Archive for March, 2004

Desk Saga

Monday, March 29th, 2004

So I found my temporary desk replacement: the Jerker from IKEA. (Where the hell do the come up with these names)

I liked it because it is mostly steel, and I can easily (with an allen wrench) break it down to 5 pieces. And be reasonably sure that I can put it back together in relatively good shape. I used the upper shelf as a monitor stand to have the monitor raised up a little. So it is efficient, durable and useful, and it wasn’t one of those crappy all particle board ones that I saw at every other furniture place.

Now I have to work on designing my new corner desk.

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Tournament Results

Monday, March 29th, 2004

The tournament was pretty cool. And I saw people from my school (Villari’s Trevose Studio) do very well. Congratulations Nick, Sheila, Steve and Chris who all left with a bunch of hardware. Probably other representatives from my school did well also, I just didn’t have time to notice, as I was also competing.

I came in second place in the “Forms” or “Katas” competition as it says on the tropy. I was pleased with my performance, The form I did was called “3 Kata” and I felt I made a good showing of it. I knew I had done well, because I wasn’t conscience that I was actually doing the form until I was about half way through. The guy who came in first, in that competetion swept the adult green through brown stripe division. I had the misfortune to draw him in the opening match of the sparring division. I lost 5 – 3, I did disagree with the last point he was awarded (I felt I blocked it with two hands) but both judges agreed he should have had that point. However, I do know that he deserved to win that competition overall.

Overall it was a good time, and I am looking forward to competing again, for no other reason than to see quite a bit of cool things done, by a bunch of good martial artists.

Also congratulations to all who competed in the Villari’s Pennsylvania Regional Martial Arts tournament. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. And I look forward to competing with many of you again.

Posted in Martial Arts | 1 Comment »

Karate Tournament

Friday, March 26th, 2004

The Villari’s regional tournament is tomorrow. I am excited to compete for the first time. I will be representing the Trevose studio, and hopefully I will make a good showing. I am competing in Forms, Point Sparring and Self Defense.

Also congratulations to the Trevose Head Instructor Jim Wing, on achieving his fourth degree black belt. I think this officially acknowledges his ability to beat me up while expending no energy at all.

Posted in Martial Arts | 1 Comment »

Economy Boost

Thursday, March 25th, 2004

And if you didn’t notice in my previous post, I am doing my part to help the economy, to go along with the new desk I will need, I just got new rugs in the bedrooms. Living room is on backorder to be installed next week.

All this goes along with Michelle’s new alternator, battery and Fan belts.

Anyone who wants me to continue to help the economy can feel free to aid in funding this spending spree via PayPal.

Posted in Finance | 2 Comments »

Computer Desk

Thursday, March 25th, 2004

My el-cheapo desk which I got from Best Buy a while ago finally bought the farm. I was moving it to get my new rugs installed when a major supporting part turned into mostly sawdust. Luckily for me the township trash guys seemed to not have any problem taking all of it. But unlucky for me and mostly unlucky for my wife’s UT2K4 game. I currently have no where to stick my computer.

So I am currently seeking options, I have basically ruled out replacing it with something similar. I would prefer a desk that will support being moved (taken apart and put back together) many times without an extroidinary amount of damage occuring as a result. So I guess anything made out of some kind of metal or pvc tubing hooked up to wooden horizontal areas would do okay. But I haven’t had much luck finding anything that was too interesting browsing on-line furniture collections.

So here are the basic requirements.

  • Sturdy enough to support moving without breaking
  • Strong enough to support my Dell 21″ monitor
  • Corner desk (the above mentioned monitor likes to be in the corner so it isn’t three inches from the edge of the desk)
  • the monitor should be raised, so it is at the right eye level.
  • Plenty of horizontal surface area for all of my crap
  • I think I like to take advantage of the vertical as well, for storage, some sort of hutch or shelving system
  • Something that is smart and puts computer parts where I can reach them would be nice.
  • need something quickly.

My current thought, is the only way I will meet all my needs inexpensively is to build something myself. But to meet the quickness demand, I will probably have to buy something crappy temporarily, which will eventually make it’s way to the basement, after I can build the ultimate desk.

Anyone have any desk suggestions? Or even some suggestions on how to build a desk?

Posted in Hacker | 3 Comments »

Iraqi Freedom?

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004

Well it seems we are running out of justification for the war (undeclared but allowed by those wusses in congress) against Iraq.

Here is a quick recap. 1. Saddam Hussein has weapons of Mass Destruction, he may even have or be currently obtaining nuclear weapons. 2. Saddam Hussein and Iraq have ties to the Al Queda terrorist network. 3. The Iraqi people are oppressed by an evil dictator led regime.

Okay so far we have basically established that 1 and 2 were flat out lies made up by the current administration and George W. Bush. And if there isn’t undisputible proof that they are lies, there certainly is no information that proves that they are not lies. At best they are gross overstatements, used to manipulate the polls and the citizens to support an unjustified war.

So the propaganda machine has been pushing the third point for a while now, pounding their chests about how they have liberated the Iraqi people and provided them freedom. However, there was a quite a price to be paid, first there are estimates that there were about 10,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, more than three times the human destruction that occured on September 11th, 2001. (source: Iraq Body Count).

And now it seems while there has been a vaccum established in the power structure, of the Iraqi government, and we all know how nature abhors such things. So it seems the religious groups in Iraq our currently seizing power. The Shia and Sunni among others are clamoring to assume the power and have now filled in the missing opression. So if our real goal was to “free” the people of Iraq, we aren’t doing so well. You can listen to the story from NPR’s Morning Edition from March 23, 2004, if you want to hear a report regarding the opressive religious forces that are seizing power in Iraq.

I would be much more respectful of the leadership if they would stop lying about everything. The only feasible reason for the war, and the only successful part of the operation is the ensured continued flow of the Oil that is in Iraq.

Those of you who really, really want to vote for George Bush again in November, please take five minutes and research some of his claims, and what great good he is going to provide for our nation. Does a man who is fully controlled by the big energy corporations really serve the greater good?

Posted in Finance | 1 Comment »