Oh, thats encouraging

TIME.com: Why The Democratic Wave Could Be A Washout — Oct. 2, 2006 — Page 1

Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, says the opposition hasn’t sold a vision for handling terrorism, Iraq or jobs. He also cites a drop-off in turnout for most Democratic primaries this year as one sign that the Dems aren’t strong enough to mount a takeover of power on Capitol Hill.

This article is a little short on content, but it speaks to what I can’t figure out about the Democratic party. People are abolutely livid about the way things are going with our Republican-led government. All the Democrats have to do is say, “Hi, we’re not Republicans, and we have a plan.” And then demonstrate with a few talking points that they might, in fact, actually have a plan. That’s all they have to do to win just about every contested election in the country.

But they can’t seem to do that. I haven’t seen a poll anywhere that suggests the Democrats are going to win any big battles. It’s disgraceful. Democrats, this is why Republicans make fun of you. You’ve been handed half the elections in the country on a silver platter, and you’ve done nothing at all.

I’ve said it before – if the Democrats don’t take the Presidency and a strong majority in Congress, the party should be disbanded for absolute and utter incompetence.

Up yours, Peter Angelos

ESPN.com – MLB – ‘Free the birds’: Fans walk out in protest

“When you get down to facts, putting together a team that can compete in the AL East means having a payroll between $100 million-$110 million. That money comes from the consumer, and I have chosen to keep ticket prices to a minimum.

Let’s just see how many teams have a lower payroll than the Orioles, and a better record. Toronto, San Diego, Texas, Minnesota, Oakland, Cincinnati, Arizona, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Colorado, and Florida. Hmm. And look at that, Toronto is in the AL East. They made huge free agent signings over the winter to not win the division. It might take $100 million to win the division, but it doesn’t take $100 million to finish above .500.

For the record, I know it’s hard to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox. I understand that. But spending a ton of money is NOT the answer.

I’m not sure how I feel about the staged walkout at Camden Yards to protest Angelos. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to get anyone anywhere. Is Angelos going to sell the team because 1000 fans walked out? I’m going to have to say that’s unlikely. Is he going to change the way he does things? Well, if nine straight losing seasons hasn’t changed him, I don’t think 1000 angry fans will, either.

Stupid computer

So, I’m at work right now, and I was about to actually do some work, and apparently my server died overnight, which isn’t that unusual.  It’s just a local server running on my machine so I can test our Java web app.  It dies a lot, it’s not a big deal.  Except that this morning, it wouldn’t come back up.  So I tried rebuilding it, and got this error: “creation was not successful for an unknown reason”.  Now, we use Eclipse as our IDE, and for the most part I love it.  It works well, it has a lot of nice conveniences built in, and an active developer community writing plugins.  But when I get error messages that say, “Like, um, something’s wrong, but, um, we don’t know what it is, or how you might fix it”, then I start to get a little annoyed.

Now, I know it’s tough to write good error messages.  Believe me, I’ve written some bad ones myself.  But, damn it, I’m actually trying to get some stuff done here, and Eclipse is not cooperating.  Stupid Eclipse.  If I hadn’t already gone to get coffee, I’d do that now.  That’s how mad I am.  Instead, I’ll probably waste some time until some coworkers get here, and then waste some more time, and then maybe try to fix my server.  Maybe.

Dont take a picture of this

Top Ten Things NOT Safe To Photograph | DSLRBlog

  1. Underground/Tube/Buses
  2. Refineries or other Industrial plant
  3. Police
  4. Government buildings
  5. Bridges
  6. Tunnels
  7. Shopping malls
  8. Airports
  9. Office Buildings
  10. Houses
    When I see things like this, it makes me want to go photograph the Metro, industrial plants, the White House . . .  The story in the post is about a guy detained in France, so I can hardly blame that on our current administration and their civil rights == terrorism campaign.  But if I were one of those sites with, you know, readers, I’ll bet one of them would do it.  As everyone knows, as the number of readers goes up, the probability of stupid trolls increases exponentially.  I’d do the math, but I don’t know they keyboard codes for limits and integrals.  I’m sure you understand.

