Category: Uncategorized

Change of plans

Last night, when I went to bed, I was all ready to yell this morning about how residents of the bigoted, intolerant commonwealth I live in couldn’t manage to see past their homophobia and vote against an overly broad amendment banning gay marriage.  I guess I should have expected it when even the campaign signs against the amendment said, “Read the whole thing!”.  As in, it’s okay to ban gay marriage, but do you have to ban civil unions, too?

But this morning I’m feeling much better about things.  I’m still mad the amendment passed.  But the Democrats took control of the House, and maybe will get the Senate, too.  My wife is happy because the race is close enough that her absentee ballot might actually mean something.  She’s out of town until Thursday, so she dutifully voted absentee.

So, for all of you who voted Democratic, either because you agree with the Democrats, or because you’re fed up with this administration and want a change, we’re heading in the right direction.  But we have to keep at it.  I urge you to write your representatives.  Tell them that we want a plan to finish what we started in Iraq and get our troops home.  We want our civil liberties back.  We want to once again respect the Constitution at ALL times, not just when it’s convenient.  We want a government that focuses on compromise and serving the people, not this partisan bickering that has taken over.

What are you waiting for?  Go write a letter.  Well, if you have a new representative, you can wait until he or she takes office.  But write the incumbents now.  It’s never to early to let them know how you feel.

I love voting machines

Polling places turn to paper ballots after glitches – CNN.com

“We got five machines — one of them’s got to work,” said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.

Looks like there was some difficulty voting in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and, shocker, Florida.  Some poll workers didn’t know how to use the machines.  Now, I could be way off on this, but I’m pretty sure this wasn’t a surprise election.  Shouldn’t someone have checked that the machines worked, and that people knew how to use them?

Tomorrow, the Republicans will probably be blamed.  However, as whoever it was said (Google is not cooperating on this one), “Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence”.  I don’t think there’s any big conspiracy.  I have nothing to base that assumption on, but this is a blog, I don’t have to have a basis for my sweeping judgments.

Helium shortage? Oh, no!

NPR : Helium Shortage Looms for United States

Helium balloon fans — of whatever age — shouldn’t worry about a shortage, however: The balloons suck up only 8 percent of the helium stock.

Well, that’s good to hear.  I don’t know what we’d do without helium balloons.   It’s a little surprising, though, that 8 percent of all the helium in the country is used for balloons.  I mean, not to knock birthday decorations and whatnot, but do we really need to use that much for something that lasts only a few days at best?

Scalzi on voting

Whatever: A Small Plea to the Right: Vote Left in 2006

if you decide it might be important that your Republican leaders actually act like Republicans, and also treat the Constitution as something other than a nice absorbent blotter for their processed beer — you might consider doing what it appears so many others are going to do this year and give your vote to the Democrats.

If I could say it as well as he has, I wouldn’t need to link to his post.

Everybody vote!

Voter turnout looked good this morning. I was number 93 with a last name L-Z only an hour after the polls opened. It was the longest line I’ve ever seen to vote, which is encouraging.

So, you may be curious how I voted. First, I voted for Jim Webb and Jim Moran because I think it’s important that we get a Democratic majority. Then maybe we can start getting back some of our civil liberties that President Bush has taken in the name of terror. Unfortunately, it probably also means that we’ll continue to botch things in Iraq, since the Democrats plan of “let’s not stay the course” is just as bad as Bush’s “stay the course”.

I voted against the gay marriage ban. Even if I hated homosexuals, I would have voted against it. It goes way beyond “protecting the sanctity of marriage” and bans all sorts of things that might be sort of like marriage if you look at them kind of squinty-eyed. And, more importantly, I think we have to treat people of all sexual orientations as human beings.  That means protecting their rights and allowing them to live, even if you don’t approve of their lifestyle.

I voted to remove the unconstitutional language that should have been removed automatically instead of requiring a vote.

I voted against extending the right to grant tax breaks to the local government.  Although in general I think local government is better suited to grant tax breaks for real estate development, I don’t see why we need to help people build new houses in conservation areas.  There’s too much building around here as it is, and the excess of housing is going to start hurting the local economy if we aren’t careful.  I’m not really sure what the point of this amendment is supposed to be, but the potential adverse effects it could have outweigh the positive ones I can think of.  So I voted no.

I voted to allow the issuance of bonds to build more parks, and to build more jails.  Seems like a good idea to me.

So, I urge you all to get out and vote if you haven’t done so already.  I’d be happy if you voted the way I did, but I’d rather you did a little research and voted against me than not vote at all.

Google is down?

The Google homepage and Google Reader aren’t coming up for me.  That’s a nuisance, since there’s usually lots to read on Monday morning because I don’t read much of my RSS feeds over the weekend.  I suppose I could actually go to the sites that I read, but that somehow seems like too much trouble.

