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Once in a while I do manage to get out of bed early enough on weekends to accomplish something other than bumming around my apartment all day long. Today was such a day and the destination was enchanted rock. As the name implies, enchanted rock turned out to be exactly what one would expect; a big fat rock in the middle of nowhere. It is located about 90 miles southwest of Austin and it takes quite a while to get there. The rock itself is pretty cool, well in as far as a rock can be cool, and grants one some amazing panoramic views of real Texas landscapes. I took a bunch of pictures so jump on over to the Pictures section to check them out. But the rock itself is only half the fun, getting there is just as exciting. The roads are simply perfect for speed racers like me: narrow, but not too narrow, curvy, with a lot of ups and downs, and since this place is in the middle of nowhere there is no traffic and of course no cops. And while I would have had even more fun in a more sporty vehicle than my poor little civic, I still had no trouble hitting the middle 90s on my way there!

Today was the last presidential debate before the election. And once again, it was more of the same; but then again I should have expected nothing else. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother watching the debates, considering that as a green-card holder I'm not even entitled to vote. But then I realize that while I can not vote, nothing prevents me from manipulating many eligible voters to vote the way I would vote if I could.

While on the topic of politics, I have decided that we should open source the government, or at least the bill drafting process. Open source you ask? Well, let me explain: I think one of the major achievements of open source programming has not necessarily been the software that it has produced, but rather the ease with which it has been able to bring people together that share common interests and allowed them collaborate on a variety of projects. Now, why would that not be possible with drafting bills that then could be submitted to the congress? It is my understanding that just about anyone can draft a bill, and then needs a senator or congress man to sponsor the bill in order for it to be accepted for review. The problem is that writing one of these monstrous documents is more than most people are willing to do in their free time. This task would be much easier to accomplish it we could have small communities, similar to programming communities, work on different bills. This then would be listed in a project area and senators and congress man could sign on as sponsors, or choose to support particular bills just like companies tend to sponsor open source projects, i.e. IBM sponsoring Eclipse, Sun sponsoring NetBeans, and so on. As an additional bonus, this would encourage people to directly contribute to politics, while at the same time making it easier to do so.

I also already have a few ideas to get started: First of all, the government should give tax brakes to all companies that reimburse employees for joining a professional gym. This tax brake should be large enough so that it would just about cover the expenses incurred by the company. This would have several benefits: It would create a healthier work force, thus reducing the number of un-productive sick days for the company, and thus increasing the output per employee. Furthermore, a healthier workforce would also require less medical attention, which would result in a decreasing healthcare cost per employee for the company: savings that could eventually be passed on to the employees in terms of reduced healthcare costs.

Second, I think people with substantial economic wealth should be given significant tax brakes if they decide to have more then two children. This would server several purposes: First, it is a known fact that this country is aging and that younger people will have to pay more and more in taxes in order to support the older generations. So we can either pay more in taxes, or encourage population growth so that instead of raising taxes on an ever decreasing working part of the population, we keep taxes the same on a growing working part of the population. Second, in order to compete with countries like China and India, we need to have more younger people that will think of the next big thing. China and India each are each graduating 300,000 engineers a year, while we are barely graduating a 100,000.  Acknowledging that their educational systems are not any worse that the ones in the states, and their recent economic prosperity, it seems to me that at this rate the possibility of them inventing the next major break-through is shifting in their favor. Finally, I state that the tax break should be given to the wealthy, and the reason for that is that we want to encourage people that can afford children to have them and not vice-versa.

This was one of those weekends that was extremely long and more exhausting than relaxing. First of all, on Friday I did not get off work until 7 pm. Then I met up with a few friends to watch the second presidential debate, in which president Bush did a lot better than I expected. I figured Kerrey would burry Bush but that was not the case and in general the debate ended up about even. After the debate and some mediocre Chinese food we headed out to a local club where we stayed until it closed down.

Eventually, I ended up in bed at around 3 am only to have to get up at 8 am to drop of a friend at a hair salon. Naively I assumed it would not take that long; little did I know that 4 hours later I would still be sitting there. On a positive note I ended up reading an entire magazine on present day China, so if you have any questions about recent economic developments over there let me know, because I just might know the answer. One crazy thing I learned: In elite schools kids who are 6 years old are expected to be able to recite the number pi up to 300 digits! I think I can only manage up to six digits.

Back to the weekend: After the hair experience I attended a meeting of the Georgia Tech club here in Austin, where we watched the Georgia Tech football team handily defeat Maryland. That same day earlier, to the dismay of many, but definitely not mine, University of Texas lost to Oklahoma - I'm just not a UT football fan. After the game, with the help of a friend, I installed satellite television at my place and soon afterwards I headed out to a birthday dinner. Finally someone else turned 25, now I finally don't feel so old! The rest of the evening was spent running from club to club until the early hours in the morning.

Sunday was pre-occupied with some more installation, some football, and really nice dinner at one of the best steakhouses here in Austin: Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. The filet mignon was simply amazing - if you are ever near one be sure to stop by; and while your wallet might feel a little lighter afterwards, your taste buds will thank you!