Posts from — September 2005

This ought to help…

“Kinda makes you miss those days when Bush only sat on his ass for seven minutes…” – Bill Maher

Humberto has a few pictures from the summer up on his site, including making calzones and the ill-fated cheesecake (as well as the “cheese cupcakes”).

“These are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe.”
- Keith Olbermann

Olberman offers an excellent commentary now that the dust has settled a bit, watch it here. I don’t think I posted it before, but Senator Mary Landrieu’s interview on ABC is also pretty good, not just because she makes a reference to punching the president, but from the helicopter you get a view of the place where the president’s photo op had taken place a day earlier. From her website:

“But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast — black and white, rich and poor, young and old — deserve far better from their national government.”

I’ll post a followup later today.

“”At some point in the conversation, [Microsoft CEO] Mr. Ballmer said: ‘Just tell me it’s not Google,’” Lucovosky said in his statement. Lucovosky replied that he was joining Google.

“At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office,” Lucovosky recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “I’m going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f***ing kill Google.” Schmidt previously worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell.”

- news.com

It’s people like that who make me utterly despise businesses.

After being out reasonably late last night and at the football game most of the day yesterday, I felt too exhausted to do anything tonight. Since I didn’t go to Patrick’s party, I took the money I would have donated to him and donated it to the Red Cross, instead. I’m not saying that to brag, just hoping it might inspire someone else to donate as well.

“CNN was better prepared to deal with this disaster than FEMA was.” – somethingawful.com

The head of the dept of homeland security said “That ‘perfect storm’ of a combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody’s foresight.”

Hey, that sounds a lot like a failure of imagination! We’ll probably just continue our strategry of defending against old attacks and attacking irrelevant targets, though. Now it’d be funny if Bush decided to go after some random aspect of nature, like THE MOON IS HARBORING HURRICANES AND MUST BE STOPPED.

Bill Maher has a good segment that manages to be sufficiently respectful and also really funny, watch it here.

CNN has an excellent article juxtaposing quotes from government officials with those from people on the ground. Amazing how disconnected they are.

This guy is in NOLA, blogging about it, definitely worth reading. He has pictures, too.

Also worth reading:
The Wall Street Journal’s News Tracker no registration required.
An email from a rescue worker
Uncensored radio interview with the mayor of New Orleans (torrent) – lots of anger

Reading those really puts complaining about gas prices or donating a few bucks for parties in perspective.

This image is from a company that makes clothes for people in prisons and asylums who may be suicidal. It’s built so that you can’t turn it into a rope or anything. The picture makes me laugh, though. The guy looks like Tim, the Enchanter.

I got to wait in line to get gas today, it was $2.89, which is rather cheap. I’ve been catching up on the news tonight, since I’ve been really out of the loop lately, and the hurricane doesn’t seem so far away anymore.

The Washington Post has a pretty good article:
“[American Petroleum Institute President Red Cavaney] even urged President Bush to launch a nationwide energy-saving plan — tantamount to the tobacco industry calling on the White House to launch an anti-smoking plan. (Bush, in a later Rose Garden address, made no mention of conservation.)”

To his credit, the President did suggest conservation later on, but it was really half-hearted, essentially saying to only use gas if you need it. While I agree, that advice is really obvious, and the economy will tell consumers that in the first place. What about longer term plans, though? What about more tax breaks for fuel-efficient vehicles and closing the loophole that lets SUVs get away with their fuel efficiency? What about encouraging energy-saving windows, alternative transportation, etc? How about a real national initiative to reach an affordable high standard of fuel efficiency? Granted, some of these (especially the last) won’t have an immediate effect at all, but right now gas prices have the public’s attention, and now that it’s clearly affecting the economy, there’s motivation.

Or we could just give oil companies subsidies. That ought to work…

I feel like I haven’t been posting that much, though it’s only been a day off. So here’s some rambling for y’all.

Classes are going ok, nothing too exciting to report. I’m taking Data Mining, which seems reasonably interesting. I’m working part-time for a company on the north side doing some microsoft office VBA stuff. It’s mostly easy, but sadly I’m not working off any reasonable requirements document, so it’s not hard to code, it’s just hard to figure out what to code. Really hard. It pays as well as my summer work and is fairly flexible, so it should be good. I don’t expect that to last beyond this semester (I’ll probably quite sick of it by then).

I’m sinking into the role of bitter old alum pretty well. Band seems good so far… the execs did a good job with camp, except when they had Al wear the pink shirt and got him to pop his collar. Part of me died inside when I saw that. A big part, like the femur.

I’m getting back into my hobby of starting controversies on the band board. For the last year and seemingly this year, Jack, Patrick and I have been the only ones willing and able to host parties for the band. We’ve asked for donations and rarely came close to making our money back, and aren’t looking forward / aren’t willing to do the same thing this year. We all started talking about it and reached the boiling point so we decided something needed to be done.

I’m not going to summarize the whole thread, but basically we proposed what we think are a few solutions, and asked for feedback. The feedback we got was varied, and sometimes confusing. There was no clear consensus, and a bunch of slightly tangential topics ended up being discussed. I think that the discussion itself will cause a short term surge in donations that will cover upcoming parties, but I’m not convinced that there’s a long-term improvement. Maybe that’s pessimism, but we paid for a lot last year, I think we’ve earned the right.

The debate has subsided since very few people seem to want to discuss real change in the way things are paid for. So, since we’re in a wait-and-see mode for now, here are some “suggestions” I have:
- If you’re an upperclassman, you need to contribute MORE than you consume. Frosh aren’t expected to pull their weight, and it’s all of our responsibilities to cover that.
- If you only have a small amount to contribute, don’t drink or eat more than that. Period. If you can’t contribute money, just come hang out with us, you’re more than welcome to. If you have a legitimate financial hardship, let someone know and we can figure something out (ie helping with cleanup and setup would be cool).
- If you don’t know how much to donate, ASK SOMEONE. When we host parties, we know how much everything costs, and usually have receipts.
- If you’re an upper without a house in which to hold parties, host one at someone else’s house (ie mine, Jack’s, Patrick’s). Sarah and Gen are doing that this weekend, which is great, and things like that should happen more often.

I know I’ve repeated a lot of things that I and other people have said on the band board, but I find it easier to outline my thoughts outside the framework of a debate. I usually resort to witty comebacks in debates, anyway, so it’s not particularly mature. Oh well.

Wow, this is a long entry, but I’ll keep going, maybe a couple of people are still reading.

I’ve been working on the most important features of runstoppable lately (the running log itself), and it has been going pretty slowly. I just keep getting caught up with design issues and haven’t been able to get into a groove with it. Hopefully that’ll change tomorrow. Tim made some great progress with the forums, which are quite usable now.

This class schedule seems really strange right now, but I’m sure it’ll start making more sense soon. Anyway, I think that’s enough droning for now… I’ve got more stuff on my mind but I have to think it through before writing about it.