There will be plenty of head scratching, and more than a little disbelief, if Republican voting in Iowa and New Hampshire mirrors a recent straw poll conducted by the Republican Party of San Diego County.
Top vote-getter: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 37% (117 votes). No big surprise there, though he was in a distant second place in a California Field Poll in August behind Giuliani.
Second place: Texas Rep. Ron Paul, 23 percent (73 votes). No, that's not a typo. And that may be a surprise to some of you, but given the number and intensity of questions from Paul's supporters during weekly Union-Tribune online political chats, no surprise here. Okay, we were a little surprised.
A TURKEY is more occult and awful than all the angels and archangels. In so far as God has partly revealed to us an angelic world, He has partly told us what an angel means. But God has never told us what a turkey means. And if you go and stare at a live turkey for an hour or two, you will find by the end of it that the enigma has rather increased than diminished.
'All Things Considered.'
Christmas ads have already been around for months -- getting tired of it yet?
ALL the old wholesome customs in connexion with Christmas were to the effect that one should not touch or see or know or speak of something before the actual coming of Christmas Day. Thus, for instance, children were never given their presents until the actual coming of the appointed hour. The presents were kept tied up in brown-paper parcels, out of which an arm of a doll or the leg of a donkey sometimes accidentally stuck. I wish this principle were adopted in respect of modern Christmas ceremonies and publications. The editors of the magazines bring out their Christmas numbers so long before the time that the reader is more likely to be lamenting for the turkey of last year than to have seriously settled down to a solid anticipation of the turkey which is to come. Christmas numbers of magazines ought to be tied up in brown paper and kept for Christmas Day. On consideration, I should favour the editors being tied up in brown paper. Whether the leg or arm of an editor should ever be allowed to protrude I leave to individual choice.
'All Things Considered.'
You all are going to be subjected to the fact that I dug up a list of Chesterton quotes, and as long as I have a fascination with them I will probably be posting them here. Actually I have squirreled away lots of lists of quotes, but I have been able to contain myself so far.
Maybe I should bring back the Quote of the Day from years past.
WE had talked for about half an hour about politics and God; for men always talk about the most important things to total strangers. It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache.
'The Club of Queer Trades.'
Here's an article over at the Holy Whapping about the Pope's new wheels. However, I link to it because I am really digging this idea for some reason:
Somehow, I'm reminded of our plans for the Vatican's airport, complete with deacons chanting "Ite, Missa Est" at the ends of the moving walkways.
A SAUCY lingerie compary asked its female office staff to turn up in their undies for a day - and almost all of them actually did.
Taiwan's Audrey Underwear decided to celebrate record sales by naming November 21 Camisole Day.
I am currently reading this
A mounting number of studies are coming to some surprising conclusions about the dangers of nuclear radiation. It might not be as deadly as is widely believed.
I got this from StumbleUpon, which is not a particularly useful site to me since they require me to install a browser toolbar that I refuse to install. So the most I can do is browse their list of web sites...
This is another of those "I almost lived a block away from there" stories, which are making me feel more and more lucky that I moved to this house instead of one of the other choices, which also included this lovely location in La Jolla.
Rancho Santa Fe, off La Soldadera. The entire canyon all the way down Del Dios Highway to here pretty much looks like the moon, for miles.
You may have third-party "enhancement" software installed that does not work with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Use one of these solutions.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
RELEASE No. 20071026-01
October 26, 2007
Iraqi Army at Besmaya Installation Support San Diego Fire Victims
By U.S. Army Sgt 1st Class Charlene Sipperly
Multi-National Security Transition Command – Iraq Public Affairs
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Members of the Iraqi Army in Besmaya collected a donation for the San Diego, Calif., fire victims Thursday night at the Besmaya Range Complex in a moving ceremony to support Besmaya's San Diego residents.
Iraqi Army Col. Abbass, the commander of the complex, presented a gift of $1,000 to U.S. Army Col. Darel Maxfield, Besmaya Range Complex officer in charge, Multi-National Security Transition Command Iraq, to send to the fire victims in California.
The money was collected from Iraqi officers and enlisted soldiers in Besmaya. In a speech given during the presentation, Col. Abbass stated that he and the Iraqi soldiers were connected with the American people in many ways, and they will not forget the help that the American government has given the Iraqi people. Abbass was honored to participate by sending a simple fund of $1,000 to the American people in San Diego, to lower the suffering felt by the tragedy.
Madison - Gov. Jim Doyle's use of his veto power to kill specific words and numbers, and then stitch the remaining fragments together to create something that never passed the Legislature, rekindled the Capitol fight over what has come to be known as "Frankenstein veto" authority - and whether it should be repealed.
San Diego County officials offer this advice on cleanup:
As some residents are allowed back into their homes and neighborhoods, there are several precautions they should take as they begin the task of cleaning up:
· Avoid disseminating ash into the air; do not use leaf blowers or non-HEPA filter vacuums.
