I’m in law school now. It’s only been a week of working and school at the same time – and it’s quite a bit. One of the professors said “I know that many of you have full-time jobs, or family/spouse responsibilities, or – God forbid – both …” so I’m not sure how easy this is going to be.

But I’m not the kind of person who gives up so easily. It’s already extremely challenging and stimulating; I’m hoping that the excitement keeps up. I’m also positive that it’ll help me in my current job – I’ll be much better at arguing.

that is all for now. I’m tired.

I think I stumbled on the most sacrilegious meal ever.

Matzoh+bacon+scrambled eggs+cheese:

Mmmmm…sacrilecious…

If you have any ideas on how to make this meal more offensive, do let me know.  I figure pork on matzoh gets me pretty far though….

Let’s see.  The only thing going on in my life right now is work, work, and more work.  I did install Windows 7 on my Mac recently; I’ve totally dropped everything Mac-related, and this change to Windows (if you know me well) is quite a surprise.

However, I’ve been reading Netbooks: The Missing Manual from O’Reilly Publishing, in order to get a better idea of issues that Sonia and I should keep in mind with her netbook.  This summer, I bought her a Lenovo IdeaPad S10; great machine, great price.

The important thing to keep in mind with netbooks is that they’re like “Computers: Lite Edition” and need to be treated as such.  If you want speed, you should plug it in; otherwise the processor might slow itself down (a lot) to save battery.  If you want to use external data, optical drives are sometimes out of the question.  Data storage can be limited, and even movie playback can cause your fans to whir at high speed.  that being said, they’re great for those who want to be able to travel around with some of their data, and always have a connection to the Net, or have a way to take a few quick notes.

This book does a pretty good job of helping those new to netbooks keep these things in mind.  Here are my main thoughts about the book.

Up-to-date information about the Netbook craze. The book came out in August, and it’s very clear.  New laptop models are listed, Chrome is touted as a reliable browser, and the hardware specifications mentioned are very useful.  This being said, the book might not be as useful in about 6 months, when new netbooks have been released; new specifications become “sufficient” and “top-of-the-line”, and the instructions listed might fall out of date – especially in terms of the Operating Systems that are talked about.  We’re going to put 7 on her Netbook at some point, and the instructions are written assuming that the user is using XP.

Full of information about using your computer’s OS. This in and of itself is a great thing for a novice user.  However, it doesn’t go into much more detail than a normal “how to use your computer” book; while some of the instructions are be tailored towards netbooks (i.e. Chapter 1: “Buying and Setting up your Netbook”), they are few and far between.  A user who is experienced with Windows/Linux might not find major portions of the book to be useful.  This being said, however, a user who wants to experiment with Linux on his netbook would find this to be a great resource.

Pictures! It’s a black-and-white book, but the pictures are very illustrative of each instruction.  Screenshots are clear and big enough; other pictures serve as a good illustration of the topics covered.

–

All in all, I’d recommend it for the user who’s not very experienced with computers and just bought a netbook, or for the user who is thinking about taking the Linux plunge on one.  Others might not find it to be as useful.

~Chris

JOY!

Even looking at it now still makes me all warm and fuzzy all over

All of my good pictures are on Facebook – go see them here:

http://cli.gs/79WdDz – day 1
http://cli.gs/yY10Dy – day 2
http://cli.gs/7gYJjX – day 3
http://cli.gs/7DhG3d – day 4
http://cli.gs/4UQhQA – day 5
http://cli.gs/uMep0b – day 6
http://cli.gs/ZYah26 – day 7
http://cli.gs/6SrEM0 – day 8
http://cli.gs/Ny2Pqz – day 9

However, in the interest of using this webspace a bit more, I’ll post a bit of a documentary-style narrative here.

When I have more energy.

~Chris

For now, they’re on facebook.

http://cli.gs/79WdDz
http://cli.gs/yY10Dy
http://cli.gs/7gYJjX

The flight was long, no problems this time though. Korean Air’s flight attendants are very attentive.  Every time something fell, every time something dropped, every time something didn’t look 100% clean, they came and fixed it.  Kinda creepy; not used to that level of service and I’m not sure if it’s what I prefer or not.

Got in around 3am, Sonia met up with us around 4am (she goes to work really early…my beautiful trooper…), and now I’m in the Hotel’s Internet cafe.

Buttloads of email, and Bank of America blocked my debit card because I didn’t clear it with them that I was going to Korea…except…wait for it…I did…I called them last night and told them to put notes on my credit card accounts. This apparently doesn’t apply to their debit card.

Mother f’er.

Whatever.

Not much worth blogging about yet.

I’ll take pictures soon obviously. It’s 8am and I am really tired, but I’m going to POWER through today.

Just watch me.

~Chris

I heard about RIP: A Remix Manifesto, a documentary about the remixing revolution from a copyright perspective, from DCist.  Haven’t watched it yet, but it has interviews with Cory Doctorow and Girl Talk (both people who I find fascinating).

Anyway, I’m downloading it at home on my new FiOS connection.  And here’s the download window:

Took forever to get FiOS but man it's worth it.

That’s a 2419 KB throughput – not 2.4 megabits, 2.4 megaBYTES.  (That’s 19.352 megabits.)  Holy CRAP!

It seemed to peak out at about 20 megabits, which is the connection that I’m paying for.

Yeah, my router confirms it. Nineteen thousand kilobits per second. !!!

It’s awesome that it’s a dedicated bandwidth, rather than a shared connection like on cable.

It only took us decades and $200 billion in tax cuts for the telephone companies.

