Too late again

Once again I find myself staying up a bit later than I should. Seems like I hit a second wind around a normal bedtime. I'll pay for this tomorrow as usual.

Today was a mixed bag. Finally got a garage at my apartment complex. $35 isn't too bad for that much storage space so close to my apartment. Didn't look at it today but I'm hoping that it doesn't get water in it like some of the other garage units. It looks promising from the outside in that regard. Little step up edges around the overhead door.

Am trying out yet another weblog client called, no lie, Drivel. Nice thing about this one is that unlike Logjam, it works with just about every blog type that I've ever heard off. Blogger and Movable Type in particular. It's a Gnome application which means its a happy camper with my Ubuntu Linux setup.

My dear friend irongall noted that she uses Semagic. It's a M$ Windows application.

From the bad news department. I got my latest health insurance bill. They decided to raise it a mere $1,800 this year. Needless to say, I'm going to be back in the market for insurance. That might get lowered some since I've moved to the cheaper Nebraska area and this was set for the nosebleed California address that I recently vacated.

From the more bad news department. I also got two letters from Cuesta College where I'd been working on an ECE degree.

The first had two notices in it. One that I'd not completed enough classes for a degree. The other that I had completed enough classes for a degree. There was also a large sturdy envelope that contained a diploma. I may be misreading what they've done but I think they decided to give me a general education AA degree, which is less than worthless to me, in lieu of the degree that I applied for. More inquiries may clear up this as a misunderstanding on one of our parts. No steam from the ears yet but the boiler is at the ready.

My good friend E got his comp sci master's degree done the other day (getting a rare A+ on his thesis) and so we met for lunch after the defense. Had I been thinking about it, I would have gone down and sat in on it (if he didn't mind). He had enough on his mind that morning. There were local Internet problems with all the dialup in the city (still wondering how that could happen) and he couldn't get his presentation files FTPed over to the school system. So a printout (fortunately the printer worked okay) and an overhead presentation was the successful Plan B.

I bused downtown and we had lunch at a new (for me) Indian restaurant. Not bad but not as good as the Indian Oven which is my favorite in Lincoln. I was planning on heading directly back to the homefront after lunch but the path to the stop included passing by the second run theater which had Sin City showing within minutes of our passing. So we both dove in for a two dollar visual adventure.

Sin City takes it theme from a graphic novel that I've never seen or read. It's kind of a surreal Sam Spade setting. Shades of Tarratino through out. Including hot chicks with samurai swords. One of these days I'll have to get around to watching "Kill Bill". Mickey Rourke was excellent in his role as mutant ruffian with a soft touch. Elijah Woods as a soul-less cannibal hitman was very chilling. Talk about casting against type for effect.

Another longtime friend, F, showed up Sunday evening from Chicago and I had a fine time meeting with her and her family. It's always gratifying to see the young ones growing up in particular. They change so fast over just a couple of years.

Finished reading my old friend Greg Gerritt's Green Party Tempest self-published book on the Green Party 2004 Presidential run. Will probably type up a 500 word review for Hopedance Magazine. Much of it was pretty much in line with what I'd noted from closely following the election cycle and Green Party related stuff in particular. His division of the current Greens into "Left Greens" and "Green Greens" (my terms) seems to hold water.

His analysis of the counterproductive nature of the Left Greens --as typified by Peter Camejo and his entourage - including International Socialist Organization (ISO) types (neo-Trotskyists) -- seemed spot on. His analysis of a "each one, teach one" guerrilla grassroots development model as being key to a sustainable Green Party development seemed also more right than wrong. The position of the ISO types is noted in this Socialist Worker Online essay What is the future of the Green Party?. One from their former comrades is noted here, The politics of opportunism: a look at the International Socialist Organization.

Once Nader had lost the official Green Party support system, he was left with what was left of Ross Perot's "Reform Party" and the ISO people to do his front work. Needless to say, it didn't work quite so well as with the Greens active support in 2000.

