Sinterklass

December 5th is Sinterklass, a holiday similar to Christmas that is celebrated in The Netherlands and Belgium. It revolves around Santa Claus, who arrives by steamboat from Spain and hands out candy to all. Here is a picture:



What you might notice is that Santa doesn't have elves helping him out, he has black slaves! Somehow, I don't think this would fly in the US.

Busy Day

Yesterday I had an action packed day. I finally got up to the mountains for some skiing, the first time I've ever tried it (I've always snowboarded in the past). The snow was in good shape, not too icy and there was a nice powder coat keeping things soft. I picked it up pretty quickly, and by the end of the day I was cruising down blues with relative ease.

From a practical point of view, skiing seems superior to snowboarding. I felt much more in control, and you're actually facing downhill seeing everything in front of you as opposed to snowboarding where you're looking to one side or the other. On the other hand, snow boarding feels a little more fluid, its more of a full body motion. Regardless, I'm looking forward to more skiing in the future.

I went and saw I Am Legend last night. It was a packed theatre, but well worth it. I recommend everyone goes and watches this one, it was action packed! I don't think I've ever been so stressed out throughout an entire movie like this one, one of the best I've seen in a long time.

Fitness Bread

Thanks to Pippa, I have been clued in to the most insane bread I have ever encountered:



Its called Fitness Bread and you can buy it at whole foods. One loaf weighs an impressive 17.6 oz, or 1.1 pounds and there are seven slices in a loaf. I've been eating it for breakfast the past week or so, and I pretty much feel awesome all the time. This probably has a lot to do with the 24% of dietary fiber a single slice has; it's keeping me light on my feet.

Snow

Well the snow has finally arrived in Boulder, we've gotten maybe a foot and a half since Friday. Looks like it'll stop tonight or tomorrow.

Snow really sucks, it makes getting around such a pain in the ass. I like it in the mountains, but naturally it is snowing in Boulder, but somehow not up at the ski resorts. I am ready for it to be gone.

Leopard Ubuntu Dual Boot Success

With a little help from Pete, I am now running my MacBook as a dual boot machine, 1/2 OSX Leopard and 1/2 Ubuntu 7.10 "Gutsy Gibbon". For those of you unfamiliar, Ubuntu is a "flavor" of linux and it lets me use all the freeware in linux much easier than trying to figure out how the hell to get it running in Leopard.

Here is a really brief outline of how to do it:
1. Make sure Leopard is up to date, then use Boot Camp to partition your hard drive. This essentially is only for OSX, you'll do the other partition with the Ubuntu disk.
2. Install rEFIt, its free from sourceforge. This allows you to choose your operating system when you load (although I thought Boot Camp was supposed to do this, but it didn't work without).
3. Insert your Ubuntu disk and restart, ideally rEFIt will give you the option of loading OSX or Ubuntu from the cd. Choose the latter.
4. Ubuntu will load from CD, and you'll see an install icon on the desktop. Click it, repartition your space, and Ubuntu will be copied over.
5. Restart again, and hopefully Ubuntu will load (from rEFIt).

All my drivers seem to work including video, sound, and even the screen brightness and volume controls. It was pretty painless.

Ubuntu is essentially just like Leopard, except its easier to get free programming software installed and working. It took me about 2 minutes to get Python, fortran, emacs, and everything else installed and running. I must say I'm very impressed, my next computer may be pure Ubuntu, although that'll be some years down the road.

How Money Works

Watch the five-part videos below that I have posted. They explain how the world's monetary system currently works. It is absolutely fascinating and completely INSANE. Its about a 43 minutes investment to watch all the videos, but I think its totally worth it, I had no idea this was how it worked.

If anyone actually watches this leave a comment so I have someone to discuss this with...

Bush, You're a Moron

The US intelligence released a report yesterday, stating that Iran had halted its nuclear weapon program four years ago and wouldn't be capable of getting a nuclear device in the foreseeable future. I thought this is good news, as now maybe the US won't start another war in the middle east. After all, it makes no logical sense for Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, all they'd get in return is sanctions from the rest of the world.

However, Bush had this to say this morning: "Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." Get over it! Iran is probably no more dangerous than Venezuela to US interests.

Here are some things that are more dangerous to the US and probably much more likely to occur:

1. Global warming destroying our agriculture and water supplies
2. Devaluation of the dollar destroying the US economy
3. Rudolf Giuliani being elected president (or Mitt Romney, or Mike Huckabee, etc)
4. Everyone in America dying from being fat
5. or cancer
6. Hurricanes
7. Volcanos
8. Tsunamis
9. Trans fat
10. Bears

IF I was a Republican...

I'd vote for Ron Paul. Check this video out:



I got to say, I really like him. He has some insane ideas (i.e. pulling out of the UN) but his justification for them is seems fairly reasonable and logical. You can read more on his positions here:

Ron Paul Positions via Wikipedia

Also, he makes such a great point about the principles of the Republican party. Aren't they supposed to stand for less government? Being fiscally responsible? That's clearly something that has been lacking in all the Republican presidents that have served in my lifetime. After all, the only president to ever balance the budget in the past few decades was Clinton! He's got about 0% chance of getting the nomination, that'll go to some polarizing asshole who believes the Earth is 3000 years old, but you got to start somewhere.

And if you've got $100 to blow, maybe spend it here:

Tea Party 2007

Beavers

This was by far the most stressful Civil War game I've seen in a long time, the highs and lows almost gave me a heart attack. Luckily, the Beavers managed to pull off the victory at Autzen, their first at Autzen since 1993.

There is a reasonable chance that OSU will get into the Holiday Bowl, which they've never played in. Most likely, the opponent would be Texas, which I think would make for a pretty interesting matchup, especially since Pippa is a Texas alumni. If we don't get the Holiday Bowl, we're headed to the Sun Bowl again to play South Florida. I don't like this match up nearly as much, as losing to South Florida would be embarrassing and winning doesn't gain you much.

We should know what bowl we're headed to once the BCS bowls are announced, hopefully ASU will get the Fiesta Bowl giving OSU the Holiday Bowl.