NASA seems to have gotten Spirit back online. They are still running tests and expect to attempt some driving this weekend. Sweet!
Another day of heavy school stuff. I just got word from one of my instructors that pretty much all my documents are unreadable to him. Great. I have a couple ideas of what to do, but if that doesn't work, I have no idea where to go next. I don't have a copy of MS Office, and I really don't want to spend $150 to get it just for this. Although given that I'm spending $1,000 a class, it isn't that big of a deal, but I just really don't want MS Office on my system. Everyone I know that has Open Office has no problem passing stuff back and forth with Office. It has never worked for me. Not once. Not in all three major releases of Open Office. It sucks. I have no idea what I can do different. File, Save As... change to Word 97/2000/XP. That's it. And it doesn't work. (shrug)
Other than that, we didn't do much. I got a bunch of reading done today while our internet connection was acting weird. We were getting out on the network outside the cable moden, but DNS was down. Then up. Then down. And now it seems like it's up. Now I see all kinds of news reports that Google was having some problem with everything other than Google being flagged as dangerous in search results. That shouldn't have had anything to do with DNS, but I'm not a big believer in coincidences. I've seen my share of them in the 22 years spent in the cubes, but not many. But the problem with the internet is that everything is a black box that either works or doesn't, and when it doesn't everyone just points fingers at each other. I'll probably never know.
And 20 years ago, none of this existed in its current form, and a fast connection to a BBS or CompuServe was 1200 baud. And you paid by the hour for CompuServe, plus there were no local numbers where I lived, so I got killed with long distance charges as well. With BBS's, they were usually free, but as most were running in some guys basement, there would only be a handful of connections, so you had hours of busy signals before getting on. Then the BBS would kick you of after 15 to 30 minutes so the next guy could get on. There were some big BBS's that didn't have that problem, but they were long distance. So yea.
I have to say that I've been pretty happy with Cable One as an ISP. This is only the second time service has gone out. The first time someone hit a utility pole with their car, so it's hard to fault them for that, and it was back the next day. The only thing I don't like is that they throttle back the connection if you have large downloads, like movies from Amazon Unbox. The first half the movie downloads at 3Mb, then it suddenly drops to less than 1Mb. It eventually makes it, usually over-night. I suspect it has more to do with wanting people like us to sign up with their cable TV service than with any real bandwidth concerns. Digital movies are a direct threat to their movie channels, so it's hardly surprising, but annoying none the less. They also actively block LimeWire (and, I assume, BitTorrent and the like), but LimeWire had gotten so polluted with junk that it was more work than it was worth to get anything from them anyway. I never got into BitTorrent. I know a lot of people swear by it, but I have enough to do that I don't need to find new things to mess with.
Speaking of finding things to do, once the school thing is over, I need to figure out what I'm going to do with myself. I'm not really sure what you do with a BS in Management and Ministry Leadership other than be a pastor (no thanks; still haven't recovered from the last time) or keep going until I get a PhD, then teach other people getting a BS in Management and Ministry Leadership. Probably should have thought of that earlier (like about $25,000 earlier...). Ah well. Maybe it will help me land another dish washing gig. Not that any sort of gig is likely as long as the economy stays the way it is. And odds are that it will stay the way it is for quite some time. Maybe I can dig ditches, then fill them back in for the federal government when Congress passes Obama's "stimulous" package.
Well, it's late and I need to get some school stuff done tomorrow morning.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
School, Dentist, Pharmacy, Blah, Blah, Blah
Debbie had a long dentist appointment today and I needed a blood draw for a doctor's appointment next week. My blood draw only took about five minutes, so I spent the rest of the two hours sitting in the car reading stuff for school. Then we swung by the pharmacy to make a quick pick-up, then home where I did another 500 words or so, then decided my brain couldn't take anymore. So I hit all my regular websites spending most of the time watching Wil Wheaton playing Rock Band at last weekend's Phoenix Comicon. Next year, we are definitely going. It's only a two-hour drive from here.
Not much else going on today. Sort of a slow day. I'm getting concerned about the class that is supposed to start on Monday as I once again do not have my books for the class. I will be contacting people on Monday to find out what the heck is going on. How hard is it to ship some books? It's not like I ordered books from some Gomer selling books on eBay from his mom's basement. This is a university! And they can't get this right?
Which makes a nice transition into an essay based on comments Jerry Pournelle made at a conference on threats to the United States. His assessment was simple: the crap education system from kindergarten through grad school is the biggest threat to our country. If anyone needs proof, just look at Wall Street where all the best and brightest have brought the entire world to the verge of financial collapse doing things a high school drop-out could tell you were beyond stupid.
Speaking of beyond stupid, want proof that the Chinese will be walking on the moon while we are still trying to get back to the space station?
Not much else going on today. Sort of a slow day. I'm getting concerned about the class that is supposed to start on Monday as I once again do not have my books for the class. I will be contacting people on Monday to find out what the heck is going on. How hard is it to ship some books? It's not like I ordered books from some Gomer selling books on eBay from his mom's basement. This is a university! And they can't get this right?
Which makes a nice transition into an essay based on comments Jerry Pournelle made at a conference on threats to the United States. His assessment was simple: the crap education system from kindergarten through grad school is the biggest threat to our country. If anyone needs proof, just look at Wall Street where all the best and brightest have brought the entire world to the verge of financial collapse doing things a high school drop-out could tell you were beyond stupid.
Speaking of beyond stupid, want proof that the Chinese will be walking on the moon while we are still trying to get back to the space station?
Thursday, January 29, 2009
A Better Day
Feeling a bit more productive today. I completed a couple thousand words by noon and decided to take a short break. I'm still breaking four hours later. But that's OK; I got more done today than I did all day yesterday, and I will get back at it after dinner tonight. With some luck I can put another thousand words or so to bed and actually feel like I'm caught up.
We may be seeing the end-game for the Spirit rover. The NASA guys may be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat once again, but we may soon be down to only one functioning surface rover on Mars. Given that the rovers were only expected to live three months or so, no one can really complain about Spirit only making it to five years. That doesn't mean that this won't be a sad day if it can't be revived.
On the economic front, the recent stock rally came to a decisive end today. No one should be surprised by that; any stock rallies for the next six months and maybe all 2009 will be suckers' rallies. Not hard to figure out why: record numbers on unemployment, while the financial wizards on Wall Street punish themselves for the worst one-year performance in history by giving themselves only the sixth-biggest bonus ever. Oh the pain. Maybe we should all send some canned goods and mac & cheese.
Our weather out here has been a bit dicey, getting down in the teens at night and only up to the high forties during the day. Two days ago, we even had snow. You read that right: snow!! It was gone in less than 24 hours, so I didn't have to get my winter boots out of storage, but it was a close call. Of course, we could live in Kentucky. Some people there will be waiting until mid-February for electricity. Ouch.
In the interest of some light reading, here is a story that tops pretty much everything. Paging Thomas Hobbes. A good example of how dysfunctional government is indistinguishable from no government. State of nature, indeed.
And just because I haven't gotten to use HCHSBTSPODTUTBGTUTHADHOI in a while. I wonder how many times I have to use that before it shows up in Google searches?
And I just checked: the answer is twice. I'm almost famous!!
We may be seeing the end-game for the Spirit rover. The NASA guys may be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat once again, but we may soon be down to only one functioning surface rover on Mars. Given that the rovers were only expected to live three months or so, no one can really complain about Spirit only making it to five years. That doesn't mean that this won't be a sad day if it can't be revived.
On the economic front, the recent stock rally came to a decisive end today. No one should be surprised by that; any stock rallies for the next six months and maybe all 2009 will be suckers' rallies. Not hard to figure out why: record numbers on unemployment, while the financial wizards on Wall Street punish themselves for the worst one-year performance in history by giving themselves only the sixth-biggest bonus ever. Oh the pain. Maybe we should all send some canned goods and mac & cheese.
Our weather out here has been a bit dicey, getting down in the teens at night and only up to the high forties during the day. Two days ago, we even had snow. You read that right: snow!! It was gone in less than 24 hours, so I didn't have to get my winter boots out of storage, but it was a close call. Of course, we could live in Kentucky. Some people there will be waiting until mid-February for electricity. Ouch.
In the interest of some light reading, here is a story that tops pretty much everything. Paging Thomas Hobbes. A good example of how dysfunctional government is indistinguishable from no government. State of nature, indeed.
And just because I haven't gotten to use HCHSBTSPODTUTBGTUTHADHOI in a while. I wonder how many times I have to use that before it shows up in Google searches?
And I just checked: the answer is twice. I'm almost famous!!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Stabbing Jello
Fred Reed just put up an essay on Gaza:
Stabbing Jello, besides being an awesome name for a band, kind of describes a lot of what is going on these days. Our new president and congress are up to their armpits in plans to stimulate the economy. Meanwhile, WWII vets are freezing to death in their homes and the sense of doom is driving other people to the breaking point of sanity. Merrill Lynch employees still got their bonuses for destroying $15 billion of their clients wealth in three months. Just how badly do you have to screw up on Wall Street to not get a bonus?
I feel like I'm stabbing my own jello here trying to make headway on my college work. I did make some progress, but not near as much as I wanted to get done. The problem is that I just can't seem to put together a sentence that makes any sense, and I have six writing assignments that I'm juggling right now and a third class that starts on Monday.
So instead of blogging, I should probably be doing school work. But the alternative is to stare at the screen without getting any school work done anyway, so here I am. And I just ran out of words.
As I write, Israel is using a military designed to fight hostile countries to fight a hostile population. In the modern world, this has seldom worked. To defeat a country you destroy its military and capture its territory. But Gaza has little military to destroy, no tanks or aircraft, and Israel already owns its territory. The IDF can invade but, afterward, the population will still be there, and still be hostile. Stabbing jello doesn’t buy you much.
Stabbing Jello, besides being an awesome name for a band, kind of describes a lot of what is going on these days. Our new president and congress are up to their armpits in plans to stimulate the economy. Meanwhile, WWII vets are freezing to death in their homes and the sense of doom is driving other people to the breaking point of sanity. Merrill Lynch employees still got their bonuses for destroying $15 billion of their clients wealth in three months. Just how badly do you have to screw up on Wall Street to not get a bonus?
I feel like I'm stabbing my own jello here trying to make headway on my college work. I did make some progress, but not near as much as I wanted to get done. The problem is that I just can't seem to put together a sentence that makes any sense, and I have six writing assignments that I'm juggling right now and a third class that starts on Monday.
So instead of blogging, I should probably be doing school work. But the alternative is to stare at the screen without getting any school work done anyway, so here I am. And I just ran out of words.
Monday, January 26, 2009
I Remember That!
The first PC application I ever used was the original Lotus 1-2-3. I would sit in from of a Compaq "luggable" for 8 hours a day running revenue analysis for funeral homes, trying to figure out how a new business could afford a bank loan, tracking cash that clients tried to hide from us (and by extension, the IRS) through a maze of interconnected businesses, client lists, due dates, you name it. All stored on 5 1/4" floppies that could only hold 360K. That wasn't a big deal when the Compaq only had 256K RAM, but when I upgraded it to 1024K, suddenly you could make a spreadsheet that you couldn't save. I solved that by replacing one of the floppy drives with a full-height monster 10MB hard drive that sounded like a cement mixer when you accessed data on it.
Ah, the memories. My fingers still reach for the / key everytime I want insert a row or save a file or format a cell, even though I haven't used 1-2-3 since the late 1980's. Those commands are in muscle memory meaning that it's just like riding a bike. The body never forgets.
That wasn't the first computer application I used. Before hiring into the CPA firm where I learned 1-2-3, I got to play with an IBM System 36 and RPG II. If you look at the picture at that link, the bulge on the top left is the 8" floppy drive; the one on the top right was used to IPL the system and perform some maintenance tasks that couldn't be done from a terminal. The system in the picture could hold one or even two hard drives. And a second chassie could be mounted on the side (it was the same height and depth, and half the width of the main unit) that would hold up to two more hard drives. You could have as little drive space as a single 30MB drive, or as much as 4 716MB drives. As late as the early 1990's, the software I worked on for VWoA had to fit on a 60MB machine so the dealerships wouldn't have to upgrade their hardware, because any sort of ugrade started in the 5 figures.
I'm typing this on a decrepit laptop with only a gig of RAM, 100GB hard drive and a lousy 1.6GHz dual core with a connected Drobo that has 3 500GB drives giving 1TB usable disk space. All for half what that Compaq luggable cost.
Ah, the memories. My fingers still reach for the / key everytime I want insert a row or save a file or format a cell, even though I haven't used 1-2-3 since the late 1980's. Those commands are in muscle memory meaning that it's just like riding a bike. The body never forgets.
That wasn't the first computer application I used. Before hiring into the CPA firm where I learned 1-2-3, I got to play with an IBM System 36 and RPG II. If you look at the picture at that link, the bulge on the top left is the 8" floppy drive; the one on the top right was used to IPL the system and perform some maintenance tasks that couldn't be done from a terminal. The system in the picture could hold one or even two hard drives. And a second chassie could be mounted on the side (it was the same height and depth, and half the width of the main unit) that would hold up to two more hard drives. You could have as little drive space as a single 30MB drive, or as much as 4 716MB drives. As late as the early 1990's, the software I worked on for VWoA had to fit on a 60MB machine so the dealerships wouldn't have to upgrade their hardware, because any sort of ugrade started in the 5 figures.
I'm typing this on a decrepit laptop with only a gig of RAM, 100GB hard drive and a lousy 1.6GHz dual core with a connected Drobo that has 3 500GB drives giving 1TB usable disk space. All for half what that Compaq luggable cost.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Stayin' Alive
I'm pretty much caught up with college at this point. I'll need to check the online forums tomorrow for responses to some of my posts there and give my essay its last read-through before submitting it tomorrow night. Then it's a whole new list of to-do's for that class, plus my second class kicking off. Don't expect much here or expect what is here to be very coherent. I'm been away from school for three or four years, so it will take a bit to get back in the swing, especially with one of the classes being on an accelerated schedule.
