Thursday, October 27, 2005

There Are Few Things I Enjoy More...

...than watching Republicans eat their own young. That is exactly what they're doing right now, which is starting to turn incompetence into impotence. Fine by me, of course. Anything that keeps Dubyah distracted long enough to let the clock run out on this administration without letting him change the country is great. Not only that, but even if Dems don't control Congress after 2006, a much narrower margin would hobble all but the most bipartisan policy decisions he tries to make.

I found an interesting writer on Slate, Bruce Reed, who has put a lot of the thoughts I have had for the last few months into words. He's of course a Democrat. Some of his best gems:

Regarding the nomination of Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan at the Fed: "As one clever conservative told me, "I'm just relieved the president didn't nominate his accountant."

On Karl Rove, Reed writes: "But if Rove is not entirely the bogeyman Democrats would like to believe, he isn't the genius he and his own party believe, either. Whatever happens to Karl Rove, the Republican Party should learn to embrace, not dread, life without Rovism.
The Bush White House fears it will be lost without Rove's services. Then again, the Bush White House—and the country—seem quite lost with Rove at the helm."

Astute words on playing dirty: "Knee-Capping: Whatever the special prosecutor concludes in the Plame scandal, there are far, far worse things that Rove and company have done over the years—from knifing Max Cleland in 2002 to smearing John McCain in 2000. Jacob Weisberg may be right that no great joy can come from this prosecution. But whether White House aides intended to discredit the CIA or Joe Wilson, the whole sorry affair is an object lesson in why the knees you cap may turn out to be your own."

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Putting Hurricane Katrina To Bed

OK, if this isn't a smoking gun, nothing is. It's nice to know once and for all that the blaming of everyone else for Michael Brown's shortcomings was truly just a Republican "circle the wagons" tactic and nothing more. I don't blame them for doing it, since both parties do it. However, I don't ever want to hear that FEMA was on top of things from any more people though. Ridiculous.

Monday, October 17, 2005

Bottom Feeders

Those bots that post comments to blogs with little links to their websites that they get a couple cents per hit from. Yeah, bottom feeders. So now for a little while at least, I will have to do the word verification thing for my comments. Sorry. Blame the owners of the bots.

I've been busy at work learning SQL. I've had exposure to it before, but not at all to this kind of depth. It's very interesting stuff, relational databases. Very logical, and it all makes a lot of sense especially once you get familiar the tables you work with most frequently.

Next weekend, my wife and I will be at the 49ers-Redskins game! When my favorite team comes to town, it's a must to go see them. Last time they were here, I had just moved down here fresh out of grad school, and didn't have the money to spend on tickets. I did see them beat the Eagles in Philadelphia two years ago in OT though. I'm sure it will be fun, even though the 49ers are simply horrible this year, much like last year. It's OK that they suck. I still want to see them play and put forth some solid effort!

Oh yes, and the Yankees are out of the playoffs since I last wrote. Few things warm my heart more than watching Steinbrenner fielding the best team that having no salary cap can buy, and losing in the first round of the playoffs. Hats off to you, George!

Monday, October 03, 2005

Swirling Around In My Head

This weekend I flew up to my alma mater, SUNY Geneseo for my 10th reunion celebration. I stayed with my old friend and college roommate Jeremy, his wife, and twin seven month old daughters near Rochester. I saw lots of people that I had not seen in years, and many that I had not seen since graduation actually. I had many interesting experiences over the course of the weekend, but it was much more a mental journey than anything else in many ways. When I go "back" someplace, like visiting people from Geneseo, sometimes I feel like I am emotionally traveling back to that time to an extent, and even though my years of undergrad are without doubt what gave me much of the mental strength that I have today, I often feel that strength drain when I get back in that environment. (I'm not including people like Jer who I have visited with often since graduation.) For instance, I had the strangest conversation with someone that I had not spoken to since we were in middle school together probably, aside from maybe a "hi" or two around campus when we ended up going to the same college after I decided to go to a neighboring high school. I'll get into that more some other time, as well as the conversation and why it took me back so many years. It was such a time warp. It's not that I'm a different person entirely of course since college. It's just "me plus ten years", after all. It gets me thinking though about who I am, what I want in life and why, priorities, alternate realities (something I've thought about a lot recently).

I think I have reached a couple conclusions so far. I know that others have thought these thoughts before, and I have as well, but I am finding these two magnified suddenly:

1. Much of the time, I learn what I need to know after I could have made the most use out of that information.

2. One lifetime is very limiting. I want to live a thousand lifetimes as myself and see just what I am capable of, the good, the bad, and the ugly (but mostly the good of course). I think people can do that to an extent, maybe throw a couple extra dice, but more than that is tricky. How can you tell how many sides it has, if after you throw it once, you are only told the number you rolled?