Hosted By...
Last Updated : Sunday, 22 September, 2002 at 10:59 PM -0500
|
| Daynotes On a Budget Hosted By... Last Updated : Sunday, 22 September, 2002 at 10:59 PM -0500 |
 | ||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
|
|
Monday, September 16, 2002 |
Unpleasant...
Well, I dunno.
Rhiannon got off the bus tonight in tears, and what I first thought was a tale of woe turned into a genuine, bona fide problem. One I will likely be addressing over the next couple of days.
It reminds me of my third grade "issues" with my teacher.
You just know that you're going to have a problem when the teacher absolutely refuses to let you go to the bathroom for the last two hours of the day. Back then, my bladder was a bit less spacious than it is now (both capacity and percent of body-weight-wise), and so when I requested for the forty-eleventh time "I need to go, please" I was told "NO!". This was in the scrum that involved getting down the hallway about 50 feet (past the boy's room), getting one's coat, and returning to the classroom.
Events being what they were, I was horrified and embarrassed to be standing there at end-of-day prayer when the dam finally broke, in more ways than one. I wet my pants to such a volume that it ran across the floor (lovely thing, to find out your concrete slab school isn't settling level, but slightly tilted) and under the heater (all prior to the winter heating season, of course).
That began the battle of wills I had with my third-grade teacher. In the years since, I often wonder if there was a sub-conscious portion of me that wanted to piss in the woman's classroom just to show her what I thought of the place. I dunno now, but I do know that the subsequent begging on her knees at the side of my desk, the tying my desk to hers, and the constant attention (some would today probably call it harrassment) probably scarred me for life. Lord knows I wouldn't qualify as "normal" today in any sense of the word...
So here we are, ten days into the school year, and Rhiannon is having a hell of a time with her third-grade teacher. If it was just Rhiannon, I could probably work with her and get through it. Unfortunately, this is the "been here since before they invented fire" teacher who everyone says "oh, boy - don't get her."
We assured Rhiannon before school started that it couldn't be as bad as that. She probably just didn't like boys. It appears that now she doesn't like anyone shorter than her.
I've sent an e-mail requesting a conference regarding today's issues - failing a response, we'll be chatting after school on Wednesday. Failing satisfaction, I'll be meeting with the principal on Thursday, and we'll be working out an action plan. If it's the last thing I do, I will make sure my daughter enjoys third grade. I know that she loves every last one of her previous teachers - gives them hugs whenever she sees them in the halls. I cannot imagine anyone not wanting a hug from this little girl.
Oh well. This, too, shall pass. And for the better.
Other than that, today was resume day. I'm hoping that, some time soon, I'll get recovery day. That's unlikely to happen, though, until some time this weekend, as SWMBO will be at an overnight staff retreat Thursday evening. How fun - single parenting. Best remember to take my medication... G'nite.
|
|
Tuesday, September 17, 2002 |
Just Another September Day...
Things were different then. 140 years ago today, 5,000 Americans died. The place, known as Antietam in the victor's naming of battles, and
Sharpsburg by the loser, was the site of the single bloodiest day in American history.
The reports of horrors from that day go on and on. I wouldn't be able to recount all of them. There was one, this afternoon, on the radio, which I had to explain.
A soldier (the report might have said the side he fought for, I've forgotten) had both of his eyes shot out. Reeling, he stumbled about the battlefield, begging for someone to end his misery. A lieutenant, seeing the man, asked if that was indeed his desire. After hearing the injured man's pleas, the officer drew his revolver, put it to the man's head, and pulled the trigger. As the injured man jerked and dropped, the officer turned to another soldier and said "he's probably better off this way" - before he could finish the sentence, the top of his head was removed from a shot.
September is not a good month to be an American, it seems. Today is also supposed to be Constitution Day, where we celebrate that old rag that Reichmarshall Ashcroft is using in place of toilet paper.
What confuses me even more is the complete disregard much of the legislative population of Washington seems to have for the Tenth Amendment.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Can you tell me how Carjacking can be a federal crime? How about some of the other laws passing Congress these days?
What we need is an amendment to the Constitution which prohibits anyone from taking elective office unless they A) have a full-time job outside the government, and B) spend no more than 90 days of any calendar year in session.
