A Little Shout Out to Composer

Composer is usually pretty painful to work with, but I realized today that it’s my old laptop’s fault. Composer works like a charm on my swanky new G5 (oh yes, I did not tell you the story of the swanky new G5 – it will have to wait). Composer’s extremely responsive in redrawing tables and other clumsy elements when it has two, count ’em, two 2ghz G5’s to do the calculations. And no, I’m not using Composer to write anything that’s going to see the light of day. It’s a word processor replacement to update a requirements document (using a template I have to use). I hate rules.

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Musical Mood Swings

Be forewarned, today is “Kevin the tired, aggro, jaw-juttin’, angry white guy” day. I’m listening to Name of the Game, rockin’ out with my head bouncing and my lower jaw sticking out in the only dance us white guys know how to do.

No, really, there’s no excuse for staying up late, getting up early, and coming into work before anyone else just to get some work done uninterrupted without that frickin’ guy saying “You’ve Got Mail” every minute, or thirty IMs hitting me at once asking me to drop everything and help them. Today, nothing is good enough. No one is up to par. You all suck and don’t know it, which makes you suck even more.

Oh, crap, how did Clocks and Trouble get in my cock-out-rockin’ playlist? Augh!! Now I love everyone, and I’m sorry for all the insensitive things I said. I never meant to cause you trouble. I never meant to do you harm. Damn you, Coldplay!!

This post brought to you by deadlines, work, documents I have to write using Word, people constantly walking past my door and looking at me, and the letter P

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I Would Refute It, But It’s True

Guess who’s number one on Google for “greatest pot roast“? Yup, me again. And unlike the last time, I’m not refuting this one. Not only is it true, it truly is the world’s greatest pot roast. Really, no kidding.

The best part is that the recipe, with minor alterations, works for pork and chicken too. Just modify the bouillon used to marinate and baste. Oh, and if you don’t own a crockpot, you should.

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There’s Enough Wrong to Go Around

Michele says it’s all the Left’s fault. The Left is violent, and we’re going to cause all sorts of violence in August. Yeah, some people probably will be violent. But, it won’t be because of their political point of view. It’ll be because they’re prone to violence. And to say there’s no violence on the Right is misleading. It’s not like everyone on the Right is peace loving. Let’s look… We have the whole militia movement, from the Right (Michele is dropping “far”, so I will too, just to keep the vocabulary the same) which spawned Tim McVeigh. He killed a lot of people. There are the followers of Fred Phelps, from the Religious Right, who probably count in their number the guys who killed Matthew Shepard. If not literally, at least figuratively. Fred wants to put up a monument to Matthew’s murder. We have Pat Robertson, who went so far as to ask the Almighty to kill off some Supreme Court Justices. We have Hitler. He’s the poster boy for the Right, right? Oh, and we have Stalin. Oh wait, he’s from the Left. He killed twenty million people, which means that the Right has a ways to go in catching up, right?

I’m not trying to make light of all the people who have died at the hands of maniacs from both ends of the political spectrum. I’m really not. But, if we’re going to play tit for tat for all the violence attributed to people registered to a political party, we’ll be here all night, tomorrow, the next day, and may never stop. We’ll end up hating not only each other, but ourselves in the end.

I’m on the Left. I used to be on the Right, drifted to the Center, and am now drifting Left. I am not prone to violence. Most people I know, and all the ones I hang out with on both sides, are not prone to violence. They come from both parties. They’re the vast sea of people in the middle, the people who vote quietly without fanfare or protest, and live their lives the best they know how.

What I feel happening is the silo-ization of our culture. We tend to hang out with people who think like us. It makes us comfortable. We can now consume all kinds of media now without ever having our reality challenged. On the Right, you have Fox News. The Left has CNN (well, according to the Right – I don’t really see it, but I’ll accept it for this analogy). On the web, you can read Daily Kos or InstaPundit and never leave your political comfort zone. This didn’t happen until very recently, and I think it’s causing all sorts of problems. When people who all agree get together, it forms an echo chamber. The dialogue escalates, because there’s no reason to think you’re going to hurt anyone’s feelings or offend anyone. Everyone agrees! We’re all pals here! We can speak freely! Then, the other side comes in, is shocked, and then goes back to their little corner of the world, and the force of language escalates again. It’s a death-spiral, that I fear will end in the complete death of political debate in this country.

I tried (and failed) to fix it over at nonDependant. I wanted a dialogue. It didn’t really develop, mostly because I wasn’t sure how to keep it going or develop it. I think someone with Michele’s personality and fire could start it. If we want to fix it and stop the violence before it starts, we need to stop yelling and start talking. We need to stop laying blame and start finding solutions.

I know this is getting long, but I want to confess something. I listened to a good part of Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9/11 comission. I was good and fired up, angry at Bush, like the good Lefty that I am. Then, I read Reid’s post about the testimony, and the switch flipped. It doesn’t do anything positive to lay the blame for 9/11 at anyone’s feet. It doesn’t matter now. There were things missed all over. Everyone made mistakes, and it doesn’t do any good to second guess that now. It’s more important that we fix the problems that remain, together.

