Stand for Change

I caucused for the first time today.

Yesterday, Senator Obama held a rally at Key Arena in Seattle, and I ditched work to go. Doors opened at 11am, which is when I got there, but I still was unable to get into the near 20,000 seat arena. Thousands of us stood outside for several hours in the cold (by Seattle standards) just to hear the speech over the speakers outside the stadium.

Luckily, the Senator stopped by the crowd on the way in. With a megaphone he stood on the steps about 10 feet from where I happened to be standing, and gave an incredibly moving speech before entering the arena. The energy of the enormous crowd made it obvious that Obama was going to carry this state in a landslide.

I tend to be passionate about politics and like to argue with my friends and try to get them to go vote. But after the rally, I tried to take it a little further. I made sure to look up the caucus location for everyone at work that I could and I think I convinced several people to go and be counted.

Turnout today was definitely incredible. And as predicted, Obama supporters seemed to outnumber Clinton supporters by more than 2 to 1 in my legislative district. We broke into our precincts and stated our initial presidential candidate preferences. There were actually a couple people that came “uncommitted” in my precinct. So initial tally gave 6 delegates to Obama, 2 to Clinton, and 1 uncommitted. Obama supporters only needed to convince one of the uncommitted voters to pick up another delegate, so a couple people were able to make a few statements and it was relatively easy to pick up the extra delegate. So finally, it turned out 7 to 2.

It was actually very laid back and people were mingling and talking and I met a few people that I will probably be seeing more of. Exactly seven of us volunteered to be delegates at our county and legislative conventions, so it was easy picking them. I really have no idea what is going to be involved in being a delegate at these conventions, but I have a month to figure it out, right? Anyway, I think it will be fun. 

The Greatest Invention of My Lifetime

Ok, I have been known to exaggerate a little bit when I get excited about something, but this time I really mean it. I bought a Macbook Air earlier this week and I have fallen in love with the multi-touch trackpad.

It is large… probably more than double the size of any other trackpad I have used. But once you start getting used to the gestures, the trackpad suddenly becomes easier to use than the five-button mouse with wheel that I have become so accustom to.

The oversized pad means that you don’t have to lift up your finger and drag some more just to get across the screen. Drop a second finger on the pad and click to do a secondary click (i.e. right click). Drop a third finger and swipe for to go forward and back (two buttons I use a lot on my mouse). Hold down control while using the pad and you can zoom in to any point on the screen. This ability gives you the precision of a mouse when trying to select fine detail in desktop graphics programs.

I am waiting until they make a similar trackpad that I can use on my desktop. It really is that good. 

Going micro…

I was thinking about using twitter towards the end of football season last year, but thought it would be too hard to get people to use it. But vj and lilachoot are now using it, so I am in. I love v!

I want more…

A couple of my friends bought digital SLR’s recently and have started uploading lots of pictures to flickr. They are definitely getting better and better, but I want more.

BSG

I started watching Battlestar Galactica this season and I just watched the season finale last night. They claim to have the best show on TV, and since they ended two weeks before Entourage starts up again, they might be right. I will definitely have to get caught up on the previous seasons.

Anyway, I just thought I would throw that out there.

While I am talking about work…

There has always been a real dearth of good books on Agile software processes. If you haven’t used an Agile process before, it really hard to understand what one is let alone trying to start one yourself.

I don’t know why I have never read this book before, but I bought Mike Cohn’s User Stories Applied on Friday, and I can’t put it down. (Man that makes me sound really lame, doesn’t it?)

I have never read a technical book that has been written so well, makes so much sense, and puts into words everything that you have thought but have been unable to put into words.

Anyway, I now understand the feeling that Oprah gets when she reads a good book. Pick it up.

Building Firefox 2.0.0.2 on Windows

Building Mozilla products on Windows has become so much easier with the new MozillaBuild 1.0 package.

I did run into a problem, however, building the Firefox 2.0.0.2 source with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 (not the express version). During the build, I would get an error dialog saying that the program xpt_link.exe was unable to find msvcr80.dll.

This was because the xpt_link.exe.manifest file was not being copied into the objdir/dist/bin directory when the executable was copied.

The quick and dirty solution:

1. After you get the error, copy xpt_link.exe.manifest from objdir/xpcom/typelib/xpt/tools to objdir/dist/bin.
2. Start the build again using make -f client.mk

The trunk (and maybe the MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH also) have a change to build the manifest file in the executable so this shouldn’t be a problem. But for those building from the release source using VC8, this is the easiest way around the problem.

I did a quick google search and didn’t find anything exactly on point, so I figure I write a short post in case anyone else has the same problem.

Gross, man.

Ok, after a few weeks of mourning time, it is time to start asking questions. The whole season, Bears fans have been divided into two groups: those that violently oppose the notion that Rex Grossman should be our starting QB, and those that don’t say anything about it.

