Month: November 2005

Ours is real fake. For safety reasons (I prefer not to risk burning the house down during the holidays) and I don’t have to buy a tree every year at $70 or more a pop for a nice one, we prefer the fake tree.

For the first half of our marriage, our yearly fight was about who got to put the lights on the tree. Matt hated doing it so he would throw them on as fast as he could (well, almost) and I hated doing it because I would spend hours putting them on very nicely. So once the cat destroyed the first ($5 after Christmas sale) tree, we bought a really nice big one with lights already on it.

I think this is year four, maybe five with this particular tree. I can’t quite remember. But last year it took a leap from a high location, which knocked out most of the lights. So, I spent many hours replacing hundreds of bulbs and got all but one strand to work. We also had a couple broken limbs.

This year several limbs are broken, fluffing it takes forever because the tree is so big and only 4 of the 15 strands of lights are working. Talk about frustrating. Something has got to give. As beautiful as that tree is, it’s done for after this Christmas. I’ll be vying for position the day after Christmas to get a new tree on clearance…with lights and smaller around in hopes that it will last a bit longer than this one did.

Oh, the things we go through for the sake of tradition! Do you have any tree stories?

Has anyone had the oportunity to play the new game system that Microsoft has deployed?

I was in Target during lunch the other day and got a chance to play a couple of the demo games while i was walking around. The games that they have demo’d have amazing graphics. I am in love… till i saw the price tag. The system price is $400. WOW… Where does it all end? How does a company like MS expect Joe Public to expend that kind of money. After seeing the news reports from Black Friday it appears that there are enough people who want it that there is a long waiting list for it. Insane.

On a funny note, I heard that there are issues with the new 360 when it was placed online for gaming that it got hit with all kinds of Virus’s. HEH…

For several years, global warming activists have been at odds with arch-conservatives, insisting that the world was getting warmer due to human industry, while arch-conservatives (recently acknowledging the indisputable warming trend) insisted it was just part of a natural cycle.

For both sides, the following find is a doozy.

Oceans rise at record rate as industrial age gathers momentum.

To sum up: The past 150 years have seen rising levels of the ocean due to methane and carbon dioxide which were unheard of for at least 100,000 years… and more like 650,000. If this is part of a “natural warming trend”, then it’s a killer one. Human civilization has only been around for about 11,000 years, and we only really got ahold of the tools of the industrial revolution 150 years ago.

I’ve just changed my opinion from “undecided” on global warming (as to whether humans are the cause, or if it’s part of a normal fluctuation) to “there’s no doubt humans are responsible for drastically rising ocean levels”. Sure, some people are going to say I’m guilty of pride because I think humans can affect an earth so vast.

I guess I’m proud, then. Or something. But still slightly ashamed, as I unabashedly use the Internet, in my fuel-heated home, guzzling electricity generated by a coal-burning power plant.

What’s the long-term solution to curbing our carbon dioxide and methane emissions? Carbon dioxide levels today are 27% higher than at any time in the last half-million years on this planet. We’re not in danger of choking ourselves in our own emissions (like in the farcical Spaceballs of some years back), but we’re in very real danger of flooding many of our coastal cities within our grandchildren’s lifetime.

Hurricanes and tornados, fueled by the additional trapped heat, will continue to grow in both frequency and intensity. Droughts will intensify, as will deluges. The Arctic permafrost is melting, and Antarctica’s sea ice shelves will mostly disappear within the next 50 years.

On the bright side, (I guess), it looks like many Arctic properties will open up. Greenland will be fertile and temperate again for the first time in a thousand years. Those ancient Viking settlements, once iced-over and barren, may become tourist attractions in a verdant farming community.

This time-span, though, is a blink of an eye in geological timelines. The carbon dioxide and methane levels won’t self-correct for thousands of years, as they get absorbed back into the earth and ocean through various means.

Unfortunately, the damage is done. Even if we dramatically reduce our emissions, we’ll continue to produce emissions thousands of times higher than any natural process has created in the last 100,000 years. We’ve already dramatically increased the greenhouse gas levels.

Knowing that there’s very little we can do on the emissions-forming side of the issue, what is to be done?

I’m thinking it’s a good time to look into northern Canadian real-estate.

So what did you guys do for turkey day?

