Sydney is a two month old Dachshund/Terrier mix, about 8 lbs. so far, who we adopted yesterday at the Silicon Valley Humane Society. They have a beautiful facility in Milpitas and the staff are great. We’ve signed up for the Puppy 1 training and socialization class starting Tuesday. He’s already good about going outside and understands No.
So happy to have this new member of our family!
Sorry but I am just fed up. Mail.app, Outlook, Thunderbird, all of them are stuck in the past and the developers need to get their acts together before users collectively hunt them down for silly slapping.
The current Democratic-back health care legislation has induced more rhetoric, emotion and disinformation since the Swift Boat Campaign. A very apt comparison since there’s about as much truth in the opposition in both. “Death panels” please! Like a politician would do something so utterly guaranteed to lose votes.
As usual SportsFilter is having its own league, plus I put my team in Ives Galarcep’s SBI league and Michael Romero’s Liverpool fans league.
Do you know that Wells Fargo will take any reason to switch retail customers to online only statements?
Yesterday was a great day. When Clint Dempsey put in the first goal I was jumping and screaming, though I had to see the replay to believe it. When Landon drove home the second just past Julio Cesar’s leaping form I was laughing with joy and pounding the countertop.
For those of you who somehow managed to avoid seeing this result, how did you do it? LOL.
[Note: I sent this email to Safeway over a week ago and have not received so much as an automated response.]
I am very unhappy about the false promise made by Safeway regarding accumulation of 10 cent per gallon discounts. I live in Mountain View, CA, and shop at the store on Shoreline Blvd. Given that I’ve accumulated 6 or 7 and the discount expires next 10 days I tried to use it yesterday only to find out that I cannot, at least not in any reasonable way. $0.60 * 14 gallons to fill up is $8.40 (or $9.80 for 7), a meaningful amount in these days of rising gas prices.
I looked very carefully at the related pages on Safeway.com and find nothing that says the reward can only be redeemed at Safeways which sell gas, just “participating locations.” But nowhere are participating locations listed and the closest such Safeway is in Pleasonton, over 40 minutes drive from here! Past similar programs have been redeemable at the Arco next to the Safeway at which I shop.
Indeed the PowerPump Locator page lists three locations in Mountain View (when I enter zip code 94043). But instead of being places where one may redeem the reward these are the three stores you have in town and this distinction is not mentioned at all.
To me this is similar to false advertising since Safeway is creating the same false expectation that I’m getting a deal by shopping at the store. Either the company should arrange for location redemption locations or stop making the claim on every receipt I get.
Ives Galarcep had a good post today, Hating Giuseppe Rossi, that made me think a bit about this American-born emerging soccer star who scored twice against the US team yesterday at the Confederations Cup. Rossi was born and raised in New Jersey but due to FIFA regulations is allowed to play for Italy since both his parents were born there.
[This is the letter I sent Fox Soccer Channel today in support of the Boycott Steven Cohen campaign]
To whom it may concern,
Steve Cohen has, and not for the first time, told lies about the deaths the 96 fans at Hillsborough, claiming that Liverpool fans were responsible for killing their own, amongst other lies. Is this the type of person you want representing your company? Steve Cohen has done this before, apologising when the outrage grew too large only to continue with his comments a short time later. Clearly, he will not stop, so our objective is to see him being put off air permanently.
Fox Football Phone-in used to be enjoyable and good for a laugh but now I cannot watch it at all. If there were another way for me to watch English football than FSC you can be sure I would.
I urge you to reconsider your use of Cohen.
I will be posting this message to my blog and elsewhere until your support for Steve Cohen and his lies ends.
Thank you,
Bill Lazar
http://billsaysthis.com
So the wizards at CBS have done it again. This is the network with the oldest demographic and having just turned 48 I shouldn’t be surprised that more of its shows are getting on my list. NCIS, for instance, who can resist Mark Harmon as a hardcase?
Six years ago tonight TS1 and I stood up in front of family and friends to pledge our love and lives together. Simply put, I’ve never made a better decision: no woman is a better match for me and she gives me hope that the future will be ever better.
For all of you still searching for a partner in life I wish only that you find someone as wonderful as Viv!
Six years ago tonight TS1 and I stood up in front of family and friends to pledge our love and lives together. Simply put, I’ve never made a better decision: no woman is a better match for me and she gives me hope that the future will be ever better.
For all of you still searching for a partner in life I wish only that you find someone as wonderful as Viv!
Two interesting GOP things today:
My opinion of the Republican party is no secret: I think they are, on the whole, sleazier and more hypocritical than Democratic politicians. To use less directly derogatory terms, GOP positions are based more on emotion than logic and are far less logically consistent; further they are far less open to true intellectual debate. How many officeholding Dems during the Bush years said, as Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) recently did, that his or her state should secede from the Union?
Chuck really has to come back next season. NBC Universal, please renew the show because I have to see what its like now that Bartowski will be able to hold his own in a fight!
This was hopefully a season finale and not a series finale but, if it was, then I think the writers did good. This year has seen the end, or possible end, of several shows I watch and the writers impressed me with quality finales. In this regard, compared to past seasons this has to be one of the best–though for the most part I’d have rather had more episodes.
Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, The Shield, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Life, MI-5, these are the ones I’m thinking about. The L Word was close but not quite at the same level; they did at least finally get back to the whole Jenny’s murder thing in the last episode. Life and Sarah Connor, at least as of this writing, are only on the bubble and not cancelled, though the latter seems sure to go.
