Sunday, April 30, 2006
Pundit Roundtable
I had the pleasure of participating in the latest Pundit Roundtable over at WILLisms. This is a regular feature in which a few other bloggers and the host give their answers to a couple of questions, or related sets of questions, on different topics. It’s sort of like the McLaughlin Group in blog form, only different. Certainly more verbose.
The first topic was: How did we get into this mess of high gas prices? What is the solution? Give us your plan for getting gasoline to under $2 a gallon.
The second topic was: You have the power of life or death over any two figures from history. You may condemn one to an early death, and save one from their fated demise. Who do you choose and why?
I will cross-post my responses below, but you should go check out the complete Pundit Roundtable for the whole thing, including Jay Tea, David Anderson, and the host himself, Ken McCracken.
Now, my responses. Topic one, oil and gas prices:
People like simple, knee jerk, catch phrase explanations for things, so that is what we hear a lot of on the dramatic recent gas price increases. Pick the right one and you might even win some votes, but that doesn’t make you less wrong, or at least unrealistically pat.
The current price behavior is an unfortunate, yet perhaps overdue, confluence of many factors. There’s geopolitical forces. It’s oil; there’s always geopolitical forces. There’s the economic growth and therefore increased demand in places like China, but do we really want to go backward and lose the other benefits? There are the forces of environmentalism, NIMBY and regulation. Thus the lack of refining capacity, lack of new nuclear power in the overall mix - none of this exists in a vacuum, lack of new drilling in this country - for what that’s worth, given the fungibile nature of oil, seasonal and other blend requirements that make production more expensive and disrupt already tight refining capacity, and fundamental, seasonally variable supply and demand.
The best thing anyone could do for gas prices is to get out of the way. Let economics work. High prices give incentive to develop new sources of oil, as well as alternatives that might reduce the extent to which we depend on same. People will act to conserve, or if they don’t then the price isn’t so excessive after all. Companies will act to chase revenue and profits available at these prices that might not be at lower prices, and in so doing are likely to make the cost of alternatives or more efficient extraction methods fall.
There seems to be a high income punditry class trumpeting how low gas prices are in historical terms, and they are right. However, your average person has trouble appreciating that long term trend when the price rockets up so quickly. It’s as if milk went up another 75 cents in the course of a few months; of course we’d all complain. This is “milk” we buy five, ten, twenty, thirty gallons a week, as opposed to a gallon or two. It really does hurt.
The mistake is rushing to do something political about that pain. We’ll adjust. We’ll pursue ways to save - or not - and the signals from that will ripple through the economy to reflect in prices and availability. To the extent that we can have an influence given the politicization and regulation of oil, and energy generally.
Where the spike toward $3 was rapid, any fallback to $2 and under will be slow. How long to get that many people driving higher mileage cars? How long to slay the NIMBY Monster and build more refineries? How long to persuade congresscritters to encourage new nuclear, encourage new drilling, etc.- or at least back off of preventing or slowing same.
My plan? Get out of the way and let the economy work. Ultimately this works even if we do nothing to change the nutjob governments in key oil producing countries. Fungibility: Know it, love it.
Topic two, creating an alternate history through an extended life and an early death for two historical figures:
This is tougher than it sounds, and one of my answers sums that up in one person. My knee jerk thought on who to condemn, partly on the idea so many people would find it a controversial choice, was Lincoln.
I rapidly changed my mind and decided Lincoln was the most logical choice off the top of my head for saving, on the idea he’d done all the harm he was going to do, but was killed before he could do all the followup good we needed. His life may have been about the Civil War, expansion of federal power, and a near dictatorial Presidency, but the founders made that conflict almost inevitable, under someone, by what they had to do and gloss over to make the Constitution happen at all. Even if the muddy status of slavery couldn’t be handled, was it really a show stopper to leave the right of states to leave the union implicit rather than explicit? Some tell me it absolutely was.
After the war, things went awry due to the loss of Lincoln, so taking the war we had instead of the war we might imagine could have happened (or not), keep Lincoln alive for the cleanup. That probably makes for a smoother reconstruction and integration of former slaves, and blacks in general, into ordinary society. Imagine no segregation in the 20th century, no need for the civil rights movement, and arguably no need for programs like affirmative action to keep the races disparate. LBJ is on my short list of kill targets, but if we spare Lincoln, perhaps we lose some of the damage of LBJ’s war on poverty. So perhaps LBJ can live, if Lincoln does. The ripples go far.
