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Last Updated : Sunday, 13 October, 2002 at 10:18 PM -0500
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| Daynotes On a Budget Hosted By... Last Updated : Sunday, 13 October, 2002 at 10:18 PM -0500 |
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Monday, October 7, 2002 |
Happy 9th birthday, Rhiannon!
Bloody Hell...
Snow this morning. Yes. Snow. I've checked my crystal ball, which is currently shriveled and sitting in the corner of the closet, and you know
what? That's not good.
Of course, if the damned crystal ball worked at all, I wouldn't be typing this right now. I'd be at work, instead. So your mileage may indeed vary.
Abby Normal?
Am I weird? I go to the mailbox today, and get excited - I got a Rockler Woodworking circular, and a catalog from Premise Plus - network cables and gadgets.
The fine folks at Rockler are on my "deserve a spanking" list because of their poor timing of a recent sale. Due to my being out of work, I was unable to take advantage of their sale on a Jet "midi" lathe for $160 off the $359 regular price... Bad, bad Rockler.
The folks at Premise Plus put diagrams in the back for patch panel cabling. Cool.
Public Service...
Just in case you forgot, Pumpkin Ideas...
and
Tasteless, I know, but Halloween looms...
More later. With the kid's birthday, I'm sure.
I Plead...
Youth and inexperience, combined with many years of long and faithful service?
> From: "Brian Bilbrey"
> To: John Dominik
>
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 6:46 PM
>
Subject: ahem.
>
>
> A broken pumpkin butt image, and a LAST WEEK link that points to
> FEBRUARY, FEBRUARY!!!!
>
> Get on the ball, John. Your baseball team certainly has, woo hooo!!!!
>
> .b
>
> --
> Brian Bilbrey && bilbrey@orbdesigns.com && http://www.orbdesigns.com/
> The guy has a reality distortion field generator
> the size of the state of Rhode Island.
>
- Daniel Gray
What? Oh, bloody hell.
Case switch will do it to me every time.
And I guess I need to change my template - last time I did, it was
February... ;-)
Yes, yes. And how 'bout dem Twins?
And just to make that Bilbrey fellow happy... Yet another obscene pumpkin picture.
What's especially disturbing is if you look at that picture in a negative image... Makes me fear old age, it does...
Birthday Bye-Bye...
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Her mother picked out HP3 - I was left to choose between the $20 full-screen (not wide-screen, which is our preference) version of Grease on DVD or the $15 "Bratz" doll. After carefully wrapping the damned thing, and noting to her that we didn't expect her to turn into a "Bratz" she's off to bed.
And many thanks, from both of us, for the congratulations. Of course, this now means my wife will be razzing me about fifty. Yes, I'm only 39. But it's important to note that she is continually pushing me in my dotage closer and closer to the cliffs of despair, as it were.
Oh well. Just wait until the drooling, incoherence, and incontinence start. Assuming they haven't already and this is just a figment of my imagination...
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Tuesday, October 8, 2002 |
The Off Day...
Yup. In between birthdays in the Dominik Family. Pop's is tomorrow.
Scum-sucking offspring of a hermaphroditic pig-dog...
Need I mention that I hate spam?
I did a little experiment. I turned off my spam filters for a week, just to see what I'm getting. Now, mind you, I've had one e-mail address for about eight years now. Another, a hotmail address, has been around for about four or five (I signed up for my hotmail account before Microsoft bought them, if that helps any).
Not counting the hotmail account, I checked this morning, and I've got 569 Spam messages. For the record...
| SPAM TYPE | No. | Percentage |
| New Mortgage | 97 | 17.05% |
| Images Porn | 70 | 12.30% |
| Work From Home Opportunities | 62 | 10.90% |
| Debt Consolidation | 58 | 10.19% |
| Free Products | 50 | 8.79% |
| Text Porn | 49 | 8.61% |
| Vacations | 31 | 5.45% |
| Sexual Enhancers | 27 | 4.75% |
| Gambling | 24 | 4.22% |
| Stock Alerts | 23 | 4.04% |
| Free Subscriptions with free products | 16 | 2.81% |
| Nigerian Money Scam | 7 | 1.23% |
| MISCELLANEOUS | 55 | 9.67% |
| TOTAL | 569 | 100.00% |
Now, in the miscellaneous category, I have a spam from someone seeking parts for a time machine, one fellow who is looking to sell gloves and hats through an importer, another fellow who is looking to sell mugs, cups, and other drink containers with names imprinted on them, various software tools (should have made that a category, but re-building a table pasted from excel to here is too much of a pain). There's also the various non-sexual-enhancing drug adverts - HGH, Hair Growth, etc.
