So, I saw on CNN this morning that Bernanke is now “concerned” about inflation. Well, it’s about time! Gold started last year at about $600, and ended it at about $800/ounce. As of the last week, only two months into the year, it’s been hovering around $950. Gas prices are up. Food prices are up. And he’s just starting to be concerned? Please. This is like being concerned about a plane crash after the fourth engine on your Flying Fortress flames out and you just got your tail sheared off by anti-aircraft fire. Most people started worrying when the second engine dropped offline. And Bernanke, bless his little heart, now drops hints that he might lower interest rates again. I guess we might as well go ahead and jettison those wings too and make the inevitable happen a little faster there …
Monthly Archive for February, 2008
The Story: Roger That. It’s a Man on a Lawn Mower. This reminds me way to much of a cousin of my mothers who actually (hmmm … should I admit this in public?) received a DWI while on a tractor, after his license was revoked for similar behavior behind the wheel of a car.
Note: My tongue is planted firmly in cheek here, if it’s not obvious.
I’ve lived in Chattanooga for around one year and nine months now. Not long, but long enough that I can see that Ron Littlefield doesn’t know what he’s doing as far as managing the weather goes.
This is my second winter here, and we’ve had no accumulation of snow and very little snowfall at all, at least down here in the valley. What kind of winter is that? Come on, Ron, give us some snow! I didn’t move from Raleigh, NC toward the mountains for nothin’! Back in Asheville, where I lived before Chattanooga, they’ve gotten over 12 inches in the last 24 hours! We’re a bigger city than them, with more resources … surely we can do better! Plus, think of all the people who are out of jobs … folks who make snowplows, folks who sell the salt and sand they scatter on the roadways when we have freezing weather. Think of the children, man!
As if that wasn’t bad enough, last summer we had a drought. We did fine down here by the river, but folks in the general area who weren’t so close ended up running out of water. Obviously Ron didn’t think of the welfare of everybody around and provide us with enough rain. Those Republicans never do think about the welfare of people who aren’t as well-off as they are.
One particular weather mis-management choice Mr. Littlefield has made that has affected me personally is that he hasn’t scheduled enough thunderstorms. I like ‘em. I like to sit on the porch and watch the lightning and hope it doesn’t strike something close enough to my house to make me jump out of the porch swing and bang my head on the roof. Any mayor worth his salt could give us more thunderstorms, and do it without the nasty stuff like high winds, hail, tornados, and direct lightning strikes that destroy property.
Most recently, anybody watching the weather who is honest would have to agree that it looks like Mr. Littlefield doesn’t know what the heck he’s doing as far as managing the temperature goes. Monday I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and then yesterday night it was below 30 and snowing (but not enough for any accumulation down here; shame on you, Ron!). Isn’t he a competent enough mayor to keep the temperature somewhat consistent from day to day? Can we have some gradual changes here, please?
Those are just a few examples that come to mind that demonstrate that Ron Littlefield has destroyed our local weather while in office. I fully expect that he won’t do enough to prevent a drought this coming summer either, which will probably mean that Georgia will invade and annex all of Nickajack Lake plus St. Elmo. If they do that, Atlanta will drain the entire Tennessee River dry within a week! To not do anything to prevent a drought now, like pre-scheduling enough rainfall for the summer, and giving us a wet spring, will certainly invite disaster!
So, we need somebody to run for mayor against Littlefield … somebody who can provide Hope ™ and offer real Change ™, especially in the weather.
P.S. I figure if folks blame the president for the economy, I can blame the mayor for the weather. Right?
P.P.S. Actually I think the mayor has more control over the weather than the president has over the economy …
The Republican Party is sending subtle and not-so-subtle messages to Mike Huckabee to pack his bags and go back to Arkansas (”Huckabee ignoring GOP’s hints to quit presidential race“). In the last week, McCain has picked up endorsements from both Romney and George H.W. Bush (huh?).
Huckabee, to his credit, is refusing to withdraw. You won’t find me defending or praising Huckabee too often, but in this case, the man is right. This is the primary, for cryin’ out loud. As I’ve stated before, I believe that every candidate should stay in the race during the primary for as long as is possible.
