Another Arcosanti Mention

It's weird how many references to Arcosanti seem to pop up in random places. I was reading an article in the current issue of Wired (15.12) about Adeo Ressi when this little tidbit caught my eye:

While other New York City kids went to summer camp, Ressi begged his parents to send him to Arcosanti, an experimental city being built in the Arizona desert. (He spent four summers as the commune's youngest working resident, which meant cleaning a lot of sewage pipes.)

The article doesn't seem to be on Wired's web site yet, but they do have this.

Of course......

This weekend we are moving the rest of our stuff from Arcosanti to the new apartment in Prescott and then Ric flys out Tuesday to Michigan to pick up the rest of our stored stuff to drive out here.

And of course, I am getting sick and it is snowing like crazy in Michigan near our cabin! Ric's parents were able to get what we wanted from the cabin piece by piece and take to their bunkhouse. (Thanks!) Hopefully when Ric picks up the Penske truck on Friday he will be able to get into his parents to get that stuff loaded.

Any of my family that hasn't read emails lately --- if you have B type blood -- we need you! If anybody else has B type blood in the Michigan area and would like to be tested for a possible donor match (kidney) -- let us know. I wish now I wasn't A+, so I could see if I could help out my cousin.

New Photos

I finally had a few minutes to get all the photos built up on the camera the last few weeks up on Flickr. We have Moonrise, our first Artsy purchase, Petrified Forest, Disneyland, and a blurry shot of an Arizona Snowman (I hope to get back and take a better shot).

Well, Mickey's big hand says it is way past bed time.

Living in Two Places

The last few days have been... um... interesting. Whatever we need is always at the other place. If we are at the new apartment, there is always something we go looking for only to realize that it is at Arcosanti, and of course the reverse as well.

The good part is that it's only for the next 48 hours, then we will be permanently at the apartment. Not that I will have much time to enjoy it. I fly out for Michigan on Tuesday, December 4, pick up the moving truck on Friday morning, load whatever we can get out of the cabin through the snow that day, then head for Birch Run bright and early Saturday. If everything goes as planned and I have some help, the rest will be in the truck by Saturday afternoon. I may hit the road and see if I can get out of Michigan before stopping for the day, or may just stay in Birch Run Saturday night and head out Sunday very AM.

I should be back here with the truck in time to spend a day unloading it, then Debbie's mom will be here for a day, then we drive her up to Vegas to catch her flight home, and then I will get to sit in our new apartment for a day or two, then hit the bricks looking for a job. With any luck, the library will be hiring, which I can walk to in about 5 minutes. If not the library, then I'm sure I can find something that is walking or biking distance. It's not like I have to worry about not matching my current pay rate or anything.

Paging Gene Roddenberry

We seem to get closer every day:

For example, according to Summit, battleships and aircraft carriers now make extensive use of selective laser sintering (SLS) printers, which can "print out" materials like titanium, cobalt chromium and polyamide, to fabricate spare parts on the spot instead of carrying huge warehouses full of replacements.

How many years before they are building the entire ship?

Of course, easier manufacture creates problems as well as benefits.

Sometimes I Really Wonder....

It must be something in the water. I realize part of the impact is having several unrelated cases of utter stupidity lumped together. But still, if it's that easy to do that, how much else is going on that isn't hitting the national media? Ye flippin' gods.

Rockin' At 3Mb

I'm posting this from my own 3Mb Cable One connection instead of dufus "Sam". Of course, Cable One, being really customer friendly, sets up their WiFi cable modem wide open with no instructions on how to secure it. Ah well. At least it worked first try, and is looking really good so far.

Woo Hoo!

Posting from our New Place

I'm posting this over some dufus's WiFi connection that he is running unsecured. We will have our own connection tomorrow AM through Cable One. It's only a 3mb connection, but it's all ours. None of this "you have a 10mb, but oh yea; you will be sharing that with everyone on your block" like some other cable companies. It's also about half the price. In the meantime, "Sam" is sharing his bandwidth with me. Thanks "Sam"!!

Gotta love it....

We picked up a reclining love seat today at a second-hand shop, which makes it very easy to use our laptop as an actual laptop. We were going to drag our queen sleeper out here, but decided it was just too heavy. It's going to be bad enough trying to get our dining room table in here, so the queen sleeper stays in the cabin in Michigan.

Well, I should let "Sam" have his bandwidth back and get my butt to work unpacking and putting away.

