Have a Googley Christmas

I'm now legally married! And I've turned 24.

A few days ago, I saw that a huge branch of a tree had fallen on a parked car. It was a newish white car, and the green leaves covered much of it.

Updated blogger settings so that there's "word verification" for comments, meaning you have to type in the word in a graphic before you can post the comment, thwarting automated scripts. Haven't logged on to blogger for a long time, because I've been using this small program that lets me post directly from my desktop (it saves the login settings onto disk).

HDB should soon be done with the pre-renovations. They've done the smooth cement flooring for the bedrooms, but in the process muddied the walls a little with cement.

Did a little coding today, expanding and modularizing a chunk of the VBA code for MS Excel. Have explored macros for OOo, but haven't gotten very far. But I have found some pretty good tutorials and code samples to work from. The thing though is that we're getting kinda busy at work, with the more clerical odds and ends that comes with physical files.

Might be doing a little Christmas shopping later. Am planning for a little Christmas tennis on Sunday morning. Just got an email about Aimee Mann's new album, "The Forgotten Arm".

Life is good. But I need to try to read more and write some poetry. Tennis is good, though Saturday tennis has been scrapped, at least temporarily.

By the way, it's amazing the stuff that Google has been coming up with. Some very good initiatives, and mostly browser based. Because when they develop for MS Windows, I can't quite use it on GNU/Linux.

Empathy

Granny is doing much better these days. She's able to speak rather clearly, and able to comprehend her surroundings as well as what we say. In fact, she cracked a joke. She burped, and I burped, then she burped again, and then asked if I had any more.

Went to celebrate my birthday/marriage with Aaron, Jasper, and Say Yang. Ate at Greenland, a vegetarian Chinese restaurant in Serangoon. That's where we were planning to go exactly one year ago, which was when my granny developed a stroke, and the dinner was cancelled.

Anyway, we went into a pet store and there were all these puppies locked up in cages. The rest of them seemed to think that puppies might like it better being caged up (or at least be ok with it) because they get fed and taken care of, not having to fight for survival outside. Yet they felt that if Jasper was locked in a cage, he would prefer freedom.

My lovey is going to arrive back in Singapore soon! Back to work for me again... Say Yang has been going wake-boarding, and it sounds damn fun. I'll try to join then if I can. Probably the closest I'll get to snowboarding for some time...

IPPT

By the way, I failed my IPPT. Managed to do only 4 chin-ups (need 6 to pass), and then after that my running also not within passing timing. My thighs ache rather badly.

The Death Penalty

I don't believe in the death penalty because I think it's horribly cruel to kill someone when you have a choice not to. It's horribly cruel especially when the death brings no benefits. Life imprisonment is a much better solution if you don't want that person to re-enter society.

People believe that the death penalty is a huge deterrence, but statistics (in the US, for example) do not suggest this. At least, that's what I've heard, though I haven't studied the data myself. I've also read that deterrence value is derived from the perceived probability of getting caught, and not so much from the harsh penalty of getting caught (with certain assumptions, of course, like assuming that that penalty isn't just a slap on the wrist).

Singapore institutes a mandatory death penalty for drug smugglers. This policy does not help with nabbing the kingpins, though it kills the pawn, who is sacrificed by the drug lords. People still smuggle drugs even though there is the death penalty, probably because they are at their wits' end, and they just can't not do this. This doesn't make it OK, of course, but I think it's very wrong to murder a desperate man. The ones really making a profit from this "business" are the drug lords, not the pawns.

Let's talk about owning responsibility. Let's talk about sex. Humans generally have sexual urges, and there is a proliferation of porn sites, should the government crack down on all these sites to prevent addiction? Or gambling. Should the government ban gambling to prevent addiction? Should the government kill all drug smugglers to prevent addiction?

In all these examples, the victim is his own enabler. And it's all about money. The addict pays for the addiction, and is responsible in part. This is not to say that the casinos and drug dealers don't take advantage of the addiction. And we (humans, mammals, animals) are all biologically similar, and susceptible to addiction, just a matter of degree.

The situation with drug trafficking bears resemblance to a war. War on drugs, as Bush would say. Say you catch a smuggler, who surrenders like the enemy. In a war, do you open fire on enemy troops who have surrendered? Not unless gripped by fear and suspicion. There is no reason for you to kill unless your own life is at risk.

The drug users are the ones with the money that funds the drug trade. If I hire an assassin to take out my enemy, who is the murderer? If the assassin gets caught, hang the guy, and problem solved? The assassin is certainly part of the problem, but the root cause is actually me, the person who ordered the hit. If you eat meat, the workers at the farms and slaughterhouse are confronted with and bear the burden of the cruelty that this entails, but you must recognize that your money is what keeps the bloody business going.

The addiction is the core problem with drugs, and the true enabler driving the system is money, which flows from the drug users to the drug lords through the smuggler.

'Yes' to harsh punishments and severe penalties for those involved in the drug trade, because there is some deterrence effect in sending someone to prison, and because they are dangerous to drug addicts and potential drug addicts like all of us. Remove that link in the chain, and keep society safe.

But not death, not murder. Don't take away a life because it cannot be returned. There is no rehabilitation for the dead, and blood is on our hands.

Fiddling with GNOME

Hello, here I am again, fiddling with my gnome desktop. Customized the "panel" by deleting the one on top and fattening up the one below. Used the big foot icon, which is equivalent to the Windows "Start" button.

My lovey is in the US now, should be touching down in a couple of hours. It's been many an agonizing hour since she left for the airport this morning... It's easy to forget how much you can really miss someone when you've been with the person almost every day for the past few months.

Christmas is coming, and with it should come some holidays, but not that many, I guess. Back at work, it's more or less routine stuff, so I'm trying to explore macros for OpenOffice.org, and by the way, OOo2.0 looks very pretty compared to OOo1.1. Version 2 has a database component, but it seems they threw in a lot of Java dependence, which some people aren't happy about because Java is not open source.

I'm thinking of writing about the death penalty soon, and maybe write in a letter to The Straits Times about it. It's good that you have "SQL view" with a MS Access query, because though the "Design view" is more user friendly, SQL lends itself to a simple "Find and Replace" using a text editor (to modify it to use a different source table).

For some strange reason, I was down with a sore and runny nose over the weekend, but I'm better now. I guess I should be able to take IPPT on Wednesday, but passing it this time is a different matter.

Tennis this weekend looks promising; last Saturday I was playing against the wall at NUS... I brought back two wooden kendo swords from Korea. I wonder if they'll come in useful someday.

Lots of staff movement in the coming months. This month one of the officers leaving. A new one to take her place. Soon my boss and her boss will leave, but I think the dates aren't fixed just yet. In a manner of speaking, I'll be leaving a few months after that too. But that's still quite a ways away.

I wonder if anyone still pokes around this place besides the spambots. If so, hello! Chances are I haven't seen you in a long time too. Oh well. Perhaps I've never even seen you before.