Oh well, at least SOME people can get it

~Chris

(Note: I don’t think this is happening to me, I just wonder whether it’s a feeling that paranoid people might get, and I think it’s more specific than just typical paranoia that it merits its own word.)

Imagine it – (you believe) your friends all have a huge e-mail conversation going on, and it has been for months and months, and the title is “Why Chris sucks” or something to that effect.  Everytime you see your friends’ inboxes, you catch a glimpse of something that might have your name on it, but you never end up finding out what is in there.

There’s got to be a word for this.  I think that you can classify these people as “paranoid” generally, but there must be a word for the more specific situation of your friends using e-mail to keep an ongoing hate list about you.

There must be.

–

If not, get on it, psychologists!

~chris

(CNN) – The National Organization for Marriage is out with new television and radio ads in New York as the state's senate is considering legislation that would legalize interracial marriage.
"New York Consequences," a 30-second television spot and a 60-second radio spot, focus on hypothetical consequences of recognizing interracial unions on equal terms with traditional marriages.
"Legalizing interracial marriage has consequences for kids," TV ad says. "Massachusetts schools teach second graders that whites can marry other races. A California public school took first graders to an interracial wedding . . . "
"The rights of people who believe marriage means a white man and a white woman will no longer matter. We'll all have to accept interracial marriage whether we like it to or not," both ads also say.
The ads are being supported by a $100,000 ad buy in Long Island and the Albany-Schenectady area, according the National Organization for Marriage. The initial ad buy runs from May 28 through May 31, the group also said.
The New York State Assembly recently passed a bill legalizing interracial marriage in the state. New York Gov. David Paterson has said he will sign the bill if the state Senate also passes it.
The new ads end with a request for viewers and listeners to call their state senators and express their opposition to interracial marriage.

]]

—

Wow.  Wow!  Sounds like 1967 right?  That sounds freaking awful.  Who knew that there could be that many awful people in the world – haven’t we gotten over the idea of interracial marriage being an anathema to society?

Oh yeah.  We have.  That’s right.

After Loving v. Virginia went to the Supreme Court, the ideas and opinions of people have changed.  It’s actually legitimately okay today – the percentage of people in this country who think it’s okay has risen steadily since those days.  And to a person my age reading that, who’s been raised in this country, I think they’d agree with me that the statement

“The rights of people who believe marriage means a white man and a white woman will no longer matter.“

is just ridiculous.  How would a marriage that isn’t your own affect your marriage?

-There aren’t a limited number of marriages able to be performed each year (so interracial marriages aren’t taking up “slots”).

-There isn’t a “marriage” market in which the stock price goes down each time a “non-traditional marriage” happens.  (n.b. – the idea of a “traditional marriage” being touted as a mono-racial marriage is somewhat inconsistent with history – cf. Othello by Shakespeare, William; the Wikipedia article on Interracial Marriages; etc.)

In today’s society, what it boils down to is this: if you don’t like interracial marriage, you don’t have to participate.  There’s no tax that supports interracial marriages that everyone has to pay, and there’s no obligation to enjoy the company of people who are in such marriages.

I’m not trying to persuade everyone to enjoy it.  I realize that there are some more conservative folks who simply don’t like the idea, and they are entitled to their opinions.  It’s up to you to not have one, and to teach your kids to be that way as well.

But really, to be opposed to a federal institution of it, the codifying of which has zero net effect on your life?  I don’t get it.

The same goes for gay marriage.

Here’s the original CNN story I found and modified.

[[

Group targets New York same-sex marriage bill in new ads

(CNN) – The National Organization for Marriage is out with new television and radio ads in New York as the state's senate is considering legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage.
"New York Consequences," 30-second television spot and a 60-second radio spot, focus on hypothetical consequences of recognizing same-sex unions on equal terms with traditional marriages.
"Legalizing gay marriage has consequences for kids," TV ad says. "Massachusetts schools teach second graders that boys can marry other boys. A California public school took first graders to a same-sex wedding . . . "
"The rights of people who believe marriage means a man and a woman will no longer matter. We'll all have to accept gay marriage whether we like it to or not," both ads also say.
The ads are being supported by a $100,000 ad buy in Long Island and the Albany-Schenectady area, according the National Organization for Marriage. The initial ad buy runs from May 28 through May 31, the group also said.
The New York State Assembly recently passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. New York Gov. David Paterson has said he will sign the bill if the state Senate also passes it.
The new ads end with a request for viewers and listeners to call their state senators and express their opposition to same-sex marriage.

]]

–

For some reason, in this country, it’s perfectly acceptable to say

“The rights of people who believe marriage means a man and a woman will no longer matter.“

while it’s antiquated and backwards to say

“The rights of people who believe marriage means a white man and a white woman will no longer matter.“

These are examples of two cases where the “rights” of people who disagree with an institution they are not forced to participate in are not actually infringed or cease to matter.

In the patent world, we’d call “same-sex marriage” and “interracial marriage” non-functional descriptive material.  They’re completely interchangable for one another, and they have no functional interrelation to the marriage itself – it’s merely a construct that the outside has created in order to marginalize the rights and happiness of others.  So why is one okay to say, while the other isn’t?

I don’t hear anyone talking about their marriages being worth less or diluted because of the nice black/white couple that just moved in down the street.  Or your son’s friend’s white/asian parents.  Perhaps it’s my extreme left-wing bias (being a card-carrying member of the vast left-wing conspiracy), but I see too many parallels to the pre-Loving days.  There are as many valid arguments for anti-miscegenation laws as there are for anti-gay marriage laws, and yet only one of those has been deemed unconstituional.

Weird how that works.

~Chris