What drives me absolutely nuts is that we've allowed this to happen. Some ... well, my vocabulary, while large, will not allow me to describe said individuals without resorting to profanity, so I'll just use the term "Spammer" - and you can fill in the word with all the venom you'd like - "Spammers" are known ... targets. They have assets. They have clearly-defined paths to the internet. Why can't we as a collective group determine that this is unwanted, and block it?
I know, the answer is simple. Lawyers. "They have a legal right to waste our time." Certainly. However, I have a legal right to charge them for the time they waste, do I not? I would think getting 569 messages a week is more than enough for some attorney to want to deal with class action-wise, but ... Oh well.
Dem Twins
The Twins play tonight, and I'm starting to get worried. Most of the local media is starting to hop on the bandwagon, but they're all pointing at the
World Series. I hope the Twins aren't buying into it. Of course, they seem pretty level-headed, but with Mays pitching tonight, that could change in
a hurry.
Mays is one of our best pitchers - no, stop laughing, really. He was injured earlier this year, which is probably why his record is as poor as it is - it's tough to come back from an injury and regain your confidence. If Mays gets some run support - say a three-or-four run lead early in the game, it could get ugly (think Game 4). If he gets behind, well, remember Oakland. Six runs, four innings, thank you very much.
In a way, the worst thing that could happen to the Twins would be a win tonight. The bandwagon would get more crowded. Hopefully they won't believe their own hype.
On the other hand, I'm going to go way out on a limb and predict that Bud Selig will appear in Minnesota - some time after Christmas. The man would be an absolute fool to show up at a Twins game these days. I heard a bit on the radio the other day where they were noting that Selig's security in the Metrodome would be tighter than Bush's, should GW choose to attend (heaven forefend), should the World Series occur here. They noted he might check into multiple hotels, one under his own name, others under assumed names. He might fly in and out of town just for the games. He would not sit in an unprotected box (which probably means they'll be putting bulletproof glass in Pohlad's box, if they haven't already).
Dumb as he is, I just can't imagine Bud Selig showing up for a Twins game until at the earliest Game 7 of the World Series, should it come to that. He's got to know that if the average Twins fan were faced with Bud Selig and Osama Bin Laden, we'd probably have a tough time deciding whom to smack around first.
Minnesota nice we may be, but steal our baseball team, and we'll get a bit upset. At the very least.
Little Project
I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. He's got 30 computers - 20 at one location, 10 at another. They're all on a peer-to-peer
workgroup. The locations are linked by a fractional T1 at 256Kb. He's got a mess.
Every single consultant he talks to and lays out the organizational issues he has tends to focus on their UNIX server first. This is a computer which runs two applications - electronic mail, and a custom program for the industry he's in. Nearly 90% of the load from the box was removed two years ago - it's still a heavy-duty box (256 MB RAM, 8 Gig HD, Pentium 133 processor) for what they need it to do (only four or five people use the application), so why they focus on a RAID for that box as the highest priority is beyond me.
He's got other, near terminal issues. When he adds a person (not often, but lately there's been some turnover), there's a whole heck of a lot of work - he's got to touch every workstation that person should access - which is most, due to the way they store files.
I laid a plan out for him the other day. He's in the process of rolling off a bunch of computers - P 233s on up to P2-450s - so I suggested the following course of action.
All of this would initially be done with refurbished existing hardware - we'd take a faster machine for the Exchange server, load it with RAM and new HDs.
And yes, I know, Windows 2000 is available. Perhaps we'll look at it. But his hope is to do this and get it done and NOT need a full-time systems person on-staff. He wants single-point administration and backup (well, we'll get double-point, but OK), and improve plenty other stuff - including network congestion (he has people in location 2 with mapped drives to people at location 1 - gee. Network issues? Yup). It's a lot easier to do that with NT 4.0 - the idea isn't to overly complicate his life.