The votes that each candidate gets (so long as voters aren’t brain-dead morons who vote for the person they think will win instead of who they like) are a valuable barometer for the party as to where the party’s voters’ sympathies lie. For instance … I’m a Ron Paul supporter. Ron Paul seems to average about 5% of the vote from state to state. As a result, we know that the majority of rank-and-file Republicans don’t like Paul’s ideas, except for the drooling idiots who voted for somebody else even though they like Paul … but I doubt there are too many in that category.
Mitt Romney should take his cue from Huckabee and un-suspend his campaign. Too bad he’s already decided to endorse McCain.
Look, if having the votes split up leads to a brokered convention, so be it. Seriously, though, the chances of that happening now are slim, even if Romney was still in the race. What are you guys afraid of? Obama-Clinton ‘08? I’ve got news for you … even if McCain gets 99% of the votes at the convention, it’s still going to be ugly. So, Republicans, get a clue and encourage your candidates to stay in the primaries until the last ballot is cast.
I’ve now had my new Macbook Pro for a little over a week. This is my first experience with a) an Intel Mac and b) OS X 10.5 (Leopard), so I thought I’d share some things I think really rock with my new setup:
- Spaces (OS X’s virtual desktops implementation) - I tried a few third-party virtual desktop programs in the past, but they generally were buggy … and none of them are as slick as Apple’s implementation. I’ve gotten really comfortable with the setup in the last few days.
- Time Machine (OS X’s new backup utility) - I plugged in my Western Digital MyBook 500gb drive and it immediately asked if I wanted to use it to back stuff up on. Well, now that you mention it … sure! And, it does this automatically when the drive is set up. I’d like the ability to tell it when not to do backups since a little extra disk usage during the day when I’m chugging away at the drive with other processes isn’t welcome, but other than that it’s slick.
- Unity Mode in VMware Fusion - It’s creepy to see a Vista window on my OS X desktop, but it’s much nicer than running the OS in a window. Being able to switch back and forth between OS X and Windows apps rocks. Yeah, I know Parallels does it too, but I’m declaring my allegiance to Fusion since it runs the virtual machines I’ve made in VMware Server and Workstation. That’s just way too valuable.
- iCal - Looks much better than it used to look. That is all.
- System Preferences - Whoa! They made the network preferences logical! Yeah, I was confused the first time I went looking for Internet Connect to connect to my office VPN, but once I figured out where it was, I was happy. Oh, and the new icon is sexy too!
Now … when I can come up with the spare cash to upgrade to Adobe CS3 in the next month or so, I think all the apps I depend on for most of my work will be Universal Binaries. That reminds me … I have to give some props to Apple for handling the PowerPC => Intel transition so well. Yeah, there were some hiccups with the early machines (which I studiously avoided by being a cheapskate and sticking with my Powerbook for nearly four years) but overall it went really well.
Title translation (for those of you who haven’t spent time reading Flannery O’Connor and ain’t familiar with the way we folks from the South speak): “That There 123 Book Meme That’s Making the Rounds.” Yes, that’s right, where I come from, the word “what” can be substituted for “that” from time to time. It drives my wife crazy. 
So, I’ve been tagged by Scott @ Transformatum. The rules are:
- Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
- Turn to page 123.
- Find the first 5 [full] sentences.
- Post the next 3 sentences.
- Tag 5 people.
So, here we go …
The senses are not to be discarded, but they should be expanded to their widest capacity. We see Christ rightly only when we say with Thomas: “My Lord and my God!” We have just established that the icon has a trinitarian scope, and now we must come to terms with its ontological proportions. [...]
The passage above was taken from The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).
I’ll confess that Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide was technically closer, but I decided to spare y’all a dry excerpt about accessor methods in Ruby objects. Besides, I’d only pulled it out for reference purposes earlier today, while I’ve actively been reading the liturgy book.
Brian, Chad, David, Philip and Will: the torch has been passed to you. You’re it!
My days of being largely inactive politically are over as of tonight. I’ve been voted chair of the Hamilton County Libertarian Party. In a few days (when I get a chance to catch my breath) the information there will be updated.
