After a sabbatical of a few months I am going to start updating the my lowly weblog again.

I bet you can hardly wait.

Some of my time away was spent up near Kremmling, CO where I did a fair amount of mountain and road biking. One of the main mountain bike routes I road was a loop up by Gore Pass. I have put together a page about the loop: Gore Pass Loop

How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?

1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed;
2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed;
3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb;
4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs;
5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb;
6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: Light Bulb Change Accomplished;
7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark;
8. One to viciously smear #7;
9. One surrogate to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along;
10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

I have started using Mozilla Thunderbird. One of the things that surprised me the most about the program was it's ability to import my Outlook pst file. I was shocked to say the least.

I think the program works great. I like how fast it loads and starts downloading mail, none of that waiting like with Outlook and it's forever loading. Overall Outlook was probalby overkill for me anyway, all I really needed was email and calendar.

For my calendar I am experimenting with the Lightning calendar addon, which although not very powerful is fine for keeping basic dates. Hey, it works for me.

Here is a nice tongue in cheek editorial by Dale McFeatters of Scripps Howard News Service.

A truly historic monument in the making

Every generation builds its great monuments, hoping that they will stand testament to history.

The Egyptians had the pyramids; the Romans, their coliseums and great aqueducts; the Europeans, their soaring cathedrals; and in our own country such generational monuments as Mount Rushmore, Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, the interstate highway system.

And now, thanks to Congress, our generation is getting its own monument - the Great U.S.-Mexico Border Fence. And a fine fence it will be, one we can be proud of - a double-layered fence 15 feet high of metal plates and wire mesh with lights, cameras, sensors and microphones to detect the telltale rustle of Latin Americans determined to mow our grass.

The fence will cost $1.2 billion, meaning we can proudly take foreign visitors there, point to our creation baking in the desert heat and say: "See that fence there? It cost $1.2 billion. Bet you don't have anything like it back in Norway."

The fence will cover 700 miles of our 2,000-mile border with Mexico, which is a little like buying a 7-foot ladder to paint a 20-foot ceiling, but I think we can agree we don't want to hear that kind of negative talk.

Years from now, our descendants will marvel at our handiwork and say: "Now that was a fence-building generation. They lost New Orleans, but those old-timers knew how to build a fence, yes sir."

Maybe, as is said of the Great Wall of China, the fence will be visible from outer space, at dusk the setting sun picking out in sharp relief the shadow of barbed wire on the desert floor.

With all due regard to Teddy Roosevelt, this is George W. Bush's Panama Canal.

If a fence is to be our monument, it is perhaps worth comparing with the great barriers of history.

That Great Wall stretches 4,163 miles across China. We can beat that. Our border with Canada is 5,500 miles. The Great Wall was built to keep out the wild tribes of the steppes out of China proper. But it wasn't even a speed bump for the Mongols; the Manchus bribed their way through and the Japanese overran it in two days.

So maybe that's not the best example.

There was Hadrian's Wall, 74 miles across the north of England intended to keep the savage tribes of Scotland out of Roman Britain. It didn't work. The Romans left. And the Scots and the Scots-Irish wound up over here, where, if you believe James Webb's "Born Fighting," they started some of our wars just so they could fight in them and gleefully joined in the rest.

OK, so that one didn't work out real well.

Here's one for you - the Maginot Line, 400 miles of forts, tunnels and pillboxes between France and Germany and Belgium intended to discourage a German invasion and repulse the Germans if they were so foolish as to try. The French left a gap for the Ardennes Forest, thought to be impenetrable, so the Germans attacked there and France fell 33 days later.

Let's keep moving on here.

How about the Iron Curtain? Barbed wire, minefields, watchtowers, dogs and border troops, stretching, as Churchill put it, from Stettin on the Baltic and Trieste on the Adriatic. And how about its little brother, the Berlin Wall, 76 miles of concrete slabs and barbed wire surrounding West Berlin?

The Iron Curtain was designed to ensure that the Soviet Union and communism lasted forever, or at least to the moment of their ultimate triumph, and the Berlin Wall was intended to keep pernicious agents of capitalism and imperialism from defiling East German socialism.

Listen, this isn't quite working out the way I thought it would. But when it's finished, the Great Border Fence will be a monument we can all be proud of. Really.

Tom Toles - 10.06.2006

Ann Telnaes - 10.06.2006

And then there is Keith Olbermanns "The Nexus of Politics and Terror" on the connections of terror alerts and bad political news.

Keith Olbermann is certainly on a role talking about the Bush Administration:

09.18: Bush Owes Us an Apology - Watch it / Read it

09.25: A Textbook Definition of Cowardice - Watch it / Read it

10.06: A Special Comment About Lying - Watch it / Read it

You might not agree with him, but he is putting what he feels into words and speaking them. Not many other people are out there doing that these days.

As for me, he is putting what I feel into words and I thank him for that.

With the Military Commissions Act waiting for Presdident Bush to sign, a few people have spoken up.