And just to keep everyone on their Prozac, today saw the third bank failure of 2009, and on Friday, Iceland became the first government to be forced from power by the economic crisis. 2009 is off to a good start.
Off to bed.
And just to keep everyone on their Prozac, today saw the third bank failure of 2009, and on Friday, Iceland became the first government to be forced from power by the economic crisis. 2009 is off to a good start.
Off to bed.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Woohoo!
The UPS dude just dropped off my textbooks, so I have about 100 pages of reading to do tonight, plus post a couple hundred words as my first assignment, then get cranking on a 500-word essay on what I just read.
And Fred continues to make me want to spend some time in Mexico. Talking about his favorite bar:
Yep. Ajijic, Mexico. Definitely on the list.
Well, I need to e-mail my instructor and get to readin'.
And Fred continues to make me want to spend some time in Mexico. Talking about his favorite bar:
Once I looked up and a horse had its head in the door. Its owner had ridden to Tom’s and parked, and I guess the horse wondered what was inside. So it stuck its head in to see. It’s what I would have done.
Yep. Ajijic, Mexico. Definitely on the list.
Well, I need to e-mail my instructor and get to readin'.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Our 44th President
I'm a little late with something about the inauguration. Luckily, this isn't a news site. Anyway.
I wish the Obama's well. The country could use some positive news about now, although I'm pretty sure it will be in short supply for the rest of 2009. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Jerry Pournelle sums it up well: we can take great pride in yet-another peaceful transition of power. That is something we take for granted, but is historically rare. Once again, some in the Congress seem to want that to change. We can hope that this is just verbal payback for the right-wing nonsense back when W took over for Clinton. If this ever happens; if there is ever a case where quietly packing your bags and leaving the White House becomes dangerous to the person doing the leaving, it's game over for the Republic.
I really hope that the morning (female-dominated) "news" shows quit obsessing over the Obama girls. Leave the kids out of it. Stop reporting on what they wear, what the school cafeteria is serving for lunch, what brand of backpack they have, blah, blah, blah. Just. Shut. Up. If you can't find anything more important to talk about, consider a change in career. I'm sure someone needs a maid. Leave the kids alone. And leave their mother alone as well. If she isn't attending a public event, Michelle doesn't exist as far as the "news" media are concerned.
Speaking of good news. GM is no longer the largest auto company in the world. The best unintentionally funny line in the article is a quote from Mike DiGiovanni, GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis: "I don't think being No. 1 in vehicle sales means much at all to the American consumer...." Right, Mike. Now that you're not number one, it isn't important. I can hear similar sentiments from six-year-olds on any playground: "Well, fine! I didn't wanna play your stupid game anyway!" Good luck with that, Mike. Oh, and how's that "viability" plan you promised Congress coming along?
And still no books for my class. Maybe tomorrow. If not, this whole thing may be screwed up before I even start.
I wish the Obama's well. The country could use some positive news about now, although I'm pretty sure it will be in short supply for the rest of 2009. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Jerry Pournelle sums it up well: we can take great pride in yet-another peaceful transition of power. That is something we take for granted, but is historically rare. Once again, some in the Congress seem to want that to change. We can hope that this is just verbal payback for the right-wing nonsense back when W took over for Clinton. If this ever happens; if there is ever a case where quietly packing your bags and leaving the White House becomes dangerous to the person doing the leaving, it's game over for the Republic.
I really hope that the morning (female-dominated) "news" shows quit obsessing over the Obama girls. Leave the kids out of it. Stop reporting on what they wear, what the school cafeteria is serving for lunch, what brand of backpack they have, blah, blah, blah. Just. Shut. Up. If you can't find anything more important to talk about, consider a change in career. I'm sure someone needs a maid. Leave the kids alone. And leave their mother alone as well. If she isn't attending a public event, Michelle doesn't exist as far as the "news" media are concerned.
Speaking of good news. GM is no longer the largest auto company in the world. The best unintentionally funny line in the article is a quote from Mike DiGiovanni, GM's executive director of global market and industry analysis: "I don't think being No. 1 in vehicle sales means much at all to the American consumer...." Right, Mike. Now that you're not number one, it isn't important. I can hear similar sentiments from six-year-olds on any playground: "Well, fine! I didn't wanna play your stupid game anyway!" Good luck with that, Mike. Oh, and how's that "viability" plan you promised Congress coming along?
And still no books for my class. Maybe tomorrow. If not, this whole thing may be screwed up before I even start.
Comfortably Numb
With apologies to Pink Floyd, I'm not really comfortable; just numb. Specifically, my tongue and lower jaw, thanks to a trip to the dentist this morning. I had some sort of ultra-deep cleaning that involved a squeaky ultrasound doohickey being scraped on my teeth and lasers burning something that smelled like wet leaves. I'm not sure I even want to know. I can't talk or swallow, so I'm sitting on the couch right now drooling on myself.
Yesterday was consumed with trying to get things straightened out for college. It turns out that the class that is supposed to start next Monday actually started yesterday. Why they don't just say that the class starts on January 20 instead of January 26 is completely beyond my comprehension. My books were shipped to Michigan because every computer system at Cornerstone has a different address for me, none of them correct. I have given my correct address five times both on-line and over the phone, and yet....
Anyway, my books are on the way here. I've already contacted the instructor to let them know that I will most likely miss the first due date (which is four days before the class "starts") because it's a little hard to write anything intelligent about what you have read when you don't have the books. He seems OK with it, which means either he is really laid back, or this sort of screw up happens on a regular basis.
The funny part was one of the responses I got to my original e-mail stating that I didn't have my books, I didn't have any way to log on to the system to get assignments, etc., I hadn't received any statements from the accounting department, that I didn't even know for sure what my student ID number was: "I'm sorry you feel uninformed." FEEL uninformed?!? I WAS uninformed!!
In any case, if this is our best and brightest at work, we really are doomed.
Yesterday was consumed with trying to get things straightened out for college. It turns out that the class that is supposed to start next Monday actually started yesterday. Why they don't just say that the class starts on January 20 instead of January 26 is completely beyond my comprehension. My books were shipped to Michigan because every computer system at Cornerstone has a different address for me, none of them correct. I have given my correct address five times both on-line and over the phone, and yet....
Anyway, my books are on the way here. I've already contacted the instructor to let them know that I will most likely miss the first due date (which is four days before the class "starts") because it's a little hard to write anything intelligent about what you have read when you don't have the books. He seems OK with it, which means either he is really laid back, or this sort of screw up happens on a regular basis.
The funny part was one of the responses I got to my original e-mail stating that I didn't have my books, I didn't have any way to log on to the system to get assignments, etc., I hadn't received any statements from the accounting department, that I didn't even know for sure what my student ID number was: "I'm sorry you feel uninformed." FEEL uninformed?!? I WAS uninformed!!
In any case, if this is our best and brightest at work, we really are doomed.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Unexpected Holiday
I didn't realize that Debbie had today off until last Friday when she said something about not working on Monday. I knew she had some sort of doctor appointment, so I figured its was going to be long enough that she was just taking a day off. But noooooo; AAA is closed on MLK Day or Diversity Day or Black Monday or whatever the heck they call it these days. Seems to be a strange day to be closed for what is essentially a retail operation, but what do I know. I'm just a 44 year old unemployed dishwasher/college student.
Yesterday, there was a meeting of Prescott bloggers at Casa Sanchez. About a dozen of the 40+ Prescott-area bloggers were there. It was nice to put faces to some of the people I've bumped into on the net. We are going to shoot for the second Sunday of every month so everyone will be in the RealWorld at least once a month. Once my on-line classes kick in next week, it will probably be the only RealWorld contact I have until mid-May.
Not much else going on. It was quiet around town while eveyone sat inside glued to the boob tube to see if the Cardinals would be in the Superbowl. We've been sitting around watching Battlestar Galactica, Monk, and Pretender on Hulu the entire weekend. We may do some cleaning and/or hang our new artwork, or if we get really ambitious we may walk downtown and hit the new exhibit at Arts Prescott. Or just sit around watching more Battlestar Galactica, Monk and Pretender. It just feels like one of those weekends. Which we've had a pretty impressive streak of.
Speaking of Prescott area bloggers, I'm going to build a new section over on the right just for those. Many of the blogs are about the persons art or craft, but a lot are pretty much what you find here. Anyone who wants a cross-section of Prescott, you could do worse than running through the list.
When I worked at Volkswagen, several of us in the geek... er... IT department noticed that there was a high correlation between geek and photography, model railroads, and aquariums. Nearly every one of the 100+ people in IT had at least one, and usually two or three, of those interests. And it wasn't a casual interest, it was all-out mega-bucks hobby. The exceptions were the women, who just looked at the men like they had just grown a second head whenever the lunch conversation inevitably turned to building saltwater filtration systems or some such. The reason I bring this up is that the blogger meeting was essentially a photography geek-fest, so it will be interesting to see how many of the rest of the Prescott bloggers are heavy into their photography. Or model railroads, or aquariums.
Anyway, need to get typing.
Yesterday, there was a meeting of Prescott bloggers at Casa Sanchez. About a dozen of the 40+ Prescott-area bloggers were there. It was nice to put faces to some of the people I've bumped into on the net. We are going to shoot for the second Sunday of every month so everyone will be in the RealWorld at least once a month. Once my on-line classes kick in next week, it will probably be the only RealWorld contact I have until mid-May.
Not much else going on. It was quiet around town while eveyone sat inside glued to the boob tube to see if the Cardinals would be in the Superbowl. We've been sitting around watching Battlestar Galactica, Monk, and Pretender on Hulu the entire weekend. We may do some cleaning and/or hang our new artwork, or if we get really ambitious we may walk downtown and hit the new exhibit at Arts Prescott. Or just sit around watching more Battlestar Galactica, Monk and Pretender. It just feels like one of those weekends. Which we've had a pretty impressive streak of.
Speaking of Prescott area bloggers, I'm going to build a new section over on the right just for those. Many of the blogs are about the persons art or craft, but a lot are pretty much what you find here. Anyone who wants a cross-section of Prescott, you could do worse than running through the list.
When I worked at Volkswagen, several of us in the geek... er... IT department noticed that there was a high correlation between geek and photography, model railroads, and aquariums. Nearly every one of the 100+ people in IT had at least one, and usually two or three, of those interests. And it wasn't a casual interest, it was all-out mega-bucks hobby. The exceptions were the women, who just looked at the men like they had just grown a second head whenever the lunch conversation inevitably turned to building saltwater filtration systems or some such. The reason I bring this up is that the blogger meeting was essentially a photography geek-fest, so it will be interesting to see how many of the rest of the Prescott bloggers are heavy into their photography. Or model railroads, or aquariums.
Anyway, need to get typing.
Friday, January 16, 2009
How Much More Will Taxpayers Take?
Can you say, "Bend over!"?
You know things are bad when then best news of the day involves a plane crash.
You know things are bad when then best news of the day involves a plane crash.
Quick Break
Trying to catch up after two days of slacking, so this is going to have to be short and sweet.
First up, another view on how bad things are at the state and local level. And it looks like California is leading the race to the bottom.
And Ricardo Montalban passed away at the age of 88. One of the best characters in the entire Star Trek universe was Khan. It almost makes up for Fantasy Island....
A group of Brits are trying to break the land speed record for steam power. Sweet.
And to wrap things up, a little blues via Tombo's Blog:
Know how you feel, buddy.
Well, break's over. Back to work.
First up, another view on how bad things are at the state and local level. And it looks like California is leading the race to the bottom.
And Ricardo Montalban passed away at the age of 88. One of the best characters in the entire Star Trek universe was Khan. It almost makes up for Fantasy Island....
A group of Brits are trying to break the land speed record for steam power. Sweet.
And to wrap things up, a little blues via Tombo's Blog:
Know how you feel, buddy.
Well, break's over. Back to work.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Lost Day
I'm writing off the entire day. This internet thing is really addictive.
Anyway, on the global warming front:
-23 degrees F in Pellston, Michigan.
-19 degrees F in Flint, Michigan.
Good thing the Obama administration is going to jump right on that global warming thing. Forget about the crashing economy, we have to cool things off quick!!
And I may not have made my latest floor for oil prices low enough. This is the price that will be paid for oil in February, so does that mean gas prices will start back down? To where? Less than a buck a gallon? Key sentence:
All we have to do is Keep It Up!!
Anyway, on the global warming front:
-23 degrees F in Pellston, Michigan.
-19 degrees F in Flint, Michigan.
Good thing the Obama administration is going to jump right on that global warming thing. Forget about the crashing economy, we have to cool things off quick!!
And I may not have made my latest floor for oil prices low enough. This is the price that will be paid for oil in February, so does that mean gas prices will start back down? To where? Less than a buck a gallon? Key sentence:
For all of 2008, U.S. petroleum deliveries—a measure of demand—fell 6 percent to 19.4 million barrels a day, with declines for all major products made from crude, according to the American Petroleum Institute.
All we have to do is Keep It Up!!
You Gotta Watch This
Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.
I know, I know. I'm supposed to be getting stuff done.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Househusband: Day Three
Househusband went on strike today. OK, not completely on strike, but I didn't accomplish what I wanted to today. I must have fallen asleep reading or something, because I have about three hours I can't account for. I need a hobby or something.
Anyway, the web is still quiet; even other bloggers are noticing a fall-off in traffic and comments. Probably has something to do with a third of the country being in the deep-freeze. But I did find some things of interest.
I love the guys that do Yahoo's Tech Ticker. Yesterday, they had a piece on the bank bailout, with special attention paid to Citi, who just put up a $10 billion loss. Stop the charade, indeed. As much as I hate to see private industry nationalized, I find having profits privatized and losses socialized even more disturbing. If Citi is so poorly run that it needs 10's of billions in taxpayer dollars to survive, then shareholders and bondholders should be wiped out. End discussion. In Citi's (and other national bank's) defense, they have stopped sending home equity loan offers to our apartment....
Retails sales in December were worse than expected and pushed retail negative for the year for the first time in a quarter century. Duh. This is, of course a "disaster" because retail sales "plummeted" 0.1%. Welcome to reality.
