go...

i did it because it made me look cool

Went climbing this weekend, some pictures here.
Also, I tried to do somethign cool with the code there, but it might just be annoying, if anybody cares tell me what you think about the rolling over image map thing.

I Guess This Ends the Genetic Engineering Debate

It Is Now A Matter of Public Record

he said it

THE LONESTAR STATE (IS BORING)

Early last week I found out that I would be taking a 5 day trip to Dallas Texas for a Six Sigma training class. I've never been to the lone star state; the state of belt buckles (large), metal tipped belts, cowboy boots, and a bunch of guys who remind you of Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen. I figured, "Hey, this could be interesting."

Granted, I am staying in a plush Westin hotel - and that very well may dwindle a mans motivation to explore by an order of magnitude. You have a bed fit for a king, a full service, delivery bar thats only a phone call away, and a 27 inch flat screen television.

I didn't even go outside until Wednesday night . I checked in Monday.

Lists of 3 things. Thats what I'm using tonight. I'm using them over and over again.

****example of using Extended Entry feature below. (for you dumbasses you write books for posts)****

Yeah Well, that story wasn't really going anywhere.

Blah blah, I went to the gym. Blah, I watched the OC and drank wine in my room. I wandered around downtown Dallas and didnt see a single human being for 20 minutes. Yeah. If you could change the channel you probably would.

Last weekend I went to Syracuse for the basketball game. It was a last minute decision. Kwas and Troy had been pushing my buttons about it for a few weeks. I just made up excuses for no reason, happily spending my weekends in Starbucks and left couch. I figure it was time for me to stop being such a douchebag.

Troy picked me up on Friday afternoon around 4pm. It was going to be a 4 hour trip at the minimun, but during a friday rush hour, we had to find the least congested road. We decided to take route 17 to Binghamton, then hook up with 81 for the remainder of the trip. 17 is highway, but is oddly littered with trippy-ass strobing stoplights.

We rolled into Cuse at around 9pm. I used some hotel points to get us a room at the Sheraton on the Hill for Friday night. That night we went out to Faegan's...for starters. We met up with Kwas and Darrell there; I hadn't seen either of them since Bruce's wedding in September. I knew that one of Lisa's (ex-girlfriend) friends was going to be there, but I happened to run into most of the 2002 SU Dance Team, which was a nice surprise considering I hadn't seen Erin in about 2 years.

After a few beers at Faegan's, Troy, Darrell and I wandered over to Darwin's where we ordered by the pitcher. More old friends, more beer. Rinse, repeat. Drunken hot sorority girls, soaking wet bathroom floors, pint glasses piled up on the back of the toilet - It was all that I remembered and cherished.

After meeting back up with Kwas, we made our way to Lucy's Retired Surfer Bar. We engaged in several games of darts while Darrell and I reapeadly wandered over to the bar to hit on a few 30 something girls who were sitting in front of a sausage packed pancake griddle drinking coronas (im serious).

We were definitely drunk when we left that place, but the night was far from over.

more to come.... (its just the the end of the OC, they never show the lesbo action until next week . AND yes, im wiriting short, choppy sentences. I'm not even proofreading, but I don't really care. (you say, he's trying to look like such a badass - I say, badasses have better things to do than write blog posts - I simply have NOTHING better to do. Hey everyone, read me pour out my bullshit to you in volumes. Left we GO.)

Now I Want This

When we got into this business, we believed our computers could be a heads-up display like you might have in a giant robot or F-14 fighter jet, with a variety of diagnostic displays, glowing panels and pulsing lights, gears, levers, locking echelons and a toolbox of makeshift and infinitely customizable power tools available for us to use in crafting ingenious patchwork solutions to whatever dire situation beckoned to us with cold fingers from the door of impending doom.
It isn't like that, and we sure are pissed.

