I have an archives section now up. It is not formatted very well or grouped specifically but I am trying to port some of the dates (which are keeping it from working right) to a standard format that will allow me to group everything together correctly.

I have finally updated my class schedule. There is one class missing which is my internship class because it has no time slot, I do it in my free time.

According to a story on Wired scientists at UCLA have altered HIV to hunt down cancer cells and kill them. The tests have so far been successful in mice but they are going to refine the method more before any tests on humans are done.

I am not sure how I feel about this. The idea of a cure for cancer is amazing but to inject someone with HIV is a little worrisome. Would you feel comfortable having a virus that has killed an estimated 3.1 million people in 2004? I really don’t know how’d I react.

I acquired a new puppy named Jackson from a woman who wanted to get rid of him. He’s a mutt according to the vet but he’s very playful and likes to sit around in your lap.

He’s a little shy but the vet thinks it’s because he was either abused or neglected but said he should completely come out of it.

Sarah and I with Jackson

He’s camera shy…

Worn out from all the attention.

Jackson and I.

With North Korea dropping out of talks and saying that it has nuclear weapons and will continue to produce them how does the world and the U.S. proceed?

From a logistical point of view we can conclude that North Korea has the ability to launch nuclear weapons at the United States from the mere fact that they have launched things into space. Would they attack the United States? More than likely not. There are still skirmishes along the 38th Parallel and because of this I think that North Korea would first go after South Korea for the simple fact that it wants the land. The populations of both countries are growing extremely fast and the territory that is covered is only the size of Pennsylvania and New York.

Should we take an aggressive stand against North Korea or do we sit back and let another Cold War unfold or even worse do we let North Korea use its weight to take over South Korea? Are we still preserving democracy over communism there or has it simply become a symbol of peace? Technically the United States is still at war with North Korea and the scary thought is that they could use that as an excuse to attack the U.S. or the troops stationed in South Korea.

I think the best plan for President Bush is to stand back and look at the situation for a while and let things unfold a little more over there. See if the Japanese or the Russians can get the North Koreans back to the discussion table and talk some sense into them. If we jump into this too quickly we may run into more problems than we expected.

I am not saying go to war with North Korea, by no means. We are right now overdrawn on troops in Iraq and we cannot afford to pull troops from Iraq and put them in South Korea, nor does this country need a draft. I think we just need to take it slow and explore our options.

If you are a user of MapQuest you may want to take a look at the new Google Maps. It is still in beta but works beautifully.

The page holds an iframe with the map inside of it. That iframe is constantly being updated and redrawn. The real beauty is the fact that you can drag the map around and follow a road. The directions functionality leaves something to be desired (much like MapQuest). I entered my address in Houston and tried to get directions to Lubbock and it gave me a route through DFW which is about 3 hrs. out of the way. I am guessing that it tries to stick to the major highways when giving directions but I really wish there was an option to get quicker directions.

The last thing I noticed was the fact that the maps are a little outdated. There are some streets and landmarks in Lubbock that are missing or are no longer here. Once they get that done then they will have an unstoppable service…. Can you say “Goodbye MapQuest”?

A flaw has been announced by Secunia. The flaw affects Mozilla 1.7.x, Firefox 0.x, and Firefox 1.x.

The flaw is really in the IDN implementation. It allows a URL to be spoofed, as well as the SSL certificate and status bar. How do we remedy this problem? For right now you need to type in or copy and paste URLs from sites that you do not “trust”. I have not found anything from the folks at Mozilla about when a fix will be released.

John Vernon, ‘Animal House’ Dean Wormer, passed away on Friday from complications with heart surgery.

His most famous role was Dean Wormer in Animal House but he also played in Dirty Harry and Topaz.

I’ll be honest, I watched maybe 10 minutes of the Superbowl. I have lost interest in it. I have lost interest in pro sports altogether. When did this happen? Somewhere in high school I realized that getting paid a bunch of money to play a sport, not cure cancer or the like was ludicrous. Why don’t we pay teachers more? Their service is much more needed and worth the money than some guy throwing a ball down field farther than anyone else.

I am tired of the showing off after every single play (something that made me switch the channel during the Superbowl). Yay, you got a tackle, stop flapping your arms and play the game. Now, don’t get me wrong, celebrating a huge play is fine but it is when you celebrate every single event in the game it becomes annoying.

Even the commercials during the Superbowl were dissappointing. The only funny one I saw was the convertible Ford Mustang one where it looked like the opening scene of ‘Fargo’.

Ok, I’m off my soapbox.

Texas Tech defeated #16 Oklahoma tonight 88-81. Tech never lost their halftime lead and Jarrius Jackson had an amazing 34 points.

In other news, Iowa State upset #18 Texas. Bad for them, good for us.