okay, the important thing now, is that you ask me what kind of car I have.

I have a question.
As we move to another election cycle, am I the only person in America who still votes his conscience? Am I the only person who votes FOR someone, rather then against the opponent? There was a time, apperently long ago, when people voted for the person they thought should be in office, rather then for the lesser of two evils.
I have a bit of news for you people. The lesser of two evils is still evil. I am no fan of George Bush. His foriegn policy, and domestic policy, make me ill. I am no supporter of John Kerry either. It sounds stupid, but I am going to tow the party line of the libertarians, yet again, even though I look down on people who tow the party line.
It seems to me that every person I talk to about this is not voting for Kerry or Bush, but voting against one of them. It's hard to make people believe that their votes can count, can make a difference. I can't, in good conscience, vote against someone. That's not how the voting thing works. You should vote for the person who represents you, otherwise there is a lack of representation. People died because of lack of representation, didn't they? Didn't they die so you could voice your opinion, even if the majority disagreed? But, if you throw your vote with something you don't agree with, could it be a minority has won? That the rule of the majority has been subverted by those few who, apparently, can manipulate the thoughts of the many?
I guess I can only say, if you think you're vote doesn't count, remember the last election was decided by something like, less then one thousand votes. If nothing else, vote for someone. I used to think that voting was enough, but now I see I was wrong. You should vote FOR someone, not against the opponent, especially when you don't agree with either of them. Remember, it's not a two party system, they have just made you think so.
You're vote does count, so make it count for you.

Learning and Inferring Transportation Routines [PDF]

Abstract
This paper introduces a hierarchical Markov model that can learn and infer a user's daily movements through the community. The model uses multiple levels of abstraction in order to bridge the gap between raw GPS sensor measurements and high level information such as a user's mode of transportation or her goal. We apply Rao-Blackwellised particle filters
for efficient inference both at the low level and at the higher levels of the hierarchy. Significant locations such as goals or locations where the user frequently changes mode of transportation are learned from GPS data logs without requiring any manual labeling. We show how to detect abnormal behaviors (e.g. taking a wrong bus) by concurrently tracking his
activities with a trained and a prior model. Experiments show that our model is able to accurately predict the goals of a person and to recognize situations in which the user performs unknown activities.

Scary Cool

Could someone just tell me WTF???
I'm up, working, at fuck-all in the morning.

WTF???

I'm curious. Where do people find new music? I read other blogs mostly, plus the random perusal of the New Release rack at Zia. I am asking this mostly because I am in need of some new music.
My last few purchases have been:

The Postal Service: Give Up
Modest Mouse: Good News for People who Love Bad News
Bjork: Debut (live)
Death Cab for Cutie: Photo Album

Damn
I mean, just, damn. That's an impressive table.

Some impressions of Windows XP Service Pack 2, as installed on my work pc.

Damn, my pc is slow.
Hmm.. IE wants to block popups now, even though my google toolbar does that
Windows wants to act EXACTLY like ZoneAlarm Personal Firewall. wierd
Microsoft REALLY wants to just be able to install updates on my pc. They asked, like, 3 times.
It took about an hour to install.

Now, I don't post much about my family, but this is different. Click here and scroll down to the Long Contemporary Category. The first place winner, that's my mom. It's going to be published and available in a bookstore near you sometime soon. My mom has been trying to write a novel seriously since about the time we got our Atari 800, which is about 1984 or so.
That's my mom, and that makes me proud. I guess if you keep trying and working at something, it really can happen. While it's not really my genre of book, I will pick up a copy, because, you know, that's my mom.
Oh, and if you want to see what an Atari 800 looked like, click here. How wierd that something so simple could move us both towards our futures, as different as they may be.