You people and your lack of knowledge of former Soviet republics/regions/whatever. Sheesh.

I am home. Unpacked. Deal with ipod later. TIRED despite pretty much sleeping on every flight.

Shit. I have to go to work tomorrow.

Still no sign of a new lease. I'm annoyed.

Oh lovely. Going through my mail I find a letter from a doctor I went to once. Identity theft within the practice. Now, I went to them YEARS ago, but now have to keep an eye on this crap.

Always keep an eye on that crap!!

Nice that in their 10 minutes on Gerald Ford, the local Fox news managed to reassure us that he really did love New York, even after the famous "Ford to NY: Drop Dead" headline, AND they showed a clip of Chevy Chase. Also, the current President will be going to the funeral, so that's nice.

Edit: In other celebrity death news, you'll all be relieved to learn that BBKing's in Times Square has booked Chaka Khan to take James Brown's place on New Year's Eve. THANK GOODNESS.

This is why I don't watch local news.

Kyrgystan still has nuclear arms capability leftover from its Soviet Days. Azerbajin has some of the most awesome open-air architecture in the world. Armenia has surprisingly palatable food, Kazakstan is essentially a large field, and Latvia and Lithuania still don't know what to do with themselves, though by god they are trying.

(This is what I learned from working with the International Centre students. And The West Wing.)

Kazakstan also has the space industry stuff - or do they just launch the rockets there?

I think it's just a launching area, from it's central Asian location that offers a good direction for orbital contact with the ISS.

Jesse, I amwith you on the pigging out. Dinner tonight was 5 stalks of asparagus and a strawberry away from being 100% fat. Though I suppose no one goes to a French restaurant with healthy food in mind.

Kazakhstan, much like LA, is mostly made of up of a huge basin surrounded by mountains on 3 sides. It has terrible smog and a huge radiation problem that is the result of being an area where they did a lot of nuclear testing.

It also has one of the most beautiful all-wood (seriously, no metal nails or screws used) churches I've ever seen in Almaty.

I liked it there a lot.

Jesse, are you home yet?

Is it morally wrong to participate in a group effort to overload the server of a site that you find reprehensible?

What if you really want to hear a sermon podcast at the site?

A bunch of people at Digg are trying to overload the server for GodHatesFags.com

Digg discussion: Make GodHatesFags pay for their bandwidth

I think it's wrong to try to silence them, but OTOH they are making podcasts, etc. of their message available to everyone on the internets....

What are people doing for New Year's Eve?

I'm hosting my annual low-key New Year's Party, which came about as a way to not spend my New Year's sitting around at home alone. Most of my friends have other, more exciting parties to go to, but I get a handful of folks every year.

This year, my girlfriend is finding a bunch of recipes for fun non-alchoholic drinks so she and my other pregnant friend will have something other than juice or water to drink. It will be odd not having the aforementioned friend drinking this year. Someone else will have to play drunken photographer with my camera, I suppose.

The only sucky part is that I have to work on New Year's Day, though thankfully my shift doesn't start until 11am. I expect I'm going to be incredibly tired that day.