Chris’s Blog

Well, somewhat.  Honestly, this is the least I’ve been excited about a Presidential election, well, ever.

At this point, I’m still trying to decide whether I’ll vote for Bob Barr (who has the most likelyhood of winning out of any third party candidate) or Chuck Baldwin (who I agree with slightly more than Bob Barr).  Wait, you say?  I’m not voting for The Lesser of Two Evils (whichever candidate you believe that to be)?

No.  I’m done with that.  When you really take a good look at the top two, there is little difference on the issues that matter.  Oh, sure, there are the side-issues that most people are convinced to make their decision based on–but on the things I feel are the most important?  They’re almost twins.

They both believe that spending billions (or even trillions) of dollars that we don’t have to bail out huge corporations that made poor decisions (and continue to) is a good idea.  I don’t.  Both candidates received over $20 million dollars to their campaigns from the very banks they voted to give money to.  Both support continuing our country’s failed foreign policies.  Obama wants to bring the troops home slightly sooner, but will likely throw Israel under the bus and expand the UN’s illegal dominion over our country’s policies.  McCain wants to “finish the job” in Iraq, but is considering other wars like Iran, Pakistan, and maybe even getting involved in the Georgia-Russia conflict.  Both will drive this country further into debt (did I mention that we already owe $10 TRILLION) with their out-of-control spending.  Both will trample our liberties (McCain with more wiretapping and “Patriot” Act-esque stuff, Obama with more gun control and more social programs like healthcare which we can’t afford).  So, why would I vote for either?

That leaves me with Bob Barr who is on the ballot in many states and who I agree with as far as platform goes on about a 80-90% level.  His problem is his somewhat sordid past.  Or, Chuck Baldwin who has little to no chance of being elected (he’s a write-in in Georgia) who I agree with on a 85-90% level.

The real race I’m interested in is the Saxby Chambliss(R)/Jim Martin(D)/Allen Buckley(L) three-way.  Saxby voted for the bailout (again, he’s beholden to the special interests that called for it), Martin wouldn’t have, but only because it wasn’t big enough!  Allen Buckley (the Libertarian candidate) is the only fiscal conservative of the bunch.  I’m happily voting for him in the hopes that it forces a run-off.  If that happens, most likely, Saxby will win (Buckley won’t even be in the run-off), but I have hopes that it will make our Senator a little more aware of the people he represents (since he claimed a few weeks ago that his job was safe because people won’t vote him out on the single issue of the bailout vote).

Then, there’s Phil Gingrey (R) who I will also happily be voting for.  Despite enormous political pressure, he stuck to his guns and faithfully represented the people of Georgia by voting against the bailout bill.  He has also stood his ground on a few other issues that I can be proud of him for.  Gingrey: He Delivers!  (He’s a former OB/GYN)

So, while I will vote, I will do so for the first time with the surety that my chosen candidate will lose.  Sadly, no matter which of the top two candidates win, America loses.

I haven’t gotten sucked in by the “early voting” fad.  I suppose it’s a nice thing for some people, but when they have 20 machines to service the number of people that are usually broken up across 5 or more voting locations with 100+ machines on Election Day, I’m not willing to stand in the 3 hour lines.  If everything works out as I hope, I will work from home on Tuesday and run out at lunchtime or early afternoon to go vote.  Typically, even in busy elections, the lines are not that long during the middle of the day.

Anyone want to bet I’m in and out in under 30 minutes?

This was too good to pass up.  A handy flowchart to help you determine if you’re a socialist, a Republican, or a fringe-kook.  So, are you a socialist?

Actually, it turned out not to be an OS X problem at all.  I started getting weird error messages when launching the simplest of applications.  The error was “The application could not be started -10810″.  Huh?

