Nearly everynight it seems the Empire State Building has a different lighting pattern. Colored lighting on the building started in commeration of our bicentenial in 1976.

Empire State Building Lighting Schedule

The Empire State Building was built in 11 months. Tell that to your contractor when he complains.

Starting a list of things I did wrong on my home renovation. A lot of the issues were caused by making decisions twice. The first time usually well thought out with reason and evidence by my side. The second decision rather rash and made to get the job moving and because the architect forgot the first decision.

When you have meetings with your architect and you decide on something, write down exactly why you came to your decision. Don’t rely on the architect writing it down. Also write down everything he’s promising you for your next meeting so you can check him on it.

Our guest room has a really cool pattern on lights on the dropped ceiling. My original decision was to have a ceiling fan without the dropped ceiling. Wish I’d written that one down. The ceiling fan in our master bedroom has been going for the last year, pretty much nonstop and we love it. Cool light pattern, not so cool, lots of heat, lots of electricity.

Advise on architects: Tom Vail of Vail Architects is bad. He might be good if his job were in sales or something where attention to detail isn’t important. Unfortunately, detail is important in architectural plans. Too many of my second decisions were forced on me because my original decision didn’t fit. Oh it fit on the plans, if only the plans reflected the reality of the space in the apartment. A few inches here and there matter and Tom Vail didn’t pay attention to those details.

Ran and finished (with the Finisher medal to prove it) the San Francisco Half Marathon this weekend. The weather was great for running: 60 degrees and foggy. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t great for scenery due to the thick fog. Sam and I both came in at 1:49.03, placing in the Top 20% of our age group. Pretty damn good for my first race in years and first race longer than 3 miles since college. I think it reflects well on the months of training we’ve banked while training for the New York Marathon in November.

Special thanks to Cara for driving us to the start line at 4:45 am and then later joining in for StarCraft.

Official Race Results

Comments on the race:
* Mile markers were at waist level so I missed most of them. I suggest 10 foot ladders.
* The start was sections in broad categories (Under 3:30, 3:30 – 4 Hours…) which led to a lot of passing and being passed in the crowded early miles.
* Running on the Golden Gate Bridge was difficult in the one lane that was section for runners each way, made worse by runners ahead of us slowing down and even walking. It was only 7 or 8 miles by that point (again missing mile markers) and was suprised to see so many people struggling early.
* Clocks nowhere on the course. If I hadn’t brought along my Polar watch and heart rate monitor, I’d have had no clue as to my pace.
* Very nice to run along the water front in San Francisco. Lots of great memories.
* The hills after the bridge, through the Presido and Richmond…brutal, but that’s San Francisco.

In a blow to State’s Rights and the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal government can prosecute users of doctor prescribed medical marijuana. Glaucoma patients didn’t see this coming.

From cnn.com: In a dissent, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (Stanford ‘52) said that states should be allowed to set their own rules. “The states’ core police powers have always included authority to define criminal law and to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens,” said O’Connor, who was joined by other states’ rights advocates. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined O’Connor in dissention.

I guess they teach reading comprehension and Constitutional Law at Stanford, courses that the six other justices need to revisit.

Totally unrelated, props to the House of Representatives who passed a bill to expand stem cell research under thread of Bush veto. Victories like these are these over the crazies in the Religious Wrong are too few and far between.

I’m really dissapointed with the Republican led Congress right now. They’ve wasted their time on Terri Schaivo, judicial nominations, and some angry dude named Bolton. None of these are issues I care about. None of these are issues that help America. Here are some of my thoughts as I explore the domain of Centrist Libertarianism:

