Current Events - Going Green

In support of the people of Iran.

Personal - Time keeps on tickin'...

Last night my daughter was playing a Wii game (My Sims) where you have to build these houses for these people in your town. One guy wanted an arcade before he'd move in. So off we went to build the house for him.

When we were done she asked me, “Daddy… What’s an arcade?”

I spent the next 30 minutes explaining to her that, no, we didn't have the Wii or XBox or computer games when I was her age, we went to the arcade and played video games.

The part about dropping quarters into the machine REALLY boggled her little mind.

Politics - Why I'm a Democrat.

Democratic Accomplishments: Rural America
* Farm Loan Bank Act (Woodrow Wilson)
* Federal Crop Loan Act (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Rural Electrification Act (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Farmer's Home Administration (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Soil Conservation Service (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Rural Telephone Act (Harry Truman)
* Agricultural Adjustment Administration (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Cooperative Extension Service (Woodrow Wilson)
* Farm Loan Housing Act (Harry Truman)

Democratic Accomplishments: Environmental Protection
* Clean Water Act (100th Congress, over President Reagan's Veto)
* Clean Air Act (John F. Kennedy)

Democratic Accomplishments: Foreign Affairs
* United Nations (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* League of Nations (Woodrow Wilson)
* Atlantic Charter (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Marshall Plan (Harry Truman)
* Monroe Doctrine (James Monroe)
* Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty (John F. Kennedy)
* NATO (Harry Truman)
* Truman Doctrine (Harry Truman)
* Peace Corps (John F. Kennedy)
* Louisiana Purchase (Thomas Jefferson)
* Camp David Accord (Jimmy Carter)

Democratic Accomplishments: Labor
* Creation of a Cabinet Level Labor Department (Woodrow Wilson)
* The 8 Hour Workday and Overtime (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* National Labor Relations Act (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Minimum Wage Law (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Unemployment Compensation Law (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Civilian Conservation Corp (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* The Full Employment Act for Labor (Harry Truman)
* Family and Medical Leave Act (Bill Clinton)
* Worker's Compensation (Woodrow Wilson)

Democratic Accomplishments: Civil and Political Rights
* Women's Suffrage Amendment (Woodrow Wilson)
* VISTA (John F. Kennedy)
* Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Lyndon Johnson)
* Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Lyndon Johnson)
* National Voter Registration Act (Bill Clinton)
* Americans with Disabilities Act (101st Congress)

Democratic Accomplishments: The Economy
* Largest Deficit Cutting Plan in History (Bill Clinton)
* Federal Reserve Bank Act (Woodrow Wilson)
* Clayton Anti-Trust Act (Woodrow Wilson)
* Securities & Exchange Act (Franklin D. Roosevelt)

Democratic Accomplishments: Education
* Smith-Hughes Vocational Education Act (Woodrow Wilson)
* Fulbright-Hays Scholarship (Harry Truman)
* Creation of the Education Department (Jimmy Carter)
* National School Lunch Program (Harry Truman)
* Guaranteed Student Loan Program (Lyndon Johnson)
* Smart Start (Governor Jim Hunt)
* More at Four (Governor Mike Easley)
* Head Start (Lyndon Johnson)
* Ameri-Corp (Bill Clinton)
* GI Bill of Rights (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Student Loan Reform Act (Bill Clinton)
* School-to-Work Opportunities Act (Bill Clinton)

Democratic Accomplishments: Senior Citizens
* Social Security Administration (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
* Older Americans Act (Lyndon Johnson)
* Medicare (Lyndon Johnson)
* Medicaid (Lyndon Johnson)
* Consolidation of Older Americans Act (Jimmy Carter)
* Successful Defense of Social Security (Democratic Minority of the 109th Congress)

Sports - Hey Minnesota, what'll you give us for Carl Peterson?

He obviously hates the Kansas City Chiefs and their fans.


Good luck in Minnesota, Jared.

I'll be buying purple and gold from now on.

(EDIT: Ok, I calmed down and changed this post a little. I still hate him.)

Politics - Bitter?

You are goddamned right I am.

And If you aren't... you haven't been paying attention.

