Our Eldest Son

Our pride and joy will soon receive his First Holy Communion!

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Today's Gospel seems particularly fitting:

Gospel
Jn 6:16-21

When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea,
embarked in a boat, and went across the sea to Capernaum.
It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.
The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing.
When they had rowed about three or four miles,
they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat,
and they began to be afraid.
But he said to them, “It is I. Do not be afraid.”
They wanted to take him into the boat,
but the boat immediately arrived at the shore
to which they were heading.

So does next Sunday's

Gospel
Jn 10:27-30

Jesus said:
“My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish.
No one can take them out of my hand.
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all,
and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand.
The Father and I are one.”

So does... well they are all fitting, aren't they? :)

Mmmm is for Molly's Milk

The bucklings are now being weaned in a hurry, and we are getting some AWESOME milk from Molly now. 1/3 quart tonight of the yummy, creamy milk. Whee!

Even more reason to vote Perry out...

Just got this info from a friend down in Austin...

I feel bad, as I'm generally a Republican by virtue of my conservative tendencies. But, you've just got to be afraid when you see something like this:

The Governor's Database

Texas is amassing an unprecedented amount of information on its citizens

by Jake Bernstein

Piece by piece, Gov. Rick Perry’s homeland security office is gathering massive amounts of information about Texas residents and merging it to create the most exhaustive centralized database in state history. Warehoused far from Texas on servers housed at a private company in Louisville, Kentucky, the Texas Data Exchange—TDEx to those in the loop—is designed to be an all-encompassing intelligence database. It is supposed to help catch criminals, ferret out terrorist cells, and allow disparate law enforcement agencies to share information. More than $3.6 million has been spent on the project so far, and it already has tens of millions of records. At least 7,000 users are presently allowed access to this information, and tens of thousands more are anticipated.
What is most striking, and disturbing, about the database is that it is not being run by the state’s highest law enforcement agency—the Texas Department of Public Safety. Instead, control of TDEx, and the power to decide who can use it, resides in the governor’s office.

That gives Perry, his staff, future governors, and their staffs potential access to a trove of sensitive data on everything from ongoing criminal investigations to police incident reports and even traffic stops. In their zeal to assemble TDEx, Perry and his homeland security director, Steve McCraw, have plunged ahead with minimal oversight from law enforcement agencies, and even DPS is skittish about the direction the project has taken.

[ .... ]

The federal rules apply to states that accept federal money and ensure the integrity of law enforcement efforts. Under federal rules, a database like TDEx must be run by a criminal justice agency. According to the FBI and DPS, Texas Homeland Security is not a criminal justice agency.

McCraw, who has an extensive criminal justice background, including a stint as an assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Intelligence, has fought a pitched battle with DPS in his zeal to promote TDEx. Repeatedly DPS has raised concerns, chief among them whether the new database is even secure enough to keep unauthorized users from logging on because it lacks “advanced authentication” to ensure that people accessing the database are who they say they are. DPS is also worried that the same user could be logged on to the system multiple times concurrently.

[ ... ]

To identify weaknesses within TDEx, a database manager with the DPS Criminal Law Enforcement Division, at the direction of his boss, easily defeated the security of the user registration process last summer. He did it by employing an accurate and relatively easily obtained agency identification number, and used one of his son’s e-mail accounts. In retaliation, Jack Colley, the governor’s director of emergency management, revoked the DPS staffer’s access to TDEx. After DPS complained, it was reinstated 11 days later.

Whole article is here: http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=2472

Who to choose for my next Prez... (Everybody's doing it)

Well, so far I'm leaning towards Ron Paul, that re-founding father from South Texas. What I think:

The Good:

• Firstly, this man is an unwavering Constitutionalists - even when it comes to sticky issues. Regardless of the popularity of the vote. This may make him unpopular in normal times - but these are not normal times at all.
• Actually believes that Liberty, above all else, is the essential American component.
• The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information.. His solution is to pull out, yesterday. I don't think the solution is that simple - but what are the chances of a successful outcome in Iraq? Simply leaving really is a viable choice.
  
• His platform states: The biggest threat to your privacy is the government.
  
• The political disconnect in America is growing. It's no longer just apathy - but anger.
  

The Bad:

• Has a certain "Ross Perot" attitude - it's very appealing to reformist, but may turn off voters. I think it will be an asset in 2008 - people are looking for change.
  
• Is easily attacked on issues such as the UN, NAFTA, security, poverty welfare, and other soft and social issues. People on the dole are not going to like him one bit. Nobody wants to pay the fair price for a happy life if the medeocre life is free.
  

What do you think?

The Milk Adventure... or... Yeah, We Got Milk

Our Nubian recently birthed three kids, here's my kids with one of the kids (hehe).

