Monthly Archives: July 2004

Car Search (Nothing like Star Search)

I’ve been looking through the Seattle Times/Seattle P-I Northwest Classified service at used cars under $10,000, looking specifically at the Ford Focus ZX3, Honda Civic SI, and Toyota Echo 2-Door, all hatchback models, as well as the Volkswagen New Beetle. It’s interesting how many Focus ZX3 models are actually available under $10,000, and how most of them are red. Apparently, drivers have a problem with red.

There’s a Volkswagen New Beetle listed right now that’s apparently $950 or $9500, depending on exactly how much you really want to pay for it (Image 320KB).

On the other hand, I could likely get a Toyota Echo 2-Door for about $14,000 new. Not sure it’s worth the difference.

The Prius is still my dream car, but it’s highly unlikely that I’ll get one. Oh, well.

Masters in Computer Science at Evergreen

There’s a very obscure recommendation for a Masters in Computer Science program at Evergreen which I may have mentioned before. It’s an interesting proposal, since it integrates both the undergrad and potential graduate curriculums. I have to say, though, that Data to Information was one hell of a trial, and that was only the introductory course. I’m not sure I’d want to try a Masters program knowing how hard the introductory one was. That said, it would be a very interesting program to see implemented.

Hodgepodge II

Thursday brought about a judge’s ruling that Washington State’s ban on selling certain violent video games to minors violates First Amendment free speech rights. The ruling also stated that the ban was too narrowly defined. Interesting, considering that these sales are more of a perpetuation of violence than anything else. There are those who would say that such games are harmless, but I err more on the side of caution: I prefer to say that there is a fairly high likelihood that these games cause children to think that violence is somehow routine. I would agree that the ban is too narrow, but it seems to me that construing this as a First Amendment issue is a little questionable.

Lawyers are free to contradict me on that conclusion.

In other news, I’m now officially working for Evergreen’s Web Team and Access Services departments, as well as being on retainer for the Writing Center. The Web Team position is probably only for the summer, and I will be focusing on accessibility issues within the entire Evergreen site. The other two are both part of my Site Manager position, which I’ve been doing for the last year on behalf of the Writing Center. It’s nice to add another Evergreen department to the list.

Not much else going on. I’m looking forward to a camping trip with Amanda to celebrate our one-year anniversary. We leave for Larrabee State Park on Wednesday and come back on Saturday. Until then, we’re lounging around in Bellingham doing generally nothing.

Looking Back

It’s weird looking back.

I had to get information from my old high school for some documentation purposes, and decided to request a copy of my official transcript while I was at it. I closed out high school with a 3.04 grade point average. I was somewhat surprised on this fact, since I was convinced I had done much worse.

Okay, so that’s no longer really all that significant and I don’t care all that much (which is precisely why I’m devoting a blog entry to it). Still, I was pleasantly surprised.

Go me.

Fall Quarter Book List

Larry Mosqueda, the faculty for my class next quarter, was nice enough to e-mail us the book list quite early — I wasn’t expecting to request it for another week, at least. Thanks, Larry!

Here it is:

Howard Zinn, A People�s History of the United States, HarperCollins, 1995,
ISBN 0-06-092643-0 paper

Noam Chomsky, The Chomsky Reader, James Peck, ed., Pantheon Books, 1987, ISBN 0-394-75173-6 (selected readings throughout the quarter) paper

John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, C.B. Macpherson, ed. and Introduction, Hackett Publishing, 1980, ISBN 0-915144-86-7 paper

George Orwell, 1984, with Afterword by Erich Fromm, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (Signet Classic from New American Library), 1961, ISBN 0-451-52493-4 paper

Angela Davis, The Angela Y. Davis Reader, Joy James, ed., Blackwell Publishers, 1998, ISBN 0-631-20361-3 paper

Thomas J. McCormick, America�s Half Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War and After (second edition), John Hopkins University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-8018-5011-8 paper

Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, Viking (Penguin), ISBN 0-670-03264-6 (Hardcover only as of July, 2004, get paperback if available by 9/04. Discounted copies available)

Larry Everest, Oil, Power, and Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda, Common Courage Press, ISBN 1-56751-246-1 paper

Douglass V. Popora, How Holocausts Happen: The United States in Central America, Temple University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-87722-750-0 paper

Mike Prokosch and Laura Raymond, The Global Activist�s Handbook: Local Ways to Change the World, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-401-7 paper

Student subscription to the New York Times

Recommended Books (not seminared upon)

Joan Powell, ed., Education for Action: Undergraduate and Graduate Programs that Focus on Social Change, Food First, ISBN: 0-935028-86-2, 2001, fourth edition

Jennifer Willsea, ed., Alternatives to the Peace Corps, tenth edition,
Food First, ISBN 0-935028-91-9

I probably won’t pick up the recommended books; any book titles in bold above are ones I still need to pick up. The latest of Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States actually seems to be ISBN 0-06-052837-0. This is the copy I picked up, so hopefully it’ll suffice (I suspect, since this is only the book list that was requested from Evergreen’s bookstore, they may carry the same edition).