Geek - Sci-Fi Sound Quiz

	I received 100 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz cheapest digital camera

Personal - Santa@indiatechglobal.com

It's been a great couple of months in the my house. Every time the girl started to act up, I'd remind her that Santa was making his lists and it just takes one call from mommy or daddy to let the Big Guy know she was edging off the "nice" list. That would re-adjust her attitude.

Now he's made his rounds and there's little to hold over her head. In fact, she informed me yesterday in the midst of one of her tantrums that, "You can't just call Santa, daddy."

I corrected her and said, yes, you can indeed call Santa but the hold times make it difficult to get through since he outsourced his Naughty/Nice Processing Facility to India but I'd probably get through to him faster if I emailed him.

That gave her enough to think about that, for a while at least, she forgot what she was throwing her fit over.

Ahhh... peace on earth, indeed.

Personal - Holiday Road

Ahhh, the holidays....

Odd observation of the day: my Firefox is set up at home so I almost NEVER see an add on a website. When I travel and am forced to use IE, I realize how the rest of the world sees the web. As one large bilboard.

No sir, I don't like it.

Personal - When in Chinatown...

I had to go to D.C. last week for work. Really mind-numbing work that any monkey with an above average I.Q. could pull off, but the boss thought I needed to be said monkey. I had successfully fought off work related travel since well before the boy was born, so I was due.

My hotel (the Marriott Renaissance) was just a couple of blocks from the Chinatown metro stop, so I figured I could hop over to Chinatown and have some pretty decent Chinese food. (Or what in China they call "food.")

Walking down the street filled with signs written in Chinese (could have been Klingon, I didn't look that hard,) I see a big Guinness sign. Odd, I think.

Sure enough, right smack in the middle of Chinatown is an Irish pub. (Fadó to be exact.) I elected to have the Fish & Chips and a couple of Guinness and fore go the Dim Sum.

This would have been a pleasant experience except for the Justice Department drones who took up residency next to me at the bar. As you might expect, they were loud, obnoxious and paying more attention to their BlackBerry/SmartPhone than who they were spilling their twelve dollar a glass Cabernet on. After lengthly discussions on who slept with whom to get their promotion, what they expect of their assistants and a disgraceful display of who makes how much more than whom, my already low opinion of them dropped several points to where I now regard them as just below a guy who kicks puppies through a box fan.

Personal - Buds

A close friend of mine recently moved to the same city I live in. It's good to have him so close again.

I called him this week and asked him to come help me pick up a new couch and he, of course, did. That's the kind of buddy everyone ought to have.

Personal - Happy Birthday Yoda!

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Frank Oz, the man who gave voice to Yoda, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Grover, Cookie Monster, Bert... and my personal favorite... the Corrections Officer in Blues Brothers!

Personal - Monday data dump

Sometimes I wish I had tourettes syndrome so I could just spew a string of obscenities and get away with it.
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I have an idea for an animated short.

It's an analogy of the Iraq war. It starts with a young boy named Georgie discovering that a bunch of cockroaches have gotten into his kitchen and knocked over two boxes of his favorite sugar cereal. He gets all pissed off and starts killing cockroaches and rips open the walls to get at their hiding places. He's almost gotten every cockroach, but unfortunately, before he finishes the job, he remembers a story his daddy told him about some flies that he tried to kill once in another room of the house. Little Georgie drops what he's doing and runs into the other room with a box of fruit and starts flinging the fruit at the flies. He kills a few, but more flies lay eggs in the fruit and produce more flies. Pretty soon, the flies are everywhere and the cockroaches have rebuilt the wall in the kitchen.

Then his best friend shoots someone in the face.

Now I just have to learn how to animate stuff and come up with a better ending.

Personal - A follow up

When the fuck did we stop holding people accountable?

Back in December I got t-boned by some asshole. He drove into me and damaged the passenger side of my car. I did everything I was supposed to do, (police report, contact my insurance company) he didn't. He did nothing. His insurance company is some fly-by night, "We insure ANYBODY!!!" type jobs and the only phone number my insurance company could find for them was a call tree that dropped you if you didn't have a claim number. My insurance company said they'd have to pay me for the damages and then they could (maybe.. maybe not,)pursue the guy.

