New update to the Angry Letters section. I got a response from Senator George Allen telling me it’s not his f’ing problem. He said it more politely than that. And he actually has a point – stupid traffic patterns are not really a federal matter. So I wrote to Delegate James “Jim” Scott and Senator Richard “Dick” Saslaw, my state representatives. I eagerly await their responses.
Author: Jon
Stop with the negative ads
The Year Of Playing Dirtier – washingtonpost.com
It is harder for Republicans to blame out-of-power Democrats for the current state of Washington, but they are equally eager to depress Democratic turnout and fire up their conservative base.
It may be that, after a conversation about ‘the liberal media’ yesterday with a definitely conservative coworker, I’m just looking for the Post’s liberal bias, but this line jumped out at me. The article, up to then, had been close enough to balanced (It said that both parties are stooping to new lows in negative political ads, and the Republicans are worse about it. That’s sort of unbiased) that I could live with it. But if the Post honestly believes that the Democrats are completely blameless for the state of the country, I don’t even know what to say.
Back to the point of the article, though. I’m pretty sick of smear ads. Being near DC, we get both Virginia and Maryland ads. George Allen and Jim Webb, running for Senate from VA, have been sniping at each other for a while. Allen doesn’t seem to be trying that hard – he’s still focusing on some comments Webb made in 1979-80. Allen also responded to my angry letter, which is nice. I’m still voting for Webb, though.
I wish we’d get to hear why I should vote for one guy rather than why I shouldn’t vote for the other guy. I’m tired of voting against the unacceptable canidate. I’d really like to vote for someone because I think he or she is going to do a good job. Is that too much to ask?
Slim with the tilted brim
‘Snoop Dogg’ faces gun, drug accusation – CNN.com
“An investigation revealed Calvin Broadus to be in possession of marijuana and a firearm,” a police statement said. . . . “There was no basis for this arrest,” said the rapper’s lawyer, Donald Etra. “We believe that once this is cleared up, all charges will be dismissed.”
Numerous things here.
First, if I were Snoop, I would legally change my name to Snoop Dogg so the media would have to stop putting it in quotes.
Second, taped to the monitor on my old PC at home is a picture of Snoop from the Wall Street Journal about eight or nine years ago when he publicily made a big deal out of quitting marijuana. It appears he’s started again. Anyway, I was taking Public Finance in college, and we had to have a subscription to the WSJ for class, so I would usually read it during lunch. As an aside, that was just after one of my roommates taught me how to make grilled cheese, and to this day I associate reading the WSJ with eating grilled cheese. As for Snoop, I couldn’t resist the little picture of him – it seems so out of place next to big time politicians and important people. So it’s been taped to that monitor for all that time. I don’t know what I’ll do when I replace the monitor.
Third, Snoop needs to remember that a 2:1 arrests-to-albums ratio is safe, but if you get much higher than that, they stop calling you “rap artist ‘Snoop Dogg'” and start calling you “convicted felon Calvin Broadus, who rapped under the name ‘Snoop Dogg’ before his arrest”.
Fourth, as far as I’m concerned, rap doesn’t get much better than “Doggystyle”.
No substantial relationship
John Scalzi on gay marriage in NJ
Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose.
John Scalzi has a nice bit on the NJ Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage. The above is my favorite line from the quote from the decision. It looks like the Jersey Supreme Court has sent a nice not-so-subtle message that the government is not in the business of spreading homophobia and discrimination. I think “no substantial relationship to legitimate governmental purpose” is a lovely turn of phrase, and I applaud the court.
I’m not so sure I’m happy with their failure to rule on whether you can call it marriage – this is an important issue for many, and not calling it marriage leaves them open to “separate but equal” challenges. But I suppose that leaving some of the decision to legislators is what the whole system is about. Hopefully New Jersey’s legislature will work something out that most people can live with.
Everyone else is posting it
outside.in is designed to change all that, as a bridge between information space and real-world space — a place to see in a single glance all the interesting things that are happening around you.
I’ve read about this on at least three blogs already, so I figured I might as well check it out. It’s user-based content, so there’s not much there yet, although with all the pimping it’s getting from big shots like John Battelle and David Pescovitz at BoingBoing, it shouldn’t be long before they have a good user community.
The idea is that you will go and provide local information about where you live, and be able to find similar information about other places. Or you might find that little hole in the wall restaurant around the corner that you’ve never noticed.