I’m a glutton for punishment. This book list should make that obvious.

Exporting Evolution Contacts for SpamAssassin Whitelists

Warning: Programming/Technical Content

I’m currently using Novell Evolution 1.5.9 as an Outlook replacement, using it for my Calendar, Contacts, and e-mail. I’m also using SpamAssassin 2.63 (specifically, spamc/spamd) for e-mail filtering. What I used to do under Windows was have Outlook check all e-mail against my Contacts and throw away any messages that weren’t explicitly from those people. However, Evolution lacks any method of doing this. As such, I decided to write my own scripts that would allow me to do the exact same thing with SpamAssassin’s user preferences file. The result is quite nice. It goes through all of Evolution’s addressboook.db files (stored for me under ~/.evolution/addressbook/local/) and outputs any line containing the word “EMAIL”, then does some text stripping with sed, sorts the addresses, removes any duplicates, and then regenerates my SpamAssassin user_prefs file with the addresses specified for whitelisting.To avoid making everyone incredibly bored, I’ve added more details in the extended entry.

Continue reading →

Furniture Continued

Despite not really wanting to mix and match my furniture from different stores too much, I’m finding that there are some pretty good deals in some places. Thus, I’ve updated my furniture listings for my room next year:

Sauder L-Shaped Work Center, Black and Cherry (Walmart – $80)
QBits Dark Alder Combi-Cube (Target – $26)

This is in addition to the papasan chair I’ve still been planning on. I have yet to select a bed or make any considerations for the dining area or living room (the exception being the Dorel Deluxe Futon at $180 from Walmart that looks pretty nice). I’ve decided on a $500 budget for my own room, which includes EVERY item in that room, so hopefully I can stick to that. The real dent will be the bed and the mattress.

Related posting: Furniture, Pillows, Chairs, and CSI

Hybrid SUVs

Ford has come up with an exellent oxymoron: a hybrid SUV, specifically a hybrid version of their Escape model. There’s a Ford SUV cartoon posted on suvsuck.org that’s interesting in the face of this announcement (mirrored locally):

It’s pretty much well-known that SUVs aren’t very good environmentally, so this might take a chunk out of it, but the likelyhood is that people who already own SUVs will simply buy the normal model (and the same is true of others who are looking for SUVs). This is more a “feather in the hat” of Ford, and it’s fairly unlikely given the current state of the SUV market that anyone will care about the hybrid version beyond the usual intrigue over what they percieve as an oddity on the roads.The better (and far more admirable) approach on Ford’s part would be to scrap the Escape entirely and only market the Escape Hybrid version. This might lose them some customers, but I’m wondering how many people would really notice such a switch and be compelled to buy one regardless of whether it was “good for the environment”. This assumes, of course, that people don’t care too much about the slight differences between the two versions.

Overall, my reaction is negative: there’s far too many downfalls to buying an SUV that this is only a minor tweak. It does nothing to improve the fact that, in a high-speed collision between a compact car and an SUV, the people in the SUV are far more likely to survive. It does nothing to improve Ford’s bad environmental image, and means nothing if they refuse to follow up with higher MPG ratings or hybrid versions of other vehicles across their expansive brand line. Really, what is this but an attempt to enter into an unestablished SUV market that probably doesn’t need establishing?

King Arthur

We went to see King Arthur in theaters yesterday. I won’t even bother to rate this movie — don’t see it. At all. Here’s why:

  • I yawned through half of it. This is never a good sign (and no, I wasn’t tired before we walked into the theater, either).
  • The characters are so one-dimensional that you never establish any connection to them.
  • The plot is somewhat predictable.
  • Battle scene followed by battle scene followed by battle scene interrupted by an inconvenient love scene followed by glorious battle scene…
  • Jeez, how much damage to the environment did they do in that last scene shoot? (Okay, so this is a dumb one, but still…)

The only thing I can really give this movie some credit for is a moderate amount of ingenuity in designing the execution of the more major battle scenes. They had interesting tactics.

All in all, I repeat my conclusion here — don’t bother seeing this movie unless you have some desire to enjoy a one-dimensional battle fest for about two hours.

Additional Links

Seattle Times Review: King Arthur
Roger Ebert’s Review: King Arthur