In other news, the wife is in Massachusetts until Thursday, babysitting her nephew.  That’s partly good for me, because it will give me time to get caught up on Nanowrimo.  I’m about 1300 words behind, not including the 1667 I’m supposed to write today.  It’s not a big deal, though.  I can make up 1300 words.

The story is going well so far.  We’ve got intrigue and sexual harassment and passionate rants in opposition to elevators.  My main character really hates elevators, which means I’m pretty sure he’s going to get stuck in one later on in the story.  His behavior between now and then will likely determine whether he gets stuck in there with the cute girl from accounting, or with 19 total strangers who smell funny.

This is fun

Boing Boing: Michael Crook sends bogus DMCA takedown notice to BoingBoing

Crook is a deranged, serial troll, and his behavior is consistent with that of someone who craves attention, no matter how negative. But what does matter is the fact that the DMCA is so poorly conceived and written that even the nuttiest, most deranged of trolls can abuse it into silencing constitutionally-protected online speech.

I love BoingBoing posts that have a half dozen or more updates to them. This one is particularly fun. This crazy guy is abusing the misguided Digital Millennium Copyright Act to make a nuisance of himself.

You know you’ve arrived in the blogosphere when you get DMCA’ed.  I don’t mean that BoingBoing has just “arrived”, they “arrived” some time ago.  I’m just saying that getting DMCA’ed sounds like fun.  Except for the legal liability part.

I think the proper response to this – he claims that he holds the copyright to his face, so by extension has a say in photos of himself – is to draw a picture of him using MS Paint (Make sure to ask the least artistically talented person you know to draw it) and use that instead of the photo.  Make sure to caption it “Mr. Poopy Pants” or something equally witty.

Nano update

5187 words in two days.  Because I’m a numbers geek, I can tell you that I’m ahead of my pace in all the other years I’ve done Nano.  Although I’m about to fall behind 2003’s Love in Black and White – I wrote 4000 a day on the 3rd and 4th that year.

So far, I’m happy with the story.  I’m a little worried that I’ve introduced too many characters, and that the timeline on the plot is going to get too hairy.  And I also am getting overwhelming urges to kill of a character or two.  I may succumb to the pressure.  I had already planned a death later in the story, but I don’t know if I can wait.

Killing a character in your story is strangely liberating.  It’s like playing God.  Even though, as far as the story is concerned, you already are God (And I mean that in the least blasphemous and least offensive way possible), but it’s still fun.  You get to say to your character, “Look at you.  You thought you were going to be a major character in this story.  And where are you now?  You’re dead!  Didn’t see that one coming, did you?”

It’s also helpful to combat writer’s block.  For example, let’s say you have a character who is absolutely vital to your plot at some point later in the story.  Let’s call him Harold.  Without Harold, your main character, Thor, will never meet Bridgitte, the green-eyed girl who works at Starbucks, fall in love, and move in with her mother.  This meeting, complete with harpsichord music in the background and a gentle snowfall, happens in chapter 12 because Harold asks Thor to meet him at the library to help him unload the secret documents that Harold smuggled out of CIA headquarters.  They meet, and Harold gets spooked by the strange elderly man reading Consumer Reports, and he takes off.  Thor follows, but loses him on the street, and finds himself in front of Bridgitte’s Starbucks.  The rest, as they say, is history.

So, let’s say now you’re in chapter seven, and Harold has just obtained the secret documents, but you have no idea how to get him to that library.  In fact, you have just spent forty minutes staring at a blinking cursor without typing a damn word, and you have stuff to do all weekend, and you know you’re going to fall behind.

At this point, Harold goes for a walk.  As he walks down the city street, a pack of wild dogs leaps from an alley and devours him, leaving behind nothing but his left shoe and the secret documents.

Do you see how you’ve conquered writer’s block?  Now you don’t have to worry about getting Harold to the library.  Harold is no longer your problem.  And now you’re scrambling to rewrite the entire second two thirds of the novel.  Soon, your imagination will awaken from its bored stupor, and realize that what Thor really needs is a plate of waffles, not a green-eyed love interest.

And there you go.  Problem solved.  See how easy that was?  And people say writing a novel is hard.

Ever honked at a school bus?

I took an alternate route to work today because I had to drop the wife off in Arlington so she could pass out Jim Webb (Democratic candidate for Senator in VA) literature.  So I was coming through a sort of bad intersection – nothing like Seven Corners, but not the nicest intersection, either.  As I went through the green light, a school bus pulled halfway into the intersection to turn right.  Into my lane.

First of all, you don’t pull halfway into the lane when a car with the right of way is already occupying that lane.  Second, I thought school buses never turned right on red.  Doesn’t it say that on the back of the bus?

I always drive more carefully around school buses.  I mean, they’re full of children without seatbelts.  And usually the bus drivers are extra cautious, too.  But not this one.  So I honked at him.  He then turned right just behind me.  On red.  Jerk.