Crackheads

Not much blogging, really, since I've been in Boston, MA teaching an Oracle class. Class went well, but I am NEVER driving in Boston again. Tunnels. Tunnels with exits in them, stacked layers of freeway six or eight high. No road signs. Freeways that you have to u-turn on to get going the right direction. AAAARRRGGGHHHGGG!!

And, of course, road constructions and road closures. Last week parts of the roof of the Williams tunnel collapsed, killing a woman in her car. They closed off most of the tunnel for inspections, and have determined that the epoxy used to hold panels in place (wiht bolts, of course) has failed and that a large number of the panels are apparently staying in place by habit, not actual fasteners. Inspections show that most of them need to be replaced or redone to keep it safe. People are being investigated and subpeonaed and the Governer is working to remove Amorella, the head of the turnpike authority. APparently, they have known about issues in the tunnels of the Big Dig since 1999 -- and yet moved forward with construction.

I didn't have to drive through that tunnel, but there are three or four others that cross the harbor into the airport. One the way back to the rental car place, I discovered that the exit they wanted me to take was actually in the tunnel itself. This was the first time I've ever considered not filling up the rental car (which, by the way, was a minivan because at 11pm when I got the car it was the only thing left) because I was petrified to get off the carefully planned route to find a gas station. I was working about an hour out of Boston, and never saw a gas station. I decided that if I didn't see a station that was literally on the road so I could pull off and directly back on, I was going to just return the damn thing as it was and pay $7 a gallon for gas.

I developed a serious phobia about driving -- to the point that one of the students in my class actually drove me back to the hotel (well, she let me follow her back).

Class went well, although it was hard to tell if they were happy or not. Half the class had never seen the toolkit at all, and the other half worked with it every day and this was a "refresher" for them. And, the second day of class saw us mushed into a tiny conference room with not enough tablespace for everyone. Rather hard to teach when you can't actually stand up! I love teaching class, but it is awfully tiring.

Pronunciation Woes

Yup. English is difficult. Try these:

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

Chairs!

Chairs! We have chairs! With cupholders.

Trapped in the Inside Lane

Anyone who has driven in Europe (or in a few cities in the eastern US) has encountered roundabouts. Call them what you will -- rotary, roundabout, traffic circle, ring-junction -- they confound most drivers who run into them the first time. Once you've driven a few, they are less of a problem (although I honestly cannot think what the inner lanes of roundabouts are for, really).

Still, this roundabout in Swindon, England, would confuse even the most roundabout-inured driver (Picture from the Urbanthought blog)

It's a huge roundabout with FIVE mini-roundabouts in it (which is actually called a Magic Roundabout). Someone was taking a serious amount of drugs when they designed this one!

It even has a Wikipedia entry describing the traffic patterns.

Omnipotent? I Don't Think So.

The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday heard testimony from Steven Bradbury, head of the Justice Department’s office of legal counsel. When questioned by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on whether the President’s interpretation of the Hamdan case was right or wrong, Bradbury replied,

“The President is always right.”

Well, that's nice to know.

Of course, that's just what these people were saying when Clinton was president, right? Right? Hello??

Director of Lessons Learned?

White House paying $100,000 salary to "Director of Lessons Learned" -- and check out some of the other bizarre titles.

From AMERICAblog:

At any rate, the list of White House salaries (after their latest salary increase) prompted some pretty snarky responses:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) offers a few more lessons learned: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

"Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.

"Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you're going to war without enough troops.

"Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it's time to demand a little accountability.

"Lesson 3: When you've 'turned the corner' in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

"Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

"I would also ask the President why we're paying for two 'Ethics Advisors' and a 'Director of Fact Checking.'

"They must be the only people in Washington who get more vacation time than the President.

"Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony."

Snerk.

Dungeon Update

We have Sound! And Video! and velvet curtains! As promised, here are a few pics of the process of getting things installed. Mark did most of the actual fastening of things, I did the measuring and layout.


Getting the screen up, levelled, and centered properly was difficult.


But it was worth it!



Chairs arrive on Thursday.

Different Philosophy

Apparently, Joe Lieberman, running in Connecticut, has filed paperwork to create a new party -- "Connecticut for Leiberman" for his run in that state should he not manage to win the primary.

Hm. Connecticut for Lieberman. Connecticut For Lieberman.

Compare this to another politician who called his campaign Dean for America -- not America for Dean.

Different philosophy and different priorities, don't you think?

Cinema Success!

Not much blogging this weekend, since we spent the whole time setting things up, going to Home Depot for the parts we forgot, configuring, going back to Home Depot...you get the idea.

We got the speakers set up, the receiver configured, the projector and screen up -- and lumped for hours watching movies. Wow.

Personally, I love the curtains. Very theater-like. This might be the coolest things we've done in a while. The Adorable husband is still taking pictures, so I'll post things in the morning, but just so you don't think we've disappeared...nah. Just hiding in the basement.

Humungous Picture!!

Mark is just holding the projector against the ceiling, but HUZZAH! Giant screen!

Strange Dogs

I spent the day on conference calls (for work) at my kitchen table. Looking out on the porch, I noticed that the silly brown dog spent the day sleeping like this:

Whew. At least for now...

We got letters in the mail a few weeks ago regarding the theft of a laptop containing information about veterans -- the VA wanted to warn us to watch out for identify theft and any odd behavior in our credit history, etc. They weren't clear what data was actually missing (although it was enough to warrant a bit of panic about identify theft), but they were investigating the incident.

We keep pretty close track of our finances and our credit history, so I'm confident we would have found anything amiss pretty quickly.

I am, however, quite pleased to note that the laptop and missing data have been recovered. The FBI seems to think taht the data had not been accessed, which makes about 26 million people breath a sigh of relief (although I don't know if I'd really relax much). An employee had the data at home on a laptop, which raise some serious issues about security. But -- the interesting part was this:

At the time, VA officials were quick to blame the data analyst involved for violating agency policy in taking the laptop home. However, it has since emerged the worker, who was placed on administrative leave during the course of an inquiry, had written permission to take the sensitive data away from VA offices in order to work from home.

It still should have been ecrypted, and stored only on the servers in the office behind firewalls -- and frankly, the employee should have been accessing them remotely using one of the many VPN protocols. There are a lot of holes in this process and no one seems to have thought much about security.

Net Neutrality

This...drivel is from the guy in charge of the Net Neutrality issue in the Senate. Senator Ted Stevens is the one who is managing the debate on the proposal to "prioritize" information on the 'net.

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?

Um. Got an "internet"? Anyway...

Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially….

They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a truck.

It’s a series of tubes.

And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

It's patently obvious that he (and most of congress apparently) have absolutely NO IDEA how this works. Not one f-ing clue. Tubes? "Filled with stuff?" And they're going to decide how it's run? The internet is really not stovepiped like most of the government is, you know?

We need a class of 10-year-olds to go in to Congress and show them how this works. Perhaps with big, simple graphics and very small words.

You can listen to the whole speech (if you can manage to decipher what in the heck he's talking about). It's a complete mess.

Separation? Nah...

Ok, found this on flickr -- The Fundiwhacko Status of Jeebusiosity...an enormous (72') addition to the marquee of a Memphis church.

They're adding a Statue of Liberty...only it's not quite Lady Liberty....she's holding a huge glowing cross and carrying the ten commandments and has JEHOVAH written on her forehead.

An article about how the 'Statue of Liberation' is being erected is here -- and more commentary is here, with more pictures

Does this strike anyone else as really, really odd? And in incredibly bad taste?

Rhetoric

The supreme court has ruled that the "military tribunals" that were designed by our own little Napoleon are not legal. They violate military law and the strictures of the Geneva Convention.

