People watching in Union Station

So, I've been frequenting the Union Station Food Court for lunch, and there is always something absurd to see. If I'm not posting on my blog, it's because I'm busy not because there is nothing to write about.

I figure People watching in Union Station ("P.U.S.") can be my newest recurring theme that never actually recurrs.

Today I watched a guy nudge his table, which caused the empty pepsi bottle he just finished to fall off the table and roll out into the area where people were walking. He watched it for a moment, as if wondering when it would evaporate after having touched the ground. It didn't, but got kicked as some woman almost tripped on it, and he looked back to his food and kept eating. Something must be wrong with this guy. He reached across the table to grab the plate that still had a few bites left before his friend returned from who knows where and they both got up and walked off, leaving all their trash there. I hate people.

Having seen this, the woman sitting with her friends at the next table over reached over as if to pick up the tray, but instead just added her plate to the pile and turned back to keep chatting away.

Lunch is not supposed to be anger inducing.

Tips for D.C. Tourists # 16

I'm working near Union Station, which means that if I go up there for lunch I am consumed by masses of elementry & middle school tour groups. At some point someone decided that a good way to keep track of your group would be to dress them all in the same color shirts - and I don't mean baby blue. I mean electric blue, hot pink, neon green & yellow, and other colors that, when blended together as these groups collide and weave through the food court createing a performance art piece that rivals hyper-color clothes and neon checkerboard shoe laces from the 80s, are all equally siezure inducing.




If you are thinking of doing this, my advice is to choose a normal color because your kids will really stand out in a white shirt. If you choose any of the colors mentioned above, you will ensure that they can only get lost in one of the ten other groups wearing a shirt that is the same migraine color as your kids.

this is gonna be tough

there will be no blogging from work, but I will try to pop on here on a mostly regular hopefully close to daily basis and ask questions like:

How come the handicap stall in the bathroom is always in the back? As if it isn't hard enough already, bathroom architects have apparently uniformly decided to make the people who need those stalls travel a longer distance, past everyone else already in the bathroom going about their business, in order to get to teh accommodating stall. You'd think the handicap stall would be closest to the door.

back in the saddle

I'm back in black after finishing exams and taking a few days to recover. I am still getting warmed up on the blog tip, and to tell you the truth I don't know how things will go when I start work.

Dell announced that it will be using a non-Intel chip in one of their higher end servers. More important as far as I am concerned is the following:

"Dell also said it would spend more than $100 million on improving its customer service, which it acknowledged had deteriorated and affected the company's image and its sales. It said it hired 2,000 new sales and support staff and retrained 5,000 others. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/technology/19dell.html?th&emc=th

I worked with/on Dell comuters at work & the service we received was why I choose a Dell when I started school. My computer ended up being a lemon, and after several go-rounds with tech support and a technician comming to replace parts, they sent me a whole new one. That being said, I probably wouldn't buy a Dell laptop again. The desktops are so cheap that I might buy one of those though.

The Big Picture

Leave it to the car-review guy to bring everything together and see the connection between little(er) problems and their bigger causes. I have written about Warren Brown before, and as he intunates, America's hunger for oil is not the problem - it is only the most recent and jarring symptom. I don't care if you belive in global warming, or infinite oil reserves once we colonize & start mining on Mars, the undeniable truth is that we are still a stratisfied society at levels that exceed rational expectations even from the seemingly inherently seperatist human race, and America continues to view the world throught the same lens.

For Sound Energy Policy, Don't Look to Congress

By Warren Brown

Sunday, May 7, 2006; Page G02

Congress thinks we're stupid. Maybe we are. We, most of us, refuse to accept that we are living in a world of rapidly increasing demand for declining fossil fuel resources.

We believe more oil is to be found around the corner, in the next country, beneath the ocean, under or in the next rock. Maybe it is.

. . .

We need more political wisdom and the guts to do the right thing.

That starts with political leaders telling the American people the truth, as Bush did in his "addicted to oil" comments. It means mandated increased vehicle fuel economy accompanied by increased taxes on gasoline, engine displacement and vehicle size. It means getting over our social and racial biases, which still keep certain people out of certain neighborhoods, and coming up with a truly efficient, democratic mass transportation system.

"Waiting until world conventional oil production peaks before initiating crash program mitigation leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for two decades or longer," the Hirsch report said.

Wake up, Congress. Wake up, America. We are a part of that world.

Full Article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050500974.html

An aquarium drunkard

I don't care who you are. If you like music and you don't know about this blog, you should:

http://aquariumdrunk.blogspot.com/

This will subsume whatever remaining space you have on your iPod.

sugar rush

I drank like 4 Mountain Dews a day when I was in high school. I also played sports at school and was generally active - but no matter how you cut it, that is not a good diet. Now, I'm not sure why the soda companies have to do this when it should be the schools taking steps to improve the healt of their students, but this is a step in the right direction.

Bottlers Agree to a School Ban on Sweet Drinks

By MARIAN BURROS and MELANIE WARNER

The country's top three soft-drink companies announced yesterday that beginning this fall they would start removing sweetened drinks like Coke, Pepsi and iced teas from school cafeterias and vending machines in response to the growing threat of lawsuits and state legislation.

Under an agreement between beverage makers and health advocates, students in elementary school would be served only bottled water, low-fat and nonfat milk, and 100 percent fruit juice in servings no bigger than eight ounces. Serving sizes would increase to 10 ounces in middle school. In high school, low-calorie juice drinks, sports drinks and diet sodas would be permitted; serving sizes would be limited to 12 ounces.

full article available http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/04/health/04soda.html?th&emc=th

"America, you lost. I won!"

I'm not sure what to make of all this. Tis dude is pretty wacko, but to the extent that he seemed like he wanted to die a martyr, I'm glad that we didn't sentance him to death. The conviction itself was a little weird when you get into the testimony and legal foundation for everything, but that is neither here nor there.

I'm taking bets on how long he will survive in prison. The over under is however long Jeffrey Dahmer made it. I bet he outlasts Dahmer.

Jury Rejects Death Penalty for Moussaoui

By Jerry Markon, Timothy Dwyer and William Branigin

Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 3, 2006; 7:00 PM

A federal jury decided today that Sept. 11, 2001, conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui should be sentenced to life in prison, rejecting government arguments that he should be executed for his role in the deadliest terrorist strike on American soil.

"America, you lost. I won!" Moussaoui yelled as he was escorted from the U.S. District courtroom in Alexandria after the verdict was read. He clapped his hands as he left.

Full article availabe at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/03/AR2006050300324.html

maybe I'm lazy. . .

. . . but I'm trying to keep at least some material flowing here even though I'm in exams.

"[T]o deny adequate review to the poor means that many of them may lose their life, liberty or property because of unjust convictions which appellate courts would set aside. . . . Such a denial is a misfit in a country dedicated to affording equal justice to all and special privileges to none in the administration of its criminal law. There can be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has." Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12, 19 (1956) (Black, J.)

children of the grave

...children of the world,

Listen to what I say
If you want a better place to live in
Spread the words today
Show the world that love is still alive
You must be brave
Or you children of today are
Children of the grave

-Ozzy Osbourne / Black Sabbath