Reality Me

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  • United States Empire … and broke its crown

    I find it difficult not to write about politics in these times. Our government is changing and I fear our grandchildren may never understand or relate to the America we knew as children. There is a Roman parallel to 9/11. In 68 or 67 BC, the Roman port at Ostia was sacked.

    IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
    …
    For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
    [Source]

    My most recent reference to 1984 comes with the death of habeas corpus. Now the question: Are you awake?

    More Ostia with great pictures. I want to visit!

  • Google’s Hidden Search Engine

    Google is trying some new tricks. They call it SearchMash. You can actually give feedback on the usefulness of features. It is unbranded as to not skew opinions or results. Google answers some questions here along with some speculation. It looks like this could be the work of Udi Manber, previouslyl of Amazon’s A9 search engine.

    See also.

  • Knee Replacement Surgery – No Big Deal

    So this morning I pull in to pickup my mother-in-law to take her to physical therapy. See, a few weeks ago she had a mad scientist take a Dewalt 5 inch saw and cut her knees off. To his manic cackling he scraped out the stuff that holds the bottom part of the leg to the top part. To lightning, the humpbacked nurse helps insert the plastic and titanium, guaranteed-fun-at-the-airport new knees! He laughts and raises his hands skyward shouting, "she lives! She lives!" She stands up! And immediately falls on her face.

    Getting back to this morning. As I approach her house I see hop-a-long with brace on the deadleg left knee toward the end of the driveway with walker in both hands and making the final adjustment on the second trash can that she just pulled down the driveway–somehow. I only wish I had shown up a few minutes earlier to watch. Fortunately, she had only pulled the recycle container out the back door and not worked it down to the street. Apparently, my inlaws recycle lead, ore, rock, and concrete disguised as aluminum cans and newspaper. After lugging it to the street I begged to take her place in physical therapy or at least sneak me one pain pill. I also noted that had she taken the recycle bin herself that she wouldn’t need the PT today because she’d be in the hospital!

    Yes, I said "inlaws." Note the s. It makes the word plural. She has an ambulatory husband who, like my son, was asked to do the garbage the night before and, like my son, 7:30 came and he went. Also like my son, he doesn’t clean up animal poop. These two should live together for a year with cats and dogs! But that really wouldn’t be fair to the cats and dogs.

  • My morning thus far

    3:30 – beg myself to get up
    5am – actually rise, bathe and dress
    6am – wake the doughnuts
    6-7am – some blogging, mostly help Noah cook muffins
    7:30-8 – drive Sarah to school
    8-8:30 – pickup mother-in-law
    8:30 – pickup Amy
    9 – Drop Amy at pre-school
    9:20 – Drop mother-in-law at sadist’s (PT)
    9:20-10am – Starbucks theraphy then home

    Later:
    10:50-11:30 – pickup mother-in-law, take her to bank then home
    1:30 – pickup Amy
    4:15 – Noah to karate
    4:45 – Pickup Sarah from school
    5:00 – Pickup Noah from karate
    5:30-6 – drive to Lenior City
    6 – Drop Tommy in Lenior City
    8:30 – Pick Tommy up from Lenior City
    9-10pm – Lost!

    To squeeze in: work, programming, marketing, resume writing, returning calls/emails, budgetting, banking, and food

  • Don’t ignore email

    I have not checked email for several days which means I will have angry emails and a back log that could have me doing nothing but email all day.

    "Do the dumb things you gotta do. Touch the puppet head!"

  • iTunes Visualization Cheat Sheet

    For you iTunes junkies out there. Play with your visualizations.

    Have fun! There are 11475 form/effect combinations, and 734400 form/effect/color combinations. It would take over 1000 hours to try them all out! And of course you’ll want to try out your favorite ones with different types of music. And if you’re still bored, you can try to experiment with favorite transitions – which should keep you busy for the next 100000 years or so… [Source]

  • I 40 east parking lot

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  • They are more important

    I am so stressed over my work that my head feels like it is going to crack. Noah wants to make blueberry muffins. I can’t argue with that. I love blueberry muffins. However, poor Noah needs guidance. Lots of guidance. He gets priority.

