I spent my weekend lending technical expertise, performing volunteer greeting in cyberspace, and just general organizing for the Katrina Peoplefinder Project. From the wiki page:

Several dozen sites have been established to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina find their loved ones, and to allow people to report missing people. This creates a difficulty for people trying to locate missing persons - they need to search dozens of separate databases and message forums.

So we've decided to create a centralized database, where you can search the data from all of these at one time.

This year, I applied and was accepted to the 2005 Citizens's Academy, a set of 15 "classes" where folks in SMC can learn about county government by meeting and hearing from folks running various parts of county government.

I'm going to try to blog the notes I take each night to my blog, and this is the first entry for 08/23/05.

The first session was an introductory session, describing the county history and its political and organizational structure. We heard from the County Manager, the County Counsel, Supervisor Jerry Hill, as well as received short greetings from a number of other county department heads.

Today, I went on a visit to the California state capitol with a group from San Mateo County Democracy for America. The staff in both Assemblyman Ira Ruskin (my assemblyperson) and Assemblyman Gene Mullin helped us in arranging a visit to the assembly chambers to watch this morning's session, a tour of the capitol, and (not-so-brief) visits with the two assemblymen.

Apparently the word "tax" (not "new tax" or "higher tax" - just "tax") sends some Republicans into a hyperbolic fit of irrational indignation. Absurd. Its this sort of knee-jerk politics that screws up the budget process in California so badly.

I turned 32 today. My daughter is 4. My son is 2. All of our ages are powers of two. This will only be the case for about 4 weeks (my son is turning 3 soon).

This will never happen again.

I hereby appreciate it publicly.

In blatant imitation of #joiito, I hereby announce my own IRC channel, #GabeW. This is on the freenode network (irc.freenode.net).

If you don't know what IRC is, or how to connect (try clicking on the link above first - it may just work depending on software you have installed), go see the #joiito intro to IRC wiki page.

Journalists have a fairly high set of ethical standards. Disclosure of things like personal interests in a news story are extremely important. In interviews, journalists usually disclose agreed-to limitations on the type of questions they were not allowed to ask.

Why don't bloggers have to do this?

Here's my disclosure: About the only thing I won't be talking about in my blog is work. Just can't do it. First, my employer is in an extremely competitive business where even the slightest business intelligence leak can cause a great deal of damage. Second, and perhaps more importantly, my employer's brand is extremely valuable and well-protected - making any statements that affect the perception or value of the brand, whether on purpose or mistake, can cause me a lot of grief at work.

Last saturday I was elected to the California Democratic Party State Central Committee. I'll be joining about 1500 other California democrats in shaping the party for the next two years.

I ran for and was elected to one of the 6 male delegates positions from the 21st Assembly District to the California Democratic Party State Central Committee. This means I'm going to the state convention for the next two years. A list of other Dean-supporters elected last Saturday is here.

What I want to hear from fellow bloggers is: what should my agenda be?

I was a groomsman for my friend Adam this weekend. (I have to blog about the great train ride from LA to San Diego later). Adam and Rebecca's wedding was pretty traditional, and I wouldn't want to insult them by calling Adam a geek, but:,

You know its a geek wedding when:

1) The wedding is in a library

2) Instead of a DJ, the bride's laptop is used for entertainment (i.e. ITunes), and

3) Wedding guests showed up wearing EFF t-shirts.

09/11/01

There will never be a day like today.

Not for my parents, not for my grandparents, not for my daughter, and not
for my fellow generation of around-30-year olds.

Someone said that this was one of those days where you'd remember exactly
where you were, what you were doing, when you heard about the attacks on
the World Trade Centers. TV polls say that 87% of Americans think today is
the most tragic day in American history.

And while I sit here and struggle to comprehend the enormity of the day,
I'm struck by the sense that today is the beginning of a new era for

I don't know what my First Post was, but it apparently wasn't a blog entry.