Barnson.org

President-elect Obama has chosen a HUD secretary. President-elect Obama said HUD is essential in the effort to stem the mortgage crisis, which “not only shakes the foundation of our economy, but the foundation of the American Dream.”

I tried searching through all my previous posts to find my diatribe on the fallacy of the U.S. housing situation. I could have sworn I went off on this sometime during 2008. Without repeating myself, let me summarize. The linking of ‘owning a home’ and the ‘American dream’ is an enormous fallacy. It is a financial marketing ploy that was irrationally grown by the detente of Wall Street and the U.S. Government. Look at where it’s gotten us. It seems there have been two major blowups this past year – Wall Street and the housing market.

Telling people that owning a home is the American dream puts a dangerous ideology in their head. The American dream should be having the freedom to choose a career and domestic path that allows each one of us the ability to find our own happiness. To the contrary, doing what it takes to move into a home, go way into credit debt, and have banks swoop up and package together all our little mortgage deals that eventually get shipped overseas so that foreign nations own 20% of our housing market is not what I would consider to be the American dream. It’s turned out to be a nightmare.

My problem with Obama is that he’s already not using his head. He’s pandering to the existing infrastructure of fallacy. I would like to hear Obama say that owning a home is nice but it’s not necessary to lead a full and happy life. I would like to hear Obama say that responsibility starts with the application of diligence, personal accountability and working to protect others in your family. I would like to hear Obama say that eliminating personal debt and executing a habit of good household finance is most important.

Friends don’t let friends get over-leveraged.

A couple nights ago I gigged a hospital corporate party with an enclave of pro musicians from around town. The organizer of the gig is a good friend of mine who is probably the best front man I’ve ever played with in my life. We had a bunch of tunes on the set list that featured some screeching rock classics; Separate Ways, Rock & Roll, Synchronicity II, among others. I guess when you work in the emergency room of a hospital these types of songs are considered calming devices.

It had been almost 18 years since I last played Separate Ways. If I recall correctly, that last time was when WS was jamming out at the QOHS pool during the back half of the Vermont senior high band home-and-away cultural exchange. And by ‘culture’ I mean the exchange of body fluids. At least for some of us. In the back seat of our cars.

But I digress. The point here is that I was floored 18 years of my life had past. 18 years ago. Kids born that night are now going to college. The price of a movie ticket has gone up 2,456%. Elephants have lost their memory.

At least everyone in the corporate crowd was rocking out to the tune. It wasn’t as though we were staring off the stage into an abyss of questioning frowns with hands covering their ears. It wasn’t as though a client spokesman was dispatched reluctantly to push their way to the stage through the force of our amplitude and to yell over the wailing rock coda solo a request to stop playing the oldies. That would have caused me pain.

And Ben, if you’re out there, I remembered my harmony part on the chorus.

Well, here I am for my first full day in Colorado Springs. From my office, I can see the Air Force academy stadium, and light planes are constantly taking off & landing for glider training for our next generation of budding pilots.

However, my particular view of this expansive city is mostly this:

Yep, sitting in my cube farm, working on a laptop as usual. One is very much like another, as far as that goes. On the plus side, I picked up a copy of Gary Taubes’ latest book and began reading it over dinner last night.

One thing that both surprised and disgusted me was how brown the snow was when flying in. From what I understand, this is part of the system that ends up cleaning the air coming in from California. The smog hits the Rocky Mountains and drops it in the high valleys. Thus Colorado is part of California’s smog-cleaning system.

When I was picking up Taubes’ book last night, I happened to show up at Barnes & Noble right as a choir was gearing up to put on a performance! They were pretty darn good, looked great, and had a lot of energy.

(Postscript: sorry for the sideways pictures. I lack the time to get them rotated and re-uploaded today!)

Welp, someone has WAY too much time on their hands and, of course, a webcam…

So I’m headed to a data center in Colorado Springs for the next ten days (Dec 11-20). During that time, I’ll be staying at a nice hotel with a gym, but I gotta ask: what do you do to stay in shape while traveling? In particular, how do you handle all the eating out?

I think my suite has a kitchen. If it doesn’t, wow, this is going to be a rough week for sticking to my eating plan 🙂

I’ve never in my life considered fitness opportunities when traveling. It’s a new experience!

–Matt

So this picture captures the feeling of the average American citizen toward the Big 3 auto-maker bailout (note: language alert!):

Thanks to the Rampant Coyote for the link.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen due to his dual British-American citizenship at the time of his birth. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/08/scotus-rejects-appeal-questioning-obamas-citizenship/ . In sum, he was born on American soil, to an American mother, despite a father who was a British subject.

One claim is still finding its way through the courts, challenging Obama’s recorded birth in Honolulu, Hawaii.

I’m just glad to see this particular bit of idiocy die.

Say Congratulations to the new IT Manager at Tiny-But-Growing-Corp!

I feel dumber already 😉

Weed

The combination of ‘online’ and ‘misrepresentation’ hasn’t reached standard household, or geek-hold, term status. But it might soon. Real soon.

I’m fascinated by the outcome of a court trial in which a MO woman was convicted of ‘accessing computers without authorization’. She had assumed a false identity online to cyberbully a younger teenager and that teenager went on to commit suicide. For her criminal conviction she faces the maximum penalty of 3 years in jail and a $300K fine.

Going deeper into the story, what you find out is that this MO woman created a fictitious identity on MySpace and used that faux persona to berate some girl who had previously wronged the MO woman’s daughter. Once that girl took her own life it appears some CA prosecutors got on board to find some available legal channel by which to allege a crime. MySpace is headquartered in CA. I’m sure the reason this case even reached a judicial decision, resulting in conviction, was because of the heinous outcome and the media attraction. That and the fact that the CA courts are pretty friendly terrain.

Now, what I believe this means for the greater public is a potential enormous shift in online mores. This kind of thing has resulted in death. How soon until ‘accessing computers without authorization’ gives ways to a more relevant term used in this case – ‘online misrepresentation’. Everything that falls under tort, contracts and criminal code is in play. How soon until people pretending to be other people online, resulting in harm, becomes regularly qualified as criminal?

Online providers are typically immune from this kind of liability because of everything in their ULAs. My belief is that these providers will do everything they can to continue staying outside of liability by releasing details of their users who are involved in criminal activity. Much like copyright infringement. They will just get out of the way and turn detail over. So, thinking about screwing someone over on eBay? Going incognito on Facebook?

Better think twice.

One of the really annoying things that happens is the constant revival of ‘My Pictures’. This thing will not die. No matter how many times I manually delete this folder continues to return. Help on putting this thing in the grave once and for all?