Flag Burning Amendment

Recently, the senate fell one vote short of sending a vote to the 50 states to determine if the constitution would be amended make flag burning a crime. I personally think that this is by no means a problem that requires a constitutional amendment to solve. I would also say, that it's not even a problem. The main sponsor of the bill, Senator Orrin Hatch from Utah, shows a graph during the debate of the confirmed number and dates of flag burning occurrences. The total occurrences was a mere 10, since about mid 2004. A mere 10 requires a constitutional amendment? The constitution is more appropriately amendment to provide rights to the people, such as universal voting rights, ending slavery, etc., not flag burning.

As Jon Stewart quoted the flag code for proper disposal the last time this came up, “when a flag has served its useful purpose, it should be destroyed, preferably by burning.” Priceless. I suppose that if the amendment eventually passed, veterans groups that dispose of worn flags on flag day by burning them would be targeted for prosecution?

Hashing

I think I made a post about hashing before on the old blog, but hashing is essentially a running group that also drinks in between runs. It usually is separated into 2 runs/walks. At the halfway point, you talk a break and either drink some water or beer. Then at the end, they do some interesting ceremony things and finish the kegs.

Yesterday was the first time that I ran in a hash period, since I walked in one last summer. I guess I am just not used to running on such a hard surface because I ended up hurting my knee. So today, I took a sick day and am just watching soccer and tennis on TV, playing some online poker (In the three tournaments I got in, I won one and placed second in another.), and am doing the RICE routine for swollen knees, which is rest, icing, compression (ace bandage), and elevation.

Again, like my last knee injury, it couldn't have come at a worse time. Last time, I hurt my knee playing basketball, only a few days before graduation. The picture is me on crutches just outside the Kohl Center, which hosted the graduation ceremonies and also is where all the basketball games are played. This time, it comes days before Candy is moving in and probably wants some help moving in. I guess we'll see. It seems to be getting slightly less painful to walk, but that probably doesn' t mean much since it took quite a while to recover from the last injury.

The last injury I actually had a slight hairline fracture in the tibia. This time, I doubt it's anything like that because I think it's just swollen from running too much on concrete. I regularly run on a treadmill at the gym and play basketball, both of which are fairly harsh on knees, but I guess I just ran too much yesterday. I guess the smart thing to due would be either not to run at hash's anymore, if I go to anymore, or only run half of the time.

Photo Albums

I finally started using a free photo album software to start uploading some old photos. I am now putting up some photos from last May when my mom and brother came out and we went up to New York. I was also thinking of going through all of my photos and picking out the top 50 or so for a few categories like landscape/architecture, people, Candy and myself, etc. Any other suggestions for top xx photo categories. I would make a poll out of it, but oh wait ... :(

Sweet monkey paw Jesus, internet has cometh

Let the celebrations begin. Internet has finally arrived. I can now make random posts about random crap from the convenience of my own place! Now I just need to find a good place to put all of my pictures.

Holy Costco

I have never been in a Costco or Sam’s club until today. I wandered into the Costco that's a block away from my apartment building. That place is crazy. They have 36 can packs of pop! I think I would pay for the $50 yearly membership on drinks alone after Candy moves out here, with her being quite the diet coke fiend:) I will also likely benefit from the 24 packs of Gatorade for playing basketball after work on Mondays.

Qdoba

I love Qdoba. It's a great place to get a great burrito and Justin recently told me that there's now one in DC, right next to the E street theaters. I was originally going to walk a few blocks to get a burrito at chipotle by me, but then I remember about the new Qdoba and took the train into DC. Definitely worth the extra 45 minutes worth of time:)

An Inconvienient Truth

When I was in New York this past week, my mom really wanted to go see this movie about a lecture on global warming that Al Gore has been doing since 1989. The movie also put in some things about the 2000 election, which was somewhat boring.

Watching the movie, you see a totally different Al Gore. You don't see the boring guy from the 2000 election. You see a guy that gives a very compelling and convincing speech on the topic of global warming. The slide show he does has a great amount of compiled scientific data in various types of graphs. A few graphs show the correlation between rising greenhouse gas emmission and raising temperatures. There are also a number of slides that are taken from around the world's ice sheets that have rapidly declined since the 1970's.

If the movies in your area, then I would recommend seeing it.

Expanding the Patent Office in Denver

Last December, one of my aunt's in Colorado was telling me about rumors that the Patent Office may open a west coast branch in Denver. I guess one of the reasons that Denver would be the choice is that there is a lot of empty office space in the downtown area. She heard of this news from aides to one of the US Senators, Ken Salazar, a newly elected democratic senator from Colorado. I guess my aunt occasionally works with some government officials in DC as part of her job.

A few weeks ago, I started hearing some of the managers at work talk about this, and it may seem like this actually may happen. If it does, I would guess it wouldn't happen until at least 2008. It will be interesting to see if it does happen at all. The downside of Denver is that the public transportation system is virtually non-existant compared to the great metro system here in DC. If there was any chance of moving in the future, it would be hard because I have gotten so used to just hopping on the train to go to work. It would be interesting to see if the Patent Office would offer any incentives for people moving.