But the rhetoric of the response from the WH is disturbing. Bush calls their decision a "finding," not a ruling. A "finding" is something that occurs in an advisory role.

"We take it seriously" is not the terminology you use when you are responding to a decision you intend to follow.

" I haven't read the whole ruling yet."...... "American people need to know this ruling wont cause killers to be put out on the street. I had a drive by briefing on the way here. We will seriously look at the findings... I will not jeopardize the safety of the American people. I will protect the American people..... I have not had a fully chance to fully review the findings. We take the findings serious. ......."

There is already legislation in the works to grant the king the power to have military tribunals, just like he wants to. Must have really pissed them off, to be told that they were wrong.

Expensive Tastes

We stopped by to pick up some beer for the holiday weekend - since we have houseguests who may want a cold one after househunting, we figured we'd cater to all tastes. We don't usually drink beer -- we're oenophiles (winos, that is), through and through -- but we keep a few bottles of beer around for barbecues and such.

And we're beer snobs. Microbrews and imported stuff only. I honestly don' t like beer...except Smithwicks. Tried it in Ireland and was hooked. I've tried some others and still don't really like them (I'll drink Grolsch, but it's really only for the cool bottles). Anyway, our local liquor store actually ordered Smithwicks specially for me. Yes, I'm spoiled.

So, we had dinner with friend of ours last week, and were discussing "expensive tastes". They mentioned that their son R (our housesitter!) only likes to drink Pellegrino foofy imported sparkly water and has expressed the sentiment that he "only likes Smithwicks" (after tasting it at our house) and that he preferred that over any other beer.

We all laughed, and noted that we all had expensive tastes when we lived at home and mom and dad bought the delicacies, but our tastes certainly changed when it was our own hard-earned pennies shelling out for the six-pack. Certainly, R's tastes would be "adjusted" when he had to pay for them himself.

Which got the Adorable Husband and I to thinking -- perhaps we should encourage expensive taste in beer. If you won't drink the half-water swill that most college students drink, wouldn't you be less likely to overimbibe? If you're shelling out ten bucks for a six-pack, you're not going to gulp it down in the volumes necessary to induce vomiting, like you would a pack of Schlitz, right? Maybe it would lower the incidence of college-student drinking parties if drinking your favorite brew meant that you didn't get to buy food or pay the heating bill or put gas in your car.

If you're willing to drink stuff that's four bucks a case, you probably will drink it. A lot of it, if I remember college students accurately. If you're unwilling to sully your delicate tastebuds unless it's imported german lager in hand-labelled and wax-sealed bottles lovingly brewed by buxom women in traditional farm-maid outfits, you probably aren't going to spend your nights with a beer bong.

Maybe it's a good thing.

Tab A into Slot B-3

My sister is one of the best gift-selectors ever. She puts a ton of thought into each and every gift, and manages to find just what people would like. For my birthday this year she bought me a lovely booksellers bookcase -- you know the kind with a middle angled shelf?

It's quite lovely, but I'm glad that I have the Amazing Fixit Husband to put it together. The instructions are in some odd Chinese-English translation, and there are really only three steps. Step 1 is pretty easy. Step 2 is...well, the exploded diagram is very nice, but it's the most complicated one seen for a simple piece of furniture. Perhaps diagrams to assemble rockets need to be this complicated. Click to have a larger look. It's rather impressive.

Convenient Leaks

Focusing on the whistleblowing as the crime is ridiculous -- and it's a distraction from the fact that it's the action being "outed" that is (possibly) illegal....not reporting it.

Does anyone else find it annoying that the white house classifies the outing of FBI agent Plame as OK, but outing the recent "banking record searches" is treasonous?

I think I understand: It's only treason and a threat to national security if it's information that might make the administration look bad. But they can leak anything they want to with impunity and it's treasonous to question it. Yeah.

Client of Doom

You know, I fit the definition of an idiot -- someone who does the same thing over and over and expects a different result.

And I'm paying for it today.

Sigh. Remember my client-from-hell? The one that very nearly made me have a breakdown? The one that prompted the several months off to decompress? They called again. Instead of saying that I was too busy, booked, or simply unwilling to go...as I type this, I'm sitting in their office trying to fix problems.

Problems caused because they did exactly what I told them not to do.. As in, "If you do X, this will completely fail." No beating around the bush there. So what did they do? X. In spades. I'm seriously considering banging my head against the wall. it would be more satisfying to bang their heads against the wall, but probably less politically correct.

I'm only here for (at most) four days, probably less. But still...what was I thinking?

Sound Bite Politics

This is an old quote -- and an old issue, really, from 2002. But reference to this was posted in one of the forums I frequent, and I found the resolution of the issue to be funny, in a sad, twisted sort of way. Is lying the only thing that this administration can do? And how many people never thought to question Bush's statements?

Back in 2002, Bush made the infamous "trifecta" joke (war, recession, national emergency); it was tasteless at the very least, but he trotted it out so many times, as if this was somehow funny:

And we've got a job to do at home, as well. You know, I was campaigning in Chicago and somebody asked me, is there ever any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at war or had a national emergency or were in recession. (Laughter.) Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta. (Laughter.) [remarks at a GOP luncheon, from whitehouse.gov]

Over and over in speeches, he has said that he promised during his campaign, that he'd only have deficits during time of war, etc. and that all of the current issues make it OK, even good that there is a huge deficit and that he, certainly, isn't to blame. Hey! It's funny, right?

I remind -- I want to remind you what I told the American people, that if I'm the President -- when I was campaigning, if I were to become the President, we would have deficits only in the case of war, a recession or a national emergency. In this case, we got all three. And, therefore, we're recovering from all three

Bush has said at least seven times that he made this statement in Chicago during his campaign. (October 3, March 27, March 28, April 30, May 14, May 20 and June 14). He didn't. I'm sure he wanted it to be true, but -- no.

The truth is simply too good:

By Dana Milbank, Washington Post, July 2, 2002; Page A13
The mystery of the missing trifecta has been solved. Sort of.

In this space last week, it was noted that President Bush often tells audiences that he promised during the 2000 presidential campaign that he would allow the federal budget to go into deficit in times of war, recession or national emergency, but he never imagined he would "have a trifecta." Nobody inside or outside the White House, however, had been able to produce evidence that Bush actually said this during the campaign.

Now comes information that the three caveats were uttered before the 2000 campaign -- by Bush's Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore. The Post's Glenn Kessler found in the archives this promise from Gore: "Barring an economic reversal, a national emergency, or a foreign crisis, we should balance the budget this year, next year, and every year." Gore said that to the Economic Club of Detroit in May 1998, then repeated it at least twice more, in speeches in June and November of that year.

There is still no trace of Bush making such a caveat; in fact, shortly after taking office, he declared that "we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens." On the other hand, Bush can fairly argue that his top economic adviser, Lawrence B. Lindsey, endorsed the caveats during the campaign. When Kessler asked back then about Gore's three exceptions, Lindsey said the same caveats would apply for Bush.

Amusing, at least to me. Sometimes it's hard not to bash the chimp just a little.

XBox rules

Since I am pretty much getting everything I want in the basement (including purple carpet!), I thought that the Adorable Husband should have something he wants. So, with the "reward bucks" we got for buying all our equipment at Best Buy, I picked up an Xbox for him -- and a few games. He is very excited about the prospect of playing Halo 2 on the enormous screen in digital surround sound!

To "check it out", he hooked everything up to the TV in the living room -- and things started going horribly awry. First, I shifted the Xbox while it was playing one of the game dvds. Yes, it was unbelievably stupid, but I did it anyways and amid loud grinding noises and death rattles, the machine ate the DVD. Munged it badly. Then, the dog took a serious dislike to the cords and cables dangling from the front of the television and chewed them off.