I figure the RAID as a much lower priority. Why? Well, first of all, the best way to destroy your credibility in this business these days is to go in and propose the most expensive parts first. Don't hide them, but don't propose them first. Why? Simple. You come off as a high-flying-dot-com-wannabe.
But in this particular case, you're talking about a fundamental conversion. They have one server, who needs more? Well, they do. Once the concept is proven, then you can get money.
If the concept fails, well, then, it might have cost them a couple of thousand (including software licenses) - not a couple of hundred thousand.
Well, it makes sense to him. And me.
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Wednesday, October 9, 2002 |
Happy 80th Birthday, Dad!
Doh!
Apparently the memory fades as you get older. I spent much of yesterday struggling with issues computer-like, and as a result, ended up watching the last
five innings of the game in bed - intending, after each half-inning, to turn it off and go to sleep. Of course, I didn't. More the fool me.
Which in no way excuses me from not publishing this last night. I apologize. I realize that there's a fair number of you out there who stop by here regularly - why, I've yet to fathom - and I thank you for it. But I forgot - I'll try not to do that in the future...
Door-to-Door I-D-ten-Ts...
The doorbell rings. I come upstairs from the computer. Open the door.
"Good afternoon, sir, my name is X, and my friend here, Y, see your roof needs repairing."
Hmmm. The roof was inspected, replaced in 1999, and looks fine. We've not had any hail this year here, and only a few high - forty mile-per-hour wind gusts.
"No, I'm afraid it doesn't."
"But you've got dings in it."
"Sorry, guys. It's a new roof. Thank you." Start to close the door.
"Please, Sir, just take my card."
"No."
"Just take it and throw it out."
"No thank you." After more back and forthing, as I close the door, I hear him saying "just take it and rip it up in my face, please!"
Well, I'm sorry, but no. Why?
Yeah, I can be a cranky bastard at times, but you know, when there are that many strikes against you, why do you keep yelling at the door after I close it? Are you stupid?
Stairs Up, Stairs Down...
I happened to look at Time Magazine this week. In between the glowing article on the new wonder-home and the seven questions about Iraq, I found a
wonderful little article about the job market. How 93% more people in the tech fields are out of work this year than last. How most of them are
still jobless 26 weeks later. How most of them are ending up taking lower-paying jobs just to make ends meet.
How encouraging. Here I am, mid-way through my unemployment, pounding resumes out by the boatload, and hearing nothing from the collective void.
I watch, and listen, as Jack goes up and down the stairs. Sometimes he makes it all the way up, or all the way down. But sometimes, and you know how it is with little boys, he misses a step. Sometimes it's early in the process. Then I'm treated to a whole lot of thumping and bumping all the way down the hill. Some times it's late in the process, and there's only a "whoops."
I see a lot of myself in those trips. The problem is I don't know whether I'm going up or coming down. I can't tell if this is a temporary setback, or if the last three years were just a feeble attempt to live above my skills and abilities.
I know they weren't. But I also know that, like any other field that shows temporary successes, people will flock to a fast-growing high-demand field regardless of their knowledge, abilities, or enjoyment of it. And hopefully, many will soon leave it, and leave the tech work to the likes of us who are good at it and love doing it.
I know, I know, it sounds odd to say I love networking, tech support, and training and all those other bits - but I really do. I've done phone tech support. It's very rewarding to hear a "oh, hey, there it is, it worked!" on the phone. It's rewarding to see the light suddenly go on in someone's eyes as you train them and show them how a complex widget works. It's rewarding to unscramble and sort out a messy tangle of wires, plugs, machines, and users, and get them all moving in the right direction again.
Most of all, it's rewarding to me just to work on computers. Not monetarily, but personally. I enjoy it. I like it. I'm good at it.
The problem is that it's difficult to convey that in a resume and cover letter. Which means that I don't make the first cut. Which means I never get the chance.
I'll keep struggling along. I don't have a "next season" and off time and all of that. I've got to keep climbing the stairs, or falling down them, and see where I end up. It's all I can do. It's not pleasant, but I've little other choice in the matter.
Dem Twins...
