Entries from March 2004:

“When operating the mode dial and the zoom button with your eye to the viewfinder, care should be taken not to put your finger in your eye accidentally.”

Not only does my friend John Farrell have an entry on IMDb, but he also has a namesake who’s a major recording artist.

And, in other news, my friend Cristian and I just made plans to go to London in May.

Cristian was a member of the Washington Renegades amateur rugby team a couple years ago, and is back playing with them again now. They’re going to the Bingham Cup international rugby tournament in London on May 29-30. Cristian invited me along, and I love London, so I jumped at the chance. We got a good deal on airfare through the tournament, and a wonderful hotel at the Waldorf London Hilton on Priceline.

Anyone interested in joining us?

I installed a new faucet in my bathroom — all by myself!

It actually was really simple. I took a short course on plumbing over the last 2 weeks through the Fairfax County Public Schools, which certainly helped me feel like I understood what was going on. But even without the course, I’m sure even I could have done this without too much trouble.

Next week: new garbage disposal. Ooh, tricky…

According to Washington Post “Reliable Source” gossip columnist Richard Leiby, Jessica Simpson was visiting the White House last weekend where she was introduced to Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton to whom she cooed, “You’ve done a nice job decorating the White House.”

I signed up to take some home repair courses through the Fairfax County Public Schools’ adult education program. Monday I took a course on plumbing, and tonight I was supposed to have one on minor electrical repair.

The course was at Edison High School, about four blocks from my house. As I was driving there, I thought about the one time I had been to Edison. About seven years ago, just weeks after I moved out to Washington, I went there to judge at a high school debate tournament held there. I was very active in debate when in high school, and I knew other debaters from Edison, and that’s about all I knew about Edison.

So I walked into the school attempting to find room 507. But the front door is at room 101. I look around, and holy shit, I had just walked into the middle of a high school debate tournament!!
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There was a child born in England in the year 1379 named Diot Coke. Incredible.

Roy “Ten Commandments” Moore is apparently considering a third-party bid for president. That would be fine with me…

Check out this animation, it’s about the Exorcist. It’s perhaps the funniest thing I’ve ever seen online. And I don’t even know much about the movie!

Kenneth Marcus of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is on C-SPAN right now talking about the new option of allowing public school districts to offer single-sex education options. A number of options would be possible, including completely separate schools for boys and girls, or single-sex “school within a school” programs.

The Department of Education will allow schools to provide single-sex options if they can provide substantial academic justification for such separation. They want to offer educators a “diversity of options” in coming up with “creative solutions” that work for their communities.

So I’m wondering, if they truly believe that a diversity of options is best, why are they limiting this to gender? I’m sure people could come up with academic justification for separating races in the public schools. Perhaps students could concentrate better if there were no students of another race. Perhaps a community has more white students going to college than minority students. They could offer college prep classes to white students, and vocational education to minorities.

Of course this is a bad idea. You can come up with lots of rationales for separating people into subgroups. But it’s still better to integrate people, in any type of environment. It allows all subgroups to receive equal resources, equal attention and a more equal chance of success.