Blog - Page 73

I just heard on the radio that the government is planning on buying 300,000 mobiles home for around a billion dollars to house the million or so homeless people from Katrina. This has to be the most twisted and backwards thing I have ever heard... let's do some math here. If we house all of the people who are now homeless in motor homes spending 1 billion of the 200 billion of the relief fund that leaves us with 199 billion dollars to spend on demolishing all the old homes of the poor and creating nice condos for the rich built by Haliburton. I am also greatly troubled about what the money is going to come from. I have a feeling that any and every social program still left intact in our government will be dismantled to pay for this instead of stopping the tax breaks for the rich that will cost our country 1.6 trillion in the next 10 years.

I just picked up an Inka Pen via a pro deal for our Search and Rescue team and so far I am really happy with it. The pen fits inside its own case and can be used quickly in the short version or converted to a full size pen with nice weight and balance. It also has a built in PDA stylus. The pen is pressurized like the space pens so that it will write upside down, in water etc. I like it so much I want to order another one and it looks like they are coming out with a titanium version in a few months!

This pen has a built in receiver to detect wireless cameras that may be spying on you and is called the Security Pen.

The power went out in Downtown LA about an hour ago. I was right about to get on the elevator in my building when I decided instead to go back and give my fiance a hug and kiss goodbye and when I walked back to the elevator the power went off. It took about 10 seconds before the emergency generator in our building kicked in, but when it did, the hallway lights came back on and one of the elevators powered up (although not the one I almost got in). When I went down to the street it was in chaos as all the stop lights were turned off and people were being stupid and running lights and pedestrians were just walking across the street with abandon. Luckily my servers in Downtown are all on generator power so my sites are still up for now.

Penelope and I had to leave to go to work and the parking attendants broke the gate open so we could get out of the parking structure. The drive out of the city was a bit dangerous due to the lack of stop lights. On the way out I listened to several public radio stations which for the most part stuck to their normal programming and didn't have any news about the power outage until about 1:45 and even then the coverage was very limited so I switched over to AM and KNX 1070 had nonstop detailed coverage of the outage, which I am now listening to here in OC. LAtimes has some info about the outage.

UPDATE: I just got word that power is back on in Downtown and possibly the whole city.

Not that they are going to guess any of my passwords with this scanning (as I use difficult, non english, symbol filled passwords) but it still pisses me off:

Jim just reminded me through his blog that today is the Art Walk. I am working from home today so I get to go check it out! Photo time! Also after the walk is the LAVoice party. Fun times.

I saw an add in Jointz Mag the other day about a music / fashion / art festival in Downtown LA called the Six Degrees Festival. The show features a couple Ninja Tune artists, the Breakestra, Phoreyz and more, looks pretty cool despite the flash website. Here is some info from the press release [1.2MB pdf]:

The Art Murmur Gallery in my building is having a reception this Saturday the 10th for the new show iPop which starts at 10pm. I will be on a Search and Rescue 24 hour pack and minimal rescue training. The training on San Jacinto, involves staying overnight with just what we bring out in our 24 hour packs (no sleeping bags / tents) and rigging a rescue raise and lower using only our personal callout ropes and climbing gear. Anyway go check out the opening!

So I've been thinking about getting some kind of portable storage to I can carry around various file with me. I had a little 64meg flash drive that just recently stopped working and now I see the new iPod Nano came out. The thing is pretty amazing and wonderfully small and I really want one! Not sure if I need one, but I do want one!

My friend will be having an exhibition of his SkullPhone art on October 15th. I will post more details about the show when I have them, but keep that day open if you are in to skulls with cell phones.