All posts by tim

Gotcha!

Stella

So, I’ve been having a bit of an issue with Stella lately. She’s been getting awoken by Etta before 7am. I don’t wake up before 7am.

No let me correct that. I don’t wake up with children before 7am. They can hang out in their beds until 7am.

Stella realizes this and has an amazing 7am timer. If I tell her she has to go back to sleep, she’ll call for me again at exactly 7am. So that’s what I started doing. If she woke me up at 6:30am I told her it was the middle of the night and she had to go back to sleep.

This worked for a short period of time. Then she started calling me in at 7am and letting me know that she’d peed in her bed. Always after 7am. And she’d command that I change the sheets. I got wise to that and started refusing to change the sheets when she demanded. I’d get to them around 8am. But she kept doing it. If I made her go back to bed – she’d have an accident. Every single time. While wearing a pull-up.*

So this morning I figured it out. She started screaming for breakfast at 6:30. So I made her go to the bathroom and then told her she could have a banana (self-serve) if she was dying of hunger. She was quiet and dry until 7am.

Of course, Etta wasn’t, but that’s a battle for another day.

I swear these kids are far smarter than me already.

* which is somewhat baffling in and of itself.

2009 Sunstroke 5k #2

Running

Obvious I haven’t been running much:

Town Lake – 27:09 (8:45/mile)

But I went back and took the jogging stroller from my mom once I’d finished. I got Stella out and she ran the last leg of the race. About 1/2 mile. Awesome little kid.

10 years

Personal

Today marks the first decade of Julie and my marriage. As much as I love Ms. Etta and Ms. Stella, I have to say there’s a part of me that can’t wait for them to grow up so I can go back to spending time with Julie. Uninterrupted.

I have goey stuff to tell her. But not on the Internet. Just wanted to record it.

10 years nerdz!

NRA – National Rube Association

Politics

So according to this CNN article, it’s getting very hard to buy gun ammunition:

“In the last two months it’s gotten very, very difficult to find ammunition,” says Richard Taylor, manager of The Firing Line, a gun shop and shooting range in the Denver, Colorado, suburbs.

“There are a lot of rumors floating around that the present government would like to increase taxes on ammunition. I think [there is] just a lot of panicked buying going on

Of course, the federal government has not floated any of these rumors. If you read the news agendas on the actual white house sites, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Obama administration hasn’t actually given gun controll or otherwise a second thought.

But on the NRA’s front page you can find quotes like this:

On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” when pressed about her goals for gun legislation, Pelosi said the following: “… the Supreme Court has ruled in a direction that gives more opportunity for people to have guns. We never denied that right. We don’t want to take their guns away. We want them registered … and we have to rid the debate of the misconceptions that people have about what gun safety means.”

…

Pelosi’s idea of “gun safety” is every gun ban, ammunition ban and licensing scheme that has come across her desk. She’s spent an entire congressional career voting to deny the rights of lawful gun owners.

So apparently it’s actually Nancy Pelosi who’s creating a run on ammunition. Republican lawmakers better watch out though, lest their campaign contributions dry up completely. Why would Winchester Ammunition give money to Republicans when keeping Democrats in power is much better business? This administration has been such a boon to talk radio advertisers that I can’t imagine they’ll give Republicans another cent.

Recession? What recession? Ammunition suppliers are working overtime to supply our nation’s need for ammunition. Thanks Democrats!

Ron Paul is a Jackass

Music

So Ron Paul has apparently said that there’s nothing to fear in the swine flu, and that this is just another example of government waste. In a response to regurgitation on Paul Burka’s blog I commented:

Uh… I’m sure that the fact that we haven’t had any serious outbreaks since the sixties has nothing to do with good government policy. I’m sure in 1976 that if the government had sat on its hands everything would have gone exactly the same way.

Sure. Right.

Sure we know how many people DID die in 1976 Ron, but how many people DIDN’T die? That’s a much more useful statistic, and without it you can’t say that the government reaction was bad.

And if you look at post-9/11 you can see that an actual event is much more useful for galvanizing wasteful government spending than is a subverted event (i.e. prevented LAX bombing). So if us “pro-government” people really wanted to make money off of this flu, we should be telling people not to worry, so more people get infected and we can use the massive public outrage to implement thousands of new programs. Oh wait, that’s what the Republican party keeps doing, and is why this country is trillions of dollars in the hole.

How about we use the government effectively? Let’s manage the disease before it kills people with the resources we have, and then admit at the end of the day that the reason things have gone so well is that the government responded appropriately.

When will Republicans realize that choking the government of money, and then criticize it when it costs too much to ramp up when we really need it, is a really ineffective and expensive way to govern? I know that vaccines aren’t part of the libertarian – “I shouldn’t have to do anything I don’t want to” ideology, but sometimes we need to be adults and do things we don’t want to. This is one thing Republicans and Democrats generally agree on since the public health cost of a vaccine vs. treating the disease is massive.