Luckily, a new video and audio cable for the thing is only about twenty bucks, and Target is awfully good about taking things back even if you damaged them yourself. But it was one of the those situations where we were thinking, "perhaps we aren't meant to have an Xbox. This might not be a good idea".

I have to admit that I'm a bit worried that the Husband -- who has eyes that are magnetically attracted to any screen -- would head downstairs, turn on the xbox, and only emerge to search for food and diet pop. I might see him once every three days or so! He's been known to lock himself in his office and play computer games for hours on end. I can't really complain much; he finds it relaxing and decompressing, I guess. But the lure of a huge screen and a comfy recliner (and wireless game controller) might be too much.

Accents

Accents are fascinating -- listening to the difference between how I sound now and my family in Minnesota (I haven't lived in MN for seventeen years or so) is always a treat. Occassionally, I still sound like a midwesterner, notably when pronouncing words like 'hose' and 'lose', but the rest of the time I'm twanging with the rest of the Colorodoans. Except when I say 'bag'. The Adorable Husband laughs every time I try.

I also am fascinated by the varieties of accents and regional dialects of English around the world and discovered sounds files on the web that illustrate them. Personally, I could talk to a person with an Irish accent for hours. Just let them read the phone book, I don't care -- I can only hope that we sound as charming and lilting to the Irish ear as they do to us.

At any rate -- for a really interesting set of example of English around the world can be found at the International Dialect of English Archives . Sound files and interviews about English in the United States (by state) are also on the IDEA site.

I found a place to send in your own voice stuff, as well, to be part of the process. Cool, eh?

Dog Days of Erie

Last weekend was Erie's Bark in the Park -- a dog-filled Saturday festival with frisbee contests and a parade. We missed it, since we apparently didn't open the mail, but our local paper had a two-page spread on pictures. This one just made me laugh.

Strange Correlation

There seems to be a strange correlation between me being home and the contractors working on the basement. I thought it was just coincidence, but it experience bears out a simple fact: when I am travelling for work, there's only a 50-50 chance that anyone shows up to work in the basement. On the days I'm home -- well, there were FIVE trucks parked outside today.

The electricians finished today except for a stray smoke detector, the plumber installed all the bathroom fixtures (yah! Flushing toilets!) and the tile is down in the wine cellar. I assume they'll grout tomorrow and wrap up trim this week. I'll post pics tomorrow.

Weird Sailing Factoid

I'm reading bits from Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick online. One of the interesting bits of information is that the Mayflower (of pilgrim fame) was a 180-tun ship -- not "tons". So called because of her ability to carry 180 of the 252 English gallon wine tuns (barrels).

A bit more poking revealed this:

In sixteenth-century England, the size of a vessel was estimated in terms of tunnage --the ships capacity to carry 252 gallon tuns of hogshead barrels of wine. A 50-tun ship could carry fifty hogsheads. The tun was a measure of volume, not weight, and it was hardly uniform. The capacity of a Spanish tun, for example, was considerably less than that of an English tun. Thus a Spanish vessel of 50 tuns was not the same size as a 50-tun English ship.

It was not until much later in the Elizabethan Era that tonnage was used, based on the size and weight of the ship and her displacement in the water. It wasn't a standard measurement for many years.

Powerful Tools

Like most of us, I was horrified to learn that the two missing soldiers had been captured and killed by insurgents in Iraq. There is nothing that can make that story less awful or possibly explain away what happened. But it really hit home to me how powerful the propaganda machine in the US is.

News reports I heard said that two American soldiers were kidnapped by insurgents, during an attack on their unit. Newspaper articles used the same terminology.

Military personnel participating in a military action/war are not "kidnapped". They are captured or taken prisoner.

I strongly suspect that the word "kidnapped" was used deliberately by the Pentagon to avoid the military connotations of these deaths, and the news organizations have carefully followed suit. The soldiers are described as victims of a criminal act, not an act of war as participants in a military action. If our soldiers were "taken prisoner" by the insurgents, than captured insurgents would be legitimate and would obviously have the status of prisoners of war -- and therefore the protection of the Geneva Convention. That doesn’t quite fit in with the current ideology of the government.

This doesn’t lessen the violence of the act, nor minimize the soldier’s participation – but it was one of the most obvious cases of spin I’ve seen lately. I don’t like it – words are powerful tools; they can be used to persuade or bully with surprising ease. The talking points from the military on this incident were carefully calculated to be emotional and have a specific effect – See how different the two statements below are:

Two soldiers were kidnapped by insurgents today

Two soldiers were taken prisoner by insurgents today

The first is the act of madmen who don’t play by the rules. The second is the act of a military force in war.

Without the ability to portray the “other” as terrorists and madmen who cannot be recognized as actual enemy combatants, it gets harder to make the actions of the US acceptable. Semantics, perhaps but powerful semantics.

In Good Company?

Jay Leno:

"Republicans in the Senate have announced they are moving on from gay marriage ... to a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning. ... We would join the only three other countries who have banned flag burning: China, Cuba and Iran. We can stand with our brothers on this issue."

Yup. We're in good company. Yet another ridiculous issue to draw attention away from the monumental failures of this administration --oh! Yes! Gotta stop those flag-burners. Yeah, that's an important issue. We're wasting time on this? Apparently the GOP wants you to believe that this a top issue for the public. It doesn't even show up on the radar for most people. Definitely in touch with reality, eh?

The Adorable Husband has very strong opinions about this -- and as someone who has actually risked their life to defend "the flag", I think he'sgot a point: want to burn the flag? Go ahead, as long as you bought the damn thing. It's just a flag. A symbol. Steal someone else's flag to burn it and he'll kick your ass.

I think it says a lot about the idea to punish flag-burning that the countries that have done this are some of the most appaling offenders of human rights, who value blind obedience and submission to the rule of the government as the most important thing of all. I don't want to be a part of that little clique, thank you very much.

Think about it this way -- one of the few ways to properly dispose of a ragged or dirty flag is by burning. The only difference between the Boy Scouts burning their flags to dispose of them and someone burning one in protest is what they are thinking.

Showcase DVDs for Home Theater

Each time we've changed our surround sound system, we've watched Twister -- yeah, not the best movie, but the sound effects are excellent and we can compare. However, I've seen a number of "recommended" DVDs to show off a new home theater, including Saving Private Ryan and Master and Commander -- both with fabulous sound.

So, in my search to find other movies for the marquee when we get things set up, I tracked down a list of DVDs that are fabulous in a home theater setup. We're going to be very busy.

For Color
Finding Nemo
Amelie
Pleasantville
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Singin' in the Rain
Blue Crush

For Black and White
Citizen Kane
Casablanca
Touch of Evil (restored edition)
The Third Man (Criterion collection)
Sunset Boulevard
Village of the Damned
Down by Law (Criterion collection)

For Picture Detail
Alien (Collector's Edition)
Underworld
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Lawrence of Arabia
North by Northwest
Seabiscuit
Hidalgo
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The Hulk
Starship Troopers (Superbit Edition)

For Surround Sound
Saving Private Ryan
Master and Commander
Das Boot (Superbit Edition)
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
House of Flying Daggers
The World is Not Enough
Apollo 13
Jurassic Park (Superbit Edition)
Fast the Furious (DTS)

All Around Coolness
Kill Bill Vol 1
Spiderman 2 (Superbit Edition)
The Matrix (ultiate collection)
LOTR: Return of the King
Attack of the Clones
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Super Speedway
Days of Heaven
Apocalypse Now

Carpet!

Ah, last week at the client and -- as usual -- things have changed direction dramatically. Not a big deal, but it's been a busy week.

