--> Stardate 57080.1 (08-01-2004)

Aha, the actress who plays T'Pol on Enterprise was not happy with the direction of the character either. I don't like a constant wimpy, weepy portrayal of a character such as this. Especially when she is Vulcan, who it has been emphasized over and over keep emotions under tight control. Star Trek has had quite a few strong female characters. One scene that sticks out in my mind is from the episode 'Conspiracy'. An admiral is under alien control, and beating up Worf. He does manage to summon security, and Riker comes, and gets beat up. Dr. Crusher walks in, the admiral charges, and she calmly shoots him with a phaser. I remember commenting after seeing it for the first time, 'Why didn't anyone else think of that?' 

The study of alternate propulsion is not dead. Warp drive may be possible according to a BBC article. NASA does have an advanced propulsion lab, but I don't think they are thinking this far ahead. 

Friday evening I took the dog to the animal ER in Sunset. His ears are a mess again. We found out after the first time this is a common thing in Labs. After a cleaning, and prescriptions for pills and a cream, he is doing better. He is wise to hiding the pills in peanut butter, or else he is tired of eating it three times a day.

Most of that day was spent hanging around the computer and phone, waiting for Home Depot to call back on the status of my deck railing. I placed the order a month ago. I know it's small from their perspective, but I'd still like to get the deck completed before the next snow.

So I spent some time wandering the `net and doing some programming. I read between 300-400 words per minute, according to this site. That's probably pretty accurate, but I wonder if I am faster with printed pages. I know studies have shown screen printing is not as clear as paper, and Microsoft and other companies are trying to make it better. A few at work wonder why I prefer black text on a gray background. One reason is that it reduces the red fringing I see because of the thick glasses. I see much better with contact lenses. I should pick up a new pair, but I have just been lazy. My insurance should pay for a new pair, which would be nice, since with my prescription the contacts are expensive, and have to be specially ordered. 

I did a first pass at a C++ program to count words. There are a few things to work out with it, although I thought I got the punctuation removed. If you are bored, this is the output. 'I' is the winner at 1,689 occurrences, followed by 'and' for 87 log entries. There are quite few that only show up once, which I hope means I am not repeating myself. I will tell when I get to one hundred.

I also watched some of the host of 'The Amazing Race' diaries that appear on the site. He seem a little miffed that one team took the hockey shots instead of the single shot of vodka from the blade of a sabre. The team didn't do that on religious principles. He went on about how it was not the cheap stuff, but the 'top of the shelf' kind. I thought that the challenge was easy. I would guess the game gets harder as you drink more, but they only had to do one shot. 

I added a few new blogs from Utah found here. Miss Cranky was there as well. I could register my site there. Of course, there are millions of bloggers out there. Ted Koppel of Nightline noted at the recent Democratic Convention that thirty years ago, there were only three networks covering it. Now there are hundreds of channels, and hundreds of individuals making their opinions public through blogging. Thomas Jefferson would be pleased. 

Saturday Rachel came home from a week at Camp Cloud Rim. This year she was ready to go, whereas last year she cried that she did not want to leave. She hasn't talked much about what she did there. She is still singing the songs, and says "Hullo, poppet" from 'Pirates of the Caribbean' all the time. We also went out and purchased a bunk bed set for the boys. The idea was to put them side by side, but Patrick is pressing to do the bunk arrangement. I am not sure if he fully realizes that he will miss out on some of the bedtime ritual he likes (reading, having myself or April sit on the end of the bed). 

Sunday, this morning in fact, I tried making the banana cream pie again. It is not done setting up in the fridge, but it already looks better than the first attempt. 

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