Oh, yeah - and none of them get paid any more. Since it's such an honor to be elected, let's save the taxpayers some money on salaries. We'll build a couple of nice dormitories outside Washington, and the elected officials can bunk there when Congress is in session.
With no more full-time legislators at the federal level, this means that we can do away with a large number of the "staff" that's built up around government. Which would also cut costs.
Oh well. I can dream.
What Fun...
I would tell you what I do all day, but that would be boring. I get up, get dressed, get the kids up, and into the car. We drive to the bus station,
and drop Ann off for her bus. Then we come home. The kids make this trip typically in their pajamas, as they don't want to wake up too
early.
Once home, I make breakfast (Rhiannon, cereal, Jack, varies), and then get them dressed. Rhiannon finishes up any remaining homework, and we get ready to go to the bus.
After the bus picks the kids up, I spend much of my time scouring the web or sending out resumes or working on various projects - only one's borne fruit of a sort, so far - and whatnot.
At nearly noon, I leave here and get down to school for Jack. I pick him up and bring him back home to have lunch. Jack changes clothes, eats lunch, and then proceeds to run around outside or inside until I relent somewhere after 3 pm and he watches TV for about an hour.
Then we go outside and wait for Rhiannon, and she comes home, changes clothes, and does homework. After about a half hour of that, we go get Ann from the bus again, come back home, and have dinner. Then we do various things (like clean up after dinner) and watch a little TV or play games until bedtime.
Then we get up and do it all over again.
Well, THAT'S A Surprise
John Vogt called me this evening to let me know that the Rochester Red Wings, a rare locally-owned "minor league" team, are partnering with the Minnesota Twins.
The words "minor league" are in quotes, here, because Rochester is definitely NOT minor league in terms of Team support. According to John, when the Cardinals sought to pull out of Rochester, they put together a group which purchased the team and it now operates under local ownership - therefore it's not a true "farm" team in the sense that the major league club calls all the shots.
Which, to my mind, is a better set up all the way around. Given the fact that Edmonton is likely to loose the Twins minor-league franchise up there, I'll certainly become unwelcome in my favorite Canadian city (yes, I have three favorite places in Canada - Edmonton, Jasper, and Winnipeg - I've been to all of them, and hope to return some day to all of them).
Oh well. John, keep an eye out for Joe Mauer. He'll be headed your way, but if things hold out like they might, you may not see him for long...
And Tom Kelly will likely be out there regularly as well. Kelly no longer manages in the majors (given the fact that the fellow won two World Series but spent much of the rest of 13 seasons looking up at "break even" he was due for an easier job), but spends a lot of time in development. Whatever you do, though, do NOT expect to understand him when he first starts talking on local television.
And the current manager is Ron Gardenheier, who is as likely as not to put some foreign substance somewhere in your equipment. Like mashed potatoes in your glove. He's a joker. Which might explain why the Twins clinched the pennant this year...
|
|
Wednesday, September 18, 2002 |
Whut Tha?
I think I missed a day here. I think it was today.
Let's see if I can find it.
Got up early, did the whole "clean and present" thing, and put my pants on with my new belt. Tightened the belt, and "sprong" went the cross-bar in the buckle. It was a reversible belt, with one of those flip-flop buckles. I attempted to tighten the buckle, applying no more force than I had to my now broken-belts (before you say something, the now-broken belts are five years old, one inch wide, and lasted for every day of five straight years. If I wore pants, I wore a belt).
Damn, says I, and I reinstalled one of the less-broken belts for the duration. Found the receipt from Monday's purchase, and then toddled out.
Got the assorted huddled masses appropriately distributed (kids to morning daycare, wife to bus), and off to a seminar on "Creative Job Search". I collected a book on various things I need to do (one of which, I think, is re-write my resume, top-down - I've got a two-pager right now, but when I attempted to fit it all on one page, it was a bit ... tight). I also got a one-inch thick book from the State of Minnesota on starting my own business (should I aspire to do so, that is). Free, too, mind you.