· The Regional Water Control Quality Board asks that you avoid washing ash into storm drains if possible.
· Wear gloves, long-sleeved shirts, and long pants to avoid skin contact.
· If you do get ash on your skin, wash it off as soon as possible.
· Wear well-fitting dust masks; those rated N-95 or P-100 provide better protection than simple dust or surgical masks. Persons with heart or lung disease should consult a physician before using a mask.
· Lightly mist indoor and outdoor hard surfaces before gently sweeping ash, followed by wet mopping. On lightly dusted areas, a damp cloth or wet mop may be all that is needed.
· Collected ash may be disposed of in your regular trash collection. Ash may be stored in plastic bags or other containers that will prevent it from being disturbed.
An amusing toy for you to play with. Go to the web site and build your own house.
Click here to view my house
The results I got were:
Based on your drawing and the 10 answers you gave this is a summary of your personality:
Your house tells the world that you ought to be a leader. You are a freedom lover and a strong person. You will avoid being alone and seek the company of others whenever possible. You love excitement and create it wherever you go. You are very tidy person. There's nothing wrong with that because you're pretty popular among friends. Your life is always full of changes.
You will avoid being alone and seek the company of others whenever possible. You love excitement and create it wherever you go. You see the world as it is, not as you believe it should be.
You are not a romantic person by nature. It also safe to say that others don't see you as a flirt. You don't think much about yourself.
A landslide swept away a chunk of an upscale hilltop neighborhood Wednesday, destroying a home, damaging five others and opening up a 50-yard chasm in a four-lane road. There were no injuries, but at least 110 homes were evacuated by Wednesday afternoon.
PHOENIX - It sounds like science fiction but it's true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.
Since the credit crisis started shaking the world financial markets this summer, many professional traders have taken big losses. Another, less likely group of investors has, too: middle-class Japanese homemakers who moonlight as amateur currency speculators.
Over the weekend I read this article in Der Spiegel about the current economic difficulties and saw this quote:
The leftist Berliner Zeitung writes:
"The current mini-crash is a painful sign of what the companies constructed of air and the extremely convoluted financial constructions are capable of. Whether this gambling pays off will all depend on more down-to-earth economics: If Joe Average in the USA can't pay his mortgage, we're all screwed."
That got me wondering, that was translated from German. How did they get "Joe Average"? Not to mention, how did they get "we're all screwed"?
The original from the Berliner Zeitung is here:
Wenn Otto Normalverbraucher, der in den USA Joe Average heißt, seine Hypothek nicht mehr bedienen kann, gehen alle baden.
That's Otto Normal Consumer, who we are informed "is called Joe Average in the USA". And rather than being screwed, everything is going in the bath for us.
Best sarcastic line of the day. Did anyone besides me think that the last thing the economy needed was to make it more likely that people would never be able to get out from under their debts?
Speaking of not-rich people, thank goodness we've restricted personal bankruptcy so that all these subprime mortgage defaults can generate a robust system of economic slavery. People had felt in control of their lives for far too long.
We're now going to reap the benefits of this attitude.
After we posted letters from Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony about Oracle support and Linux philosophy, he seems to be out of his job at Linspire. Coincidence?
In case you were wondering what music Hitler listened to after a particularly stressful day in the office: Hitler's Record Collection Surfaces in Moscow
This article contains my favorite quote of the day, or probably the week. From Megan at Asymmetrical Information:
But I did not laugh. I was raised to laugh at people behind their backs. It's called "manners".
Actually, I'm sure that's what started this process...Red Hat acquiring JBoss. This upset Larry Ellison, so he's stomping his feet, but the gun he chose to fire back with, "Oracle support," doesn't have any bullets. Threatening Red Hat using Oracle's support is like bringing a water pistol to a gun fight.
I would pay money to find out which vendor said this.
"We need to stifle creativity in the open source community to get control of standards..."
I am running into some open source "issues" today. The open source solutions tend to be simpler and better. However, they tend to also only be 70% solutions to the business requirement, at which point the developers get bored and move on to something else. This is exactly why companies like Microsoft actually dominate the market instead of open source solutions.
If open source was so great, we would have a functional open source replacement for Microsoft Exchange right now that could be dropped in and used by an average administrator. We don't have one. It's been ten years since I started looking at that issue, but went on to another business opportunity assuming that the Exchange-replacement one would be an obvious one that would be done by half a dozen people who were more qualified than I. Boy was I wrong. This is another one of those ideas I've had that I've ended up kicking myself about years later. That's food for another post later on, though.
Pro-Taleban militants in Pakistan's North Waziristan region say they have ended their truce with the government.
In a statement issued in Miranshah, the main town, the militants accused the government of breaking the agreement.
It came as Pakistan deployed more troops in the area, fearing "holy war" after the storming of the militant Red Mosque last week left 102 dead.
Iranian intelligence operatives recently detained over a dozen squirrels found within the nation's borders, claiming the rodents were serving as spies for Western powers determined to undermine the Islamic Republic.
