Monday, 30 January 2006, 1854

On Wednesday, January 25th, Dick Armbrust passed. He was a good man, and I can't say anything that can sufficiently honor him. He and his wife gave me the first kick in the pants to start consulting, which has provided alternately a full-time job, and a healthy side-income over the years. He was blessed with an adoring wife, two beautiful girls and a boy who looks like he's carved out of a mountain. The service was today, and while I managed to make the reviewal before hand, I couldn't stay for the funeral. It was a packed house at our Lady of Grace, though.

The only real measure of a man is how many lives he positively impacts. It was standing room only at the church, and the parking lot was packed. Thankfully, though he worked hard in life, he also took time to fish, to hunt, and to be with his family.

His funeral reminded me of Charlie Krause's funeral, in Willmar, back in '99 or '00. Charlie also ran his own business, and was a devoted father and active sportsman. Kind, funny, sincere--and both of them passed before they ever got a chance to retire.

Sunday, 29 January 2006, 2309

Well, the polls suggest that more Americans than ever are disatisfied with Bush as President. Funny--even Fox News shows that the majority of American citizens are disappointed. At least I'm not alone.

In other news, a new PHP-based format is coming to this page, which will make it markedly easier for me to update this thingy, and should improve my posting regularity.

Thursday, 19 January 2006, 2337

Here's the deal. The last time we had a gubenatorial election, we had three candidates. Two democrats: Tim Penny, and Roger Moe. Then, we had a single Republican candidate: Tim Pawlenty. Pawlenty won, because Penny split the democratic vote.

Right now, the same thing is working on happening. Kelly Doran is running under the banner of the DFL. His running mate is a true moderate, Sheila Kiscaden--someone for whom I have a great deal of respect. Doran is pro-choice, opposes new gun-control laws, and is generally quite sane. He's also opposed to funding a new sports stadium with state tax dollars, and wants to see our property taxes at a somewhat more sane level.

What does Hutchinson believe in? You'll have to wait until January 25th. He won't even say who he's running with. He's still "building his platform." What's that mean? He doesn't have any actual convictions himself, he's just marketing himself as our next new governor.

Hutchinson is Pawlenty's dream candidate. He is Pawlenty's Ross Perot, as it were. Using him, Pawlenty can shave off enough conservative DFLers tolet the right wing have another victory. Seriously, the last governor we got from a third party was Jesse Ventura. Can we afford _another_ Ventura? I know we can't afford another Pawlenty term.

Sure, you say, you're just bitter because you lost. Yep. Lost in '04. Lost in '00. Why? I blame Nader. Nader got a book deal with Rupert Murdoch, merely for agreeing to split the liberal vote, to bolster Bush's chances of re-election. Short-sighted arrogant swine. Politics is a team game, and if we don't start playing as a liberal team--which maybe means getting behind someone with whom we don't agree with 100%--we will continue to lose elections.

In short, do not vote for Peter Hutchinson for Minnesota Governor in 2006

Monday, 16 January 2006, 2303

All is good. Thor is the toughest kid I have ever met. Full details in the latest update at http://www.thorwaldgustav.com/

Sunday, 15 January 2006, 1417

Tomorrow, we go into Gillette for Thor's next tissue expander insertion. They will also be using the Alexandrite laser to lighten many of his smaller moles. 1030 hours is his scheduled time, and of course Dr. Wood will be doing the work again.

Sunday, 15 January 2006, 1341

Next Saturday is the Walk For The Cure at the Mall of America. Angela has organized a very small team, on a last-minute basis. I could try to shill for donations, but Angela wrote a better letter than I ever will:

Dear friends and family,

The local chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation is hosting its annual Walk to Cure Diabetes at the Mall of America on Saturday, January 21. Last year we didn't participate as we only learned about it a few days before the event. My only excuse for the late notice this year is that I just recently learned that some of you are interested in walking with us, so I thought I'd send a note out to everyone who might be interested in helping out in one way or another. My goal for next year is to start planning well in advance and have a real team organized to be there for Thorwald.

Here are the ways you can help this year:

1. Help us come up with a good name for Thorwald's team! Examples of existing team names are "Kayla's Cure" and "Taylor's Troops." You get the picture. Something catchy but succinct.
2. Send me a check made out to JDRF. Any amount would be much appreciated and put to good use!
3. Come out and walk with us! Walkers are encouraged to collect pledges of their own, but the JDRF also welcomes anyone who just wants to show up and walk for moral support. Let me know if you're interested and I can give you more information. I also have extra collection envelopes for anyone who might want one.

Most of you have witnessed firsthand the daily process of living with juvenile diabetes. The efforts of the JDRF have greatly improved the day-to-day manageability of this disease, but a cure is still the ultimate goal. Insulin pumps, glucagon and rapid-reporting glucometers have all granted our Thor the ability to live an almost completely normal life. Our most fervent hope, however, is that he can be completely cured and freed of ever having to wonder about his blood sugar levels or the long-term effects of diabetes. Money given to the JDRF directly funds such endeavors.

So many new technologies and new areas of research have recently opened that we honestly believe a complete cure will be here within Thor's lifetime. Our hope is that such cures will be available within the decade. If your situation is such that you cannot walk, and you cannot donate, then you can help by simply asking political candidates this: "How much money do you intend to allocate for diabetes research?"

Thank you all for your continued love and support!

Angela, Jeremy, Thorwald and Gunnar

You can also paypal us, using my email address.

If you don't have money, and you don't have time, then just do this: The next time some idiot politician starts blabbing about "Defense of Marriage" or "Homosexual Agenda", ask them what they're doing to stop REAL problems, like heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Maybe we should take some of that money they're using trying to legislate behavior, and use it to fund research which can prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths per year.

Sunday, 15 Jan 2006, 1301

Well, I made this thing CSS compliant a long time ago, but I finally dumped the table-based layout. I haven't tested the new layout to see if it works in IE. I'm sure someone will tell me. I also stuck a bunch of old posts in the archives file.

Sunday, 15 Jan 2006, 1241

I've converted two of my three classes hosted at http://linux.angelar.com/ to XHTML 1.1 compliance, and CSS-usage. I've used a couple of sed scripts to do it. lab.sed converts my labs, css_index.sed converts my index pages, and css_maker.sed converts all the slides themselves. The shell script convertdir.bash converts the entire directory, and the whole works needs the header file to ensure XHTML 1.1 compliance.

Sunday, 15 Jan 2006, 1211

Thor had his diabetes appointment a week ago, and his A1c was up to 8.7. Needless to say, we're being quite a bit more aggressive about correcting highs again, and swapping out his infusion set every 2 days, instead of every 2-3.