A juggling technophile shares personal stories, challenges, humor and perhaps some political commentary.
The things that should never be discussed much less published by non-professionals.
From MoveOn.org:
Hey,
Want a free Obama button? MoveOn’s giving them away totally free–no strings attached. I just got mine, and wanted to share the opportunity with you.
Click this link to get a free Obama button:
http://pol.moveon.org/obamabuttons/?id=-10678064-xWz9Azx&rc=ads.adwords.ng.img336x269
Thanks!
If this is true, then I’d have to agree that drilling ANWR doesn’t seem terrible. I think the fears lay in the "foot in the door." Once the ANWR site is in production, will it make it easier to open many more sites? I sure would like to see some fact checks on this.
See also.
From a developer’s standpoint, the page turning Flash on that site is awesome!
Apparently Knoxville gasoline supplies have been out since Monday.
"Knoxville has been out of gas since Monday. We’ve been buying gas from Atlanta, North Carolina, Kentucky, anywhere we can get it," said Bill Weigel, head of the Weigel’s chain of convenience stores in Knox, Blount, Sevier, Loudon, Anderson and Monroe counties. [Source, Knoxnews, EPA boosts gas supply in Southeast; Knoxville running low]
When Cathy mentioned this to me yesterday, I was caught totally off guard. How could some significant news slip past the hyperconnected?! I polled Twitter:
djuggler: Hold the phone! Does anyone have a link or verification about a gas shortage in Knoxville?
I then saw that Michael Silence was causing the run on gas! djuggler: Blog post causes run on gas in Knoxville http://twurl.nl/5lbr8z Yea, hurricane Ike might have a little something to do with it too.
Then Twitter kicked in!
@djuggler WIMZ reported a little while ago that gas prices were going up @ 6:00 pm. I don’t really believe things are that coordinated. @djuggler My initial thought was that it was just a rumor that got out of control. I haven’t checked into any more so I could be wrong.
@djuggler goodness…it’s raining here and everyone thinks it’s ike. i’m like people! we’re in central kentucky – ike is still in the middle of the gulf of mexico! buy a couple or three clues. LOL
@djuggler I don’t know about shortages, but wholesale gas prices popped up today. http://tinyurl.com/4bb86p Coming soon to a pump near you djuggler: @barner Didn’t they hear about OPEC? Prices are supposed to plummet! Rock beats scissors. Ike beats OPEC. http://twurl.nl/mxxsab
BrianGM: @djuggler that’s the first I heard about a gas shortage! Anybody got any connections with Pilot? djuggler: KNOXVILLE: As you fill up, Twitter the prices please. Heading out to pickup a child. Should I participate in the gas shortage mania?
LissaKay: 3.63 – 3.65 in kodak BrianGM: @djuggler ofcourse! Anybody that’s cool will be doing the ’08 K-Town Gas Shortage Tweetup!!
jenmcclurg: @djuggler I’m all for a good panic, so I filled up behind Kay’s Ice Cream on Chapman for $3.54
Digitarius: @djuggler This *would* break on a day that I coasted in to work on E, wouldn’t it? djuggler: I am participating in the hysteria. Weigel’s rocky hill. 3.69 3.79 and 3.89 every pump full with cars waiting.
overtlytrite: @djuggler it was still 350ish on campbell station I tend to shut my eyes and just feed the machine my card I don’t want to see the total Digitarius: @djuggler 3.699 at pel parkway & hardin valley barner: @djuggler $3.69/gallon on Sutherland Ave a couple hours ago. Up $0.05 this afternoon. LissaKay: Racetrac on Western is out of gas LissaKay: Gas prices jumped 20 cents in 4 hours at exit 407! Still 3.63 at Food City though
vagredajr: about 2 hours ago I filled up the minivan w/$3.69 gas. It is now $3.99 EVERYWHERE in Fountain City.
bobmissy07 People, think! If you only drive to Kroger & church, there’s no need to fill up the Rambler. You’ll be fine. No evacuations here, remember?
pattib22: @bobmissy07 @wbir has reported cummins supply terminal has run out of gas and not expecting next delivery till 9/17 vagredajr: oh boy, here comes the gas run 
lasthome: $4.09 at BP near Fort Sanders West and Kingston Pikelasthome: Anyone wanna place bets whether it will come back down to $3.64 next week?
