Thursday, February 10, 2005

The Pentagon Channel

I caught up with Ron by cell yesterday around 5:24 PM; he was on a ferry back from a job interview in Victoria, BC. I phoned to clue him in about the upcoming segment on CBS about Willie Nelson's biodiesel bizmo. After quitting Collaborative Technologies at Free Geek, Ron dove head first into biodiesel, by volunteering at a local refinery and upgrading the family car. He'll view my tape when he gets home.

Later that evening was another Python meetup at the Lucky Lab. Like last month, I showed up with one of Tara's stuffed snakes, so new registrants would be able to identify our table. This time, none of us were new.

Scott, who goes back a long way in computers, has been implementing this dynamite search algorithm (I forget its name) which he claims outperforms just about any other when it comes to pawing through gigabytes of text. I've put him in touch with police at the computer forensics lab in Hillsboro, as he needs raw intelligence about how to fine tune his presentation. I'll also mention his project at an upcoming Wanderers meeting.

Both Ron and Scott are running low on fuel, as each pursues a dream. They're both risk-taker capitalists, using their heads to score a net gain for themselves and others over the long haul. Speaking of capitalists, even our little Dawn Wicca and Associates is implementing stricter fiscal discipline these days, given new costs: we're cutting Sarah's day care at the Howladay Inn and sticking with Comcast's basic package, which includes lots of home shopping, but no Comedy Central and no SciFi Channel. Maybe we'll get Pentagon's new service at no extra charge (not counting taxes).

Fortunately, the Fuller School knows all about doing more with less and has been moving ever further towards doing everything with nothing since Bucky died in 1983. This school is about as lean and mean as they come I'd hazard. Our network is strong and continues to make inroads. Our access to timely global data is increasing exponentially. So in the long term, I have every confidance that our risk taking will pay off handsomely, in terms of real wealth (= life support, actual and potential) for omnihumanity -- plus for dogs, wolves, tigers, elephants and like that.