W00T!!111!!! We now know the joys of a home wifi network! I'm writing this from our bed! Okay, I know, I'm waayyy too excited about this, especially since this is something I really should have done, like, a year or two ago.

So, I now have to fill y'all in on the adventures in setting it up. The apple store had a sale today, and along with all the iPod stuff, they were selling the airport express. Now, since Jeff's a student, and gets the student discount, we usually get our apple gear that way. However, they were selling the airport express for less than it would cost normally with the student discount. So, we got one.

However, Jeff's old powerbook g4 (it's almost 3 years old now) didn't come with an airport card, and he never got one installed. So, we stopped by compUSA and picked up a Belkin wireless PC card. Jeff was very suspicious of it, because the box only mentions windows and not mac. But I figured it would work with a Mac, due to the lovely plug n play-ness of OS X. So, I set up the airport express, then Jeff plugs the belkin in the powerbook. It takes a while to respond, but it's up and running in a few minutes. Then, I start noticing major range problems. Turns out that antenna wasn't plugged into the wifi card all the way. This is a common problem, apparently.

But we're up & running now! Yay!

OOou, beer beer beer bed bed bed.

I've heard more about/from Colin Powell in the last week than I have all year. He's now come out to say the US is against the "official" election results from Ukraine. Earlier today, it was announced that the guy backed by Russia (Yanukovych) won, instead of the opposition candidate (Yuschenko). I'm glad my country's doing the right thing.

Revolution in the Ukraine?

Wow. There's some heavy stuff going on over in the Ukraine right now. I'm sure you've heard already, but long story short: run off election between the guy who's part of the current leadership regime (and was in prison for robbery and assault a few decades ago, and is linked to big business and thought of as associated with crime) and the opposition leader had major voting fraud problems, and people are taking to the streets to protest against the pro-Russian guy who was supposedly elected. Of course, there's a lot more to the story. I learned a lot about the whole thing through this post on Metafilter, and subsequent comments.

Here's an article that has more background on the politcal climate in the Ukraine, and about the two leaders.

This page has up-to-date info about what's going on. It's being translated by a few people on the fly, so give them a break. Here's two bloggers who are posting info, in case you can't get on to http://eng.maidanua.org/ (the page I linked to at the start of this paragraph, it's running rather slowly right now, understandably).

BBC is covering this, and has a slideshow of pictures up.

People of the Ukraine, for what it's worth, I'm with you. I hope no blood is shed, and that the truth comes out on what happened with the election. There's definitely something very shady going on, and such corruption can not be tolerated. I only hope that my country, if faced under similar circumstances, would stand up against such tyranny. With love, from the outskirts of Washington, DC.

They're doing what?!?

I spend a little time in the mornings reading over the washington post, usually when I'm having a cup of tea, or in this case, waiting for the computer to finish processing some data for me. Well, the end of the year is coming up, and I know that when anyone thinks of the end of they year, s/he thinks of taxes. So, I start reading this article, which deals with Dubya's plan for a tax code over haul. And then I get to this paragraph:

The changes are meant to be revenue-neutral. To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.

Okay, so they want the total amount of revenue generated by taxes to be the same. Eliminating the deduction for local and state taxes seems fair enough. Then, WHHAAA??? There is a health crisis in this county! J & I pay just under $400 /month for our health insurance provided through my employer, and that's not including a $15 copay on all office visits and another copay on prescription drugs. And now, this "pro-business" administration wants to make it more expensive for my employer to provide me with health insurance?!?

It's hard enough for many small businesses to provide health insurance, even with the tax breaks. There is no reason for the government to be taking that tax break away. It just means that more people are going to require government aid in paying for health-related services, which means money will be drained from the government. And since people without insurance (and those who are underinsured) tend not to seek out medical help until they're in grave pain / serious condition, the costs per person will go up.

I feel like Frank Grimes right now. "It boggles the mind!"