"We are giving the Persians, and especially the rulers of Iran, a two month period to end all kinds of support for the Iraqi Shiite government and to stop direct and indirect intervention ... otherwise a severe war is waiting for you," he said in the 50-minute audiotape.
Mark Hill, food and agriculture partner at the firm, warned that rising demand for wheat and maize was bound to result in increases in the price of staple foods for British consumers.
Police are on the hunt for a man who robbed a New Hampshire bank on Saturday disguised as a tree ...(Tim Blair)
"Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing."
-- Abraham Lincoln
Source: September 30, 1859 - Address before the Wisconsin State
Agricultural Society
Your Dominant Thinking Style: Visioning |
 You are very insightful and tend to make decisions based on your insights. You focus on how things should be - even if you haven't worked out the details. An idealist, thinking of the future helps you guide your path. You tend to give others long-term direction and momentum. |
I just spent all day fighting a power outage that happened in our colocation facility. We managed to get all the machines back up and running correctly, except for one. The one that was just going on 1000 days of uninterrupted uptime, by the way, spoiled by Abovenet/DataPipe's interruptible Uninterruptible Power Supplies.
We lost a disk and some RAM from that system, and /usr/local/bin disappeared, and... it's a mess, pretty close to destroyed. The hero of the day is Allen, a friend of the company, who made a very long drive down to San Jose to help us out of a tough spot.
Anyway we did have backups of the data, I have moved the web site over to another machine, and the couple of mail accounts that are still stuck on there will be moved someplace else tomorrow, and then we can abandon that heap of junk to Abovenet/DataPipe when I abandon their facility sometime in the near future.
So that is a somewhat happy story, despite the loss of one day of my life. Here is what happens when you don't have good backups:
Business magazine fails to heed its own tech advice
NEW YORK: Business 2.0, the technology-aware magazine published by Time, periodically reminds readers of the importance of backing up computer files. A 2003 article likened backups to flossing - everyone knows it's important, but few devote enough thought or energy to it.
Last week, Business 2.0 got caught forgetting to floss.
On the night of Monday, April 23, the magazine's editorial system crashed, wiping out all the work that had been done for its June issue. The backup server failed to back up.
(International Herald Tribune)
Belligerent wino: I am the government!
--Caton Ave, Brooklyn
I have to agree with the Anchoress. It is too early to talk about a Presidential election that is two years off. I think it is unhealthy for the republic to be in a permanent election campaign.
Another good article up on Supply-Side Forum, this one about Alexander Hamilton.
My favorite quote is:
The end of fighting was only the beginning of the struggle of the new country, faced with a worthless currency and dismal credit rating. John Witherspoon, President of the College of New Jersey, later Princeton, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, described it well: “For two or three years we constantly saw and were informed of creditors running away from their debtors, and the debtors pursuing them in triumph, and paying them without mercy.”
Hipster: ... So he said, 'I wish Jesus was alive now. I'd invite him to join MySpace.com and I'd force him to be my friend.'
--Q train crossing the East River
Overheard by: Beth Smith
A rare treat from nature: Perfect snow doughnuts
"This is no joke. We did not build it," said Mike Stanford, an avalanche-control expert with the state Department of Transportation (WSDOT). "They are a natural occurrence in nature."
(Seattle Times)
I will be back up in the Bay Area later this week.
Old guy: Small fish and chips.
Italian vendor: The fish aren't ready -- 10 minutes.
Old guy: What? I'm very deaf.
Italian vendor: The fish aren't ready -- 10 minutes!
Old guy: What? I can't hear you.
Italian vendor: No fish! Have a look here [points to other menu items].
Old guy: I can't see so well. Just get me a fish and chips.
Italian vendor: No fish!
Old guy: Why are you talking to me?! I can't hear well! Just get me a fish.
Italian vendor: No fish!
Old guy: Are you stupid? I'm deaf and nearly blind, just get me a fish and chips! God, you'd think you didn't have any fish!
Edinburgh, Scotland
United Kingdom
Scientists have discovered what happens in the brain when the mind wanders. Until recently, little has been known about the neural mechanisms that give the mind its ability to daydream.
But now psychologists and neuroscientists in Aberdeen and America have revealed that a collection of areas in the brain termed the default network, supports what is known as mind wandering.
This is the best episode of Ren and Stimpy ever made.
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Not all 7s are created equal. Some -- as the fledgling 2007 will no doubt remind us -- have a little something extra. Yes, we're talking about the slash, the cross stroke that some people swipe through the torso of their handwritten 7s.
The slash can say a lot about where you've been and where you'd like to go, about who you are, who you'd like to be and how well you'd like to be understood.
Fire investigators suspect an arsonist began a fire around 7 p.m. Jan. 2 on the fifth floor of a Sorrento Valley office building, in the offices of Chicken of the Sea International.
A similar fire broke out in October.
