I spent some time earlier this evening phone banking for Obama and some Washington State races, at the new Beacon Hill HQ:

We now have a location on Beacon Hill to volunteer for Obama and Gregoire. It’s between Horton and Hinds on Beacon Ave. S. It’s a place you can volunteer for phone banking or pick up packets to canvass your neighbors.

There’s an open house on Wednesday, September 24th between 5 and 9 pm. Stop by to phone bank, share food with your neighbors, and get to know other Obama supporters in your area.

For exact location and details contact:

Michele Frix

Washington State Democrats-Co­or­di­nat­ed Campaign

Field Organizer/11th Leg­isla­tive District

michele@wa-democrats.org

206.617.7281

It’ll be open every evening …continue.

This year is the 22nd an­niver­sary of the Northwest AIDS Walk. A whole generation has passed. Twenty years ago, AIDS was a gay man’s disease and a death sentence. The Reagan ad­min­is­tra­tion was just beginning to ac­knowl­edge the existence of AIDS, half a decade after it had first been recognized and thousands had died.

AIDS is still a serious problem, but the de­vel­op­ment of an­ti­retro­vi­ral drugs a decade ago means that people with HIV are living longer, healthier lives than before. More than 1.5 million Americans are now living with HIV/AIDS: 9,000 of them in King County. 40,000 people are infected every year, and most new infections are among African-Americans. The U.S. is getting off …continue.

Two days into his in­ves­ti­ga­tion of a missing teenage girl, PI Nick Petrov has a seizure that wipes out his recent memories. As he tries to rediscover what it was he was doing, he comes to realize that this case is somehow connected to his most famous case, ten years before.

The brain-damaged detective struggling through a once-easy in­ves­ti­ga­tion made for an in­ter­est­ing story. The plot moves briskly, but by the end has devolved into total im­prob­a­bil­i­ty with gaping holes.

Consider my creduli­ty—and char­i­ty—s­trained.

At Cozi, we’re writing our new web services in Python (a story for another day). I wrote up a few hard-won tips on using the Cheetah Template library at the Cozi Tech Blog.

(An earlier Rebus book than The Hanging Garden or The Naming of the Dead.)

A brutally murdered man has ties to Protestant loyalist para­mil­i­taries in Northern Ireland. He also happens to be the un­ac­knowl­edged son of Rebus’s old nemesis, Big Ger Cafferty, who wants revenge. Never a team player, Rebus goes his own way, solving the case against the backdrop of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a socially deprived housing scheme.

Later in the series of Cooper-Fry books than Dancing with the Virgins. Detective Constable Ben Cooper’s working re­la­tion­ship with Det. Sgt. Diane Fry has improved somewhat, with Fry now according Cooper a modicum of wary respect.

They find themselves separately in­ves­ti­gat­ing two crimes in the remote Derbyshire village of Withens: the dis­ap­pear­ance of a teenage girl two years ago and the recent murder of a young man. At the heart of local matters are the extended Oxley fam­i­ly—­sus­pi­cious, clannish, and looked down upon—and Ben must find out what they know. Meanwhile, …continue.

Twenty years ago, David Marion, then a near-illiterate teenager, was sent to prison for life for the murder of two grown men. Hugh Freyl, a rich, blind lawyer, spots something ex­tra­or­di­nary in him, and spends years educating him behind bars, then securing his release. Now, Freyl has been brutally murdered and David tracks down the killer.

Brady weaves together two stories, Hugh’s narrative of the last twenty years and David’s in­ves­ti­ga­tion, dove­tail­ing them neatly. David is intense and paranoid, al­ter­nate­ly charming and terrifying those he comes in contact with.

The book is part mystery, …continue.

Crockford is one of the world’s leading JavaScript experts. In this slim volume, he explores the features of the core language, both the good parts and the warts.

JavaScript has been redeemed since 2005 with the explosive pro­lif­er­a­tion of Ajax websites. Long regarded as a toy language, suitable for little more than generating popups, we have come to learn that in the hands of experts like John Resig (of jQuery fame), JavaScript can be a powerful, expressive language. Anonymous functions, duck typing, and dynamic objects are all good stuff.

Crockford gives …continue.

Betsy Thornhill had a face lift. It worked so well that she now passes for her mid-thirties, instead of 51. After decades in London, she moves back to Manhattan a few months after 9/11. Within days, a man who came on to her is dead, and she’s the main suspect.

I didn’t like this book or Betsy. I couldn’t believe that all the male characters would throw themselves at her—she looks great, but her per­son­al­i­ty and confidence are lacking. Im­plau­si­bly, Betsy fails to think about her estranged daughter, Franny, for 160 pages, despite the strain …continue.

After months of attacking Obama’s “in­ex­pe­ri­ence”, McCain has picked an unknown first-term governor from a minor state with an un­der­whelm­ing resume.

What gross ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty! A seventy-two-year-old with a history of skin cancer, who feels the need to keep his medical records under a tight wrap, should have a running mate who’s ready to take over at any time. When you compare her to Biden or Obama, Palin clearly isn’t. I sincerely believe that I’m better informed about the world than she is, based on reports of her lack of interest in Iraq until recently, and that she didn’t have a passport until 2007.

What she does bring to the ticket is hard-right, cre­ation­ist, evan­gel­i­cal cred­i­bil­i­ty. (MoveOn and …continue.