Under-18 girls are being arrested for child pornography for taking naked pictures of themselves with their cellphones and sending them to their boyfriends. Child porn is illegal on the theory that the person taking the pictures is exploiting the child and the child cannot truly consent as they are not of age. So in this case, we have 15-year-old girls being charged with exploiting themselves by taking nude pictures of themselves, and not consenting to themselves to have the pictures taken by themselves. For this, they will be dogged for life with felony child porn charges. And to repeat what I said a few days ago: what exactly did these "children" do wrong? Please support your answer with the appropriate moral framework that does not include any reference to deities.
And Warner Music Group again demonstrates that they are run by mental defectives. Which is more: $.01 times 1,000,000 views or $.10 times zero views? If you pick the former, you have a higher IQ than the entire executive suite at WMG.
Cool video:
Love JoCo.
Anyway, the web is still quiet; even other bloggers are noticing a fall-off in traffic and comments. Probably has something to do with a third of the country being in the deep-freeze. But I did find some things of interest.
I love the guys that do Yahoo's Tech Ticker. Yesterday, they had a piece on the bank bailout, with special attention paid to Citi, who just put up a $10 billion loss. Stop the charade, indeed. As much as I hate to see private industry nationalized, I find having profits privatized and losses socialized even more disturbing. If Citi is so poorly run that it needs 10's of billions in taxpayer dollars to survive, then shareholders and bondholders should be wiped out. End discussion. In Citi's (and other national bank's) defense, they have stopped sending home equity loan offers to our apartment....
Retails sales in December were worse than expected and pushed retail negative for the year for the first time in a quarter century. Duh. This is, of course a "disaster" because retail sales "plummeted" 0.1%. Welcome to reality.
Under-18 girls are being arrested for child pornography for taking naked pictures of themselves with their cellphones and sending them to their boyfriends. Child porn is illegal on the theory that the person taking the pictures is exploiting the child and the child cannot truly consent as they are not of age. So in this case, we have 15-year-old girls being charged with exploiting themselves by taking nude pictures of themselves, and not consenting to themselves to have the pictures taken by themselves. For this, they will be dogged for life with felony child porn charges. And to repeat what I said a few days ago: what exactly did these "children" do wrong? Please support your answer with the appropriate moral framework that does not include any reference to deities.
And Warner Music Group again demonstrates that they are run by mental defectives. Which is more: $.01 times 1,000,000 views or $.10 times zero views? If you pick the former, you have a higher IQ than the entire executive suite at WMG.
Cool video:
Love JoCo.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Househusband: Day Two
Gave the office a thorough cleaning this morning. It takes forever because of all the stuff piled up on shelves, desks, etc. Tomorrow: the bedroom. Yes, you wanted to know that.
After I was done with chores, I was nosing around on the web and found something that looked interesting called Slicethepie. It's a music review site that you can actually make real money from. The music is pre-contract, so some of it is really bad, and it takes a serious investment of time to make anything from it, but it was fun. At least until the site blew up and kept giving me zero-length music tracks to "review." I headed over to the forums to see if it was a Firefox or Java problem and the very first forum thread, going back several months, was people complaining about zero-length tracks screwing up the works. (sigh) Never fails; a great idea shot down by shoddy programming.
Speaking of shoddy progamming, more problems with the Diebold voting machines. The audit trail is so poor, there is no way to know if votes were counted, re-counted, uncounted, or randomly deleted by the software. I spent the better part of a decade writing accounting software, which has audit trail requirements that are on the somewhat strict side (if you ever want audited financials, that is). If my work had been this grossly incompetent, I wouldn't have lasted a week at VWoA. With all the conspiricy nuts out there claiming that Obama is a Muslim, Obama isn't a US citizen, Obama's pastor (I thought Muslims called them imams?) is a racist, Obama is a communist, you would think voting machines that randomly delete votes and allow election officials to delete batches of votes without leaving any sort of audit trail would attract at least some attention.
I've mentioned several times that there will be another wave of bailouts when all the defined-benefit pension funds run out of money due to their portfolios losing 30-40% of their value in 2008. I've also mentioned that states, counties and municipalities will also need bailing out due to the drop in sales tax, income tax, and property tax receipts. Now combine those two disasters.
Evidence of global warming: 36 below.
Well, need to start thinking about dinner. I'm thinking tacos....
After I was done with chores, I was nosing around on the web and found something that looked interesting called Slicethepie. It's a music review site that you can actually make real money from. The music is pre-contract, so some of it is really bad, and it takes a serious investment of time to make anything from it, but it was fun. At least until the site blew up and kept giving me zero-length music tracks to "review." I headed over to the forums to see if it was a Firefox or Java problem and the very first forum thread, going back several months, was people complaining about zero-length tracks screwing up the works. (sigh) Never fails; a great idea shot down by shoddy programming.
Speaking of shoddy progamming, more problems with the Diebold voting machines. The audit trail is so poor, there is no way to know if votes were counted, re-counted, uncounted, or randomly deleted by the software. I spent the better part of a decade writing accounting software, which has audit trail requirements that are on the somewhat strict side (if you ever want audited financials, that is). If my work had been this grossly incompetent, I wouldn't have lasted a week at VWoA. With all the conspiricy nuts out there claiming that Obama is a Muslim, Obama isn't a US citizen, Obama's pastor (I thought Muslims called them imams?) is a racist, Obama is a communist, you would think voting machines that randomly delete votes and allow election officials to delete batches of votes without leaving any sort of audit trail would attract at least some attention.
I've mentioned several times that there will be another wave of bailouts when all the defined-benefit pension funds run out of money due to their portfolios losing 30-40% of their value in 2008. I've also mentioned that states, counties and municipalities will also need bailing out due to the drop in sales tax, income tax, and property tax receipts. Now combine those two disasters.
Evidence of global warming: 36 below.
Well, need to start thinking about dinner. I'm thinking tacos....
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sampler Post
Happy Birthday, Debbie!!
Still not much happening either on the internet or in RealWorld. I'm back in house-husband mode doing cooking, cleaning, dishes. Wee!
Jerry Pournelle did have an interesting essay on what are the foundations of morality. The historical answer has been revelation from God or gods. But in a secular society, what do you use? Objectivism, utility, rational self-interest; all have been put forward, but all suffer a fatal flaw: why that system of morality? If you eliminate "Because God said so." then what makes your system The System? A 50% + 1 majority? Your guns are bigger or your thugs are more ruthless? You are a better debator?
Anyway, that discussion leads rather neatly into this news story:
And why not?
The best we can hope for in 2009: "The news is going to be unrelentingly bad for the next four to five months." Looks like I picked a good year to sit on the sidelines and take college classes. And it looks like we got rid of everything just in time so that I can sit this one out. If we were still in Michigan, we would be living in a cardboard box behind Denny's and eating out of the dumpster.
Will it be Fire or Ice? (HCHSBTSPODTUTBGTUTHADHOI) Pretty bad when Pravda comes closer to living up to it's name that the media in the "free world."
Not much of real interest tomorrow unless everyone wants to read about my housecleaning adventures and what's on the menu for dinner. So I'm off to bed.
Still not much happening either on the internet or in RealWorld. I'm back in house-husband mode doing cooking, cleaning, dishes. Wee!
Jerry Pournelle did have an interesting essay on what are the foundations of morality. The historical answer has been revelation from God or gods. But in a secular society, what do you use? Objectivism, utility, rational self-interest; all have been put forward, but all suffer a fatal flaw: why that system of morality? If you eliminate "Because God said so." then what makes your system The System? A 50% + 1 majority? Your guns are bigger or your thugs are more ruthless? You are a better debator?
Anyway, that discussion leads rather neatly into this news story:
Natalie Dylan, 22, claims her offer of a one-night stand has persuaded 10,000 men to bid for sex with her....
The student who has a degree in Women's Studies insisted she was not demeaning herself....
Miss Dylan, from San Diego, California, USA, said she was persuaded to offer herself to the highest bidder after her sister Avia, 23, paid for her own degree after working as a prostitute for three weeks....
"It's shocking that men will pay so much for someone's virginity, which isn't even prized so highly anymore."
And why not?
The best we can hope for in 2009: "The news is going to be unrelentingly bad for the next four to five months." Looks like I picked a good year to sit on the sidelines and take college classes. And it looks like we got rid of everything just in time so that I can sit this one out. If we were still in Michigan, we would be living in a cardboard box behind Denny's and eating out of the dumpster.
Will it be Fire or Ice? (HCHSBTSPODTUTBGTUTHADHOI) Pretty bad when Pravda comes closer to living up to it's name that the media in the "free world."
Not much of real interest tomorrow unless everyone wants to read about my housecleaning adventures and what's on the menu for dinner. So I'm off to bed.
Couch Potato
Spent the last three days mostly sitting on the couch. We did make it outside for a couple hours to buy some food and hit the library, and we even managed to do the laundry (only because the alternative involved phrases like "Captain Caveman!!"). But other than that, we ate, we slept, we read, we watched movies.
It was wonderful.
I ran through all my usual places on the intertubes, but everyone seems to be sitting on the couch as well. There just didn't seem to be much newsworthy going on out there in RealWorld. I'm sure part of it is the time of year combined with the lousy economy and topped off with the presidential transition that has everyone just checking off days until Obama gets sworn in.
So that's all that's happening in Sunny Arizona. Time for sleep.
It was wonderful.
I ran through all my usual places on the intertubes, but everyone seems to be sitting on the couch as well. There just didn't seem to be much newsworthy going on out there in RealWorld. I'm sure part of it is the time of year combined with the lousy economy and topped off with the presidential transition that has everyone just checking off days until Obama gets sworn in.
So that's all that's happening in Sunny Arizona. Time for sleep.
Friday, January 09, 2009
Bye Bye, Willie!
I said goodbye to Willie and the Rooster's Cafe today. I was only scheduled for two days this week, and was not even on the schedule for next week. This morning, I was called in early because prep was so far behind. Five minutes after I show up, the owners wife, as she habitually does, breezes into the kitchen, and literally pushes me out of the way without even acknowledging that I exist. So I left. The owner followed me out to the parking lot where I gave him some choice thoughts about him and his wife.
So. No more Rooster's. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Which is just as well with the college schedule I have coming up in a couple weeks. I'll just focus on getting my last six classes out of the way then worry about how we are going to eat after I'm done.
So while I have some time to kill, a little reminder that just because the news media has the attention span of a three-year-old doesn't mean that the lead story from a couple years ago has somehow gone away.
And the public schools continue in their primary mission, which as we know has nothing to do with education and everything to do with teaching the next generation to endure any form of degradation imposed by authority figures.
On a lighter note, there may be Stonehenge-type remains in Lake Michigan near Traverse City. It won't likely do much for tourism given that it takes scuba gear to see it, but still cool if it pans out.
Well, off to enjoy my "retirement."
Thursday, January 08, 2009
Score!!
I was finally able to score some drugs today. It only took a month or so, but I can finally kick out the squatters in my lungs before they do serious damage. In the process, I found a clinic not too far from the apartment that wouldn't totally suck as a primary care provider. I need to talk to them about that in a couple months. It seems surreal to me; before moving to Arizona, I had exactly three primary care doctors. I changed from my first doctor only because he retired, and my second only because we moved 200 miles away. In two years in the territories, I've had the same number of primaries, and I'm looking for number four.
But none of that matters at this point. The important thing is the little bottle of pretty blue pills that will make all the bad stuff go away.
I was off work today because a) my job sucks and I don't get hours any more, and b) I needed a full day to try and score drugs. Debbie got cut loose early from her job because the economy sucks. So we used an Olive Garden gift card for lunch and a couple movie passes to go see Marley and Me. Holy Crap. DO NOT take small children to this movie, especially if said small children have a dog. The last 45 minutes or so of this movie will tear out their little beating hearts and stomp them to mush. Even for us it was... well... yea.
In brighter news, the feds will borrow $1.2 trillion. I remember when that was the entire budget. I remember when that was significantly more than the entire budget. That number doesn't include any of Obama's "stimulus" measures.
In typical fashion, job losses lag the recession, just as job claims lag the recovery. The new thing in the last month is that now those jobs are coming from small businesses that had hoped Santa would save them. He didn't. Expect to see lots of empty holes at the local mall.
The next financial implosion: pension funds. The feds should bail them out....
Evidence for man-made global warming continues to pile up:
Record snow in Spokane.
Dog sled race canceled: too much snow.
Twelve people die in Europe's cold and snow.
And it's only the first week of January. The really cold, harsh weather is still to come.
No Steve Jobs = crappy, boring keynote. The bright spot for me was that someone at Apple reads this blog: iTunes music will no longer have DRM and some very timorous first steps have been taken to reduce the cost of buying music through iTune.
OK; going to bed before I fall asleep on the couch.
But none of that matters at this point. The important thing is the little bottle of pretty blue pills that will make all the bad stuff go away.
I was off work today because a) my job sucks and I don't get hours any more, and b) I needed a full day to try and score drugs. Debbie got cut loose early from her job because the economy sucks. So we used an Olive Garden gift card for lunch and a couple movie passes to go see Marley and Me. Holy Crap. DO NOT take small children to this movie, especially if said small children have a dog. The last 45 minutes or so of this movie will tear out their little beating hearts and stomp them to mush. Even for us it was... well... yea.
In brighter news, the feds will borrow $1.2 trillion. I remember when that was the entire budget. I remember when that was significantly more than the entire budget. That number doesn't include any of Obama's "stimulus" measures.
In typical fashion, job losses lag the recession, just as job claims lag the recovery. The new thing in the last month is that now those jobs are coming from small businesses that had hoped Santa would save them. He didn't. Expect to see lots of empty holes at the local mall.
The next financial implosion: pension funds. The feds should bail them out....
Evidence for man-made global warming continues to pile up:
Record snow in Spokane.
Dog sled race canceled: too much snow.
Twelve people die in Europe's cold and snow.
And it's only the first week of January. The really cold, harsh weather is still to come.
No Steve Jobs = crappy, boring keynote. The bright spot for me was that someone at Apple reads this blog: iTunes music will no longer have DRM and some very timorous first steps have been taken to reduce the cost of buying music through iTune.