Nice idea. Execution looks pretty good, although I didn’t poke around too much. It’s certainly designed better than HotSoup.
Im very dusty
When I moved in to my condo, the seller swore that we could easily paint over the ugly venetian plaster he’d had put up. “But, of course, you’d never want to”, he said. I beg to differ. Brown bamboo floors and brown walls just don’t do it for me. So the wife and I painted over the walls, and it just peels right off. Now that we’re trying to sell, we’re sanding the stupid walls so we can paint them. We tested a little spot, and sanding actually makes the primer stick.
Unfortunately, sanding also makes a horrific mess. I’m at work now, and my hands still feel like they have plaster dust on them. And I haven’t sanded anything since last night. I’ve taken TWO showers since I touched a sander.
Oh, well. I think we can finish sanding tonight or tomorrow, then we’ll paint, and forget this horrible dusty mess. The cat will no doubt appreciate that, as well, so she can go back to being black again.
This is what they mean by liberal media
Bush’s New Tack Steers Clear of ‘Stay the Course’ – washingtonpost.com
But the White House is cutting and running from “stay the course.”
Oh, how clever. Use the phrase that the Republicans use to attack Democrats and then the phrase the Republicans used before the Democrats used it to attack Republicans. Where does one go for neutral news reporting? I get Fox News at the gym. Fair and balanced, they say. Yes, fair to radical conservative nutjobs, and balanced between Republicans and other Republicans. I tried Daily Kos, because that’s one of the first names in political blogging news. If you take Daily Kos, and reverse the adjectives – that is, replace “bad” with “good” and all that, you have Fox News all over again. I tried the Wall Street Journal, but they hide behind a pay wall, and I don’t want to get a subscription. The Washington Post can’t possibly claim to be unbiased after allowing a line like the one above to be printed. Where do you get your news?
Banana nut goodness
We’ve taken the memories of home-baked banana nut loaf and turned them into a convenient on-the-go snack. Luscious banana is blended with whole oats and walnuts.
You know what sucks about the Odwalla Banana Nut Bar? Not a damn thing. That is one fine “nourishing food bar”.
Yeah, remember what we said before? We were lying
Beltway Toll Plan May Need Va. Funds – washingtonpost.com
“I think it demonstrates the risks involved in seeing privatization as a panacea,” said Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. “We can’t simply hope that the tooth fairy, in the form of the private sector, will make all of our problems go away.”
No, but you can hope that a plan that you agreed to doesn’t go $100 million over budget. The sequence of events seems to have gone like this:
- Private industry says, “We can make an HOT lane without using any taxpayer money, thereby easing congestion and making a profit!”
- Virginia government says, “Sweet, go for it, dude.”
- Private industry says, “Oops, when we said ‘no taxpayer money’, we really meant ‘$100 million in taxpayer money’. Our bad.”
- Virginia government says, “Looks like you’re not the tooth fairy! Here’s some cash.”
Great. It probably won’t even help traffic.
New stuff coming soon
I’ve been working this weekend to bring you some new features here. Once I get it all working, you’ll be able to submit your own complaints, and view the complaints of others. It will be pretty low-tech at the beginning. It will probably involve you emailing me through a form on the site, and then I’ll add your complaint somewhere. The goal eventually is to take me out of the equation, and allow you to interact somehow with the complaints of others.
To that end, I’ve been working in Prado, a PHP framework. I started using them because they offered AJAX support, and you can’t be a cool website without AJAX, right? But it turns out that AJAX was supported in version 2.X, and will be again in 3.1, but the current version is 3.05, and it does not really have any AJAX support. I thought about going back to 2.X, but then I’d have to redo things when 3.1 came out, which they claim should be in about two weeks. So, thanks to Mo for showing me how to upgrade to PHP5 on Dreamhost (Great inexpensive web hosting company, by the way), and I’ll get the new stuff out as soon as I can.
This also gives me the opportunity to say how much I like developing on my Ubuntu box using a lighttpd server. For some of you, I know this is like a foreign language, but I honestly thought you stopped reading when I started talking about Prado. Anyway, it was a real personal accomplishment for me to get PHP 5 and Prado installed on lighttpd and have a small web app up and running over the weekend. I’m quite pleased with myself, actually. While I do web development for a living, the server configuration and things like that are not my strong suit (Or even, really, my suit at all). I never really learned anything about managing a server, and our enviroment at work was set up before I got here. So I’m just going to pat myself on the back here for figuring it out and getting it all working.