The toughest question of all is who to kill, because there are just too many. Do I go with someone obvious, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Jimmy Carter? Maybe whoever is responsible for giving up Cuba? (Who is that, anyway? Help me, history buffs, you’re my only hope.) LBJ? Not if Lincoln lives. John Maynard Keynes? Imagine, no famed “we’re all Keynesians now” quote from Ronald Reagan (who is decidedly not on my short list). As I write this, I lean strongly in JMK’s direction, but if we’re gunning for “economists,” why not Marx? Heck, that’s like taking a scythe to multiple follow-ons at once. I could suggest an early demise for Jesus Christ and make the Christians feel persecuted. Oh wait, they already do! Plus if we’re being mean enough to suggest that, why not that Paul dude who got it past the mere cult stage. Or I could invite a denial of service attack by suggesting a certain crazy Arab before he can impose his hallucinations on the world. FDR? But like Lincoln, he is a mixed bag of deepest evil and decisive good, and unlike Lincoln he got to live to do the best of the good.
Augh! Can’t. Make. Up. My. Mind.
Aw, what the heck. It’s obvious, but let’s go with Karl Marx. Let the folks with dictatorial impulses find another ostensible muse to justify themselves rather than merely being what they are. Imagine a twentieth century without Marx looming over it like the father of nightmares.
Had I been thinking, I would have ended that with a “he’s dead Jim” joke. Oh well.
The Hunting of the Eggs
We’re leaving momentarily to attend the annual Easter egg hunt at my grandmother’s house. Yay for good weather! This should be a lot of fun for Sadie, and people can stop complaining about never seeing Valerie. Indeed, it’ll be nice having a big crew of people - I am told they are expecting 26 of us - to keep Valerie entertained. This can be a bit of work, as she is a people person to a degree Sadie never dreamed of being.
I expect there will be pictures. If I remember the camera.
I made up for some of my lack of writing here by responding to an invitation to write something for another blog. It was great fun! I don’t think there are many people I avoided offending. More on that later when it is up.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
I Preferred When DOS Only Meant “Disk Operating System”
Why yes, we’re here. Yesterday morning? Not so much.
There was a Saudi-based denial of service (DoS) attack against Hosting Matters, where we are hosted, yesterday, lasting a few hours. I’ve seen mention that it came back for a while after 9:00 last night, but I didn’t observe that and have no idea if it’s true. There was rumor that the attack was aimed at a specific blog, then point blank denial from HM that the particular bellicose blog was the target. Be that as it may, if you go around goading a bully to punch you in the stomach as hard as he can, and the bully punches you so hard you lose your lunch all over your neighbors, don’t be surprised if your neighbors aren’t unhappy with the bully exclusively.
Anyway, this made things interesting, as I was working from home and couldn’t get work e-mails. This is going to lead to changes in how I have things configured. Any internal e-mail to me forwards to an elhide.com account I can get anywhere. That’s on HM too. Along with the business site and thecotc.com, which is supplied hosting directly by the business site, a couple of client web sites, and one client’s e-mail. My new business sites I’ve been too busy to pursue are hosted in elhide.com’s space, which meant they’d have been down too had that mattered. For me the e-mail was the main thing. The big client’s MX record points inside the building, so even as their web site was down, e-mail worked fine.
Apart from any notions I may have of diversifying my hosting, and apart from having made sure people have Gmail and Verizon e-mail addresses as backup, I think I will switch it so internal client e-mail (to clarify, my office is on their network and I am directly on their internal e-mail, which is great when I am at the office) forwards to Gmail instead. In turn, the Gmail forwards to my primary account, so it would look the same. But if elhide.com were down, I could go to Gmail and have complete continuity.
I almost went and blogged at my original backup site yesterday: InstaJay. That was meant as an “if Hosting Matters is down” backup to my old blog, but after I set it up, HM got more reliable. I may setup something else as an AV backup, but you might bookmark the one I just mentioned so if I do post “we’re down, here’s what’s happening” someone will actually see it, even if I don’t create and publicize another backup site.
