10 - 2004 | ***Dave Does the Blog

For the record

Granted that its clear intent is to show that the Bush administration is a bunch of evil buffoons, this timeline of goings-on over Dubya’s presidency is useful as we hurtle…

Granted that its clear intent is to show that the Bush administration is a bunch of evil buffoons, this timeline of goings-on over Dubya’s presidency is useful as we hurtle toward election day — and, as with me, you may very well look at some of them and shrug, or even say, “Right on.”

Still, even if (or particularly if) you wade through the spin, it’s a good reminder of some of the things Bush and the GOP have done over the last three-plus years. I’d certainly forgotten some of these gems (though, no, it hasn’t changed my mind).

(via DoF)

Proportionate voting

It makes you wonder. People dislike the Electoral College because of its “winner takes all” nature, discarding the votes in a given state of those who voted for X, if…

It makes you wonder. People dislike the Electoral College because of its “winner takes all” nature, discarding the votes in a given state of those who voted for X, if Y got the majority of votes there. Instead, they argue, we should use the popular vote to elect the president.

But why should we stop with “one man, one vote”? Why is my vote all or nothing to a single candidate? Why should I be forced to vote completely and utterly one way, if my personal inclination is that both candidates are schlubs? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to cast 0.54 votes for Kerry, 0.45 votes for Bush, and 0.01 votes for the Legalize Everything Party?

Do I cast support to more than one candidate? Very well then I cast support to more than one candidate,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.).

Home Improvement a deux

Remarkably enough, not only did we get the garage car-available within days of the in-laws leaving, but we did it in part by actually finishing a bunch of project, including…

Remarkably enough, not only did we get the garage car-available within days of the in-laws leaving, but we did it in part by actually finishing a bunch of project, including the last bit of trim on the inside of the back doors, the trim in the front of the new buffet, and grouting of the tile on same.

That, plus hiring the Boy to sweep leaves, and it was a productive, if not particularly entertaining, Sunday.

Spooky

Every Halloween, we get cold weather and snow. This week it’s been relatively warm and clement. Forecast for tonight …? … Winter Weather Advisory in effect from 6 PM this…

Every Halloween, we get cold weather and snow.

This week it’s been relatively warm and clement.

Forecast for tonight …?

… Winter Weather Advisory in effect from 6 PM this evening to 6 am MST Monday…

The National Weather Service in Denver has issued a Winter Weather Advisory.

Snowfall accumulations of 3 to 6 inches are expected over the Denver/Boulder metropolitan area tonight. This includes eastern Boulder… eastern Jefferson… Denver… eastern Douglas and western Elbert counties. Light to moderate snowfall is expected to develop during the evening and continue through early Monday morning. Snowfall may accumulate at rates up to one inch per hour between 8 PM and midnight. In addition to the snowfall… gusty north winds at 15 to 25 mph with some higher gusts are also expected through the evening. Temperatures will also be dropping into the upper 20s.

Motorists should be ready for winter weather driving conditions to develop. People who expect to be outdoors this evening should also be dressed warm enough to handle the cool temperatures.

Fortunately, the purple kitty has heavy fur …

UPDATE: The current advisory:

… Winter Weather Advisory in effect from 8 PM this evening to 6 am MST Monday…

The National Weather Service in Denver has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for the greater Denver… Boulder metropolitan area.

Snowfall accumulations of 4 to 7 inches are expected in the Denver… Boulder metropolitan area by late tonight. Precipitation may begin as a mixture snow and rain early this evening before quickly turning over the all snow with falling temperatures late this evening. Snowfall should gradually decrease late tonight and end during the morning on Monday. Gusty north winds may also produce some blowing snow late tonight and Monday morning in areas east of the I-25 corridor.

Should be a fun commute.

Our cunning plan gone awry

So last night, before we went to bed, a strategically-placed alarm on my computer reminded us that it was time for us to change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time….

So last night, before we went to bed, a strategically-placed alarm on my computer reminded us that it was time for us to change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time. I dilligently went around the ground floor, changing the VCR, the microwave, the oven. We headed upstairs for bed, and I changed both our alarm clocks.

All was right with the world.

Until, of course, Kitten work up at a few minutes after 7, as the clock in her room informed her. That it was actually a few minutes after 6, instead, was very, very, very, very difficult to convince her of, and required that she come into our room and check both of our clocks. Which, fortunately, we’d reset. That this meant she should go back to her room for another hour was even a more diffucult task.

