After two interviews and a month of waiting I finally received an offer to be one of the lead web developers for Mammoth Mountain. I accepted the offer today and put in my two weeks notice at the Mammoth Times. I'm sad to leave the team at the Times, but look forward to the new challenges and new team at the Mountain. I will be working mostly with Flash and ColdFusion web development on Linux hardware. The change in jobs means a pay increase comparable to that of something I'd find down in the city, which is good for paying of debt and starting to save for the wedding. In related news, my fiance's just started her new position as asst manager of catering operations at Mammoth Moutain. With our new jobs and good roommates here in Mammoth it looks like we'll be staying a bit longer than we expected.
There's an interesting article on CNN today about a Boy Scout member that is being threatened with expulsion because he's an "Atheist". The kid is 19, is an Eagle Scout, has tons of merit badges, and done a thousand hours of community service, yet the organization will not let him stay in unless he commits to believing in a "higher power".
As a scout myself I find this offensive and it's not the first time the Boy Scouts of America organization has surprised me like this, they made a fool of themselves a while back when they expelled gays from the organization, why not just expel blacks and jews while they're at it so they can have an "ultimate race" of scouts.
I feel lucky that I had a good experience in Scouts. I had leaders that were very liberal, they would spend ample time teaching us topics, such as wilderness survival, and they would also teach us to think for ourselves. We had a really good time and topics like religion never came up, that's what church was for I thought. I myself was an Agnostic during my stint in Scouts, but it never really was an issue, our group dealt with more important subjects like our rank advancements, community service work, and best of all our outdoor adventures all over the state of Arizona. I even moved on from Boy Scouts to Explorers, another sub-group of the BSA organization. Again, religion and sexuality were never issues, instead we focused on learning business organization rules and exploring the world around us, everywhere from Colorado, to California, and in between. Some of the best memories of my life, and also where I met my fiance.
In summary, I think it's okay that the organization has rules like "members must believe in a higher-power" because that still leaves the subject pretty wide open. I just think the individual group leaders need to be more sensitive to the situations. The kid in question here seems like a bright hard working kid who is learning a lot in this time of his life, what he doesn't need is someone forcing him to believe in something, he should be given a chance to find something to believe in and the be allowed to make his own decision. As I said, I had a great time in the BSA, however, over the last few years I have started to seriously re-evaluate whether I would let my kids join the organization in the future.
Update: Kasei also commented on this subject today.
In an article about hacking iPods on macobserver.com there is a quote from Steve Jobs about why they didn't spend big money trying to build encryption into the iPod:
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails,"IMO, this is one of the most brutally honest quotes from any industry leader that I know of. If Balmer were to comment I'll bet he would bitch and moan about how "security through obscurity is the only way!"
Thanks to recent influence from friends here's some music that I've gotten into recently:
Foo Fighters - One by One
cKy - Infiltrate.Destroy.Rebuild
RJD2 - Deadringer
Disturbed - Believe
Taproot - Welcome
Dan the Automator - Wanna Buy A Monkey
I spent this last weekend in Phoenix, and the week before Christie's family came to visit us and to check out the fall colors throughout the Eastern Sierra. Here are some photos from the last several days.
California was the first state to pass the very controversial medial marijuana initiative in 1997, and a few other states have since followed, including Washington and Oregon, both are Democratic states. Interestingly enough the very Republican state of Arizona is about to join the ranks of limited legalization and subsequent decrimilization of marijuana.
Arizona has long been known for it's conservative style and poor governors, and especially for how Maricopa County's Sheriff Joe Arpaio cracks down on drug usage. If this new bill passes for Arizona, patients will be able to receive medical marijuana possibly without a prescription, which seems like it will be difficult to track.
Kozmo Pot?
The other thing about the bill that confuses me is that patients will have their "medication" delivered to them via Department of Public Safety (aka Cops). This part of the bill will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. I don't understand why medical marijuana can't be handeled like other pharmacueticals where it would be dispensed from a regular pharmacy with a normal doctor ordered prescription.
Pot or Politics
There is a good article that was recently on the front page of the Santa Cruz Good Times weekly newspaper discussing the tension between state laws for the legalization of medical marijuana vs. the DEA and their never ending mission to stop co-ops from growing pot for patients. Even though the drug is legal for legit 215 card-carriers in CA the federal agents will not let them be truley free until there can be a greater agreement between state and fed.
the DC Sniper does it again and probably revels in the glory of the stupidity of the media and how they feed right into his hand. The last thing cops said last Monday night was the "Sniper doesn't attack on weekends". Looks like he responded by waiting until the weekend to prove the police and the media wrong as an older gentleman in Virginia was hit this evening. Serial killers typically create a pattern to their crimes. It appears the pattern this killer is creating is a "random" one. The story just gets more and more interesting.