Once I finished that, I turned around, and headed back home. Picked up Jack from the post-kindergarten daycare he will end up in, and then went home. Fixed the "Girl Scout Recruiting" yard sign, got the mail, went inside, down to the computer, sat down, and SPRIONG went my glasses. One of the screws had loosened to the point of release, launching my lens straight down, fortunately to the carpeted floor.
Ever the Boy Scout, I pulled out the eyeglass repair kit. I started going through the three screws supplied (none of which was a perfect fit, though one was close - twice as long as needed, but close). I nearly had the thing together, when "sproing" again, and there went the "good" screw.
Lovely. Get Jack, get back into the car, drive like Pete the Pirate (one eye closed) to the mall (fortunately only about two miles away). Walk into the store I bought the glasses from in March, and ask if they can fix them. Older gentleman says "sure" and proceeds to install the screw.
"It's just a bit long, so let me nip that off" he says. Out come the nippers. Meanwhile, I've said "if it's all the same to you, I'd prefer the longer length - I'd rather have the lens fall out and the screw stay in than have the screw AND lens pop out."
Snip. "There you go, uh - " he says. "The ... danged frame just snapped!" We look at it. Sure enough, just above the hinge (the screw went in from the other side), there's a break in the frame. "Lovely," I think to myself. "What better way to insure job interviews will come than from having tape on one's glasses."
He starts looking around for the book, looks to see if they can order the frames. I look closely at the frame. The edges of the break are suspiciously clean. The channel where the lens fits is slightly crushed. The edges of the break on the frame are offset slightly, and have an even wedge-shaped indentation.
He'd left the nippers on the counter, I picked them up and looked at them. Sure enough, the poor fellow had snipped through my glasses FRAME, rather than the screw.
At this point, I was thinking "pal, you'd better come through, or I will light you up like there's no tomorrow." Unfortunately for this fellow, the district manager was in the store, and I was prepared to let the DM know what I thought.
I asked "how long for replacement frames?" Thinking three days is too long, of course. "Seven to ten days, if they're still in production."
Lovely.
He found the frames, found they were still in production, and placed an order. "Good thing that happened here when I was working on them" he said. "Otherwise you'd have to pay for a new frame." Right. Assuming for the moment I hadn't listened to my own desires and NOT snipped the screw, would I be in this mess? Probably not.
I grabbed the frames, said quietly "I didn't want to say anything" and showed him the break. And the tool. "You missed the screw," (it was still sticking up out of the socket), "and nipped the frame, instead."
"I'll be damned" he said softly (and probably accurately). "I've been doing this for nearly 15 years. Never did that before."
"Sokay. I won't say anything."
He took the frames to the store manager anyway, and she shrugged, and said "well, we have a pair on display - would those fit his lenses?"
Ten minutes later I walked out of there with glasses fitting better than they had since the day I got 'em. One of the unfortunate facts about having a lopsided head is that the glasses go on oddly. Fortunately, 85% of the glasses-wearing population has lopsided heads. The rest go into politics.
Of course, I then had to go to Rhiannon's school, meet with her teacher, and attempt to straighten all of that out. While I suspect that there will be changes in the future, for now, things sound like they're improving.
And now, off for the evening rush - pick up SWMBO for the bus, a quick dinner, we need to drop the girls at choir, and then wait for them to return. No rest for the wicked, and it's a wonderful life, if you're strong.
Of course, it's not the insanity that bothers me, either. It's the whole journey to get there that's really wearing me out.
More later, if I manage to work up the energy (or need to hide)...
Oh, No...
I can imagine the reaction of the Bush Administration's upper echelons when Saddam said "send in your weapons inspectors".
I'm no goof. I know that Madass's best bits of the nasty stuff are hidden. Iraq might be smaller than the United States, but the bottom-line truth is that we have trouble finding things sometimes (have you ever tried to find a decent mechanic, or a grocery store open past 10 pm in a small town?), so it wouldn't take much to hide some of their stuff.
But the bottom-line truth here is that Bush's rhetoric was not aimed at getting the weapons inspectors back in Iraq. If Bush & Co. had thought through the possibilities, I'm sure they never would have said "Weapons Inspectors, Damnit!" if they thought Saddam would capitulate.
So now we're faced with a bunch of people who have what they wanted, and are now forced to say "well, what I really meant was..." Is it any wonder why the world isn't filled with pride and confidence at American "Leadership"?
