Free-Return

Emerald Directions

!OK, I admit it, the cab got lost between Puxi and the Emerald (路博园 lu bo yuan) . It has to have the worst directions in the world because it is so confusing. Here are the Map. The basics to know are that it is in kangqiao and it is on the outer ring road and hunan gong lu 湖南公路

Here are directions from the Emerald to various locations, so you can reverse them to get there:

Lujiazui 30 minutes Hu Nan Road --> Jin Xiu Road --> Hua Mu Road --> Yang Gao Road --> Century Avenue --> Lujiazui
Pudong Airport 20 minutes Hu Nan Road --> Outer Ring Road --> Pudong Airport
Hongqiao Airport 30 minutes Hu Nan Road --> Outer Ring Road --> Xu Pu Bridge --> Outer Ring Road --> Hongqiao Airport
Bund
(Wai Tan) 25 minutes Hu Nan Road --> Long Yang Road --> Nanpu Bridge --> Zhong Shan Dong Yi Road --> Bund
Huaihai Road
(Puxi Tai Ping Yang Dept. Store 2) 35 minutes Hu Nan Road --> Long Yang Road --> Nanpu Bridge --> S-N Viaduct Road --> Huai Hai Road
Xujiahui
(Puxi Tai Ping Yang Dept. Store 1) 45 minutes Hu Nan Road --> Long Yang Road --> Nanpu Bridge --> In Cir. Way Viaduct --> Cao Xi Road --> Xujiahui

Personally, I don't like these directions because they are kind of round about. The easiest thing to do is to get the on the A20 highway （A 二零高速公路) and get off at the Hunan Gong Lu (湖南公路）

Shanghai Community International Schools

Map and Directions
From Puxi: (浦西）
Take the Lupu or Xupu Bridge. （卢普或许普大桥）
Follow the signs to the Pudong Airport. （开道浦东机场）
Take the Hunan Rd. exit. （开到湖南公路出口）
Turn right on Hunan Road. Turn right on Xiuyan Rd. （小拐修沿路）
The school is on the corner of Hunan Rd. and Xiuyan Rd.
SCIS - Pudong
800 Xiuyan Road
Kangqiao, Pudong
Shanghai, China 201315
86-21-5812-9888 (FAX: 86-21-5812-9000)

Nikon D80 and 18-200VR

Well, I've switched to Canon for my digital camera and now have a passel of Canon lenses (wahoo!), but if you are on Nikon, then there are some great options now that the Nikon D80 has shipped. Pricegrabber has the D80 for $900 or so dollars, but the big news is that there is an amazing lense, the AFS Nkkor 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6 VR G ED DX that is pretty much everything you could want. Yes, it is $700, but Ken Rockwell and Bjorn just love the thing. It isn't super fast, but it covers just about every range you'll ever need from wide angle of 18mm to 200mm (with a 1.5 lense factor, that's up to 350mm equivalent). Ken's review is amazingly detailed.

That isn't the perfect lense as its a little slow and it does have strong barrel at 18mm, then pin cushions higher up. Image quality is good wide open and gets worse as you telephoto. It is very sharp at F/4-F5.6 at 18-24mm and requires F/11 at higher. The vibration reduction gives you good images down to 1/10 sec at 200MM and 1/5 at 18mm.

If you really want high quality but bulky pro lense, then the AFS Nikkor 28-70 F/2.8 ED IF is the one to get. It is expensive heavy and bulky but optical quality is amazing.

There is a Santa Claus

Bolton nomination is dead and Rumsfeld is gone. Merry Christmas and welcome to a new era of international relations. Wooohoo! BTW, it is incredibly honorable that outgoing Senator Chafee, who lost his seat in Rhode Island won't use his last few months to slide this one through which he could have.

He blocked Bolton initially, so Bush had to recess appoint him and could have, since he's a lameduck, just slid it through. Apparently, Bush expected a payback from Chafee after he campaigned hard for him (which ironically is one of the reasons that this extremely moderate Republican senator actually lost).

Country makes sense

Wel the election is over that the biggest winner IMHO was common sense. I'm absolutely amazed that after billiions of dollars of marketing and spin, the center of the US figured out what was going on.

