Older blog entries for jlbec (starting at number 34)

raph:

I don't know about ThinkPad 600s, but I am currently on my third battery for my Toshiba Tecra8000. Every year (just about on the dot in June) my battery dies and starts discharging extremely fast. One week it lasts two hours, the next one hour, the next 10 minutes.

I asked the support person about this, and he told me that it was a common problem. They basically expect that the battery will stop behaving after a year. Note that the battery warranty is about a year.

I have a disease.

I have this software project. It's pretty complete. So what am I doing? Writing documentation! I have a whitepaper, a reference, and half of a tutorial.

What is wrong with me?

DV:

Cats are essential.

raph:

I've heard the apartheid comparison before, and it depresses me that people take it seriously. If apartheid in South Africa were repealed, the newly empowered population would take their place in society, and South African people, white and black, would do their best to improve the country for everyone. This is, in fact, largely what happened.

If the Israelis totally free these camps, the newly empowered population would respond by murdering Israelis.

It's not the same situation. Jewish settlers live in homes vacated when the residents fled to Jordan during the War of Independance. They left of their own free will, and when Jordan turned them out, they came back.

Does this mean that Israel manages the refugee camps in the best way possible? No. The Israeli government has the impetus to do something, anything to protect the populace. A governemnt that even appears to fail to do so will be voted out in favor of one that does. This is a risk of Parlimentary democracies, and is in fact the reason a hawk like Sharon is in power. The situation needs to be remedied such that a government that does not counter murder with violence can keep its power. To do the "right" thing, the Israeli government must watch its citizens be murdered and not retaliate as it has recently. It is easy for us to say that from here, but it is not when every night you find someone you knew is dead because they felt like going out to eat.

The black people of South Africa never claimed that they wanted to run the white people out of the country or kill them. They merely wanted equal standing under the law. The situation is not the same, and to compare it belies the murder that has been done in the name of the Palestinian people.

The only possible solution for the Middle East is one that creates an environment where Hamas and the like cannot exist. An environment where Israel, the Palestinian state, and the states around them all persecute such groups. that environment is far off, especially since the current Palestinian leadership supports the actions of such groups.

As long as their charter and there actions read "We will not rest until the state of Israel is destroyed and the Israelis are dead or gone", this will be an untenable situation.

Taxes suck.

I'm bored.

You konw what? I don't weblog. I never weblog. I think it is for the same reason I've slowed down entries in my notebook: I don't want to set down for posterity some of what I am thinking.

It might offend some people. It might reach just the wrong ear. Heck, it might just be too personal. I guess there is a problem with not venting, but quite frankly, I find the alternative even more dangerous.

21 Mar 2002 (updated 21 Mar 2002 at 22:14 UTC) »

The XML-RPC interface to Advogato would be more fun if the documentation mentioned how to get a diary object :-)

later...

Ok, duh, but it wasn't clear on first pass that the diary object is server.diary. Don't mind me, just update the doc :-)

I don't understand the IRA.

Why are they giving up their weapons? The Palestinians have proved that if you kill enough innocent people, the UN will give you whatever you want. It would seem to me that the IRA merely needs to blow up more people more often to obtain their goal of a united Ireland.

I have a lot I want to say.

I have a lot of anger. Most of it is directed at those who did the unspeakable, but some reserved for those who would say this country is "reaping what we sow".

I don't want to flame friends and neighbors. I don't have the energy. I can't say what I want to say right now. It's too much.

Instead I will leave a small part of what Dave Barry had to say.

I'm not naive about my country. My country is definitely not always right; my country has at times been terribly wrong. But I know this about Americans: We don't set out to kill innocent people. We don't cheer when innocent people die.

Mad props to uzi, yosh, Doris, Sunil, and Jane. Amy and I are moving to SF proper, and they helped us run six carloads of stuff up to the new place. Thank &deity for good people.

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