This is the stupidest thing

This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. When do comedians have to apologize for their jokes? I think it’s perfectly reasonable to read in a comic strip that Georgie has the lowest IQ of any previous president. That’s funny. It’s scary that it might be true, and he’s not doing anything I can see to make that joke not funny. Why apologize?

I’ve decided that when I retire, I’m going to run for Congress. It may not be a serious bid, but I’m going to do it. I may start small and run for city council or the school board, but I’m running. I hear more and more every day about how corrupted everything’s become by the two-party system, and it just bothers me. My latest point of ire? Redistricting. We don’t pay a lot of attention to it because it happens once a decade, but here’s how it works:

  1. The census is taken and numbers counted. In the 10 years since the last census people have moved around, and populations shift. This means it’s time to move voting districts and reallocate representatives.
  2. State legislatures have the responsibility for redistricting, and if you think the national legislature is bad, get a load of your state houses. They’re snake pits of people not bright enough to make it to the national level. They’re the ones who decide how to draw up the lines.
  3. Whichever party is in power in the house at the time of redistricting gets to draw up the lines. As long as they don’t get too crazy, they can draw them up however they want, giving them advantages over the other party whereever possible.
  4. There have been several public cases of abuse, mostly in the South and California. If you get caught goofing with the lines too much, it’s called gerrymandering, which is my new favorite word.

Doesn’t that piss you off? Couldn’t the lines be drawn by computer simulation? I’m no genius, but I think I could write that in Tcl over a weekend. I’m tired of everything in government being a vast winged (left or right, take your pick) conspiracy. The work of government should be apolitical for the most part. Legislation I completely understand as being a point of much contention, but the daily work of government and even the courts has become rife with political machinations. It makes me want to become a conspiracy theorist, but I just don’t drink that much coffee…

There really isn’t anything to

There really isn’t anything to say today. I’d hate to not provide my loyal reader(s) with something to pass the time with, so why don’t you go rent a movie, go check a book out from your local library (like The Code Book or To the Bright and Shining Sun)? Yeah, that sounds like fun. Wish I could join you, but I have to work.

Tcl is fun for many

Tcl is fun for many reasons. Everyone should learn it and use it in their daily lives.

I’ve started my Blogger API

I’ve started my Blogger API project! I’m calling it BlogTcl. It will be an XML-RPC implementation for AOLserver and I’ve laid out the skeleton of the Tcl code with proc names and some documentation. Wow, my first open source project. I feel like such a geek.

So, if I get some

So, if I get some time in the next week or so (that’s as long as I give myself to start a new project – no sense fooling myself), I’m going to work on an AOLserver/Tcl implementation of the Blogger API. I’ve never worked with XML-RPC, but it looks like it’s just POSTing XML to an url, and ta-da, you’ve got a cool buzzword to add to your resume. AOLserver makes this terribly easily by allowing you to construct responses and requests and has a very nice Tcl socket API. And just when I was getting bored…

Mmmmm, Big Brother 2, TV

Mmmmm, Big Brother 2, TV that sucks in a good way. It’s trash, but it’s amusing trash. The people are all shallow and goofy, and make me laugh at their attempts to cover up their evil. Yum yum yum.

Why does the TV my

Why does the TV my wife watches suck so badly? She’s off at church at her lady’s thing, and she’s having me record JAG. Oh PLE-E-E-ASE! The dramas on CBS suck. They’re horrible. JAG is the biggest piece of crap of all of them. It’s trite, melodramatic and stupid. The characters are paper thin, and transparent. Ugh. Thankfully, I have the happy web to keep me occupied while the drivel spills to tape for my wife to peruse later.

I’ve created an account of

I’ve created an account of our Risk game on Sunday… probably only interesting to the fam. You’re welcome to look at it though, if only to get a glimpse of my amazing photographic talents.

My favorite non-uncle uncle is

My favorite non-uncle uncle is retiring from his column @ Salon.com. This saddens me, as it was always well written, funny, and provided some more insight into a man I only knew through the radio. As I said before, he’s the kind of man I want as an uncle. He sounds like a guy you could call with problems you can’t talk to your parents about. He sounds like a guy you’d want to have dinner with, or have along on a campout. I’ll miss his column.

In happy news, I played Risk for the first time in many many years on Sunday night with the fam (well, Dad, H and S… Jen and Mom bowed out to discuss fabric). I documented the carnage with the digital camera, and will post a report later today (unless things get busy).

Interesting Google tip: If you

Interesting Google tip: If you type in link:http://www.somesite.com, it will find pages that link to the url you enter. How cool is that? I remember AltaVista being able to do it too, but I can’t remember how. I wish we did that… Oh well, here’s how cool my sister is. She has 5 pages of sites that link to her, and I have 4 sites total, two of which are comments I’ve posted to other sites, one is a site I’m a member of, and one is real. She’s won awards, you know.