Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I managed to take off twenty minutes and Rachel and I scootered down to our house (we don't move in until the start of the month). I didn't bring a camera, but I'll try and take pictures some time soon. I don't think I've posted a clear picture of where I'm staying right now though, so here you go:

That's a big fat grasshopper (or I guess sandhopper since there's not really a whole lot of grass on the Baja) and the resort we're staying at. As I mentioned before, we have a giant suite with a bedroom, living room, and kitchen/dining area (aka “office”). I'd say this would cost about $400 a night in Canada or the US, but it's a quarter of that here (we picked this place because it had internet access).

I'm mentioning the price re:BMEfest — supplementary costs like accomodations, food, and so on are low (this resort suite could easily be split between four people for $25 a night, and there are hostels and smaller places for a few dollars a night). My gut feeling on this is that these reductions would easily balance out the slightly increased travel costs and a BMEfest down here could be incredibly rewarding.

Oh, and yes, it's a giant pain in the ass to find flight booking and even good tourist info on La Paz online. It's not hard to do once you know where to look though… Rachel is already working on a website for that, so no worries — if we take that path we'll make it real easy for you.

Finally, earlier today I was thrilled to get the pictures above from Rafael at Symbiosis in La Paz, a short scooter ride from our house. I haven't had a chance to say hello yet in person but I'll stop in soon, but I thought people would be interested to see that “even down here” (that sounds a lot worse than I mean it to) there are studios doing interesting work. We're everywhere, you can't stop us!

I like this place more every day.

Ironically, the only thing that sucks about being a programmer in Mexico is being a programmer. In Canada it wasn't so bad working long hours. But watching everyone else getting to go and have fun and play and explore while I have to stay connected to a keyboard working on some of the toughest programming I've done in the last year just feels incredibly unfair — my life really has been a story of the harder I work, the less I get (though it dangles cloers, and of course other people both locally and on a larger scale get more the more I work). I'm not really complaining, I like my life and I don't think I'd want to not make the contributions I make, but sometimes I don't like the cost it comes at. I suppose I don't mind accepting some sadness if it brings far more happiness to others.

Anyway, I'm just online temporarily to email myself some test images so I'm out of here now…

Open letter:

Hey Vinnie Saletto! If you're going to knock off my artwork please at least credit me or throw me a link, dude… I don't really care that much if you're just using the wings, but it's kind of lame.

I think if his design wasn't so boring and uninspired I wouldn't be as annoyed — I've even given copies of the wing rendering to people to use in the past. But just taking a BME shirt and sticking a stupid circle over the identifiable parts is silly. Thanks to Sporko for the tip.

While I'm mentioning things that are lame, Fixie_Rider pointed out this this forum discussion slagging BME (and hotlinking some images, but I'm not so worried about that). I mention it here because it always cracks me up when self identifying “punks” are all conservative and closed-minded. What, is Machester full of babies that think Avril is punk?

Other than that I've got programming, programming, programming to do. I have to say that this place (La Paz) is really ideal for anyone who can figure out how to telecommute or otherwise disconnect themselves from the office. DSL connectivity is fine, cellular coverage is digital and complete, visas are relatively no-questions-asked, so far it seems a lot safer than America, everyone is friendly, and even in the middle of winter it's still quite warm (and of course everything that's not imported is half the price).

Last night we went out for vegan food (there are a small number of vegetarian places), and happened to bump into Diego which was a really nice coincidence… I got to hear a lot of the internal political history of Mexico's privatization efforts which just seem incredibly corrupt and self-destructive. The more I travel the more it seems that the quality of life and strength of economy in a nation is almost singularly determined by the level of corruption inside the government.

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I'm cringing a little linking this because it's way out in conspiracy land, but what if Bush is dying?

We already know that Bush is a born again Christian who believes the rapture (a friendly word for “apocalypse”) is nearly upon us, and that he has a role in bringing it about. What if he is dying? It would mean the following:

The largest doomsday cult in the world has successfully placed an operative into the controlling position of the world's largest military power, and that operative has only a short time left to live (and thus complete his mission).

Let me remind you that the White House has systematically refused to release the President's inch high stack of medical records. The only medical records he's been willing to release are dental, and that was just to try and prove he wasn't AWOL.

Also, check out this “told you so” bombshell from Rumsfeld:

Here's what Rumsfeld said Friday: "I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten — indeed the word 'terrorized' is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be."

Several eyewitnesses to the crash claim they saw a "military-type" plane flying around United Airlines Flight 93 when the hijacked passenger jet crashed — prompting the once-unthinkable question of whether the U.S. military shot down the plane.

Oops! Next he's going to tell us the Pentagon was hit by a missile.

What is that, like when WIRED magazine prints a little “undo” a few issues later that no one notices after the print some typically inaccurate junk? Oh yeah, while I'm writing bitchy open letters, here's another:

Hey WIRED magazine! On page seventy of your December issue you write the following:

"the first American guy... to get a [JewelEye] implant was Nashville musician Christopher Robin..."

While it's true that Mr. Desperate-to-save-his-career may well be the first American “guy” if you want know that not only is he not the first American to have it done (that would be my wife, nor is he even the second — that would be Island Allman (as in Greg Allman's daughter) — but I suppose he is the first American “guy” if you want to play the chauvinistic game of discarding anything that women do.

Yeah, that's right WIRED, I still haven't forgiven you for leaving my name out of “The Web's Next Killer App” as the head of the development team for the world's first Internet casino. Credit where credit is due please!

Anyway, I'm blabbering and have to go do some work!