So I drove up to Cheyenne yesterday and back last night...discover CARPET! Yeah! Still a bit of stretching to go -- but isn't the purple fabulous? This is looking down towards where the screen will go in the theater:



I assume they'll be tiling tomorrow and wrap up next week with the plumbing and electrical stuff. I can't wait!!


And (you'll be surprised about this one) we added a huge bookcase in the sitting room, which I'm sure will be full as soon as we can move downstairs! I have four enormous piles of new books in my office that are slated for the "reading room" downstairs. Considering that it was a cool 65 degrees down there when it was 103 (yes, 1-0-3!) yesterday, so I imagine we'll be spending a bunch of time down there. Must buy comfy chairs.

Plague Monkey

Not much posting over the weekend, since the Adorable Husband brought the plague home from work and promptly gave it to me. I actually stayed home sick on Friday (and considering that I was working from home, I felt bad enough not to even try to work and just went back up to bed) and spent the rest of the weekend trying not to fall into a Nyquil-induced stupor. I'm fairly certain that my brain is liquifying and draining out my nose in the form of Snot. Lots and lots and lots of snot. Ugh. Then, of course, the coughing sets in. I slept on the couch most of the weekend.

We did get out and about a bit -- went to The Taste of Louisville on Saturday and wandered a bit along the main street until rain drove us back to the car, and then went over to make an appearance at Rainer's graduation open house before I crashed. We stopped at home only long enough to realize that the painters were trying to gas us out of the house.

Ah -- I should explain. The painters arrived on Thursday and sprayed the walls and ceilings downstairs. The purple is LOVELY. Then they came on Friday to paint trim. We went downstairs after they left and it was...awful. I don't know if it was bad paint, thinned too much, too thick, or what -- but the paint had just slid off the trim in some places, leaving rivulets and blobs and a completely uneven surface. It looked as if it had just been glopped on and when it was partially dry, another layer was sprayed on. I think that they tried to spray a second coat before the first was entirely dry? We took pictures and sent off an email to the contractor, basically asking, "what the hell?" Obviously there had been some sort of problem. I had no doubt that they were going to fix it, but 'fixing' in my mind was not just repainting, but sanding a LOT.

So, at 8;30 on Saturday, the painters returned and, apparently, were using solvent to remove the paint from the trim and start again. It smelled so strongly of paint thinner/airplane glue in the house we were a bit concerned for the guys in the basement. It was unbearable -- and even though it was 90+ degrees outside, we opened the whole house and fled.

But, it seems to have worked. After another day of work, the paint is smooth and neat. Much, much better. We've been very happy with all the work the contractor has done -- even if they don't seen to be able to stick to a schedule to save their lives. I know that it's a busy season, and that it's hard to get everything scheduled tightly, but....c'mon, people -- let's have a reasonable schedule and communicate changes. The Adorable Husband reminded me (just as I was going to launch into a truly great rant) that we did tell them that we weren't on a tight schedule, had basically said, "whenever" when asked when it needed to be done. So -- we reaped what we sowed, I guess. Perhaps if I'd been more pushy about sticking to the schedule before, we wouldn't have any problems now. I'm getting a bit irked that the contractor hasn't called me to "check in" at all in the last two weeks. I've been travelling, it's true, but they should still pop by to make sure things are going ok. I'm pretty much home full-time after this week (working on a local project) so we should see better progress, I hope.

There is still some touch up to do for painting, but I imagine that they'll have the carpet in this week and the electricians and plumbers back to wrap up. The purple velvet drapes (10 pairs) arrived last week, and the theater chairs are being delivered to a local moving company in a few days, to be delivered to us when the carpet goes in. Everything else is staged and ready to go!

I am Such an Enabler

The neighbors all have puppies, and I have to satisfy myself with The Daily Puppy.

Huh? Wha?

I am so embarassed that Wayne Allard is from my state. This is a guy who has supported (if not sponsored) just about every regressive, medieval, wackoloon proposal in congress. The current distraction from the administration? Marriage is under attack! Oh, yes. Those dastardly gays are trying to ruin The American Way by marrying, didn't you know?

Yeah, right. This pops up every time the poll numbers go down. I guess they hope that this will rile up the fundamentalist arm of the party and appease them so they vote "properly" in the next election. Don't we have better things to worry about?

I am stilll waiting for ONE actual argument as to how gay marriage would "damage" marriage. Oh, wait. Allard is trying to argue that gay marriage would contribute to the "epidemic of fatherlessness" in the US today. Huh? How would banning two men from marrying keep deadbeat dads around for their children? Really, can we at least try to make a coherent, logical argument?

Every "argument" that I've seen ends up being "Eeeu!". The ICK factor. Some people (who apparently think waaaay too much about what people are doing in the privacy of their own homes), are squicked out by what they think gay couples do. The whole 'defense of marriage' is based entirely on trying to enforce one particular religious view (that homosexuality is a) a chosen lifestyle and b) an abomination. Newsflash, people -- neither of these statements is anything close to factual, and not everyone agrees with your view. Making up "facts" and preposterous sky-is-falling hysteria is one sign that your position is wrong.

"We have lost our moral compass. We need to get back to the biblical definition of marriage!" they cry, awash in righteous indignation that we don't all take up pitchforks and pikes and storm the castle of rationality. The laughable thing is that they have rarely actually read the bible (except the teeny bits they are taught in church) and are woefully ignorant of just what it is they are espousing. Back to "traditional" marriage of the bible is not quite the Leave-it-to-Beaver model they seem to think it is.

First off -- let's understand that the one-woman-one-man model of marriage is a relatively modern invention and for most of human history, we have been polygamous. Men have had many wives as the norm for most civilizations. The bible doesn't abjure men to cleave to one woman, but to many. But, there are some interesting bits in the bible about the details....{the details here come from a number of posts, but I went to read the citations} Gen 29:17-28 , II Sam 3:2-5 Exodus 21:10 -- And more (Genesis 26:34, Gen 28;9, Dt 21:15, Judges 8:30...(check more here)

The reality of history in biblical times is that men had multiple wives. This was normal and acceptable. Because most (not all) societies have been male-dominated, and because women often died early in childhood, multiple wives made sense and was a cultural norm. It still is in some cultures. I don't know about you, but that's not going to work for me.

Oh -- and concubines? Sure! Can have those, too -- II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21. and many, many others. High-ranking men often had official wives (usually married for political reasons, which has been the reason for most marriages in history) and other concubines, if they could afford them. Once again, not really gonna work for me.

Only virgins can marry, of course (Deut 22:13-21) (for women only, and women who aren't virgins at marriage? Stoned to death. Men who are not virgins? Well, men are different, doncha know.

Is this beginning to sound familiar? Sounds pretty much like a middle-eastern religious-based set of laws, doesn't it? Sounds pretty much like the modern way of life in arab countries, right? Like the rules in Afghanistan? Well, it should. That is the environment in which the bible was written and collated, so that is the mindset it represents. In this particular worldview, sex is evil and women are most certainly not equal partners but should be viewed with deep suspicion and controlled completely. That's pretty much the story for most societies up to (and in some ways including) our own.

(and, if you argue that all of these citations are from the Old Testament and, well, we all know the new convenant makes those null and void...well, you better stop using all of those OT cites to prove your points in other arguments, too. Can't pick and choose.)

The people arguing for a "traditional" marriage are trying to create some made-up version of what they think marriage should be and are trying desperately and shrilly to force everyone to ignore the fact they they don't have any rational basis for their arguments. Nada.

