JP Grace
life, technology, travel, and photography
Book Meme
Nov 13th
Instructions
- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.
Mine
“The two evildoers had tried to form a friendship in the past, but it had turned out like a great episode of Blind Date–they hated each other.” – From “Dude, Where’s My Country?” by Michael Moore
Epic Bailout Frenzy Screws Almost Everybody
Sep 19th
The fix is in. In an incredibly bold move, the fed will bail out everyone. Once again the little guy gets the screw job. If there was any doubt before that the Bush administration didn’t truly believe in Capitalism let the skeptics take note. This is Socialism for rich people. It is the most shameful, dumb headed, and wrong action they could have taken. Once again the Bush administration has paid off their croanies and pissed on everyone else.
Behold how quickly the goverment swoops in to assist the financial companies. How much have they spent? Some estimates place the number at $1 trillion. Have you ever heard of such a silly rule as: no short selling of ONE kind of stock? NO SHORT SELLING?! WTF?! That is so fundamentally flawed its hard to imagine investors ever having confidence in the financial system again.
“I don’t want to ban short selling, that is just horrible!” -Jim Cramer
“Whats happened here is that we’ve changed the rules in the middle of the game” -Art Hogan (Jefferies Managing Director)
Day 3: Juneau
Jul 29th
Dylan and Chevas, my brother and sister-in-law, finally meet up with us. They missed thier flight from Miami and had to connect with us in Alaska. Now I’ll be able to get some good pictures from Dylan’s camara.
Today was supposed to be the big helicopter ride day. Alas, poor weather has ruined our plans. So instead of conquering the world from above, I decided to expore the seedier side of Juneau’s underbelly.
There’s a ton of really cool bars downtown. Some a bit more of a tourist trap than others. For instance the Red Dog was very faux authentic old-timey bar. I say that only because an authentic old-timey bar would have just as many locals as tourists. Still fun though. Nothing beats live ragtime, in a saloon with swinging doors, 4 inches of sawdust on the floors and bartenders shouting: “BITCH, SLUT, WHORE!” Strangely enough my grandparents loved it and refused to leave until departure.
Then there’s The Hanger. It’s a restaurant/bar right on the water. From the bar you can enjoy over 20 beers on tap, over 100 bottles, watch sea planes take off and land, and about 5 ten story cruise ships at the docks. All of this juxtaposed against low clouds, rising mists and disappearing mountain-sides makes for a satisfying grin.
I managed to make it back to the boat before calapsing into my bed in exhaustion. Early bedtime tonight.
Day 2: @ Sea
Jul 28th
Today was the long haul from Seattle to Juneau. I spent the day first at the gym and the spa. On a side note, it turns out I have 23.5% body fat, but I have about 15 lbs more muscle that then a health person of my composition.
After lunch I spent some time at the casino and “watching whales”. Turns out I’m just as bad at real Texas Hold’em as I am at video game Texas Hold’em, down $50. Also, I seem to be the only person on this trip who isn’t seeing any of these massive beasts of the sea. The drinks made up for it though. 
Dancing through the decades probably would have been as tedious and miserable as it sounds, had I not met up with the hot red-headed Isreali making eyes at me over dinner. She and her leggy blonde accoomplice made me the envy of the entire club. Did I mention the girl/guy ratio and the old/young raito were skewed a bit in the wrong direction? Well they are.
Day 1: Bon Voyage!
Jul 27th
That was a lot longer that I had anticipated! From a 5am wake up to a 3am bed time. The most exciting event of the day unfortunately was the plane ride: a last minute landing pull-out, enemy-fire-evation style manuever to avoid landing on the wrong runway. We almost landed on the “take off” runway. Ooops! Err… “There was a miscommunication from the tower”, as the pilot offered. Thanks guys.
Once on the boat things ran much smoother. The view of Seattle from the harbor is amazing. You can see downtown, the Space Needle, the Seahawks and Mariners Stadiums.
While doing a brief once over of the ship, I discovered this great deal in the spa. For $150 I got a weeks worth of private access to a slew of great ammenities. Including suanas, a hot mineral bath, and hot beds. I have a feeling that will be the best $150 I spend all week.
The Alaskian Adventure Begins
Jul 26th
The work week is over and final preparations are coming to a close. Only a few short hours ’til I take off for the great Alaskian frontier. Check back throughout the next week to catch updates from the road. Don’t expect much in the way of writing, but I will try to upload pics on a daily basis if possible.
How to Follow Me in Realtime
Jul 26th
Nothing beats twitter when it comes to realtime updates from the road. I’ll be sending updates to all my social media as things develop. See http://jpgrace.com/ for details.
UPDATE:
To follow me on twitter, visit: http://twitter.com/jpgrace and click follow.
Excellent Ergonomic Keyboard and Mouse… By Microsoft?
Jul 25th
As many of you know, I’m not a huge Microsoft fanboy. In fact, it’s much the opposite. Thats what makes this post even more incredible.
Earlier this week a co-worker ordered a new keyboard for work. When the wrong model number arrived in the mail, what ensued was nothing short of a debacle. Mike decided that selling the wrong one and buying a new correct one would be the best solution. After sending out an email to a mailing list within the company to see if anyone wanted to buy his new, wrong keyboard a 3 hour mail thread debated the merits of various input devices.
All of this got me to thinking. Why am I using these painful, awful company supplied devices? It didn’t take long for that feeling to translate into a purchase. The model I chose the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Desktop 7000 is amazing! It arrived today, a full 10 days ahead of schedule. Thanks to the good people at TigerDirect!
I’ve owned a previous incarnation of this model as well. All of which leads me to believe that for all its shortcomings, Microsoft has consistently been able to develop quality ergonomic input devices. Perhaps do to the fact that all of the engineers writing sloppy code in Seattle spend more time than most in front of a keyboard.
Insightful Talk on Creativity and Education
Apr 23rd
Sir Ken Robinson Video at TED 2006
In this early 2006 forum, Sir Ken Robinson gives an insightful talk on the role on education in our lives and how it should be changed to compensate for our evolving understanding of the education paradygm.
Ubuntu Blows Me Away!
Apr 2nd
Over the past several years I’ve been interested in switching to a full time Linux user. After evaluating a possible upgrade of my laptop to Vista, I decided against it. Two of the main reasons for this was the crippling DRM and bloated operating requirements. Then it occurred to me that now would be the perfect time to make the big switch to Linux.
I decided on a dual boot with XP/Ubuntu as my OS’s and a shared partition between the two. Everything went relatively smoothly during download/install, meaning that after reading through a few how-to’s I was able to do it without doing anything disastrous to my computer. However I soon discovered that my wireless card was not fully supported. I was determined to not let this setback dissuade me from switching.
After about a month of using a wired connection I noticed that the new beta version of Ubuntu (Fiesty Fox) had improved wireless functionality. After installation, it worked beautifully!
As a first time Linux user I was amazed at how the user experience rivalled windows. Many software packages even blew away my expectations of what was possible. I love the repository system for keeping everything up to date and running smoothly. Also the open source nature of all things Linux is a constant source of pride and joy to me.
Of particular note I am super pleased with the performance of Linux compared with XP. The two running the exact same types of programs have remarkably different memory footprints. With XP running I have been using up amost all of the 1.5 Gb of RAM installed on my laptop. Whereas in Ubuntu I’ve been using between 500-700 Mb.
Its gotten to the point that I hardly ever boot into XP anymore. In fact I’m so happy with the move that I would recommend it to anyone considering or so inclined. In retrospect I should have done this much sooner.