Jump forward to last month. ANOTHER asshole, (high on prescription pain killers according to his girlfriend,) hits me on the drivers side of my car. Again, I do what I'm supposed to, (see above) and he does... nothing. His insurance company says they don't have a phone number for him and they have sent him a letter (!) asking him to get in touch with them. They refuse to talk to me until they talk to him. Have they sent a registered letter? No. Have they sent an adjuster to his house? It's a PO box. Have they gotten a police report? Nope. (BTW, the Allen County sheriff wants me to send them $3 for a police report, and no, they won't email it to me.)

In the mean time, I'm shit outta luck. For all I know the second guy is in fucking jail for DUI and the first guy has left the planet.

You can bet your ass that if I was at fault I would come through and make damn sure it was taken care of.

Fuck.

Personal - Tuesday data dump

How the hell did I ever mow the lawn without an mp3 player?
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I really, really want a nice stand mixer. (For to make cookies!) Jeeze they are expensive.
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I used to drive through Greensburg, Kansas a lot when I was going to school. It was a quiet little town on highway 54 where even the gas station was closed on Sundays. I remember once my buddy's Mustang broke down in Greensburg and we had to wait almost two hours for the guy who worked at the service station to "finish his supper" and "drive back in to town."
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Boston was cool. The mate and offspring had fun. I did get lost trying to find Salem, Mass.. Turns out there's a Salem, New Hampshire, too. Who knew?

Personal - Car accident

On the way home from the funeral yesterday, I was hit by a guy who was high on painkillers. No one was hurt, and there was minimal damage to the car, but it was terrifying.

My pregnant wife was asleep in the passenger seat. We were coming up on an on ramp and I had just taken the cruise control off. I saw a guy in a little black car coming up behind me but didn't pay too much attention. As he got up next to me, he drifted over into my lane and I laid into the horn. He never stopped coming over, and after he bounced off of me, he kept driving. my wife woke up and started freaking out. I was livid. He showed no signs of stopping so I was going to follow him.

All of a sudden, a red car came flying past me and got up next to him. There was a girl in the car and she was screaming and gesturing at the guy. I assumed he must have hit her as well. She got in front of him and basically forced him to pull over. She was out of the car and screaming at the guy before I even got out of my car.

I came out of the car ready to beat the guy senseless.

The guy got out and stumbled. I thought, "crap... He's drunk." The guy looked at his car and up at me and was totally confused. All this time the girl is still yelling at him.

She finally tells me that she's his girlfriend and that he's on prescription meds for a torn rotator cuff and she told him not to drive, but he did anyway. He's stumbling around so I turned him around and made him sit in his car. (I was afraid he'd stumble out into traffic and become road-paste.)

I get her to find his insurance card and I go back and call the cops. He basically passes out in the drivers seat.

My wife stepped out of the car and the girlfriend sees that my wife is pregnant and she melts down. She starts screaming at the guy all over again.

The cops get there and I tell them what happened, they take pictures and statements and the girlfriend left. (She was on her way to work.) I asked the cop and he assured me the guy was going nowhere in his condition.

The best possible thing that could have happened to that guy was bumping my car. He could have killed himself or worse, someone else.

Personal - Rest well, G.O.M.

My godfather died.

I have to go to his funeral tomorrow.

He taught me what it meant to be a man, how to live up to my responsibilities, how to be a better friend. He did that all without ever telling me how to do it... he just lived that way.

He was a very faithful catholic and I hope that faith gave him comfort near the end.

I'll miss him terribly.

Personal - Wednesday data dump

What's on the droids mind this week?

Baby boy on the way... he's gonna need a name.
Must sell house.
Must find new house.
Zero day exploits sure are a P.I.T.A..
Trip to Boston for training.
Proud of my nephew.
Documentation sure would be nice.

Personal - A picture share

Personal - R.I.P. Larry Bud

Larry "Bud" Melman dead at age 85

You will be missed, funny man.

Personal - Note to self...

It's "every time" not "everytime".