It's all a worthless exercise, anyways. It's only on the table now to keep attention away from the problems Bush has with the war in Iraq, foreign policy, domestic policy, and pretty much everything else he's touched. The truly fanatical conservative part of the GOP is not happy with their golden boy -- he didn't merge religion and politics and government enough to please them. Hopefully, people see this whole thing for what it is: distraction and a pathetic attempt to pander to voters by lying to them.

Public Accountability? Nah

From Truthout.org.

The Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has declared itself exempt from a yearly requirement to report how it uses its power to classify secret information. Basically, what they do is no one's business. Hundreds of thousands of pages are evaluated by the Information Security Oversight Office -- but only one teeny note arrived from Cheney's office explaining why he wasn't going to disclose anything...for the third year in a row.

Though not the only government entity to shrug off the reporting duties, Cheney's office is unique in that it has actually issued a public justification for its non-compliance. Cheney's office argued on Monday that its dual role in the federal government places it above the reporting mandate.

"This matter has been carefully reviewed, and it has been determined that the reporting requirement does not apply to [the Office of the Vice President], which has both executive and legislative functions," Lea McBride, a spokesperson for Cheney's office, told The NewStandard.

Cheney's press aides declined to specify to TNS how the office's legislative role effectively exempted it from the executive order, or why the office had complied prior to 2003.

And we live in a democracy? 'For the people, by the people" and all that? Really?

Way to much Time

Everyone has a hobby that they love despite the fact that it's weird or time consuming or expensive. Tying flies, collecting cows, building chairs, playing computer games..something.

But there are limits, you know? If your hobby includes dressing up a guinea pig, I think some invisible line has been crossed from hobby to bizarre obsession. Designing and sewing themed costumes for your guinea pigs must be a symptom of something. I'm not sure what it is, but can it possibly be good?

Actually, I'm more worried about the people who buy these little costumes -- although the expression on the guinea pig's face is priceless.

History of Dance

And now, the History of Dance [ video from youtube.com ]

Interface Design Patterns

If you haven’t checked out Safari Online Bookshelves, it’s definitely worth a look – hundreds (thousands?) of technical books online and readable from cover to cover. I’m in love.

I’ve also been reading an absolutely fascinating book on designing interfaces (called, surprisingly enough, Designing Interfaces, by Jennifer Tidwell). Even you don’t do this sort of thing for a living, it’s a really interesting look at how we approach new software or new objects that we have to interact with (from ATMs to programming your cellphone). It talks about how we use familiar gestures to interact with new objects (well, there was button like this on my last phone, so this must do the same thing!) to how our expectations of how things behave impacts our choices.

Yeah, my geek-o-meter is clicking wildly, but I love this sort of thing.

When All Else Fails...

Change the rules! That seems to be the idea in the current administration when challenged on their ‘torture policy’. A new version of the Army Field Manual contains very ambiguous statements regarding torture and allows the US to treat captured prisoners differently depending on how they are ‘classified’. And we all know that King Bush has determined that HE can decide who to imprison and what laws he has to follow.

Obviously, something needed to change to give clearer guidelines to soldiers responsible for the detainment of captured prisoners. But, arbitrarily deciding that the Geneva Convention can be suspended for certain types of prisoners – isn’t that what Bush and his cohort have been trying to do for the last few years?

…Pentagon proposal to have one set of interrogation techniques for enemy prisoners of war and another, presumably more coercive, set for the suspected terrorists imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, said Senate aides, who were granted anonymity because the discussions were confidential.

Obviously, we haven’t seen what the actual text is at this point, but it certainly sounds like it attempts to bypass the “uniform standard” required by the torture amendment passed last year. .And the Pentagon’s behavior in the last few days has been awfully suspect as well – when the content of the new manual was leaked, they suddenly decided that not everyone really needed to be briefed.

Lawmakers expected to see the new document last month. However, the Pentagon canceled those briefings and instead described the manual to only a handful of senior senators and aides. As the dispute with Congress has grown, the military has continued to delay the document's release — and defense officials say they do not know when they will release the new manual. [LA Times]

Most of the issues circle around torture – since we already know that Bush has exempted himself from having to follow the rules set out in the McCain measure via a signing statement (because he apparently didn’t have the balls to actually live up to his threat to veto the defense authorization bill if the amendment wasn’t removed), I’m not surprised at the current brouhaha.

The really unfair part about all of this? The assmarmots who are writing the new “rules” will never, ever have to live by them. They’ll never be held accountable. The only people being pilloried and blamed for torture are the lowest-level soldiers. If they follow the new manual, they are effectively being set up as war criminals by the very people who are supposed to be supporting them.

Casing the Joint

On Saturday morning, we saw a white van parked in front of our house, and I glimpsed a guy walking along the side of the house. With the basement work, we didn’t think too much of it initially, but then noticed that it was an eletrician’s van and no electricians were supposed to be working. Hm. Suspcious – but by the time we went outside to check, he’d gone.

 

The same day, we got the newsletter from the HOA – which included a notice to report a ‘strange white work van, parking on the street at night, and disappearig by 7am’.

 

When it was sitting in the culdesac this morning, the Adorable Husband called the police. The officer was still sitting by the van, waiting for the guy to return when I left for work. This person has apparently been casing construction sites and stealing stuff – tools, dryers, etc. They think he’s targeting the huge development behind us, which has half a dozen houses partially finished. Or, he may have been wandering around our house to see what was available.  The poor dogs are so confused about people in the house that I don’t think they’d bark at anyone!

At any rate, I had to call the basement people at six this morning to tell them that the house was locked up tight (we’d been leaving the basement windows unlocked, so they could come and go at will) and that they needed to lock it up when they left.  Fun. NOT.

Exclusionary Baseball

I'm not much of a baseball fan (not one at all, really), but this announcement by our very own Rockies team is just too much. They are apparently looking for "players with character", which in translation means: players who have "accepted jesus as their personal savior".

Oh, goody. They are going to be an overt "christian" team. They're going to issue "special vouchers" to christian fans for special concerts after games and testimonials by their god-blessed players. The team is quite sure that god has something to do with their winning record and will continue to give them an advantage over other teams because they have "more character."

I can't decide if this is insulting to everyone who is not christian, or just sad. From the author of The Nation's article,

The Rockies right now are a noxious reflection of a time in US history when generals speak of crusades and the President recounts his personal conversations with Yahweh. ("You're doing a heckuva job, Goddy!")

If Monfort, O'Dowd and Hurdle want to pray on their own time, more power to them. But the ballpark isn't a church. Smoltz isn't a preacher. And fans aren't a flock. Instead of using their position of commercial power to field a God Squad, the Rockies might want to think about getting some decent players. There was once this guy named Babe Ruth. Not too much for the religion, and his character was less than sterling. But I hear he could play some decent ball.

I wonder how this will really affect their attendance nunbers. I never went to a game, so losing me isn't even noticeable, but there are a lot of people here who are not so excited about the predominance of religion in public life. How difficult is it to understand that not everyone believes the same things, and that fact is a Good Thing?

Normandy, Shnormandy

In an attempt to (defend? explain?) the massacre at Haditha, Bill O'Reilly boldly asserted that US soldiers have committed atrocities in past wars; specifically that they had killed unarmed, surrendering germans at Malmedy in WWII.

You can watch the whole exchange (with Wesley Clark, starting at about 3 1/2 minutes) where he tries to argue that "it's ok" because:

"In Malmedy, as you know" Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday night, in some indecipherable attempt to defend the events of Haditha, "U.S. forces captured S.S. forces who had their hands in the air and were unarmed and they shot them dead, you know that. That's on the record. And documented."