We need to stop preaching to our respective choirs. The preaching is turning into shrieking, and isn’t doing anything to fix things. We need to turn around, shake hands and talk to each other: about our problems, about our respective solutions, about our dreams, our lives, our families, and our communities. It’s time to get a little uncomfortable. Hi, my name is Kevin. I’m a Lefty. Nice to meet you.

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Gay Marriage Again: A Dilemna

People at Church keep bringing up gay marriage, and I keep quiet. The problem is that the it makes me angry. I don’t want to keep quiet, yet I do. These weren’t places I could pull out all the reasons it’s wrong to create a Constitutional ban (it sounds a lot like this and this).

Maybe I’m a bad Mormon. Maybe I should be against it. I don’t think so. I have yet to hear a good argument against it – and I’ve asked. They all come down to “homosexuality is wrong, therefore gay marriage should be outlawed.” This argument doesn’t hold water for lots of reasons. First, any argument that echoes old arguments about race makes me suspicious. Second, any argument that boils down to “it’s wrong because I say so” doesn’t work for me either. Thirdly, I have the feeling that the people I’ve heard say this, and people in general who are for the ban, don’t actually know any gay people. If they did, I don’t think they’d be so quick to judge.

I don’t know what to do. I feel bad for not speaking up. I feel like a coward. But, I’m not sure how polite I can be. I’m not known for pulling punches in debates, and I’m definitely no diplomat. I feel strongly about the issue, and everyone brings it up at Church, I want to scream, “We have separatation of Church and State for a reason!!! The only reasons you can give me why you’re against this are solely based on religion!!! So, you lose (but, that’s not the only reason, there are a dozen other reasons you lose this one)!!!” Of course, I can’t do that. OK, maybe it’s not that I can’t. Maybe it’s because I don’t have the backbone to do it.

Either way, it’s eating at me, and it has sharp teeth and doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon.

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Really, I Don’t Think It Is

Guess who the first hit on Google is for “france is full of gay people “. Yep, it’s me. Good call, oh great oracle. But, speaking to that, I don’t think it is. My gaydar didn’t go off once in France (OK, it did once, but he was British). Not in Paris, and certainly not in Mandelieu. And with the number of small children with hetero-lookin’ parents I saw there, I can pretty much vouch that France is not full of gay people. I don’t even think France is all that full of anything. There were plenty of places I saw that had no people at all, and were completely undeveloped.

Someone should start a game… Let’s refute the searches that bring people to our sites, and then collect the best somewhere. Yeah, someone should totally do that. Someone with lots of free time, but not me, because I don’t.

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Tired, But Full of Music

I’ve been too tired to do much of anything. I think I’m worn out from all the travelling, and it doesn’t seem to matter how much sleep I get, I’m still tired. My birthday was fun. I’m twenty-nine now. Yep, so it goes.

I got a ton of new music in Austin, and I’ll tell you all about it some other time. For now, go buy Zero7‘s latest: When It Falls. It’s fantastic. An earlier album, Simple Things is also stellar. Why? It’s laid back trip hop with beautiful voices, gorgeous songs and great lyrics. Let it wash over you like a hot shower.

Oh, and go give Scott Andrew some money. Not only does he write beautiful songs, but he makes great yearbook picture faces too!

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Big Dork In The Middle

I am a gigantic dork. I’m also praying that Matt doesn’t post the kickball pictures he took (I got a sneak peek during the conference through his shared iPhoto gallery – aren’t you PC people jealous?). They’re my new weight-loss motivators. I’m going to print one of them out and super-glue it to the fridge.

In other words, the pirate flag is going up today. I’m taking over something. I don’t know what yet, but there may be some “yargh”-ing and “avast me hearties” heard. Be on the lookout.

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SXSW Is Over, And I’m Pooped

All packed, unfortunately. I started coming up with a list of all the people I’ve met this week, and it’s unbelievably long. If I just counted the people I had a conversation with, the list is still incredibly long. For those long-time Me-Knowers, you know this is a big deal. I don’t do this kind of thing very often. I’m very uncomfortable with small talk, with big groups. This was different, somehow. I didn’t feel like I had to explain myself. The people here “get it”.

Before I actually write down the list, I want to do some thank you’s. There were a few people who really made me feel welcome right off the bat, who included me in the “gang” and were just the best. Michael and Ari, James, Brent, Paul (gotta get a blog, man), Mike, George, Esin, Debra and Smokler were all just fantastic. I can’t thank you guys enough for helping make my first SXSW experience better than I could have imagined. I loved hanging out with all of you, and can’t wait till next year, so we can do it all over again. I’m working on a list of people I met that I had good conversations with, or at least ate a meal next to. It’s really long, so it’ll probably get finished sometime after I get home. But, I loved everyone I met, and had a great time.

Now, it’s time to go back home, hug my family, and get to work on the Next Big Thing™.

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