    If you haven’t had a 10 year old boy yet, their brains don’t work.

    The cooking lessons are fun. I enjoy watching him go through discovery. This morning I have had questions like:

    "What’s a muffin pan?"
    "Where’s our can opener? How do I use it?"
    After getting the mixing bowl, "Where can I get a bowl to put in the ingredients?"

    I had no doubt that one or two of the eggs would splat on the floor. One did. Learning to crack and egg is scary. I feel bad for him. He will have to go to school before these are done. This child moves in slow motion!

  • Fading Light

    My Joy cannot beat Misery
    Our Stress weighs too heavy
    Stealing away the Happy.
    Our Days are filled with constant pleasures
    Like firecrackers, numerous, small, quick.
    The Suck is like a Nuke
    And evaporates all positive energy.
    It is all Wrong.
    Losing my Fight.

  • Bionic Mother-in-Law moved

    Cathy and I helped move her mother from rehab to home. One mocha later she was very happy to be back in the real world but wishes the laundry lady would have come with her. New knees, less pain. We returned home heavy one skeleton and one dracula both of which remain buckled into our backseat.

  • Lower the bar!

    I have to quit taking on the impossible projects.

    What am I doing now? My current contract is to allow a user to enter a single product id or a list of product ids then go out to a government website and download the 17 or so pages of pdfs for each product. Then I combine the multiple pages of pdf documents into a single pdf document and present it to the user for download to their local machine. I may end up inserting footer information into each page of the pdf. I have to do this for 4 different countries. Then I have to convert the code from php 4.4.4 to php 4.0.0.

  • Hypothetical Question

    If you got called into jury duty selection on a Monday, and you knew your wife was getting out of rehabilitation from double knee replacement surgery on Tuesday, what would you say to the judge? Apparently, nothing is the correct answer.

  • Today’s Irony – Let’s Burn Fahrenheit 451

    A Houston parent wants Ray Bradbury’s 1953 classic "Fahrenheit 451" banned from his daughter’s high school. Here is the best sentence from the article:

    "It’s just all kinds of filth," said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read "Fahrenheit 451." [Source]

    Uh, hello?! Don’t you have to read a book to pass judgement upon it? These are the same people that are making it illegal for you to buy sex toys. His rationale for the reconsideration of curriculum:

    He looked through the book and found the following things wrong with the book: discussion of being drunk, smoking cigarettes, violence, "dirty talk," references to the Bible and using God’s name in vain. He said the book’s material goes against their religions beliefs. [Source]

    Incase you have not read it or have forgotten, Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which paper burns. Firemen no longer fight fires but burn books.

    "Fahrenheit 451" is a science fiction piece that poses a warning to society about the preservation and passing on of knowledge as well as asks the question about whether the government should do the thinking for the people… Other themes include conformity vs. individuality, freedom of speech and the consequences of losing it, the importance of remembering and understanding history and technology as help to humans and as hindrances to humans… [Source]

    Coincidentally, we just passed banned book week which is celebrated the last week of September of every year.

  • Why consider impeachment?

    Personnally, I am not certain impeachment would lead to any better situation than we have now. I think Foley and friends are doing a better job than impeachment. I just can’t wait until 2008 but my fear is that this administration will have done such damage that whoever wins in 2008 will have a doomed 4 years. Their job will be to clean up the mess and this mess is going to take decades to correct. So, Bush Co. will create a law that will allow presidents to serve 16 years instead of 8; perhaps it will come in the form of "an ex-president can return to office for a maximum of another 2 four year terms." (I saw a reference that a senator has quietly started just such a bill but now I can’t find it) After the citizentry has a great disappointment in the 2008-2012 term since the expectations of that president will be totally unachievable, GW Bush will return to office from 2012-2020 or longer.

    The reasons for impeachment given by impeachforpeace.org:

    • Illegal war
    • Illegal spying
    • Illegal breaking of Geneva Conventions
    • Illegal detention
    • Illegal release of classified information

    Looks like the revolution begins on October 5th.

  • Pressure

    The walls are closing in.