Not only did he get it COMPLETELY WRONG -- it was Americans (84 of them) killed by Germans in Malmedy -- how in the hell is this supposed to "excuse" the behavior in Haditha? And he repeated the same story more than once. If it was a mistake, there are still some serious issues with the whole argument:

Arguing that it's ok to commit a crime because the same crime was committed in the past? That's just wrong -- morally, ethically,and intellectually. I'm quite sickened by the thought.

Arguing that it's ok to commit a crime because the opposing side has "done worse"? Who is setting the moral bar here? Us or them? This is also just wrong -- morally, ethically, and intellectually.

Equating the deaths of innocent civilians to those of combatants is off the mark as well. Civilians are to be protected, not attacked. It's wrong to kill a solider who has surrendered, but to attack and kill non-combatants swings so far over that line that it's just ...evil.

I really can't figure out just what O'Reilly was trying to do here. I really can't. Neither can most people. I don't want to believe ill of our soldiers -- but if this incident went down as reported, trying to justify it in any way is morally repugnant.

And, in an attempt to whitewash the whole problem, the transcript from FOX news changed Malmedy to Normandy. Olbermann discusses the entire thing here.

On, Blitzen!

American Family Association is starting early this year to beat the "War on Christmas" drum:

Don't let the anti-Christmas crowd kick Christ out of Christmas this year
Companies are now working on their Christmas promotions. [...]
Now is the time to let the retailers know that if they ban the use of the term Christmas, you will not be shopping with them during the Christmas season!

Yadda yadda yadda.

As I've posted before -- since when is rampant consumerism part of the christian tradition? And, more importantly, why do they think it's ok to demand that their particular winter religious holiday take precedence over every other one? Wishing people joy and happiness during a season with many different religious observances seems to me to be a Good Thing. Does it really matter how you do it?

If it's genuine (and frankly, the mumbled "greetings" of store clerks can't really be seen as anything more than politeness, certainly not meaningful disdain for christianity), then it should be taken in the spirit in which it was given. If I greet someone with a sincere 'Happy Holidays!' shouldn't that be enough? (I'll point out here that even as a godless heathen I still say Merry Christmas -- but I respond to any holiday greeting, be it christmas, kwaanza, whatever, with a smile and thankyou.)

I've never heard of anyone being shunned or criticized for actually saying Merry Christmas. Lots of stories of people being confronted for NOT saying it, though. Aren't there better things to be cross about?

So what if you say Happy Holidays. It's inclusive. Oh, wait -- maybe that's the problem. By acknowledging that there are people with different beliefs they somehow feel diminshed? Why? I really don't get it.

And the story NOW is...

Poor, sad, maligned JC-Hosting. Yeah, respond to a legitimate request for data on a site you shut down with no notice, and it's someone else's fault. You poor, poor baby. If, as you said, AW was over its bandwidth limits, then charge them -- that's what a professional hosting service would do.

James makes all these rather pitiful excuses for why they pulled the site (note he's now denying that Barbara Bauer had anything to do with it, which he's contradicted in several places) and blaming those awful people at AW for making him look bad. Oh, and he's also claming that this whole problem is actually increasing his business, because his new customers know that he won't allow spammers and scam artists to shut down their site. Um, like you did for Absolute Write? Yeah, I'm believing that.

Even if there were problems -- and to be fair, there might have been. AW is a large site with a lot of activity -- even if...you deal with it professionally. You don't deny access to the site and data and you (gasp!) TALK to the offending webmaster. This whole screed sounds a bit like sour grapes and CYA for someone who made a bad decision and just can't own up to it. Far too many coincidences, if you ask me. Classifying a whole community of writers as "hacks" and insinuating that they are all annoyed "PA authors" (PA being Publish America, a huge scam publisher) is just the sort of ad-hominem attack I'd expect from someone trying to deflect blame and figure out what their story is. It's easy enough to prove one way or another -- claim that the webmaster sent you emails? Well, you still have them, don't you? (Although, to be sure, now that lawyers are involved (at least on AW's side), no one can do that. )

I definitely won't consider hosting with them, and will make sure to tell anyone asking me for advice to avoid JC-hosting.

On a lighter note -- it looks like they finally did (at midnight on the first of the month) allow the webmaster back in to download/backup the data and restoring and testing in progress. Hope it works.

Feeling Any Better Yet?

Well, Barbara Bauer, PhD (which is how she apparently likes to be addressed) has lots and lots of visibility in the web-world. I've been reading blog after blog today. The 20 Worst Agents list now comes up second on both Yahoo and Google when you search on her name. Only a few weeks ago, it didn't even show up on the first two pages. When this debacle started, it was somewhere around 25th.

Bet that's not quite what she expected, hey?

AbsoluteWrite is back up, and trying to get the forums working again.

Picking Fights and Losing

About a week or so ago, a writers forum that I frequent (Absolute Write) was yanked by the hosting company because a scam artist "literary agent", Barbara Bauer was a bit put out by her name being listed on the 20 Worst Agents list -- she called the hosting company and apparently threatened lawsuits and bad publicity and whatnot. Her reason? They "posted her email address and that caused spam" or some nonsense and she cited the DMCA as proof that the ISP would be liable.

This is not illegal, and it's not a DMCA claim.

The ISP shut down Absolute Write anyway. Her email is posted on her own site, so the idiot at the hosting company who responded by pulling the plug was ill-informed about law or just plain stupid. This same "agent" has threatened to sue for -- get this -- one billion dollars for the "use of her name" on Writer's Weekly forums.

This is utterly ridiculous. And to add insult, the hosting company JC-Hosting in Nashville, TN, has refusedto give the site owner access to the database so she can move the forum elsewhere. The forum is populated by 7000+ writers, and is extremely busy and the archives contain several years woth of people's writing and comments. Bad move.

They have changed their story several times on why they "pulled the plug" and each story is getting thinner than the last. Now, they claim that it was "bandwidth overages" and this was just the catalyst for their actions. Of course, they are "saints" to put up with this, and everyone on the AW forums are horrible poeple who just want to malign them. (Sound like any three-year olds you know?)

And to add a new twist to the story? The owner of the hosting company just opened up her own writing forum -- and apparently invited many people from the AW forums to join. Ah, no.

This has pissed off a lot of people -- and they are not the quiet type.

Making Light
RichardCobbet.co.uk
KuroShin.org
Nanowrimo.org
Digitamedievalist.com
ChillingEffects.com
Amazon.com
Chatworthy Blog
Apocalypse Cow
Twiliterary.com
DeborahWoehr Blog
The Good Web Guide
Tailrank.com
Miss Snark LIterary Agent
BoingBoing
Technorati Listing of all blogs
NVCN id Vides
Juliawrites

And a Technorati tag, just for fun:
BarbaraBauer

and, quite literally HUNDREDS more posts and blogs and articles about this fiasco that are linked from those above. I'm sure that Ms. Bauer and her 19 worst-agent friends have spent a lot of time in the last few days throwing up.

Want publicity? You got it. It just ain't gonna be good.

It's simply not a good idea to pick a fight with the internet.

Roaming Porch Chairs

Well, the rocking chairs on the porch finally succumbed. The wind has picked them up too many times and skidded them across the driveway -- A few times in the high winds they rocked their way across the porch and then flung themselves willy-nilly into the concrete. Usually we'd hear the racket and make it outside just in time to keep them from going walkabout in the field behind the house. They kept trying to migrate, or something. We even wedged them up against the house, but they'd manage to sneak their way to the edge of the porch and away they went.

I'm surprised, actually. They're pretty heavy. Apparently, they are quite aerodynamic, too.

Sitting in them had become a delicate balancing game and they were creaking alarmingly.And the Amazing Fix-It Husband was unable to actually get them solid again. So, we went off to look for New Chairs. This is very stressful for us. We did, however, after five different trips, find really nice, solid metal-framed wicker chairs and two small tables. Success!

