A new hot tub cover is installed, and a cover lift is added to make opening and closing the thing easier. I am refilling the tub now (periodic replacement of water), and changed the filters. It will be a guessing game to set the temperature as the LCD panel has stopped working... sigh.
A new hot tub cover is installed, and a cover lift is added to make opening and closing the thing easier. I am refilling the tub now (periodic replacement of water), and changed the filters. It will be a guessing game to set the temperature as the LCD panel has stopped working... sigh.
Air Penguins
Air Ray
Air Jellyfish
Hat tip to Will for pointing these mesmerizing videos out.
There is no joy in the broken hearts and damaged relationships. No joy in the dishonesty, the deceit, the contempt, the lack of respect for their partners and voters. No joy in the hypocrisy that both of these Republicans pilloried then Democratic President Bill Clinton when he was caught having an affair in the 1990s, and now both have participated in the very same activity that they themselves claimed was reprehensible and grounds for impeachment.
I think we are being unreasonable as a society to expect everyone to lead perfect lives with no mistakes and no loves outside of the one sanctioned by some very narrow definitions founded a century ago. Monogamy is not the natural order of things, and limiting ourselves to just one love denies the fact that we love our children, all of them, even when we have more than one child. We love our parents even after we get married. We can certainly fall in love with more than one adult and be attracted to more than one person at a time; it is not a weakness as some in the media present. It is natural.
What is reprehensible are the lies about it. The lack of honesty within their families. The lack of honesty within their support staffs. The fact that they pilloried Bill Clinton for his affair and for his lack of honesty (and I agree with them on his lack of honesty), but then proceeded to do exactly the same thing they sought power trying to stamp out. Spitzer's crime was that he engaged in the same activity he ran against. Kettle; calling the pot black is perhaps a little silly.
For me, I don't really care how many consenting adults of whatever sex are cavorting with our elected leaders, so long as they are honest and open about it (so they are not vulnerable to blackmail), their partners and families are ok with it (so trust is not violated), and they are clear with their staff so that emergency contacts can be made and duties fulfilled (an affair should not interfere with the job).
Schadenfreude? No, it is very sad that our society prosecutes people for the affairs and not for lies and neglect of responsibility.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW7OPByRG
Hat tip to mindflayer... perhaps it's Obama's geek credentials that attracted my sysadmin friends to his campaign....
Thanks and hat tip to
This weekend it went through a very frustrating fit of telling us it could not re-calculate a route we needed because "Route Calculation Error: Not enough memory available." would pop up on the screen after calculating for minutes (by modern standards it is pretty old). Short routes could still be calculated on the fly, but long routes (we were on a long trip) were simply not working. I poked and prodded it for quite some time, resetting the device a dozen times. Finally I figured out an erroneous setting that used up all the memory in the little device... It was set to record our tracks. I am not sure what that is, but as soon as I turned off that feature, and purged the recorded tracks, route calculation - even for long trips - went back to normal.
I am only publishing this in case anyone else out there sees the same error - check to make sure you are not "recording tracks" and if you are, stop doing that and you may find you have plenty of memory again.
Hope this helps.
sutragirl and I went to Boone, North Carolina this weekend to see her cousin get married. I confess I was not thrilled about traveling into the hills as I was under the wrong impression about the area. Boone and Asheville are awesomely fun places and we are definitely going back for more fun when we gather some vacation time.
The wedding was beautiful and the guests know how to party; that was the busiest dance floor at any wedding I've been to including a few weddings packed with ballroom dancers! The band was "the Professors of Soul" and they were awesome, and the wedding party requested something called double Dutch that surprised me (think skipping rope but with music and imaginary ropes)... A blast was had by all.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily
It is worth reading in it's entirety. Freedom is not a gift that can be given and democracy is not something that can be forced on someone. Both have to be desired, fought for, earned, and one by the people who want democracy. Furthermore it is a grave responsibility and requires ongoing vigilance to keep the freedoms we cherish.
This makes what is happening in Iran so special, so amazing. The Iranian people are earning their freedom with incredible courage against a pretty formidable and scary deck of cards stacked against them. They are literally putting their lives on the line. I admire them for it and hope we can live up to that example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XESusg8
In case embedded does not show up for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_KIqdS1S
Pretty impressive design. Hats off to the cold war era packet messaging system designers from the 1960s.