I worked. Ahh, the life of a laborer 🙂 I was at work from 9PM Wednesday night through about 7 AM Thursday morning, handling UNIX support issues for workers in India. It was an unusually busy night! I’ve noticed this tendency for people I support there — and here in the US, we’re not guiltless — to submit support issues, claim they are “critical”, and then when it isn’t handled within, say, thirty minutes, use my support team as the scapegoat for their multi-week project not getting handled on time.

It’s terribly frustrating to *know* this is done routinely, handle the support calls, close the ticket, and have the user repeatedly re-open the ticket claiming to not understand the solution I provided. Until one day I saw the pattern behnind the madness, and then it makes perfect sense: the goal of the ticket isn’t to get the problem resolved, it’s to get a plausible excuse for their otherwise inexcusable delay. Or, at least, so I tell myself.

Strangely, the few times I’ve wanted to test my theory, the turnover is so high in our remote office that the worker who attempted to use us as a scapegoat is no longer there a few weeks later. Justice, I suppose.

Anyway, after working, I went home and slept for about 3 hours before leaving for our family get-together at my brother Jay‘s house. Lots of turkey, lots of pie, lots of fun and a sad goodbye. All the good stuff. It was really nice to have a family get-together where all we were doing was just hanging out, all day long. Usually, we get together for dinner at around 4:30, and by 7:30 we’re packing up to leave. This time, we had enough time to play Dance Dance Revolution for a while, watch three episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (now I’m on Season 4, episode 3… yeah, I’m slow, but woot!), play board games (I didn’t get into those today), geek-out by whipping out matching laptops on the couch, and stuff ourselves silly to boot.

It was a good Thanksgiving. Now where’s my diet book?

I just read a stat putting half of U.S. households paying at least one bill via online banking. Which leads me to ask: how many of you are paying bills with an online bill-pay service?

I don’t know much about paying bills via the internet. At one time, I thought that you set up a bill-pay account with your bank, and then the bank did the work of collecting all the monthly bills and presenting them to you through their web portal. I’ve been told that this is not how it works. I’ve been told you have to personally set up each and every repetitive bill with the vendor, not the bank.

For the last couple of years I’ve been holding out, waiting until the vendors started offering a discount incentive for paying their bills online. Unfortunately, the exact opposite happened. Banks offer it for free and vendors now charge a fee for wanting to pay by credit card. Maybe writing out all those checks by hand and paying postage isn’t worth it anymore? Especially considering the first class rate is hiking to $0.39 on 1/1/06.

Is online banking for real? Somebody hook a brother up with the 411.

Around this time of year I often find myself thinking about the musical “The Sound of Music”. Besides the fact that Julie Andrews was both incredibly hot and could sing like an angel (thus inspiring my childhood crush on her), several of the songs are compelling and stick around in my brain after hearing them.

Heh, and it seems like they always played “The Sound Of Music” on local TV stations around November/December. I’m really not sure why, but maybe they wanted to balance the usual violent fare with a token “family” movie around the Holidays or something.

Anyway, the one that is stuck in my head today? “My Favorite Things”. I’m sure you know the tune; if I’m wrong, go watch The Sound of Music right away!. My brain, in my sleep, began re-arranging lyrics into a song called “Least Favorite Things”. Here’s a sample stanza or two:

Children with puke-breath and loaded, plugged toilets, Having to work when I’d rather avoid it, Gastrointestinal distress and “bling!”, These are some of my least-favorite things.

Cheap plastic parts breaking in an appliance, Creationists pretending that it’s science, Naught in my inbox but advertising, These are some of my least-favorite things.

When my job bites, When my locks freeze, When I have to curse, I then remember some least-favorite things, And think that it could be worse.

Come on, guys, pitch in a verse! I know you can…

Yet another useless test: the Yankee Test. Claims to be able to identify where you’re from based on relation to the Mason-Dixon line, which traditionally separates the Northern United States (the Yankees) from the Southern United States (.

My result?

58% (Dixie). Right on the Mason-Dixon Line

Some terms I had never heard of until I was an adult, like “frontage road” which I’ve only ever referred to since I’ve been out West. Considering that the Mason-Dixon line historically divided Pennsylvania from Maryland, and I’m from Maryland, I’d say it’s pretty accurate!

Maryland has traditionally been quite ambiguous regarding whether it’s a Southern or a Northern state. Culturally, it is Southern. Sympathetically, it’s Northern. In order to ensure that Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, would not be the Union capital surrounded by Confederate states, during the Civil War (a.k.a. “The War of Northern Aggression”) a brigade was sent from Boston to keep the peace and ensure that Maryland was Union… despite it actually being south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Nevertheless, several Confederate regiments were formed within the state, notably from Baltimore, and they fought on behalf of the Confederacy.