Digging into it, it seemed that if I killed a few apps or restarted the Mac, it was fine for a while.  It would (after a time) go back to doing what it was doing, though.  I had recently moved from an older iMac to a new one via Firewire, Target Disk Mode (which is awesome), and Carbon Copy Cloner (which is also awesome and I’ve donated to the author for the fantastic software he wrote).  So, I thought maybe this was the problem.  I checked and double-checked and then Repaired Disk Permissions, all to no avail.

A chance meeting on Google and the Apple Support Forums led me to Microsoft Desktop (which is the Mac’s version of the IntelliPoint and IntelliType utilities for Microsoft Keyboards/Mice).  Sure enough, a “ps -ax” in the Terminal turned up dozens of (MicrosoftDesktop) processes that were spawning mercilessly.  Awesome.

So, I uninstalled 6.0, rebooted just to make sure it was clean, and installed the latest version (6.21) of Microsoft Desktop.  Turns out the old version has a bug that seems to be fixed in this new version.  Whenever your wireless mouse battery level gets low, it tries to spawn a dialog but sometimes can’t.  It does this quietly over and over eating up all the available processes until your machine just grinds to a halt.  So, upgrade to 6.21 (which seems to fix the problem) or change your mouse batteries.

What a blast!

A little-mentioned portion of the Bailout Bill that has dire consequences is the increasing of Federal Deposit Insurance to $250,000.  Thomas DiLorenzo over at The Lew Rockwell Blog says it better than I can.

He ties it back to the S&L crisis of the 1980’s and previous increases of the FDIC limit:

Bankers looked at this and thought, well now, I can make big, big bucks by taking on far more risk with my loans (which pay higher interest), and if the loans go into default, why, I’m covered for more than twice the amount of government insurance.

They did indeed take on much more risk; thousands of their big real estate development loans defaulted; and it ended up costing taxpayers half a trillion dollars.

Brilliant move there, guys.  Really brilliant.

Over the weekend, our not-quite-2-week old baby started running a fever.  Not much, but our pediatrician said to take her straight to the ER if it hit 100.5.  When it was 100.4, we decided to take her and made the mistake of going to our local, rural hospital ER.  They did some tests and discharged us telling us to come back if the fever went back up.

Well, Saturday rolled around and we were monitoring her fever.  After her afternoon nap, it was up to 100.7, so we called our pediatrician and after he spoke with the pediatrician on duty at a bigger hospital in the same network, he decided to send us to the Children’s Healthcare hospital.

Wow, these people are awesome.  If you want an example of what private industry can do in conjunction with tax deductible charitable organizations, check out the Children’s Healthcare system.  Everyone (doctors, nurses, techs) has been awesome and it’s wonderful to know that they specialize in children.  You can see the love for children that most, if not all the ones we’ve encountered have.  It almost makes me want to quit my job and find out some way to make a living helping these people care for these kids!

Our little one is doing great.  She’s been on antibiotics, hasn’t had any fever since early Sunday morning, and most of her labs have come back fine.  We still have to wait until tomorrow to get the 2-day culture results to find out if we’re going home or staying another day or two.  That being said, there are some very sick children here.

I have donated small amounts to Children’s Healthcare in the past, but after this experience, I’m going to find a way to fit a regular donation into our budget.  This is what happens when private industry and charitable organizations are allowed to solve the “problems” of our society rather than the government.

The so-called bailout bill (personally, I think, “monetary socialism bill” has a better ring to it) has passed the House (see the link to see how your Congressman voted).  All that remains is for President Bush to sign it which I’m sure he’s rushing to do since it was all his idea and the only thing he thinks can save what’s left of his legacy.

I vowed a few days ago when the Senate passed this 451-page behemoth that is another step toward socialism and that I would not vote for anyone that helped pass it (including McCain and Obama).  We need to send Congress a lesson that when they do not represent us, they get removed from the position of “representative.”

God bless, Phil Gingrey (R-GA 11th Dist) who is my Congressman.  Generally, I agree with the guy and I think he’s mostly done a good job.  Today, he faithfully represented the people of Georgia by voting against H.R. 1424.  Thank you, Congressman Gingrey!