Yes, I know. Looking at yesterday's blatherings, I look positively prescient. Well, not really, no. Bud Selig did show up, and chowed down in
Pohlad's private box, apparently without windows closed. The Twins DID win, but not exactly in a convincing manner.
Tonight's another matter entirely. If the Twins win tonight, so what. If they don't, then we're in serious trouble. If they do win, that doesn't mean a whole lot. What is critical is if the Twins can manage to win at least one game in Anaheim. If not, then, well, we might have big problems. The very last thing I'd like to see is the Twins returning to the Metrodome down 3-2 in the series. There's this whole momentum thing, you see...
And, for the record, Hey, Kyle, get off your dead arse and post the foul ball story, would ya?
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Thursday, October 10, 2002 |
What... A... Morning...
5:45 am - My alarm goes off. I get up, turn it off, go back to bed (apparently).
5:50 am - Ann's alarm goes off. It does not wake me. She hits snooze.
6:50 am - I awaken to the words "It's ten to seven, I'm going in at 8:30" (if we leave the house by 7 am, we can get her to her 7:20 bus, which
gets her to work by 8 am. If we miss that, there's a 7:50 am bus (same stop) which gets her to work by 8:30 am). Reply "oh. OK".
6:52 am - Bedroom TV goes on. The local pre-Today news show is winding down with happy news and weather recap. Beautiful day, weekend temps
might fight to hit forty. Lovely. Hello winter.
7:00 am - Arise, turn on Jack's light, and stagger into the bathroom.
7:20 am - I complete my necessary ablutions, and stumble (a step above stagger, if you'll forgive the pun) back to the bedroom. Ann is now sitting
on the edge of the bed.
7:25 am - Dressed and now semi-coherent, I realize that we are now twenty-five minutes from bus departure. And neither of us has started the
ten-minute "dynamite the children from their beds and get them basically dressed" process. Yikes.
7:30 am - In something of a minor miracle, we leave the driveway ahead of the projected schedule.
7:34 am - Murphy, ever my co-pilot these days, arrives in the form of heavy, heavy traffic. Ann then mentions "Oh, 35W is closed at 90th
street for some sort of police activity" ("Police Activity" is metro-traffic code for "A bust of some sort on or near the highway" - in
other words, lots of cops, potentially with guns drawn, and not a whole lot of moving traffic). Great. County 13 is the main route between 35W and
Cedar/77, which is the next-best way across the river going to the east (169 is on the west side).
7:40 am - I realize with heavy heart that we are not going to make the ten-minute dash down Cliff as needed - in fact, we haven't a hope, as we're still
five minutes from Cliff on a good day, and this is not a good day.
PLAN B: Take Ann to St. Paul, turn around, get kids on bus.
7:41 am - looking at the gas gauge, I realize that this is, perhaps, an imprudent time to test the level of accuracy of said gauge or the "miles to
empty" calculator in the trip computer. Ever since that fateful trip in April 2001, I don't like to push it.
7:42 am - Realize that the trip downtown and back will likely take at least an hour, if not more - in other words, entirely too long to be able to also
work breakfast in.
7:44 am - Pull into a SuperAmerica for Gas, gas (in the form of junk breakfast foods), and air (as I've now got a low tire again).
7:50 am - Leave the SA and continue North on County 13.
8:25 am - Arrive downtown St. Paul, eject Ann from the car, and am around the corner before she even gets to her door.
8:32 am - Lovely. The northbound lanes of I-35E (heading to St. Paul) are open - Southbound is merged down to one lane at the river bridge due to
their adding a third lane on said bridge - not soon enough, unfortunately.
8:35 am - Contemplate all manner of violent and impolite activity as I watch over 80 vehicles (yes, I counted) fire past the first "Left Lane Ends,
Merge Right" sign over a mile and a half behind me, and push ahead, right up to the back of the dump truck that marks the beginning of the serious road
construction before they consider moving into my lane. Bastards.
8:41 am - Complete travel through the bottleneck, and back onto the open road, where I rev the old engine up to ... well, strictly speaking, I think I'd
better not admit that. Let's just say I kept up with the faster traffic flow.
8:55 am - After reviewing with the children what needs to be done, I get off the freeway. Continual review.
9:05 am - Pull into the neighborhood, unbelievably, right behind the bus that normally gets the kids. Great. I've got 20 minutes to get them
to their classrooms, and I live three minutes from school. Almost enough time to change.