I know how this is going to end, and I'm really, really very sorry about this. I really am. But here we go.
Bush & Co. will get inspectors sent in. After claiming and complaining, Bush will produce evidence that shows Iraq was up to "something". Said "something" will be enough for them to start moving forces into place. Iraq will bluster that the evidence was planted (does it make a difference any more? No, not really, no), and Mad Ass will likely produce another one of those "mother of all battles" remarks again (Yeah, Saddam, we remember the last "mother of all battles" you promised. It cost us the mother of all gasoline tankers to keep up with your troops running back to Iraq so fast that they left skidmarks and a fair amount of equipment - not to mention how most of them resisted "repatriation" afterwards.
Once the "evidence" is found, and no further evidence is forthcoming, Bush will decide that this is a big problem. He'll gear up for war...
And then the elections will happen in early November, and by January, we'll all be asking "Saddam who?"
|
|
Thursday, September 19, 2002 |
Welcome to the Looney Bin
Yup, that's here. Ann just left for the staff retreat which takes place this afternoon, evening, and tomorrow morning. She will probably tangle with
Rhiannon in the driveway tomorrow getting home; and then we'll have another weekend. This weekend, the busy day appears to be Sunday - Rhiannon has choir
at 9 am mass, then we have a barbecue with friends Sunday evening.
Then back to the grind next week with the extra-special School Picture Day and Early Start Cluster-coitus on Tuesday. Normal start of day is 9:25 am. The Burnsville district decided, in infinite wisdom, to have five "Late Start" days - 11:30 pm or thereabouts. Hell, people, LATE is 9:25 am in my book.
So the principal of our school, a good egg, all around, says "Well, if you're gonna start late, can we use them busses there to start early?" Well, he doesn't say that exactly, but you get the picture.
Burnsville says "sure." Out goes a notice, and we all prepare for an hour early start time.
Then the fun starts. "Oh," says Burnsville "we need the busses back, so you people can start early so long as it's some time between 7:59 am and 8:00 am."
Oh. Okay. And the end of the day? "What? You start early then want to mess with the end of the day as well? Please, why?" Exactly.
I guess the good news is that it doesn't really matter what the President or the Congress or the Governor or the Mayor do - it's the damned school board that controls our lives.
Imbeciles
That's right. Slack-jawed, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, brain-cramping, stomach-churning, nose-picking imbeciles...
From: aforementioned cretin
To: John_Dominik@hotmail.com
Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2002 6:26 PM
Subject: Link to our Dungeons and Dragons e-card service...
>
> Dear Dungeons and Dragons webmaster,
>
> After I did did visit your Dungeons and Dragons website at
> http://jdominik.rearviewmirror.org/2001/20010813.html I wanna ask you if
> you could place a link or box to our Dungeons and Dragons e-card service.
>
> If you wanna place our e-card promotion box please place the following
> HTML code into your website:
>
Code Removed As it served no reasonable purpose.
>
> If you prefer to place a link to our Dungeons and Dragons e-card service
> please point it to the following URL:
>
Link removed because I'm not helping these idiots
>
> RealGreetingCard
>
> P.S. let us know if you did place a link to us so we can insert a link
> back to your Dungeons and Dragons website!
>
How kind of you to ask. What's my cut?
And are you folks looking for an editor? I should think fsomeone with more than a one-cylinder brain could do a bit better than the sentence fragment "After I did did visit your Dungeons and Dragons website at". I would think the pay these days is pretty good. Of course, most D&D fans are thrilled to send D&D-themed cards to one another.
Oh well. I guess since you folks never did visit my site (Dungeons and Dragons, yeah, right. Mention it once in three years, and it's a D&D site), there's no point in providing a link for you folks. I mean, I only draw about 200 unique visitors a day. Small potatoes by comparison to some of the big sites. So it goes.
Oh. I suppose that, on the off chance that a human being with that one-cylinder brain does actually read this, I should put in a translation.
That would be below.
BITE ME. F__K OFF.
Half-Circle...
Tonight, I ran the trash out (Thanks Brian for reminding me), and on the way back, I was reminded that fall has come.