She did, though, and promptly came in later, about 7:10, to inform us that, “Daddy, it’s after 8 o’clock on my clock so it’s after 7.”

Next year, we change her clock first.

Next fall, that is. I wouldn’t mind the same mistake, in reverse, next spring …

Half-way there!

Two-hundred fifty miles!…

Two-hundred fifty miles!

Die, clown, die!

Came down this morning for a bite to eat before going off to a training session on contemplative discernment. Discerned that someone was in the middle of a trackback ping…

Came down this morning for a bite to eat before going off to a training session on contemplative discernment. Discerned that someone was in the middle of a trackback ping spam attack on this blog. Ran a couple of them through despamming, deleted the rest — and sat here and watched as additional pings crashed against the blacklist. Hah!

My biggest worry is how I’m going to handle that while away on business and vacation. Trackbacks in particular cannot be easily turned off, and MT-Blacklist doesn’t moderate them (for semi-obvious reasons), which creates an annoying window of opportunity.

Still, though it’s not doing much for contemplative state of mind at the moment, I’m feeling rather satisfied.

UPDATE: Whilst I was gone, dude burned up another six hours of futile additional attempts with the same strings. Again, I say: Hah!

UPDATE: Fifteen hours after I initially blocked this guy, and the blacklist log shows his processes still splashing against the filters, once every minute or two now. Over five hundred today. Jeez.

How’s that for a topper?

Okay, I can imagine some folks going for a Star Wars Wedding Cake Top with Han and Leia on it. Not me, since my geekiness is exceeded only by my…

Okay, I can imagine some folks going for a Star Wars Wedding Cake Top with Han and Leia on it. Not me, since my geekiness is exceeded only by my stodginess, but some folk.

But I’m not sure even my geekiest friends — indeed, probably least of all my geekiest friends — would go for a Star Wars Wedding Cake Top option with Luke and Leia on it.

I’m just sayin’.

(Of course, an Anakin and Amadala one would be almost as creepy — and bets that we’ll eventually see that, too?)

(via Anne)

Doors!

Photos of the recently-mentioned new doors (and the construction process thereof) can be found here….

Photos of the recently-mentioned new doors (and the construction process thereof) can be found here.

Heavens

I’m trying to decide if this is one of the better, or worse, reasons to vote one way or another: Planets governing President Bush are eclipsed and in an uncomfortable…

I’m trying to decide if this is one of the better, or worse, reasons to vote one way or another:

Planets governing President Bush are eclipsed and in an uncomfortable position, making his tenure controversial and his re-election bid unsuccessful, the [Indian] soothsayers said on Friday, four days before the vote.

On the other hand, the planets of Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry were in the ascendant, ensuring him success in competitions.

“Saturn, which is the lord of health and fortune for President Bush, has been eclipsed by the Sun, which is unfortunate and gives him a clear defeat,” Lachhman Das Madan, editor of a popular astrology magazine, told Reuters.

“Kerry will win,” said Madan, who is also known as “the emperor of astrologers.” “It is cosmic writ that George W. Bush cannot become president of United States again.”

Bets that, if Bush wins, Pat Robertson will comment on this? (Which, in and of itself, might be a reason to vote …)

Now see the violence inherent in the system! Help! I’m being repressed!

So upon posting my decision to defy The Man, the evil forces of John Ashcroft and Karl Rove immediately (well, an hour or two later) jackbooted the service on my…

So upon posting my decision to defy The Man, the evil forces of John Ashcroft and Karl Rove immediately (well, an hour or two later) jackbooted the service on my host server for a half hour or so. But I won’t knuckle under! Power to the people, man! Power to the people!

Articles of faith

An interesting article via GeekMom on how the “squeaky wheels” of the religious right are improperly shaping the view of religious folk in this country — in part because of…

An interesting article via GeekMom on how the “squeaky wheels” of the religious right are improperly shaping the view of religious folk in this country — in part because of how surveys of religion improperly lump together different threads of religious thought, and in part because of how the media even simplifies things further.

