A video about someone (local I think) who built a small house. For a single person it's kind of a cute idea.

http://www.theolympian.com/multimedia/story/157692.html

We had a conversation on OlyBlog with sailors from the USS Olympia a while back. It appears as if some are in the mood to organize some sort of demonstration or protest of the sub coming to town. Via Portland Indymedia:

We just learned, fairly recently, that the military will be sending three boats to the port here in Olympia. The boats will be here for our glorious, annual Lakefair, a gross exercise in denial, military worship and escapism.

The military is not shipping anything this time. Instead they are coming into our town in order to further perpetuate the tolerance and celebration of military "culture". If we did anything, it would not be to physically stop the war from proceeding as usual but to show them we will not allow them to insult us by bringing their boats here after the SHIT they pulled on those who just recently, a year later, came out of the courtrooms.

There are no plans for anything as of now. But we know the date, we have a little over two weeks and we have a lot of people who have been in this town for a long time. If there are any times and places thrown out there they will be announced.

As for all of you out there, in Cascadia, traveling through or thinking about traveling through, use your imaginations and dream some dreams. Aberdeen was in the middle of nowhere and we did what we could, Tacoma was Tacoma, and now we are here, the conditions being what they are. A lot has been learned, some rifts have developed, some ideas have spread, others have continued to stagnate and some of us have learned to work together. But the possibilities of what can happen in Olympia on the 20th and the days following are limited only by us, our numbers and our determination.

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that the idea of "Love the troops, hate the war" might be lost if the demonstrators are not careful in crafting their message around this event. Maybe it's not about the war, per se, but militarism and empire in general. But then, why pick on these sailors in particular?

My power bill keeps going up and yet I'm regularly using less power each month than last year. I know I voted for that recent Go-Green ballot measure but it wasn't supposed to be a big increase and this steady rate hike has been going on for some time now. What gives?

Isn't there a formal public process for standard rate hikes?

Am I alone in this maddening sinking feeling of being robbed?

Should I just shut up and obey my cororate masters?

The message came to me third hand. Anyone know any more?

"My wife was told by a parishioner at our church today who works at the Auditor's office that the owner of the property is planning on cutting down the trees.

He is supposedly planning on building a 5 storey building at the corner of Carlyon & Capitol Way. He is supposedly putting his request to the Tumwater City Council this week. We need to get the word out, and if this is true, do all we can to stop it!"

Hmm.

Then as we start to connect the dots an important image emerges.

And now, take away the grid lines, leaving the little black dots to float in space.

Here is the second in my series of UML charts. In this round I was surprised to see my own neighbor had a UML plate as well! Some of the UMLs in this chart were listed last time, but most of them are new: 011, 032, 037, 049, 061, 065, 084, 173, 183, 262, 279, 322, 336, 418, 421, 429, 443, 476, 558, 607, 652, 795, 816, 842, 901, 951, 974. UML lists 1 and 2 bring a combined total of 48 UMLs spotted out of 1000. This chart only presents those UMLs spotted in round 2.