Did you know you can vote in the Presidential election from overseas as long as you are a US Citizen?

I heard a story on NPR this morning about an effort to register expatriates (Americans living abroad) to vote in the General Election. LexusNexus did a similar story. We can use all the help we can get in prompting regime change here in the US, so if you're an American living out of the country please take a moment to update your US registration or register here for the first time. It must be done this week to be in time for this year’s election. Here are the instructions:

1. Fill out this form (PDF file)
2. Sign and date it
3. Use this postage-paid envelope (PDF file) or use a plain envelope and write in bold letters on the bottom left-hand corner, "Official Absentee Balloting Material" and affix appropriate postage
4. Address it to the elections official of the place where you last lived in the US; for King County in Washington mail it to: King County Elections Room 553 500 4th Avenue Seattle, WA 98104 (for other US counties look here)
5. Mail it no later than this Saturday, October 2nd (this is the WA deadline, it varies by state) For more information and instructions visit details the Federal Voting Assistance Program web site.

It is dull and gray outside my window today. My window spider is still sleeping but it looks like s/he is going to have a feast today what with all the tiny flies in the web.

I find it funny that this is on the MSN Music homepage.

I just got home from a UX team morale event where we visited the new Seattle downtown library. It is very cool. Since we were on a special tour we even got to go inside the server room and the sorting room. The automated sorting is really impressive.

I bought Benjamin a copy of Fable for his birthday and now he is playing it in my office while I frame my photos and play on the computer (the XBox was setup in here for the party). It's one of our forms of bonding. :-)

I just finished draming the two pieces I am donating to the Another 100 Artists fundraiser. I had to change my plans for the churches piece because I failed think ahead about the frame size and it didn't look good horizontal, but I switched the orientation and it's still satisfactory.

Tonight I took Benjamin to the Met for dinner to celebrate his birthday. We were sad to discover that they no longer have cheesecake on the menu. Their cheesecake used to be flown in from New York's Carnegie Deli and it was Benjamin's favorite. We still had a delicious meal, but now I'm on a hunt for the perfect cheesecake.

Right at this moment we are having the Old Man AniMayhem Birthday Party at our house. Today Benjamin turned 30 and on Thursday Rob & Jason turn 29 and 30 respectively. At the moment there is a single player X-Box game and a 4-person LAN game in progress. Three more people are spectators and there's an anime movie playing but no one is watching it. Is it possible we have too much technology in this house? :-)

Benjamin got a job! He starts Monday working for AT&T Wireless in Redmond. It's a 6-month contract with the possibility of becoming permanent. Maybe we'll even carpool. :-)

We're continuing to unpack and reorganize and so I am now the proud owner of a multi-mon setup at home. The second monitor is not in good condition, but it is good enough to hold Photoshop palettes and such. Overall I'm very glad. :-)

Another 100 Artists

Today I worked on my piece for the MoveOn PAC fundraiser Another 100 Artists. I am going to donate a framed photographic series; it will be a series all framed in a single frame. Here are the current contenders. I'm interested in input if you have any. Here's the deal with the fundraiser: One hundred artists create one hundred pieces of art. One hundred patrons donate one hundred dollars to attend a gala event and take home one of the pieces. MoveOn gets $10,000. That simple. And we show how a bunch of artists and activists can take their country back! 7-9pm - Thursday, September 30, 2004 Mt. Baker Community Center - 2811 Mt. Rainier Drive S. - Seattle If you would like to donate artwork, please contact Phil Scroggs. Contributing artists are invited to be guests of the event. But, they can also be patrons! To purchase a patron ticket, please visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/418.