Personally, I'm hoping that the Socialist Worker Party (SWP) types will go back to their own party where they can be all that they can be without screwing things up in the Greens. The Greens have enough problems without that added load of retro static. The whole thing feels like some kind of weird 60s era time warp experience. Kind of like when I heard Kwame Ture (formerly called Stokely Carmichael) talk about his version of "What is to be done?" at the Nebraska Student Union when he was on his last speaking tour (he had terminal cancer). I felt like Sherman had turned on the "Way Back Machine".

Greg and I go back to what I'd call the "proto-Green" era in the United States. We met back in the early to mid-80s at one of the first gatherings of Greens in the United States. This was at Hampshire College. At that time the split was between the eco-anarchist and municipalist Social Ecology crowd (which I hung out with at the time) and the more traditional electoral politics based types like the Maine Greens (which included Greg at the time). Greg and I kept in touch for some time after that conference but eventually drifted apart as often happens. I was pleasantly surprised to run into him, and fellow Maine Green, John Reisenbrink, at a national gathering of Greens in Santa Barbara.

The Santa Barbara meeting was the last meeting of the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) as it was at that gathering that the Green Party of the United States (GP-US) was formally founded. One of the other things hashed out at that meeting was the relative representation of each state group in terms of voting power and influence within the new group. This kind of issue cropped up once again after the Green presidential convention in Milwaukee that resulted in David Cobb being elected as the official Green Party candidate and Ralph Nader left out of the official picture.

Speaking of Nader, I spent much of my time at the Santa Barbara meeting sitting with Nader's observer at the gathering, Teresa Amato. We had a fun time making occasional peanut gallery comments about the proceedings.

I've been rather fortunate to have been at some of the key events in the development of the Green Party both nationally and internationally. Not only did I get to observe at the Santa Barbara founding meeting and participate actively in the Hampshire College gathering but I was also, by complete accident, in Frankfurt, Germany when the Greens first got their 5% to get seats in the Hessian Landestag (state parliament). I was staying with some radical and Greenish friends who tried to get me up to speed on it all but I'm sure there was a lot that I missed. My German language skills had a lot to be desired by that time. (I'd minored in German during my undergraduate days.)

Enough for tonight. Another "Progressive Nebraska" meeting late this afternoon.

Too late again

Once again I find myself staying up a bit later than I should. Seems like I hit a second wind around a normal bedtime. I'll pay for this tomorrow as usual.

Today was a mixed bag. Finally got a garage at my apartment complex. $35 isn't too bad for that much storage space so close to my apartment. Didn't look at it today but I'm hoping that it doesn't get water in it like some of the other garage units. It looks promising from the outside in that regard. Little step up edges around the overhead door.

Am trying out yet another weblog client called, no lie, Drivel. Nice thing about this one is that unlike Logjam, it works with just about every blog type that I've ever heard off. Blogger and Movable Type in particular. It's a Gnome application which means its a happy camper with my Ubuntu Linux setup.

My dear friend irongall noted that she uses Semagic. It's a M$ Windows application.

From the bad news department. I got my latest health insurance bill. They decided to raise it a mere $1,800 this year. Needless to say, I'm going to be back in the market for insurance. That might get lowered some since I've moved to the cheaper Nebraska area and this was set for the nosebleed California address that I recently vacated.

From the more bad news department. I also got two letters from Cuesta College where I'd been working on an ECE degree.

The first had two notices in it. One that I'd not completed enough classes for a degree. The other that I had completed enough classes for a degree. There was also a large sturdy envelope that contained a diploma. I may be misreading what they've done but I think they decided to give me a general education AA degree, which is less than worthless to me, in lieu of the degree that I applied for. More inquiries may clear up this as a misunderstanding on one of our parts. No steam from the ears yet but the boiler is at the ready.

My good friend E got his comp sci master's degree done the other day (getting a rare A+ on his thesis) and so we met for lunch after the defense. Had I been thinking about it, I would have gone down and sat in on it (if he didn't mind). He had enough on his mind that morning. There were local Internet problems with all the dialup in the city (still wondering how that could happen) and he couldn't get his presentation files FTPed over to the school system. So a printout (fortunately the printer worked okay) and an overhead presentation was the successful Plan B.