How accurate is your forecast?

Weather Forecast Accuracy for Falls Church, Virginia via Lifehacker This website not only gives you a current forecast, but it also tells you which of the other forecasting sites are most accurate. If you haven’t lived under a rock your entire life, you probably know that weather forecasters are generally regarded to be on about the same level as used car salesmen in terms of honesty. I’m often surprised at how angry people get at the weatherman, as if it’s his or her fault that either the weather is bad, or that the prediction was off.

What I’m really curious about, though, is how accurate the accuracy-checkers’ forecast is.

He says what were all thinking

CNN.com – Chavez calls Bush ‘devil’ in U.N. speech – Sep 20, 2006

This article scares me.  Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is supposed to be a lunatic, but the article makes him sound like a mildly loopy Democrat.  Am I so tired of the stupid things our President does that the ravings of a madman start to sound normal?  Or is Chavez made out to be a little crazier than he really is by the media (Impossible!)?

I shake my fist at you, minivan

A blue minivan was the first to trigger my smug reflex.  I knew she was going to do it the minute I saw her.  And not only did she turn into the third lane from the left from the far left lane, but she was poking around under her seat or something while we waited for the light.  Who knows what she might have been looking for?  A pound and a half of pot she grabbed from Willie Nelson, probably.  Or an assault rifle.

But she got hers.  I honked at her as she cut me off.  She’ll think twice about doing that again, I assure you.

Surprise! Youre Jewish.

Allen Says He Embraces His Jewish Ancestry – washingtonpost.com

“I was raised as a Christian and my mother was raised as a Christian,” Allen, 54, said. “And I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including my Lumbroso family line’s Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed.”

If you’re 54 years old, and have to find out about some aspect of your family heritage from a magazine article, I don’t think you can claim to take great pride in that aspect. This is his grandfather he’s talking about. It’s obviously not something his family takes pride in. It’s pretty obvious to me that Allen is a racist. That doesn’t bother me so much. What bothers me is that he seems to think it’s okay to express his racist feelings, which is just mind-boggling. If he’s a racist, fine. That’s his problem. But when he continues to make remarks that demonstrate total insensitivity to different peoples of the world, I start to wonder if he should be involved in politics. There are plenty of non-caucasian and non-christian residents of Virginia, especially around DC, and I think they deserve a representative who doesn’t hate them. Or, at the very least, a representative who can acknowledge that other peoples have an equally valid claim to personhood as he does.

I don’t know much about his opponent (Although I voted for him in the primary) except for an offensive paper he wrote 20 years ago about women in the military. I’m inclined to forgive that in the absence of more recent examples of similar things.

An omen?

As of about 5:30 PM today, I have been married for a month. It’s been a very good month. Tonight, after a celebratory sushi dinner, we went to Harris Teeter so my wife could get ingredients for a vegan carrot cake.  She often bakes dessert for birthdays at work (She even takes requests – is it any wonder I married her?). Harris Teeter often gives coupons when you check out based on what you’ve just bought.  I think this is a cool idea, although it irritates me that I get coupons for Propel with carcinogenic artificial sweetener when I buy delicious Vitamin Water.  We’d been complaining that we hadn’t gotten any good coupons lately. One of the ingredients in the cake was, strangely enough, carrot baby food.  We got a coupon today.  I’ll bet you can guess what the coupon was for, loyal reader.

Where are the drivers in the wrong?

I was all set this morning to scowl smugly at any driver who dared to turn into my lane from the wrong lane at Seven Corners.  I was eagerly anticipating the opportunity to bask in the glow of self-righteousness.  I could almost taste it.

And no one was there to turn next to me.  I was so disappointed.  We left the house a little earlier than usual this morning, and there just wasn’t any traffic.

As an aside, do you see what I did there?  I managed to turn a day in Northern Virginia with no traffic into a complaint.  That skill (And I was born with that.  That’s not something you can learn) is why I run Complaint Hub, and you just read it.  Anyone can complain about stuff that sucks.  But it takes a true visionary to complain about the lack of one of the things that everyone complains about.