My vomit and pictures

So I've been sick for 13 days now. At first I thought it was just a little cold but the sore throat persisted. Then the coughing started and hasn't stopped since. I can feel a patch on my throat that is burning with the fire of a giant red sun. Not to mention the oddly colored inner things which keep coming up. The cold air outside makes me cough. The dry air at work makes me cough. The regular air at home makes me cough. I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is cough. Hot tomato soup is the best invention ever, I've decided this past week.

I've decided that I have some sort of viral infection, so I'm going to need to see a doctor in order to get antibiotics. For those of you who care, I'm going to see my doctor today, so rest assured. But in the meantime, I feel like shit. I woke up yesterday morning, coughed, and thought, I don't even want to get out of bed, let alone go to work and talk to people. But I went to work anyway becasue I'm a sucker and people from corporate were in town. They took me to lunch; how nice of them. I had a ceaser salad with grilled chicken. It was good. But only this first time through. I went home after work and had some tuna on crackers for dinner. I haven't had any kind of appetite, obviously, but a few hours later I got a craving for peanut butter. So I toasted some bread, spread the PB and ate. We all know how many crumbs toast produces. We know this going in, the risks associated with crumbs, but we forge ahead anyway. At least I do. I refuse to be a slave to my fears. Well, in this particular instance, maybe some caution should have been heeded. I was taking the last bite and it felt like a small crumb attached itself to the side of my throat and wouldn't come lose. This caused me to cough. and cough. and cough. All kinds of coughing. Loud, boastful coughs, dry coughs, yelping, high pitched coughs, wet coughs, vomit coughs... It was the last kind, where I would cough up big resevoirs of loogie. Biggest loogies ever, coming out of Mike, last night.

I had been standing over the sink the entire time becuase, as usual, with coughing, comes spitting. Its not pretty, most of the time, but its a fact. That coughing fit lasted for about 15 minutes, at the end of which my throat felt no better. I was now convinced that this crumb was not a crumb at all and that this patch of fire in my throat was spreading. To be sure, however, I tried to find out if I could just fish it out with my finger. It didn't work, my gag reflexes are more finely tuned than those of your common porn star, and I couldn't get one knuckle into my throat before I started coughing it out. I thought to myself, well, I'm not coughing anymore, so I guess I'll just have to live with this. I turned around to put a teapot of water over fire to make some tea. I picked the teapot up, set it down and then turned around as quickly as possible so I could vomit in the sink. It happened within a matter of 2 seconds.

I vomited three times. I defined a "time" by breaths. Once that reverse peristalsis gets goin, there's no stopping it. You just have to let it flow. So the first time it stopped, I was able to sneak in a couple of quick breaths before the second wave or "tsunami" came. I had my eyes open the whole time, watching my ceaser salad, tuna, and bread, all mixed together into some kind of watery mush, pour out of my mouth. It was so disgusting. Here, I took a picture for you to see for yourself. So I closed my eyes during the second vomit which lasted about 5 seconds. While I had my eyes closed I thought about how ironic it would be if watching myself vomit would disgust me so much that it would make me vomit.

Well, I can't tell you if it was due to watching myself vomit or if it was simply a continuation of the current vomiting, but of course, I had to do it again. At this point, I wasn't so much disgusted any more, but rather simply anxious for this all to end. I thought to myself, "does this mean I'm going to be really hungry now?"

Watching yourself vomit, or rather, waiting to stop vomiting, is very awkward. It reminded me of keeping your eyes open while kissing a girl. It just seems weird and out of place. Not to mention, rancid. At least for the girls I kiss. I don't even know what that means.

Anyhoo... I've decided to keep a running count of days until I vomit again. I suspect there will be many, so this isn't something I'm going to think about until I vomit again, but let the record show that the last time was February 9, 2005.

Beware! This post MAY be about BOOKS

After speaking with Jon, I decided to post this excerpt from academia. I figured while I am already writing papers for class, I might as well post them since you working people probably have nothing better to do than read this. Also, it will increase my number of posts which will make me seem more manly to some. If you wish me to stop posting stuff like this, just say so and I will. Otherwise, this is a reaction paper for my independent study class. It is not graded, we meet once every two weeks, and I read two books then I write a short paper stating what struck me about the books. Pretty sweet assignment. Read or don't read, but here it is.