I heard one person forecasting $5 a gallon but I think they were being snarky. If the Saudis really left OPEC, then prices should come down.
Update: Knoxnews reports Knoxville gas prices push closer to $5 and Michael Silence has more.
I remain at a mostly at loss for words. Of course, two very unexpected things happened as a result of September 11, 2001. First, Amy happened. Second, September 12, 2001 happened. September 12 is a day I will never forget for it was the first time I my life, the only time, I can remember looking into the sky and not seeing a single airplane. No flashing lights. No contrails. No engine noise. No whump whump whump of helicopter blades. Only sky, birds, and at night, stars. For such tragedy on September 11th, there was an ironic peacefulness to the skies in the hours and days that followed.
Yesterday I was reading about OPEC wanting to cut production by 550 million550,00* barrels a day and wherever I was reading that commented that the cuts would amount to more oil than the US could produce if they drilled all US land and territories. Not sure if I believe that. But the point is that OPEC is powerful. Er, was.
Saudi Arabia walked out on OPEC yesterday. It said it would not honor the cartel’s production cut. It was tired of rants from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the well-dressed oil minister from Iran.
As the world’s largest crude exporter, the kingdom in the desert took its ball and went home.
…
OPEC has made no announcement to the effect that it is dissolving, but the process is already over.
Of course, I’m not an economist so I have no idea if this is a good or bad thing.
Update: A friend explains that this is good for the United States in that gas prices will go down but bad for the world because greenhouse gases will go up.
Update: *Thanks to Brian Arner for the correction!
Obama will be a seriously great president!
I feel like a presidential candidate asking for 20 people to donate $5 each to send Cathy and Sarah to BlogHer Nashville. Some amazingly wonderful people have contributed to sending Cathy and Sarah to BlogHer! Sarah is thrilled! Cathy is so jazzed that she wants to be a panelist at BlogHer 2009. So if you are attending a BlogHer event, be sure to whisper loudly within earshot of the organizers, "Gee, I sure wish Cathy McCaughan of Domestic Psychology were speaking." Sarah and Cathy are going to come back with their blogs on fire like never before! We are a 7 person household and 6 of those people have blogs! (that doesn’t include Facebook and MySpace etc.) We are "The Family That Blogs Together." With 5 children in 5 different schools this year, such a trip would not be feasible without your help. Thank you!
If you believe a study published in the Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy in 2002, flip a coin to see if your wife is cheating on you. Heads you’re okay. Tails then someone’s getting some..er, tail that is.
55 percent of married women engage in extramarital sex at some time during their relationship…90 percent of them didn’t feel guilty about doing it—they felt entitled to do it [Source, Men.Style.Com, THE NEW INFIDELITY]
On the positive side, a third of all these marriages survive! The study also said 60 percent of men cheat (maybe we aren’t supposed to be monogamous). So, getting quick with the math*, doesn’t that mean 5 percent of the women are doing 2 men? It seems to me that with a little open communication, and perhaps open relationships, half the married population would be a lot happier. Alrightee then. Now where did I put that keystroke logger?
*Yes the math is wrong. It presupposes that married women only cheat with married men and vice-versa. But it was funny!
I’m so lovin’ the 2008 election!
For an eon, I have wanted to put the decals representing our family on the van. This past Mother’s Day I made a greater effort to find them and came across several people admonishing the stickers as careless parenting and dangerous to our children. I felt compelled to comment:
The DC Internet Caucus panel on kids and predation has determined that the media has misrepresented the way that children are preyed upon. Although we want to protect our children, being realistic about threats is important because overprotecting them can be just as harmful. Just think, if you teach your children to jump from every shadow, they may grow up to believe that stickers on a car might actually make your child more vulnerable to a child predator.
Yesterday, Evie, a child abuse awareness volunteer added commentary stating that those of us thinking people were being overly paranoid or overly protective were wearing rose colored glasses and not living in the real world. I felt compelled to comment further:
Evie, I’m a realist but while you think we are viewing the word through rose colored glasses, I think you are jaded because you work with the problem.
When I worked as a quality assurance engineer my job was to find problems and when I left the office I continued finding problems. I found billboards with misspellings. Newspapers with poor grammar. Stuff in my life that was assembled wrong. And so forth. But the truth of the matter was that although these were “problems” for the common person, and on the grand scheme of things, they were inconsequential.