Michelle Malkin took it upon herself to be the reporter of record regarding the outage. She offered to list and link all the blogs that were affected, so I sent her ours as an experiment. I guess we don’t count.
My old cell phone also chose yesterday to act up, spontaneously rebooting itself, and being found to be off completely as it sat on the charger. That made me say “well, time for the cell upgrade project like NOW,” until I discovered the back cover was loose and letting the battery disconnect randomly. Doh. I had been thinking I’d try to get a mixed-use portable web and e-mail and phone device as part of updating the cell situation, but maybe it will make more sense just to get a family plan with two or three basic phones (me and Deb, and possibly one to leave at the office), then later do something about “e-mail anywhere” (and web if possible). We’ll see. Just because it’ll officially be a business expense doesn’t mean I don’t want to do the whole thing as reasonably in cost as possible.
Okay, enough digression. This was supposed to be just an obligatory “we were down and we’re back” post. Oh, and I meant to note that from my perspective we’re loading even slower than ever, as if things atill aren’t completely right in host land. Hope that goes away.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Valerie: “The things I have to put up with. Sheesh!”
In this bath picture Val has what I call “ocean eyes.” They make it seem she’s going toward green.
Poor kid. She turned two months on the 21st. Sadie started teething at two months. They are related…
Mmmm… Pear
Yesterday Sadie just couldn’t stop eating, as if she’s on a growth spurt or something. At one point she raided the refrigerator for this good pear, ran off and just started eating it, skin and all. Normally we cut fruit up and remove all or most of the skin. Apparently she decided it’s time to start eating it like big people. Good thing to start with, in that case. You can see in the pictures how big it is. She ate almost the whole thing herself. After she was about halfway through I sliced the rest, ate a couple of those, and gnawed around the core, showing her that we throw that part away. But otherwise it was all her.
Fed shows signs of living in my reality. Story “at some point this year”…
Oh, how I hope the Fed *does* decide that they’re done with the interest rate hikes for a little while after the May meeting. It’s so damned depressing to watch your credit cards cost more every few months. Makes it that much tougher to get the damned things paid off, too. Be nice to truck along toward getting that done at the same speed for a little bit, you know?
(BTW, the first person who tells me it’s my own fault for being in debt and to suck it up because its my just reward for being an idiot is going to get smacked with a packet of ramen. Life happens. Get over it.)
(Yes, I’m cranky. Why do you ask?)
Soon, we will have no other content. Because the baby quit sleeping again. And it’s fun, too!
And people keep joining in! Now Kate is back to Idol-blogging, too. Yay!
Happy Birthday
To blogger Sgt. Hook.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Denis the Cootie.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Darren Rowse.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Marginal Prophet
|
You Are a Prophet Soul |
 You are a gentle soul, with good intentions toward everyone. Selfless and kind, you have great faith in people. Sometimes this faith can lead to disappoinment in the long run. No matter what, you deal with everything in a calm and balanced way. You are a good interpreter, very sensitive, intuitive, caring, and gentle. Concerned about the world, you are good at predicting people’s feelings. A seeker of wisdom, you are a life long learner looking for purpose and meaning. You are a great thinker and communicator, but not necessarily a doer. Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul |
Overheard In Our House, AI Edition
What I said in reaction to Kellie “the Hideous Pickle” Pickler being voted off American Idol:
“Oh my God, Sarah must be having an orgasm!”
Yeah, it was time.
I never wrote my AI post from last night, though mostly that amounted to ”what Dean said.”
I was unusually impressed with Taylor, as for once he gave some reason for his fan base to exist and keep him in it even when he’s awful.
I was unusually impressed with Katharine, though we still aren’t keen on Her Plasticity. Listening to the MP3 afterward made it more impressive. Watching the video afterward with no sound made her seem even more ridiculous than when there’s the singing to distract you.
Elliot did what Elliot does best, maybe more so than normal, but ultimately the song bored me no matter how well performed.
Paris was better on MP3 afterward than I credited her at the time, despite her song choice.
Chris was just perfect. Good choice of artist and apparently this time nobody minded the choice of a more obscure song. At least, I’d never heard of it. He not only had the voice, but he meant it.
