Archive for December, 2006
As 2006 draws to an close, i have tallied up the air miles that i have flown this year. Prior to 2006, i was averaging at least 120,000 miles a year for four consecutive years. The total flight miles for 2006 is 53,490 on 43 flights, less than half the average of the previous years. In comparison, i did 126,490 flight miles on 84 flights in 2005.
A direct consequence of this sharply reduced flight miles is that i won’t reach the Platinum elite status on Northwest for 2007. That sucks.
These are the cities that i have flown to this year: Boston (2x), Detroit (3x), San Jose (4x), Tokyo (2x), Hong Kong (3x), Fuzhou (China), Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru (Malaysia), Washington DC, Phoenix (7x), Portland and Seattle.
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Ever since i received my replacement Xbox 360 console from Microsoft, the noise from using the DVD drive has been unbearable. Unless i turn up the volume when playing a game, the noisy drive is extremely distracting. Watching a DVD using Xbox 360? With the amount of noise coming out of that piece of crap, you can forget it.
Compare the ambient noise with the one when the Xbox 360 DVD drive is engaged:
Ambient noise:
Ambient noise
Xbox 360 DVD drive:
DVD drive on Xbox 360
Because of this noisy drive, my Xbox 360 has been collecting dust for the last few 5 months. I didn’t want to send my Xbox 360 back to Microsoft because it’s past its 90-day warranty period. So this recent announcement from Microsoft in extending the warranty from 90 days to a year is a welcome news for me. Needless to say, the first thing i did after reading this news was to contact Microsoft. My Xbox 360 is going back to Microsoft.
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That’s what the departing Microsoft Windows development chief Jim Allchin wrote, in a 2004 email to Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. In his comment regarding the quote, Jim explained that it was “a rant encouraging a change to the way we were building Windows at the time.”
Jim was simply admitting what all Windows users, especially those working at Microsoft, have been wanting to say all along, that they would all buy a Mac!
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The Trap of Recognizing Israel
by Jonathan Cook
December 16 2006
antiwar.com
The problem facing the Palestinian leadership, as they strive to bring the millions living in the occupied territories some small relief from their collective suffering, reduces to a matter of a few words. Like a naughty child who has only to say “sorry” to be released from his room, the Hamas government need only say “We recognize Israel” and supposedly aid and international goodwill will wash over the West Bank and Gaza.
That, at least, was the gist of Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s recent speech during a visit to the Negev, when he suggested that his country’s hand was stretched out across the sands towards the starving masses of Gaza – if only Hamas would repent. “recognize us and we are ready to talk about peace” was the implication.
Certainly the Palestinian people have been viciously punished for making their democratic choice early this year to elect a Hamas government that Israel and the Western powers disapprove of:
- an economic blockade has been imposed, starving the Palestinian Authority of income to pay for services and remunerate its large workforce;
- millions of dollars in tax monies owed to the Palestinians have been illegally withheld by Israel, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis;
- a physical blockade of Gaza enforced by Israel has prevented the Palestinians from exporting their produce, mostly perishable crops, and from importing essentials like food and medicine;
- Israeli military strikes have damaged Gaza’s vital infrastructure, including the supply of electricity and water, as well as randomly killing its inhabitants;
- and thousands of families are being torn apart as Israel uses the pretext of its row with Hamas to stop renewing the visas of Palestinian foreign passport holders.
The magic words “We recognize you” could end all this suffering. So why did their prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, vow last week never to utter them? Is Hamas so filled with hatred and loathing for Israel as a Jewish state that it cannot make such a simple statement of good intent?
Continue reading ‘Jonathan Cook: The Trap of Recognizing Israel’
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I was scared. I wasn’t scared shitless (屁滚尿流) but i was scared. Tonight was the first time in the many years that i have been flying that i was actually worried about the landing.
I already knew before getting on the flight from Phoenix to Seattle that it was going to be really windy in Seattle. The weather forecast was calling for wind up to 90 miles per hour. In fact, the inbound flight was actually delayed by more than one and a half hours because of the windy condition in Seattle. By the time everyone boarded the plane, the captain announced that Sea-Tac airport had put a hold on all the inbound flights to Seattle. So i sat in the plane for an hour before it finally took off.
As the plane got closer to Seattle, i could feel the plane going up and down, like a roller coaster, except for the fact that there was no track to hold the plane down. I knew the damages caused by the wind storm was probably significant because when i looked out of the window, i noticed that half of the normally brightly lighted Evergreen floating bridge (highway 520) was completely dark. As the plane made its final approach to the airport, it got worse. The plane was bouncing up and down, left and right, like a model airplane in the hand of a 5-year old child. The pilots were desperately trying to align the plane with the runway. The woman next to me was holding on dearly to her daughter’s hand. I had both of my hands grabbing onto my thighs.
When the plane finally landed safely on the runway, most of the passengers broke into cheers. “Wow”. That was the first word out of the lead flight attendant’s mouth when the plane landed. This is the second time that i have witnessed passengers applauding after the plane has landed. The other time was when my flight landed in Honolulu - i was totally clueless as of why people were cheering.
When my flight landed at Sea-Tac, the wind was gusting at more than 50 MPH.
Even my ride home from the airport was not uneventful. A portion of West Marginal Way was completed flooded. The police blocked off the flooded area and i could see a half-submerged vehicle with water reaching as high as the windows. The power went out completely for people living along SW Avalon Way.
As i am writing this in my bedroom facing the Puget Sound, i can see flashes around the darkened neighborhood west of my house. Probably trees falling onto powerlines. The light fixtures in my house are blinking and i can hear the UPS for my webserver beeping ever so often.
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Thanks to one jerkass Seattle Rabbi with the Central Organication of Jewish Education, all the Christmas trees at the Sea-Tac Airport have been removed. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, after being threatened with a lawsuit “if the airport did not erect an eight-foot menorah to balance the message of the Christmas trees” because Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky “complained they were offensive”, the Port of Seattle ordered all 15 Christmas trees removed.
People like this Rabbi are the same kind of douchebags who, having nothing else better to do after digging their noses, complain relentlessly about the “Merry Christmas” greeting. So what’s next, all the school cafetarias in the Seattle school district be made kosher because there are some Jewish kids attending the schools?
This is so ridiculous.
Update 12/14/2006
The Christmas trees are back! After receiving hundreds of threatening letters and emails, the Rabbi decided that he was not going to sue the Port of Seattle to force them to put up his Menorah. Soon after, the airport authority put all the Christmas trees back up.
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I do not know James Kim personally. I only know him by watching his reviews of products on cnet.com and also on the cnet tech review on my Tivo. I am not even sure why but somehow what happened to him affected me. There is this deep sense of sadness i felt when his body was found on Wednesday. I was hoping that he would be found alive and be united with his family. A few things came to my mind, including why he was able to drive onto a road that was supposedly closed. Why wasn’t the closed road gated? I remember driving to Mount Rainier in the winter of 2003 and found that i was not able to proceed because the road was closed and it was gated.
Well, in a AP story today, it was discovered that the road that the Kims took was supposed to have been gated. According to the Forest Service, “vandals had cut the lock on a gate that should have stopped the Kim family from taking that spur road.” For this act of vandalism by some reckless asshole, James Kim paid for that with his life.
Update 12/14/2006
The Bureau of Land Management has now admitted that the gate on the logging road where James Kim made a wrong turn was NEVER locked. So this tragedy is now due to some incompetent federal employees.
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