Fiat Lux

We're back safely from Rome. We had a fantastic time.

I kept a travel diary, which I will be uploading over the next few days, plus shot 6 rolls of film which I will also upload. Please be patient!

For 7 years, a very nice cappuchino machine has been sitting unopened on our shelves. It was a wedding gift we registered for (thanks Dexter!), but for one reason or another we never got around to using it. Today, with the memory of the excellent coffee of Rome fresh in our heads, I finally cracked it open.

Success! Perfect espresso and froth. Using our friend Ben's excellent Costa Rican coffee didn't hurt.

Now I'm going to drink it and read some headlines while it's still hot.

No great surprise I suppose, but it's looking more and more obvious that Condoleezza Rice wasn't exactly truthful in her testimony before the 9/11 panel this week, if today's Washington Post report is to be believed. We'll know for sure if (when?) the White House does release the PDB in question, but from all the leaks coming out, it certainly doesn't sound like simply 'historical' material as it was described to the committee.

That said, I am by no means certain that 9/11 could have been prevented. It's possible that an increased focus on domestic terrorism in the months leading up to 9/11 could have shaken loose enough of the data we had to "connect the dots" but it is by no means a sure thing.

What upsets me is that this administration is trying to take an attitude of total blamelessness for 9/11. Failures were "systemic". Intellignece was not specific enough to be actionable. Principals were not asked to take actions. (Side note - maybe this is a Washington thing, but aren't principals supposed to be the ones who decide to take actions, instead of waiting for their staff to tell them what to do?). Instead of saying, as Richard Clarke did, "We screwed up, we're sorry." they are saying, "We couldn't have prevented it, so there's nothing to apologize for." That's not good enough.

Arrogance is nothing new for this administration. But this is a time when it rings particularly sour.

Trying to grind a half-pound of coffee in the Cuisinart because your coffee grinder won't hold that much = a good way to waste time and coffee.

I installed Gallery today as part of the preparations for getting the Rome photos online (they're being developed currently). Gallery, like Movable Type, is an excellent freeware application with more features than you can shake a stick at, and lots of room for plug-ins and customizing.

It was a very smooth install; the only hitch being I had to upgrade my Java VM before I was able to run the Gallery Remote tool that makes bulk uploading of pictures MUCH easier. I used one of the included skins, which doesn't really match the color theme for this blog, but it's cute. Over time I may tweak the CSS some to bring them closer in line, but this is a personal site, so 100% consistancy in look & feel is not my most important priority.

There's a link the the galleries over on the right side of this blog, or you can see them here. Pix from Rome should go online in the next couple of days.

I was going to blog about President Bush's press conference last night -- his total unwillingness to give a straight answer to any question being just the least of it -- but as I reviewed a transcript this morning prior to posting, I decided why bother. It's too depressing and today's my day off, I want to enjoy myself.

I'll just link to a recent Paul Krugman column on the Iraq mess that I find particularly apt.

I finally got the 120+ photos from Rome captioned and uploaded. Click on the photo gallery link to the right or here if you're lazy to check them out.

I'm back to 6 day work weeks but hope to get the travelogue uploaded within the next week as well.

American troop deaths in Iraq this month now number more than 90, and there's still 11 days to go before the month ends. Yet in just 10 weeks, the US is supposed to hand over soverignity of Iraq over -- although to whom is far from clear.

This would all be funny if it weren't so terrible. It makes me feel like we're trapped, like a mouse caught on a glue trap, nothing to choose from except bad alternatives, and what's worse is that it all could have been prevented.

And now people like Paul Bremer, as well as most of the military in Iraq, seem to think that only more violence is going to break this bad cycle and fix things. Have they learned nothing from the history of the Middle East this past 100 years? Increasing the violence is only going to breed more violence.

This is the kind of crap that makes me feel bad to be an American.

I've been pretty down recently, so everything is looking like I'm seeing it through shades of gray. Still, I'm more than a little saddened by the current Doonesbury strip sequence, in which longtime character B.D. (who was shipped off to Iraq last year) has been gravely wounded. And for the first time (perhaps ever) in the strip, B.D. is seen without his helmet.

Maybe Doonesbury is just cynically exploiting the war to prop up his ratings (although I doubt that). Most likely, he's trying to dramatize this difficult issue by bringing it "home" to the Doonesbury family.