Kellie was the particular blight on the evening, between song choice and performance. Unchained Melody is just too big, too famous, and too Not Country for her. For me it goes further, much the way Taylor did on Queen night.
When Taylor sucked doing Crazy Little Thing Called Love - which should have been a fine choice for him - one of the things that bothered me was that it’s a popular sing-along song for me. There are two dangers there. Once is changing it, and the other is being open for negative comparison to me. Since I thought Taylor sounded no better than I would singing that song, I considered it an awful performance.
Which led me to muse about the odd fact that one of my favorite songs to sing along with is Bridge Over Troubled Water, which led me to think a Simon & Garfunkel theme week might be entertaining.
Which brings us to this week, when Kellie did Unchained Melody, which I also particularly like to sing along with, though it’s more in the “difficult to do well” realm of Bridge Over Troubled Water than, say, Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Thus is offended me similarly to the way Taylor offended me a couple weeks back.
Anyway, only five to go. Wow! So that’s… four more weeks? Wow. Go Chris!
Ever get exactly the wrong amount of sleep?
It’s all I can do to stay awake today.
Every time I try to post my mind goes blank.
Like this:
Really, really blank.
*yawn*
I’ll have to get back to you after my nap.
Apparently I’m old and boring now. Heh.
|
You Are More Mild Than Wild |
 You’re confident, and you really aren’t concerned with how “hot” you are. Other people’s ideas of what’s sexy don’t concern you. And this is exactly what makes you attractive. |
AI, AI, oh.
Yep, we’re behind with the Idol posting. (You’d think we stopped to watch House and then the Gilmore Girls afterward instead of posting about it or something, and then collapsed into bed because wow! what a night of television.) So behind. But Dean isn’t, and neither is SarahK, and neither is Ann Althouse, and they all have links, too, and can I just say that Sharon summed it up nicely for me? Oh, yeah.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Tiger Russell.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
AI5, Top 6…the anticipatory post.
I’m so scared of Bocelli night, but that’s probably because it really isn’t my favorite sort of music anyway. Am I the only one who feels like they’re trying to steer who winds up in the top few by the choice of genre and the order of the weeks here? Not sure how I feel about having an artist consult every. freaking. week., though it’s sort of fun, too. I *am* interested in what, precisely, “classic love songs” will wind up meaning.
Anyway, I just wanted to throw this statement from Ann Althouse out there, from the comments to her results post last week:
I think the final will be Kellie and Taylor. But Katharine is gaining strength. At the auditions stage she was my favorite… But now she bugs me. Paris bugs me too. Oh, hell, they all bug me. Except my dear, sweet Chris...
Dunno about the prediction, and I didn’t watch the audition shows, but Oh, hell yes! they all bug me. That’s exactly it. Except for Chris…
My predictions: Paris sings something too old for her. Taylor sings something good but lends it inappropriate energy. Elliott sounds incredible but is impossible to look at because he keeps making those odd hand gestures. Kellie sounds better than she did last week. Katharine is impossibly good, all but for the empty eyes, and once again I find myself saying that she doesn’t grasp the meaning of a single note-perfect syllable. And Chris? Ah, Chris. Hot, hot, hot.
Hey All Y’All, I Was Just Curious
| Displaced Southerner You are 75% true Southern! |
|
You’re pretty Southern, but something is keeping you from being a true Southern Belle or Gentleman. Maybe you’ve moved, or maybe your parents were Yankees and brought you up without ever taking you fishing or hunting or to Memaw’s for chicken and black-eyed peas. You know your Southern facts and culture, but that literature still escapes you. And when you order tea at a restaurant, you expect it to come “unsweet.” Yikes. Next time you have the chance, visit a classic Southern downtown area and spend an afternoon just soaking it in… Montgomery, Birmingham, Jackson, Natchez, Memphis, Charleston, Atlanta, or even New Orleans! |
My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
| Link: The Southern-ness Test written by gwennykate on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
Via NotDeskmerc
SOLVED!
Almost three weeks ago we started working with Juris support on the problem of edited pre-bills generating an ambiguous error when saving. This did not happen in all instances, but ultimately was putting the firm in a position of not being able to do cash receipts or billing.