No, not the cooler breezes (though the mid-60-degree dewpoints were quite unpleasant today), or the lowering clouds. I could stand four feet off the front step of my house, and if I looked through the gap in the trees down the street, I could see the lights from a building in Edina.
A building that, about 14 years ago, I looked at out my living room window - well, sliding glass door - whenever I passed through that room on my way to bed. It was a small, one-bedroom apartment that we had moved into through the help of a friend who had been doing caretaking at the apartment complex. We moved in, and started. We were told to clean half the building, but the other half was never ever cleaned. I was almost never home other than to sleep (and occasionally eat).
I can remember doing one 24-hour-turnover (got the keys to the place when I got off work from my retail job at 4 pm. I had to turn the apartment over, clean it completely out, up, and have it ready to move in by noon the next day. And I had to open the store at 9 am). Ann was horribly, horribly sick, so I made her lie down, took my little cart out, bumped across the busy street and into the building across the way, worked from 6 pm until about 3 am to get the place cleaned up. Took off the covers of the baseboard heat and cleaned each one of the fins on the radiator, raked the carpets, scrubbed everything until it sparkled (cheap hint - rub down your bathroom counters with vegetable oil before you show your home. It will make them shine and look newer).
And then got my ass chewed because one of the painters came in, patched a hole he'd missed (and so had I), and the place was an absolute mess when the tenants came to move in.
In some ways, it was a so much simpler time. In others, it was incredibly more complicated. Ann was working about 40 miles from "home" in a retail jewelry store, as an office-type person. I was working in a software store as an assistant manager - which meant if there was grunting work involved, it fell to me.
And I didn't mind it. Grunt work is easy work, really. It keeps your mind free for other things.
We would usually work opposite schedules thanks to the perverse scheduling gods, and I worked typically four weekends and Sundays, and many evenings. She would work mostly days, and Saturday morning opens.
It's been a long time.
Golfie-golfie-golfie...
I know at least 1/2 of 1% of one of you people out there is interested in our next major golf event occurring this weekend. The historic and prestigious
Solheim Cup tournament is being played at Interlachen country club (not too far from that building) this weekend.
What's the Solheim Cup, you ask? If you had asked me last week, I would have guessed Mrs. Solheim's better china, or perhaps some form of athletic equipment.
Now, I know that it is a $75,000 piece of Waterford Crystal which is the victor's trophy for winning at "match play" in the Ladies Professional Golf Association version of the Ryder cup.
Tomorrow morning, the ladies tee off in foursomes - two Americans, two Europeans, and they play "match play". Which apparently means that if they win the hole, they win the hole, who gives a damn by how many strokes, next hole please.
You know, as I re-read that sentence, I'm thinking I should probably re-write it to include the word "golf" in there somewhere, but I'm just too tired to mess with it, really. Anyway, the ladies do this for Friday and Saturday, and Sunday's the one-on-one version (and if you think I'm going to include details here just to boost my hits from p0rn surfers, you've got another thing coming).
Anyway, in the end, someone will go home with that chunk of crystal, and we'll be done with Golf around here for another couple of years. Between the PGA championship and this all in one year, I think we've done our bit for maniacs in ugly pants chasing for balls.
And there's another sentence just begging for a re-write. Which indicates to me it's far, far past my bedtime. G'nite.
|
|
Friday, September 20, 2002 |
Thugs, Bugs, and Plugs
Not necessarily in that order, mind you.
I'm half in fear of, and half interested in, the explanation those two idiots from Chicago have in attacking a first base coach of the Kansas City Royals. On the one hand, I find it comforting that it's a father-son tag team of idiots, in which case it's quite a relief knowing that while papa managed to reproduce, his fifteen-year-old son is liable to not pass that cesspool of a gene swamp along to any other generation. Unless, of course, the mother has a cousin who is willing to encourage the frothing of another batch of morons.
What is beyond me is why these idiots seem to think that attacking a first-base coach of a team that is, at best, trying to avoid digging a hole in the basement to make room for the stats (Believe me, Dave, I know how that works - I'm a Twins fan, after all, and while they may be on top this year, look at them four years ago, or watch for next year. "Toilet" is usually a word that appears in the same sentence as "Twins" and "record" and "September". Along with, I suppose, the phrase "club-record worst-season ever"), as evidenced by the tag at the end of the article "needs to go 7-2 over its last nine games to avoid matching the club record for single-season losses".