With the support of the Libertarian Party of Tennessee, we’ve set up a Meetup group to provide a point of contact with persons who are interested in Libertarian ideals. Meetup groups have worked well for the Ron Paul campaign, and we believe that we can effectively use them to grow the Libertarian Party as well.
My next goals as chair are to find persons willing to serve in the remaining open positions on the Executive Committee of the party, and to investigate ways we can promote the party locally.
It is my firm belief, as I have written before, that growing strong, viable parties to challenge the Democrats and Republicans is critical to effecting lasting change in our nation. The labels “Democrat” and “Republican” have become so generalized as to be ultimately useless in determining the overall political positions of any particular candidate. If you don’t believe me, think about the differences between Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel on the Democratic side and Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Alan Keyes, Sam Brownback, Duncan Hunter, and Ron Paul on the Republican side. Sure, there is a common thread that joins many of the candidates in both sides, but a detailed survey of their positions would reveal more differences than similarities in many cases.
For political parties to be useful, they must represent a relatively narrow portion of the political spectrum. Then and only then will elections be most able to demonstrate the direction the citizens wish the government to move in.
My desire as chair is to raise the visibility of the LP locally, grow its membership, and elect Libertarians to office locally without compromising the key principles which differentiate the LP from other parties. We cannot afford to broaden our tent at the expense of maintaining a clear, consistent platform, or we will have started down a path that will ultimately see us in the same position that the Republicans and Democrats find themselves today.
If you suspect that you may be Libertarian, I encourage you to take the Nolan Chart quiz. If you are Libertarian, I encourage you to join us in our quest to change the face of government in Hamilton County, TN. Our next location will be Tuesday, March 11 at 7:00 p.m. The location will be announced at a later date. When a location is chosen, it will be posted on our Meetup Group’s page.
Notice anything unusual about the amount of memory Java is supposedly using according to Activity Monitor? Here’s a hint … my disk drive is only 160 gigs …
I’ve looked forward to getting an Intel Mac for some time now, if for no other reason than because I could run a Windows virtual machine significantly faster since there wouldn’t be any need to do “translation” between Intel and PPC instruction sets. Even on my pretty healthy 1.5 GHz Powerbook G4 with 2 GB RAM, XP was glacially slow … and that was after I disabled nearly every non-essential Windows service and ran it at 800×600.
Then VMware introduced their Fusion product, which uses (basically) the same virtual machine format used by VMware Player, Workstation and Server. I’ve got all three products in use at work. I build VPS machines in Workstation, use them in Player, and have a number of Server VPS machines running on host machines at the datacenter. Running Fusion would mean that I could move the VPS machines to my Mac and test them, which would just be cool. Several times in the past, I’ve duplicated a running VPS from the datacenter and tested upgrades … and it’s saved my bacon.
In the last couple of weeks, while I’ve been without my Powerbook after its logic board failure, I created a CentOS5 VPS to use to test things on while I was using the Vista laptop. Yeah, I know I can install XAMPP, but I just don’t trust it for my development work. Of course when I got the Macbook yesterday, I went ahead and installed Fusion on it and copied over the VPS, and had it up and running with a minimal amount of hassle.
And today … just a few minutes ago, I discovered that they have an application that will convert Virtual PC 7 machines to the VMware format. I ran it on my IE7 XP virtual machine, and it worked like a charm. I’ve already ordered a copy of Vista to run as a virtual machine too (just because it’s different enough from XP that I want to be able to test on it without having to use another machine), but I probably won’t get it and be able to set it up until mid-week. Having the XP machine means I can test stuff in IE 7 right now. Yay for VMware!
The Hamilton County Libertarian Party will be meeting on Tuesday, February 12 at 7:00 p.m. at the Ryan’s at 5104 Hixson Pike (just north of Northgate Mall).
The purpose of the HCLP is to promote the principles of liberty and elect persons who will do the same at the local level, and to support the work of the Party at the state and federal levels. If you are interested in a return to a government that is once again constrained by the limitations imposed upon it by the Constitution and respects the life and liberty of its citizens, please join us on Tuesday night.
Latest Comments
RSS