9:08 am - Jack is crying because his pants are too long, his socks are too short, his shirt has to be tucked in, and he wants a bigger sweatshirt.
Assist.
9:11 am - Jack is crying because I asked him what happened to all of the papers that were supposed to be in his backpack. They aren't there.
9:13 am - Go through Rhiannon's backpack. Find two school sweatshirts (holy hell will break loose when her mother hears of this). Find her
homework folder, and check to see that her homework is in it for the day. Also confirm "math minutes" slip is there as well.
9:15 am - Rhiannon comes up with a jumper on (needs to be zipped) and a dirty sweatshirt. Throw the sweatshirt back downstairs. Zip the
jumper. Realize that my little girl will A) not wear jumpers next year, B) might not outgrow them in length but rather in torso circumference (no, I
refuse to contemplate what that means), and C) needs to comb her hair. Direct her to make it so.
9:16 am - Jack emerges. Shirt untucked, color still under the sweatshirt, shoes on wrong feet. Direct corrective action. Then take
corrective action.
9:18 am - Everyone is nearly ready. Head out the door. School starts in seven minutes.
9:19 am - Wait to pull onto street, because Grandma's still getting used to the manual tranny. It kills. Three times.
9:20 am - Release frustration. Swing around Granny Putt-putt, and pull onto busy street. Find that I am the fortunate bastard in that I'm
following someone with a new Red Volkswagen - so new, in fact, that she's not sure if the speed limit going down the hill is 15 or 20 mph (it is, in fact,
35). She sticks to at or under the lower limit. Due to traffic control, I need to use this lane, and can't get past her to get back in it.
9:24 am - Get to school. Rhiannon gives me a kiss, and hops out. Followed by Jack, he of the two planes in hand and no backpack with library
book in it. Yell. The two teachers watching the drop-off area are suddenly staring at me. Jack throws the airplanes back in the car,
inadvertantly aimed at my head (metal models of an F-14 and F/A-18, ouch). I take one for the team and hand him his bookbag, which he ducks from.
Considering the only thing in it is a library book which weighs less than the bag does, empty, it's not a weapon. Certainly not one I'd use on him.
They grab the stuff, and head in, following the teachers.
9:25 am - Look in my rear-view mirror. Yeah, about 20 other cars behind me, doing the same damned thing.
I hope your morning went better. Now, to prepare for conferences with the teachers... Oh, and take my medication, find my restraints, pierce my tongue (to forestall long lectures to said teacher)...
More later, if I survive...
The Call To War...
As I got out of the car this morning, NPR was playing the senate debate on the resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, one last time - our Republican leaders are quite adept at finding reasons to keep and use a strong military. In the days of the Cold War, where the "missile gap" and other attendant terrors kept us fearing the Red Menace, it made a whole hell of a lot of sense.
Or did, until we realized that we had something like a 17 to 1 advantage.
Now, however, the President seems to be intent on wagging yet another dog. Clinton did something similar in the days following his impeachment - bombing Iraq based on suspicions of chemical warfare component production. This president seems hell-bent on giving us some sort of victory, no matter how hollow, that he can point to in the rollup to his re-election. Bottom line? I don't think there's anything new in the wind - I think the bottom line is, again, "we've got all this hardware and we want to use it".
The Democratic leadership, on the other hand, seems torn between being a party of progress and a party set on a course which will most certainly difference them from the Republicans. Whatever that might be. And, of course, the occasional sexual or other indiscretion which in the end always hurts (sorry, two bad puns in one day).
The lack of a viable opposition to these two bumbling groups is what, apparently, makes the American system great - apparently we all fall into one of two groups - both increasingly extremist, both moving further from the middle, and both staking out positions on all issues, whether or not they're important to most Americans, in the hopes that soon enough one position or the other will attract enough people.
So now we watch. We watch as the Senate, more commonly known as the House of One Hundred Presidential Candidates, waffles back and forth. Sen. Byrd, otherwise known as King Robert of Pork and Virginia, plans to filibuster the issue, which is the legislative way of throwing a three-year-old temper tantrum ("if I can't have My Way no one will have Any Way At All!"). Senators on both sides of the issue are content to wait while Byrd and the rest tie the issue up. And that's not right, either.