There was plenty of criticism of the way Ron Moore brought the four year flight to an end. Almost everyone loved the first hour but the second not so much. I felt it was great that all the main character arcs and nearly all the questions were answered. I specifically wanted to know what the Six that only Baltar and the Baltar only Six could see were, and we got that answer. My main quibble was that the very last bit, with the two angels walking down a Manhattan street, was a ham-handed method of getting a point across.
The Wire, as I wrote a few months ago, gave us a “final season of an awesome show [of] 10 episodes that layered on the death of the American big city newspaper to a stack of stories that were already deeper than the aggregate total of the 500+ episodes of the three editions of CSI” and I like the CSIs. This was, quite possibly, the finest show produced by American television.
The Shield was another great one, very bleak (as were BSG and The Wire), but like them it ended and did so honestly within the framework created over its run. The sight of Vic Mackie forced to sit quietly at a cubicle desk for years to come was a terrific way to punish and reward the atrocious behavior we’d seen.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles finished at a point that let the creatives go forward if the show is renewed–try figuring out how they were going to explain John Connor’s trip forward and how and/or why he would come back to the present–or if not gave viewers a sense of one major part of his life coming to a close.
Let’s just hope the NBC execs have the good judgment to bring back Chuck and Life.
For a new programming project I decided to see what the whole CSS framework and grid design craze is about for myself, and to refresh my Ruby on Rails programming skills.
A little research turned up Chris Eppstein’s Compass gem. This is a very nice meta-framework, which can be used with Rails, Merb, Sinatra or other Ruby frameworks as well as pure Ruby, that combines Hampton Caitlin’s SASS gem with any of several CSS frameworks, including (at this writing) Blueprint, Yahoo! UI Grids and 960 Grid System. Blueprint seemed sufficient for my needs and the easiest choice so I went with it.
Author’s note: I tried publishing this with Blogger as a regular post but it just wasn’t working, so its available as a standalone page.
Today a man in Pittsburgh shot and killed three police officers who had responded to a report of domestic violence. Yesterday another man shot and killed thirteen people in Binghampton, NY. Both gunmen were wearing body armor, apparently prepared to take on any police response.
Online comments, in this case on the Yahoo Buzz discussion of the Pittsburgh story, are certainly not to be taken as more than anecdotal evidence of community sentiment but still I was seriously wound up by the majority of those posted as of now.
Most of the posters seemed more concerned that President Obama and the Democratic congress were trying to override their Second Amendment right to own guns than with the 16 dead people and their grieving families. A couple of particularly sad examples:
“these brainwashed killers are brought out intentionally, so to take away our 2 amendment. bring on the chaos so to create more control. gun control that is. biden is on it!” said dorite.
“Will Obama insist on calling the shooter something other than a murderer? Perhaps this event will be called a “Disturbed Citizen Confrontation.” If we can’t call terrorists “Enemy Combatants.” how can we call Americans “murderers?” said (the ironically nicknamed) Patriot.
Seriously, sixteen people who were doing their jobs or else in the same boat as the murderer are being buried and these dunces want to make up absurd claims with no basis in reality?!
Let’s for a moment, though, take them seriously. Another poster makes the valid point that the majority of gun owning Americans do not use them to murder people or commit other crimes.
Is that a good enough reason to continue allowing Americans unfettered access to all types of guns? The NRA and the rest of the gun lobby use their muscle to prevent any limitations on gun ownership.
The primary arguments I have seen are that people need guns to protect themselves and for hunting. If this is so then why are laws that cover guns and ammunition which are not used in either of them a problem?
The Second Amendment is not, after all, as absolute in its language as the First. “Congress shall make no law” is much stronger than “shall not be infringed.”
Some people will argue that what the Founders wrote should be taken literally and not interpreted, either in regards to the times in which they lived and their other writings or in light of changes since then and current thinking.
My answer is simply WTF. You want a rifle for hunting and a pistol for the house? Fine. Armor-piercing bullets and .50 caliber machine guns? Kiss my heiny.
Another argument is that if we outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns. By definition I suppose that would be true as any hunter who kept a rifle in the garage or homeowner with a .22 in the back closet would be an outlaw. But that isn’t what’s on the table, its just a strawman argument to generate emotional appeal where logic fails.
Finally some will argue that an armed populace keeps the government on its toes, from overreaching its place. When the government has Stealth bombers, divisions of M1A tanks and nuclear subs I do not believe any group of civilians will be able to achive that result.
The only answer for this is to hope some substantial portion of the military will side with, well, whichever side is actually right. Even without the military, the lack of change brought about by various anti-government groups over the last 20 years is reasonable proof that armed civilians cannot succeed.
No, the truth now is that gun owners have become religious. They speak and react with the same zealous vigor as religious fanatics–and not surprisingly there’s a serious overlap of the two groups.
In a way this strange. You shall not kill is one of the 10 commandments, stated as an absolute. Not you shall not kill except in self-defense or in order to eat (the commandment isn’t specific to humans. No killing period.
Meanwhile our families, friends and neighbors are dying in front of our eyes. Are these two men murderers? Yes. Are their guns to blame? No. But when gun-owning fanatics will not allow the least restrictions on gun sales so that clearly mentally unbalanced people can buy them, then they share blame for the result.
Last: Our literal-minded compatriots will make exceptions on the one hand, since it suits them, but not on the other even when doing so might be closer in agreement with their self-proclaimed religious beliefs.
Next time you happen to be in a conversation with a religious gun owner, have some fun and ask them how they reconcile the contradictions.
BillSaysThis 