The strips (three so far) are gripping and immediate. B.D. has just been wounded and is fighting for his life. Doonesbury deliberately lets all the voice bubbles in the strips float loose, not tied to any one character, to emphasize the disorientation and chaos of the event. A nice touch. The only thing missing is any sign of blood -- but I suppose that might be too graphic.

At any rate, whether it's because I'm depressed or because they're good (or both) these strips have gotten to me. They're worth a look, even if you're not a Doonesbury fan.

To top it off, Senator Chuck Hagel goes onto CNN to say it might be time to reinstate the draft. "If we've got a generational war then all of us should take some responsibility for this country if it is a nation at war," is how he put it.

And another 10 American troops have died in Iraq since my last post here.

Since Vietnam, presidents have been concerned (and rightfully so) that their military antics would lose support once the public started to see the bodies of US soldiers arriving home in flag-draped caskets.

The Bush administration installed a simple solution: It ended the public boradcast of those images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings.

Well, thanks Matt Drudge, and screw the Bushies. This is the price we're paying for the Bush/Cheney fixation on Iraq:

PS - the person who originally took those photos has lost her job.

Time to lighten things up a bit. Coming this weekend: Iron Chef America.

Batali, Puck, Flay ... and NO William Shatner. The TiVo is already programmed. This should be fun.

Couldn't sleep, so I was browsing the news sites this morning. I came across this gem from Salt Lake City: No-Carb Eating Couple Booted From Buffet.

Roast beef was the issue. As Reuters put it, "when [customer] Amaama went up for his 12th slice, the manager asked Amaama to stop." Chaos ensued.

What rational person is going to think they're controlling their weight by eating that much food? 'Oh, but it's low carb!' you hear the cry. 'Cut out the carbs and you can eat anything you want and still lose weight!'.

I call bullshit.

If each slice of roast beef averaged a mere 2 ounces, that's just under a pound and a half of meat eaten. Let's look at the calories in that (you remember calories, right?). According to the handy guide at http://www.calorie-count.com/, 3 ounces of cooked beef, all fat removed, has 232 calories. So those 11 slices of roast beef contained approximately 1700 calories - more if my estimate of a 2-ounce slice is too small or if all the fat had not been trimmed off.

It passes my understanding how people can think this is a good way to lose weight. The FDA recommends consuming approximately 2000 calories a day, depending on a person's age and activity level. You can bet dollars to doughnuts (if you'll pardon the carb-laden expression) that this goober ate much more than just 11 slices of roast beef that day. Whether he was excercising regularly or had an active lifestyle wasn't mentioned in the article, so perhaps I'm doing the guy a disservice. Maybe he mountain bikes to work every day and rarely sits down on the job. But somehow, I suspect that's not the case.

You want to lose weight? It's simple but it's not easy. Burn more calories than you consume. How you do that is up to you. Excercise or don't, eat carbs or not - it doesn't matter, as long as your net calorie count is negative, you'll get lighter.

Maybe I should write my own diet manual. Call it "The Sanity Plan." I'd make millions, quit my job, and spend my days doing book tours and being pampered. With merchandising tie-ins (I see 'I want sanity' t-shirts, maybe kitchen products), perhaps a chain of Sanity fitness centers, I'd be set for life.

Unfortunately, most of America is not ready for sanity. And people (I do not exclude myself) are generally lazy. They really want the magic fix-it that's going to let them do as little as possible and still shed pounds. Sanity is too hard.

Ah well. Time to brew some coffee and get ready for work.

Lately I've fallen into what I consider a bad habit. Each morning around 5:00 AM, I wake up and can't get back to sleep. Unfortunately, that's about 2 hours earlier than I'd like to be waking up, so I'm not getting enough sleep.

I suspect it's stress related and hope that it will soon pass, but right now it's annoying. Being tired adds to stress, and that's the last thing I need this week.

Wish it were a more upbeat one.

I blew a 3rd interview today. After some 2 hours of talk, the interviewer gently told me I was not the right candidate for the position and was kind enough to tell me why. The fact that I was going up against 2 internal candidates for the job was one factor. The other (and more telling) one was that I was so obviously burned out and unhappy that he couldn't be sure whether I really wanted to work for his company or if I just wanted to get away from where I was now.

And he was right.

Being tired and burned out is one thing. But if it's impacting my ability to not only do my current job, but to get other jobs, I need to get out now.

I'm giving notice tomorrow.

Tonight, I'm going to have a big glass of wine and try to not feel sorry for myself.