I am hoping the resistance continues to be non-violent; though with the current government's crackdown, it is unlikely to be completely peaceful.
Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish continues to be an excellent source for news about the current revolution in Iran.
The mainstream media fail is that over 36 hours later, only the BBC has any real coverage of the revolution happening in Iran. You have to get this information from bloggers and twitterers if you want it. Guess the revolution is not being televised after all.
- andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com
- hoosierinva.blogspot.com
- talkingpointsmemo.com
- bbc.co.uk
- blacknell.net
- tehranlive.org (Wow, this is an incredible site!!!)
- Update: JuanCole.com
- Chlorine is between 2-3 ppm (a little high, but will burn off with sunlight)
- pH is 7.2 (a little low). The test kit I have suggests adding two pounds of pH up (Alkali).
- Total alkalinity is between 90-100 ppm (pretty much ideal).
With all the slightly acid rain we have been getting I am not surprised the pH is a bit low, so I need to add some pH up and let the chlorine burn off a little and we should be good to go. Looking forward to getting wet.
No one votes, so now there will no longer be a vote.
Scott Nolan has hereby declared the former commonwealth of Virginia a monarchy and himself it's king!
All hail Scott.
First Edict of the new monarch: "We feel oppressed by the heat and humidity and would be pleased if all our loyal subjects stripped down to bathing attire or skivvies and plunged into the nearest pool or swimming hole until sufficiently refreshed so they can once again partake in the welfare of the realm."
Once refreshed, subjects are to hail their benevolent king, and lament the passing of their former rights as apathetic and negligent voters.
Ministers, titles, and offices will be handed out subject to the monarch's whim over the next few days. Supplicants welcomed by the new monarch forthwith... Bribes are welcome, lions would please the new king most of all.
Bob McDonnell used to be the lawyer for the so called "Faith and Family Alliance" and his current campaign manager also heads that organization, an organization dedicated to stripping the rights of women away and keeping them in the home, subservient to their husbands.
Sadly, Rick Howell's blog is gone, but the google cache still has some of the pertinent old posts about theocratic Bob McDonnell: google cache of rickhowellspeaks post (from 2007).
A more current site, that I have not been able to evaluate is The Real Bob McDonnell.
It is clear that in this odd year, where there are relatively few political elections in the nation, the money machines for both parties want to make examples of New Jersey and Virginia. It will be interesting to see how many fiscal conservatives support "Taliban Bob" despite his extreme views and record. So far his money has been from the extreme right, religious conservatives, and corporate lobbies.
I am disgusted by the attempt to repaint McDonnell as a moderate, and wish he'd run on his own record and agenda. I am also disgusted by Democrats who misrepresent as well, and in this race for the Governorship I think we have one candidate attempting to secure the Democratic nomination who is almost as misleading in his ads, but even that nominee is not has bad a choice for democracy as Bob McDonnell.
Finally got to see the DVD version of Dr Horrible's Sing Along Blog and the musical commentary and the applications for the Evil League of Evil... fell asleep scheming up evil characters and their applications to the League...
Pho is your friend when you have a sore throat. Trust me on this one!
For those who can't see embedded videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWGmN_x00
I have many close personal friends who happen to be gay and happen to be in life-long relationships. They deserve the exact same treatment that I enjoy with my partner today. Some of them even get credit for counseling my partner and I through difficult times. Our marriage is stronger because of them.
Hopped online for a few to catch up as I crashed early this evening, and as the thunder and lightning continues, and the broadband cable connection drops in and out it hit me: a few years ago I'd run around the house physically unplugging the computers to keep them as electrically far away from deadly lighting strikes as possible. These days because of laptop batteries and wifi/airport connectivity; my computer is safely disconnected from any physical wiring and pretty safe to use in the house during a storm. I did not even think about it until a particularly loud crash startled the cats.
I still have a healthy respect for storms and the power of lightning, and tornadoes (as the one natural disaster that is both hard to predict and hard to do much of anything about) scare the heck out of me... but I certainly don't miss the need to disconnect the world anymore. The cost of the wireless access point, cable modem, and home router is trivial ($145 together) when compared to the cost of just a modem in 1990 ($999 for a Courier HST 14,400 baud; or $1400 for a Telebit Trailblazer 19,200 baud).
When friends all went as a group to see "You've Got Mail" we laughed about how unrealistic it was to show them connected all the time with no cables; and that has certainly changed.
Many things have dramatically improved.


