Poked.net

ROT13, and no I haven't.

Tentative Schedule:

Dec. 27, depart dulles international airport
Dec. 28, Arrive Helsinki, Finland
Dec. 29-Jan 5, Moscow
Dec 31, Bus tour to Suzdal for New Year's Eve Celebration; Monastery stay
Jan 6-10, St. Petersburg
Jan 11, Depart for Estonia; tour multiple Baltic coastal small towns
Jan 12, Tartu, Estonia or Island of Saaremaa
Jan 13, Tallinn, Estonia
Jan 14, Tallinn, Estonia; Ferry across Baltic to Helsinki
Jan 15, Depart Helsinki for US

Some planned activities, just a few thus far:
City tours of Moscow, Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallinn; tour of vodka distillery, St. Petersburg Museum of Art, Russian ballet, rural agriculture and forest products tour, several cultural programs such as a visit to Lenin's tomb, tour a greek orthodox church, and several other environmental and economic activities.


Meet the Teachers
Dr. Milman, native of Moscow, professor of russian with a PhD in slavic languages. Has published textbooks on russian language. Has translated for Gorbachev in the past.

John Boyer, geography department, has won the National Council for Geographic Education Distinguished Teaching Achivement Award, and the Virginia Tech Sporn Award for Excellence in Teaching. Participated in the presitgious Fulbright-Hays Seminar Abroad Program in India and Sri Lanka.


Now, from what I've been told, the weather goes down as low as -50 at times where we will be. Also, I've been told that New Years in Moscow is a party to rival all new year's parties. From what I hear, its so big buildings are burnt down. Mmm.

First Legal Beer

Strangely enough, it tastes the same as the illegal ones. Fortunately it doesn't taste any worse, because I can never go back to the illegal ones.

Thanks Jen.

Wow, Iden just brought over his new kitten and let us play with it while he ran a couple errands. It's so cute, so we made sure to make it into a lean mean string chasing machine. It either enjoys playing with us or hates us for making it use literally all it's available energy. Anyway, I would love to have a cat. I'd feel bad though as my place isn't exactly ideal for one (its small, and full of sharp metal objects). Oh, and Yud may end up putting pictures of the kitten up at some point (aka, whenever his g/f leaves).

The only thing that bothers me about the california election is that the way it is looking, more people will have voted to leave Davis in office than voted to put Schwarzenegger there. Davis needed >50% of the votes to stay in office, Schwarzenegger just needed about 30% to ensure a win. Thats a minority rule, and just reminds me terribly of the history class lesson that Hitler won on a minority vote that held the popular majority.

Other than that, I don't think Davis was doing a good job and I suspect Schwarzenegger may be the best candidate - so the outcome looks decent.

LOL - Sent to me by my grandfather:

STOCKS
If you had bought $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00. With Enron, you would have $16.50 left of the original $1,000.00. With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left. If you had bought $1,000.00 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10-cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

Based on the above, my current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle. This is my new retirement program, I call it my 401-Keg program.

I think this would be the perfect thing for stealing the hope. Life-sized his and her robots that can be programmed to do your bidding. And nicely priced for a hope diamond theft at only $400,000.

A very interesting blog: Public Defender Dude - The rantings of a Public Defender constantly fighting against society's pervasive Police Industrial Complex. Enjoy the unique perspective of one who's life's work is to fight the system through the system.

Right now, Moisa is using my cd burner to burn files that are on his hard drive - directly. All over the local network. Gotta love linux. Now, the day that we can rip dvd's on dan's machine, encode on spencers, and burn on mine - all in a stream, thats when I'll be satisfied.

The hope diamond glows in the dark - Man, I really have to steal this thing.

You can finally say you've achieved something when you can go to google and search for:
something cool
And you get your own website back as the 4th result.