In dividing respondents into three categories besides denomination?”traditionalist,” “centrist,” and “modernist”?the survey still plays into the unsubstantiated popular perception that the most religious people are those with a literalist understanding of scripture (in the case of evangelicals) or a high view of the “tradition” of papal authority (in the case of Roman Catholics). These are the traditionalists. Similarly, the “modernists” in the Green survey?those who answered “yes” to the propositions that religion should be adapted to modern circumstances and that all world religions contain the truth, come out looking merely less observant than their traditional co-religionists. So, when the survey shows “traditionalists” of all denominations having more conservative political views and the “modernists” more progressive ones, we cannot escape from the impression that the most faithful persons among all denominations are politically conservative, rather than concluding that conservative political views seem to coincide with a very specific sort of religiosity.

Where, for example, would the political views of a member of Evangelicals for Social Actions show up in such a survey? Though she might agree that tradition is worth preserving and that scripture is highly authoritative, she would not qualify as an evangelical “traditionalist.” Why? Because rather than focusing her energies on the single passage from Paul’s Letter to the Romans used by antigay members of the religious right, she might instead take seriously the over 2,000 biblical verses relating to poverty and spend her time developing micro-enterprise lending programs in poor countries or advocating increased foreign aid. But she might not qualify as a “modernist” since she could easily disagree that all world religions contained the same truth. This person, like other religious conservatives with socially progressive views, falls below the radar.

Interesting stuff, and challenging for more mainstream Christian denominations to take a more public stand on matters of both spiritual and social importance (to the extent that social issues in fact have a spiritual component).

For your Halloween reading pleasure

The Dionaea House. Nice and spooooky. And it makes me want to write about a dozen things that would all seem terribly derivative … (via Doyce)…

The Dionaea House. Nice and spooooky. And it makes me want to write about a dozen things that would all seem terribly derivative …

(via Doyce)

Angst Watch 2004 – The Decision

Changed my mind again — or, rather, changed my mind about when I was going to post this. Yes, it’s the “Who Am I Going To Vote For President” post…

Changed my mind again — or, rather, changed my mind about when I was going to post this. Yes, it’s the “Who Am I Going To Vote For President” post (may God have mercy on my soul). Read on if you have any interest (and a few minutes).

Continue reading “Angst Watch 2004 – The Decision”

Parts is parts

I found it amusing, as we were watching The Mirror Crack’d this evening, that I knew him as Blofeld, and Margie knew him as The Criminologist. That says a lot…

I found it amusing, as we were watching The Mirror Crack’d this evening, that I knew him as Blofeld, and Margie knew him as The Criminologist.

That says a lot about the two of us.

Coverage

I’m trying to figure out how BBC World can have the following line-up of commentators and analysts for their US election coverage and still maintain some pretence of impartiality: BBC…

I’m trying to figure out how BBC World can have the following line-up of commentators and analysts for their US election coverage and still maintain some pretence of impartiality:

BBC World will also broadcast a special edition of ‘Question Time’ featuring film-maker and author Michael Moore, columnist Richard Littlejohn and former Bill Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal.
Other discussion programmes feature guests such as Madeleine Albright, George Soros and former CIA director James Woolsey.

Albright and Blumenthal both served under Bill Clinton, as did Blumenthal. Woolsey also served under Clinton, though he was hawkish leading up to the war in Iraq. The political opinions of George Soros and Michael Moore are not exactly secrets.

Richard Littlejohn is — well, from the references I can find, he’s a right-wing nutjob British writer.

Now, those aren’t the only folks — perhaps — that BBC World is going to be having discuss the US elections, but, still, it hardly seems to be a representative example of folks with a broad range of opinions about, say, who might make a better US President, or who truly reflects the will of the American populace.

Weird.

Signs of the times

Because the big issue worrying everyone these days is … highway sign legibility! Worry no more. The Feds have given interim approval to a new highway sign font, cunningly named…

Because the big issue worrying everyone these days is … highway sign legibility!

Worry no more. The Feds have given interim approval to a new highway sign font, cunningly named Clearview. It’s an interim approval, and states are not required to adopt it, but I’m torn between the font geek in me thinking, Cool, and the rest of me thinking, Big flipping deal.

The designer assures us that studies show Clearview (on the left, compared to FHWA E-modified “Highway Gothic”) is much more legible at distance. This is increased by designing signs to use mixed case instead of all-caps. It’s also supposed to be a lot more visible when blurry or over-reflected.

One thing for sure — it will make our signs look a lot more European. Which is not a bad thing, to be honest.

Okay, I admit it — it’s cool.

