Yes we got our power back last night after 9 days. Once FPL sent the second truck and I showed them where the problem was it took all of 5 Minutes to get us back up! Yes the first truck came while I was at work and they "couldn't" find the problem so they left. FPL still sucks.

FPL sucks. They are the worst company in the world. Why? We got hit by a cat two hurricane! Guess what no power a week+ later! I have power at work but my house is dark and we have no water! After a week we are still bathing out of water I stored before the storm! No help from FEMA or the county government to speak of! If you have never been without power for a week you have no idea just how bad it is!
FPL needs to be account for this massive failure! This is Florida and hurricanes happen! A category 2 is not even considered a major hurricane. If peoples homes, cars, and most places of business can survive with little to know damage then why not the power grid?

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged." - Abraham Lincoln

"Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me.'" - George Orwell

Okay I feel that capitol punishment is wrong. I freely admit that world would be better with some people taken from it. The problem with capitol punishment is that innocent people have been put to death. The rich are far less likely to be put to death than the poor. And the white people far less likely than none white.
The problem is what about the guy that that raped and killed that little girl. He admits he is guilt. There is no doubt. I admit it part of me wants to see this guy dead. At this point what is right and what is wrong? What he did was wrong. Would removing him as a threat be wrong as well?

I read this in the news.
The us is doing most of the heavy lifting again. So many people like to say that the US is too powerful and does not care about others should read this. The US military is providing most of the airlift and helicopters for this work and is sending the Mercy as well. US servicemen and women are busting there butts and risking there lives to save people. Not to say that others are not doing there bit sometimes there are things that it seems only the US can show the will and has the resources to do.

""We've been racing across the ocean," said Rear Adm. Chris Ames, commander of the strike force.

The strike group, which had been headed to the Persian Gulf, was diverted while near the Pacific island of Guam. Ames said the Marines' primary responsibilities would include transporting food and medical supplies.

The Pentagon (news - web sites) also has decided to send the USNS Mercy, a 1,000-bed hospital ship based at San Diego, to join the relief effort, officials said.

U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said he was encouraged by the military response to the Dec. 26 tsunami, singling out U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman for praise.

"The group that the U.S. initiated have proven very useful in responding to my 12-point wish list for everything from helicopters to transport planes to air traffic controllers," Egeland said in New York.

The U.S. operation in Sumatra is part of a wider international effort. The American helicopters brought survivors to an air base in Banda Aceh where medical teams -- including Chinese, Australians and Indonesians -- tended to their immediate needs before putting them into trucks destined for nearby hospitals. "

To continue the discussion about NK is to wonder what'll happen to the crumbling infrastructure and their ?nuclear? arsenal.

At a certain level, even though Kim's a wack job, you'd have to think that at some level there's a general who has the brains to go "Ya know, even if we had a dozen of these bombs, we're going to lose." Though if people weren't aware, NK has managed to drop missile parts on Alaska. So, if they wanted they could with drop a bomb on San Francisco. What's a more frightening prospect is NK starving would degenerate into a civil war and it's nuclear material would go to the strongest general or the highest bidder. (though the strongest general wouldn't be too bad provided they didn't have the intention to use it) So, in a nutshell, NK worries me.

The next area that frightens me in terms of future stability is China (and India). China has a couple of major problems that it doesn't like to talk about. I'll mention the first one and then talk about both of them when I talk about the second one. The first problem is AIDS. Right now China has an out of control AIDS epidemic that it isn't talking about or doing much about. The second and more serious problem is peasant unrest. The great divide between the peasants and "haves" in chinese society grows every bigger. These "haves" have the money to buy the medicines to stave off the effects of AIDS. The peasants who have little or no education about safe sex practices come to the cities (most of them male) come to the city to make money to bring home to their village. Once in the cities they engage in risky sexual behavior. In one region 11% of sex workers tested postive for HIV. They then go home to their village and well you get the idea. The thing that's dangerous is that this is directly effecting the cogs of chinese industrial might. What happens when large numbers of it's working age population can't work anymore, i.e. start dying in droves. Now the government has gotten off their asses on this, but so far it's been really slow to react. When the unrest bit comes in is that at a certain point the workers are going to realize that the government a) knew this was happening b) did nothing about it. That's when the shit will hit the fan. Though at that point it's a bit like beating up the captain after the ships already gone over the waterfall. China's social fabric will start to rip when there isn't enough food. Then international investors will start bailing out (though that will have happened earlier (probably right after the communiest party is dragged out in the street and dismembered by 100 million enraged peasants).

India frightens me for all the same reasons as China. Rampant poverty, population explosion combined with an explosive HIV situation.

