- every 4 years the presidential candidates will say:
* less taxes
* less taxes for the middle and lower classes
* smaller government
* more money for retirees
* social security will not be touched
* they'll balance the budget and eliminate the deficit in 4 or 8 short years
* they'll cut government waste
* stronger defense
* more money for education
* they came from poor or middle class upbringings
* the other guy/girl is not patriotic
* the other guy/girl is naive
* the other guy/girl is controlled by big business
* the other guy/girl is under the control of the lobbyists
* the other guy/girl will take away your guns and keep you from defending yourself from an invasion by cubans
* the other guy/girl is weak on crime
* NAFTA was bad
* they'll stop illegal immigration
* all of the above will be accomplished without anyone getting less of anything
* they are for small business
* they are for family farms
* they like guns and have always liked guns

lately, the extreme media (the conservative republicans mostly) have been saying a lot about patriotism (and their opinion of the lack thereof by democrats). i thought i'd come up my own list on what it means to not be patriotic:

- have you ever been arrested for a violent crime or stealing/cheating people?
- do you drive while drunk?
- do you leave litter around?
- do you cause trouble with the police or your neighbors?
- do you criticize immigrants (loudly in public particularly) if their english language skills need work?
- do you cheat on your taxes?
- do you fly the US flag a lot and think that just doing that means you are patriotic?
- do you think anyone of another ethnicity or country is 'less' than you are?
- do you think anyone of a different religion (or none) is 'less' that you are?
- do you think simply serving in the military makes you patriotic vs what you actually did
and how you did it in the military?, for example, if you served overseas, did you cause trouble
with or make a bad impression on the people that lived there? did you take advantage
of the bar girls or humiliate the men because they had to work in jobs you consider menial?

if you answer any of the above 'yes' i do not consider you patriotic.

i found myself in line at best buy this morning at 7am hoping to get a wii for my parents (it looks like it can help older people get a little more exercise). when i got there, there were already more than 100 people in line (some were in tents) ahead of me. at around 745am a couple of store employees came out and started giving out tickets. they only had 56 wiis so i wasn't even close to getting one. ah well, looks like it will have to wait until after xmas.

cleavage, i'm glad that i don't have it because i'd spend all day looking at it and never get anything done at all.

installed kubuntu gutsy gibbon 7.10 on a desktop (nvidia 8800 gts) and a laptop (nvidia gforce) over the last few days. i've had trouble with nvidia graphics on both of them in the past. this time i used 'envy' (http://albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html) on the desktop to setup the nvidia driver and it worked liked a champ . the laptop came up just fine w/o envy. so far, i've been pretty impressed with kub 7.10. i quickly got vpnc going for work vpn access and setup eclipse for my general development w/o issue. i'm also running wpa on my home wireless now so i'm using wpa_supplicant for it and it's working well too. i've been a red hat/fedora user for a long time but kubuntu is gradually winning me over. i still run fc8 on one machine i use at home but now have kubuntu on one work machine and two other home machines.

since getting my 160gb iPod classic a few weeks ago i've been extremely impressed with it's ease of use. i've imported maybe 75% or my CDs into itunes, bought a couple of audio books for it ("curveball", "i am legend") and subscribed to a number of free audio and video podcasts (news, npr, aviation training and information, political talk shows). i think that i haven't been more impressed with any other consumer electronics appliance in my life. i'm finding that i rarely watch/listen to anything live nowadays. i'm instead using my tivo and ipod for almost all entertainment and news/talk type things (except c-span's washington journal which i still listen to live). i've also bought several specific tunes via itunes.com and am likely to not buy CDs again. the interesting thing about the iPod and similar audio players is that none of them discuss audio quality (meaning i don't need CD quality), instead they are advertised from the convenience and "fashion/trends" type approaches. i'm beginning to think working in a software area that involves any of the above would be interesting and a good idea.

things that get me worked up:
* minivans
* school buses
* people that go into the kitchen at work, get a styrofoam cup, partially fill it with water, drink some of it and then throw the cup away
* people that reply to large email list posting with things like "nice idea!" or "me too!" or "sorry to see you leaving" or "thanks!", i do wonder if they think that everyone on the list wants to hear any of those things
* my kubuntu machine updating something and breaking the nvidia driver (again)

today, the wash post had the second of a series of articles about a student in a dc public school. were i a parent, i could not even imagine sending my kid to a place like this. and, if you fly through national, note that this kid may have gotten a job as a baggage handler there recently.
this is a link to the second article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/11/AR2007111101648.html?hpid=topnews

it's worth reading but is very depressing.

we're back from a week in iceland on vacation. was pretty cool. i put some pictures up on my flickr and home galleries. if you like nature and scenic vacations then iceland is the place for you.