In 3 hours it will have been 4 weeks since the end of my fast, and 5 weeks since I’ve eaten meat, dairy, eggs, refined sugar or enriched flour. Overall I’ve really enjoyed it, so much so that I’ve going to keep with it ad nauseum adding only fish and eggs on rare occasions. Tonight Max and I are planning on doing something special to celebrate our 4 weeks, and I’m sure it’s going to entail the pint of rice ice cream sweetened with raw cane sugar that I picked up the other day.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

It’s officially been three weeks as a natural vegan! After my leg healed (an unrelated incident) I’ve been feeling very full of energy and find it easy to rise in the morning, and wake up refreshed. Last night (around 9:00) I felt so full of energy I went for a run through the ROTC trails in the dark, then up all 3 flights of stairs to the roof of CAMP. As far as food goes, simple foods have been a real hit, something like whole wheat pasta and tofu-tomato sauce. I have also been enjoying Amy’s Texan veggie burgers for a quick meal. Quinoa salad and curried quinoa remain favorites.

My weight has seemed to stabilize, after the fast, I was around 133lbs, and as I began eating, it jumped to 142lbs. Now that my body has adjusted, I have been between 136-137lbs. While I feel great, and not weak in the least, all of my clothes are quite a bit too big, and I need to punch a new hole in my belt. I think I’ll be getting some new clothes in the near future that don’t hang off me like drapes.

Max and I had a talk last night about our plans for after the month. He said he’ll return to being a free-a-tarian, eating meat only if he doesn’t pay for it. I’ve been thinking, and the only things I miss are eggs and fish. I think I’ll eat those rarely, but stay away from meat, milk products, refined sugars, and enriched flours. If I start to feel slowed down, I’ll return to my pure vegan diet.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

As the election draws ever closer and the vice presidential candidates have been chosen, I’ve decide to air my opinions for people to take as they see fit, and perhaps spark some intellectual conversation about my opinions. First, I’m going to announce that I’m an independent and neither party fully represents my beliefs, however, I will most likely vote for Obama and Biden come November.

Biden:

• Biden has a very sketchy voting record when it comes to his support for stronger surveillance and enforcement of file-sharing and other copyright infringement. He seems to lack the desire to reform copyright and had thrown his bid in with the RIAA and MPAA, who take to bullying the average citizen.
• He has foreign policy, something that Palin does not. (Sorry, you can’t count the fact that Alaska is near Russia). That makes him someone who can hopefully work to work for peace and rebuild faith from our allies.

Palin:

• No experience, being the mayor of a small town, then the governor of Alaska doesn’t cut in compared to Biden.
• A staunch fundamentalist, I think it’ll be hard for her to keep her beliefs out of our country’s direction if she already tried to ban books in her town library (seems like she doesn’t care about the freedom of speech). I’m honestly terrified of someone who thinks creationism should be taught next to evolution.
• Wants for people to be more independent, but wants to decide for all the citizens of the US that gay marriage is a sin and that abortion is horrific. (I say let the people/states decide)
• Is a hypocrite about so many things, she criticizes Obama for touting change, but McCain has been pretty change heavy himself. The flip-flopping earmarks and the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’. The resistance to being asked serious questions (until this week) and calling Biden on the same.
• Not knowing what a Veep does?!
• While this is not her fault, I think that her 17-year old daughter’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy shows that abstinence-only sex-ed (touted by Palin) doesn’t work all that well.

It’s a pity that women are going to vote for her, just because she’s a woman. I think it’s time for a woman to take charge in leading our nation, but I don’t think Palin is the one. McCain’s is getting on in age, and I’d be terrified to think of an ‘average hockey-mom’ being the most powerful person in the world. I look forward to learning more about her once she starts talking with the press.

Come out and vote in November,

Ranok

Well, it’s been about two weeks of eating as a vegan. I have stayed at a healthy weight, have been feeling pretty good asside from an alergic reaction to a medicine I was taking. I have been very good thus far, the only times I’ve bent the rules is to eat wheat flour (non-whole wheat) when it’s only a little bit. I enjoy the lightness of my meals and how I don’t feel bogged down after eating. However, being a college student, especially a lazy one is making cooking difficult and adventurous meals a rare occasion. I’ve been eating lots of quick meals, like quinoa salad and tomato avocado sandwiches. Max however has been very creative, making a vegan carrot cake (with raw sugar) and maple tofu icing and some delicious black bean burgers (picture, and another). I’ve also found that Amy’s food is both quick and fits in my diet, even though it is expensive, can be a great help when you want to eat on the go.

Peace and chow,

Ranok

In spirit of last night’s COSI meeting, I figured I should get ahead of the game and post a little bit about what I’ve been up to with OSP. There were a number of shortcomings with the 0.2 release in terms of permanent storage and replication. Since r65 (version 0.2) there have been a number of changes, mostly some old ones centered on ERLFS and the most recent ones, which tweak the mnesia settings. Below are some important revisions and their impact:

• r88 – Now will autosense is a node has a disk, and will determine whether or not to keep a copy of the applications table on the disk or just in RAM
• r89 – Made gen-join.pl which asks the user a bunch of questions to make a join script for easier setup
• r93 – When you first install OSP, you should run ./setup-osp.sh to initialize the database on the first/master node
• r96 – Added the add-backup-server, which will make a disk copy of all the tables to that backup server incase of node failure, there’s a backup copy

While thse changes are small, they are still very needed in creating an actual application. Currently, OSP is at r97, only 3 away from the big 100. I thought that we should have a mini OSP party when we reach r100, but since OSP is distributed, so should the party. So when you get word of the 100th commit, please raise a glass or eat a slice of cake.