Below are the most recent 9 friends' journal entries.

Monday, October 13th, 2008
rhitroadkill	11:07a	columbus day So I have today off. I got my pictures off my camera by borrowing a friend's card reader. Now I need to decide if I want to go into town. I was thinking about getting fabric to start on my new RenFest outfit, but then I figure I don't really need to spend any money on frivolous stuff like that. Even if it is a holiday weekend and there are sales. There will be more holiday weekends and more sales. I just need to convince myself that. I also need groceries and a book from the bookstore, but I can grocery shop around here and books are not really necessary either. I also kinda want to make a scrapbook of my trip, but I've never done scrapbooking so I don't have any of the stuff. Katie does, but it would be the height of rudeness to steal all of her stuff. And that fancy paper and crap gets spendy too. I need to be conserving at this time what with all the work the car still needs. At least gasoline is WAY down (knock on wood). So I think I've talked myself out of going into town. whew. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 12th, 2008
rhitroadkill	4:45p	I am BACK!! I am back from Florida. I had so much fun. We went to all the Disney parks and also to Kennedy Space Center. Because they scrubbed the launch last week, we didn't get to see it, but we DID get to see TWO shuttles out on their launch pads. Normally there is only one or none. Almost never are there two. So that was awesome. I took about a brazillian pictures but my cord for my camera has a wonky USB end. So I probably need to buy a new one to get the pictures off the card. Or a card reader. Something. So no pictures yet. Oh, except for these which are courtesy of the disneyphotopass and my computer's prntscrn option (hells no I am not paying 13 dollars for a print!) and Yes, I got my picture taken with Lilo and Stitch. It made my day. SERIOUSLY. More picspam when I get it off the camera! I'll also blog about the whole trip later. For posterity of course. When we landed at the airport, we got McDonalds for lunch and my friend Rae (who invited me on the trip to her parents' timeshare) got the Happy Meal. She wanted the lego toys and was really disappointed to get the girl's option. It had a Wizard of Oz doll. The Wizard. Well let me tell you, we were going to leave the Wizard at the airport but wised up and realised what an awesome prop he would be. We took pictures with the Wizard EVERYWHERE. Every ride practically has a shot of the Wizard. We got ride operators and tour guides to pose with the Wizard. The Wizard is awesome. It rained every single day we were there (except the very first one) but though we got a little damp, fun was still achieved. :-) more later (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 11th, 2008
thegameiam	10:09p	Why the political parties suck Gov. Palin hasn't had much to say about policy specifics, so she's not who I'm mad at right now. Sens. McCain, Biden, and Obama have proposed one bad idea after another, and seem to be racing to outdo each other in the "free ponies for everyone" approach to government. During the Biden/Palin debate, I jolted upright when Sen. Biden talked about resetting the principal amount of outstanding mortgages. I remarked to Sarah at the time that this was a spectacularly socialist initiative, and then I was stunned that folks didn't jump all over it. (Side note: I think I've used up my quota for the word "maverick," so here are some synonyms - "bohemian, dissenter, loner, nonconformist, stray, unbranded".) And then McCain talked about the same thing during the "town hall" - and my reaction was ARRRRRGGGH! I thought there was a Republican running here? Why is this a bad idea? I think it's safe to say that the government has not had a particularly good history of being able to determine what appropriate values for ANYTHING are. Consider the $600 hammers, or the baffling and byzantine process by which private companies bid for Federal business, or the deleterious effect of the 70's wage/price controls, or the idiotic effects of the assorted "gouging" investigations, or the investigations into whether "speculators" are the reason for the rise in oil prices - or pretty much anything else, actually. Government can do lots of things well, but assessing value is precisely the thing at which it sucks - if you disagree, reexamine your property tax assessment. So with this long history of being bad at assessing accurate values, why would we think that it would be any better at assessing the value of arbitrary properties? Consider: a person is behind on his/her mortgage and the government is going to step in, and going to re-set the principal balance. The nature of the incentives here is a little messed up - suddenly the road to home ownership is paved with overextension, funded by those folks who made more prudent decisions. How will the government decide what this appropriate value is? If it's based on traditional methods (like comparing the property to similar ones), then that might produce a result which doesn't actually help the buyer - the adjusted value might be just as bad! If it's based on "ability to pay" or something like that, how would they deal with folks who have lost their jobs, divorced, become injured, etc? Ugh. This is an exercise in nationalizing property, and I don't think that that has turned out well for the places which have done this (see: Union, Soviet). So that's why I don't like that approach. What about health care? Here, McCain and Obama both confuse the map for the territory - both of their plans are focused on health insurance, and either stress getting people into a mandatory insurance regime, or giving discounts for individual purchase of insurance. That's fine, but they miss the point that health insurance isn't the solution: health insurance is the problem. Nobody had insurance 60 years ago, and yet people had health care. A better idea is this: divorce the idea of health insurance from the idea of health care. Both of the Senators' proposals will cost a lot of money. It would be cheaper and more effective to open 200 federally-funded primary/urgent care clinics in areas where there are concentrations of underinsured people. Set the prices for services at a nominal level (i.e. $10 for an office visit). Staff them with folks using a "teach for America" model - i.e. pay off the loans of doctors who will work there for five years. This focus on health insurance is a red herring, in that the insurance companies are really good at using statistics to their favor. All of the things people don't like about them (denying claims, rejecting applicants with pre-existing conditions, high deductibles, limited doctor choice) are things which are a natural outgrowth of their basic premise for existing, which is that certain pools of people are less risky than others. If we legislate that they need to change their rules, we'll just end up with more expensive insurance coverage which covers fewer things. A note on Sen. Obama's suggestion of expanding the government plan to cover others: this will be a hell of a lot more expensive than he thinks, for the same reason that if GEICO had to insure everyone regardless of driving history they'd raise their rates. So these are two reasons why "none of the above" is an appealing choice this November. I do think that McCain is likely to do less harm than Obama will, and I actually do *like* Palin (specifically, I like her espoused persona better than the espoused public personae of any of the other three), so I know which way I'll vote, but I may be holding my nose while I do it. Our politicians need to start with Hippocrates: "first, do no harm." Current Mood: thoughtful Current Music: none (2 Comments |Comment on this)