Taxes – A necessary evil, but very unfair. I’m not complaining about the rich paying too much, but rather the poor and middle class being unfairly burdened. The commerce of filing and minimizing your taxes is a big industry. Knowing your way around deductions, loopholes, tax shelters and the like takes a degree in accounting or a good accountant, both of which cost money. Estate taxes are hurting middle class Americans who have paid taxes on their income, yet their hard work will be taxed upon their death if they don’t hire a tax advisor to restructure their holdings into Trusts and gifts. The complexity of our tax system is a burden to low and middle class Americans, those that can least shoulder this form of recessive taxation. Congress should spend their effort making the tax code more fair for all people, instead of doling out yet another subsidy to farmers, energy companies, and H&R Block.
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Found this in Best of Craigslist. Of all the arguments for gay marriage, this pretty much sums it up:

And what sort of morally deformed person would take pleasure in the bitter disappointment of so many to whom this meant so much? What sort of person gloats in public for nothing more than just the empty momentary and childish pleasure of being agreed with on something that doesn’t affect them in the least?

Gay marriage doesn’t affect you one way or the other. Gay marriage doesn’t change your marriage and it doesn’t change your religion. A million gay people can get married tomorrow and nothing would change for you. Nothing at all. You wouldn’t even notice it but for your obsession about other peoples’ sex lives.

* Britney Spears can still get married while drunk for the 5th, no 6th, no, 7th time in Vegas to someone she just met last week, or even that night.
* You can still get married and divorced in the same day if you wish in several states and in some you can do that several times.
* Two 80 year olds can still get married as long as they are of different genders and even if one or both are afflicted with dementia.
* Two people of different genders can be married without ever meeting one another, even on the day of the wedding.
* Your sister can marry a guy on death row and never consumate the marriage.
* Your grandmother can marry the 20-year-old pool boy.
* Mary K. Latourneau can still marry the schoolboy she raped.

Please don’t tell me that gays are destroying the sanctity of marriage. Heterosexuals are doing a pretty bang up job of that without any help at all from gays.

Remember these when you go to church on Sunday:
# “Leave to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
# “Whatsoever you do to the least of you, you do also to me”

Found this in the NY Daily News under the byline of Neil Steinberg:

NO DOUBT it is a thrill to ride a chartered bus all night from Cleveland with your fellow peace activists. No doubt it feels great when you wake up after a few hours sleep to shouts that you are rolling into New York City, where the big workers’ rights protest, or anti-fur rally, or whatever, is being held.

You stand around all day, sing songs, make new friends, shout for the TV cameras, listen to Martin Sheen speak. A memory to last a lifetime.

But that is not the point. Of course activists of every stripe want to come to Central Park to protest. The point is whether the average New Yorker wants to have a pleasant, well-tended park, or one that looks like a vacant lot the hour after the circus left. Most would prefer a pleasant park.

The said, there is a certain the-whole-world-is-watching thrill to go for a walk in the park and stumble across some giant rally of 100,000 people fooling themselves they are accomplishing something. So I have an idea: Allow, if not lots of big gatherings, then more than the paltry pair of nonopera, nonsymphony gatherings that are allowed now. But charge them. If it costs $250,000 to restore the lawn after each big hoo-ha, then require that groups pony up beforehand. That seems only fair – you make a mess, you clean it up. An extra buck or two a head won’t break most organizations – well, except maybe the peaceniks. They never seem to have jobs.

Getting Mighty last week (two years ago) led Sara to tell me about her first car, a little Honda Civic named, “Manamana”. Lucky or fate sent this video to me a week later…muppets rule!

Editor’s Note: Local copy of manamana – This is an old post from a long forgotten section of buzolich.com that happened to mysteriously vanish in the reorg

One of the better pranks I’ve heard about let alone seen video of.

Visit HarvardSucks.org where Yale students help Harvard express their true feelings about themselves.

Score of game: Harvard 35, Yale 3. Yet everyone goes home a winner.

Less than a week until the election ends and the post election season starts. To bide the time, I found a web site that counts the electoral votes based on state to state polls.

Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004

Kerry and Bush are pretty much tied, with a few states swinging in the wind. New York isn’t up for grabs, but I’m going to vote anyway.

Find your polling place at an aptly named site MyPolling Place.com

Go vote, grab some popcorn to watch the returns and then realize how similar these two candidates really are.