Chris Wins Survivor

Reviews, Television

SurvivorI’m doing a lot of reviewing lately, and tonight my topic is Survivor. When this show aired it’s first season, we didn’t watch it. And for weeks among family and friends and the water cooler we found ourselves left out of the biggest TV buzz of the season. And so, determined not to let that happen again, our family has become dedicated Survivor fans. Tonight, Chris has won the 9th season, Survivor Vanuatu, overcoming long odds from his balance-beam choke on episode one, to being the only guy left in a tribe full of woman.

What’s the staying power of this show to us? For one, Survivor has become the only must-see family television in our house. It’s a shared family pleasure to watch regular (and often irregular) people compete and scheme against each other for the chance to be on television and the possibility to win some serious money. We chose our favorites, and boo the villians, and it’s a good time.

The show is also a lesson in life. Strangers are thrown together, all there to play a game they know to be cutthroat, and they want to win the money. Yet over the days together, competing as teams, and working together in alliances, they form relationships, good and bad. And by the time the final vote comes about, there’s always a major boilover of emotions that cracks me up. Sure, it’s gotta hurt to be on the jury, coming so close and now having to chose which of the people that beat them will get the money. Some handle it well, and graciously acknowledge the victors. But others pull out the bitterness… boo hoo, you lied to me, I thought we were friends, you would say anything for the money… waa waa waa…

Certainly real relationships can develop on Survivor, hell, Rob and Amber are getting married (but that may have been Rob’s ultimate post-game play, right?), but to the Survivor cry-babies out there I’d like just say, “Get a grip. You were out-played, out-witted, and out-lasted. So save the tears and be a good loser”.

OK, so maybe I should get a life, but Survivor provides some harmless escapism and fun family TV time, and we’ll likely keep watching as long as they keep churning ’em out.

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Visit Udvar-Hazy, Really

Museums, Reviews

If someone encouraged you to visit the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, it would be understandable if your reaction was uncertain. Is that like Betty Ford? Is this an intervention? What is this place? Well, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy is a very wealthy guy who wrote a vey large check to the Smithsonian Institution in order to build a location at which the Air & Space Museum could put on display the very many large and wonderful items that are way to large to be displayed at the Air & Space Museum on the mall. The Udvar-Hazy Center, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary today, is well worth the visit. And Mr. Udvar-Hazy deserves to have his name on it for having helped bring it all about.

The place is enormous. Just imagine a hanger that holds a Space Shuttle, a Concord, the Enola Gay, an SR-71, and dozens of other air and spacecraft, many of which are hung high above your head, yet doesn’t feel crowded. And it doesn’t, the place is that big.

After wandering among the planes for a long time, we caught a chance to rest our feet and a great IMAX film, The Magic of Flight. It was a terrific overview of the story of flight that focused on early attempts and the historic success of The Wright Brothers, and the members of the Navy’s Blue Angels. A new IMAX movie,Fighter Pilot, opens today, and according to this review in the Washington Post, may rate a return visit. Despite the kids whining, we skipped the flight simulators, a decision re-inforced by the above Post review which described them in a word, “Lame”. If you want to ride a simulator, ride the ones that the Air & Space Museum on the mall has to offer.

So later in the evening on the day of our visit to Udvar-Hazy, I asked my pilot father the question, of all the planes we saw today, which would you most like to fly?

To fly, as in take a ride on, or to pilot?, he replied.

OK, Mr. precision… both…

The answers:

To take a ride on, any of the WWII era planes, particularly the Corsair. That makes sense, as a Navy pilot, dad would be interested in an earlier generation of the Navy’s carrier based fighter airplane.

To pilot, the SR-71 Blackbird. Another good choice. As a test pilot, dad would love some time in the high-speed, high-altitude spy plane. The last flight of the one on display at Udvar-Hazy arrived here after a record-setting flight from, Los Angeles to Washington, DC, in 1 hour, 4 minutes, 20 seconds. That’s an average speed of 2,124 mph. Yes, good choice on that one.

And a follow-up question. Which one would you not get into no matter how big a check Steven Udvar-Hazy was willing to write you?

Answer… any of the hang-gliders, like the Sportswings Valkyrie (why no photo? dang). No engine, no guns, only gravity, wind, and a kite to dangle from. Dad’s been plenty daring in his career in the air, but he’s not stupid.

