Monthly Archives: January 2003

Boom

Thursday, January 9, 2003

I took off my splint temporarily to inspect the damage; the bruise in the middle of my palm is aging nicely… I'm sure you're not really supposed to “test” these things, but I'd say I have ten to fifteen degrees of movement off straight in every dimension.

It's getting late (I was in town doing banking), so instead of an image update, my plan for this afternoon is to fix a few things on IAM and perhaps add a few features as well… So definitely check back later tonight or tomorrow morning. Any changes will be posted here.

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Polls away

Thursday, January 9, 2003

This one has been floating around lately… Thought I'd give it a go:

1. If you died tomorrow who would you leave everything you own to?
Rachel of course if it had to be one person. But my assuming broader distribution it would also include my brother and sister and a number of friends.

2. Who is the one person that you could stand spending a straight 24 hours with and not get the slightest bit annoyed with?
Well duh, see above.

3. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would you change (personality and looks)?
I'd be more physically fit and less of a softie. But I am working on that.

4. What is the one thing you just have to do before you die?
Relax and enjoy the moment. That's what I hope to do right before I die anyway.

5. If you won the lottery what would you do with your, let's say, 18 million dollars?
I think I'd probably give away a quarter of it to friends (including myself; that is, treat a quarter as disposible), invest a quarter of it in communal land and housing, invest a quarter of it into making BME a free non-profit, and save a quarter for the future.

6. What do you want people to say about you when you die?
“He helped me.”

7. How long does it take you to get ready to go out?
Not too long usually, a minute or two I guess.

8. What would you like to be reincarnated as?
Maybe some sort of deep sea creature with no predators. I'm sure it's serene life.

9. Do you make fun of your friends?
Not in any negative way, no.

10. Do you enjoy talking to your self?
Yeah, I think I do. Internal dialogue is important.

11. What's your biggest fear?
Government persecution.

12. What would you have liked to be named?
I'm perfectly happy with my name.

13. What's your most prized (material) possession?
I don't think I really have prized possessions. I certainly have possessions, but I'm not obsessed or attached to them.

14. What songs bring back the most memories?
Slowdive – Losing Today. It was the first song I heard on LSD, about thirteen (?) years ago. I haven't touched LSD in I think seven or eight years, but wow… powerful experience.

15. What's the largest organ in the human body?
“The skin”, I'm told… Although to me that stresses the definition of the word organ.

16. Do you have a bar trick?
Yeah, I can move all my fingers independently under conscious control. Very few people can do it. Here's a diagram — doing it fluidly is tricky, I've only ever met one other person who could do it easily:

17. Could a pack of wolves done a better job raising you than your parents?
I doubt it!

18. What do you look for in the opposite sex?
Character, brains, looks, in that order. If the “stats” aren't exceptional on each one, I'm not interested.

19. If you were given one day to live what would you do?
Boring but true answer: I'd probably spend it teaching Rachel everything that would be needed to ensure BME's survival.

21. What's your best physical feature?
I don't know… I like being tall, other than that I'm pretty normal on the whole physically (except the changes I've made personally).

22. What's your summer job?
Filming.

23. What was the worst punishment your parents inflicted?
I think kicking me out of the house — first for a nostril piercing, and then for a mohawk — messed with me the most. Although the threats were worse than the punishments.

24. What have you learned about love?
Love isn't something one learns about. Love is. (If that makes sense).

25. How have you changed in the past year?
I think I've grown up a lot, I've gotten a better focus on where I want to go in life, and I think I'm finally starting to gain a little wisdom and vision. Of course, those are the sorts of things that generally if you think you have, you don't. So who knows.

26. What's your way of escaping reality?
Creating a new one.

27. What hair problems have you had?
Ha, you tell me.

28. Can you do anything related to gymnastics or whatever?
Yeah, and I do enjoy it, but it tends to result in injury to either me or the ATV.