OK; going to bed before I fall asleep on the couch.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Backing Up
I did our annual full backup last night and into the wee hours of this morning. It took 10 DVD's in total. One DVD held everything except MP3's and photos; those two directories filled the other nine. Obviously this is not a good strategy. For one, it's a pain to do, so I put it off. Second, the DVD's I have are not archival quality, so it's a crap shoot as to how long they will remain readable. Third, it is just dog slow doing it.
Besides all that, the largest directory (Movies) cannot be backed up to DVD's because nearly all the files are larger than what a DVD can hold. Nothing in there is as important as, say, our tax records, but it would still suck to lose it all. Tape drives, in my book, are a complete non-option at this point. They are just too expensive, the files are unreadable by anything other than the original hardware/software, and if burning a DVD is slow, backing up to tape is glacial.
So last night, I started a little experiment. I still have an aging Western Digital 60GB USB drive. I set up a batch job that uses xcopy commands (with the /D /S /C /I /R /K /Y switches) that dumps everything except the movies from the Drobo to the WD drive. Unplug it, hand it to Debbie to take to work and lock in her desk, and voi la: full copy of all our files in an unattended half hour or so, and easily stored off-site to boot. Once a week, she will bring it home, I rerun the batch job which updates changed files and adds new files (but does not remove deleted files), and give it back to her.
This is a short-term solution for a couple reasons. First, for those doing the math at home, there isn't a great deal of free space left on a 60GB drive holding 10 DVD's worth of files. Two or three more of our little weekend photography road trips, and it will be full. Second, this drive is already five or six years old and was starting to have some gremlins. But Western Digital makes a 120GB drive that Amazon sells for $75, so replacement isn't that painful. Over the next few months, I plan to pick up a couple that can be rotated to our off-site storage facility known as Debbie's Desk once a week, or anytime that I feel we need a backup (like after dumping a bunch of photos off the camera).
I may even go further than that and buy a USB drive just for annual backups. At $75, it would be pretty cheap to just plug the drive in, run the backup batch job, write the year on the drive with a Sharpie, and send it off-site to Debbie's Desk. I'm not sure how long a USB drive can sit around until all the 1's and 0's turn into 1/2's, but it's got to be good for a couple three years anyway. Each year, just buy a new drive. Eventually, the backups from three or four years ago can be reformated and used as door stops, building blocks for the kids, whatever. Which still leaves the Movie directory. There are USB drives up to and well beyond the 1TB capacity of our Drobo, but they tend to be slightly outside the casual-purchase price range. I may just not worry overly-much about it. If we get robbed or the apartment burns to the ground, we'll likely have bigger things to worry about than losing our digital copy of Wild Hogs.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm sitting at home without much to do. I need to sign up for my last college class and order the books from Amazon, do some laundry and start thinking about what we will be doing for dinner tonight. I'm supposed to be working on the menu for the cafe, but I need questions answered and there isn't anyone around to answer them. I'm only scheduled to work 12 hours this week. Woo. Hoo. But that's all going to change when the new menu takes effect. Which I can't finish because three weeks into this, some basic decisions can't seem to get made. And which has items on it the cooks don't have the food to make anyway. But we're going to starting using the new menus tomorrow. Right.
In a little less than three weeks, I will be starting college classes. It looks like I made the right call by bunching everything up into five months; it's not like I'll have a job or anything.
Besides all that, the largest directory (Movies) cannot be backed up to DVD's because nearly all the files are larger than what a DVD can hold. Nothing in there is as important as, say, our tax records, but it would still suck to lose it all. Tape drives, in my book, are a complete non-option at this point. They are just too expensive, the files are unreadable by anything other than the original hardware/software, and if burning a DVD is slow, backing up to tape is glacial.
So last night, I started a little experiment. I still have an aging Western Digital 60GB USB drive. I set up a batch job that uses xcopy commands (with the /D /S /C /I /R /K /Y switches) that dumps everything except the movies from the Drobo to the WD drive. Unplug it, hand it to Debbie to take to work and lock in her desk, and voi la: full copy of all our files in an unattended half hour or so, and easily stored off-site to boot. Once a week, she will bring it home, I rerun the batch job which updates changed files and adds new files (but does not remove deleted files), and give it back to her.
This is a short-term solution for a couple reasons. First, for those doing the math at home, there isn't a great deal of free space left on a 60GB drive holding 10 DVD's worth of files. Two or three more of our little weekend photography road trips, and it will be full. Second, this drive is already five or six years old and was starting to have some gremlins. But Western Digital makes a 120GB drive that Amazon sells for $75, so replacement isn't that painful. Over the next few months, I plan to pick up a couple that can be rotated to our off-site storage facility known as Debbie's Desk once a week, or anytime that I feel we need a backup (like after dumping a bunch of photos off the camera).
I may even go further than that and buy a USB drive just for annual backups. At $75, it would be pretty cheap to just plug the drive in, run the backup batch job, write the year on the drive with a Sharpie, and send it off-site to Debbie's Desk. I'm not sure how long a USB drive can sit around until all the 1's and 0's turn into 1/2's, but it's got to be good for a couple three years anyway. Each year, just buy a new drive. Eventually, the backups from three or four years ago can be reformated and used as door stops, building blocks for the kids, whatever. Which still leaves the Movie directory. There are USB drives up to and well beyond the 1TB capacity of our Drobo, but they tend to be slightly outside the casual-purchase price range. I may just not worry overly-much about it. If we get robbed or the apartment burns to the ground, we'll likely have bigger things to worry about than losing our digital copy of Wild Hogs.
Anyway, as you can probably tell, I'm sitting at home without much to do. I need to sign up for my last college class and order the books from Amazon, do some laundry and start thinking about what we will be doing for dinner tonight. I'm supposed to be working on the menu for the cafe, but I need questions answered and there isn't anyone around to answer them. I'm only scheduled to work 12 hours this week. Woo. Hoo. But that's all going to change when the new menu takes effect. Which I can't finish because three weeks into this, some basic decisions can't seem to get made. And which has items on it the cooks don't have the food to make anyway. But we're going to starting using the new menus tomorrow. Right.
In a little less than three weeks, I will be starting college classes. It looks like I made the right call by bunching everything up into five months; it's not like I'll have a job or anything.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
It Begins
Israel begins the ground invasion of Gaza. If you really want to understand what is going on, you could do worse than reading this, this, and this. Pushing any person or group to the point they have nothing to lose is bad strategy. It is also a handy way to remove ambivalence. A person who does not consider you a friend but does not hate you, will quickly come to curse your very existence if you back him in a corner. And before leaving the typical anonymous flames in the comments, do note that I didn't say who was pushing whom in this current situation.
State governments begin to collapse. Sales tax revenues are down significantly. Income tax revenues are down significantly. Property tax revenues are down precipitously. The financial collapse of counties and municipalities is also underway, but still hidden in the dust and debris. 2009 is not going to be a year of recovery.
Another industry begins to go into decline. Steel has gotten so beat up for so long that the industry had all the fat cut out long ago. That allowed them to do well until the fourth quarter of 2008, then the bottom fell out for them too. Double-digit unemployment is hard to bounce back from, as anyone who lived through the Carter administration knows.
You know it must be bad when even electronic devices begin committing mass suicide. Actually, it's "just" a leap-year bug, although the fact that there are people in the electronics industry who still don't know how the calendar works is frightening. Far better, of course, that they are screwing up Zunes rather than making $400,000 loans to people that make $17,000/year working five part-time jobs.
Well, off to spread some cheer elsewhere.
State governments begin to collapse. Sales tax revenues are down significantly. Income tax revenues are down significantly. Property tax revenues are down precipitously. The financial collapse of counties and municipalities is also underway, but still hidden in the dust and debris. 2009 is not going to be a year of recovery.
Another industry begins to go into decline. Steel has gotten so beat up for so long that the industry had all the fat cut out long ago. That allowed them to do well until the fourth quarter of 2008, then the bottom fell out for them too. Double-digit unemployment is hard to bounce back from, as anyone who lived through the Carter administration knows.
You know it must be bad when even electronic devices begin committing mass suicide. Actually, it's "just" a leap-year bug, although the fact that there are people in the electronics industry who still don't know how the calendar works is frightening. Far better, of course, that they are screwing up Zunes rather than making $400,000 loans to people that make $17,000/year working five part-time jobs.
Well, off to spread some cheer elsewhere.
Lazy Morning
Spent the day so far sitting on the couch and plowing through my regular blogs instead of doing all the stuff I should be doing. So now I'm blogging while sitting on the couch instead of doing all the things I should be doing.
Jerry Pournelle's mail page has had some very worthwhile reading on it this week. My favorite so far is, as will come as no surprise to anyone, a massive broadside aimed at the world's newest religion: Anthropogenic Global Warming. I'm renewing my subscription today. (Jerry runs his site on the public radio model; voluntary contributions urged by some tasteful begging and not-so-subtle hints about making a living.) I think I'm past my year, but now it is on the first (or close enough for government work) so I have no excuse for forgetting to do it. If you spend any time on his site, I would encourage you to start 2009 the right way and do the same.
I thought my New Year day was bad because I was sick. At least that wasn't as bad start to 2009 as Scott Adams had.
OK, I need to get something accomplished today while the drugs are keeping the fever and coughing at bay.
Jerry Pournelle's mail page has had some very worthwhile reading on it this week. My favorite so far is, as will come as no surprise to anyone, a massive broadside aimed at the world's newest religion: Anthropogenic Global Warming. I'm renewing my subscription today. (Jerry runs his site on the public radio model; voluntary contributions urged by some tasteful begging and not-so-subtle hints about making a living.) I think I'm past my year, but now it is on the first (or close enough for government work) so I have no excuse for forgetting to do it. If you spend any time on his site, I would encourage you to start 2009 the right way and do the same.
I thought my New Year day was bad because I was sick. At least that wasn't as bad start to 2009 as Scott Adams had.
OK, I need to get something accomplished today while the drugs are keeping the fever and coughing at bay.
Rovers, Job, Other
The Spirit Mars rover turned five today, and Opportunity will hit the same milestone on the 24th. Not bad for a 90-day mission.
I tried to go to work today, but there were already four people in the kitchen. I've been doing secretarial work (creating checklists, new menu, etc.) and the owner had some stuff I could work on at home. So I put in four hours on that and called it a day. I just don't see a happy ending here. If I had stayed at the cafe, there would have been eight employees total working in the cafe. That has to be close to $100/hour burdened labor when sales are optimistically about $500 a day.
Ah well. I got an e-mail from my adviser and I'm all set for college starting on January 26. I'm doing all six classes that I need for my degree between then and May 11, so if my job turns to crap or goes away completely, it will make my life easier. At least for getting homework done. Paying the bills might be another matter, but we'll hardly be alone in that.
John Travolta's son died Friday after apparently having a seizure, falling, and hitting his head. What would be tragic may turn out to be much more. Travolta and wife are practicing Scientologists and the son has a history of health problems that the parents have in the past treated with such standard claptrap as detoxification. Depending on what the autopsy turns up, this could get ugly. I don't know what sort of person John Travolta is, but I've enjoyed watching his acting since his Welcome Back Kotter days. The fact that he stays more or less out of the news means he is probably a fairly normal person who just happens to subscribe to a belief systems that is popular with the Hollywood crowd even while being seriously wacked.
I didn't include resolutions in my New Years Day post because I was barely conscious due to high fever. I normally don't in any case, or have a list like Bob Thompson's. But this year may be different. One year ago, I was 190 pounds. Then I started working around food all day and taking a half-dozen meds that all cause weight gain. That isn't their primary function, according to the label, but it's the only thing they do predictably. I am now over 230 again. The meds haven't really fixed what they were prescribed for, but they certainly made me fat. So I'll be working on that this year both for myself and as support for Debbie meeting her resolution.
And of course, completing my four-year college degree 27 years after I started it will be 2009's biggest achivement. Maybe I should just be happy with that.
Not much else happening. I got up our Christmas and Vegas photos. I want to try to get downtown this weekend if only to get out of the apartment for a bit. With some luck, I'll be doing some data gathering as well, about Macs and local scanning and printing services from some local artists. I also need to look into getting my parents into the digital photo age when they don't have a computer. I'm sure it's possible, but I haven't done it that way, so I have no clue about availability or cost.
Well, I need sleep.
I tried to go to work today, but there were already four people in the kitchen. I've been doing secretarial work (creating checklists, new menu, etc.) and the owner had some stuff I could work on at home. So I put in four hours on that and called it a day. I just don't see a happy ending here. If I had stayed at the cafe, there would have been eight employees total working in the cafe. That has to be close to $100/hour burdened labor when sales are optimistically about $500 a day.
Ah well. I got an e-mail from my adviser and I'm all set for college starting on January 26. I'm doing all six classes that I need for my degree between then and May 11, so if my job turns to crap or goes away completely, it will make my life easier. At least for getting homework done. Paying the bills might be another matter, but we'll hardly be alone in that.
John Travolta's son died Friday after apparently having a seizure, falling, and hitting his head. What would be tragic may turn out to be much more. Travolta and wife are practicing Scientologists and the son has a history of health problems that the parents have in the past treated with such standard claptrap as detoxification. Depending on what the autopsy turns up, this could get ugly. I don't know what sort of person John Travolta is, but I've enjoyed watching his acting since his Welcome Back Kotter days. The fact that he stays more or less out of the news means he is probably a fairly normal person who just happens to subscribe to a belief systems that is popular with the Hollywood crowd even while being seriously wacked.
I didn't include resolutions in my New Years Day post because I was barely conscious due to high fever. I normally don't in any case, or have a list like Bob Thompson's. But this year may be different. One year ago, I was 190 pounds. Then I started working around food all day and taking a half-dozen meds that all cause weight gain. That isn't their primary function, according to the label, but it's the only thing they do predictably. I am now over 230 again. The meds haven't really fixed what they were prescribed for, but they certainly made me fat. So I'll be working on that this year both for myself and as support for Debbie meeting her resolution.