What we need is a vote on the matter. It's been kicked around in one form or another for nearly 11 years now. Should we or shouldn't we have? Big question. Of course, George Bush the 41st President wanted that Victory Parade to take the nation's mind off the sinking economy... uh, wait a minute...
The question now is "do we do this to the finish, or not?" There's no waffling on the issue. We've no longer got Kuwait or other issues to cloud the purpose. The idea is to find, and eliminate, Saddam Hussein. And we've seen how well we can find and eliminate a few key people - just look at the corpses of Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden. Er....
I think a vote is required. And, while I'm not going to like or agree with the outcome, the bottom line is that once the resolution is passed, we'll have to suck it up and deal with the consequences. Iraq will need to be toppled - whether it's crumpled like an empty paper bag as in the case of Afghanistan, or if it takes years of fighting (like ... well, the war on terror), it needs to be done, and I guess we'll do it now.
The key will most certainly come the day after the war is won. I can conceive of half a hundred possibilities which might cause the United States to lose the war - of those, only about two are in the realm of probability (Hussein successfully striking Israel, which strikes back, and infuriates the Arabs, who join in the war against Israel and the US, and Israel retaliates by using Nukes... The second is much more farfetched). Odds are that the US will win.
And following that day, we'll have a parade.
The key, though, is what happens thirty, sixty, and ninety days after that. Will we stick around and do the job right, or will we abandon them?
Uh-oh...
Well, looks like my first attempt at getting a computer business going in the neighborhood might be a bust. The next-door neighbor, who has a home-based
business, said "say, what do you know about Amigas?" Groan.
Yup, I own one. But of course, his problem isn't with an Amiga 500. It's an Amiga 1000 with apparently dead boot disks. It makes it through the first disk, but then when the second disk is inserted (everyone remembers those lovely days, don't they?), it goes dark. I suspect a bad boot disk set. Anyone have any ideas on that? Specifically, how to replace it? I'm assuming I can download it from somewhere, the problem is writing it to the floppy...
Darn. Shucks. Rats. Phooey. Nuts.
And similar expressions of just plain disgust.
Seems I've been missing a few really good spams lately. And a couple of apparently good deadlines. Such as, for example, last Friday. I could have entered a drawing.
| Grand Prize | Second Prize | Third Prize |
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Apparently, these are desirable things. I've no idea what they are, but they sure look like either some sort of evil medical device or a poorly constructed lamp. My first hunch was "you know, that looks damned uncomfortable". The one on the left is purported to be twenty-seven inches tall - that's darn-near desk height. Far, far past toilet-top height. So they're probably not chairs or medical devices. Must be lamps.
Though I've my suspicions that the third-prize "prize" is liable to be something for ... well, self-medication. That, or a "Polish" squirt gun (it's made out of glass, according to the spam).
Hey, I'm an Eagle Scout. What do I know about self-medicating?
Verrrrry Interesting. But Schtupidt.
Yes, that's an attempt to spell Artie Johnson's famous line.
Conferences this evening. Rhiannon is doing very well. She has two issues. Talking (wow - four years in a row now) and organization (well, there's a first). She's becoming more responsible for her work, though it's taking some time. She's getting better on her bin and her homework, and we're just in need of controlling the talking in class.
Jack, on the other hand... His teacher decided, early on, that Jack would best benefit from tight control. Which means he is welded to his teacher. He sits in front, right next to her desk/chair. He's very tightly reined in, and watched 100% of the time. This morning, he complained to the teacher, and she said "well, if you think you can make good choices." He left his table, picked another one, and promptly got into trouble. Back to home plate to start over. He pouted for all of 20 seconds, and then got over it.
He's got good days and bad days, like any other child, but the teacher noted that this class was and is incredibly loud. From standing outside the window, listening to them roar around, I can believe it. She did use the word "hyperactive" though, which then flowed into a discussion of bedtimes and good versus bad attention. So Jack is migrating to an earlier bedtime than his sister, and we're going to see if more sleep is the answer - most hyper kids this teacher has seen (in 20+ years of teaching) tended to be those who couldn't quiet down and go to sleep, which meant, in turn, they had difficulty concentrating, which led to, you guessed it, bouncing off the walls.