Worst Technology Ever

Well, we all knew it. AOL is horrible. Insultingly patronizing, and then -- when you learn there are better things out there -- impossible to leave.

PCWorld has published a list of the top 20 Bad Technologies...or would that be the bottom 20. At any rate, it's an amusing trip down memory lane for us techno-geeks. Yup, we remember these things, and usually we cringe.

Here's the top offenders...you just knew that MS Bob was going to show up, right? What I want to know is, where is Clippy?

1. America Online (1989-2006)
2. RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
3. Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
4. Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
5. Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
6. Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
7. Microsoft Bob (1995)

More at their site -- with pictures.

Da Vinci Code

We actually saw Da Vinci Code last weekend –despite the wildly varying reviews, and we really did like it. It’s a bit slow in places, and sometimes there is a “lecture” quality to the dialog but all in all, it was a fun movie, beautifully filmed, and defintely a fun movie. It’s not moviemaking genius, but any means, but who cares? The music is great (I really like Hans Zimmer) and the scenery in Paris and London is great.

I liked the book. It was fast-paced, interesting, and if it was a bit predictable, I still read it in a single sitting. I belong to a number of writers’ forums and the sheer venom directed towards Dan Brown as “a hack”, “the worst writer ever”, “complete trash” is startling. At some level, it starts to sound as if some people don’t like the book simply because it’s so popular. If so many people who normally read Harlequin romances and People magazine liked the book, it obviously can’t have any literary value. Just a wee bit of literary snobbery, in my opinion. Is it good literature? No. In some cases, Brown writes incredibly clunky, amateurish prose. His dialog can be laughable. But the plot is tight and moves quickly and you want to know what happens. He’s a good storyteller, even if he is not an artist with words. I don’t understand the very vocal condemnation of the book based on “historical fact”…c’mon, people. It’s FICTION. Fic-tion. While based on some history, and some rather specious religious conspiracy, there is enough of a plausible story there to make a good novel. Many of the facts are right on and verifiable, and the representation of the history of the christian church is pretty close. But some of the other stuff in the book? A bit harder to support. Brown gets a lot of criticism for gettig some facts wrong (geography, albinos, etc) but on the core stuff he’s pretty close – changing what he needed to make the story work. Because….

Once again, repeat after me…FICTION. The giant hoo-hah from the religious right over banning this movie, or protesting it, and spending so much time trying to “prove” that it was wrong – what a waste of time. All it does is convince people who might not be terribly interested to go see the movie, to see what the hoopla is about.

If your faith is so weak and flimsy as to be threatened by being exposed to alternate views, then perhaps you really do have reason to worry about the impact of the Da Vinci Code. Intelligent people question their beliefs, and consider opposing ideas before just blindly accepting one view. Perhaps that is the problem. If you have to think about something, and there are plausible ideas you need to consider, then you can’t just retreat into the safety of what you’ve been told. I suppose I have to like any book that at least prompts people to start talking about things.

Perhaps, from work

Just testing if I can actually post to the blog from work, when I can’t actually access the webpage. Theoretically, this should world.

Lovely weekend – very busy. We went to see ‘Into the Woods’ at the Longmont Theater on Friday night. I love musicals, the Adorable Husband humors me. It’s a small local theater, and the show was very good. We also saw X-Men 3 in the afternoon – lots of fun.

Saturday we had our friends over for fondue again…and we were all lounging around the table, drinking wine, and realized it was 2am. I’m getting way too old for that sort of nonsense. At least it was a holiday weekend, so we could sleep in (and sleep in we did – ‘til nearly eleven!). Great food, a few spirited arguments about religion and politics. We always enjoy having them over.

Yesterday we wandered the Boulder Creek Arts Festival and post-BolderBoulder party and saw the a capella group <a href=”www.faceonline.biz”>Face</a> (which was founded by a family friend). Absolutely phenomenal concert – seven men, no instruments. I’m still trying to figure out how the “rhythm section” guy was able to make all those sounds only with his voice.

So here goes – emailing the blog entry….

Dungeon Update!

Finally! More pictures and noticeable progress. I haven't posted pictures in a while, since the difference between 'wallboard up', 'wallboard taped', and 'textured' is not terribly noticeable . And, of course, things sped up dramatically once I was back at home a few days a week.

But we finally have DOORS and WINDOWS and the trim is going up. Yeeha! I assume they have another two days of trim work (we have complicated door and window headers) and then painting. We had hoped to have things done before my Dad is here, but the schedule looks like we're about two weeks out from having things finished completely. The painting might be done by the time he's here, but no carpet yet.


So -- pictures: The theater is the most interesting -- the crown molding will hide rope lights in the ceiling, and the round holes in the walls are for single-light sconces like those we have upstairs. The rest of the holes are speakers. The french doors do have glass in them, it's just papered over during construction.

The bathroom is relatively small, and the big solid door is to the wine cellar. We were laughing that it could be used as a scream-therapy room -- 8" of insulation and a solid-core door...no one's going ot hear a thing!


They haven't closed in the pop machine. Every time we look at it, Ethan (the contractor) sort of looks at it, puts his hand to his chin, and murmurs, "ahhh. Yes." He says he has a plan. The exercise room is pretty small and with all the hvac and plumbing, the ceiling is low in places. We have so many soffits, etc, because the ceiling is low and much of the vents hang down below the ceiling level. The Adorable Husband swears that the next house will have 12' ceilings in the basement. Or more

Big Brother Really IS Listening

Not worried about the NSA listening in on your phone conversations or emails? Think they aren't in your neck of the woods compiling lists of everything that goes through the wires?

Not likely. Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago...and hundreds of other cities, are part of the AT&T network that can be (or may already be) monitored...with the help of AT&T.

The web that is AT&T .

Tacky Tacky

Ken Lay needs to pay his legal fees. So, he's trying to get the University of Missouri to return a 1.1 million dollar endowment that he gave them in 1999 for an Economics Chair. He initially wanted it back to donate it to charity after Hurrican Katrina (good intentions, at least, if a bit questionable given his previous somewhat shady donations), but when when that didn't materialize, he wants it back to pay legal fees. Um, no. That's not the way it works.

"[The trustee] came expecting to get a check and made clear it was to clear legal fees," says Scott Charton, director of university communications. The meeting was fairly tempestuous, involving threats of litigation. In any case, according to a statement Missouri released on Monday, the university’s general counsel concluded, after talking to the state attorney general, that there were "legal questions" concerning the propriety of returning the funds. The Missouri constitution doesn't allow public funds to be given to private concerns — either to Lay or his charities.

Tacky, eh? I suppose it would have been helpful, now that he's been found guilty on all counts.

Government Secrets

Once again, this administrations is hiding the things it does, all in the name of the "war on terra". I, for one, am getting heartily sick of hearing about Bush avoiding the law, flouting the rules, and redefining the role of presidential power to allow him to be king. The latest sure looks to me like he's covering his ass over the illegal wiretapping and phone logging -- simply don't allow anyone to talk about it:

President Bush has granted his intelligence czar the authority to exempt publicly traded companies from reporting requirements — in the name of national security. [from APR]

DAWN KOPECKI: The President just delegated authority to John Negroponte that allows him to exempt any publicly traded corporation that is working on national defense issues or national security issues from the reporting and accounting requirements under the 1934 Securities and Exchange Act. It's basically the rules and regulations that require companies to keep accurate records, acurate books, accurate accounting . . . and then disclose those projects and that information to investors.

RYSSDAL: The memo that the President signed was dated May 5. Talk to me about the timing of this for a second.