Been there, done that, and would like to avoid it in the future, though we all know what will happen next year.
On to Plugs. As in, which plug can I put in a spammer to rapidly electrocute him or her?
I do not get Spam on the level of people like Bob Thompson. I have rules set up to filter messages I do not want, and I can hear the "ding-dong" of new mail, and watch the count on my "Deleted Items" folder swell. Most days, I get about 80 that are automatically filtered into the bit-bucket, and another thirty or forty which have to be manually delivered unto that pile.
What I'm finding more and more offensive as I get older is the filth and smut that spammers use. I regularly receive HTML-formatted mails (gotta figure out a way to dump that crap RIGHT into the bit bucket unless it's from a couple key people like my wife), with pictures of things that I just wouldn't want to have to explain to Jack or Rhiannon if they're over my shoulder. The subjects are ... well, full of words I don't want my children using, let alone asking what they mean.
My wife's favorite Spam to date has been the one with the subject "John Dominik, we heard you have a small penis!". Gee, thanks. Guaranteed I'll buy your product now, after you've shamed me with your e-mail. "Yes, please, and a slap 'round the head with the idiot bar, if you would be so kind?"
Perhaps I'm out of date - after all, the marketing course I took was, gee, nearly twenty years ago now, and marketing changes almost as fast as technology. But there are some simple, straightforward rules.
1 - Do not, under any circumstances, annoy, insult, talk down to, or in any other way offend your potential customer. At best, they will remember the bad things. At very worst, you will lose that individual as a customer, and seven or eight hundred people besides.
2 - Treat the customer better than you would like to be treated - regardless of first-time or long-term customers. They will recommend you to a few friends.
3 - Try, very hard, to associate yourself with a positive quality in that person's mind - this is not the same as associating your competition with negative qualities.
4 - Do not speak ill of the competition - and avoid mention of them whenever you can.
That's about it. But I guess if you can't follow simple rules, and are desperate for any sucker to pay you $75 for 30 pills "GUARANTEED TO MAKE YOU SEXIER" then I suppose you'd best use whatever it takes to get your message through. Realize, however, that your offensive tactics will likely cost you more business than you gain.
And on to bugs...
I don't know what happened, but in the last 24 hours, we've managed to bring forth a whole new raft of mosquitoes. Yes, that's right, the state bird. I was out waiting with the kids this morning and I must have swatted thirty or so on my legs in five minutes. It helped that I had the news paper and could do 80% of my leg in a wrap-around fashion, of course, but boy, they were thick.
More later, when I reach some form of coherency...
or not...
|
|
Saturday, September 21, 2002 |
Good ... Well, afternoon, now. It was morning when I sat down here.
This morning, as with nearly every morning, the blessed alarm clock rang, I hopped happily out of bed, and then... Wait, who am I kidding? The sole reason the alarm clock is a long way away from my bed is because if it were closer, I'd attempt to kill it. And by now, I'd have succeeded.
So it went off, I did my initial morning ablutions, and then realized that the time was 8:50 am. Which makes it time for soccer in our home, these days. So I announced to all and sundry "WE'RE GOING TO BE LATE FOR SOCCER". Prophetic, I am not. I'd say, at best, "intelligent" would work.
So, for some unknown reason, the kids and wife come staggering out (after I've filled my water bottle, gotten to the car, opened the garage and trunk, put the lawn chairs in the trunk, gotten the paper from the mailbox, and checked out all of the local radio stations), all holding mugs of something warm (serves me right for rushing off before the num-nums were distributed, I guess). We made it to the soccer field, where Jack put on the most amazing display of inattention and ability I've ever seen.
For those of you unfamiliar with Y sports, no score is kept off-field. I note that in italics, because while there is no scoreboard, there is definitely scorekeeping. Or as one little boy howled today - "We're ahead by five goals!"
And indeed, we were. Despite the desire of each child to wear the goals (traffic cones) or sideline markers (I guess a pie tin sans bottom would be the best descriptor of this implement) on their head, they somehow managed to make it through.