I bused downtown and we had lunch at a new (for me) Indian restaurant. Not bad but not as good as the Indian Oven which is my favorite in Lincoln. I was planning on heading directly back to the homefront after lunch but the path to the stop included passing by the second run theater which had Sin City showing within minutes of our passing. So we both dove in for a two dollar visual adventure.

Sin City takes it theme from a graphic novel that I've never seen or read. It's kind of a surreal Sam Spade setting. Shades of Tarratino through out. Including hot chicks with samurai swords. One of these days I'll have to get around to watching "Kill Bill". Mickey Rourke was excellent in his role as mutant ruffian with a soft touch. Elijah Woods as a soul-less cannibal hitman was very chilling. Talk about casting against type for effect.

Another longtime friend, F, showed up Sunday evening from Chicago and I had a fine time meeting with her and her family. It's always gratifying to see the young ones growing up in particular. They change so fast over just a couple of years.

Finished reading my old friend Greg Gerritt's Green Party Tempest self-published book on the Green Party 2004 Presidential run. Will probably type up a 500 word review for Hopedance Magazine. Much of it was pretty much in line with what I'd noted from closely following the election cycle and Green Party related stuff in particular. His division of the current Greens into "Left Greens" and "Green Greens" (my terms) seems to hold water.

His analysis of the counterproductive nature of the Left Greens --as typified by Peter Camejo and his entourage - including International Socialist Organization (ISO) types (neo-Trotskyists) -- seemed spot on. His analysis of a "each one, teach one" guerrilla grassroots development model as being key to a sustainable Green Party development seemed also more right than wrong. The position of the ISO types is noted in this Socialist Worker Online essay What is the future of the Green Party?. One from their former comrades is noted here, The politics of opportunism: a look at the International Socialist Organization.

Once Nader had lost the official Green Party support system, he was left with what was left of Ross Perot's "Reform Party" and the ISO people to do his front work. Needless to say, it didn't work quite so well as with the Greens active support in 2000.

Personally, I'm hoping that the Socialist Worker Party (SWP) types will go back to their own party where they can be all that they can be without screwing things up in the Greens. The Greens have enough problems without that added load of retro static. The whole thing feels like some kind of weird 60s era time warp experience. Kind of like when I heard Kwame Ture (formerly called Stokely Carmichael) talk about his version of "What is to be done?" at the Nebraska Student Union when he was on his last speaking tour (he had terminal cancer). I felt like Sherman had turned on the "Way Back Machine".

Greg and I go back to what I'd call the "proto-Green" era in the United States. We met back in the early to mid-80s at one of the first gatherings of Greens in the United States. This was at Hampshire College. At that time the split was between the eco-anarchist and municipalist Social Ecology crowd (which I hung out with at the time) and the more traditional electoral politics based types like the Maine Greens (which included Greg at the time). Greg and I kept in touch for some time after that conference but eventually drifted apart as often happens. I was pleasantly surprised to run into him, and fellow Maine Green, John Reisenbrink, at a national gathering of Greens in Santa Barbara.

The Santa Barbara meeting was the last meeting of the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) as it was at that gathering that the Green Party of the United States (GP-US) was formally founded. One of the other things hashed out at that meeting was the relative representation of each state group in terms of voting power and influence within the new group. This kind of issue cropped up once again after the Green presidential convention in Milwaukee that resulted in David Cobb being elected as the official Green Party candidate and Ralph Nader left out of the official picture.

Speaking of Nader, I spent much of my time at the Santa Barbara meeting sitting with Nader's observer at the gathering, Teresa Amato. We had a fun time making occasional peanut gallery comments about the proceedings.

I've been rather fortunate to have been at some of the key events in the development of the Green Party both nationally and internationally. Not only did I get to observe at the Santa Barbara founding meeting and participate actively in the Hampshire College gathering but I was also, by complete accident, in Frankfurt, Germany when the Greens first got their 5% to get seats in the Hessian Landestag (state parliament). I was staying with some radical and Greenish friends who tried to get me up to speed on it all but I'm sure there was a lot that I missed. My German language skills had a lot to be desired by that time. (I'd minored in German during my undergraduate days.)

Enough for tonight. Another "Progressive Nebraska" meeting late this afternoon.