It was a great day, a great place to visit, and great fun. My rating is two thumbs, way up.

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Former Interns Make Good

Diversions, Work
Jessen   Ethan
  Jessica  
David   Robbe

Years ago in my Senate days, I enjoyed the opportunity to employ a few interns each year, letting them do my work for me for no pay just for the experience. Is this a great country or what? For many, their internship was their first experience in Washington. For me, it was a heady power trip. Neverthless, it was an honor and a joy to help mold young minds, and show them the ropes of life on Capitol Hill.

This post started as a ‘way to go’ for one former intern, but in writing it I started thinking about all of them. I’ve stayed in periodic contact with some of them, lost touch with others, and (I’m sorry to say) I’ve certainly forgotten a few. I hope they recall their brief time under my tutelage fondly, that it was fun, and maybe even practical to their later endeavors.

So then, where are they now? Let’s turn to my bookmarks and to Google. And can we lure any of them here to my blog for an update? Read on and see!

Jessen Jessen Yu – Jessen was my original intern from way back in my Kennedy days. He organized my messy clip pile (those files are still in my closet today!), and helped me build many of my earliest web site. That was in 1995, it’s on his resume. Today he’s a programmer with a company called Genetic Programming where he is performing research “as applied to the automatic design of analog electrical circuits, control systems, and antennas”. I taught him all about genetics. OK, not really.

JessicaJessica Yu – Yes, you read that name right. Jessen enjoyed his internship so much, he sent his younger sister our way. Jessica built fine web sites, and she did it with a unique style that most of the guys lacked. After college she got into journalism I think and last I heard was in Hong Kong working as a graphic artist for the Wall Street Journal.

DavidDavid Sirota – David passed his final exam of finding his way to the Capitol Building in DC, and had his wisdom teeth out during his time with me. He went onto an impressive career of his own on the Hill as a Communications Directory to House members and Committees, and has now become a prolific and excellent writer (see his recent article: Top Billings: How a Montana Democrat bagged the hunting and fishing vote, and won the governor’s mansion), and a regular ‘policy wonk’ contributor to Al Franken’s radio program.. I’d like to say I taught him how to write, but I didn’t.

RobbeRobbe Richman – Robbe is President and founding partner of Articulated Impact, a Washington DC web development and marketing company. I taught him how to express himself, no, not really.

EthanEthan Shapiro – There’s a picture on my basement wall, of Ethan, myself, and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington. Ethan had built Senator Murray a new web site, and he was MY intern, so we both got thanked. In the photo she doesn’t reach our shoulders, it was a good day for feeling tall. I see Ethan in my buddy list, and know from his site that he’s continued in a career in technology. I expect he misses his Mac.

Melanie Ho – Went on to become the President of the UCLA Bruin Democrats, and won a Gold Shield award in 2000.

Dan Orr – Dan stays in touch and even sends Christmas Cards and postcards from his travels. He returned to academia where I think he plans to stay forever.

Chris Green – stayed in the Senate a long time, went to law school and became an Esquire, and recently returned to the Senate. We taught him to love the Senate.

Greg Yates – also stayed on the Hill, first for Sen. Boxer, then to the House side I think. Greg, where are you?

If you’re among the former interns listed here, please comment! Share your memories! If you’re a former intern that I’ve forgotten, I’m sorry! I’m an aging idiot and my memory is failing. Remind me, and I’ll update this post to include you.

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Testing MarsEdit 1.0

Technology

So the Mac blogs are abuzz about a new application for Mac bloggers called MarsEdit. I was intrigued enough to download it and give its trial run a spin, and so this is my first test post using it. I’ll update, edit and otherwise mess with this posting to see how well MarsEdit works with my MT based blogs, and I’ll report my findings to you here. Is it good enough to buy? Stay tuned…

So, that post went up, but I didn’t see the opportunity to put it in a category. These later edits are being done via MT as usual. But I’ll press on and save reading any manuals for later 🙂

Aha… so when I click the ‘Refresh’ button on MarsEdit, it grabbed the 10 most recent posts to my blog, along with their categories. So this edit, is again being done in MarsEdit rather than MT. The research continues…

UPDATE: How cool is that? A comment from the programmer! Thanks for the help Brent. So here’s another test… if I edit an existing post using MarsEdit, will the comments survive the update? Here we go to find out… yup, they sure do. Good to know 🙂

UPDATE: OK, so when my demo period ended, MarsEdit passed the ultimate software test. I just missed it too much not to buy it, so I did. Great stuff Brent, keep it up!

