In my effort to fully embrace the hacker ethic, I’m doing more and more stuff myself, instead of paying someone to do it. For example, changing the oil in our car. Now, I learned this particular trick while I was a poor college student, and there was a time when I was happy to pay […]

Posted on August 19th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Life, and How to Live It | Comments Off on DIY

Today was big news day for the Subaru Rally team. First, Tommi Makinen announced his retirement at the end of the season. This was to be expected, after two frustrating years with Subaru. But even despite the lack of results, both parties had nothing but good things to say about one another. And, mirroring what […]

Posted on August 18th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: World Rally Championship | Comments Off on Rally News!!!

Well, I finally went ahead and did it — I wiped the hard drive on our laptop and installed Linux. It was about that time, as it took Windows 2000 nearly 10 minutes to completely boot, and with the iMac (and Office for Mac), we didn’t really have any good reason to keep a copy […]

Posted on August 16th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Technology | Comments Off on Linux on a Laptop

Slate has a brief article about how then-Governor Howard Dean was basically forced into granting same sex partnerships the same legal rights as a married couple. Most interesting quote from Dean: “Gay marriage makes me uncomfortable, the same as anybody else”

Posted on August 15th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on Interesting Stuff…

One of my newest pet peeves (not like I have many of them) is the inability of system administrators/DNS administrators to add a root domain entry in their domain name server records. The biggest offender? The University of Pittsburgh oops. Sorry, I meant http://www.pitt.edu. I wonder how many hits the university loses when someone not […]

Posted on August 15th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Technology | Comments Off on Geeky Pet Peeve

Lately, I’ve found myself buying most of my bike parts at Kraynick’s bike shop. Keep in mind of course, I’m not looking for high-end components most of the time, so Gerry’s is a great place. I can get odd-ball components (like 39 tooth track-compatible chainrings) for next to nothing. It’s also nice to be able […]

Posted on August 14th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Bicyles | Comments Off on Excellent Shop

Lawrence Lessing has invited Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich to be a guest blogger on his site. I think this is going to do more harm than good for Kucinich, as he writes as if he’s writing a speech (which makes you wonder if he’s even writing the posts at all — perhaps it’s an […]

Posted on August 12th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on Presidential Blogging?

Scott Rosenberg has an interesting take on John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty. I think his analysis of the treatise is good, but it has a certain liberal bent to it (which shouldn’t be a surprise considering he’s a columnist for Salon). Mill makes quite a case for Classical Liberalism, but I think these days it’s […]

Posted on August 12th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on On Liberty

If you live in Pittsburgh, you’ve no doubt heard that the city is laying off over 700 employees because of a massive budget shortfall. Pittsburgh’s financial situation has been pretty grim for years now, but things are finally starting to bottom out. So who is going to suffer the most? The average taxpayer. We lose […]

Posted on August 11th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: Politics | Comments Off on How to Wreck a City

A quote from Petter Solberg at the end of his second place drive at Rally Finland: We almost lost it on the first corner, but I kept on going. At one point, I was standing in my seat with all my weight on the throttle pedal – I actually bent it! I know it’s not […]

Posted on August 11th, 2003 by admin
Filed under: World Rally Championship | Comments Off on How Hard Was Petter Trying?