Of course, the left and right haven't changed. 9 out of 10 democrats voted democratic and 9 out of 10 republicans still believe firmly in Bush, the war and that we are just not working hard enough to prevail. but, the great center figured a few things out. Some of us have been worried (me among them) that we were headed for a 1984 Orwellian democracy where yes meant no and no meant yes and freedom meant imprisionment.

While I'm sure historians will write lots and lots in the future about these last six years, for me it has been truly remarkable to see the free flow of information actually work. In the end, it wasn't the legislature nor the judiciary that stood in the way of the "executive presidency" but the 4th estate, the free press and most importantly, the Internet had a huge impact.

In the end, US politics IMHO will again end in a muddle and that is just fine with me. As for what to do with Iraq and so forth, the die is cast, just taking over a country doesn't work. It didn't with Vietnam and it certainly doesn't in Iraq (or Afghanistan) for that matter. I only hope that not too many more servicemen and women will die (and be maimed) before they are back home.

2006 Election Endorsements

2006 General Election Endorsements | News | The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper

2006 General Election Endorsements

Things are so complicated this year, you really do need a cribsheet in Seattle.

Tossups

Looking just at toss ups, the one in Washington is Darcy Burner vs. Dave Reichert. If you want to contribute the maximum is $2100 per individual for the general election. See Darcyburner.com

More seats at risk

A NY Times poll shows that more seats are at risk and that religious conservatives, the heart of the Republican party, may be losing some enthusiasm.

“The social conservatives are frustrated with what’s going on,” said Saulius Anuzis, the chairman of the Republican Party in Michigan, where, he said, one-third of his volunteers are social conservatives. “We have heard disappointment and disenchantment. The level of commitment isn’t as fierce as it ought to be.”

They have a good Election Guide as well.

Bush supported by 86% of Republicans

An amazing statistic really when you think about it, is how well the strategy of maintaining the base really work, despite some really bad news, Bush's approval rating remains at 37% mainly because every last Republican loves him.

Poll Shows Strong Shift Of Support to Democrats - washingtonpost.com

President Bush's approval rating, which rose to 42 percent in September after an anti-terrorism offensive marking the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, registered 39 percent in the latest poll. The percentage of respondents who said they strongly disapprove of his performance is about double the number who strongly approve. This disparity in voter intensity could have implications for turnout on Nov. 7, since impassioned voters are most likely to go to the polls.
The president's approval rating reached a low of 33 percent in May, but he has since regained support from Republicans who had expressed unhappiness with his performance. In the current poll, 82 percent of Republicans said they approve of how he is handling his job, compared with 68 percent in May
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Fatwallet

OK, Andy told me about this site, here is what I like:

The Rewards You get $5 for signing up and you get 2% off any buy.com purchase which is use a ton. Barnes & Noble is 4% and Overstock is 4%, so these are pretty significant.
Coupons. They have a good summary of all the discounts at Amazon for instance and they put them all in once place, so you can just see what the discounts are rather than the Amazon way of putting them in category.

The Hot Deal News i'm guessing probably gets lots of click. Reminds me of the QVC approach, discount and who won't just buy a skillet for $10, so this is good for the browser, while the 2%-4% discounts are good for the folks who are in considered purchase mode.

They partner with Pricegrabber for shopping comparisons and I loke the way they bring up the most popular to the forefront. Interesting to see how Computers, Photography, and Electronics come up first.

State of Denial

After two books about the Bush Administration that could have been written by Karl Rove, it seems that Bob Woodward remembered to tell it like it is...

New Book Fuels Election Year Debate Over Bush, Rumsfeld - washingtonpost.com

New revelations that White House aides tried twice in the past two years to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld fueled a caustic election-season debate yesterday over the president's wartime leadership and underscored divisions within his administration.
The latest book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, "State of Denial," paints a portrait of an administration riven by personal and policy disagreements exacerbated by a deteriorating situation in Iraq that has grown even worse than Bush admits to the public. In Woodward's account, Bush has become increasingly isolated as his team has rejected advice to shift gears in Iraq before it is too late.