We'll see how it goes. Jack is far, far too young to be diagnosed ADHD or medicated. At this age he's an active young boy who is, perhaps, unwilling to focus his energies. Hopefully this will soon pass.
We'll see how it goes, at any rate...
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Friday, October 11, 2002 |
Bummer, Duuuuude.
Tim Pawlenty is one of the four candidates we have locally for governor. Well, three with a real chance to win (remember, this is the state with Jesse
Ventura as governor).
Pawlenty had been running a series of ads. Two of them were "pop-up video"-like, while a third slammed the other two candidates - "Tax-man" (Tim Penny, Ventura's endorsed choice and an Independent) "And Roger" (Moe, the Democrat).
Seems that Pawlenty's underlings, a raging bunch of morons if there ever was one, passed some video straight over to the Republican Party. Here in Minnesota, we have a rather unusual, at least to me, manner of regulating campaigns. In the Governor's race, they're limited to $2.2 million of advertising - I'm thinking that's on television, but I'm not sure.
The problem is that the first video, the "pop-up video" takeoff that introduced Pawlenty around the state, was paid for by the Republican party. Now, I think Tim Pawlenty's a pretty smart fellow. I also think that he's a poor judge of people to have hired a jackass who would let someone lead them down the primrose path like this.
The "official" explanation is that Pawlenty didn't know what the video was for, that his campaign "sold" it to another firm, which "sold" it to the Republican party, which built an ad around it.
Now, of course, comes the sting. Seems that the $800,000 spent on that ad will count against the $2,200,000 budget for the campaign's media buys. Which runs them up against the limit, or nearly so. Which, in turn, means that they're hurting.
Since this is politics, there's no chance that it ends there. The party was fined $4,000, which had to sting in the three weeks prior to election day. But what's worse is that there might be additional fines levied against the Pawlenty camp - possibly as much as $3,200,000, which would go against Pawlenty's media budget. And, to add insult to injury, the fellow who heads the state campaign finance board, Doug Kelly, said that if the campaign exceeds the $2,200,000 budget, there would be additional fines. Sorry, folks, but not even in new math does "X + 800000 + 3200000 = some value less than 2200000" - and we all know X isn't a negative number.
Pawlenty says he's going to appeal, and that it's just a misunderstanding. Frankly, I think that's the end for Pawlenty - and since this thing was turning into a two-horse race to begin with (Tim Pawlenty and Tim Penny were neck and neck in most polls, with Roger "I've done this before" Moe running a respectable, for a third party, that is, third), that's nothing but good news to Tim Penny, the candidate who actually has a "party" fighting for him.
The good news, I guess, is that the third (and fourth) parties are running close enough to give us viable choices, rather than the extremist crap out on the fringes like the major parties have been lately.
So it goes.
Fall Is...
As I bang away on the keyboard down here, I can hear the wind rustling the leaves. Our expected 70-degree temps today are a brutal tease for the coming
attractions. Tonight, Cold Front #1 hits, and we drop about 20 degrees. Sometime before Jack's soccer game tomorrow morning, Cold And Wet Front #2
hits, and we go down another 20-30 degrees and we get, you got it, moisture.
So, for those of you not fans of new math, that's 70 - 20 = 50 - (20 to 30) = 30 or below. Can you say "Damn, that's cold?"
We started Jack's soccer season in shirtsleeves. We'll end it in winter coats. This is, somehow, appropriate. We started the summer with Jack and Co. all bundled up, chasing the pink flamingo in Tee Ball, we end it by bundling back up for winter.
Good heavens. Pumpkin parties. It really makes you wonder what they're serving...
I suppose the alternate caption would be "puking your pumpkin brains out..."
My Bad...
Yes, I did.
I was at Menards today. Looking for lumber for the desk-side systems table (nothing fancy - 2x6s, 2x4s, plywood, and that's about it) when I encountered The Stand. The Stand is capable of handling a 12' tree, up to seven inches in diameter. The Stand is also nearly two feet across - which will need to be attached to some 3/4" plywood for my needs, but we'll get there.
I promise, pictures of The Stand later.
Hey - when you've been looking for the Holy Grail your whole life, and then you find it, wouldn't you be a little excited? I mean, besides a job, that is?