And of course, completing my four-year college degree 27 years after I started it will be 2009's biggest achivement. Maybe I should just be happy with that.
Not much else happening. I got up our Christmas and Vegas photos. I want to try to get downtown this weekend if only to get out of the apartment for a bit. With some luck, I'll be doing some data gathering as well, about Macs and local scanning and printing services from some local artists. I also need to look into getting my parents into the digital photo age when they don't have a computer. I'm sure it's possible, but I haven't done it that way, so I have no clue about availability or cost.
Well, I need sleep.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
New Year's Resolutions
It is that time again ---- I don't remember all my resolutions from last year (and too lazy to go back and look them up). This year I am deciding to be a bit different with my resolutions. I decided to do one resolution a month. A month seems more manageable than a year.
My January resolution is one that is almost always a resolution -- to lose weight. This time, I am being more specific. First, it is just one month; second, I am setting a certain realistic amount to lose.
Of course, I didn't start too well. I'm sure Ric mentioned while in Vegas we stopped by the Ethel M chocolate factory. We ended up getting an assorted selection of 48 pieces we personally selected. (24 for each of us) Well ...... I finished up my layer today. Not sure why -- maybe in my mind if I ate it all now, it would not bother me later this month?!
I have some work out videos I borrowed from a coworker that I have not even pretended to pop in the VCR. I want to work on looking at them and seeing if I will use them. I saw part of one that my newest niece used while I was staying with them while in Michigan. If I don't find one I like, I may ask Melissa to get the name of the one she was using for me.
Well....wish me luck. I wish you all luck out there that make a resolution that they want to try to keep.
My January resolution is one that is almost always a resolution -- to lose weight. This time, I am being more specific. First, it is just one month; second, I am setting a certain realistic amount to lose.
Of course, I didn't start too well. I'm sure Ric mentioned while in Vegas we stopped by the Ethel M chocolate factory. We ended up getting an assorted selection of 48 pieces we personally selected. (24 for each of us) Well ...... I finished up my layer today. Not sure why -- maybe in my mind if I ate it all now, it would not bother me later this month?!
I have some work out videos I borrowed from a coworker that I have not even pretended to pop in the VCR. I want to work on looking at them and seeing if I will use them. I saw part of one that my newest niece used while I was staying with them while in Michigan. If I don't find one I like, I may ask Melissa to get the name of the one she was using for me.
Well....wish me luck. I wish you all luck out there that make a resolution that they want to try to keep.
Happy New Year
It's 2009.
We're both home today; Debbie because she works for a real business, me because I'm still too sick to be handling food. We just spent the last hour driving around trying to find something other than an ER room that is open. All of the after-hour and urgent care clinics close on weekends and holidays here in the territories. My doctor has no answering service and no emergency number. I'm supposed to have a note from a doctor when I go back to work, but that presupposes that there is a doctor available.
Just love living in the third world.
So we stopped at Walgreens and stocked up on OTC meds instead of something that will actually address the root problem I've had for six weeks. That should keep me going until it gets bad enough that even the mental defectives that pass for doctors out here can't pretend that there isn't anything wrong with me.
Anyway, that's how 2009 is starting for us.
We're both home today; Debbie because she works for a real business, me because I'm still too sick to be handling food. We just spent the last hour driving around trying to find something other than an ER room that is open. All of the after-hour and urgent care clinics close on weekends and holidays here in the territories. My doctor has no answering service and no emergency number. I'm supposed to have a note from a doctor when I go back to work, but that presupposes that there is a doctor available.
Just love living in the third world.
So we stopped at Walgreens and stocked up on OTC meds instead of something that will actually address the root problem I've had for six weeks. That should keep me going until it gets bad enough that even the mental defectives that pass for doctors out here can't pretend that there isn't anything wrong with me.
Anyway, that's how 2009 is starting for us.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Sifting the Rubble
I have some free time this morning. The kitchen manager called me a few minutes ago to tell me not to bother to come in as he already had five people in his kitchen. It would have been six, but the new "friends & family" guy that the owners hired didn't bother to show up on his first day. In any case, I'm on my own until noon-ish, so I thought I would sort through the dozens of open tabs I have in Firefox and inflict them on my five regular readers.
To lead off, we have one from the I Guess You Have To Be Known For Something Even If It Is Massive Suckage category. Referring, of course, to the most ineptly run football team in the history of the NFL. The last Superbowl appearance by the Detroit Lions was... oh wait; Detroit has never played in a Superbowl, hasn't won a championship since 1957, and has only been in the playoffs nine times in a half-century. But never fear, say the Fords; "His [Lions coach Rod Marinelli's] future has not been announced, but team owner William Clay Ford has decided the leaders of the front office, Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand, will be back in some capacity." Lets see; in my lifetime, there has been a brigade of players and coaches with solid to stellar careers before and after playing/coaching in Detroit. Now I know basically nothing about football, but I can recognize a management problem from a mile away. Instead of firing yet-another coach, maybe the Ford family should fire themselves and all their croneys working "in some capacity." Or not. Every organization needs a buffoon, and given the kind of people they elect as mayor, why not Detroit? Paint the Lion's jet to look like a giant clown-car and you're all set.
Next we have one from the Are People Really So Stupid That It Has To Be Said category: don't take health advice from celebrities. I would also add, don't take political advice, scientific advice, economic advice, child-raising advice, fashion advice, or lip/breast/butt augmentation advice from celebrities. In fact, I'll make it easy: don't take advice from celebrities. On anything. Ever. Not even on how to become a celebrity, because most of them had nothing to do with it. They are celebrities due to a combination of family connections, luck and hard work by other people, and haven't a clue as to how it all happened. (I make an exception to this diatribe for Abigail Breslin, the cutest girl to stand in front of a camera since Shirley Temple.)
And one from the combination Holy Crap How Can People Who End Up Running Multinational Corporations Be So Fracking Stupid and the Ten Years Late To The Party file, we have the music industry deciding that maybe there is something to this so-called internet thing after all. Of course, they still don't get it. I've said it many times before. The music industry can have more money than God in four simple steps:
Drop all forms of DRM. It doesn't work. It can never work unless you prevent people from hearing music. If I can hear it, I can copy it. Period. Just accept that this is so, and live with it.
Fire all the lawyers at the RIAA. Suing college kids and grandparents isn't really making you any friends. It just makes everyone more determined to get music for free. Anyone that takes the time to punch the holes necessary in their firewall to make Limewire or Bittorrent work probably doesn't have the money to buy what they are downloading anyway, so the pathetic attempts to stop them will not result in higher sales. Use the money saved to do the next two steps.
Cut prices to $.25 for individual tracks and $2 or $3 for an album. And given that there is no size restriction on a digital album, that price should include no fewer than 15 tracks plus hi-res jpeg's of any artwork, band member photos, etc., and hi-def video of live performances, promotional videos, interviews, music videos, whatever. Set up a $10-per-month subscription service that allows unlimited downloads of anything more than a year old, some limited-but-still-generous downloading of current music, and access to the new stuff a week before the "official" release.
Empty the vault. Drag out all those recordings that are currently disintegrating and digitize them. Sell for $.05 a track, or unlimited downloading for subscribers. Even the federal government has figured out that keeping history locked in a vault doesn't accomplish much.
And that's it. More money than God. The music industry could make this recession their best financial performance ever. They won't.
And last but not least, we have the obligatory Holy Crap He's Still Beating That Same Patch Of Dirt That Used To Be Grass That Used To Have A Dead Horse On It category: 2008 will be remembered as the year that man-made global warming was conclusively refuted.
OK. I'm done for now.
[Updated to add: I officially nominate HCHSBTSPODTUTBGTUTHADHOI as the longest and most obscure internet acronym ever.]
To lead off, we have one from the I Guess You Have To Be Known For Something Even If It Is Massive Suckage category. Referring, of course, to the most ineptly run football team in the history of the NFL. The last Superbowl appearance by the Detroit Lions was... oh wait; Detroit has never played in a Superbowl, hasn't won a championship since 1957, and has only been in the playoffs nine times in a half-century. But never fear, say the Fords; "His [Lions coach Rod Marinelli's] future has not been announced, but team owner William Clay Ford has decided the leaders of the front office, Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand, will be back in some capacity." Lets see; in my lifetime, there has been a brigade of players and coaches with solid to stellar careers before and after playing/coaching in Detroit. Now I know basically nothing about football, but I can recognize a management problem from a mile away. Instead of firing yet-another coach, maybe the Ford family should fire themselves and all their croneys working "in some capacity." Or not. Every organization needs a buffoon, and given the kind of people they elect as mayor, why not Detroit? Paint the Lion's jet to look like a giant clown-car and you're all set.
Next we have one from the Are People Really So Stupid That It Has To Be Said category: don't take health advice from celebrities. I would also add, don't take political advice, scientific advice, economic advice, child-raising advice, fashion advice, or lip/breast/butt augmentation advice from celebrities. In fact, I'll make it easy: don't take advice from celebrities. On anything. Ever. Not even on how to become a celebrity, because most of them had nothing to do with it. They are celebrities due to a combination of family connections, luck and hard work by other people, and haven't a clue as to how it all happened. (I make an exception to this diatribe for Abigail Breslin, the cutest girl to stand in front of a camera since Shirley Temple.)
And one from the combination Holy Crap How Can People Who End Up Running Multinational Corporations Be So Fracking Stupid and the Ten Years Late To The Party file, we have the music industry deciding that maybe there is something to this so-called internet thing after all. Of course, they still don't get it. I've said it many times before. The music industry can have more money than God in four simple steps:
Drop all forms of DRM. It doesn't work. It can never work unless you prevent people from hearing music. If I can hear it, I can copy it. Period. Just accept that this is so, and live with it.
Fire all the lawyers at the RIAA. Suing college kids and grandparents isn't really making you any friends. It just makes everyone more determined to get music for free. Anyone that takes the time to punch the holes necessary in their firewall to make Limewire or Bittorrent work probably doesn't have the money to buy what they are downloading anyway, so the pathetic attempts to stop them will not result in higher sales. Use the money saved to do the next two steps.
Cut prices to $.25 for individual tracks and $2 or $3 for an album. And given that there is no size restriction on a digital album, that price should include no fewer than 15 tracks plus hi-res jpeg's of any artwork, band member photos, etc., and hi-def video of live performances, promotional videos, interviews, music videos, whatever. Set up a $10-per-month subscription service that allows unlimited downloads of anything more than a year old, some limited-but-still-generous downloading of current music, and access to the new stuff a week before the "official" release.
Empty the vault. Drag out all those recordings that are currently disintegrating and digitize them. Sell for $.05 a track, or unlimited downloading for subscribers. Even the federal government has figured out that keeping history locked in a vault doesn't accomplish much.
And that's it. More money than God. The music industry could make this recession their best financial performance ever. They won't.
And last but not least, we have the obligatory Holy Crap He's Still Beating That Same Patch Of Dirt That Used To Be Grass That Used To Have A Dead Horse On It category: 2008 will be remembered as the year that man-made global warming was conclusively refuted.
OK. I'm done for now.
[Updated to add: I officially nominate HCHSBTSPODTUTBGTUTHADHOI as the longest and most obscure internet acronym ever.]
We're Back
We made it back from Vegas in one piece, physically and financially. The credit card didn't actually catch fire, although I definitely heard a faint screaming. We didn't do nearly as much walking around and picture taking as we planned. The word for this trip was COLD. At least the snow was gone when we got there, but it was windy and COLD the entire time we were there.
We saw Ka as planned. It was a bit different than other Cirque du Solei shows I've seen. There was less acrobatics and more focus on the story line. It was good, and the engineering was the some of the most amazing stuff I've seen. There was no fixed stage; just two enormous hydrolic platforms. The one in the back was limited to moving up, down, forward and backward. The front platform was fully articulated, moving forward, backward, left, right, and tilting from level to fully verticle, and rotating 360 degrees while in any position. There was a six-on-six verticle fight scene that was awesome (as well as a bit vertigo-inducing).
Best line of trip was from a girl around three years old while we were waiting for the tram that connects to Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandelay Bay: "Daddy! It not a twain, its a twam!
Biggest annoyance of the trip (other than the COLD) were the timeshare sales people disguised as Excalibur hotel employees. Now if the Excalibur wants to pimp the timeshare they are investing in, that's fine. Set up your kiosks and have at it. But getting out of our room, getting in or out of the hotel, or getting to the registrations desk involved running a gauntlet of timeshare pimps that would do anything including stepping in fromt of you and blocking your path to drag you over to their stupid desk where they would go on and on about free nights and half-priced show tickets, but never ever mention "timeshare" or that you had to allow them to charge large sums of money to your credit card that they promise to give back. Over the course of our stay, we found ourselves becoming increasingly rude to the pimps, which only seemed to encourage them. The only defense seemed to be hiding in the ubiquitous large groups of Chinese whenever we had to pass one of the timeshare pimp checkpoints.
Speaking of which, I think we saw more Americans in the Vatican City than in Las Vegas. Large packs of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese could be seen everywhere and we heard a pretty fair cross-section of EU languages and well. I guess that's a better way to get all those dollars back than having the Chinese lending them to our government.
We had planned on stopping at the Hoover Dam on the way back, but when we got there, it seemed the rest of North America had the same idea. We got through that mess and didn't stop until we hit Chloride, Arizona. If there ever was a hair on the zit on the wart on the left butt-cheek of the world, it's Chloride, Arizona. 'Nuff said. (shudder)
Anyway, I need to get our Christmas pictures and road trip photos off the camera and on Flikr. Hope to get to that tomorrow or maybe Wednesday. So far, I'm scheduled to work all week, but my time at the cafe may be drawing to a close. I found myself saying out loud all the things I normally just say in my head. The owners seem to take great pride in displaying their stupidity in increasingly-obvious ways as well as pushing out all the original hires and replacing them with their friends and family. Especially friends and family that are as stupid as they are. Good luck with that, but I don't need to be a part of it.
Anyway, I need to try to get some sleep.
