A visit to Libya

A writer for the LA Weekly visits Libya and the story isn't too surprising.

Winter in LA

 I hate Socal for a bunch of reasons...traffic, the leftists that run stuff here, on and on. But, it's stuff like this that makes it all worthwhile.
 

Death to Amtrak!

A comic by Peter Bagge explains quite succicntly what Amtrak's problems are.

The Patriot Act

All of the Bush kool-aid drinkers are whining about the failure of the Senate to vote on re-authorizing the Patriot Act (which will result in the eventual death of a bunch of stuff in it; nevermind the fact that it was voted on by a bunch of people who never read the damned thing in the first place). If this is the kind of shit that gets pulled under the Patriot Act, I say death to it.

UPDATE

Turns out, this was a hoax

What's changed in 2000 years?

Nothing. This graffiti from Pompeii shows that nothing's really changed.

The comments from Fark on this are funny too.

Varig flight

The Varig flight from LAX to Narita was definitely a mixed bag. Boarding was supposed to start at 8:05 (!) for a 9:05 departure, but it boarding didn't start until 8:45 or so. It didn't really matter, though, since there were only about 50 people or so getting on the flight at LAX (we did push back from the gate on time) The flight starts in Sao Paolo, goes to LAX, then onto Narita. There were roughly 50-60% Japanese, about 30% Brazilians and then just a few random foreigners. I had the whole cramped row to myself, which made it nice, otherwise, it would have been miserable for me. The food on the plane was a grade or 2 below mediocre - all of the jokes about airline food were still holding true on this flight. The service was OK, nothing as nice as Singapore or JAL. I slept for big chunks of the flight and it was nice landing at Narita so early (1:30pm as opposed to my normal 5-6pm). The gate was a short walk to the customs area (again, as opposed to being miles away). So, I sailed thru the whole thing.

Also, normally, I get a Japan Rail pass since it's so much cheaper for taking the train (Y28,000 for the pass I get, a train ticket from Narita to Misawa runs Y19,000, so the pass saves Y10,000), but since I pulled the trigger on getting this trip together so fast, I didn't have a chance to buy a JR Pass. Usually, you have to buy them overseas, but apparently, JR has changed their rules and now you can buy them at the ticket office, so, I saved tons of $$.

So, I got into Misawa at 7:15pm, it was chilly and a bit of snow. Took a shower and Noreen and I headed out to dinner. Last nite, we got about 2-3in of snow, forecast is for more, 35F high, low 20s at night. Not too much else going on here.

Updates as developments warrant.