29. What's the most annoying thing people tell you about you?
Deification.

30. Have you met any celebrities?
Yeah, but to be honest, the vast majority are totally normal people.

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Article

Thursday, January 9, 2003

This is from the Ottawa Sun, December 15, 2002. The writer was kind enough to send me a copy — which is rare and appreciated. It really reflects well on them. Anyway, here's the article. I figure if they use BME's photos (with permission), I can share it with the people who created those photos.

Warning: These are big files (about 200k each, and quite large).

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January 9th

Thursday, January 9, 2003

I've got the update in place and I'll try and upload more images today as well. There's 2,394 sitting in my inbox at last count so I should be careful to not get too far behind.

Anyway, there's very little in the BME news today, so let's see what's in the “normal” news. I'll start with two personal stories, and then the war stuff:

  • I told you, I told you, I told you – One of my three predictions for world revolution was a home manufacturing device. Looks like it's rolling along well.
  • Jesus was a pot-head? I don't think that's a big surprise, but I also can't take seriously a researcher at High Times that uses this as “proof” that people who prosecute pot-heads are anti-Christian (a ludicrous statement, even if Jesus and his followers used a marijuana tincture for healing).

Now some less pleasant stories:

  • Flaws in the war machine – Did you know that America has 1/20th of the world population, and a quarter of the world economy, yet has literally half the entire planet's military spending? The scary thing is that's not changing — the US has quite publicly stated that their policy now is to not allow other militaries, including friendly ones, to grow… The end result is one of the following:
    1. The US seizes military control of the entire world.
    2. The US collapses financially.
    3. The US becomes a nation with very poor people, a low standard of living, very rich companies, and a very well armed government.

    The third options sounds a little too familiar.

  • Nato directionless on nuclear policy. NATO fears that if the UN doesn't back up the US (which it really shouldn't, given the total lack of evidence), it will be asked to launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes on Iraq.
  • US weapons dossier may remain a secret. Rumsfield says that the US has evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, but that for “security reasons” it will not reveal that to the UN or even to the security council, even if they go to war based on that premise. (Seriously!)
  • Families of Sept. 11 Victims Hold Vigil in Iraq. Surviving relatives of 9/11 victims are going to Iraq, making themselves human shields against US agression. Not that it'll stop the killing… The suggestion that the US government cares about its people is patently ridiculous and we all know it.
  • U.S. Can Hold Citizens As Combatants. A Federal Appeals court ruled that during the “war on terror” (expected to last at least a hundred years), US citizens have effectively ZERO civil rights and can be held without trial and without lawyer, and can be executed, tortured, and so on. Ashcroft calls it an “important victory”. We all know what he stands for.

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Mostly confirmed

Wednesday, January 8, 2003

Well, it seems this grand experiment is on. Even if it flops I need the break. I hope that being 5000 miles away from my computer can get me to relax a bit… I'm making a long list of everything I need to train people to do so all contingencies can be handled. I'm sick and tired of having to fly back from vacation every time I go anywhere because something goes wrong that only I can fix.

Oh, and the connection didn't hold, so I've had to restart the upload. Those of you who are in this update should have your passwords by now though… Guess that means I'm staying up later than I'd hoped today; and now it's snowing so I hope it doesn't cut out totally.

This broken wrist thing is really not fun. I know it could be worse, but this is the first time I've broken anything in my life. The kicker is that what I miss is the physical activity that got me into this jam in the first place; skateboarding around Rob's house just isn't the same as going full out on an ATV or snowmobile! Well, it's getting better at least — it doesn't really hurt unless I take off the splint and bend it (I need a contact mic; it made some very disturbing noises when I bent it the last time).

And yes, I realize that doing things like that will make it take even longer to heal.

I'm going to go sit in the snow for a while now.

And holy hell, how did my hit counter pass a quarter million hits since October? This is a closed site after all — it blows me away that so many people read what I have to say… I can't imagine it's that interesting?

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