a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
The lies from the Trump White House have been piling up, but the shoes are starting to drop. It definitely appears there was collusion between the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign and the Russians. And so now we can ask .. what will happen next? What did Trump know about it? And what possible defense can the White House offer for all this?
Seattle’s Yesler Way bridge was built in 1910, making it one of the oldest permanent steel roadway bridges in the city. Its new rehabilitation project is well underway and scheduled for completion in fall of this year. The $20 million project was funded by a ‘Bridging the Gap’ transportation levy (a property tax increase) passed by voters in 2006, together with a grant from the Federal Highway Bridge Program.
I have a new flowering maple* with a number of beautiful red and yellow bell flowers on my back patio. My previous one was making a very slow recovery after it had almost died during winter. Towards the end of this year, I will keep an eye on the temperatures and cover this one up a little bit to shield it from severe cold.
*Its other names are abutilon and Indian mallow. It’s not a true maple; the leaves just look a little like those of a maple tree. It is related closer to plants such as the hibiscus.
Alright .. I confess I could name no more than a dozen or so, of the leaders in the Group of Twenty (G20) conference ‘class photo’. I have work to do to get my world politics knowledge current! Check out the handy guide from CNN. G20 does not mean exactly 20 countries. Some additional countries are invited; and Europe counts only as one ‘county’, sort of. It’s complicated !
(CNN) G20 leaders posed for a class photo as they kicked off their summit in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday. Here’s who’s who in this year’s group portrait:
1. Emmanuel Macron, President of France
2. Donald Trump, President of the United States
3. Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia
4. Enrique Peña Nieto, President of Mexico
5. Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa
6. Mauricio Macri, President of Argentina
7. Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
8. Xi Jinping, President of China
9. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia
10. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, President of Turkey
11. Michel Temer, President of Brazil
12. Moon Jae-in, President of South Korea
13. Alpha Condé, President of Guinea
14. Paolo Gentiloni, Prime Minister of Italy
15. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada
16. Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India
17. Shinzō Abe, Prime Minister of Japan
18. Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia
19. Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
20. Donald Tusk, President of the European Council
21. Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission
22. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
23. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations
24. Roberto Azevêdo, Director-General of the World Trade Organization
25. Erna Solberg, Prime Minister of Norway
26. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization
27. Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of the Netherlands
28. Christine Lagarde, International Monetary Fund chief
29. Macky Sall, President of Senegal
30. Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labour Organization
31. Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore
32. Jim Yong Kim, President of World Bank
33. Mariano Rajoy Brey, Prime Minister of Spain
34. Nguyễn Xuân Phúc, Prime Minister of Vietnam
35. Mark Carney, Chairman of the G20’s Financial Stability Board
36. Ibrahim Al-Assaf, State Minister of Saudi Arabia
There are 20 members of G20: 19 countries and the European Union. Spain is considered a permanent guest at G20 summits, and extra guests are frequently invited to attend. This year, Germany invited three partner countries — Norway, the Netherlands and Singapore — as well as the African Union (represented by Guinea), the Asia‑Pacific Economic Cooperation (represented by Vietnam) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (represented by Senegal).
Also invited: the International Labour Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the Financial Stability Board, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
I’m finally making a serious attempt to sort out the chaos on my Google Drive and Google Photos cloud applications. Much of the chaos was due to thousands of my junk pictures ending up in the cloud through the automatic back-up function setting (I turned that off for now). Check out the diagram and the notes I made for myself. I’m sure it’s all subject to change as I learn more, and as Google make adjustments to their cloud offerings as well!
I have a number of old PCs, notebook computers and external hard drives that I have mothballed, but that I had not yet taken to the recycle shop here in Seattle. Although I had deleted all the files from them*, the drives still need to be scrubbed. (Yes, I could physically destroy the drives with a hammer, but that is messy and I wanted to avoid it).
*Deleting files just change some of the pointer information on it. It does not remove the file from the drive.
I finally found a solution: a military grade drive erase program called Darin’s Boot and Nuke program (DBAN). It’s open source software and free for personal use, but it does take a little work to set up and use. (Here’s a review).
First, download a program and use it to burn a boot file onto a DVD. Then set up the computer with drives to be erased, to boot from this DVD (not from its hard drive). The program then lets the user select the hard drive or external drive that should be obliterated (overwritten). OK, time to pay attention. Verify twice, erase once (along the lines of the tailor’s motto ‘Measure twice, cut once’). The warning says ‘This program irrecoverably destroys data’ . Yes. That is what I want.
The United States is 241 years old .. and I am celebrating the 10-year anniversary of my citizenship this year.
Happy Fourth of July!
It was a beautiful day with a high of 74°F/23°C here in the city.
Here’s a view from the waterfront just north of Seattle downtown, out over Elliott Bay. That’s a special kind of cruise ship anchored out in the water.
We went to a Queen* concert on Saturday night here in Seattle’s Key Arena. Adam Lambert (he’s from Indianapolis) stands in for Freddie Mercury these days – not an easy task by any means, but he did just fine. If anything, he brings a little George Micheal ‘look’ and persona to the stage. I really liked Lambert’s glamorous and glittering outfits!
*Of the four original band members, 60-somethings Brian May (lead guitar, vocals) and Roger Taylor (drums) remain. In the original band, Freddie Mercury did lead vocals and piano, and John Deacon bass guitar.
As for the songs, of course the crowd-pleasers were there: We Will Rock You, Somebody to Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, Under Pressure, as well as a few songs that I did not know. My favorite song was actually the closing one, played at the end of the encore: God Save the Queen. A lot of glitter from the rafters filled the arena, and that was the signal to go home.
Another week, and we’re halfway through 2017. Un-presidential President Trump started and continued his tirade of ugly tweets against two cable news anchors on Friday and into Saturday, drawing condemnation from across the political spectrum. To top it off, he tweeted out a change in strategy for the Republican Senate’s disastrous draft healthcare bill. (Trump: Repeal the Affordable Care Act now and replace it ‘later’). Senate leader Mitch McConnell was having none of it, noting ‘It’s not easy making America great again, is it?’.
Unexpected good news from Germany: the German parliament voted for marriage equality*, just five days after Chancellor Angela Merkel relaxed her party’s opposition to same-sex marriage. The law is expected to be on signed by September. *Same-sex couples in Germany have been able to form civil unions since 2001. Opinion polls show that most Germans favor legalizing same-sex marriage.
