Ultranormal

  • Depressing and Enlightening

    This article about how the Administration makes policy decisions is scary. It’s depressing that the most powerful man in the world makes decisions without the facts and then tries to make the facts conform to the outcome he wants. It’s unbelievable. It’s unethical. Jen and I have been talking about this quite a bit (I finally got Ms. Political Science degree to talk politics with me – yay me), and we both agree that we’d rather have a President who reasons through an issue and comes up with what they honestly think is the best solution and not what we have now – a President and Administration that decides on a course of action before looking at the facts or consulting experts. Their disdain for people who actually know what they’re talking about is frightening to me, but makes perfect sense when you think about their track record – read the article. It’s an eye-opener.

    And because I linked to that, I have to tell you about Talking Points Memo and Oliver Willis. Talking Points is one of the most intelligent and coherent political blogs on either end of the political spectrum, and has turned into a daily must-read for me. Oliver is a funny guy who frequently makes excellent points (plus, he’s got a huge Dean banner on his site and is a ‘Skins fan). Read ’em both. Enjoy.

    Oh, and Dawson loves me.

  • New Pics

    Now that things are back up and running, here are the new photos in the gallery:

    In other news, I killed the basil plant I bought at the Farmer’s Market. Max and I were doing a really good job of remembering to water it, but I you can’t take a week off from watering… oh well. Maybe we can revive it.

  • Dropping the Pooch

    At least he just dropped the pooch… I swear this isn’t political, but the look on the little girl to the left of GW’s head iis priceless. If it weren’t for that girl’s frozen horror, it would look like GW was cheering on a complicated canine trick.

  • We’re Back!!

    That was no fun, but I’m mostly back online. There are still a bunch of missing photos, and some links may be broken because I changed the permalinks to something a little more managable (having one directory with 1900+ files in it is never a good idea). I know, you’re not supposed to break permalinks, but I don’t care. I did it anyway. It’s my site.

    Why did I switch? Well, as you may have seen, my site was down for a while. Why? Well, apparently, my previous web host was hit by a dDOS attack, which explains the site being unreachable. But, why, after it came back, were all my html files 0-length, and every time Movable Type went to recreate them, were they 0-length? I didn’t change anything. Plus, this isn’t the first time my site, or part of the service has gone down. So… I’m gone. Now, I’m with Insider Hosting, and am really impressed so far. The MySQL performance alone is much better than with the old host. Plus, they have a really cool control panel and SpamAssassin!

    I’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about, but I’m sick today… again. So, the new pics, and other stuff will probably wait until Tuesday when I can get the rest of them back online.

  • I Tried, I Really Tried

    I tried to send Michele an e-mail for her Voices project. I couldn’t do it. I just can’t. Why? I’m not sure. The memories are too raw, too real and too close. It’s been almost two years, and I can’t do it.

    I watched Bowling for Columbine yesterday. It was difficult, but even if you don’t agree with him, the message of the movie is important. It’s time to stop being afraid. As a country, we’re still full of grief, anger, pain and in some cases, guilt. Call it national survivor’s guilt. The thing I took from the movie was that we’re a country that’s afraid of itself. We’re afraid of our neighbors, unforeseeable catastophies, shadowy conspriracies, natural disaster, etc. We’re scared because we’re not in control, because the news media crams fear down our throats. The comparison between international media and our’s was incredible.

    Even if you hate Michael Moore, he’s right. It’s time to stop being afraid. It’s time to stop allowing the Administration to play on that fear to advance its ideological nonsense while we duct tape our windows and buy distilled water.

    It’s time to ignore the Media. It’s time to stop paying attention to vague threats, insufficient theories and hysterical diatribes from those paid to make money for their networks.

    I think that this year, on September Eleventh, I’m not going to watch the news. I’m not going to watch TV at all. I’m going to hug my wife, hug Max and I think I’ll take the day off and we’ll do something quiet as a family. He’s too young to remember what happened while he was over at a friend’s house playing, or understand why his father is crying. Hopefully, he’ll remember that we spent a good day savoring twenty-four hours that will never come again.

    Maybe that’s what it’s about. Maybe the way we honor the dead, the damaged and the grieving and fight the fear is to take that day to create better memories, create visions of our loved ones smiling and laughing to replace the tears and disbelief of that day.

    I don’t know if that’s the answer. But, I’m not afraid to try. I’m not afraid.