We saw Ka as planned. It was a bit different than other Cirque du Solei shows I've seen. There was less acrobatics and more focus on the story line. It was good, and the engineering was the some of the most amazing stuff I've seen. There was no fixed stage; just two enormous hydrolic platforms. The one in the back was limited to moving up, down, forward and backward. The front platform was fully articulated, moving forward, backward, left, right, and tilting from level to fully verticle, and rotating 360 degrees while in any position. There was a six-on-six verticle fight scene that was awesome (as well as a bit vertigo-inducing).
Best line of trip was from a girl around three years old while we were waiting for the tram that connects to Excalibur, Luxor, and Mandelay Bay: "Daddy! It not a twain, its a twam!
Biggest annoyance of the trip (other than the COLD) were the timeshare sales people disguised as Excalibur hotel employees. Now if the Excalibur wants to pimp the timeshare they are investing in, that's fine. Set up your kiosks and have at it. But getting out of our room, getting in or out of the hotel, or getting to the registrations desk involved running a gauntlet of timeshare pimps that would do anything including stepping in fromt of you and blocking your path to drag you over to their stupid desk where they would go on and on about free nights and half-priced show tickets, but never ever mention "timeshare" or that you had to allow them to charge large sums of money to your credit card that they promise to give back. Over the course of our stay, we found ourselves becoming increasingly rude to the pimps, which only seemed to encourage them. The only defense seemed to be hiding in the ubiquitous large groups of Chinese whenever we had to pass one of the timeshare pimp checkpoints.
Speaking of which, I think we saw more Americans in the Vatican City than in Las Vegas. Large packs of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese could be seen everywhere and we heard a pretty fair cross-section of EU languages and well. I guess that's a better way to get all those dollars back than having the Chinese lending them to our government.
We had planned on stopping at the Hoover Dam on the way back, but when we got there, it seemed the rest of North America had the same idea. We got through that mess and didn't stop until we hit Chloride, Arizona. If there ever was a hair on the zit on the wart on the left butt-cheek of the world, it's Chloride, Arizona. 'Nuff said. (shudder)
Anyway, I need to get our Christmas pictures and road trip photos off the camera and on Flikr. Hope to get to that tomorrow or maybe Wednesday. So far, I'm scheduled to work all week, but my time at the cafe may be drawing to a close. I found myself saying out loud all the things I normally just say in my head. The owners seem to take great pride in displaying their stupidity in increasingly-obvious ways as well as pushing out all the original hires and replacing them with their friends and family. Especially friends and family that are as stupid as they are. Good luck with that, but I don't need to be a part of it.
Anyway, I need to try to get some sleep.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Economic News
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Retailers are so desperate that some are reverting to the Middle East bazaar model. What next? Retailers become like Egyptians and physically assault people in a vain attempt to turn them into paying customers?
Looks like my $25 floor on oil prices may have been overly-optimistic. Parts of this story make me want to cheer:
Keep it up, America. Lets see those Arabs drink their oil.
Not really economic news, but we have the Notable Quotables for 2008. Some are economic, but due to the election, most are political. What would the world laugh at if there wasn't a Chris Matthews?
And the economy can't be that bad if the iFart application for the iPhone can make $10,000 a day.
Probably my last post before we leave, so Merry Christmas for real.
Retailers are so desperate that some are reverting to the Middle East bazaar model. What next? Retailers become like Egyptians and physically assault people in a vain attempt to turn them into paying customers?
Looks like my $25 floor on oil prices may have been overly-optimistic. Parts of this story make me want to cheer:
...Americans continue to cut back on driving amid the worst recession in a generation, leading to growing stockpiles of gasoline and eroding demand for motor fuel....
...Oil traders so far have brushed off attempts by OPEC to boost prices through production cuts....
Keep it up, America. Lets see those Arabs drink their oil.
Not really economic news, but we have the Notable Quotables for 2008. Some are economic, but due to the election, most are political. What would the world laugh at if there wasn't a Chris Matthews?
And the economy can't be that bad if the iFart application for the iPhone can make $10,000 a day.
Probably my last post before we leave, so Merry Christmas for real.
More Photos
In preparation for our trip to Vegas, I cleaned off the camera and found Debbie's photos from the Prescott Christmas Parade. We didn't go to the one last year because the weather was so bad and we were still unpacking from the move. Debbie ended up going to alone this year because I was working at the cafe. Someday, I may get to see one if we live here long enough.
Oh, Great
State and city budgets are or will shortly be collapsing due to falling sales taxes, real estate taxes, building permit fees, etc. No one is really talking about that yet, but they will be early next year. So what else is hiding in the bushes?
Insurance companies are imploding due to what logical people see as the predictable result of building mass concentrations of people below sea level, in the historic paths of hurricanes, on seismic faults and other places subject to periodic mass destruction. Increasing rates to cover the actual risk of living in high-risk areas is, of course, impossible. God forbid that someone stupid enough to build a wooden structure in an area swept by naturally-caused wild fires every year or so actually pay insurance fees in line with having their house rebuilt every few years. I mean, lets get serious. So in the past, insurance companies spread the risk around through re-insurance and bond markets. One small problem: those market vehicles have basically disappeared.
So guess who will be getting a bail-out in 2009.
Another surprise lurking in the hedge is regional banks. All the focus has been on the national banks with their too-big-to-fail status, ignoring that regional banks exist primarily to make residential and commercial real estate loans based on deposits from ordinary working stiffs. Well, the working stiffs more and more aren't and we all know what has happened to real estate. Most regional banks operate under tight scrutiny and don't have the luxury of Washington political connections. But there is a lot of money looking for a safe haven, and thanks to the internet, anyone in the United States can buy CD's from Bob's Bank, whether or not Bob's Bank is solvent or not. In other words, pretty much the same money (or what's left of it) that caused the real estate bubble that popped this year is now flowing into regional banks, many of which are is very bad shape. Deja vu all over again....
Merry Christmas.
In happier news, we will be heading out for Las Vegas first thing Christmas morning and will be back Sunday afternoon. I'm off work today, Debbie has a half day, then we are both free until Monday. We are mostly going to Vegas to see Ka, the Cirque du Soleil at the MGM Grand. We haven't seen it yet so why not? We'll also be heading over to Debbie's (and her mom's) favorite place in Vegas: Tower of Jewels. Somebody has a birthday coming up in a few weeks. The column of smoke you'll see coming from Vegas will be our credit card. We're not sure what else we will do, but we are staying on-strip at the Excalibur, so we will be able to hit Ethel M's for some nutritious snacks, and the M&M place and the Coke place for one day's main meal. And we will certainly check out all the stuff like the sea battle in front of Treasure Island, the fountains in front of the Belagio, etc. etc. We'll also try to get down to Fremont Street and see what's new downtown (other than the hords of tweakers hanging around everywhere). Expect lots of pictures on our Flickr account.
While we are gone, our apartment will be in the care of the killer chihuahuas next door. Seriously. Don't even think about it.
Insurance companies are imploding due to what logical people see as the predictable result of building mass concentrations of people below sea level, in the historic paths of hurricanes, on seismic faults and other places subject to periodic mass destruction. Increasing rates to cover the actual risk of living in high-risk areas is, of course, impossible. God forbid that someone stupid enough to build a wooden structure in an area swept by naturally-caused wild fires every year or so actually pay insurance fees in line with having their house rebuilt every few years. I mean, lets get serious. So in the past, insurance companies spread the risk around through re-insurance and bond markets. One small problem: those market vehicles have basically disappeared.
So guess who will be getting a bail-out in 2009.
Another surprise lurking in the hedge is regional banks. All the focus has been on the national banks with their too-big-to-fail status, ignoring that regional banks exist primarily to make residential and commercial real estate loans based on deposits from ordinary working stiffs. Well, the working stiffs more and more aren't and we all know what has happened to real estate. Most regional banks operate under tight scrutiny and don't have the luxury of Washington political connections. But there is a lot of money looking for a safe haven, and thanks to the internet, anyone in the United States can buy CD's from Bob's Bank, whether or not Bob's Bank is solvent or not. In other words, pretty much the same money (or what's left of it) that caused the real estate bubble that popped this year is now flowing into regional banks, many of which are is very bad shape. Deja vu all over again....
Merry Christmas.
In happier news, we will be heading out for Las Vegas first thing Christmas morning and will be back Sunday afternoon. I'm off work today, Debbie has a half day, then we are both free until Monday. We are mostly going to Vegas to see Ka, the Cirque du Soleil at the MGM Grand. We haven't seen it yet so why not? We'll also be heading over to Debbie's (and her mom's) favorite place in Vegas: Tower of Jewels. Somebody has a birthday coming up in a few weeks. The column of smoke you'll see coming from Vegas will be our credit card. We're not sure what else we will do, but we are staying on-strip at the Excalibur, so we will be able to hit Ethel M's for some nutritious snacks, and the M&M place and the Coke place for one day's main meal. And we will certainly check out all the stuff like the sea battle in front of Treasure Island, the fountains in front of the Belagio, etc. etc. We'll also try to get down to Fremont Street and see what's new downtown (other than the hords of tweakers hanging around everywhere). Expect lots of pictures on our Flickr account.
While we are gone, our apartment will be in the care of the killer chihuahuas next door. Seriously. Don't even think about it.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Cats and Dogs
I don't normally post e-mail jokes because almost everyone has already seen them three or four times in their e-mail. But I liked this one. And it's my blog. Deal.
Dog's Diary:
8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
3:00 pm - Ran back and forth in the hall! My favorite thing!
5:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing!
7:00 pm - Got to play tug! My favorite thing!
8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!
Cat's Diary:
Day 983 of my captivity.
My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape.
In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet.
Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I am. Bastards!
They continue to pick me up and handle me, an obvious attempt to subvert me.
There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of 'allergies.' I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.
Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow -- but at the top of the stairs.
I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches.
The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released -- and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded.
Tonight I will again lay on their heads while they sleep and hope to smother them.
Dog's Diary:
8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
3:00 pm - Ran back and forth in the hall! My favorite thing!
5:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing!
7:00 pm - Got to play tug! My favorite thing!
8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!
Cat's Diary:
Day 983 of my captivity.
My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape.
In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet.
Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I am. Bastards!
They continue to pick me up and handle me, an obvious attempt to subvert me.
There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of 'allergies.' I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.
Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow -- but at the top of the stairs.
I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches.
The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released -- and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded.
Tonight I will again lay on their heads while they sleep and hope to smother them.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Food or Fuel?
Feed 91 people for a year, or run your car for 21 seconds?
The One thinks this is a good idea. The one-fifth of the planet who are malnourished may feel otherwise. But they're just black (or brown) and poor, so who cares.
Merry Christmas.
The One thinks this is a good idea. The one-fifth of the planet who are malnourished may feel otherwise. But they're just black (or brown) and poor, so who cares.
Merry Christmas.
...And All the Children are Above Average
Mongomery County will no longer recognize gifted students. Given No Child Gets Ahead, that's hardly surprising. But this is:
Parents' wishes? How exactly does that work?
Parent: Gee, I wish my kid was gifted instead of being dumber than a rock.
School Administrator: Well, ma'am, call me Cinderella, because I can make your wishes come true.
But never fear because "School system leaders say losing the label won't change gifted instruction, because it is open to all students."
Ah. Yes. Well. That would certainly explain our academic declines in recent decades.
Two-fifths of Montgomery students are considered gifted on the basis of aptitude tests, schoolwork, expert opinion and parents' wishes.
Parents' wishes? How exactly does that work?
Parent: Gee, I wish my kid was gifted instead of being dumber than a rock.
School Administrator: Well, ma'am, call me Cinderella, because I can make your wishes come true.
But never fear because "School system leaders say losing the label won't change gifted instruction, because it is open to all students."
Ah. Yes. Well. That would certainly explain our academic declines in recent decades.
Housekeeping
Still tweaking the blog layout. Removed some dead links, added some new ones, cut down on the number of widgets/categories, etc. I want to do some changes to the actual blog template at some point.
Yes, I'm bored. As usual.
Yes, I'm bored. As usual.
Welcome to the 1950's
Here is a series of videos on Tech Ticker that feature the economist Gary Shilling. He's an older dude that's been around the block a few times and, unlike most of the MBA types that caused this mess, remembers when debt was considered slavery and saving a virtue.
Everyone would do well to adopt those attitudes. I've been saying it for a very long time: get fast, get small. The comet has hit, but the blast wave (wide-spread state and municipal bankruptcies) isn't here yet. Now isn't the time to stand up on your hind legs to see what that bright flash of light on the horizon is all about. It's time to duck.
Everyone would do well to adopt those attitudes. I've been saying it for a very long time: get fast, get small. The comet has hit, but the blast wave (wide-spread state and municipal bankruptcies) isn't here yet. Now isn't the time to stand up on your hind legs to see what that bright flash of light on the horizon is all about. It's time to duck.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Another Mega Post
Going back through the archives on Blogger, I noticed I seem to wander back and forth between making long, rambling posts once every few days that cover dozens of topics with no theme or organization, and making several short, to-the-point posts daily or near-daily. Not sure why that is. I think I prefer writing the long rambles, but when I'm on other people's blogs, I prefer to read the shorter, to-the-point posts. I'm sure a shrink could prescribe a pill to fix that.
Anyway, a group of American companies are joining forces to compete with Asian companies making lithium-ion batteries for cars. A fine idea, but I worry for the success of the project when I read this:
Um, no they won't. A battery is not a "source of energy" any more than an empty gas tank is a source of energy. A battery is a storage device for electricity generated by things like coal-fired plants that our next president wants to tax out of existence. It is precisely this sort of muddled thinking that forces me to bet on the Asians.
Crude oil futures are below $40. So much for my $100 floor, my $75 floor, and my $50 floor for oil prices. Maybe a $25 floor? Good thing I don't make investment decisions based on whatever is rattling around in my head when I write this stuff, and just shove our money into CD's instead. In any case, I still maintain that this is temporary and our future will look more like what we saw this summer. Probably not next year, but certainly by 2010. And best of all, no one will remember this post by then, including me. Sweet.
