Author: Jan Dembowski (page 31 of 96)

March 23, 2010

Politically, this is a really fun week

David Frum demonstrates that he gets it. Political cartoonists get it (Danziger’s was too good to not show).

GOP? Nope. Senator McCain? Nope. Democrats probably do get it but it’s a long way to November and there is plenty of time to let the bully on the block take their lunch money.

The GOP had the opportunity to participate and they did get involved with amendments. But it was all an act since no matter how bipartisan the Obama administration got, the GOP was just wasting time.The Democrats had the votes and the GOP thought they did not have the spine. Now the GOP platform is to hope that the country implode before November.

There are many rational discussions about what’s wrong with the bill. But so far the GOP only panders to the gun totting racist fear mongers. Which is what you do when you care about getting the votes instead of getting the job done.

March 22, 2010

Even their web server went into a coma

Just for giggles I tried to go to the GOP web page to see what kind of response the opposition has to the health care reform.To be honest I was hoping for some rational arguments about why this health care reform is bad. I wasn’t counting on much, but I hoped it would be something profound.

Two things happened. First I was redirected to a Fire Nancy Pelosi web page.

Nice graphic. The second thing was that the rest of the GOP website was FUBAR. There is a link at the bottom of the page that is supposed to lead to the real website and it just does not work.

Putting aside any politics for a moment (I’m for reform myself), their lack of technical expertise is appalling. This is the GOP website for crying out loud. It’s just not that hard to get it right.

What these folks need to do is speak with (read as “HIRE”) some of the talent that hosts conservative websites. While the styling and graphics are important, just being able to serve HTML pages without a redirection loop might help them get their message out.

March 21, 2010

Looks like the Democrats actually DO have the votes

Health care in this country is currently broken. Too many times hard working people need to decide to go poor or stay healthy. That does not mean that people should get a free ride, but there has to be a way to equalize the health care that I get with the health care that an unemployed single mom gets.

So when the Obama administration actually tried to address this great problem, the GOP decided that for anything to pass a super majority is required. You know, the filibuster proof 60 seats in the Senate? And when Scott Brown was elected, the Democrats almost fell for it. But right now it looks like the Democrats have found their nerve.

It’s not a law yet (11:25 PM Sunday night) but unless the GOP can win elections right now, this should pass.

I don’t think that’s a bad thing; the GOP had almost 8 years of running the show and look how that turned out. And just like them, if this administration fails then come November there will be changes.

March 20, 2010

“I hope they don’t bring back segregation”

The things kids say. On the radio this morning me and the kids heard about that public announcement someone aired in a Walmart. Some jerk used the PA system to make a racist comment.

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP/ 1010 WINS) — An announcement at a Walmart store in New Jersey ordering black people to leave brought chagrin and apologies Wednesday from leaders of the company, which has built a fragile trust among minority communities.

A male voice came over the public-address system Sunday evening at a store in Washington Township in southern New Jersey and calmly announced: “Attention Walmart customers: All black people leave the store now.”

via Announcement At NJ Wal-Mart: ‘All Black People Leave Store Now’ – 1010WINS.com .

There are always an available pool of morons in any public place, and I seriously doubt that Walmart had anything to do with that. And now Walmart is locking down the PA system at least in that store.

But what struck me was what my 8 year old said when he heard that.

Him: I hope they don’t bring back segregation.

Me: How do you know about segregation??

Him: Dad. We learned about that during Black History month.

Me: Oh.

I should not be surprised at all, and I’m glad that my kids school teaches about that. But at 6 AM on a Saturday morning, I’m not ready to hear things like that from my kid’s mouth.

March 13, 2010

Model train show

Today was a miserable day weather-wise but had one good thing going for it. The next town over had a model train show and the highlight was a N gauge train layout. It was a fun display and I took almost 300 photos. I shared 40 of them over here on Flickr. I also learned of a couple more train museums to visit in Long Island.