Our CDC does a great job. And you really only have to look at say – Mexico – to see this. You guys can jack around with the federal budget and education, but keep your ideology off the things that keep me alive. Thanks.

I didn’t even mention the number of places that Ron Paul had his facts wrong.

No next Bill Gates

Politics

Another teabagger on CNN. The best part:

Commentary: Next generation won’t have a Bill Gates

If we cannot borrow money…The next generation won’t have a Bill Gates, a Steve Jobs or a Mark Zuckerberg because the budding American entrepreneur won’t be able to secure the financing to create the next dynamic technology company that would have energized the economy.

Why? Because kids with super rich parents will no longer get massive amounts of money from their parents with which they can startup a business? While I understand where this guys coming from, Venture Capital is actually one of the few places that is in no way impacted by the banks having trouble loaning. And Microsoft was hardly started by poor kids with no means, securing standard small business loans with a brilliant business plan.

The US’s spending is in a scary place. The bailouts are scary. But if anything we should be talking about how we regulate these markets so that no single bank can fail in the future and take out the rest of the banking system. If a company is being watched for being too big to fail, it should be broken up. Trust busting is essential to keeping the free market moving.

You can’t in case I must

Public Transportation

I’ve seen this argument a lot in cases where we’re talking about transit. Paul Burka over at Texas Monthly has written the latest:

I get it now. This is a real estate play. Freeways have changed cities in ways that are less than desirable. They cut off neighborhoods from the rest of the city. They are business-unfriendly, because they move traffic past commercial areas. And, of course, they contribute to sprawl and pollution. Rail changes cities in ways that are desirable. They combat sprawl by concentrating development around rail stations. The provide an opportunity for redeveloping deteriorating residential and commercial areas and adding value to the tax rolls. Freeways are better at moving people. Rail is better at moving civic values. This is why the business community in North Texas has thrown all of its weight behind this bill, and this is why it is going to pass, and Governor Perry is going to let it become law. It’s the oldest of power principles: Let the big dog eat.

But if Austin ever gets to vote on such a plan, I’ll never vote to let my gas tax money be used for rail.

What an abrupt change. He rattles of a list of benefits and then says he’ll never let his money go towards it. I see these sort of “arguments” all the time. My mother is a big proponent of them. It’s the “even though you and your friends want to take transit and this will make my experience driving better because you’re off the road, I’m going to vote against it on the off chance that this will eventually lead to me having to take transit” argument.

It’s amazing the phsycology of the human brain. And so hard to fight against these really base arguments. They seem to be ingrained at a really deep level that logic can’t touch.

Faith-based greenfoolery

I am insane

Greg from Daddy Types did a great article on the anti-vaccine tomfoolery going on in California. It’s really interesting to me how liberals spent the 8 years under the Bush administration carping about the attack on science and evolution while doing exactly the same things themselves. I often read about liberals not wanting to give their kids vaccines, not because they’re afraid of autism (a few have been informed), but because they don’t want to give their kids drugs. They prefer natural remedies over drugs. I’ve grown weary of explaining what a vaccine is.

I’m afraid we’re probably going to have to have a lot of deaths to stop that particular bit of nonsense.

I don’t have a problem with midwives. I have lots of problems with the fact that hospital medicine isn’t really based on science either (due to ethical concerns). We have people railing against Demerol and Epidurals to ease labor pain, but then taking “natural” tinctures from their midwives. Tinctures generally being alchohol based. Alchohol being a drug that we definitely know crosses into the babies blood stream, thanks to pretty extensive research in the 1950s and 60s (and thus having the same exact downsides as demerol).But let’s not pretend that everyone isn’t just guessing.

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of people talking about how organically grown vegetables are the cure for obesitvy. You know, because if you eat lots of organically grown vegetables you’re more likely to be skinny. Of course if you eat lots of commercially farmed vegetables you’re going to be skinny too. ‘Cause you’re filling up your stomach with undigestable roughage.

And can we stop using the term organic? Because I’m pretty sure all the vegetables I eat are organic, regardless of how they are grown.

I’m done venting. I’ve had no sleep. How ’bout you? Any pet peeves about the way that science is mistreated in our society?

Oh, and on a somewhat related note, can we stop all of our calvinist wailing about how commercialism is immoral, and the root of all our problems today? Scavenging from dumpsters is not a scalable way to get food.

Liberace – SysAdmin

Ramblings

When getting mail from Jonathon Adler it is sent from liberace@jonathonadler.com. I love the idea of Liberace the SysAdmin. With his golden servers, ermine covered server racks, and pool in the middle of his data center.