They start walking the first day, talking, and after two weeks are healthy and strong. The only unfortunate part is that they were all bucks. No extra milk for us - but so far I don't really know how much milk we'll need anyway. We named them Puzzle, Johnny, and Cabrito.

We had one "runt" who was determined to die the first couple of nights. This involved me waking up at obscene hours in the morning, collecting milk from cranky nanny goat and squirting said nutrients into the mouth. Ugh!

One thing I learned though - have a heating pad when your goat kids. No kidding, it was a lifesaver.



And now, onto the next adventure... milking for us. So I found some plans to build a milking stand - and it was quite a quick and fun little project.

So, yesterday I finished building a milking stand. I liberally applied waterproofing stain - I suspected goat milking is a rather messy business. And so it was.

Today we all piled out into the goat pen, and what do you know? She's a kicker. A "you touch me there and I'll knock the living daylights outta ya" kicker.

Fortunately, the stand is tougher than it looks - and she stayed right in place. My childhood livestock experience came in handy though - I just grabbed her hind legs and held them down, while the family wend to work.

All I can say, is that milking is tedious work. Two hours of work and we getting to the "not too bad" stage.

But, hopefully I am teaching my kids as my parents taught me. The illusion of the supermarket is that everything is cheap and easy. Not so. Learning to milk is probably not a big life skill, but neither is learning the area of a polynomial curve. Both are rarely used, yet it's still good to know.

Plus I now have fresh eggs, milk, and soon cheese. Feta and Cohuila, cottage cheese. Did I mention cheese?

The next big project - is stocking the freezer with Beef. Our 550 lbs of grass fed organic beef lasted well into the second year, but now all I have left is 15 lbs of elk from my brother's last mountain climb.

Quantum Computers

I've been holding off on blogging this one... apparently some guys in Canada have a working quantum computer.

WOW is all I can say... if it works, it'll be 20 years early.

Here's a link to a blog describing some of the hardware

Fortunatly the demo will be posted online for us to view tomorrow. A 16 bit Quantum computer should be able to process 65,536 operations simultaneously. I'm not even sure how one developes "software" for such a thing anyway - it's not programatic at all, merely statistical.

Strangely for me, the description of piloting The Heart of Gold (from Adam's Restaurant at the end of the universe) is quite a decent explanation of how quantum computers work from the laymen perspective.

What's really incredible here is that they claim to be able to solve a particular subset of NP complete problems based on the Ising statistical model. NP complete problems are the problems that no computer can solve efficiently - like how to schedule 300 airline flights a day in the most efficient manner. How to price a product across markets to maximize profits.

It's easy to verify the solution (you make money hehehe), but computing the solution takes forever. An example, what two prime integer numbers multiplied provide this solution:

18819881292060796383869723946165043980716356337941
73827007633564229888597152346654853190606065047430
45317388011303396716199692321205734031879550656996
221305168759307650257059

Easy Right? I mean, it's just two numbers you multiple and get that answer. Any computer should whip that out in a jiffy... Yeah..., um... NO.

I don't believe that this particular device will solve such problems, but if it does, or a cousin pops in next year - you can kiss SSL away (Yeah, as in HTTPS, as in your online bank, ebay, amazon. Also, don't forget PGP, and RSA digital signatures)

RSA - which SSL uses - depends on exactly the same problem to protect the keys used to secure your credit card through a symetric cypher. There are alternatives - but they're not nearly as easy and conveinient.

In my doomsday analysis - quantum computing is really the equivelent of the Internet A bomb - it makes the data security equivelent of rifles, tanks, and submarines into toys when applied to the right problems. But just like Oppenheimer, what scientist WOULDN"T want the chance to play with such a device?

Perhaps pandora's box is more suitible.

Happy New Year!!

The Christmas cards we wanted to send are now Happy New Year cards we want to mail by the end of this week.

Yowsers! Time sure does fly!

So does Mr. CD... 2 trips lately

I got on a plane for the first time since '99
What a weird thing it is for *everyone* to walk through security barefoot.
Things that make you go hmmm.

Good news abounds

-Molly the goat expecting a kid any day now
... home milking should be an adventure!
-Baby Dog is now officially Big Dog with a Real Name
...My, how that puppy has grown!
-School back in swing with
...2 reading and math whizzes
...one preschooler
...2 tag-a-longs
-The babies are going to turn 2 this year!
...UNBELIEVABLE Did I mention time flies?
-Card business running full steam ahead
-Blogged on other interests
...in hiatus, scheduled to resume during Lent
-Going to have a huge "garage sale" soon

Got back in touch with several friends, hoping to do more of that this year!

end of the state of conviviality address