I moved to Mammoth Lakes, CA about a year ago for two reasons, to get away from the tedious lifestyle that comes from living in the city, and to continue to explore our world by diving in head first. When I got here there were no jobs in tech available and I ended up working food service to make ends meet for a while. Disappointed I started considering moving to another city somewhere else in the US around summer 2002. Luckily, things worked out to where I could stay in Mammoth and continue to do what I love, work in the web development field. However, I never thought there could be such a huge software project going on right in my backyard.
Down in Crowley Lake, CA (about 15 minutes South of Mammoth Lakes) there is a company called OpenOSX that is developing mapping software. But not the kind to show streets and highways, this company just released a package called GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) a GIS (Geographical Information System) software package for OSX. Apparently the company has been working with NASA and NOAA to develop software that accurately maps areas of California, including the infamous Long Valley Caldera, with extreme precision and allows you to view them in 3D and create simulations of erosion, rainfall, and how wildfires would spread.
I can only imagine this software development effort is run out of someone's house because I don't know of any business complexes near Crowley Lake. Either way, I'm impressed and inspired by the fact that people up here in the mountains can develop software as professional (if not more in this case) as those people in the city can.
Interestingly enough, my roommate, who writes Brain Flossing, comments on this exact topic with his latest entry Generation Wrecked. To contradict what he wrote with the example of Joshua Lacock, author of GRASS for OSX, from Crowley Lake, CA, you don't have to live in the city to be a programmer, you just have to be motivated enough to want to start a project like that. Admittidly, it's not easy when you're disconnected from a city like Los Angeles, I can only imagine how stressful it would be to work on such a large programming project in such a secluded environment.
This last weekend my fiancé, Christie, and I decided to drive to Napa to look at wineries and see if there are any places worthy of having a wedding at. We turned it into a long weekend and left Thursday night so we could spend some time in San Francisco. Pics available here. Story continued in the extended section...
The wackjob whose been picking people off (so far 9 dead and 2 critically injured) in DC lately sure is stirring up the news. I'm interested to see how the whole thing will end. In some ways I feel like the rest of America and I want to see him taken out whatever way possible, because I know if he's captured alive he'll probably get some crazy prison sentence then will be back on the streets in no time. However, something inside me feels disturbed enough to want to see him captured alive and studied in detail to find out what caused him to flip out and start this crazy mission of death. The worst part is you know that he'll get at least one more (and quite possibly more) innocent civilian before he's caught.
The part that scares me is how intelligent the sniper is being. When cops said publicly that children were safe earlier in the case the next day the sniper picked off a kid at school. Every move they predict is wrong so far. The only thing I can predict is that there will be some strange twist before the end, maybe I've just seen too many movies, or worse, maybe the sniper has seen too many movies.
The whole SF/Napa/Sonoma story...
This weekend my fiancé, Christie, and I decided to drive to Napa to look at wineries and see if there are any places worthy of having a wedding at. We turned it into a long weekend and left Thursday night so we could spend some time in San Francisco. We made it to SF about 1am and ended up camping at Mt Talampais (Mt Tam to the locals) in the back of the Xterra.
Friday we woke up and started planning out what we wanted to do. We ended up driving around for a while and seeing the sites, SF is still a favorite of mine because of the huge amount of diversity in the city and some of sociological technical advances you can find. We spent about an hour in the Sony Metreon, which is a hi-tech mall near the Moscone Center. I picked up a couple pieces of hardware for my PS2 and we moved on to Fisherman's Warf to have lunch at Joe's Crab Shack, a Landry's owned restaurant, so we wanted to take advantage of the discounts we'd get from Christie's employment at the Chart House, another Landry's restaurant. Joe's was awesome, we ate crab n' shrimp till we could eat no more. While we ate we were treated by the Blue Angles, who were doing some practice routines over the bay in preparation for Fleet Weekend, where they perform some impressive airiel acrobatics for the crowds that gather around Pier 39. Later Friday evening we drove up towards Napa and found and affordable motel in Fairfield, about 20 miles East of Napa. Thanks to the Route 66 mapping software for that one.
Saturday morning we woke up and drove to Napa to mess around at some wineries and see if we could find any places worthy of hosting our wedding next year. We didn't really find anything for that but we had some great wines and enjoyed a very relaxing picnic. We made it to Clos du Val, Chimney Rock, Pine Ridge, and Rutherford Hills wineries. All were very nice and each winery had a specific wine that was very memorable. We jotted over to Starbucks to wake ourselves up after the massive amounts of wine we tasted and the Chicken Salad sandwiches we brought for our picnic. We then headed North to Buthe-Napa State Park to set up our campsite.