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Saturday, October 12, 2002 |
Well, it's a rare Saturday. We got up early, got out the door, over to the Soccer fields, Jack did soccer (and while the day dawned cold and gray., the sun came out while we watched Jack), then we hit the grocery store, then came home.
I worked for a while in the garage on the new desk-side computer table, and Ann napped. We grilled brats for dinner, and now we're just hanging out. Not too bad a day, in total.
I'd better be careful, or people will start calling me Phil.
Dem Twins...
Yeah, I know. Seven innings of nothing to nothing, and here we are seven runs down, three outs to go to win and tie.
My wife is rather upset at all of this. She doesn't understand that this is unusual enough for me that the Twins played this season. The fact that they are playing in the post season at all is a minor miracle of sorts.
Sure, I'd love to see them win, but for my wife, it's feast or famine. You see, she's a Bears fan. And, to quote her, "I only root for teams that can win super bowls". Well, near as I can figure with about forty super bowls having gone by, the Bears have been in one. Sure, they were a powerhouse of the old pre-Super-Bowl NFL, but that was all long before she was born.
Now, the problem with that is that if you get into the playoffs, you expect to win. If, on the other hand, you've been to the big game and lost four times, you expect some disappointment. In fact, you don't expect to win.
Does that make the loss tonight that much more painful? No. Not really. No. The fact is that there's a bunch of guys who gave me a lot of pleasure this summer - and win or lose, they have no reason to be ashamed. They did damned good.
Of course, she's taking it personally. So it goes.
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Sunday, October 13, 2002 |
Hey, I'm Stupid...
This is what happens when I'm feeling particularly bored, apparently.
Last night, after typing and uploading the above, I took leave of my senses. I decided to download the drivers for an external parallel port CD-ROM Burner I acquired through snooping through a junk cabinet a friend has, and also plug in my USB Zip 250 drive. So I did. And, in an absolute and total abdication of anything remotely resembling intelligence, I installed both sets of drivers. At once. Without rebooting.
Uh huh. Yup. I can hear you laughing. And a few of you cringing. So I did the "yank the new shit" route - removed the applications. And assumed I was fine. I rebooted, and it locked. I rebooted again, and managed to blue-screen. Reboot a third time, and a second blue-screen. Reboot a fourth time, this time to the step-by-step confirmation (remember F8 on boot? Yeah. Me too - all too bloody often). And again, we meet Mr. Blue Screen. At least he was consistent. Seven reboots later and I still got VXD errors on bootup. As my son says, "me no like". Yes, he can speak better - seems he prefers baby talk.
And so did my computer.
After an extended interlude (called sleeping, shower, church, fellowship Sunday with Donuts, and some housecleaning for a play date), I came back, and decided to pursue my ever-popular and usually successful method - it's called "clearing the registry with a roto-rooter".
And it brought me to where I am right now - a stable configuration. At least, computer-wise. Somewhere, my lovely bride took leave of her senses, and between the end of 9 am mass and noon today, we decided "oh, hey, since we're going to watch one kid for a while this afternoon, let's bring two more into the mix."
Somewhere in there, she started the vacuum cleaner. And promptly noticed not only was the air not whirling around in that clear chamber thingy, but it was getting really dusty and not much else was happening. Well, now. So I started using my technical skills, and poking around in the underside of the vacuum cleaner - by the time I was done, I'd removed over a dozen screws, had just about all of the removable parts off except the motor, and had removed about a six-by-six-by-six-inch cube of cat hair that had formed in the hose between the beater bars and the outflow nozzle
So Rhiannon has two friends over (another had a play date elsewhere, which reduced the quiet little girl mix), and Jack and his friend Tony are enough for the upstairs noise level. So yeah, it's a quiet Sunday. Not. At least we have entertainment...
Like the fifth showing of Monsters, Inc. since yesterday. Now I understand "2319 - 2319". I think I'm going to use it on the children when they fail to clean up. Especially the shaving part. And the lampshade. Especially the lampshade.
Pictures
Yes, I know. More Pictures.
Rhiannon with her "family birthday cake". And the number nine on top. Yeah, we finally got around to it. She wanted to help make it, which is why it took until yesterday to get it done.
Above is The Tree Stand - it's about 22 inches across.
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