FullMetal Alchemist Review: Adult Swim

First Impression? Aside from the bad voice work for Ed and a few of the random characters (R. Bruce Elliot, who also voices Richard on the Americanized version of Detective Conan and is the voice for Iron Chef Sakai, needs to not be hired anymore), I think it was a good overall interpretation. They didn't leave too much of the blood and dismemberment scenes out (and frankly I don't know how they're going to, since loss of body parts is an integral part to the story) and the actor they got to do the voice of Alphonse is about as good as they could've gotten. I'm betting they'll cut back on some of the sexual and religious imagery more than anything, but there wasn't really a plethora of that in FMA to begin with.

The downside? Knowing what happens means that not only do I have to relive it with bad american accents in a lot of cases, but I also have to wait until the end of next year to find out just how the whole damn thing turns out. The story is continued in the upcoming FullMetal Alchemist Movie, due out in theaters in Japan in late summer, 2005. The waiting...the waiting.

Baby city, Batman! There are 4 women at my work who have/will be giving birth within a 5 month period: 1 each in October, November, December and February. Strange. Last year, the wives of 2 of the men in the office had kids within a month or so of each other (my office gave them a joint baby shower). I don't have any deep insight or anything on this, I just thought it was really weird.

J & I went to vote this morning. It took us around 45 minutes from start to end. We got there around 8:10 am and left a touch before 9. There were lines aplenty. Our polling place was a school, specifically in the gym. There was a line to get into the gym, and in the gym you had to wait in 3 lines, one to get your orange card with your information, another to get your e-voting smart card (or whatever they're calling it), and another to wait for the voting machines. Everyone waited together in the line leading to the gym, then split up according to last names to get the two cards, then everyone waited together again in the line for the machines.

It went: everyone waits in line. Then, you move into the gym, wait in line according to last name (A-G, H-O, or P-Z) to receive an orange card with your voter registration info on it. Then wait in another line (still according to last name) to get the smart card device you put in the machines. Then go wait in the line (with everyone again) to wait for your turn at one of the 9 or so voting booths. Stick the card in, do your votin' thang, and on your way out, give the card to an election official or drop it off in a box on your way out. It went pretty smoothly, although the lines were a bit out of order (the line for the machines was in between the lines for H-O and P-Z, facing the other way), and there was a fair amount of waiting. The people working the polls were very friendly.

While I was there, I talked with one of the officials in charge at my polling place about my concern over the lack of voter-verifiable paper trails in the (Diebold, I believe) machines my jurisdiction uses. He was a pretty nice guy, although a bit of a smooth talker. I just wanted to register a complaint about it, but he went to the trouble of trying to talk up the machines, mentioning that the votes are recorded and checked on both the smart card and the hard drive on the machines before they are accepted, and showing me the security sticker on the machines that proves any physical tampering. He did say he would write it up and mention to the higher-up elections officials that I had a concern about it. Don't get me wrong, I like the electronic voting machines. They're easy to use, and tallies up totals a lot quicker than other methods. What I don't like is that if there is a problem with them, there is no way to check and do a re-count of the votes. Think about it this way--if you're having sex and you really don't want to get pregnant, you use mulitple birth control methods (e.g. condoms and the pill). That way, if something goes screwy (excuse the pun) with one form of protection, you have the other to rely on. It doesn't help that the CEO of Diebold has said before he'll do what he can to help Bush get elected... here's a story about e-voting that mentions this that I dug up via google news.

Anyways, I hope all goes well. This evening, I'll be at home with J, sitting back with a beer, watching tv, checking the internet and keeping track of the tallies via the US map & stickers that came in a recent New Yorker issue (thanks, cnn, for paying for that). And watching the daily show election special (it's at 10pm, instead of the usual 11). So, woo! for democracy.

So you know that painful, sore feeling when you get water up your nose, when you're swimming?
Well, I found out just now that a bit of falafel up your nose give the same feeling.

If you need to cough while eating, just spit the food out and cough. Otherwise, you may be in for a world of hurt...