I missed the fourth anniversary of this blog, and the 1,000-posts milestone. We've been doing this on Blogger since September 21, 2004 and this is something like post number 1,145. The original web journal that we started out with begins on April 1, 2000. I had intended to transfer some of the more meaningful posts here, but have never gotten a round tuit. I may still do that. All the entries are on my hard drive, although the vast majority of them are "Work and school." Probably what most of the entries here will be from January through May.
And no, there was no point to that paragraph.
Central Athens is still a cloud of tear gas. This all started over a teenager killed by a police "warning shot." I'm not sure that the people rioting even remember that, or what, exactly, setting the town Christmas tree on fire has to do with protesting police brutality. I guess you need to be Greek. The police could probably end this with a few more well-placed "warning shots."
The NewTek TriCaster looks to do the same thing to video production that we saw with music about a decade ago. The current version is $4,000. Moore's Law will halve that in 18 months, putting it in the same price range as a decent PC. Content delivery over the internet can now be considered a solved problem. Anyone care to predict how long before the internet does to cable TV what cable TV did to broadcast TV?
The Trek universe has lost another of its icons. The voice of the Enterprise is now silent.
At work yesterday, we only had about 20 customers all day. I still don't have an actual job that I do while I'm there. I spent seven hours cleaning out and organizing storage areas, refrigerators and freezers, and talking about what exactly it is that I'm supposed to be doing while I'm there. Yet-another line cook was supposed to be the answer, but it looks like they will need a full-time prep guy. Hopefully, when we come back from our Christmas Las Vegas trip, my hours will change to something like 5am to noon and I will be rolling meatballs, making soup, slicing, dicing, chopping, and generally getting things ready first for breakfast, then helping with the transition to lunch, then I'm gone for the day. That will certainly help with the college thing by consolidating my free time into a single block instead of my current three-hours-in-the-morning, scamper-off-to-work, few-more-hours-in-the-evening mode of operation.
We had dinner at the restaurant I worked at way back at the beginning of the year. They are still hanging on, with with less than half the staff they had when I was there. There were only four other tables while we ate. When I worked there, Thursday night was the busiest night of the week. (It's a Prescott thing; don't ask.) They are now open only four days a week. I haven't been by the bakery lately, but based on the rumors around town, nothing has changed there, either. Every prediction has next year being pretty much more of the same that we have seen this year, so Prescott may start looking like Flint did in 1982.
Time to scamper.
Anyway, a group of American companies are joining forces to compete with Asian companies making lithium-ion batteries for cars. A fine idea, but I worry for the success of the project when I read this:
The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture said lithium ion batteries "are anticipated to replace gasoline as the principal source of energy in future cars and military vehicles."
Um, no they won't. A battery is not a "source of energy" any more than an empty gas tank is a source of energy. A battery is a storage device for electricity generated by things like coal-fired plants that our next president wants to tax out of existence. It is precisely this sort of muddled thinking that forces me to bet on the Asians.
Crude oil futures are below $40. So much for my $100 floor, my $75 floor, and my $50 floor for oil prices. Maybe a $25 floor? Good thing I don't make investment decisions based on whatever is rattling around in my head when I write this stuff, and just shove our money into CD's instead. In any case, I still maintain that this is temporary and our future will look more like what we saw this summer. Probably not next year, but certainly by 2010. And best of all, no one will remember this post by then, including me. Sweet.
I missed the fourth anniversary of this blog, and the 1,000-posts milestone. We've been doing this on Blogger since September 21, 2004 and this is something like post number 1,145. The original web journal that we started out with begins on April 1, 2000. I had intended to transfer some of the more meaningful posts here, but have never gotten a round tuit. I may still do that. All the entries are on my hard drive, although the vast majority of them are "Work and school." Probably what most of the entries here will be from January through May.
And no, there was no point to that paragraph.
Central Athens is still a cloud of tear gas. This all started over a teenager killed by a police "warning shot." I'm not sure that the people rioting even remember that, or what, exactly, setting the town Christmas tree on fire has to do with protesting police brutality. I guess you need to be Greek. The police could probably end this with a few more well-placed "warning shots."
The NewTek TriCaster looks to do the same thing to video production that we saw with music about a decade ago. The current version is $4,000. Moore's Law will halve that in 18 months, putting it in the same price range as a decent PC. Content delivery over the internet can now be considered a solved problem. Anyone care to predict how long before the internet does to cable TV what cable TV did to broadcast TV?
The Trek universe has lost another of its icons. The voice of the Enterprise is now silent.
At work yesterday, we only had about 20 customers all day. I still don't have an actual job that I do while I'm there. I spent seven hours cleaning out and organizing storage areas, refrigerators and freezers, and talking about what exactly it is that I'm supposed to be doing while I'm there. Yet-another line cook was supposed to be the answer, but it looks like they will need a full-time prep guy. Hopefully, when we come back from our Christmas Las Vegas trip, my hours will change to something like 5am to noon and I will be rolling meatballs, making soup, slicing, dicing, chopping, and generally getting things ready first for breakfast, then helping with the transition to lunch, then I'm gone for the day. That will certainly help with the college thing by consolidating my free time into a single block instead of my current three-hours-in-the-morning, scamper-off-to-work, few-more-hours-in-the-evening mode of operation.
We had dinner at the restaurant I worked at way back at the beginning of the year. They are still hanging on, with with less than half the staff they had when I was there. There were only four other tables while we ate. When I worked there, Thursday night was the busiest night of the week. (It's a Prescott thing; don't ask.) They are now open only four days a week. I haven't been by the bakery lately, but based on the rumors around town, nothing has changed there, either. Every prediction has next year being pretty much more of the same that we have seen this year, so Prescott may start looking like Flint did in 1982.
Time to scamper.
Almost Not Funny
This exact scenario played out so many times in my 22 years in a cubicle that it almost isn't funny. Almost.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Work and Randomness
As I predicted, the uptick in business at the cafe after the radio ad blitz on Thanksgiving weekend has proven temporary. It looked for a while as if it would sustain, but as of about a week ago, it completely fizzled. The last two days have been the worst since the place opened. As of yesterday, I don't even have a job to do while I'm there. I literally stand around polishing the tile on the walls for six hours a day. Everything I was assigned to do has been given to other people, but for some reason, I'm still there. The best part is that the owners seem determined to keep me for reasons that are a complete mystery to me. Monday was absolutely hysterical. There was one person running the cash register and waiting on customers with only occasional help running food and bussing tables. All day. One person handled every single customer. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, there were five people working to make the food orders that that one person was taking.
Anyone expect this place to survive long? Me neither. The owner freely admits he knows nothing about the restaurant business. Ya think?
In other news, global warming strikes North America with ice storms, snow storms and record cold temperatures. And it ain't even Christmas yet.
Flat-dead-tree media continues to decline into irrelevance. I can't remember the last time I read a newspaper, and I was about twelve when I figured out that the most truthful part of a newspaper was the comics page. Dead man... er... make that, "Flat dead tree walking."
Speaking of global warming, our temps here have been running about the same as in Michigan. There was even snow on the ground when I walked to work yesterday. Well, more like slushy water. We were supposed to get hit with a snow storm today, but it didn't materialize. Just cold, windy and cloudy.
Paul Graham has an interesting post about credentialism and the changes taking place in the US economy. I think it answers the questions that Scott Adams posted a couple days ago about the future of capitalism. In many ways, smaller is better now that technology has removed many of the barriers to entry that for over a century have made "bigger is better" synonymous with capitalism. The question is will Washington mandate the bigger-is-better model? Bigger is certainly easier to regulate, and we seem to be heading toward every facet of our existence being micro-managed from the Imperial City. Will small once again out-manouver the regulators? The next ten years could be very interesting indeed.
I mentioned a while back that I will be starting up college again around the end of January. The load will be pretty heavy; I will be taking regular on-line classes plus dropping into a series of cohorts to finish up as quickly as possible. At a couple points, I will be in three classes at the same time, something I haven't done since the last time I was a full-time college student in 1983. I don't know if I can do it, but it would be nice to be done by next summer. Then I would be a dishwasher with a BS degree. Or more likely, an unemployed dishwasher with a BS degree. I'm almost hoping to get canned before my first class starts up January 26. It won't help our budget any, but at least I would have time to sleep.
Speaking of which, I need some.
Anyone expect this place to survive long? Me neither. The owner freely admits he knows nothing about the restaurant business. Ya think?
In other news, global warming strikes North America with ice storms, snow storms and record cold temperatures. And it ain't even Christmas yet.
Flat-dead-tree media continues to decline into irrelevance. I can't remember the last time I read a newspaper, and I was about twelve when I figured out that the most truthful part of a newspaper was the comics page. Dead man... er... make that, "Flat dead tree walking."
Speaking of global warming, our temps here have been running about the same as in Michigan. There was even snow on the ground when I walked to work yesterday. Well, more like slushy water. We were supposed to get hit with a snow storm today, but it didn't materialize. Just cold, windy and cloudy.
Paul Graham has an interesting post about credentialism and the changes taking place in the US economy. I think it answers the questions that Scott Adams posted a couple days ago about the future of capitalism. In many ways, smaller is better now that technology has removed many of the barriers to entry that for over a century have made "bigger is better" synonymous with capitalism. The question is will Washington mandate the bigger-is-better model? Bigger is certainly easier to regulate, and we seem to be heading toward every facet of our existence being micro-managed from the Imperial City. Will small once again out-manouver the regulators? The next ten years could be very interesting indeed.
I mentioned a while back that I will be starting up college again around the end of January. The load will be pretty heavy; I will be taking regular on-line classes plus dropping into a series of cohorts to finish up as quickly as possible. At a couple points, I will be in three classes at the same time, something I haven't done since the last time I was a full-time college student in 1983. I don't know if I can do it, but it would be nice to be done by next summer. Then I would be a dishwasher with a BS degree. Or more likely, an unemployed dishwasher with a BS degree. I'm almost hoping to get canned before my first class starts up January 26. It won't help our budget any, but at least I would have time to sleep.
Speaking of which, I need some.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Want a pen pal?
I came across an article in a magazine --- you can visit this website (http://www.adoptaplatoon.org/) and sign up to be pen pals with an active service person.
I just started --- they will call you to explain their programs -- I chose the pen pal program -- and then will send you an email with your person's name and some info about them. I have two -- one is from NJ and the other is from Hawaii. They were both deployed to Iraq. (No, you don't have to worry about international postage --- you mail things to the APO address given)
I may ask Ric to write some notes also ... I think it would be great if a family "adopted a soldier" ... then each person could take a different week to write/make a card/send pictures etc.
I know how much I love getting cards/notes/emails/phone calls. Just think about those that are not here in the USA and have easy access to those things. Take a moment and see if you would like to give somebody a quick note each week.
I just started --- they will call you to explain their programs -- I chose the pen pal program -- and then will send you an email with your person's name and some info about them. I have two -- one is from NJ and the other is from Hawaii. They were both deployed to Iraq. (No, you don't have to worry about international postage --- you mail things to the APO address given)
I may ask Ric to write some notes also ... I think it would be great if a family "adopted a soldier" ... then each person could take a different week to write/make a card/send pictures etc.
I know how much I love getting cards/notes/emails/phone calls. Just think about those that are not here in the USA and have easy access to those things. Take a moment and see if you would like to give somebody a quick note each week.
Highlighters
Yellow, pink, blue, orange, green....some colors of highlighters.
What was the highlight of your 2008? Something that stood out/that you want to remember/something that you would highlight when reading about your life in 2008...............
The year is coming to a close, think back on the events of your life; the good and the bad. We all have our ups and downs. I hope your ups outweigh your downs. I wish I was like my friend Kim back in Michigan --- she journals --- and never has to wonder what happened and when or forget "little" things.
I think that will be one of my New Year's resolutions. I have a small journal that I received from a coworker when I was leaving. I did write in it when we started our trip from Michigan to Arizona (via Florida). I like revisiting it --- especially the day I wrote down that Ric told me loved me first. It meant so much to have him say it to me -- not repeat it back to me. And to see my note the day we left Michigan --- I believe I wrote "the first day of the rest of our lives" -- or something like that.
What was the highlight of your 2008? Something that stood out/that you want to remember/something that you would highlight when reading about your life in 2008...............
The year is coming to a close, think back on the events of your life; the good and the bad. We all have our ups and downs. I hope your ups outweigh your downs. I wish I was like my friend Kim back in Michigan --- she journals --- and never has to wonder what happened and when or forget "little" things.
I think that will be one of my New Year's resolutions. I have a small journal that I received from a coworker when I was leaving. I did write in it when we started our trip from Michigan to Arizona (via Florida). I like revisiting it --- especially the day I wrote down that Ric told me loved me first. It meant so much to have him say it to me -- not repeat it back to me. And to see my note the day we left Michigan --- I believe I wrote "the first day of the rest of our lives" -- or something like that.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Moral Defectives
Moral defectives in Washington DC are refusing to disclose to whom $2 trillion was given and in exchange for what. One presumes an honest accounting will include a great deal of booze and whores, but even a less-than-honest list of just what collateral a bunch of bankrupt banks could put up in exchange for $2 trillion would be enlightening.
Meanwhile the moral defectives in Chicago, political birthplace of our next president, are... um... doing what the moral defectives in Chicago have been doing for going on two centuries.
In other words, nothing new.
Merry Christmas.
Meanwhile the moral defectives in Chicago, political birthplace of our next president, are... um... doing what the moral defectives in Chicago have been doing for going on two centuries.
In other words, nothing new.
Merry Christmas.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
MPEG Player
OK, so I'm poking around this morning and happen to visit the VideoLAN web page. There is a new version of VLC (still pre-release, but newer than what I'm using) that has a much better user interface and video playback is much closer to what Windows Media Player and the Quicktime player give. So strike what I said about epileptic camera men. VLC is shaping up to be a decent video player while not being "improved" to the point of inutility.
See? Complaining works! Better yet, my powers of self-justification and rationalization are undiminished. Even if I'm still out $20.
Hungry. Must eat generic Lucky Charms NOW!
See? Complaining works! Better yet, my powers of self-justification and rationalization are undiminished. Even if I'm still out $20.