Naral Voting Guide

Well its election time. Really primary time. In Washington, the big issues are the State Supreme Court and making sure that fair minded people are there. Prochoice Washington has a simple voters guide:

State Supreme Court
Position 2: Susan J. Owens
Position 8: Gerry L. Alexander
Position 9: Tom Chambers

Court of Appeals
Division 1, District 1, Position 7: Marlin Appelwick
Division 1, District 3, Position 1: Mary Kay Becker

District Court
Northeast Electoral District, Position 2: Mary Ann Ottinger

D-link DI-624 Firmware

broadband » Forums » D-Link » [Info] D-Link DI-624 Rev.C Firmware 2.76b05. Wow, who would have ever thought the world is this complicated. These are a series of discussions on the various flaws in D-link firmware.

I've been using v2.70 with WEP on, since WPA seemed unreliable. It has been stable for me pretty much, although we usually power off the router when there is a problem. I would like to get to use WPA2 with AES encryption as this is the most robust, but it is tricky to find a D-link release that does it. I run it without any Super G and with 802.11g only which is supposed to improve performance.

Here's a catalog of versions and problems:

2.76 Beta 5 (only on D-link Germany).
2.75 Beta 2. This was up last year 2005-07. It has since become just 2.75. Quite a few folks have seen this become 2.75 without a beta, but report problems like rebooting every 10 minutes and trouble connecting with a Broadcom chipset in an HP laptop.

BTW ftp.dlink.com has raw versions of just about every firmware you need, specifically for my DI-624 Rev C, the software lives in ftp.dlink.com/Gateway/di624_revC

Some other aside, since the D-link outputs at http://192.168.0.1/natlist.txt a real time connection list, two folks have done Windows utilities that reformat that so you can see what's happening. They are D-link Connection Monitor currently in version 1.7.95 and Router Monitor 0.91 Beta which does about the same thing.

Also, this router allows you to use NTP to make sure the time is correct in it. If you fill in us.pool.ntp.org, you'll get a pool of US servers with the correct time. Last complexitiy is that this thing makes you set the Daylight Saving Time hours, but in 2007, these time change due to legislation so that it starts a month earlier in the first week of March intead of April. So beware!

Republicans Losing The Security Moms

Republicans Losing The 'Security Moms'

Married women with children, the "security moms" whose concerns about terrorism made them an essential part of Republican victories in 2002 and 2004, are taking flight from GOP politicians this year in ways that appear likely to provide a major boost for Democrats in the midterm elections, according to polls and interviews.
The study, which examined the views of married women with children from April through this week, found that married mothers support Democrats for Congress by a 12-point margin, 50 percent to 38 percent. That is nearly a mirror-image reversal from a similar period in 2002, when this group backed Republicans 53 percent to 36 percent. In 2004, exit polls showed, Bush won a second term in part because 56 percent of married women with children supported him.

Losing in the Heartland

For the GOP, a Heartland Plunge

When the Columbus Dispatch's respected poll recently reported that Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was trailing Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland by 20 points in the race for governor of Ohio, there was dismay but no shock among his fellow Republicans. Those I interviewed during a recent visit here said they had seen it coming for a long time. But it is a political earthquake.

Who Won the War?

It's interesting to see who is going to win this latest Lebanese conflict. To me its another case of the big super power, in this case Israel, winning, but losing at the same time and another example of where we have:

They don't hate us for who we are, but for some very real bad things that have happened. Notably, lots of innocent folks have died or lost their homes
They don't love the Hezzbolah because they want to be martyrs irrationally, but because the organization works and provides an alternative for a government that is either a dictatorship (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt) or inept (Lebanon, PLO)
They get their money from "us". Oil is the real center of gravity of the Middle East.

Hezbollah Leads Work to Rebuild, Gaining Stature - New York Times

As stunned Lebanese returned Tuesday over broken roads to shattered apartments in the south, it increasingly seemed that the beneficiary of the destruction was most likely to be Hezbollah. A major reason — in addition to its hard-won reputation as the only Arab force that fought Israel to a standstill — is that it is already dominating the efforts to rebuild with a torrent of money from oil-rich Iran. Hezbollah’s reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network — as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well — was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.