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Nomar Stays A Cub

Baseball

I still consider myself a fledgling baseball fan. Not yet a long suffering Cubs fan, but I have suffered with them. And despite the exciting, curse-breaking win by the Red Sox, it’s still an off-season of disapointment for Cubs fans, waiting for Spring and another season. And there was good off-season news today, Nomar Garciaparra has re-signed with the Cubs to play a second season. It must have been tough, watching the Redsox break the curse without him, but I am glad he’ll be back in Wrigley next season to help break a different curse.

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Fighting Back Against Spam

News, Technology

Last November, Lycos Europe launched a web service called ‘Make Love, Not Spam‘ which allowed visitors to download a unique screen saver. The goal was to serve a little payback in unwanted traffic to the web sites promoted in spam email messages. The screen saver happily sent endless requests to these servers, slowing their ability to churn out their unwanted messages. Criticized for using tactics of the sort more often employed by hackers and others who might launch such a denial of service attack, Lycos shut down the service.

I’m glad to see that creative efforts to fight back aggressively agains spam are being explored and implemented. Even if this particular approach has crossed the line somewhere (where was the ‘Make Love’ part of this, on the screen saver?), I applaud Lyco Europe for trying to do something, and hope they’ll keep at it. Fighting spammers in court, as was successfully done recently in Virginia, is great, but it’s only one weapon in the fight against spam. And global fight that it is, won’t always be an available option.

The real problem will never be solved. Spam only works because people are stupid, and it only takes a few boneheads who think that cheap VIAKAGARA is only a click away to force those of us who know better to pay the price for their ignorance in the spam we receive as a result. Idiots.

Anti-spam screensaver scrapped
BBC, 12/6/04

UPDATE: Slashdot reports that a trojan horse virus is being distributed under the false promise that it is the installer of the Lycos Anti-Spam screensaver. Jeesh… you really just can’t win for trying can you.

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If Bush Ran Against Jesus

Humor, Politics

(from MAD Magazine)

I loved MAD magazine as a kid. It was funny, and smart, and even felt a bit subersive. When reading MAD, you knew that your folks wouldn’t get all the jokes, and that they wouldn’t approve of many that they did. So when browsing the blogs the other day, I found a link in a comment that led to this MAD Magazine parody, I was very pleased. They’re still smart, funny, and not afriad to offend. Good. This is funny, because it is so easy to recognize as the way things are, and the way they would be, should Jesus ever seek elected office in America today.

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Fun With Photomosaics

Diversions, Photos, Technology

We’ve all seen a Photomosaic before, an image that is produced by combining many other smaller images. They’re really cool. I recently discovered a cool Mac program called MacOSaiX that makes them, and it’s really cool too.

Here’s an example…

(click for larger version)

The program allws you to identify source photos from a local drive, a Google image search, or by using random glyphs from your font collection. In this image I used my local iPhoto library and the program used 4,411 photos to produce this mosaic which is measures as 84.1% in ‘Mosaic Quality’. And check out the detail; the trim on the shed in the background, the dogs furry tail, the shadowy patches of snow. Way cool.

It takes a bit of time, and I’m still on the quest for producing a really high-quality photomosaic. But just playing with it is fascinating… the program I mean. Give it a try.

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I Am Thankful

Diversions

I had counted on being most thankful this Thanksgiving for the end of George Bush’s reign in the White House, but that was not to be. I am instead sorry.

Nevertheless, I am thankful for many things;

  • My wonderful loving family, every single one of them is special to me.
  • Friends. Happily there are some people out there who ‘get’ me, and they keep it all interesting.
  • My career. I am one of the lucky ones who enjoys their work.
  • Entertainment. Books, movies, music, theatre, love ’em.
  • Technology. The Internet, computers, Tivo, mobile phones, iPods. I can’t wait to see what’s coming next.
  • Our spa. Thank you Jim & Julie for the hand-me-down hot tub. We love it.
  • Too much else to list here. Life is good.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

for further reading: Thanksgiving from Wikipedia, and 21 Reasons to Be Thankful from the Center for American Progress.

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