Hungry. Must eat generic Lucky Charms NOW!
Catching Up
And a week flies by while I try to finish off Infinite Jest. The book covers a lot of ground, then just sort of ends on page 981. OK. Well.
So today was catch-up-on-everything-I-haven't-been-doing-for-a-week-because-I-was-plowing-through-a-book day.
Yea. One of those posts.
Anyway, human-caused global warming continues to get hammered. And even really smart people who think there is something to it argue that there are more important things to spend resources on. Not that any of it will make any real difference. I do find that news of layoffs at Yahoo! and Google getting more attention than the world ending in 20 years hysterical. Nothing like the threat of having to use the same PC for 18 months to knock that whole everyone-will-die thing right off the national agenda. Good to see we still have our priorities right.
A guy invented a robot wife that can cook, clean, hold up her end of a conversation and slap at anyone other than the husband who tries to cop a feel. Apply Moore's Law. Factor in sex-selection abortions and China's one-child policy creating a generation of men with no hope of marriage, and it's pretty easy to see where this is going. (No place good, if you were wondering.)
The EU is starting to fray a bit about the edges. As the most entitled-feeling generation in human history gets pinched harder and harder in the next 12-18 months, we'll see much more of this. Realizing of course that "pinched" in this generation's estimation means Basic Cable, a Dell instead of an Alienware PC, and making due with last year's 40" LCD instead of a new 60" plasma TV.
Scott Adams is a god:
Remember that line as you Christmas shop: "How bad does your company's product have to be before your target market prefers eating its own poop?" That pretty much expresses what I feel walking through any store at Christmas.
Did I mention that Scott Adams is a god?
And just in time for Christmas:
Speaking of preferring to eat my own poop, I bought something at the Apple Store last night. See, I've been in the market for a decent video player that supports MPEG-2 (the encoding used on standard DVD's). I have been gradually building up a movie collection for a couple years now. At first, I watched them in Windows Media Player. It worked, the video was good, blah, blah. Somewhere along the line, Microsoft "improved" the software so that it gets all confused because the video's have 5.1 surround sound and our laptop only has stereo. The movie plays, but the only sound is left-front and right-front. Given that 99% of the dialog is on the center channel, our movie watching began to lack something. Although given Hollywood's typical output, some movies were improved.
Anyway.
The first try was VLC, an open source project that gets a lot of positive geek chatter. And installing and using that did indeed solve the audio problem. The downside is that the video quality is, to be charitable, slightly less visually appealing than WMP. So for several months now, I've been on an on-and-off quest for another media player. I found several mentions of a Quicktime (Apple's video player/format) add-on that would allow Quicktime to play MPEG-2 videos. But it costs $20. Not a lot of money, but still. I kept poking around, not finding alternatives and ending up back at the Quicktime add-on. So in a moment of weakness, I bought it last night. Download, install, fire up a movie. The video is gorgeous.
And amazingly silent. That may work for Charlie Chaplin, but not for The Dark Knight.
There is, even in the universe of paid software, nothing that remotely resembles a help desk. So I hit the forums, and, not finding anyone with my particular problem, started a new thread. The answer was a link to a FAQ page in 6-point text, with an oh-by-the-way buried two-thirds the way in saying that the add-on doesn't support AC3 audio.
Which is what every movie made since the invention of the DVD is encoded with.
So the add-on will work with any MPEG-2 file other than all of them, excepting (some) home movies.
So I'm still watching movies that jerk around like the camera man has uncontrolled epilepsy and my wallet is $20 lighter. Merry Christmas to me.
Work has been up and down. Since firing the manager, sales have increased dramatically, food costs are much lower, we don't run out of things nearly as often. I've gotten most of my hours back on next week's schedule, although we still have at least one and more likely two superfluous kitchen staff. The owner is still injecting cash to keep the paychecks from bouncing, which wouldn't be bad in a two-month-old business, except I don't think he has enough cushion to do it for much longer. And, as is natural when something like this happens, there are a lot of babies getting tossed out with the bathwater. Inevitable, but unfortunate.
And I'm off to bed. Enough for now.
So today was catch-up-on-everything-I-haven't-been-doing-for-a-week-because-I-was-plowing-through-a-book day.
Yea. One of those posts.
Anyway, human-caused global warming continues to get hammered. And even really smart people who think there is something to it argue that there are more important things to spend resources on. Not that any of it will make any real difference. I do find that news of layoffs at Yahoo! and Google getting more attention than the world ending in 20 years hysterical. Nothing like the threat of having to use the same PC for 18 months to knock that whole everyone-will-die thing right off the national agenda. Good to see we still have our priorities right.
A guy invented a robot wife that can cook, clean, hold up her end of a conversation and slap at anyone other than the husband who tries to cop a feel. Apply Moore's Law. Factor in sex-selection abortions and China's one-child policy creating a generation of men with no hope of marriage, and it's pretty easy to see where this is going. (No place good, if you were wondering.)
The EU is starting to fray a bit about the edges. As the most entitled-feeling generation in human history gets pinched harder and harder in the next 12-18 months, we'll see much more of this. Realizing of course that "pinched" in this generation's estimation means Basic Cable, a Dell instead of an Alienware PC, and making due with last year's 40" LCD instead of a new 60" plasma TV.
Scott Adams is a god:
Comic strips are supposed to be an exaggerated world, but lately it has been hard to concoct ideas for Dilbert that are more absurd than reality. For example, when Dilbert's company develops a new product, I want it to be worse than any product you have ever seen in real life. I thought I was ahead of the curve until I saw my dog's reaction to her dog food. Let's start by saying she doesn't care for it.
Now you might think this is not the least bit unusual. Pets have preferences just like people, so it should be no surprise that she wouldn't like a particular brand of dog food. At least that's how I saw it until I reflected on the things she DOES like to eat, including every other type of food, the cat's food, mud, twigs, bugs, cat vomit, and her own turds.
If you ask me, the bar has been set low. How bad does your company's product have to be before your target market prefers eating its own poop? If I wrote a comic along those lines it would be too absurd to work even as comedy.
Remember that line as you Christmas shop: "How bad does your company's product have to be before your target market prefers eating its own poop?" That pretty much expresses what I feel walking through any store at Christmas.
Did I mention that Scott Adams is a god?
And just in time for Christmas:
Speaking of preferring to eat my own poop, I bought something at the Apple Store last night. See, I've been in the market for a decent video player that supports MPEG-2 (the encoding used on standard DVD's). I have been gradually building up a movie collection for a couple years now. At first, I watched them in Windows Media Player. It worked, the video was good, blah, blah. Somewhere along the line, Microsoft "improved" the software so that it gets all confused because the video's have 5.1 surround sound and our laptop only has stereo. The movie plays, but the only sound is left-front and right-front. Given that 99% of the dialog is on the center channel, our movie watching began to lack something. Although given Hollywood's typical output, some movies were improved.
Anyway.
The first try was VLC, an open source project that gets a lot of positive geek chatter. And installing and using that did indeed solve the audio problem. The downside is that the video quality is, to be charitable, slightly less visually appealing than WMP. So for several months now, I've been on an on-and-off quest for another media player. I found several mentions of a Quicktime (Apple's video player/format) add-on that would allow Quicktime to play MPEG-2 videos. But it costs $20. Not a lot of money, but still. I kept poking around, not finding alternatives and ending up back at the Quicktime add-on. So in a moment of weakness, I bought it last night. Download, install, fire up a movie. The video is gorgeous.
And amazingly silent. That may work for Charlie Chaplin, but not for The Dark Knight.
There is, even in the universe of paid software, nothing that remotely resembles a help desk. So I hit the forums, and, not finding anyone with my particular problem, started a new thread. The answer was a link to a FAQ page in 6-point text, with an oh-by-the-way buried two-thirds the way in saying that the add-on doesn't support AC3 audio.
Which is what every movie made since the invention of the DVD is encoded with.
So the add-on will work with any MPEG-2 file other than all of them, excepting (some) home movies.
So I'm still watching movies that jerk around like the camera man has uncontrolled epilepsy and my wallet is $20 lighter. Merry Christmas to me.
Work has been up and down. Since firing the manager, sales have increased dramatically, food costs are much lower, we don't run out of things nearly as often. I've gotten most of my hours back on next week's schedule, although we still have at least one and more likely two superfluous kitchen staff. The owner is still injecting cash to keep the paychecks from bouncing, which wouldn't be bad in a two-month-old business, except I don't think he has enough cushion to do it for much longer. And, as is natural when something like this happens, there are a lot of babies getting tossed out with the bathwater. Inevitable, but unfortunate.
And I'm off to bed. Enough for now.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Sleepless in Prescott Again
Sitting up and blogging because every time I lay down and try to sleep I wake up choking from my lungs filling up with fluid. I went to the doctor Tuesday who said I need to just "fight it off" because it was "just a virus" as he ran off down the hall, having already given me my 2.47 minutes of face time.
Pneumonia can of course be caused by a viral infection. Must be another bit of knowledge that hasn't made it out here to the Territories yet.
As predicted, the cafe manager is history. I hung around and talked to the owner and it sounds like they had good reason to doubt the guy's competence and basic integrity. I'm sure I would hear a very different story were I to bother to look up my now-ex-manager. My personal experience lends a certain credibility to the owner's version of events, but every story has at least two sides. In any case, I have no intention of falling on my sword for the guy. Every one that works there gets along pretty well and business has, against all odds and expectations, been picking up since The Big Day. Who knows? I may have found a job that will last more than three months after all. Mild optimism is beginning to intrude.
Then I make the mistake of looking at the market data from today. Maybe not.
Well, I'm off the see what other happy news I can find on the web. Then I'm going to bury myself into Infinite Jest until I get the thing done. It's 1,000 very-dense pages of the most convoluted storyline I think I've ever encountered. Don't get me wrong; it's a great book and gets better the further I dig into it. But a casual read it ain't. And it's due back to the library on 12/12, so I need to put it to bed.
And maybe sleep. Or not. Waking up feeling like I'm drowning in the fluid from my not-pneumonia isn't a lot of fun.
Pneumonia can of course be caused by a viral infection. Must be another bit of knowledge that hasn't made it out here to the Territories yet.
As predicted, the cafe manager is history. I hung around and talked to the owner and it sounds like they had good reason to doubt the guy's competence and basic integrity. I'm sure I would hear a very different story were I to bother to look up my now-ex-manager. My personal experience lends a certain credibility to the owner's version of events, but every story has at least two sides. In any case, I have no intention of falling on my sword for the guy. Every one that works there gets along pretty well and business has, against all odds and expectations, been picking up since The Big Day. Who knows? I may have found a job that will last more than three months after all. Mild optimism is beginning to intrude.
Then I make the mistake of looking at the market data from today. Maybe not.
Well, I'm off the see what other happy news I can find on the web. Then I'm going to bury myself into Infinite Jest until I get the thing done. It's 1,000 very-dense pages of the most convoluted storyline I think I've ever encountered. Don't get me wrong; it's a great book and gets better the further I dig into it. But a casual read it ain't. And it's due back to the library on 12/12, so I need to put it to bed.
And maybe sleep. Or not. Waking up feeling like I'm drowning in the fluid from my not-pneumonia isn't a lot of fun.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Ouch
So much for the market rally.
Holiday sales were up, but only with discounts that resulted in a cash loss on every item sold. And so far, the numbers say the usual loss-leader effect was not there. People came in, bought what was 50% or 60% off and left. Given that a record percentage said that they were done Christmas shopping, don't expect even this vaguely good news to hold up.
The automakers are due back to beg Congress for money again. Maybe this time they'll car pool. Idiots.
At least gas prices will stay low. OPEC is leaving production at current levels, driving oil back below $50. I just hope people are smart and keep doing what they've been doing. We may be at a turning point where people are tired of being jerked around by inbred Saudi princes, and dumb-ass auto companies, and the profit-before-all-else oil companies, and are just refusing to play anymore.
Uncle Henry talks to Congress. Whenever I see one of these ass-clowns talking, I respond to every single statement with "Why?" "How?" "Says who?" Probably one reason Debbie doesn't stay in the room. Domestic tranquility aside, I think I have a valid point. When Uncle Henry says more people should own their own home: "Why?" All the data shows that a lot of people own homes that shouldn't. The only way to make it possible for more people to be able to own a home is for homes to be cheaper. But then Uncle Henry says that we must stop the slide in home values: "Why?" It's pretty clear that a lot of people can't afford a home at current pricing levels. So which is it Uncle Henry? Higher prices or more homeowners? Don't tell me that the head of the US Treasury never took Econ 101.
Anyway, give it try. At a minimum, you'll annoy the crap out of your spouse.
Holiday sales were up, but only with discounts that resulted in a cash loss on every item sold. And so far, the numbers say the usual loss-leader effect was not there. People came in, bought what was 50% or 60% off and left. Given that a record percentage said that they were done Christmas shopping, don't expect even this vaguely good news to hold up.
The automakers are due back to beg Congress for money again. Maybe this time they'll car pool. Idiots.
At least gas prices will stay low. OPEC is leaving production at current levels, driving oil back below $50. I just hope people are smart and keep doing what they've been doing. We may be at a turning point where people are tired of being jerked around by inbred Saudi princes, and dumb-ass auto companies, and the profit-before-all-else oil companies, and are just refusing to play anymore.
Uncle Henry talks to Congress. Whenever I see one of these ass-clowns talking, I respond to every single statement with "Why?" "How?" "Says who?" Probably one reason Debbie doesn't stay in the room. Domestic tranquility aside, I think I have a valid point. When Uncle Henry says more people should own their own home: "Why?" All the data shows that a lot of people own homes that shouldn't. The only way to make it possible for more people to be able to own a home is for homes to be cheaper. But then Uncle Henry says that we must stop the slide in home values: "Why?" It's pretty clear that a lot of people can't afford a home at current pricing levels. So which is it Uncle Henry? Higher prices or more homeowners? Don't tell me that the head of the US Treasury never took Econ 101.
Anyway, give it try. At a minimum, you'll annoy the crap out of your spouse.
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