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The art department at University of Massachusetts has an illustrated Aesop’s Fables web page.

Technically, this is my last vacation day, and on Monday (after the weekend) I will be back at work. The holidays have been great, with family visiting and lots of cards from friends. I have a newer (faster) computer, and one thing I hope to do in the coming months is to begin to keep up this web log with some content and a little design work. That is not exactly a new years resolution, just an intention.

I am saying goodbye to the work desk until January 5th!

If you are wondering what the discussion around electronic voting is about, go to Open Source Politics, where John has
set up a demonstration of what can be done (easily and invisibly) with a computer voting system. It is particularly scary when you also follow the story far enough to notice that the CEO of the company that makes the voting machines being considered for use in Ohio has promised to deliver Ohio to George W. Bush.
Sometimes it’s best to hang on to old technology until you can insure that the new one will do the job at least as dependably as the old one. And there is a certain comfort in knowing that there is a piece of countable paper out there with my mark on it.
It would be easy to program computers to print out your ballot after you mark it so you could drop it into a box to be counted if the outcome was questioned. After all, when we go through the supermarket checkout, don’t they give us a list of what we selected? What possible reason could there be for not providing for a possible re-count in a democratic election?

I took time from my NANOWRIMO project today to cancel my membership in AARP in response to their support of the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill.
See http://www.moveon.org/medicare.html for a list of both liberal and conservative groups that oppose this bill.
Here is the letter that I sent to the CEO and the President of AARP.

Dear Mr. Novelli and Mr. Parkel:

I joined AARP the first minute that I could, because I believed that you represented the interests of older Americans, including those of us who are not millionaires.

Please cancel my membership. With your endorsement of the medicare prescription drug bill, you have abandoned those who need you most. You have allowed your own interest to cloud your sense of responsibility to your members, since you must be aware that the bill that you are sponsoring will be a windfall for your own insurance company. You will be wealthier because of the bill that you are endorsing, and the people who trusted you will have less money and fewer options.

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Glen showed me how to put links to my project web pages on my blog! They are under the heading “Projects.” Now you can find my jigsaw puzzles again!

My month off work is almost gone, and it has been too short! I have been looking around at all of the things I have done, and I think the time has been well spent. I won’t make a list here, because it would be too long for anybody to read anyway!
I will say that I watched a movie just about every day, from Glen’s collection of DVD’s and videos or in the theater. We not only watched movies, but we had time to talk about them. Since I watched these with Glen, this has been something like a 6-credit-hour graduate seminar in movies. You can read Glen’s movie reviews at Anvil & Sprocket if you wish to participate in the seminar.
Maybe I will get around to telling about some of the other activities, like the trip to South Carolina, the family reunion, the high school class reunion, the good food and the good books, taking care of my plants and my house, at a later time. To my friends from work who took care of things there and let me have the time away, thanks for not calling! I will see you on Monday!

I have a 10-month contract at Emory & Henry, which is great if you can plan for the summer off! This summer, they asked me to work through June, but they have agreed to just stack up work on my desk during July.
So I have a whole month off work!
Today is my first day at home. I am happy to say that I did not get the least bit bored! I made soup at lunch, did some laundry, cleaning, and vacuuming, sorted out some stuff on the back porch, and got a start on a writing project. In addition, I watched a movie with Glen — The Incredible Hulk Returns, one of the movies with the real Hulk, not the cartoon one. I also read half of City of Light, City of Dark , story by Avi and art by Brian Floca. And I wrote this entry for my blog, and it is not even 5:00 p.m. yet.
And I can do all of this great stuff again tomorrow! Maybe with a different movie.