At 2:30 am… wondering where the day went after the Counter-Strike: Source after the pre-thanksgiving house cleaning after the CSS after the linear algebra math test (that I feel good about, btw) after the work after the sleep in… Hm, seems cyclical.
I just got back from Bellingham, home of Western Washington University and several of my friends. I went up with Shai and Theo, mainly to see Beth and eat at Lemongrass. We were halfway successful. A late start due to a Magic release party attended by both Shai and Theo, and a bike ride in the U-District I went on with Dan in search of Watermelons (and other forms of food), then a heavy desk to move, and Half-Life 2 pushed the departure time to about 8:00pm Saturday night. We capped the night by (well, some of us) watching Antz and then playing some Phase 10. The morning saw us eating pnacakes, and then a late lunch at the a different Thai resturant, where the food was alright, but the service sucked tards. Oh well, not every grass is a LemonGrass.
After the TRC meeting today (which included talking about the upcoming 2005 competition and stuffing 450 envelopes), I met up with Dan and took a look at Half-Life 2 on one of the few computers owned by a friend that outclasses mine in every respect (well, almost – except for my RAID 0 4x stripe and debatably my Audigy 2 Platinum).
After eating at Applebees, I even tried my hand at HL2, but with different controls and not being used to the feel, I had trouble staying on small beams that are normally easy for me to traverse. Lets just say, tis not good to fall down into a horde of zombies.
After my grisly death, we watched many more grisly deaths in Tombstone, which neither of us had ever before seen. For its formulaity, I enjoyed it a good amount, even though I saw through it, I still had a good time.
Upon returning home, I ended up buying the Gold HL2 package – I figure if I wasted $60 on Doom3, I should reward a good game with a little more. After all, Half Life 2 is why I bought/put together Kaleidoscope (my desktop) in the first place.
Although we tried to avoid it, I still ended up having to download the entire game, but on a cable modem it seems to be going too bad – ETA was an hour.
1,371,153 - 48.8666% - Christine Gregoire - Democrat 1,371,414 - 48.8759% - Dino Rossi - Republican 63,346 - 2.2576% - Ruth Bennett - Libertarian
You know its tight when the Secretary of State goes up to four decimal places. A mandatory recount is in order, and Rossi is having to fight for a certain type of provisional ballot to be counted in some counties where he leads (which happen to have Democrats running the show) while Gregroire is getting the same types of ballots here in King county, by court order.
Of course, republicans were earlier arguing not to let any of those ballots be counted, but I think the law, once ruled upon, should be applied uniformly. The article fromt he Seattle Times follows:
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There has been some major sparsity over the last week, something I aim to correct here.
There were several contributing factors:
Notably, Half Life 2 is not yet on that list.
Now, I am all caught up in Math, work is going well, TRC is decently on track, I am feeling great, work is moving along nicely, and, well, as soon as I finish my Math test on Monday, you might not hear from me for a while due to HL2.
Oh, there’s also real work going on on a site update, look wise. Don’t get too hopeful too early though.
Check out this piece by Tony Snow. An excerpt:
Elected officials derive their legitimacy from a system of government that lets citizens pick their lawmakers. Officeholders do not acquire additional “legitimacy” by virtue of the electoral margin. (Had that been the case, Ronald Reagan should have been able to assume czarist powers, and Bill Clinton would have enjoyed less proper authority as the winner in 1992 and 1996 than Richard Nixon did as the loser in 1960.)
Therefore, we now are ready to explain the 2004 election result in a simple declarative sentence: George W. Bush did not win a mandate; he got a job.
The same holds for the opposition. Democrats have an obligation to work with the president when they think he’s doing the right thing and to resist him when they think he has gone off the rails. Our system of government, like the legal system, thrives on adversarial conflict — the clash of ideas.
So, to summarize: The president doesn’t have a mandate; doesn’t need one; couldn’t get one if he wanted. He survives on the basis of popular support and consent — both of which he needs not just on Election Day, but every day. If he fails to persuade people that he is doing the right thing, he will bring his party to ruin, and perhaps his country. Ditto if his policies backfire.
But here’s the magical part: Every four years, we get a chance to correct our course. That’s because we — not a president — have the mandate.