For now, it looks like I’ll be voting for Congressman Gingrey, Mr. Allen Buckley (who is running against Saxby and Martin for the Senate seat), and possibly Bob Barr (jury is still out on that one).

If you hadn’t heard, Georgia has been having a bit of a gasoline shortage problem.  Because of that, my boss(es) graciously allowed us to work from home a couple of days this week.  I have a Macbook with Parallels and all my developer tools, plus I always keep the latest code handy, so I had no problem getting set up to do this.  After working from home Wednesday and Thursday, here are a few observations in no particular order:

• Surprisingly, my 3 year-old left me alone for the most part.  She was awesome!
• I got a lot done.  In my opinion, more than I would have with the distractions of the office.
• I don’t want to do it every day.
• I miss the gang.
• I miss lunchtime (a social event in our office).
• Seemingly contrary to the previous point, I loved lunch at home.  Had a great sandwich and watched Colbert all in less time than I would’ve spent at lunch if I were in the office.
• The “drive” is awesome.  I got up later, got to work earlier, quit later in the day, and still didn’t feel like I’d spent ALL DAY at work.
• Two days per week is probably enough.
• My home desk, chair, and 19″ CRT monitor suck.  My knees hurt after two straight days.

We’ll just have to see if we’re allowed to continue doing this in the future.  For my part, I feel it helped me make some good progress and between phone, email, and IM, I didn’t feel at all out of touch with the people I needed to get my job done.

This current situation in our economy has an overwhelming majority of our federal government screaming like Chicken Little that the “sky is falling,” an overwhelming majority of the American people screaming that the government needs to stay out of the market and not spend more money we don’t have, and an overwhelming majority of our elected representatives refusing to listen to us.

It seems appropriate that tonight was the “Debt” lesson of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class.  This entire problem was built on credit/debt.

• Credit that lenders were forced to extend to people that would never be able to pay it off. Forced by the government’s Community Reinvestment Act and President Bush’s goal of raising minority home ownership by an unrealistic amount.  Now, I’m not against minority home ownership–I am against anyone buying a home they can’t afford to pay for and financing it at 100%(or even 125%).
• Credit that banks have used to buy other, smaller banks (Wachovia, I’m looking at you).
• Credit that was passed around as investments in the sub-prime lending boom.
• Credit that people didn’t read the terms on or did and took it on anyway knowing they couldn’t repay it if the interest rate notched up.
• Credit, credit, credit.

Are you seeing a pattern?  Do we really think that giving the people that screwed it up in the first place more credit will help get us out of this trouble?  Because that’s what this bailout is (I refuse to call it a “rescue”).  It’s not real money.  It’s credit that we’re borrowing and printing (as in, more paper money that devalues the paper you have in your pocket).

Well, apparently, our government ignored the voice of the people and the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of their own version of the unconstitutional bailout bill.  Apparently, it needed more pork to pass.  This vote (from what I hear, though I’ve not seen the official tally yet) apparently included our two Georgia Senators, Chambliss and Isakson.  Well, all I can say is:

1. The term “Bank Robber” has a new meaning.
2. I urge you to do as I will do the next time I have opportunity and vote against any incumbent that voted to spend your tax dollars to prop up failed multi-billion dollar companies on Wall Street.  Fire them!  That’s the only way we’ll take our government back.
3. Vote for someone other than McCain or Obama in the upcoming Presidential Election.  Both of them overwhelmingly supported bailing out Wall Street at our expense and both of them attempted to help buy the American people’s complicity in this (which this time, from all the polls I’m seeing failed miserably).

I unsubscribed from the McCain campaign propaganda emails today and left explicit reasons in the “comments” box on the unsubscribe form.  I will be making an informed decision on who to vote for in the next few weeks.  Have any good ideas for what to do with a couple McCain/Palin bumper stickers and a never-used yard sign?