My son could have stayed there all day. The N gauge trains are about the size of one of my fingers and the detail was surprising. I shot most of the event with a Nikon 50mm f/1.8D lens and some shots with my Sigma 30mm f/1.4. I prefer to not bug people with a flash so most of my shots have a narrow depth of field. It’s a shame that I did not use the flash since the detail on those sets was amazing.

The Nikon 50mm is on loan and I am definitely getting the newer Nikon 50mm f/1.4G.

March 12, 2010

I know it’s Karl Rove, but geez

Some people will never get it and this debate will never go away.

George W Bush’s former top adviser has said he is “proud” of the use of harsh interrogation techniques – including waterboarding – during the War on Terror.

via Bush aide Karl Rove insists ‘waterboarding is not torture’ – Times Online.

Why stop at waterboarding? The number one compelling reason was to protect Americans and save lives, so why was waterboarding the only method used?

It is pointless to keep discussing it: President Obama’s administration won’t do anything and political hacks like Rove only do it to score radical conservative “street cred”. But really, what can’t be rationalized away?

Note: The dunce cap photo was taken by Cogdogblog on Flickr. Creative Commons is very cool.

March 8, 2010

Now using Hybrid and a child theme

I’ve been interested in switching to a theme framework and after looking at both Hybrid and Thematic, I’ve begun plugging into Hybrid with the child theme WP Full Site.

It’s a fun little exercise and Hybrid has lots of places to make changes just using a child theme. The WP Full Site function.php file has already gotten some additions by me and I’ve switched from using the_content() to using it for just the first two posts. The rest uses the_excerpt(); I couldn’t work out how to use the Query Posts widget so I broke down and copied hybrid/home.php to wp-full-site/home.php. The file in the child theme directory gets precedence over the parent template version.

This is hands down the wrong way to go about this and defeats much of the point of using a child theme. But until I work out the widget logic, this will have to do. And besides I get to brush up on my PHP skills some more.

Update: Nuts, while playing with my install I lost this post. This is actually copied from my RSS feed on Google Reader. Backup, backup, backup…

March 7, 2010

And the winner is Xmarks

Earlier I had dropped Xmarks and installed Mozilla Weave. After a few weeks I’m back to Xmarks. Syncing the browser history is a very useful feature, but some really weird things have been going on with my Weave sync data lately.

My problems began when I installed Weave on my Ubuntu 9.10 work station. I could not get the bookmarks to install on that browser for anything. No errors in the log, just no sync either. I have just plugged in another old PC in the basement and installed Weave. The same thing happened and I was not getting any data synced.

Also being able to roll back to an earlier set of data on Xmarks is a huge benefit. I screw up sometimes and Xmarks has a great safety net.

I know that I can install Weave and Xmarks at the same time. That way I can use Xmarks for password and bookmarks and Weave for browser history. But I’m not going to do that because I want to limit the amount of add-ons that I’m using.

Now if only Xmarks would just sync web browsing history then I would not keep looking at Weave…

March 6, 2010

MINI Cooper fan problem

This is me charging my 2006 MINI S.

The battery was dead and I just assumed (HA!) that it was drained from being unused for months. Nope! The electric fan behind the radiator was not turning off. I charged the battery, went for a ride and when I left the car parked the battery was drained again.

You can read more about it here. I tried the “tap the black box” solution and it didn’t work for me. For now I have disconnected the fan and will have to take the car to the dealer.

February 27, 2010

Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn started

The first episode of Mobile Suit Gundam Unicorn has been released and it looks good. All of the Gundam series starts off with a kid who gets tossed into a mobile suit battle. And of course these 16-year-old kids pilot their Mobile Suit like an expert in less than 5 minutes.

This series takes place in UC 96, only three years after Char’s Counterattack. This feels odd, the main character feels like an Amuro Ray clone. And in episode 1 they mention that the character Full Frontal is called Char reincarnated. It’s only three years after Char died, so that’s an odd comment.

The story looks good and the animation works. It’s like they are intentionally copying the style of how the people are from War in the Pocket; that might be just to maintain the continuity.