Senator Barack Obama - Remarks on the Military Commission Legislation

Global Politician - Scrapping the Geneva Conventions

The Washington Times - Habeas Corpus Sellout

Keith Olbermann - Why does habeas corpus hate America

The Village Voice - Congress Bows To Bush

Steve Sack - 10.05.2006

For George, I don't think this just applies to Iraq. I think his whole outlook is filtered quite a bit.

Life is hard for Chad Vader, the younger, less charismatic brother of Darth Vader, who is the day shift manager of Empire Market.

http://splu.net/chadvader.htm

Drew Sheneman - 10.06.2006

It's always that find print that sneaks up on you and bites you in the ass. 

Looking for that Halloween get away? Shall I suggest visiting Bran Castle in Romania?

Yes, the castle that Bram Stoker allegedly used for Dracula's Castle.

via Wikipedia:

In addition to its unique architecture, the castle is famous because of persistent myths that it had been the home of Vlad the Impaler; however, there is no physical evidence that Vlad ever lived there. According to most accounts, the Impaler spent two days in the Bran dungeon, as the area was occupied by Ottoman Empire at the time.

Bran Castle was subsequently featured in multiple film adaptations of Dracula, and has informally become known as Dracula's Castle. The local economy has made use of the connection to boost tourism, and postcards and t-shirts are available depicting the castle with the Dracula name.

More Info:
Bran Castle Museum
Bran Castle Pictures
Bran Castle Postcards
Legends and History

As soon as I saw this I was lol. Definitely a classic.  

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"
- Salvor Hardin in "Foundation"

A quote which the Mountain Gazette says should "be nailed to the foreheads of warmongers from here to kingdom come and to goddamned eternity and back"

Peacefire has added https:// support back to the www.StupidCensorship.com site. They found due to a common configuration error where networks are set up so that blocking software only applies to http:// sites and https:// sites past through unfiltered. https://www.StupidCensorship.com

They have also added http://www.TowerOfDonuts.com to their list of circumventor sites. Here are other circumventor sites that as of today still work.

Prickly City - Scott Stantis - 10.13.2006

I have started listening to KVUC 102.3 FM here in Denver. I ususally listen to KBCO, but KVUC is more diverse / eclectic in there programming. KBCO, as a Clear Channel station, is more formatted than KVUC, who is owned by NRC Broadcasting and owns 2 stations here in Denver and 13 stations in Colorado resort towns.

They are online - www.kcuvradio.com

Small is better.

This is a good essay in High Country News about cell phones and their place in the outdoors.

Leave only footprints, and turn the darn phone off

Check out Guy Junkers web site, Junker Toons, featuring his cartooning. I thought the mountain bike ones where pretty funny.

The Colorado Avalanche streak of sellouts ended last night. After 487 consecutive sellouts, nearly 11 years, the Pepsi Center was 326 short of capacity last night for the loss to Chicago. It was the longest recorded string in NHL history. The last time Colorado didn't have a sellout was Nov. 1, 1995, against Calgary at McNichols Arena.

I did watch the third period. I have to say, I need a player roster just to figure out who these guys are anymore.

Candorville - Darrin Bell - 10.16.2006

Chip Bok - 10.16.2006

NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists report this year's ozone hole in the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere has broken records for area and depth.

www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ozone_record.html

Doug Marlette - 10.17.2006

Ann Telnaes - 10.21.2006 

I Know I'm Not Alone - Michael Franti travels to Iraq, Palestine and Israel to explore the human cost of war with a group of friends, some video cameras and his guitar.

I am playing around with changing from <table> to <div> and have found a few issues with IE. At this time this web site is best viewed with either Firefox or Opera. If you are using IE, this page doesn't view the way it is suppose to.

Reporter Without Borders has published their fifth anual Worldwid Press Freedom Index this week and it shows the U.S. dropping 9 spots to 53rd on the list. We are now tied with Botswana, Croatia and Tonga.

The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of “national security” to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his “war on terrorism.” The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognise the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.

Freelance journalist and blogger Josh Wolf was imprisoned when he refused to hand over his video archives. Sudanese cameraman Sami al-Haj, who works for the pan-Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera, has been held without trial since June 2002 at the US military base at Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein has been held by US authorities in Iraq since April this year.

Check out this "poster" of quotes, actions and info on the Bush administration on Jim Hightowers HightowerLowdown.

The New York Times reported this June that Bush was running another spy program. This one was snooping through international banking records, including millions of bank transactions done by innocent Americans. George reacted angrily to the exposure, branding the Times report “disgraceful” and declaring that revelation of his spy program “does great harm to theUnited States.” The White House and its right-wing acolytes promptly launched a “Hate-the-Times” political campaign.

Name the guy who was the first to reveal that such a bank-spying program was in the works: George W. Bush! At a September 2001 press conference, he announced that he’d just signed an executive order to monitor all international bank transactions.

Lalo Alcaraz - 10.26.2006