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Bushmills, Lucky Charms and Boondock Saints on St. Patty’s day… before noon.

Netflicks has Boondocks Saints II… but is is not the same.

The VM server is a bit more difficult as you have to really look at the processors to ensure KVM is supported.  AMD is pretty straight forward. I wish Intel was the same.  Though with how inexpensive 1TB SATA drives and Linux having software RAID 6, my goal is to keep this server under a grand.  Like I said, I am having fun with this.

On the political side, Portland’s local government is going off the deep end with Hayden Island.  On one side of the island they want to take away land with the CRC.  Then Adams’ ‘Hand Picked Yes People’ spent 17 months and $500,000 doing… well no one knows?  Then it is becoming politically to popular to speak up for sexually exploited teens, which Dan Saltzman started making noise about during his re-election.  My question is where was he and the rest… oh, a year ago?

Speaking about asleep a the wheel.  Portland city council did what we know they would do with lawsuits against the city that they know they can not win… settle.  One would thing that the former and current police commissioners would make it to the council session to vote and give guidance about why it took 4 years and $1.6 million.

One good thing, all of this tech that I am doing is gearing up for some really cool stuff for the local elections in 2012!

After the interview I was off to the old hood to visit RevPhill.  It was great catching up with him and he gave me a piece of great advice to answer friends questions about my past year… make a Zine and carry copies with you.  This is brilliant.

Then it was off to get some post interview thank you cards… but I just could not send some lame piece of paper that essentially is a reminder of my name… I would not want to be treated like that.  So for the same price of cards I found a cool tattoo book and sent that instead.  Which was had a cool serendipitous outcome as at the Main postoffice I ran into a campaign volunteer who was kind enough last year to drive me home after I had about 5 too many beers.  I love how Portland is small like that.

So today my goal is to clean the kitchen (which needs it bad), then fill the green yard debris bin and get the trash to the curb… my rewards shale be outline my Zine, write a tiny rails App and install play with puppet on some VM’s… I guess I could update wordpress as well.  I am also digging this Sci-Fi book that I got for $1.00 from Powells called Salt.

UPDATE: Amazing how much time CLEAR tech support takes trying to get a static IP.

It has been a non-stop first part of this year, which means that I am not much for updating this blog.  Well that and I was honestly surprised at the number of people who were attacking me this time last year. Now that the politically motivated attacks are stopped I guess it is safe for life to get back to normal.

Well, I am still in Portland and thanks to my good friend Steve, I have been learning Ruby.  Why I did not do this years ago I do not know why.  This language is as fun (and less annoying) than PERL.

I am now volunteering for Mary Volm to be a publicly financed candidate for Portland city council.  She is the only woman who is running for office this term and is simply brilliant.  I like the fact that she is an artist and understands what it is like to sacrifice for your work.  She also knows the city inside and out by working 20 years for the city.

If you could please visit Mary’s website and support her.

One thing for sure… 2010 is going to be interesting!

The past 10 days here in Portland have not been all that great.  The water bureau drops the ball on E-coli and no leadership is found to solve the Police issue we are having.  I find more an more the city that the city I looked for so long to call  home is coming apart at the seams.

We have a city council race where Nick Fish and Dan Saltzman are up for re-election… yet from the looks of it no viable candidate is going to run against them.  If only to ask them about their voting record and support of the collective insanity known as Sam and Randy.  Really, someone has to keep them in check.  I look around and talk to many Portanders who see the city falling into decay, yet are overwhelmed with trying to keep their homes and jobs that prevent them for the unthinkable of  running for office.  We can do so much better… if only people would step up.

Hence, this is how we get the government that we have… which is not a very good one.

For example… the mayor is trying to slip by eminate domain ( aka. condemnation ) of property this week, of course it is on the concent agenda.

I was about to finish this blog when I found this gem:

Adams want to have all Portlanders cellphone numbers… and will fine you for not giving him it

“But this weekend’s E. coli scare prompted Mayor Sam Adams to propose a new idea that’s sure to be controversial: creating a mandatory database of all Portlanders’ cell phone numbers, so that the city could contact all citizens immediately in an emergency.”

the Mayor said the city must create a secure database of citizen cell phone numbers so everyone in Portland could be contacted quickly. “This changeover has to happen. This event and last year’s inclement weather event shows for the need for us all to do that.” Noting that many Portlanders would go out of their way to sign up for a voluntary database, Adams suggested fines of other penalties for people who don’t let the city put their numbers on file.

[Adams] added that the idea also stems from cut backs in media that make city reliance on TV and print reporters widespread publicity of city announcements less feasible.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the council reacts to this?  That is if they react to this?

Anyhow, Mary has to use Windows (which I understand, though can not wait to get her a Mac).  I really feel bad for Windows users with all the malicious code out there.  For the longest time I have believed that local governments and schools cold save a lot of money in time and licensing by using something like Ubuntu (my Linux flavor of choice, hey- it is a Debian variant).  Why are we giving money to Redmons, WA… when we have OSDL just down the street from us?  No too mention that that money could go to local consultants and stay in our local economy.

But back to Mary’s system.  Wow, this bug on it was straight up nasty.  I had to use my fallback  Linux rescue boot disk, mount her disk and remove files that way.  Now that Spybot Search and Destroy is running, all should be good.

Tonight Mary and I were in the glass studio working things out.  She was doing art and has a piece in the kiln right now.  I got to zone out and cut glass while listening to a Screeching Weasel CD I slipped on her Ipod.

In the realm of Hulu (as we do not have cable)… I was really stoked to see the new Legend of the Seeker.  I was really impressed and entertained with last season, not to mention that I kinda relate.

Not to mention that WWeek just posted RandyLand part II!

Today I was at a political event that had all sorts of mover and shakers in the region.  The first was a wonderful lunch with Avel Gordly… she really gets it in a way that resonates with me.  Mary and I attended a sermon that she gave at church on Ainsworth and 29th.  This was such a wonderful multicultural collection of people.  We were really welcome.  It was very nice to meet a TV camerawoman (who interviewed me last month) and her partener who were sitting behind us.  We then had lunch with Avel and had great conversations about Portland, education and Oregon.

Then we were off to an event where Lew Fredericks was spinning up his run for state rep.  This was not so much of a friendly place for me as there were many people there who knew me as the person who tried to recall Sam Adams.  One state Rep. expressed his disappointment.. to the point I had to call him out and remind him that I ran a positive volunteer grassroots campaign.

As I sit here tonight and reflect how some politicos treated me the song titled Pariah under Glass comes into mind by the band Boy Sets Fire.  Though as soon as I mentioned ‘Winning’ Mark… it became apparent who the true pariah is.

Being on the side of good only feels lonely at times… but you are never truly alone.