thegameiam	9:49p	Update Sarah's been out of the hospital since Monday, and is recovering from Colitis. Her diet has been restricted - pretty much all of the regular whole grains and vegetables are out for now. She's getting better steadily, and has appreciated very much all of the calls, visits, and other good thoughts. Thank you. Current Mood: thankful Current Music: none (Comment on this)
Monday, October 6th, 2008
thegameiam	12:05a	a quick update Sarah had been sick over Rosh Hashana, but it was on Friday morning that we learned how sick she was - she was running a 102.5°F fever, and had severe stomach pain. We went to the Sibley Hospital ER at about 8AM. She was checked in pretty rapidly, and they started checking her out. About 3PM, they told us that they were going to admit her, and she's been there since. It doesn't appear to be Crohn's disease, B'H, although that's a risk due to family history. She's been on "clear" liquids for multiple days now (clear liquid = "sugar + food colouring"), and they're not letting her out of the hospital until she can progress to solid food. Her spirits are good, and visiting hours there are 11AM - 8:30PM. Our hope is that she's out of there before Yom Kippur Wednesday night. I stayed over the first night, but was a wreck for the rest of shabbat (the environment was bad enough for me that I got a wicked migraine, and got myself sent to the ER too (so now we have matching bracelets) due to vomiting. Phenergan is wonderful stuff, I tell you. Oh, and unless you're totally bleeding out, it's worth the drive to Sibley Hospital - their ER is the nicest I've ever been in (and given my history, that's a lot) - they're uncrowded, and have both excellent nurses AND doctors with good bedside manner. They even have heated blankets. Refreshing! Collapse now. Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: none (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
thegameiam	11:02p	I've been blowing a lot Shofar, that is - 320 over 2 days - that's probably my second highest total for a Rosh Hashana (two years ago I had 220 in one day). I learned two new things about shofarot this year: one, that while there are some very particular customs about exactly which 100 notes are played, those customs don't have any particular halakhic significance. Two, that there is a custom of the baal tokea wearing a new shirt on the second day so that the shehekheyanu blessing will avoid the questions about whether Rosh Hashana is one long day or is actually two separate days (mostly, we finesse the questions when possible). Alas, I didn't get my favorite v'kol ma'aminim tune. Maybe next year... One verse which stood out to me a great deal is in the musaf amidah from Psalm 69:7 (Christian Bibles have this as verse 6 for some reason) - Birnbaum translates thus: Let not those who hope in thee be humiliated through me, Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek thee be disgraced through me, O God of Israel. I find that to be a remarkable condensation of the ideas which are expounded upon in hininei. === Sarah got a wicked cold/flu thing right as the holiday came in, so that put a big crimp in our plans. === One cool thing which just happened is I got my first unsolicited speaking offer (in a foreign country, no less!). w00t! === Y'know, Gedaliah really wouldn't have fasted for me... I'm just sayin'.. Current Mood: tired Current Music: none (1 Comment |Comment on this)
rhitroadkill	8:51p	I do love Pushing Daisies. Really, I do. I think it is totally one of my favorite TV shows and that is saying something because I really watch very little television. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
angel_grrl	10:49a	On a similar note... Guess what I found... :D Paper craft meets Pokémon My Pokémon Ranch style: Pikachu | Chimchar | Piplup | Turtwig. These will probably take much, much less time to put together than the Hello Kitty modular origami set I was going to try to modify to make a Pikachu... Current Mood: crafty (2 Comments |Comment on this)
angel_grrl	10:41a	Replacing a GameBoy Cartridge Battery I've had this project to do for a while. After we got a second GBA (thanks again, wrexen; we're getting a ton of use out of it!) and both kids became obsessed with pokémon, we discovered that my Pokémon Silver cartridge would no longer save games. While we could get around that by keeping the SP plugged in all of the time, that was a bit more work than Zach wanted to deal with, and Alex just decided to stop playing altogether. (They had decided independently that my Yellow version was Zach's and the Silver version was Alex's, where by "they" I mean "Zach". I think it's because the Yellow version has a picture of Pikachu on the front and is therefore inherently superior. This was before we discovered the battery issue, so I don't think it was malicious on Zach's part.) I scoured the internet for what to do and found several guides that explained how to replace the battery. They all involved detaching the original battery, which is soldered to the contact tabs, and then somehow taping the new battery in to ensure it's firmly in place. That all seemed very shady to me, not to mention that I couldn't figure out how to get the special screw off the back in the first place. Someone on girl_gamers brought up the same issue, and someone in the comments posted a link to this very comprehensive guide. Unlike other guides, every step had pictures, which made me feel a little better. I was finally able to put my round nosed pliers to use, as they were the only thing I could wedge into the tiny area between the screw and its surrounding plastic. I had no luck trying to turn the screw with a screwdriver, as the guide original suggested. And of course I had to take pictures of the process because it was fun and I need to be able to prove to my kids later that I am an awesome mom. ;-) Current Mood: accomplished (1 Comment |Comment on this)