Don’t be jealous

Last week the signs went up on my street that said “No Parking” “Tow-away” “We’re fargin’ serious and we got backhoes“.
I had known that something was going to be dug up since the USA guys had been out writing on the street, identifying the underground lines.
Sure enough, they came and this was the scene in front of the house next door.


Yep, they are running fiber optic cable to my street. And the main junction box is about 50 feet from my front door!
Fiber to the home baby!
I talked to the guys doing the work and they says it’s a telco, probably Verizon that has contracted them to do the install. I’m guessing that within 6 months or so, it will be lit up.
For those not so tech saavy, fiber to the home is a new kind of data connection like a cable modem or DSL, except the speeds are much higher. The expected minimums for fiber are 15 Mb/s download and 2 Mb/s upload. That’s TEN times faster than the typical DSL line.

The Man Who Would Be King

One of my most favorite movies is The Man Who Would Be King, a movie based on Rudyard Kipling’s novel, that starred Sean Connery and Michael Caine as British soldiers that march into Afganistan and carve out a kingdom.
Several months ago, we were ‘testing’ a conference room at work that had HDTV for an upcoming presentation and The Man Who Would Be King was on in HD. I extolled the virtues of the film. It looked damn good in HD.
A few weeks later, Brad presented me with a book about the real life inspiration for the story.
The Man Who Would Be King (The First American in Afghanistan) – Ben MacIntyre
The book is a history of Josiah Harlan, an American adventurer that went to the heart of Asia and literally become king. In the early 1800s, there were still many places on the globe that were hard to get to and where western civilization had little influence.
Harln left from Pennsylvania to travel the world ended up in India. At the time, India was under the control of Britain. To the north was Afganistan, a place of warfare and tribal control. To Harlan, this was a place to make his own name.
The book goes through the details of exactly how he did this. At one point Harlan was the Prince of Ghor, a huge area. The claim exists today and hs great, great, great, grandson was recently made aware of his royal lineage.
The story is interesting, but the book is a history textbook. I can be a bit slow, but for an avid reader of history like myself, it is a good choice. I needed a break from the spate of sci-fi I had been reading.

The people spoke

Well, the election is over but the counting is not done. It’s not over till the fat lady sings says my father, but the truth is that the voting didn’t go the way I had hoped.
I was wrong in hoping that a strong turnout would break Kerry’s way.
I was wrong that Bush’s base wouldn’t increase.
I was right that the vote wouldn’t be close. Unfortunately it’s something like 3 million votes for the wrong guy.
Yesterday, I was cautiously optimistic about the voting when I heard of the turnout. When I got home from work I surfed the net around 7PM and there was no real news at that point. Knowing that nothing was to be gained by fretting over the TV news, I played games for a couple hours.
To try to get my mind off the idea of losing, I watched the Daily Show and headed off to bed around 10:30. The results wouldn’t be known till the wee hours, so I didn’t even check the net or the TV news.
Once in bed, the thoughts of the election raced in my head so I woke up the sleeping wife and made some hot monkey love to get my mind off of politics.
Around 5AM my eyes popped open and I could lay in bed any longer. Heading up front, I put on CSPAN and was disheartened. Bush had a huge lead in the popular vote and it was down to calling Ohio, even though Bush led the tally in Ohio.
Well, the voters spoke. I’m sure it will be debated what happened for the next four years, but as of today, I know how the Dole supporters felt in 1996.
Damn this sucks…

Your duty today is to vote



The Flag on Election Day, originally uploaded by Argyle.

For over two hundred years, American have worked and fought for your right to vote.

Today, your duty is to vote.

Other things can wait, your country needs you today and you must answer it’s call.

Halloween

Just finished the dishes, the girls are asleep, and the trick or treaters have stopped appearing at the door. Time to wind down from a long weekend.


The girls had a great time today and happily have the day off from school tomorrow.
Me? I gotta work…