View From The Hill

The view from my new job.

Vashon Island

Spent the day on Vashon Island, although I didn't take many pictures.
Walked seven miles from the harbor to the downtown, then a bit more.

SUBPRIMES

Last night we saw a show at Theater Off Jackson. First skit was overworked yet underdone. The second, "Not. Stable. At. All", was great; an intense yet opaque look at the slow breakdown of the American fugue state. The sleepwalkers won't understand it.

About half the audience left during the break and I knew why after "SUBPRIMES" began. Imagine Casey Serin, the Housing Bubble Blog and CalculatedRisk condensed into thirty minutes of fast-paced, one-man skits. Nobody wanted to see it, just like nobody wanted to see the Dot Com bubble or the Housing bubble (or the current treasury bubble). Norman Bell made several attempts at audience involvement ("repeat after me, all you junior loan officers") but audience apathy was high.

Then we ate dinner at a new 24-hour diner and I met a waiter I'd known in Bothell in 2007; an older Iranian man with graying hair and stern face but he's a pretty good waiter. He recognized me immediately but I was baffled for ten minutes.

"Traded in your computer for a girlfriend?", he asked.

As we walked through Chinatown, a young interracial couple passed us. The Asian girl smiled and said, "You two are so cute together" and her boyfriend nodded. I heard it at the David Rawlings concert at the Show Box, and at the masquerade ball in GeorgeTown, too. But she hasn't figured it out yet.

Gold-Tungsten Fraud

In Oct, 2009. rumors of possible gold-bar fraud suddenly flooded the Internet. The specific gravity of tungsten is very close to gold, so gold-plated tungsten alloy bar is difficult to detect using common methods. Notice that prior to Oct, 2009, there are never any rumors of gold-tungsten fraud. Also notice how those rumors short-circuit the rapid rise in gold's price.

Today, China announced that it was forgoing gold purchases in favor of US gov't bonds -

"China's appetite for gold purchases may be limited, the country's chief foreign-exchange regulator suggested yesterday as he offered soothing words about Beijing's role as an investor in United States Treasuries"

Now put two and two together. Look at the sudden spike, an atypical meme curve which sometimes indicates deliberate injection through many sources simultaneously. Did the US govt deliberately inject fraud rumors across the Internet to kill gold as an alternative to gov't paper? If so, this will not fix the US govt's debt problem, but only buy a little more time.

Credibility

As I wrote sixteen months ago, Obama is a manufactured president. It's likely that he was identified early, helped along and rocketed forward into the democratic nomination when an opening appeared. The evidence is there for anyone who cares to seek it.

Obama's Selective Service records falsified

"It became obvious records were created after the fact for Obama and were later changed. However, the computer access date is frozen on Sept. 9, 2008; two days after Obama appeared on Stephanopoulos' show saying he registered with SS in 1979 when the requirement was nonexistent.

The mistakes made by adding to and changing the fraudulently created record after Coffman's FOIA request was fulfilled but before the Allen's was received, provides an audit trail of the fraud."

This is what the United States is now, a country of fraud and lies.

Ustream

"Moblog" ("mobile blogging") was the original attempt at popular video streaming and it died slowly over the past six years (graph #1). In June, 2006, I predicted that RocketBoom & VLogs too early. I was right (graph #2). The latest video blog is Ustream and I think this one succeeds (graph #3). Ustream.tv took five minutes to configure and test on my iPhone and my biggest problem was the latency, ten seconds from broadcast to display. But it's easy, supports many cellphones and it works.

Space

Respect space, respect ego.

People grow at their own pace

Effectiveness trumps efficiency.

The free marketeers haven't learned that. Yet.

Event - Why I Moved To Idaho

I plan to write up several personal events and how they shaped my thoughts. I walked eight miles today, often in a retrospective mood, and rode the Portland aerial tram. I've already earned two degrees and changed careers twice. I'm not doing it again.

1989 - Kirk Richmond, a 29-year-old manager at Teradyne, rejects my request to move into software development because "if you were going to succeed at something, you've have done it by now". I am 31 years old, working third shift and taking CS classes during the day. I quit and move to Idaho, graduate five years later after writing ASPEN, which is used by 3000 users in forty States.

Of course, I'm now 51 and he might finally be right.

Portland Tram Dux

Patterns

I bumbled around the Wiccans for years, not grasping the obvious. Marri admitted in 2008 that they use words & context to manipulate men. The admission surprised me, although she didn't say it explicitly but led me to that conclusion (as usual). It's been over a year since we talked (she called me this night and now I wish I'd written about it) but reflecting back on our conversations and other wiccans I believe she told the truth. I rented a room in Bothell for several months, one of my roommates was a writer and she listened intently to my Wiccan stories.

"It sounds like they want something from you, they normally wouldn't waste time on a non-believer", she said. "They believe it's possible to attract dark forces from another plane", she said, "forces which plague you with bad luck or trouble. Why are you messing around with them?".

Because I'm trying to figure it all out, I answered.

There is a pattern and synchronicity to Reality that we don't grasp.

I'm fairly sure of that now.
I suspect that even God can't predict the future.
This is just a big test-bed.

Damn

I have no idea what hit me about sixty miles north of Portland.

It flew across from opposing traffic, picking up mud in the divider, and hit so quickly I had no time to react.

The windshield was hit in three spots, the mirror and bracket are clean gone but there's no damage anywhere to the body.

What the hell?

Today's Mystery Guest

Trick

The devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he didn't exist.

God's greatest trick was convincing people that they can think.

The Discordance

I drove along Alki beach and at 5:14 am, a white dove flew out and almost hit my radiator. I have no idea if it means anything. I wrote about my "discordance epiphany" exactly one year ago today, discordance that Joe Stack tapped into yesterday, dead-center. I wasn't sure what it would look like but discordance has energy; the greater the discord, the greater its energy, the easier its triggering and the United States has so very much cognitive dissonance. The Triggering revealed enormous denial in both political parties, and neither may be qualified to lead. But the Discord has been laid bare to millions, it's amazing how fast and how deep it traveled.

Three months earlier I mentioned the Social Broadcast. I may have inadvertently triggered the Tacoma incident. Alternately, we may have both picked up the same subliminal Message. Either way, I had a persistent premonition a few weeks before it happened and I was shocked at how it matched my vision. It's possible to initiate a set of cascading messages through the Broadcast, quietly, below the surface, and trigger action at the end. Matching contexts unlock the meaning, like two locks keyed to the same combination, sender and receiver.

I don't really understand it but doubt it was coincidence, the timing and detail are too close.

My first sense of a pattern was four years ago. I wish I could figure it out. A year earlier, the Grifter would have fooled me but for some reason, I perceived his true nature almost immediately and after some reflection I deduced the sequence of events that set me as his mark.

I suspect that the closer you venture to the Voice, the more anathema you become to sleepwalkers.

The Path goes whereever it goes, though, and I'm curious where it leads. Altruistic culture trumps selfish culture because selfish culture cares too much about itself to sacrifice for the future. The Broadcast is an integral part of Altruistic culture and I watch for secondary echoes. I can't prove their causality but I can estimate probability, such as the coincidental use of "allegiance" in an Anarcho title, or three cryptic Tweets immediately following my ping of a response-provoking message.

Nisqually

Visit to the Nisqually wildlife refuge.
Not the most inspired pictures but we were pretty busy that day.