KOPECKI: Well, May 5 is the day that Porter Goss stepped down from the CIA. It's also six days before USA Today published its story that three major telephone companies had turned over massive amounts of customer calling records to the federal government, that the NSA was using to data-mine and look for patterns and, basically, spy on.

RYSSDAL: Now, if you play this out, conceivably what this rule now means is that AT&T and Bell South and Verizon, who have these government contracts — it's been reported in the papers — have these government contracts to sell customer data to the government, they may never have to report that income or how the finances of that program worked.

Yeah. I feel safer. Lots safer. What about you?

The Benefits of a Handy Husband

Once again, my absolute faith that the Adorable Husband can Fix Anything has been rewarded. The sprinkler system has been on the fritz for a while (the drop zone doesn't work automatically and had to be turned on at the valve each time) and finally gave up the ghost and began leaking.

We've been ignorning the problem, really. It's not a huge deal to turn it on and off. But, the leaking was definitely an issue. So, he replaced the valve -- no joy. Tested all the wiring -- no joy. But he did eventually figure it out, and replaced all the wire connectors and (with the help of a multimeter and other tools that he has out in the garage)...voila! Working valve. Yeah!

An no one had to dig up the yard, no wire had to be pulled, and we only had to make THREE trips to Lowe's for parts.

I assume that he can fix everything. So far, I've been right.

Much better hotels

I got to spend the night at home last night, and drove back up to Cheyenne this morning. It's really not a bad drive, not much traffic. I wsa up and out of the house by 6am, which is pretty much the buttcrack of dawn for me. I hate mornings.

The poor Adorable Husband had to roust me out of bed at six, which is always a bit risky for him. I'm not the most pleasant person before I actually wake up (which is somewhere between one and three hours after I get out of bed) and he is just as likely to startle me into leaping out of bed with a snarl as he is to manage to wake me up and get me steered into the bathroom without incident. Then I stand in the shower for twenty minutes or so. He, of course, is perky in the morning. It's a tradeoff -- perky and alert in the morning equals somnolent by eight pm. Me? I hit my stride about midnight. I really got used to being nocturnal when I was off work.

Well, the hotel tonight is lovely -- internet access (free!), big tv, new bed. Not gold and roccoco with gilt mirrors. Much better. Of course, it's near train tracks, so I can hear the train whistles as if they are in the next room, but couple that with the sound of jets overhead from the nearby airforce base and it's barely noticeable.

People eating alone (probably more so women eating along than men) seem to make waitstaff nervous. I usually take along a book to read, or a book of crossword puzzles to do while I eat, and I don't mind being alone...unless the waiter (waitperson? what's the right term now?) decides that I need to be "amused" and that it must be the worst thing on earth to have to eat in a restaurant by myself. They hover, they make weird small talk, they keep interrupting, as if I couldn't possibly be interested in reading a book over dinner and have to be saved from a fate worse than death. The good ones realize that I'm fine, I just need regular refills of diet coke and a box for leftovers...the rest? Well, here's a tip: you aren't going to get much of a tip if you actually sit down at the table with me and make like we're long-lost pals. Unless you look like Colin Farrell, this is not going to impress me much.

Unfortunately, no hockey for me tonight unless I head off into the smoke-filled bar down the road. I'd forgotten that not ever state bans smoking in restaurants. It's startling to be asked 'smoking or non?' when I walk in, and I'm seriouslly apalled at the concept of smoking int he same place people are eating. Bars here are cloudy with smoke, and that's about the only place that gets enough satellite channels to show the Stanley Cup games.

Not that the Avs are going to win. I'm quite sure they're going to go out with a bang, though. Too bad, we'll have the basement done and set up with the theater in time for the actual Stanley Cup games. There isn't even a team I like remaining.

As for basement news -- I have pictures, which are unfortunately on my desktop machine at home -- of the walls up and taped and mudded. Lovely! They actually look like rooms now, and I assume they'll be in to sand and do the texturing. Personally, I hate textured walls, but hte rest of the house is this low knockdown finish, and we want to match. It's easier for the drywall guys, too -- they can be less precise. When we had the kitchen in the other house done, I wanted a "levvel 5" finish, which took them THREE tries to get right and it still wasn't actually smooth. This bumply stuff hides a multitude of sins.

I'll post the pictures when I get home tomorrow!

Tax Savings and 1972 hotels

I can't blog from work -- heck, I can't even access yahoo from the office at the moment. And, the hotel that I checked into last night in Cheyenne (at the recommendation of several people) was a shining monument to the decorating style of the early 1970s, which was the last time it was remodelled, I"m sure. Gold carpet, rococo lamps and mirrors, gilt wallpaper. It was...wow. And had no internet access, despite loudly proclaiming that it did on the web site.

Anyway, drove home to spend the night in my own bed (it's about a 1 1/2 hour drive from Cheyenne) and will head back out tomorrow, spend the night there and drive back Friday. Not too bad.

But, I ran across this article -- touting the "tax plan" that was just agreed to by congressional republicans

House and Senate Republican negotiators reached a final agreement yesterday
on a five-year, nearly $70 billion tax package that would extend President
Bush's deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains, while sparing
about 15 million middle-income Americans from the alternative minimum
tax

So, how much does this really help the "middle class"? It's surprising how many people think that the tax cuts are really helping the little guy. The truth is, it's aimed directly at those in the top 5% or so. Here's how much you might actually benefit from this:

Income, in 2005 dollars Average tax saving
$10,000-20,000          $2
$20,000-30,000           9
$30,000-40,000          16
$40,000-50,000          46
$50,000-75,000         110
$75,000-100,000        403
$100,000-200,000     1,388
$200,000-500,000     4,499
$500,000-1 million   5,562
More than $1 mil    41,977 

SOURCE: Tax Policy Center

We have Walls!

Amid a tremendous mess, we have wallboard! Everywhere. Well, mostly everywhere. A few bits needs to be finished (inside the wine cellar) and a few bits need to be redone (wine cellar ceiling).
Actually, I probably won't make them redo the ceiling. We're not going to humidify much, so the ceiling should be fine (the walls are all greenboard already). I already made them move the vapor barrier to the right side of the cellar wall, it's probably not necessary to have them move the entire ceiling. But, there is a section of ceiling that has a pipe that protrudes down. Definitely going to have to fix that!

With all the soffits and beams and cutouts, I can only imagine that they are glad we're doing a knockdown finish (not smooth). It would be a pain in the butt to get this smooth! They've had to glue the wallboard to the bottom of the beams, and in at least one place, it bows quite a bit. I think that's a piece they'll have to replace, too. They really are going to hate me. I should bake more cookies.

At any rate, they should start mudding tomorrow, adn I think by the end of the week they'll have the texture done. Whoohoo!

I'm off to Cheyenne tomorrow morning -- whether to stay there overnight or not I don't know. Things are a bit in the air right now. Other than a 16-page security policy document that I have to sign and directions to the office, I have zippo about what I'm going to do. Should be fine.

We're on a Mission from God.

Bush hasn't seen the new movie Flight 93 yet, but in an interview with CNBC he said that the people on board struck the first blow in WORLD WAR III. Considering that this administration has been specifically denying any "world war III" term since 2002, it's a disturbing comment.

But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd
died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it
"our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war --
World War III".

Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack
to World War III.

Scary. Reminds me of the following:

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will
be fought with sticks and stones. --Albert Einstein

We're on a Mission from God.

Bush hasn't seen the new movie Flight 93 yet, but in an interview with CNBC he said that the people on board struck the first blow in WORLD WAR III. Considering that this administration has been specifically denying any "world war III" term since 2002, it's a disturbing comment.

But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd
died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it
"our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war --
World War III".

Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack
to World War III.

Scary. Reminds me of the following:

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will
be fought with sticks and stones. --Albert Einstein