All Our Relations: Native Struggles For Land and Life. By Winona LaDuke.

Walleye Warriors: The Chippewa Treaty Rights Story. By Walt Bresette and Rick Whaley.

These two books deal with similar issues: the struggle for self-determination among native groups, and co-management of natural resources as a method of environmental protection. By tying the natural environment to traditional native culture, LaDuke’s All Our Relations: Native Struggles For Land and Life presents various case studies to show how native groups have fought ecological and cultural degradation at the hands of U.S. government organizations and multinational corporations. In Walleye Warriors: The Chippewa Treaty Rights Story, Bresette and Whaley detail the events surrounding the Chippewa off-reservation fishing treaty rights struggle during the late 1980s and early 1990s in northern Wisconsin. By shedding light on the underlying existing economic and social tensions, in Wisconsin during these violent years, the authors relate this local concern for treaty rights to what they see as the inherent problems of a global economic market. Both accounts pose many larger questions, some of which will only be answered by time itself. There is, in each book, an overriding sense of optimism and hope that rests on people from different cultures, races, and histories working together to create real and lasting solutions to environmental problems with global consequences.

There were several things which struck me while reading LaDuke’s book. First, in each chapter, she describes a completely avoidable situation that has “happened to” a native group within the United States. Issues ranging from contaminated breast milk, to inedible salmon, to the extinction of numerous species provide the reader with shocking figures of modern day conditions within native communities and their lands. Realizing this is a book written by a well known social and environmental activist, one must be careful to separate facts from political rhetoric. I had little trouble doing so in this book because LaDuke uses statistics, interviews, government documents, and scientific research to validate her claims.
My initial reaction to the majority of All Our Relations was, “This is shocking.” While attempting to remain emotionally neutral and read this book from an academic standpoint, I focused more on the individual leaders, methods, and solutions to problems. In doing so, I realized that all of the grassroots leaders were women; some formally educated, others not. This writing contrasts with most of the books I’ve read about the Red Power movement of the 1970s. Women’s roles were generally downplayed or ignored, while the more flamboyant and charismatic male leaders were lauded by the media and scholars for their actions. I found this to be a telling sign of how the scholarship has changed in recent years, as well as how women’s roles are becoming more publicly acknowledged.
The most positive aspect of this collection is the adaptive solutions enacted by these native groups to survive under recent abuses. While LaDuke begins each chapter with a discussion of what “happened to” these groups, she proudly ends by describing how native peoples are continuously overcoming the odds. For example, facing timber depletion, Native Harvest and White Earth Land Recovery Project reclaimed White Earth land and developed sustainable reservation businesses that employ and train White Earth tribal members. Native groups in near Yellowstone banded together to stop the slaughter of buffalo in an attempt to revive the herds of the great plains. Focusing on positive local changes that can serve as examples in the wider global arena is an important aspect of this book.
LaDuke challenges us (the U.S. Government, Tribal Councils, activists, humanity) to “transform human laws to match natural laws, not vice versa.” Additionally, “America and industrial society must move from a society based on conquest to one steeped in the practice of survival.” She cites Walt Bresette’s “Seventh Generation Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution and calls for our generation to consider the impact of the seventh generation from now. I cannot think of a piece of legislation in modern history that has applied this line of thinking. Modern technology and policy changes so rapidly that our society has always focused on solutions for the short-term. LaDuke warns unless our philosophy changes, all we will be left with is the short-term.