Today was the Day of Caring and we worked at the Ballard Boys & Girls Club. I had to leave early though because my wrist just started bothering me too much (I didn't want to make it hurt so much that I couldn't do anything useful this weekend). When I got home Benjamin said I smelled so bad he forced me to take a shower immediately. ;) Once I was showered and re-dressed in clean clothes several huge claps of thunder sounded and the sky opened up. it rained so hard there was hail mixed in. At that moment I felt like I'd called it quits at just the right time. :)

I'm donating a photographic piece to a fundraiser for MoveOn PAC called "Another Hundred Artists." The idea is that one hundred artists create one hundred pieces of art; one hundred patrons donate one hundred dollars to attend a gala event and take home one of the pieces. MoveOn gets $10,000. It's on September 30th if you are interested in attending. Tickets can be purchased at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/418. For more details about the evening, please visit http://anotherhundredartists.com.

Dentistry

I just got 3 fillings. The dentist was impressively fast, but it was still thoroughly unpleasant. It's strange to me how getting fillings and having local anesthetic can make one feel so crappy. :-(

Sometimes (often) I think Americans are kinda stupid. Paris, France, Sep. 9 (UPI) -- A survey of 34,330 people in 32 countries found only one in five would vote to re-elect U.S. President George Bush to a second term. From http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040909-121736-3062r.htm

They wouldn't let us take pictures during the company meeting today, but this is a picture inside McCaw Hall where I ate some breakfast. ;-)

I voted in Washington's new primary election system today. Did you?

I've been thinking a lot for the last few days about what I want in my life, short and long term, at a very high level; mostly in terms of employment. I attended the MS Women's Conference last week and it made me think about things I could be doing to be more successful professionally. But this weekend I talked to my Aunt Lin about materialism and our tendency to spend So much of our lives making money to buy things that we don't need (and may not be making our lives any happier or better). So I'm thinking about what I want in my life. Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs comes to mind.

Yea for me!

I just had my annual review and I got a level promotion, a raise, a bonus and a good stock award. Woo-hoo!

I am regularly annoyed by other people's incorrect use of words, but I don't want to become a word tyrant because I know others who do it and it is really annoying. Also, I am not terribly well educated in the grammar department myself, so I am not 100% confident that what I think is really correct. Regardless, here are some of the ones that annoy me:

• "I could care less" (instead of "I couldn't care less")
• "usage" when "use" should be used (nice sentence)

Hmmm. They aren't coming to me in abundance. I'm gonna add to this more later. ;-)

This is a hideously low-quality photo of the spider that has made a home outside my window today.

Today we went to a pig roast birthday party for my uncle's 60th and cousin's 30th birthdays. This is the unfortunate pig selected.

Six Feet Under last night went well. Erik & Claire brought a yummy baked ziti dish and we ate it all up (despite the giant pan).

I got this new Bush shirt yesterday at Bumbershoot. :)

We just got home from Bumbershoot. We saw Bebel Gilberto, Built to Spill, and The Pixies. I like Bebel Gilberto and she signed the CD I bought, but The Pixies were the best in terms of acoustical quality and just putting on a really tight performance. They were machines - fast, precise and on top of it. This photo is of Bebel; all of my closeups are either dark or blurry and I am too tired for digital enhancement. ;-)

George Lakoff nails the frames of the Republican Convention

You may have heard of George Lakoff already. He's a linguist who's gotten quite a bit of media attention in the last year or so talking about the election race in terms of linguistics, particularly the concept of framing. Lakoff sat in on the Republican Convention and did a daily report on how the Reblicans are framing the issue in their speeches. Here is the report from Day One of the Republican Convention. Frame, v. 1. To shape, direct (one's thoughts, actions, powers, etc.) to a certain purpose. 2. To form or construct in the mind; to conceive, imagine. Selected definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary online.

rb.log

rb.log is the web log of my former mentor, now living in the UK. He also runs a work-related technology trends blog that is pretty interesting.

Poem: My Country Awake

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection: Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-- Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. --Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. Thank you to Martin Sheen for bringing this poem to the attention of many young progressives like myself.

But at least now my office is starting to look like a real room (no more boxes). Take it out, put it back in...

My office exploded into the dining room!

See, now it is getting sunny (though still raining). :-)

It's raining outside my office window and I can't tell you how glad I am that I know that. You might think that being able to see the rain and gray weather would be depressing, but it is infinately better than not seeing it at all.