If you've been following the news, you'll see that there are some major issues in the Ukraine right now. Basically, according to the exit polls the non russian backed canidate should have won, but the russian backed canidate won instead. To top it off, international monitors reported voting irregularities. Though they haven't said what those were. In any case, right now there are tens of thousands of Ukranians in the street demanding that the "winner" be redecided. This brings up the next question. What if russia has been trying to influence the election in Ukraine? It's not that inconcievable. Considering that 15 years ago, it was just a satelite state of the USSR. Everybody thought that Putin was pro-western president until he suddenly ignored all kinds of russian properly law and gutted russians largest oil company on grounds that people have argued are "flimsy" (such as the company suddenly having massive tax bills out of nowhere). Could we see a new soviet union reemerge? IF it did, what ramifications would that have on our current military strategies? We've moved away from fighting the monolythic enemy (USSR) to the current situation where we're basically the worlds targets... Though we do have to remember that alot of messes that we've made in the past were to harrass the USSR and now those messes have come back to haunt us. (i.e. Afghanistan)

Back in the day there was this doctrine about how the foreign policy of a country should be to promote stability in the world.

Looking at the existing situation the world is in, I see a couple of things happening the near to far future that I think will have a profound effect on the quality of life here in America.

1. Saudia Arabia. I see in the not to distant future the Saudi's losing control of Arabia. There are a number of factors to why this will happen, however the most profound are these. Firstly, the royal family skims something like 40% of it's countries wealth off for itself. This while people live in extreme poverty. Secondly, In order to keep the people from wanting to march into the palaces and string them up, they Saudi's have had a tactic of keeping the people pissed at some other group of people... you know... us. They've done this by allowing extreme forms of Islam to flourish in SA. So, now you've got a group of fantical people who believe that all their problems (both real (I'm not going to pretend that we haven't thrown some gas on the fire) and percieved) Though the problem with this strategy is that, the Saudi's are actually in bed with the current administration (Bush & Co.). So, now that the princes have cultivated this core group of religious zealots who believe that all things american are unholy, they're losing control of them. This is double bad. For one, because of our short sighted knuckleheaded policies, without the Saudi's oil, we've only got about 6 months before we start hearing this loud sucking sound out where our strategic oil reserves are. For two, the Saudi's need us just as bad. So, when the royal family's heads are living out in the sand cleanly removed from their bodies, the timer starts on our economy and it's already run out for theirs. Then the only export SA has is terrorists. Think about it. If you add up all th exports from the 22 oil producing countries in the middle east and then subtract oil from their exports, it's smaller than Finland. SA doesn't produce anything other than oil.

2. North Korea. I highly suspect that their's no clean rules for power transition in that country and I don't think Kim's getting any younger. The countries offical flower is the kimjongilia (I kid you not, I couldn't make this shit up if I tried!)
Thus I suspect that when the time comes it'll degenerate into a messy internal power struggle between the generals and their armies, etc.

This POST isn't finished, though feel free to comment...

So, I went yet a whole other year without writing in my journal.

Well, I'm now 28. Since I was 27, my wife and I bought a house.

No promises, but I'll post more as things progress...

I'm so excited! Today when checked in, I had a message informing me that I have my first foe! It looks like MrBlackBand (715820) does not appreciate me or my comments. Good. If I'm pissing people off with my arguments (which are always supported by facts), then I am saying the correct things. It's just a shame that this user would rather bury his head in the ground instead of being open to discourse- and resolving problems. Good luck MrBlackBand, you and "red" US need it.

With all this talk that the gay marriage proposals got religious conservatives to the polls, let me just say this: those people who believe that gay marriage is ruining the sanctity of marriage are just a bunch of bigots attempting to rationalize their views. They run under their banner of "being Christian," when they're no better than racists.

A case in point is this comment. This guy is trying to rationalize hating gays by quoting the passage from Leviticus.

People who use the Bible to justify hatred of gays infuriate me to no end. They claim to be religious, but they do not even know what the Bible says. Let an agnostic Unitarian Universalist (that's me) correct them.

Leviticus 18:22 states: "You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination." OK. Word of God, eh? We should then follow EVERYTHING in Leviticus. No sense being selective. Leviticus 25:44-46 tells us that we can take slaves (gentiles only). Leviticus 19:20-22 also states that sex with an engaged slave is punished by an animal sacrifice at temple. Chapters 1-7 of Leviticus tell us the collection of laws relating to sacrifices, offerings, and the like.

