Just wandered though a rather wierd bout of freezing rain. I think freezing rain is my current least favorite form of weather, due mainly to the thick layers of ice it deposits upon every surface. Much, much more nasty than snow, and wet to boot.

Been extreemly busy doing all sorts of random things here and there. I cut the first part of a CD with Chyna and Marcus, which we are currently planning on calling 3 Dimensions: x,y & z. I still haven't heard the final mastered cut, (as it's still in production) but I'm assured that it's pretty decent. [Yes, I know I need to get unlazy and cut a demo of my own. I'll get around to it eventually.]

Stuff is, as expected, going to pot in Iraq. Not too terribly happy with the direction that the war has taken, but of course, I was unhappy with the absolute total lack of planning and direction comming from the current administration before we undertook this rather slipshod operation. Since the start, my dissapointment has been growing geometrically. When will the US learn that it's HumInt capability is the laughing stock of developed nations? Granted, our ElInt is (in general) top notch, but not everyone is stupid enough to send vital messages in the clear, or use cell phones. (Yes, my GnuPG key is available at [http://pgp.mit.edu|pgp.mit.edu])

I've been indulging a bit in one of my more intersting pastimes: looking at old dilapidated buildings, and buildings in various states of disrepair all around Rochester. There's something magical about buildings which have been abandoned whom the environment is slowly reclaiming brick and beam by brick and beam. This building is one on Cliff St. off Upper Falls Blvd. in Rochester, NY. which I ran across on saturday.

On sunday, I was comming back from Nate's barn below bristol mountain, taking a rather circuitous route back to rochester, when I passed through a town that I haven't been through before, called Honeyo Falls (Thanks Steve!), which has a small water fall that used to power a saw mill. All around the waterfall were little individually iced blades of grass and tree bits which had slowly build up a countoured layer of ice from the mist of the falls. Definetly pretty interesting to see arrayed on the ground and in the trees like mini stalagmites.

I then wandered around Rochester's High Falls, which I hadn't bothered to really look at before, even though I've played pool right by it on numerous occasions. There are quite a large number of industrial buildings in the area, and it seems that RG&E owns ever third one of them, and almost all of the ones facing the gorge. Regardless, it was definitely interesting to check out and see one of the larger waterfalls in an industrial area.

This winter just seems to want to keep right on going. Today there was about 3 inches of snow, which still seems to be falling even though it's almost 2A EDT. My car and the entire parking lot outside of the Eastman Dental Building was completely covered, as you can see to the left. This, added onto the nice bit of ice stormage over the weekend which cut of power to a large number of people, including Raphael and his family in Brighton. Oh well. I'd much rather have snow than an ice storm. [But I think I'm going to have to spend some serious time on the beach in FL or CA when I get back to thaw out a bit. Brrrr.]

In other interesting bits, it seems that the Oakland police department has decided that it would be a great Public Relations move to fire upon relatively non-violent anti-war protesters who decided to protest APL, a shiping company that supposedly is a major DoD shipper. Regardless of whether you agree with the protesters or not, the usage of force against relatively non-violent protesters should not be tolerated in any city. The right to air one's grievances in a public maner is one of the liberties which all Americans hold dear, and must not be taken away by force or threat of force in all but the most dire circumstances. Frankly, I'm not quite sure how 1000 protesters who may or may not have been keeping longshoremen from work is a "dire circumstance" requiring much more than a police presence to make sure that the protesters refain from vandalizing property and avoid liability from not responding.

Since I seem to be using a keyboard now more than ever before, I started to get slightly worried about the type of keyboard that I've been using (Ye olde standard plank). To that end, I've been looking around at the various different styles of ergonomic keyboards out there, of which the nicest seemed to be the data hand series, and settled on the Kinesis Ergo Advantage Pro.

While it means that I'll be able to continue typing for a lot longer, it also means that I've had to spend the past few days learning how to type all over again. (For someone who normally types well over 80wpm with few errors, it's quite frustrating.) I've mapped the shift key to the foot pedal that comes with the machine, and have moved a few of the other keys around, so hopefully I'll be able to figure it out well enough to type at at least half of my original speed. (Although it's likely that within a bit I'll even surpass that.)