Checksum Arcanius

My first day as as a University of Washington Husky began as a glorious late September morning in Seattle. The sun was showing signs of life, yet the air was cool and the lingering clouds made it clear they they would not easily relinquish their rule from the night.

I awoke earlier than normal, unaccustomed to the morning cross-bridge commute and expecting the worst. My preparations took longer than expected, but the commute was shorter than expected. I traveled across the I-90 bridge, then up I-5 to the Montlake E-1 parking area. I was additionally pleasantly surprised to find that, with my Husky Card, parking cost only $2.62 for the whole day. Clearly, I had not researched this process very well.
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Check out the live comment previewing I just installed. Not only was this the easiest Wordpres Plugin I have ever installed, it is also one of the coolest!

I highly suggest it to users of WordPress, to avoid whoopsie’s like half on my comment disappearing over at Passive Digressive, and shots in the dark like my recent comment at Bernie Zimmermann’s blog (even though that one worked).

Today at work, I made a bar code that when scanned, logs me into my computer.

Also, after work, we bade farewell to Mark “The Prophet” Holton. Microvision will miss you.

If all goes well, this will change to include Biology 200…
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I’ve talked about Factcheck.org before, and thanks to the new “Blasts from the past” section on the left, I went and checked it out again today. There I found this detailed event-by-event log of the unfolding of the disaster in New Orleans.

What I get from reading it is the gross incompetence of government in general: State Officials blocking Red Cross, Federal Officials “just finding out” about the 40,000 people in the convention center, Local Officials ordering the evacuation well after it would have been effective and the failure to follow disaster plans at all levels – if that would have even helped.

Take from it what you will, but here is what I take from it: Government generally does not work very well. I an no anarchist, but I believe as Thomas Paine said, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” In the Wake of Katrina, we see again and again government at its intolerable best, wallowing gloriously in its own incompetence.

Those that rely on government to protect them will never be safe.
Those that trust government to save them will be left alone in their time of need.
Those that believe that government is the answer will only end up with more questions.

This weekend, I took a real stab at Gallery2. It has an immense yet well-managed feature set, it is spectacularly modular, and it is highly configurable. Unfortunately, underneath its glossy exterior, it is depressingly slow, and, if I dare demean a feat that I in no way consider myself capable of accomplishing, the software is very poorly done under the hood.
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Glorious News From the Front: Not All Cops Are Jerks!

While driving to Portland in a rented vehicle that I wasn’t even supposed to be driving, I got pulled over for doing 80 in a 70 that had moments ago been a 75. Amazingly, the cop who pulled me over checked my records quickly, told me he wasn’t giving me a ticket, advised me to use cruise control, and sent me on my way. He never once threatened to arrest me, he didn’t call me names, and he never went into psycho-cop-power-trip mode. It was actually a pleasant experience, except for the initial realization that he was coming after me.

The corallary to all of this is I am now in Portland, on my second ever business trip.