Unfortunately Marie, their best player, took some sort of forearm injury which left her out of the last ten minutes of the game. That's OK, because it allowed the other team to get back a goal. And Jack did have the opportunity to again play goalie - this time, a goal was prevented by the sheer dumb luck that comes from a ball rolling right across the front of the goal and none of the other ducklings having the presence of mind to kick it in.
Jack did stop another shot by laying hands on the ball - this did not, however, prevent the opposing player from kicking him anyway. As expected, Jack was pulled for ten minutes while various medical professionals who knew better just walked away, and his mother provided excesses of "tea and sympathy" sans the tea.
I stumbled across the site to the left there this afternoon. To be honest, I can't tell you how I got there or who I went through to find it. My habit of "Right-Click-Open in new Window" is so ingrained that I couldn't tell you what the path was I followed.
But I found this site. And you know what? In a perverse way, it made me feel better. There are people out there with bigger needs than mine, with more desperate circumstances, and far, far more problems than I have. And they're in pretty sorry straits.
I've got a house I'm in no danger of losing. I've got skills and abilities which will soon result in a new job, and at a rate of income that will allow me to survive and even thrive.
Other people don't have that. As soon as I do get back on my feet, I'm going to do something good for myself, and donate to this site. If you'd like to, feel free.
Oh, and as far as I can tell, I get nothing out of this but satisfaction. Which is fine by me.
First Strike Doctrine
Great. Now Bush says that waiting for someone else to strike first is an outdated mode of defense.
While I have every confidence in the world that the Public Relations Might of the United States can "spin" any action the president chooses to take, the bottom line is that this is a shift that does not sit well with me.
While some might not care for it, the bottom line is that the United Nations was organized to insure that this sort of behavior was no longer required. While I fully agree that getting a committee to decide on anything is about as painful as a mouth full of root canals without the anesthetic, the point in having a committee is to prevent seriously unbalanced folk from doing something stupid.
The U.N. isn't perfect, but if we're going to run roughshod over the procedures and rules established there, we should fully expect to have it done to us in return.
|
|
Sunday, September 22, 2002 |
Which Sounds Better?
December 7th, a day which will live in infamy, or December 7th, when a pre-emptive strike was called on our navy?
Before you decide I'm "un-American" think about it. President Bush is discussing changing this country's tactical posture from "defensive" to "first-strike". What we are in effect saying is "we know things will happen that we do not like, therefore we will do what we need to to prevent them."
Fine. But there's evidence which can be argued about, discussed ad naseum, and be "controverted". Then there's evidence like bombs falling on the Navy, like planes crashing into buildings, and the like, which is clear, unambiguous, and definite.
I appreciate the desire to strike a blow against terrorism and all of that, but I have a problem with "we don't like Iraq, so we're going to take care of this right now." History showed Japan to be the aggressor in World War II. Certainly, we gave them reason to attack, but we did not attack first.
And while history is written by the victors, it is read by all. We need to remember that while it's good to win, it's better to not have enemies. Since we will always have enemies, is it better to deliberately antagonize, or should we try to get along?
Since there's an ever-increasing number of people here, and a finite amount of space, so let's try to get along, while making it clear that we won't put up with any crap.
Of course, since I'm not the president, we won't be running that course.
Big Day Today
Yup, first choir experience. The kids did well at church, and after, and we came home - then I did something and managed to take a three-hour nap - in
bed, flat, completely, out.
I guess it's as good a way as any to mark the end of my second month out of work. Since I don't like that, I've updated my resume, and you can click here to find my newest one. My previous resume was, according to a number of qualified HR people who've looked at it, "too dense". Problem, we hope, solved.
A nap was perhaps a foolish way to celebrate my last few hours of "summer". Highs today were going to struggle to hit 60, and tomorrow's going to be cooler. Time to mow front and back yard, treat heavily with the Scott's treatment that's been sitting in the garage for a while, and wait for the leaves to come flying down. How lovely.
Gee. Sounds like a Phil Hough-type Sunday. At least we didn't have people breaking and entering...
Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 John
P. Dominik. All rights reserved. No reproduction without express
written permission. Opinions expressed herein are my own, and my fault. For further information, check out my
other home page.