Isn’t it funny how, in this age of the Internet and television, we still preserve some unique geographically-based linguistic patterns?

A little late, But the 11th was Veterans day. I am a Army Veteran. I proudly served on active duty for 5 years active and another 3 inactive. I was lucky that i never was sent into an active combat arena. The closest I ever came was being deployed down to Panama where i worked some counter-narcotics missions.

I currently have, whom I consider to be, one of my best friends deployed to Iraq. He is a Sergeant First Class who works as a Master Explosive Ordanance Disposal Tech. His job is to investigate and diffuse bombs (bombs, mines, unexploded stuff) This is his 3rd depoloyment to Iraq. Not a day goes by that i don’t pray for his safe return home.

I can only hope that the insanity of this war is brought to a rapid halt. “We are not a nation building military, we are a war fighting military” G.W. Bush. These were words that the Commander in Chief spoke during his first campaign in 1999 (?). Since 9/11 he has been hell bent on rebuilding the country of a foreign land instead of improving and protecting our own. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Sadam needed to be taken care of, but that is what black ops units are for.

I would like to stand up and thank all those who have served and who are serving. I will forever support the soldier.

I have heard a few quotes today that have stuck with me….

“In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” ~José Narosky

“This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.” ~Elmer Davis

My .02

JB

I don’t know why, but I’m all into the blog posting today.

I’m devastated by this news. Where else will I turn to see some of the blandest television programming ever aired? Or maybe it was all attention recently from the TV nannies.

“LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The Camdens will bid farewell to viewers in May when the WB Network’s top-rated family drama “7th Heaven” ends its run after 10 seasons in what sources said was largely a cost-cutting move.”

All the bad news is here.

Maybe we can hope that Dr. Gillian Taylor and Captain/Commander Decker will end the series finale by sling-shotting themselves back around the sun and back to their real lives in the 24th century.

In the raft of recent legislation passed, politicans voted into and out of power, and various and sundry other things that are the necessary result of living in a democracy, one thing slipped the notice of most people:

The state of Texas outlawed marriage. Not gay marriage: marriage, or anything identical to or like it.

What’s funnier to me is this page, in defense of the marriage amendment, which gets it wrong again! Now remember, these are the guys who supported the proposition, and were attempting to defuse the last-minute campaign opposing the amendment because it would ban all marriages in Texas. I fully expect them to fix the language on this HTML page soon, though:

A phantom group launched a campaign Monday to trick Texans into voting against the state’s marriage protection amendment by falsely claiming that such a vote would actually protect marriage.

Now, the trick hinges on how you interpret the word “vote”. The way I read it is that the “vote” is the vote for the amendment. The amendment is, itself, a “vote”. After reading it a couple of times, I realize that the “vote” could also be, as intended, the “voting against the state’s marriage protection amendment”.

This group gets big stars for sending crappily-mixed messages.

The group opposed to the state’s marriage protection amendment opposes it on the grounds that it would actually protect marriage? Huh? I realize that it’s just one word. They intended to say “would actually prevent marriage”, or that they meant the vote to be the vote against the amendment, but this is just too funny. The same group that wrote the Constitutional Amendment, and screwed it up, also wrote this page defending it, and screwed it up again.

And to think, my wife and I just this morning were discussing a potential move to Austin if my job requires it. Hmm. Maybe not. I’d really not like to suddenly become an illegitimate father.

The actual language of the constitutional amendment is even funnier. Those crazy Texans!

SECTION 1. Article I, Texas Constitution, is amended by adding Section 32 to read as follows:

Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. (b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

Of course, the legal status most identical to or similar to marriage is marriage itself…

Reminds me of that old joke: “If marriages are outlawed, then only outlaws would have in-laws”… But now it’s true!

(Note: OK, I totally get the other side to this. Activists in favor of the proposition are saying that the language clearly doesn’t ban marriage itself. And yet, looked at in isolation, it sure looks like that to me. Mathematically speaking, “1 == 1”, or “1 equals 1”, or “1 is identical to 1” are equivalent statements…)

— Matthew P. Barnson – – – – Thought for the moment: Matrimony isn’t a word, it’s a sentence.

(The randomly-selected signature, too, is just too funny today!)