So I am addressing those (including me) that have been closet Grossman fans and continued to believe that he is the primary reason that we had more hope in our 13-3 season this year than we did in the 13-3 season in 2001. With the NFL’s free agency period starting on Friday, is it time to change our tune?

Campaign Contributions

If you aren’t spending any money supporting candidates for the 2008 general elections, then consider donating to the notMac Challenge fund. Or better yet, answer the call to public service and work on a solution.

Advisory Measures

In the aftermath of Seattle’s Monorail disastrophy, the public has returned is focus to the looming problem of the deteriorating Alaskan Way Viaduct. The double-decker elevated concrete structure separates downtown from picturesque waterfront of Elliot Bay, and experts say that there is a 1-in-20 chance that an earthquake will cause a catastrophic failure of the viaduct in the next 10 years.

A political fight ensued, with the city proposing replacing the viaduct with a tunnel, and the state declaring it would only pay for a replacement elevated structure.

After realizing the price tag of a large tunnel (one that could handle the same amount of traffic as the viaduct) would doom the proposal before it could even be fully studied, the city decided on a smaller tunnel option combined with surface road and transit improvements to pick up the rest of the load.

So a special election has been called for, and on March 13th Seattle residents will advise the city and state on what they prefer: a new elevated structure, or the so-called surface/tunnel hybrid. These measures are not binding, but will continue to shape the political debate.

The way in which the measures have been written, however, has already changed the discussion. There are two measures: 1) do you prefer the Surface/Tunnel Hybrid Alternative, and 2) do you prefer the Elevated Structure Alternative. This leads to four possible outcomes of the election.

This has allowed Seattlites to resurrect a third plan that had been declared politically dead last year: the surface/transit option, or, as I like to call it, the “tear the damn thing down and be done with it” option.

After a lot of consideration, I have decided to support this third option and will vote “no-no” on these measures.

Some things to keep in mind:

The viaduct is not a vital artery to the heart of the city.

The viaduct provides a good route for traffic to pass through downtown from the south side of the city to the north side, and vice versa. Its limited downtown exits do not provide significant improvements of access to and from downtown. Therefore, the short-term health of downtown would not be seriously affected by tearing down the viaduct.

Meanwhile, it has been well documented that a lot of the issues faced in larger inner-cities can be avoided by keeping the city’s revenue base from an easy commute to the suburbs. San Francisco, Portland, Milwaukee, and Denver have all torn down elevated freeways to reinvigorate their cities… and all with positive effects.

The long term affect of losing the viaduct cannot be predicted now.

WSDOT’s website says: “Extreme congestion on I-5 and in the downtown city grid following the 2001 Nisqually Earthquake closures made it clear [that the viaduct] is a critical route that needs replacing.”

This is misleading because short-term road closures always cause problems that eventually subside as people find new ways around it, adjust their lifestyles, and factor their commute into many of the major decisions they make.

Seattle’s traffic problems are serious. But the unprecedented population increases and development in the areas around downtown means that the region is starting to adjust to these realities. The first light rail line of the area is scheduled to open in just two years. The “Transit Now” initiative, expanding public transit 15 to 20 percent over the next 10 years, was overwhelmingly passed by county voters last November.

We need to let these significant changes evolve before we try to predict the catastrophe that will come by tearing down the viaduct. If it does turn out that we do need to do something, we can make the right decision on what to do with the three billion dollars earmarked for this project.

Tearing down the viaduct pays for itself.

At an estimated $800 million, this option is far cheaper than the $2.8 billion elevated structure or the $3.4 billion tunnel. Meanwhile, a large corridor, the length of all of downtown, is open for strategic redevelopment.

The Olympic Sculpture Park, a new nine-acre waterfront park opened a few weeks ago by the Seattle Art Museum, is a few blocks north of where the viaduct ends. It has been incredibly successful and has enjoyed both critical and public acclaim since it opened. Opening up more of the waterfront will allow both residents and visitors to enjoy the beauty of the city in a place that is currently reserved for tourists.

As the population of downtown continues to grow, so does the revenue generated from it. A major improvement to the livability of downtown would generate much more cash than a toll-less viaduct or tunnel.

It is also important to remember that we pay for these large projects through regressive taxes. There is no income tax in this state, and most of the money for this project comes from a substantial gas tax increase. Though it seems progressive to increase the price of gasoline in an effort to lower demand for fossil fuels, it is important to remember that the working poor pays a much higher percentage of their income for this tax than the wealthy.

Vote No and No.

Anyway, I know that none of this constitutes a decisive argument that we will not have any problems if we tear down the viaduct and just make some improvements to surface roads and public transit. But it has convinced me that we don’t know that there will be problems with it. Other cities have done it under surprisingly similar circumstances and it has worked out.

There are enough reasons to try it, and if the sky does in fact fall down because of it, we can decide later to build a seismically sound elevated structure to hold it up.