We had already had a traumatic time of upgrading the the newest incarnation of Juris, after a few years of essentially smooth operation. The trigger for upgrading was the need for an electronic billing format not usable in the old version, based on the needs of one modest client. Had that not come up, we would probably still be waiting to upgrade. Which, actually, I didn’t realize we were.
Anyway, the upgrade had gone badly, wasting a weekend for me and having to be completed on Monday after support was available. Then the upgrade reset some defaults and none of us realized it, so half a month of timekeeping entries got duplicated as many as several times each. They are still working on purging the duplicates.
Then the pre-bill editing problem.
We worked with one support guy who covered seemingly everything and ended with the edict to upgrade to SQL Server. The proximate cause of his decision was that the combined data and logs from MSDE were over the limit of 2 gigabytes. He insisted there was no way to trim this, and that we should have received warnings at 1.6 and 1.8 GB but we must have turned the warnings off. I did a Verify and Shrink on the data, which truncated the logs down to zero and made the whole database about 1.5 GB, well within range.
What bothered us was the assumption that it was all us. If you have Spiffy Program version 2 and it works great, then you install the upgrade to version 2.1 and it barfs, how can it be that suddenly your machine is misconfigured, lacking memory, or not using an adequate database? Well, it could be, with dramatic enough changes, but you, the vendor, would have loudly warned the customer of the changes in requirements before insisting they upgrade.
In fairness, we should have SQL Server, and this has helped me emphasize the need to upgrade soon, like this year. MSDE really is going to be outgrown before much longer. In fairness, 512 MB really isn’t much RAM for a server anymore, and it’s looking like the updated MSDE is what’s hogging most of it. In fairness, while they encouraged us to save money by using Windows 2000 Professional on our “server,” that was never as ideal as using the full server OS.
So we ended up back with support, with a woman there who was perhaps more helpful, and certainly more willing to dig in and make sure it was resolved. We retraced some steps. We uploaded them our data when it looked like corrupt data had to be the problem. That was a breakthrough, because it proved the data was fine.
Finally, after looking at SQL error logs again, she had a senior tech Webex to our server, which is something I’d expected them to do sooner. It was a pleasure watching him fly around the system, looking at event logs, SQL logs, file versions, and various settings at high speed.
It was almost a let down in the end; an anticlimactic (as opposed to being against the weather in an anticlimatic way) result. The problem?
msxml2.dll
Ours was a few notches below the minimum required. Why did their distro or Windows service pack or something not update it if there is a newer one? No idea, but duh.
In the end, the resolution was as simple as renaming and unregistering msxml2.dll, copying a newer version to system32, registering it, and (after a courtesy reboot to clear the memory and just because it felt too simple otherwise), testing the prebills that would not save edits previously.
That worked. Yay. Let’s not do that again soon…
They’re taking down the old Carquinez Bridge…
And my progress-loving ass is sort of sad.
Some of you know that I used to live at the base of the Vallejo side of that bridge...I was a student at the California Maritime Academy for a couple of years. It’s just so damned uncomfortable for something so seemingly immutable to cease to exist outside of memory.
Am I the only one who thinks about going back to places I’ll never actually go back to? I know they’ve changed the campus quite a bit, as they have many, many more students now than they did when I was there, but imagining that is not so jarring. You can take a mind-tour and add in a building here and a building there without it seeming all that strange. Trying to picture walking around with the wrong bridge in the background, though, makes me feel funny, and not really in a good way.
Ah, well. The sepia tone gets a shade darker, and life trundles on. I’m quite certain I won’t mind that I’ll likely never find myself there again, though.
It’s pretty neat the way they’re dismantling it.
UPDATE: Here are more pictures.
Meanwhile, they’re talking about slapping some extra restrictions on teens.
I knew the elderly have a hell of a lobby and all, but only in Massachusetts would that somehow translate to a discount on auto insurance.
Good God.
Valerie stats
So I’m running behind this morning because it was time for Val’s 2-month well baby visit. She weighed in at 10 pounds 9 ounces and was 22 1/2 inches. The doc is quote-unquote thrilled with her growth, and so am I. According to their charting, she’s 50th percentile plus on both height and weight, but the online calculators are saying more like 25th weight and 35th height, which would jibe with that according to my records, she’s almost exactly the same size that Sadie was at this age. Both of them seem to have no relation at all between the point on the chart they were at when they were born and the curve they wound up choosing. Fascinating.