My first reaction to Walleye Warriors: The Chippewa Treaty Rights Story was to compare the book to Messages From Frank’s Landing, by Charles Wilkinson, which dealt with the 1973 Boldt Decision and treaty-fishing rights in the Puget Sound region. Both cases were strikingly similar, but Walleye Warriors provided a much more in-depth look at the events in Wisconsin. One of the main themes of this book is the need for “Euro-Americans” and Indians to work together. It is fitting that the book is co-authored by Walt Bresette (Chippewa) and Rick Whaley (Euro-American leader of the Witness group).
I was initially surprised that the landmark Boldt Decision and its violent aftermath had not served as a better warning for the events in Wisconsin. Almost twenty years later, the same abuses, racism, and violence against native communities was occurring. I was dumbfounded by some of the descriptions of the protestors, and the basis for their claims. The Chippewa’s miniscule take of the fish population was blamed for Wisconsin’s lagging economy, and the Indians were viewed as wanting extra rights and special treatment. Bresette and Whaley’s treatment of the protestor’s ignorance is actually quite objective, blaming the state’s education system and the state institutions and anti-treaty organizations for aiming for the public’s sore spots: the economy and loss of tourism. While this misinformation campaign masked the real issues, the protests erupted on the lakes and the Chippewa and their allies began a campaign based on non-violence and community education to change the minds of the public and the courts.
Similarly to when I read LaDuke’s book, I was appalled at some of the statements made and actions taken by the protestors. I must have lived a sheltered childhood, because I was shocked at the level of blind and ignorant racism portrayed by the protestors and public officials during this campaign. It both angered and confused me more when I realized this was only 15 years ago--well into my lifetime.
What also struck me about this book was the continuous reliance on non-violence by the Chippewa and the Witnesses. When compared to AIM and the actions of the Red Power Era, I realized just how different these two situations and players involved were. The treaty-supporters made genuine strides for unity among the citizens in Wisconsin, and hoped to open their eyes to the true problems occurring within the state: economic hardship, job loss, and mismanagement of environmental resources. Once the Indians stopped serving as a scapegoat, the “Euro-Americans” and the Chippewa could work together to solve problems that affected both groups equally.
Another topic I found interesting was the state courts’ rulings. When the subject was social/civil rights, the rulings generally favored the Chippewa. When the case involved resource management or claims monetary compensation, the rulings were unfavorable. Bresette and Whaley assert the Chippewa would be perfectly equipped to co-manage the resources surrounding their reservation. With the amount of resources found on modern tribal lands, the idea that the enforcement of treaties is a powerful method of environmental protection was intriguing.
One can only conclude from Walleye Warriors that although many strides have been taken since the civil rights movement began, social equality does not equate to economic equality or access to resources. Additionally, the nature of the reservation system and the century old treaties are problematic in determining the validity of sovereignty claims in the U.S. court system.
Both All Our Relations and Walleye Warriors showcase the determination of native groups to adapt and survive in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While each focuses on local issues, the ideas expressed can and should be placed in a global context. They both serve as a warning to our generation that we must change our ways and , in doing so, secure our survival together.

Still Waiting

So I inadvertently stumbled into the role of secretary/bitch this week at work, and now I’m waiting for the higher-ups to look at this Word document that I updated and formatted for them. What started as my doing a co-worker a favor by assuming his duties as scribe for a meeting has turned into unanticipated work and the dreaded waiting-game. I was innocently sitting in on the pre-meeting for the meeting that I volunteered to scribe for and some people realized that this performance assessment model that they had prepared for some Government folks looked like crap. Who would have the courage to step in at the last minute and edit this document? Who would become the Microsoft Office Alchemist and turn this seemingly worthless document into one with value-add? You guessed it. They told me what to change and I changed it, and then they told me again, and so I changed it again. That happened a few more times and now here I am, at the 25th hour. I really want to go home, but do I dare ask if I can go home? I think I have done all that I can with the damn thing; I have nothing to do with the contents so I think I am exonerated from having to do additional work. But I feel that I will be revealing my true character as a slacker if I were to ask to go home. Do I make a good impression and hang out at the office a bit longer or do I go home and tell them that they can reach me by e-mail or cell-phone? Tough call for someone as indecisive as myself. Dammit.