We had a nice campfire at Bothe-Napa State Park and slept well. Sunday we woke up refreshed and ready to hit more wineries. First stop was the C.I.A., but not the one you're thinking of, the Culinary Institute of America. It was amazing, the part we checked out was like a museum of old culinary tools. After the CIA we headed off to check out one of our favorite wineries, V.Sattui, the gardens were beautiful and wine was great, as always. Then we checked out Cline Cellars and Gloria Ferrer's Champagne Vineyards and had a nice lunch. On our way back to Mammoth we stopped a nice little pumpkin patch and picked out a couple nice potentially spooky looking orbs. Then we started the trek back and made back to Mammoth six hours later.
I've spent the last few days learning FlashMX. I have to admit, the learning curve was not to be rekoned with. The good news is the application comes with some great tutorials to help you get started. Anyway, I decided to do a sample presentation for a restaurant that a friend of mine runs called Parallax at Mammoth Mountain.
A couple weeks ago my roommates and I had a bunch of our friends from LA drive up here to Mammoth Lakes for the weekend and stay with us for BBQing and partying. We had a blast and took a ton of pictures, which I finally posted online.
Of all the crazy things I've downloaded off the Internet, this has got to be one of the most wacky. Apparently some guy likes to shoot his fully-auto rifle at dirt. Sounds like fun.
Today I saw an interesting paid advertisement in a local newspaper, The Inyo Register. Apparently there's a guy who's causing trouble down there, or something, one can only imagine from the ad:
ATTENTION: Residents of Big Pine... If you see Jim Nikolaus walking after 12:00 Noon please do not pick up or offer him a ride anywhere. Thank you, his family
Interesting article from siliconvalley.com about how Apple is the only tech company not comforming to the "entertainment cartel" regarding Digital Rights Management. I think Apple has taken a bold step here where they will piss off a handful of [very powerful] people in Hollywood, but they will gain the respect of millions of techies who love to play with digital media. Hopefully this is a marketing move that will help change Apple's overall position in the economy... for the good.
I spent most of this weekend learning Macromedia Flash MX. I never thought I'd learn Flash and I know now why, it's a complicated and heavy duty. I just needed a motivation. For my first project I'm going to build an interface for the restaurant that I worked at last winter, Parallax.
Last night I finally saw the foreign (subtitled) film Amelie, which is a great movie. It's a story by a brillant French movie writer, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I especially liked the character development in this movie. Jean-Pierre also wrote another one of my favorites, City of Lost Children and another one I've yet to see but have heard good things about, Delicatessen.
After being confused for a few months now about the whole situation in the Middle East, I have finally come to the conclusion that we are really going to attack even though there's still a good chance we don't belong there. Over the past few weeks we've seen and heard an increased level of fighter jet activity up here in the Eastern Sierra, which makes sense since we are so close to Edwards AFB and China Sea Naval Base. I have to admit, I like watching the dog fights above Owens Valley and the Long Valley Caldera.
The way I see it, Bush it gonna take a vote of Congress, find out we shouldn't actually be there, then go in an bomb the shit out of Iraq anyway, which will very likely cause innocent young Americans to die. This hits close to home for me since I am one. I agree Saddam is a thorn in the side of civilized Earth, but there's got to be better ways. Don't we have survelleince and special intelligence we can use to quietly take him out while he's on the toilet or something?
Today I was playing with iTunes in OSX.2 and started wondering if there's anything better out there for playing mp3's on my older Powerbook G3 (Pismo). After some google research (I wonder if students use google urls for their bibilographies in school these days, I guess that's a whole different rant) I found this page at xlr8yourmac that has a side by side comparison of iTunes, Audion, and MacAmp Lite. After a brief overview of the results I quickly went to download MacAmp Lite and was very impressed. It's lightweight, has a nice playlist, and best of all is free.
I actually started this experiment a few days ago when I downloaded, compiled, and installed mpg123 (a commandline mp3 player, popular on linux platforms). I read the warnings that it wasn't stable, but ignored them and boldly started tinkiering. After about 30 minutes of partially-stable playtime mpg123 brought my machine to a complete halt and was forced to do a three finger salute to reboot. Needless to say mpg123 is not my player of choice.
On the note of iApps I have to say that I'm finding a lot of alternatives to iApps that I am finding work better, are faster, and have more options. So far I have replaced:
iPhoto = iViewMediaPro 1.5.5
iChat = Adium 1.6.2
iTunes = MacAmp Lite
I'm still using Mail and I find the anti-spam technologies to be revolutionary, but the gui eye-candy of fading and such seem very tedious on my older PowerBook. I'm starting to consider checking out Mailsmith or possible installing the new Eudora beta.
This optical illusion is really hard to believe. I had to open it in Photoshop to verify that it's true.
My roommate, Adam, helped me set up Movable Type so that I could start writing my own blogs. I first heard about the concept of blogging sometime around Defcon this summer and the idea has been so interesting that I have been itching to start my own. Well, here's my chance, I hope I don't blow it. Anyway, I'll keep uploading photo albums and will link them off from here. so you can all enjoy Mammoth, the Eastern Sierra, and my other adventures vicariously...