Speaking of which, did you see this? Breastfed babies put weight on in a different pattern, which is something I’d seen before in the breastfeeding info I’ve looked at, but apparently the WHO is going to publish new charts that regard breastfed babies as the norm. I believe the CDC redid their charts about 5 years ago, and they’re based on a mix of breastfed and formula fed babies.
Anyway, Val is set for the next two months. She got her first set of shots today, which she took with relative equanimity. Poor kid. Beats the hell out of the alternative, though.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Stephen Green.
Happy Birthday
To blogger Rosemary Esmay.
Monday, April 24, 2006
I think he’d probably be quite good at politics.
I think Kelsey Grammer is correct that being forthright would more than balance what he’d be being forthright about if he ran for public office. Hell, I’ve been saying for years that if President Clinton had just ‘fessed up, the whole affair would have fizzled right out with no lasting damage...and that was a contemporary sin.
A quiz just weird enough that I couldn’t resist it.
Find your own pose!
Via OscarJr, who has returned to the blogosphere. Woo-hoo!
If only we could move it closer and *really* ruin Teddy’s view…
I only agree with the New York Times once every 2.3 years, so I have to note it when it happens. Today, they’re bashing the sneaky little amendment that would kill the Cape Wind project. Good for them.
Doin’ things is what I like to do…yes!
One of the things living in Massachusetts has done for me is taught me to pity anyone who doesn’t live within walking distance of a Dunkin Donuts. All my big plans for escaping New England some day? Entirely dependent on a successful nationwide expansion, which according to Slate is actually underway as we speak. It’s not the donuts. It’s the coffee. 3 words:
Best. Coffee. Ever.
And to think I scoffed when I was first told about the phenomenon. My apologies to the coffee gods. *bows in supplication*
Anyway, the point of that article is actually the current ad campaign, which is driving me batshit crazy. Hell of a thing. Way better than Target, who they compare it to. The scary thing is that the stupid song is actually doing what it says! The bathtub totally gets scrubbed more efficiently while chanting, “I’m slightly more productive now than previous because/ I’m slightly more efficient than I previously was.”
In any case, if I ever win the lottery, I’m setting aside a chunk of the proceeds for a cup of Dunkin’s coffee every morning for the rest of my life. I love it that much. I only wish that I could have discovered it before I quit smoking, since coffee’s just not the same without a cigarette. Ah, well. In my next lifetime, I suppose…
(You hear that? That’s Jay reading this and laughing so hard you can hear him clear across the country!)
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Pogos II
I meant to point out, mainly for the benefit of some of the relatives, that Pogos II was on a recent Phantom Gourmet as the Long’s Hidden Jewel for the week.
Nevermind whether or not they spice their homefries. With all the intriguing pancake and french toast varieties, it sounds even better than Good Days.
I haven’t been to the new place yet, but sounds like a good idea. The original Pogos, in Plympton, was good but way too small.
Popeyes
Thanks to Phantom Gourmet’s annual fast food episode, we have learned that there is a Popeyes near us. Well, at least near the office, and near our old place. It’s in Brockton, in the Westgate Mall, by one of the entrances nearest Old Navy.
Mmmm… Popeyes.
There used to be one in Fitchburg, right off of route 2. A friend who lunched there regularly whenever he went to the registry of deeds in Fitchburg introduced me to them, and subsequently I stopped a few times on my way between eastern and western Massachusetts. Last time I was in Fitchburg, a few years ago, for a lunch meeting with the makers of TurboLaw software at Slattery’s Restaurant, highly recommended, I happened to drive that way back to route 2 and saw Popeye’s had closed. How sad. Even though I was unlikely to get a chance to go there again, and it was too far to make a point of it.
There are also three in Rhode Island, all owned by the same franchisee as the Brockton store, called Deliver Me Chicken.
Now what we need is a Jack In The Box almost 827 miles closer to us than the nearest one, in Statesville, NC.
At least there’s an Arby’s only a few towns away, in the Emerald Square Mall.