That said, if these people are so afraid of ruining the "sanctity of marriage," they should be worried about the high rates of divorce. Estimates are that 1/2 of all marriages end in divorce. It's not just liberals getting divorces, Born Again Christians are as likely to get divorced as the general population (source). As for "protecting" marriage, if people were so concerned about it, they'd make adultery illegal, and make divorce illegal. Divorce laws have gotten easier in the last 20+ years. Here's a hint: that has nothing to do with homosexuals. Also, how many people who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 were divorced? Many. How many people going after Clinton for his blowjob had had affairs? Several.

My point is, if one holds so close and dear that one specific passage is enough to base views/hatred/laws/etc, they need to give enough weight to all the other passages. Why are they allowed to choose some passages over others? The rest of us think they're just goofy for giving so much weight to something that is really just a good collection of stories designed to teach a moral code to uneducated people thousands of years ago.

Okay I have to admit it. I want something better than UNIX or Windows. Why have we seen no real improvement in OSs since Unix?
I am no fan of Microsoft but I have to say at least they did not just copy Unix. Windows in my opinion is a huge disaster that is a huge pile of everything thrown together. It is a server a desktop and now an embedded system. It was not designed as much as it mutated. Mac OS/X has a great UI but it is still ruining on top of Unix.
I want something different.
Here is what I would like to see.
1. Object oriented. Yes I have heard all the anti OO people but I can honestly say that I enjoy writing OO code. I want the OS to have a root object that everything is descended from.
2. Integrated DB. I want a database to be part of the OS. It could be used for the file system and for configuration files as well.
3 Networking centric. Unix and Windows both have networking tacked on. Why not design the system from the ground up to be networked.
4. Replace X. Can't we do better than X after all these years?
5. Clustering. VMS had a great clustering system in Vax Clusters. I would love it if every desktop that was added to the network became part of a cluster.
6. Cpu independent. All programs would compile to an ideal byte code. When installed it would and a compiled blob to the executable. The new OS would not care if you wrote the program for a Power PC or Athlon 64. This is not all that different from how the Transmeta cpus work or the IBM AS400 worked.
7. Good install system. Not a tacked on solution but making installing new software as much a part of the OS as the API to put a letter on the screen. Ports is great. Yum works pretty well. Apt-get works but I have had issues with all of these. Since it is network centric how about a bittorrent like system integrated into the OS for APT like stuff?
8. A good UI. This just goes without saying that with out a good UI it will not work.

What is the biggest problem with a new OS? That is easy hardware support. Oh well I can dream and Linux does not suck.

Okay yes we have been hit by two hurricanes but Adelphia's service is the pits.
First let my dispel a myth or a marketing lie.
1. Cable is more reliable than a dish.
This is not true. my sister has a dish and was much closer to the coast than I was. She still has no power but she does have TV. She is running her dish off her generator. The dish stayed attached to her home and did not move. Now there is a power pole down in her backyard so I think we can say that the dish is pretty sturdy. I have some other friends that also have the dish and they are all up and working. No one with Cable is working.
2. DSL is more reliable than Cable.
True.
I have a support tech working for me that is running his computer off his generator at home and using his DSL.

Before anyone thinks I am being unfair about his let me just point out.
1. I have power and my phone back.
2. Adelphia never came out to fix my cable after the last storm. I fixed the connection to the house myself but the cable was still laying on the ground.
3. Adelphia has provided NO information on when the I can expect the problem fixed. Florida Power and Light at least have completion date for the county. Adelphia has provided no information at all as to when I can expect my service back. Phone and power are both up and working at this time. So Adelphia is the only utility not working. I am very glad I do not have my phone or alarm through them.

Yes we got hit again. The storm did little damage to my house but we lost power again.
The office is back up with power so the guys can get back to work and I can sit in AC at least during the hottest part of the day.
I have to give Home Depot a big thumbs up for being so well stocked this time. They had lots of everything and did not raise the prices too much. Power is already coming back so this might not be that bad after all.
We can hope.

Well we got hit hard by Hurricane Frances. We just got our power back last night but still now cable or broadband at home :(
Over all a bad thing if you ask me. But what can you do a tree took out the cable and power line. On a bright note I have seen trucks from everywhere including Canada working full of utility workers. They are working there butts off after Charley and Frances and now Ivan is going to nail Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and the panhandle of Florida. Those poor crews are going to be dead on there feet. I hope they all get through this safe.
And I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

Well, time to get another job. Just recently handed in my notice, I've had enough.

Not really much more to add, my last day is next friday. Anyone looking for a unix/networking guy in the Perth, Western Australia area (part time work preferred, starting my own business), please feel free to email me :D