The Stupids Have Guns

It's that time of year again. I love the suggestion in one comment: "I know we can’t use literacy tests anymore for voter registration; but, would it be too much to ask for some form of intelligence test before issueing [sic] a hunting license?" Unfortunately, the answer is "No" for the same reason in both cases: literacy and IQ tests are viewed as racist by blacks. Nuff said.

Ubuntu Fix

I've fixed all my Ubuntu problems today in about an hour. I reinstalled Windows XP. There is probably a lesson in all this; one I'm sure I will forget completely the next time a hot new Linux variant comes out that is just as good as Windows, except when it isn't, which will be pretty much everything a normal person would want to do on a computer.

Now to reinstall everything. The fun never ends. Someday in the distant future, I may actually use my computer as a tool rather than having all my free time sucked up in care and feeding....

Contempt

Contempt of court is a crime in this country. But if the courts and judges act in a contemptible manner, isn't contempt the proper response? This is nothing less than an attack on one of the core principles of the republic. If people cannot be secure in their property, then we are subjects, not citizens.

I'm posting this at 4 am in the dark while Debbie is trying to sleep. I seem to have developed some sort of sinus infection. My sinus pump seems to be helping. I will have to remember to take the time today to use it every few hours. We are picking up the U-Haul at 7am so we can move all the bulky stuff today and I am getting sick. Of course.

Ubuntu (sigh)

Well, we are still on Ubuntu mostly due to sloth. It's like figuring out which is the least pain in the neck; dealing with the endless list of shortcomings and bugs in Ubuntu, or dealing with the pain of a Windows installation followed by reinstalling all the software, all the Windows patches and security updates, re-setting everything up, etc. I'm not sure this is what computing is supposed to be. I guess I just expect too much.

I still have no information on why the audio track of any video plays through the nasty little built-in laptop speakers instead of using the device that is set up in preferences. I suppose the answer is "get better external speakers," which would certainly be simpler than the setup I have. When we move, I may even look into that so the stereo can be out in the living room instead of tied to the PC.

I'm also having a lot of performance issues like interruptions in audio playback every time data is coming from the internet. Given that I am running on a dual core with a gig of RAM, that makes no sense.

A lot of pictures have been piling up on the camera since the Great Crash of 2007 that killed off the Windows side of our PC, so tonight I may tackle that little beastie. It promises to be loads of fun....

Tomorrow and Friday, we have a U-Haul rented to move the big stuff. That includes the desk that the PC is on, so blogging may be interrupted until I can get everything set up and a new connection established at the apartment. I think we will go ahead with Cable One instead of Altel. I've tried wireless before and basically wasted a lot of time and money on something that just doesn't work that well. I'd rather have a physical connection any day.

Attention Holiday Shoppers!

The dollar is crashing. Again, exactly what anyone who has had Econ101 would expect as a result of the Feds reving up the printing presses. I guess that leaves out everyone on the Federal Reserve board who are making noises about printing more money to fix the problem.

For the first time in my life, a Canadian dollar is worth more than a US dollar. Unreal.

Slave Doctors?

Kip makes some astute observations about socialized health care:

One of the points I try to emphasize from time to time is that a purported "right to health care" requires, as a matter of basic metaphysics, a "right to enslave health care providers." This is not histrionics: How, exactly, are you to enjoy your "right to an emergency appendectomy" without a surgeon to perform it? If your "right" truly is a right, and if no willing surgeon is available, then an unwilling one will have to be conscripted.

Fred on Education

Twenty-odd years ago, a commission on America's public schools declared that if they had been imposed on us by a foreign government, we would rightly consider it an act of war. I can't help but wonder what they would think of our schools now?

Anyway, Fred has, as usual, a rather creative solution.

Just to Hammer the Point Home

Read this carefully. We all know the mantra by now, right? Small and fast....

Ramen

The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has now spread into academia. It has been so funny watching this grow from an off-hand comment on The Panda's Thumb to a world-wide phenomena.

Honest Politician?

Well, sort of. I guarantee that Obama is a moral defective like the rest of the presidential field. But at least he isn't provably stupid by denying the obvious.

Didn't inhale. Pfffft. Right, Bill. Just like you don't have a thing for chunky interns.

$98.03

Read this little blurb carefully. Note why oil prices are hitting record levels. This is what happens when a country decides to burn up the presses printing funny money. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions.

Hang on; this could be an interesting couple of years.

News That Will Shock You

Here it comes, so brace yourself: the lying moral defectives in the UN lied about the extent of AIDS infections and the rate of growth of new infections. The productive people of the world saw a 3,000% increase in the amount of their tax dollars given to the UN of the basis of these (to be charitable) flawed statistics. So when do we get our refund?