You can buy the font yourself for only a mere $800. Beat the rush! Get a legit copy, before folks start making cheap knock-offs!

(via J-Walk and Typographica)

Angst Watch 2004

I’ve decided to spare everyone the trouble of reading daily installments of my internal debate over the election. Instead, I’m storing all my thoughts in a nice file that I’ll…

I’ve decided to spare everyone the trouble of reading daily installments of my internal debate over the election. Instead, I’m storing all my thoughts in a nice file that I’ll drop like a bomb on this blog on Monday. Every day presents new reasons why I shouldn’t vote for one presidential candidate or the other, which makes the decision all the more, um … entertaining. Yeah, that’s a word, all right.

For what it’s worth, I think I know who I’m voting for. My internal polling is running about 51-48 (with 1 percent suggesting I just blow off the whole thing). That’s enough for me to think I’m likely to vote the way I’m feeling now — but there’s always the chance of some last-moment revelation/gaffe that could change that, or some reasoned argument I stumble across altering my decision. I don’t think so, but …

Speaking of which, is it my imagination, or have the “Bush is a dolt / fiend / criminal / lunatic / idjit / puppet / danger” folks been in a full court press over the last week or two? Maybe it’s been because I’ve been avoiding explicitly political sites, for the most part, but a lot of the non-explicitly-political sites have been doing a lot more Bush-bashing. That’s certainly their prerogative, but it still feels a bit odd (especially given the polls) — and, in marked contrast, assuming that is their political bent, I’ve seen very little Kerry-supporting on those same sites. Which I can also understand, but it does lend itself to the idea that Daffy Duck or Boris Badinov could run for president and folks would support him over Bush …

Anyway, more Monday.

Worlds of wonder

Stepping out of the Melting Pot last night, we were walking dead east through old town Littleton. Head of us, in the sky … Whoa. Up there was the Moon…

Stepping out of the Melting Pot last night, we were walking dead east through old town Littleton. Head of us, in the sky …

Whoa.

Up there was the Moon all right, but a ruddy, pale moon, a sliver of white at the very top. It looked like a bad rendition of Mars, complete with ice cap.

Ah. I’d read that World Series fans would have their first opportunity to see a lunar eclipse during the game. (And congrats, Boston! Two nigh-unprecedented events in one night!) So this must be …

“Katherine, can you see the Moon?”

We ducked over into a parking lot to get out from under some trees.

“Isn’t it pretty?”

“Ooooooh! Yeah!” She ran back to the others. “Mommy! Mor-Mor! The Moon is so pretty!”

“That’s an ‘eclipse,’ honey,” Margie said. Ever the science major.

“Can you say, ‘eclipse’?” I asked. Ever the humanities major.

“That’s a hard word,” Margie noted.

Katherine looked back at us from where she’d run a few yards ahead. “Eclipse,” she said, clearly, not seeing what all the fuss was about.

Kitten’s first (cognizant) eclipse. Cool.

Home improvement log

Done (while I was home yesterday): Installed trim around the new back doors, interior and exterior. Installed door hardware. Relocated the top deadbolt for the semi-fixed door. Installed the pop-out…

Done (while I was home yesterday):

Installed trim around the new back doors, interior and exterior.
Installed door hardware.
Relocated the top deadbolt for the semi-fixed door.
Installed the pop-out lattice-work/lights on the door.
Spackle around the new doors.
Installed the baseboards around the new buffet.
Stain and prep the front trim for the buffet.
Buy new light fixtures for the dining room, entry hall, stairwell.
Hang new dining room light.
Get dining room and living room back in livable order.

Great stuff, and very little of it would have been possible without Jim’s help (and direction).

To be done (Real Soon Now):

Replace the new siding pieces framing the back door. The stuff does not remove very easily (certainly not as easily as wood), and we need some replacement trim pieces. That said, Margie’s made the call, and the guys at Ultimate Exteriors were very quick and helpful.
Do some minor caulking around the new back door.
Touch-up paint around the new doors (on the inside).
Decide about drapery around the new doors. Follow up on decision (if need be).
Install a trim piece on the upright “between” the two doors (actually part of the semi-fixed door).
Install the front trim for the buffet.
Grout the tile on the buffet.
Hang new entry hall light.
Hang new stairwell light.
Buy and install new hallway lights (3).

Home improvement — it’s not an adventure, it’s a career … 🙂