Cats and Dogs - Why Do So Many Americans Hate Cats?

Meet Shasta. Shasta is a cat. Shasta is ancient by cat standards, at almost 15. She is a typical cat: cuddly and affectionate when it suits her (which includes 3a with surprising frequency), uninterested and aloof when it feels like one of those days. She plays fetch, she hisses at other cats but loves all humans, and she has long lost interest in all play that doesn’t end in her being fed a treat.

Confessions of a Linux User

As you may have guessed from the number of entries on Linux on this blog, I extensively use it on pretty much all computers I own. It doesn’t matter if its an ancient 486 that sits in the basement and connects once a day to data sources to mangle them for presentation as email or the latest Ultrabook from Samsung. They all happily run Linux, in particular either Kubuntu or Ubuntu Server (my one exception being the crappy Acer netbook that only runs Fedora).

Affordable Care Act: They Should Have Led With This

So today I received a letter in the mail. From my Health Care Provider, Kaiser. It was a message to warn me that Kaiser had spent only 77.6% of my premium on health care cost, but that the Affordable Care Act established that any HCP has to spend at least 80% of premiums on health care, and has to do everything else (administration, marketing, CEO salary) with the remaining 20%.

L'America: Why I Love America

Over the years, my European friends and family have repeatedly asked, “Marco, why do you like living in America so much?” When I hear that question, I just smile, because the answer is long and complex. Even when they pointed out all the strangeness of the Bush years, I continued smiling: what I love about America is not a particular administration, but the people and the culture.

Surely, I am no bumbling fanboy that buys into anything whole cloth. I can distinguish what I like from what I don’t, and I can see instances where Europe does better than America. There is no need to point those out to me.

The Most Translated Pages on Wikipedia

There is a list on Meta, the wiki about Wikipedia, that contains 1,000 articles deemed important for a new language version of Wiki. So if you come up with some new language (not Klingon, please!), you should first translate these articles to kick start your project.

I looked through the list and found it extremely arbitrary. It was pretty obvious it was a curated list that had someone’s opinion of the things that matter. So I decided to do my own footwork and determine what articles you should translate first.

Mall of America Security - a Witness Account

Several news outlets (for instance, PBS here) have reported that Mall of America has taken suspicion a little too far and has created terrorism reports on visitors performing nothing but routine visiting. Some of these visitors have allegedly ended up on counterterrorism lists. Here is my first-hand account, sent to friends a few days after a bizarre incident occurred to me. It’s a first-hand account, unmodified (down to the very lazy all-lowercase spelling):

Stingray Sting

[Image hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons]

So, last year, in my continuing quest not to be San Diego’s Worst Surfer, I took one step too far. In particular, the step led me onto a stingray, a lovely little creature that (understandably) is not too fond of being stepped on. Unfortunately, it decides to make its point by stinging (hence the name) and injecting a venom into your flesh.

It all happened very quickly, yet felt like a slow motion movie. I stepped into one of those sand cones that form in agitated waters. My foot moved into the center of the funnel, and there it felt something squishy, and then something that felt a lot like a bite. After a short period, another thing that felt like a bite. Then I fell backwards into the water and stumbled back to shore.

New Digs

What do you know? I will have to move again. Sick of living near UCSD (mostly because students don’t typically make for good neighbors), I am moving with all the belongings to Pacific Beach, the rough-and-tumble neighborhood of San Diego right South of tony and zany La Jolla.

Why Pacific Beach? I hadn’t set my mind and was open to any neighborhood close to the ocean, and Pacific Beach just had the best combination of places for me. It wasn’t impossibly expensive, and a townhouse there can be pretty sizeable and yet “affordable” (as Southern California goes).

Europe

It’s been the best of times, it’s been the worst of times. My brothers and I decided to part with our old family house in Germany, since none of us was ever going to live there, and I had to go and retrieve as much of my distant past as possible. At the same time, I knew this was the last time I’d see the place and get to soak in the memories of my childhood.

Election Night

As a good California resident, it’s no surprise I cast my lot (figuratively) with Barack Obama, the clear favorite of the Golden State. Indeed, after the shortest election night I can remember, we heard the concession speech just after 8p and the victory speech soon after.

One has to admit that the real surprise of the night was John McCain’s concession speech. It was the McCain I remember pre-2004: the man of integrity that puts his country above his own interests and those of his party. He was gracious beyond reproach, in one fell swoop making me forget the rhetoric he had been spewing for months. Besides, the words were aided by his demeanor. John McCain seemed genuinely relieved this election was over. Not that he lost it, mind you, just that it was over and that he could return to being the man he had been his whole life long. I doubt we’ll see him running for president again.