Okay, okay, I’m back. Sheesh. Don’t all clamor for news at once.
I suppose I ought to do a post-mortem of my Howard Dean experience. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the heart to do that, since it was ultimately fairly disappointing to me. You can look at the pictures I took here. Unfortunately, they’re in reverse chronological order and don’t have titles. Ah, well.
Incidentally, since Dean dropped out of the presidential race, I’ve concentrated on the main task at hand in my life: finishing the CLCV web redesign. It’s basically done, though there is still some tweaking necessary. I’m proud of it, though, and impressed by the independence and efficiency of my work (and, yes, I do say so myself).
I do, of course, urge you to vote for John Kerry for President in November, for reasons I hardly need to elucidate.
The weather here has been spectacular and my taxes are done. That’s good. However, my bike’s derailleur kind of self-destructed Saturday (I think it’s fixable) and I’m running for staff representative to the CLCV Board of Directors (in what is turning out to be an outrageously excessively political process, unsurprisingly). All in all, an okay Ides of March.
The Dean volunteer experience is hitting a few snags. I submitted a volunteer form on the New Hampshire for Dean website, but haven’t heard back, and it’s been tough to get any straight answers from the campaign.
Below I’ve reproduced my first post to dean2004.blogspot.com, the unofficial Dean Nation blog. One of the main contributors to the blog is my old dorm-mate from college, Aziz, who asked if I would guest blog during my New Hampshire volunteer experience. With 3,000 page views a day, how could I say no?
I found out this week, as reported by Wired News and a San Antonio paper, that a key provision of the former Patriot II Act (which would have allowed lots of new violations of our freedom in the name of stopping terrorism) was passed as part of the funding bill for intelligence agencies (which is kept secret as a matter of course).
Long rant continues:
2004 brings a vast (but humble) new repository of site content. Finally, I’ve organized many of the photos I’ve taken over the last 6 months (since getting a digital camera and then a camera phone) and posted them on the site. None of them saw Photoshop at all, and the html is straight from iPhoto, but hey—they’re up.
Finally saw Winged Migration last night. A good movie, but I saw it in Berkeley at the Elmwood Theater. The contradictory opinions some people have are amazing. For example, the scene in which people hunted geese with shotguns was met with hisses and disapproving gasps. The scene in which a bird hunted a fish with its beak was not. People, it’s essentially the same thing.
For the record, since I haven’t mentioned the presidential race since June, I’m for Howard Dean.
I had a nice last couple months; thanks for (ahem) asking. I went to Wisconsin to see the family for Thanksgiving. I plan to go back for Christmas and New Year’s, tentatively. [People in Madison and Chicago, be ready! Want to have a New Year’s party?]
I’ve also been hanging out with friends from work. We’ve been watching Hitchcock movies, including “The 39 Steps” yesterday. Fun!
Also, I’m [semi-] working on changes to this site—I honestly plan to put up my last year’s worth of pictures. There are just so many, though; it takes a long time, especially if I want to add captions. I’ll just have to cut down the number. I’m also working hard on the CLCV web redesign. I have a meeting with the ad hoc redesign committee next Friday to pick a design direction. From a graphic design perspective, this project should turn out at least as well as the DNR redesign of [geez] 2 years ago (though it’s an overall feat of much less magnitude, it’s as significant to my portfolio at this point).
Standing invitations to the Bay Area for all, by the way… it is beautiful here in the winter. Beautiful. Sure, it rains a little, but today I was a little too warm wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. It’s paradise, really.
Today’s thing: After an extended break, I’m back. Today’s thing is that I think I’m going to implement a daily feature called “Today’s Thing” on the homepage. I will update it each day. (We’ll see.)
It occurred to me, after the recall election, that very few people have probably experienced the Buffoon Governor Trifecta(TM) that I have. 1986-1999: Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin. 1999-2002: Jesse Ventura, Minnesota. 2003-?: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California. The mind reels.
How awful. One of my absolute favorite musicians, Elliott Smith, died yesterday. He was only 34. Rest in peace, Elliott. Thanks for the amazing music. I’m sad that I missed several opportunities to see him perform, and now I never will.
everybody knows
everybody knows
everybody knows
you only live a day
but it’s brilliant anyway—”Independence Day,” Elliott Smith