Misc

Strong rumor has it that Joe Biden has been selected as Obama's running mate for the presidential elections.

This weekend (in between reconfiguring my nephew's new computer ), I had a chance to view a special by CNN called "Black In America", a two part special that examined the lives of Black Americans from different perspectives since the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
(This is evidently will be available for download on iTunes as well).

(Note: Another good examination was done by the NYTimes several years back called How Race is Lived in America, a fifteen part written series that also examined the issue of race in America from different perspectives.)

Sadly, SimonDelivers has announced plans to shutdown within two weeks, citing the high fuel costs.

Some more sad news as I found out that Jim McKay and Bo Diddley as well as Harvey Korman had all passed away recently.
While I wasn't a huge fan of his music (slightly before my time), I certainly do admire Bo Diddley's pioneering efforts as an artist, to say nothing of his longevity on the music scene.

Jim McKay is probably known best for 1972 Munich Tragedy and ABC's Wide World of Sports, coining the phrase "The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat".

Harvey Korman was best known probably for the Carol Burnett Show (he is certainly fixed in that role in my consciousness - who can forgot "Ed and Eunice" ), but he also had a key role in Mel Brooks' movie Blazing Saddles.

Rest in peace....

Congrats Barack Obama! He has won the Democratic Presidential Nomination and for the first time in quite awhile I am actually looking forward to the Presidential election this year.

I am severely behind on my blogging (sorry my two readers ), but last weekend I had the opportunity (with my grand-niece and grand-nephew) to take in the Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater MayDay Parade that occurs annually near Powderhorn Park. Needless to say, the puppets were extremely impressive, as were the various drumlines that were featured. My small grand-nephew and grand-niece were good throughout the entire 90 minute parade (even waiting semi-patiently for over hour just for the parade to start). As usual, I will have the pictures up soon...

It is always important to have fun in life, and what better than to string along a 419 scammer?
Thanks to the goodness of Digg.com, here is another story of a user patiently stringing along a 419 scammer - Enjoy!
(disclaimer: probably NSFW).

Thanks to my other nephew, I was able to get a free ticket to see Desmond Tutu speak (as part of the PeaceJam Festival). It was a simple and direct message, "Making Friends Out of Enemies", but one well worth hearing these days. He spoke for about 20 minutes and then answered questions that had been previously sent in for another 15 minutes or so. One of the funnier moments was when MPR's Kerri Miller asked him what he though Bush's legacy would be. He side-stepped it nicely by remarking that he thought Laura Bush would be remembered for her concern on Burma, then proceeded to tiptoe off of the stage to thunderous applause ( & laughter ). For my part, it was quite rewarding to hear someone with that much impact on World History speaking. If you get the chance to see him in person, I highly recommended it.

Sadly, Dith Pran, one of the more famous survivors of Cambodia's notorious Killing Fields, has passed away. His story was told in the 1984 movie "The Killing Fields", which won three Oscars (sadly, Haing S. Ngor, who played Dith Pran in the movie, was killed in 1996 during a robbery). Dith was also instrumental in setting up the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Musuem to help raise awareness for the Cambodia survivor's plight.

After 16 years of faithful service (and never once leaving me stranded), my 1992 Mazda Protege went to Protege heaven. The replacement is a blue 2005 Honda Civic LX SE (which also brings me the always joyful perk of car payments again - *groan*). Rest in peace, Protege. *sniff*

Somewhat tired of listening to the endless dribble on the various news channels about the elections results, I turned to the internet - in particular the combination of Google Maps and Twitter (and TwitterVision). The combination allows Twitter posters from all over the world to comment on the elections via Twitter and Google Maps and TwitterVision shifts to where the user is actually posting from. And the comments are far more entertaining then the paid newscasters.

With Barack Obama winning handily in Iowa and surging ahead in the New Hampshire polls, it would seem to be a good time to post a couple of articles on how this candidate has truly embraced the power of the internet. TechCrunch also had an in-depth interview with him back in November of 2007.

Been meaning to post this a couple of days back, but I pretty much ended up stepping off the plane and back into work (or at least that is what it feels like ).
However, while in Hawaii, everything was great. After calling off the BillabongPro Pipeline Masters the first three days of the contest (due to poor waves), it finally got underway and I was able to catch a couple of days of competition (to say nothing of the view on the beach ). Of course, there were pro surfers aplenty to gaze at (and unfortunately, I wussed out on my chance to get my picture taken with Taj Burrow, an Australian pro surfer {read: cute!}). Of course, there was the near fist fight between Sunny Garcia and Neco Padaratz that I just missed getting inadvertently entangled in (due to Sunny feeling that Neco had cut him off from a wave).
Ate at Haleiwa Joe's (very nice Ahi fish), a Thai place that was simply called Haleiwa Eats (extremely nice satay chicken and yellow curry fried rice), as well as a tasty Indian restaurant called Bombay India, where I enjoyed some very tasty Chicken Tikka Masala.

Of course, I got to come home to 10 degree weather after being in 80+ degree weather for the previous week - yeah .

(And yes, I am still working on getting my pictures up -- in the meantime, here are pictures from my previous trip. ).

So far I have managed to successfully acclimate myself to the 80+ degree weather .
Missed the Honolulu Marathon (but did hear the cheers outside my window at 4:00 am ). Also did some boogie boarding and ended up with very sore ribs.

Now for my shameless paparazzi-esque moment: while hanging out on the North Shore, I did happen to bump into Shane Dorian ( & son ) as well as Mark Occhilupo - two Pro surfers whom I have watched for many years ( for the lady readers out there, just rent "In God's Hands", which has Shane in it - enough said ).

P.S. No-one ( and I mean no-one:-) ) will care about this except for me, but this is my first ever blog post from my iPhone. Yeah?!

It is somewhat embarrassing to say that I will be blogging lightly for the next week (since I have already been blogging lightly already due to work ), but I will be since I am Hawaii for a week. Yeah!