  • Maddenisms

    Sorry, one more before I go to bed… how creepy is it when John Madden says “penetration”?

  • Off This Week

    Aloooooha. I’m off work most of this week and doing stuff with the fam. Don’t expect much until Friday, when I’ll hopefully tell you all about the Dean rally on Saturday, show you the pictures and tell you what I thought. You can read my lovely sister’s account if you wish. I have a much more favorable impression of the event, but I must say that I was so happy that she went with me. It showed a lot of guts and maturity on her part to go to a rally for a candidate she knew she didn’t agree with on issues that are important to her. She went because I asked her, and she knew it was important to me. It meant a lot that she went.

    So, pictures coming on Friday (unless I get bored, which I’m not yet), and more stories when I get to it.

  • Busy, Yet Naughty

    I am a naughty blogger. All my offline time is spoken for. I’m trying to get Michelle’s redesign finished (I know, I know). I’ve got the templates mostly configured, and I just need to finish ironing out the bugs and get the main archive page finished. I installed Movable Type for Dawson last night, and have just been too tired to do anything else. This sinus infection just won’t go away. Thankfully, I have the next six days off from work, which will be a much needed respite from insanity.

    I did convince my mother, father and little sister to go to the Dean rally on Saturday! Yes, that was my big accomplishment this week. Next week? It will probably be seeing how many hours in a row I can sleep without waking up.

  • Live in the DC Area? Whatcha Doin’ Saturday?

    What are you doing on the 23rd? Not doing anything? Good! Come see Howard Dean in Falls Church at 4pm. I mean it. Even if you’re a Republican. Even if you hate the idea of ever voting for a Democrat or if you’ve never voted and don’t plan to start in 2004. Please, just come out and see what it’s all about.

    I love that Howard Dean is running with a crazy grassroots, web-based campaign. I love that he’s out there doing things a little differently than everyone else, and it’s working for him. He seems like an honest guy, a capable and intelligent leader and when I compare him to our current president, I get depressed. Why am I depressed? I’m depressed that I see none of those qualities in our current president. I’m depressed that not enough people can see that. I’m afraid that Bush will win in 2004, and we’ll have four more years of criminal incompetance and corporate government. I don’t think I could stand that.

    So please, do me a big favor and look at the alternative. You might be impressed. You might not be, but at least you looked.

  • A New Week

    Yes, the roast was fantastic. It was pretty much perfect: fall off the bone, rich, meaty, a flavor to die for and enough leftovers to make either pulled pork barbecue sandwiches or carnitas tacos for dinner tonight. I served it up with roasted garlic taters and zucchini sauted with diced green peppers. It was tasty. To finish up the recipe, I ended up crockpotting it for almost five hours by the time I was all done with the other stuff. I let the roast rest after cooking for about ten minutes and then cut off enough for Jen and I for dinner (it was more a delicate prodding – the meat came off real easily). I realized that the roast tastes almost exactly like the pork used in good carnitas tacos (my one true Arizona addiction), so next time I make it, a more Mexican spice job: cook with some chilis some ground chili power, and cumin and a couple more onions and I may have the perfect carnitas.

    In other news, today is Low Impact Monday. The last month or so has sucked. I’ve been sick. Work’s been crazy and rushed, and I’ve been stressed out. Today, the big last-minute project I was scrambling to get done is in QA (on time, a-thank-yew-very-much), and I’m going to take it easy and experiment on some new features for some thing I’m working on. I ready another hundred pages in the orange book this weekend, and am going to play with some of the concepts in the book. I feel the need to decontruct something and put it back together. I haven’t picked my victim yet, but it’ll probably be big… Hell, it might be one of the most highly trafficed sites on the web. If I succeed, I’ll let you know and show you the fruits of de labor.

    Also, in stress-related news, I’ve been listening to a lot of downtempo stuff lately. It helped me handle the stress and concentrate through the pain of a sinus infection to get stuff done. Peace Orchestra has been a godsend. I got it because the song Who Am I is on the Memento soundtrack and just grabbed me. I had to hear the rest of the album, and it doesn’t disappoint. Massive Attack’s 110th Window was also in heavy rotation along with Jazzmusique. Now that I’m feeling mostly better and ready to play, it’s A3, A Picture of Nectar and maybe some Soul Coughing. Welcome to a brand new week.