I think the quality of our life, and the ability for our children to grow up confident rather than afraid, out weights over the top paranoid reactions to events that have a low likelihood of ever happening to most people.
I am a scout leader and have been trained on child safety and protecting our children. I am a father of five. I want no harm to come to my children or anyone else’s. But like the woman who allowed her 9 year old to travel the subway alone, I want my children to live life to its fullest. I want them street smart but trusting because I believe by breeding trust we help make the problems go away. Don’t treat symptoms; treat problems. Ask the adults around you and I think you will find most of us lived as a child safely being away from home all day long and not abiding by any of the safety recommendations of this day and we all turned out okay. Using reasonable safety measures and common sense makes our children very safe today.
Yes, abductions are easy. So is drowning but that didn’t stop me from taking my children to the ocean and letting them have the time of their lives this summer.
I feel bad for the children Evie has had to help. They should have never been in such a predicament. Isn’t it true that most child abductions are by friends or family? or someone otherwise close to the victim? If so, the stickers really don’t make a difference do they? According to Duhaime.org, 75% of abductions are by friends or family with most abductions being by a parent in a custody dispute.
Evie, you do not live in the real world. You live in a microcosm and broadcast it upon the real world. No insult intended.
How children lost the right to roam in four generations is written on a UK website but certainly reflects similarly to how our children in the United States are treated. As a parent, the thought of my children roaming to areas where I cannot locate them is terrifying but that thought is hypocritical. As a child, I was told to be home at a certain time. I might go out and be in the woods for 6 hours. As long as I got home before 5pm, I didn’t get in trouble. And I would play without a watch. I knew the time based upon where the sun hit the tree tops. My mother had no way to contact me other than a loud shout. Today we have cell phones and FRS radios and GPS trackers. With such technology, why do we keep our children closer than ever? Shouldn’t we allow them the opportunity to explore and grow? Instead we keep them close to home. Doesn’t that encourage more indoor play? Or sedentary computer gaming? Perhaps keeping our children on a short leash and teaching them that no one can be trusted is not good for their health, mental stability, or overall development. Kids need the adventure of ‘risky’ play.
See also:How Far Did You Roam As A Child?
Vote Obama!
Now that Sarah Palin has been announced as John McCain’s running mate, people are being quick to dig up dirt. The first I came across was an insinuation that Sarah Palin, with her stance against abortion and birth control, promoting ‘abstinence only’ beliefs, is raising her daughter’s child as her own. iReport lists 8 reasons this may true including a picture. Daily Kos added commentary. Next, Palin denies global warming is man made and adds that Palin is no friend to the environment "once attacking McCain for his ‘close-mindedness on ANWR.’". And finally MSNBC chimes in with the ethics investigation: "Palin is under two ethics investigations springing from accusations that she abused her office to pursue a personal grudge."
Update: I think this is a good time to emphasize that we should remain focused on the issues and not on slinging dirt.
Issues that could arise from the baby (which honestly, as a Downs baby it seems more likely to be her baby than her daughter’s): stance on abortion, availability of birth control, and position on sex education in schools. What about honesty and disclosure regarding the child (presuming it is her daughter’s)? A non-issue as that is her personal decision and a simple matter of privacy.
Issues that could arise from denying global warming is not man made: Religion in government, Decision made on religion vs science, teaching of creationism instead of evolution, Kyoto Protocol, environmental choices such as drilling ANWR, mountaintop removal coal mining, drilling the protected coastal shelves, energy policies, war on middle eastern nations for control of oil, clean energy vs nuclear.
Issues that could arise from the ethics investigation: misuse of power, integrity, trust in our leaders, open government, privacy of citizens, Patriot Act
Did McCain just win the election? Please tell me that we aren’t about to have 4 more years of Bush policy because the blood is rushing from the brains of men to cat calls and discussion of whose weapon is larger, and blood rushing from the brains of women angry that Hillary didn’t get the nomination. I hope our society is more intelligent than to be led by "look! something shiny!" Young, beautiful, pageant winner, hunter, gun aficionado (lifetime NRA), 5 children – 1 in Iraq and 1 with special needs (Down Syndrome), has ANWR in the palm of her hand — good move McCain! But I don’t think it’s checkmate. I truly believe that our society is intelligent enough to see that the Obama policies are far better for this country than the McCain aristocracy.
I look forward to the debates. This is going to one awesome election!
